Streaming statistics released by Spotify in 2019 show 30% of those streaming the Beatles are aged 18 to 24. 20.6 million of Spotify’s monthly users, close to 10 percent of the streaming platform’s overall 220 million users, were listening to the Beatles. (Source)

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Adam Levine • Maroon 5

"I fell in love with music through The Beatles. I still think there hasn't been a better band."

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Alice Cooper

"'She Loves You' was the first song by The Beatles I ever heard and it literally changed something in my brain. It inspired what Alice Cooper became. . . It was the first one that totally knocked me out because I’d never heard anything like that before. We were listening to The Beach Boys and The Four Seasons, and all of a sudden, here’s this band coming along with all this hair and Beatle boots and these suits, and they were singing these songs that you could hear them one time, and you knew them."

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Andy Partridge • XTC

"You know, I was such a big Beatles fan, and when I'd buy a new album I'd invariably hate it the first time I heard it 'cause it was a mixture of absolute joy and absolute frustration. I couldn't grasp what they'd done, and I'd hate myself for that."

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Billie Eilish

When asked about her favorite music she replied, "Um, I mean, the Beatles? I think if I had to choose, and, no matter like, like, throughout my life, I don't - I think like no matter who my favorite artists are now, or next year, or last year, whatever, like the Beatles will always remain the favorite underneath."

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Billy Joel

"The single biggest moment that I can remember being galvanized into wanting to be a musician for life was seeing The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. I said at that moment, I said, 'That's what I want to do."

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Bob Dylan • The Traveling Wilburys

"Everyone thought The Beatles will just pass by. But to me they had staying power."

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Booker T. Jones • Booker T. and the MGs

"We released McLemore Avenue, our tribute to Abbey Road, the same month the Beatles split. Abbey Road had made me want to do more than R&B and work with people like Leon Russell, Quincy Jones and Bill Withers. . . . I’d loved them since I’d first heard them as a college freshman, pouring all my quarters into the jukebox to play 'I Want to Hold Your Hand.'" 

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Brian May • Queen

"I don't think anyone comes close to The Beatles, not even Oasis."

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Brian Wilson • The Beach Boys

"As soon as I started hearing Rubber Soul, I loved it. I mean, loved it! I still remember hearing 'Michelle' for the first time, and 'Girl.' What an incredible song! Everything about the way John Lennon sang, and the lyrics he was writing. . . It sounded amazing.       

     'Norwegian Wood' is my favorite, too. The lyrics are so good, and so creative. . . I can’t forget the sitar, too. I’d never heard that before, that unbelievable sound. No one had heard that in rock ‘n’ roll back then, this amazing, exotic sound. It really did inspire the instrumentation I ended up using for Pet Sounds. When we were listening to it that night I said to myself, ‘Now I’m gonna make an album just as good as Rubber Soul.’. . . It inspired me to do my own thing, and so the next morning I went to the piano and wrote 'God Only Knows 'with Tony Asher."

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Bruce Springsteen • Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band

"The first record that I ever learned was a record called 'Twist and Shout.' It was a Beatles record."

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Cat Stevens/Yusuf

“George Harrison had an immense influence on me, spiritually, from the very beginning. We both understood that music was the key to something much higher. ‘Here Comes The Sun’ represents the returning of light and hope to a seriously dark and broken world. Its message could not be more suited.”

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Dave Grohl • Nirvana • Foo Fighters

"If it weren't for The Beatles, I wouldn't be a musician. They seemed capable of anything."

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David Bowie 

"Towards the end of the 70s, a group of us went off to Hong Kong on a holiday . . . and during one of our expeditions on the back streets a kid comes running up to him and says, 'Are you John Lennon?' And he said, 'No but I wish I had his money.' Which I promptly stole for myself. . . . It’s brilliant. It was such a wonderful thing to say. The kid said, 'Oh, sorry. Of course you aren’t,' and ran off. I thought, 'This is the most effective device I’ve heard.'

     I was back in New York a couple of months later in Soho, downtown, and a voice pipes up in my ear, 'Are you David Bowie?' And I said, 'No, but I wish I had his money.'
     'You lying bastard. You wish you had my money.' It was John Lennon."

(Okay, this is just a great story. It's from a Commencement speech given to the Berklee College of Music’s Class of 1999.)

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David Crosby • The Byrds • Crosby, Stills and Nash • Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young

“I liked pop music because of The Everly Brothers, but seeing The Beatles made something else click. It changed my life. They changed my life. Let’s be very specific about that.”

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David Gilmour • Pink Floyd

“I really wish I had been in The Beatles. [They] taught me how to play guitar; I learnt everything. The bass parts, the lead, the rhythm, everything. They were fantastic.”

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Ed Sherran

"Growing up, I was inspired by The Beatles and Bob Dylan."

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Eric Clapton • The Yardbirds • John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers • Cream • Blind Faith • Derek and the Dominoes 

"I saw The Beatles play at the Hammersmith Odeon when I was at the bottom of the bill in The Yardbirds. This band was like they were a single person. It was an odd phenomenon, in fact. They seemed to move together and think together. It was almost like a little family unit.... When I saw them play, I was overwhelmed by their gift. Each one of them seemed to be very well endowed with their own musical capacity.”

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Gene Simmons • KISS

"There is no way I’d be doing what I do now if it wasn’t for The Beatles. I was watching The Ed Sullivan Show and I saw them... It blew me away that these four boys from the middle of nowhere could make that music."

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George Michael • Wham!

“I was big into Abbey Road and Revolver. . . I made one record to show how much I loved Lennon [‘Praying for Time’]. I made another record to show how much I loved McCartney [‘Heal the Pain’].”

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Graham Nash • The Hollies • Crosby, Stills and Nash • Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young

"I don't think there'll ever be another Beatles. I think that the Universe put those four kids in the right place at the right time, and gave them the right talent to be able to move the hearts and minds and spirits of billions of people. And continue [to] to this day.

     Very often when I'm warming up my voice with David and Stephen we'll sing Beatles songs. And their incredible simplicity, and their incredible melodic structure is stunning to this day! How - I mean, with all due respect, in this Western scale of music there's what, twelve notes? Are you kidding me? The Beatles were unbelievable, and I think we all knew it. . . .The Beatles were the best band in the world. There's absolutely no question about it."

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Jimmy Page • Led Zeppelin

"If it weren't for The Beatles, there wouldn't be anyone like us around."

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Joe Perry • Aerosmith

"The Beatles did everything long before anyone else. They weren't afraid to try things and to experiment with a lot of sounds. In 200 years, when you look up 'rock and roll' in the dictionary, it'll have a picture of the Beatles next to it."

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Joe Walsh • James Gang • Eagles

"I took one look on The Ed Sullivan Show and it was, 'Fuck school. This makes it!' I memorized every Beatles song and went to Shea Stadium and screamed right along with all the chicks."

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Justin Hayward • The Moody Blues

“The Beatles opened the door and they were the leaders of a group of only about 100 people in London but it seemed like the whole town belonged to us and wanted to listen to us... I was in the middle of it. The Beatles were moving so fast and the rest of us were just trying to keep up and move through the doors they had opened.”

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Keith Richards • The Rolling Stones

"The Beatles were the first to find that path between artistic and intellectual."

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Lemmy Kilmister • Hawkwind • Motörhead

"The Beatles was the most magical thing I've ever seen. This complete four-headed monster, each of them as good as the other. You could see them feeding on each other's energy, and you could see they were having fun. They'd swear at the crowd and when they'd made a mistake they'd crack up laughing - which bands didn't do at all back then."

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Michelle Phillips • The Mamas and The Papas

"The first night we ever took acid we heard our first Beatles album. It was such an eye opener. We wanted to do commercial music but we just didn’t know exactly what it was. And it wasn’t folk anymore... When we listened to that Beatles album ... our jaws just dropped and I remember Denny was the one who said, ‘Now, we wanna be doing more stuff like this.'"

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Mick Jagger • The Rolling Stones

"The Beatles were so big that it's hard for people not alive at the time to realize just how big they were."

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Nancy Wilson • Heart

"The lightning bolt came out of the heavens and struck Ann and me the first time we saw The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. There’d been so much anticipation and hype about The Beatles that it was a huge event, like the lunar landing: that was the moment Ann and I heard the call to become rock musicians."

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Nick Cannon

"You can't love music without loving The Beatles."

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Noel Gallagher • Oasis

"It's beyond an obsession. With every song that I write, I compare it to The Beatles."

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Ozzy Osbourne • Black Sabbath

"That song changed my life. 'She Loves You' had such an impact on me. I remember exactly where I was. I was walking down Witton Road in Aston, I had a blue transistor radio and when that song came on I knew from then on what I wanted to do with my life...This was so brand new and it gave me a great feeling. Then I became an avid Beatles fan – they were great... I owe my career to them because they gave me the desire to want to be in the music game."

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Paul Weller • The Jam • The Style Council

"The Beatles will always be my guides. They were my four prophets from the north. They came to show us there’s another way to live – and to rejoice in what we have."

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Pete Townshend • The Who

"The Beatles did not grow up. They stopped making records at a point where what they were doing was incredibly interesting and potentially very, very mature. They worked as solo artists, obviously, but, as a band, they stopped. Yet, there’s something universal about that music and The Beatles’ appeal that will go on for a long time to come, in spite of their not being here. Because they were driven by a real passion, which is still evident, and were endlessly innovative. They put an awful lot into the music and it lives on."

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Rick Rubin (Record Company Founder / Record Producer)

"It transcends everything. It’s much bigger than four kids from Liverpool. For me the Beatles are proof of the existence of God. It’s so good and so far beyond everyone else that it’s not them."

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Robin Gibb • The Bee Gees

"The Beatles were a great influence to us because they were songwriters, they broke a lot of rules and they created an artistic credibility in the pop music business, which was never there before... The Beatles broke down walls and started selling a lot of albums, which pop artists didn’t do before them... When The Beatles came on they changed all that, and pop music started."

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Roger Daltry • The Who

“The Beatles were beyond beyond… and the Stones. We supported both of them in 1963 and ‘64. I’ll never forget that ‘64 one with The Beatles.”

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Roger Taylor • Queen

“I suppose we were influenced primarily by The Beatles’ albums, really. Certainly Rubber Soul, Revolver and Abbey Road. They were very eclectic.”

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Roger McGuinn • The Byrds

"Early on The Byrds went to see A Hard Day's Night, a kind of reconnaissance trip, and we took notes on what The Beatles were playing and bought instruments like they had... I got really jazzed by The Beatles."

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Steve Lukather • Toto

"The Beatles were my on switch to life. It was like 'The Wizard of Oz,' when it goes from black and white to color. I was, like, eight years old, seven years old, I saw them on Ed Sullivan and I said, 'George Harrison - I wanna be that guy. Who makes that noise, you know? I loved them all. When we all saw The Beatles, life changed."

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Stevie Nicks • Buckingham Nicks • Fleetwood Mac

“Listening to Help! was like having these wise elders giving you all the information about what love is. It was like having four great teachers showing you how to write songs. These guys truly wrote about the intricacies of relationships. It was going deeper, and that’s what we were surprised by.”

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Sting • The Police

"The Beatles are the reason I'm a musician."

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Tom Petty • Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers • The Traveling Wilburys

An excerpt from an extensive interview, reprinted from Guitar World Magazine (2004), where Tom Petty describes seeing The Beatles perform on The Ed Sullivan Show, and the days that followed.

"Most magic is a trick, an illusion. But this was real. Man oh man, was it real.

     I think the whole world was watching that night. It certainly felt that way. You just knew it, sitting in your living room, that everything around you was changing. It was like going from black-and-white to color. Really.

     I remember earlier that day, in fact, a kid on a bike passed me and said, 'Hey, The Beatles are on TV tonight.' I didn't know him, he didn't know me. And I thought to myself, 'This means something.'

     [The Beatles] came out and just flattened me. To hear them on the radio was amazing enough, but to finally see them play, it was electrifying. They did those three songs at the top of the show and then you had to wait 'til the end for them to come back on. It felt like an eternity, watching these comedy skits and, like, guys spinning plates. And remember, this is the biggest show on TV, but to us kids, we wanted The Beatles, so to have to watch a guy spinning plates, it was total torture."