The Beatles arrived in the USA 60 years ago: How they still connect with Gen Z Long Islanders 

When Beatles fans began buzzing last October about a “new” Beatles song, Kristen Pittaro was among the first to hear about it. The 21-year-old Stony Brook University student from New Hyde Park happens to follow Paul McCartney’s Instagram page, but that’s not how she heard the news, she says. Instead, her phone lit up with texts from other fans who correctly guessed that the new single would be titled “Now and Then.”

“We have a text thread where we’ll battle each other about who has more Beatles knowledge,” says Pittaro. She adds of the band: “It feels like they never broke up, like they’ve never not been around.”

It was 60 years ago this month that the Beatles first visited America, landing at JFK International Airport on Feb. 7, 1964, to perform on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” The Beatles would become the unrivaled cultural leaders of the Baby Boom generation and classic rock touchstones for Generation X. But even as both those cohorts have gone gray, a new one, Gen Z — that extremely online demographic born between the late 1990s and the very early 2010s — has continued carrying the torch for a band that split up more than half a century ago.

“Every generation finds a way to embrace the Beatles, and right now it’s Gen Z’s turn,” says Rob Leonard, host of the long-running radio show “Beatlesongs” at Nassau Community College’s WHPC/90.3 FM. “At the radio station I work at there are people who like the Beatles — and it’s a college station,” he adds. “They wear the T-shirt and they actually understand the band.”

That’s partly a testament to The Beatles’ enduring musical output, from 1962's “Love Me Do” to 1970's “Let it Be” — nearly all of it some kind of landmark or milestone. It’s partly a tribute to the indelible personalities of the individual Fab Four: charming bassist McCartney, rebellious rhythm guitarist John Lennon, thoughtful lead guitarist George Harrison and fun-loving drummer Ringo Starr. Their ever-replenishing fan base is also proof that The Beatles’ marketing machine has done its job, keeping the band alive with a decadeslong stream of archival material, remastered classics and new compilations.

Beatles fan since he was a toddler

“I would say that the first album for me, honestly, was the ‘1’ compilation album,” says 25-year-old singer-songwriter Brandon Gurba, citing the collection of No. 1 singles that was released in 2000. “ 'Love Me Do’ is the first song on there,” Gurba recalls. “That couldn’t have been the first time I ever heard harmonies, but it was just amazing.”

Gurba, who lives in St. James, says he became a Beatles fan as a toddler and a collector as a kindergartner, acquiring Beatles posters, a “Yellow Submarine” lunchbox (“my prize possession,” he notes) and even figurines from The Beatles’ Saturday morning cartoon series. These days, Gurba says, his energy is more likely to go into Beatles research online.

“With the internet, I’m finding new information on The Beatles seemingly every week,” Gurba says. “It’s either a photograph I’ve never seen or a story behind a song that I hadn’t heard before. And whenever I need to seek something out — like, who engineered this particular record — it’s at the tip of my fingers.”

As for “Now and Then” — a home demo from Lennon augmented with archival guitar parts from Harrison and new contributions from surviving Beatles McCartney and Starr — Gurba calls it “absolutely emotional.”

“It’s all them,” he adds. “I felt that as a listener, as a fan.”

'The Beatles were our No. 1 influence'

Christopher Evan Greek, 24, of Stony Brook, and Andrew James Ardizzone, 25, of Syosset, met when each posted on Reddit in search of fellow musicians. The two began rehearsing at each other’s homes and eventually hit upon the stage names Evan and James. “We both had the ambition to follow the people we were inspired by,” says Ardizzone. “And luckily for us, The Beatles were our No. 1 influence.”

In the summer of 2022, Evan and James began posting to Instagram and TikTok videos of themselves playing Beatles tunes, often dressed in suits and sometimes shot in black-and-white. At one point, says Ardizzone, they were posting up to four Beatles covers a week.

Greek says his ear tends to be drawn to the Beatles’ harmonies, while Ardizzone says he’s impressed by the band’s canny commercial instincts. He points to “Help!,” originally conceived by Lennon as a plaintive ballad before his bandmates transformed it into a fast-paced pop-rock gem. “They were very intelligent from the business side,” Ardizzone says.

Evan and James’ cover song output has dwindled recently as they’ve begun working on original material. Their instruction manual: “The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present,” McCartney’s personal history of his best-known songs. “We’ve been reading it together every day and trying to improve our own songwriting,” Greek says. “No matter what music we release, there will always be some kind of Beatles element in the back of our minds.”

The next generation: A 14-year-old fan

Gen Z surely won’t be the last generation to love the Fab Four. Isabella Viana, who at 14 falls roughly into the even younger cohort of Generation Alpha, says she’s been gravitating toward The Beatles since her middle school choral teacher introduced her to “Here Comes the Sun.” Now a freshman at Lynbrook High School, Viana says she listens to Beatles podcasts and shops for Beatles vinyl at her local record store, though she also listens to contemporary acts like the emo band Car Seat Headrest and the pop duo Twenty One Pilots.

“A lot of kids are very into modern music, and The Beatles definitely can be a part of that,” she says. “The Beatles are so popular that no matter where you go, you’ll always find someone who knows a few of their songs.”

By Rafer Guzmán

rafer.guzman@newsday.com@raferguzman