Well first off I will say that you do have to understand the period, Rock&Roll used to be a young folks only type of thing, I'm a late Baby Boomer so Elvis was more of a movie star by the time I knew who he was, but the Beatles were a long haired and socially unacceptable rock&roll band that everybody's parents hated when I was a kid, so like today that probaly made them even more appealing, musically I'd have to say they were a really good Chuck Berry influenced R&R band, but they had a knack for writing songs that everyone related too then, later on I would say that they were very innovative for the time in their writing and and album concepts, it's a hard thing to look back on a era of music that you didn't personally experience and judge thru the eyes of someone who has already heard what the last 40 years of music lead too, I've heard people putting down Eddie Van Halen, but if you go back to 1978 and listen to the music of that year, he had no equals in the rock guitar field, but in 2002 it's a different story, if you don't like the Beatles or Elvis that's OK, because reguardless of their talent, they were as much a cultural/youth phenomenom as musical talents and probaly some combination of the two has made them the icons they are today