I'm curious how old you are, CW. Rock fans who grew up on a diet of the "heavier" sounds that followed The Beatles may find that their music doesn't seem to "rock out" enough for them. In their day, The Beatles did often get represented as one side of a dichotomy, with The Rolling Stones on the other, as the "light" to The Stones' "dark". As a big fan of both, I can say there is some truth to this characterization, but that it really misses the point.
"Rock" music as the art form we know would have been inconceivable without The Beatles happening first. All other groups and artists, The Stones included, were in their day continually playing catch-up and second fiddle to The Beatles. The Beatles were, are, and forever will be, by far the most important single thing to come along in Rock & Roll after its beginnings with Elvis and Chuck Berry. They mark the divergence of what came to be known simply as "Rock" from Rock & Roll's roots in Rhythm & Blues, Country & Western, Pop, and Soul musics that came before, and with it Rock's establishment as an Art Form, no longer just a passing teenage fad.
They did this by integrating everything that had preceded them with a talent, flair, eclecticism, capacity for evolution, timeliness, and sheer songwriting originality and genius, totally unprecedented in the music before them and not matched since. The important thing to realize is that although they did not blaze every Rock path that formed in the 60's (and every path taken since, BTW, does have its roots in this seminal decade), the ones they did not, such as those pioneered by The Velvet Underground, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, and even their British Invasion mates like The Stones and The Who, would not have come to be without The Beatles' inspiration and example.
Just as songwriters, Lennon and McCartney wrote so many high-quality, notable, and well-known tunes, and with such incredible variety, that casually interested listeners like yourself will frequently complain that although they like a lot of Beatles songs, there are a lot they can't seem to get into. Contrast this with most other groups or artists, where folks tend either like the bag that they work in and therefore dig them, or don't (but for maybe a song or two).
Yes, it is also true that, contrary to what some have thought, not every single Beatles song is an uncontestable masterpiece. But their batting average is orders of magnitude beyond most other prolific artists nonetheless. And though they were not the first Rock & Roll performers to write their own songs (Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, and Brian Wilson all had success at this before The Beatles arrived on the scene), they did set the standard, observed ever since, for the self-contained group which both writes and performs all its own material.
Now me saying this, or even its being true, is not going to - and is not supposed to - make you "like" The Beatles more than you presently do. I, for instance, generally like a lot of 20th century classical music much better than I do Mozart, even though I realize that one could not have come to be without the other. I acknowledge his genius even as I admit that it affects me less than it does others. When it comes to The Beatles, there is no "escaping" the Pop aspect of their work - either in the Tin Pan Alley sense of the word as it applies to song-craft, or in their literal popularity worldwide and their attitude towards fame and success. They were trying to be liked by as many people as they could and still touch them all artistically and emotionally. The Beatles did not engage, for the most part, in the willfull obtuseness that so many lesser-talented groups or artists have cultivated in their quests for "exclusivity" among their audiences. The Beatles didn't want a narrow, self-conscious, self-congratulatory audience, separate from other audiences by age or preference. They had what it took to have the whole world as an audience - and they knew it.
So you get songs old people can like, and songs kids can like (many of which, BTW, display a sense of humor that's almost entirely missing in today's simultaneously pretentious and sophomoric Rock). Musically, you get Rock both hard and soft, along with everything from good old Rock & Roll, to Folk Rock, to Experimental Rock, to Psychedelic Rock, to an amazing collection of what can only be described as Original Standards Rock, and all featuring a combination of singing, playing, arranging, and production that is without equal.
But perhaps more importantly, especially from the post-Beatlemania middle period onward, you get genuine, personal, intelligent, wise, and challenging artistic communication in almost every piece, that combined with the musical innovation, creates an impressionistic whole which makes most other artists' output seem disappointingly literal, posturing, and earthbound by comparision. Whereas other groups may have stood for more for rebellion, or sex, or fun, or violence, or drugs, or jamming, or dancing, or simply a fad of the moment, The Beatles always, first and foremost, stood for - and successfully embodied in their art - love. All of those things were representations of freedom, which defined the era - but only love is completely universal for everyone all the time. That is why The Beatles legacy still to this day towers over everything else in Rock.
