Thanks for the suggestions everyone. If you want to know I'll be starting off with Rubber Soul.

a most tres excellente choice

Rubber Soul is good, not their best but even The Beatles' mediocre albums are phenomenal. Listen to Abbey Road next, that is their best in my opinion.

I would start off with a movie like "A Hard Days Night" then watch a doc like The Complete Beatles or The Beatles Anthology.

Some people think that the beatles were nothing special, just a mediocre pop band. I don't see how anyone can think that.

I used to think that a while back.... God I was an idiot.... ;)

Ive been defending them for a while now, on another thread. Theyve been called "formulaic pop band". That's so false. They were always changing and experimenting and they were so innovative in so many ways. They DID NOT stick to the same formula that got them their success in the beginning.

That's true. Certainly their greatest strength was being able to combine accessible pop/rock to their more arty/experimental side in a perfect balance. And like you said they were constantly adapting and changing to keep themselves on the musical cutting edge.

Traditions do not appear out of thin air, they reflect certain natural tendencies in people's minds, and totally discarding traditional forms in favour of something previously unheard before is much like somebody discarding the traditional way of walking down the street in favour of, say, crawling on all fours - just because this makes him different from the regular "sheep herd".

They could take traditional forms and imbue them with new content, as well as pour old content into new forms.