AS THE SAYING WENT back in the day, “Beatles 4ever!”

But of course, the Fab Four’s tenure was finite, lasting 10 years, and their touring stint far briefer. Four heralded swings through America’s largest cities spanned just two-and-a-half years, ending unceremoniously six decades ago this month.

Thus, the afternoon and evening concerts on Aug. 25, 1966, at the Seattle Coliseum (today’s Climate Pledge Arena) became the British group’s fourth- and third-to-last large-scale shows. The final two came days later at California baseball cathedrals: Aug. 28 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles and Aug. 29 at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park.

Because of their musical chart-toppers, long-running hit movies and ongoing controversies, the Beatles’ 1966 sweep of 14 U.S. cities was big news, here, there and everywhere.

Beatles brouhahas that spring included the abortive release of the group’s “Yesterday and Today” LP, whose original cover showed the quartet posing as butchers with raw meat and decapitated dolls. Also stirring debate and protest was a notorious John Lennon interview claim, “We’re more popular than Jesus.”

Before the Coliseum shows, Emmett Watson, at the time a Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist, said Beatlemania no longer was limited to the 9- to 14-year-old “hysteria set.” Most of the $4-$6 ticket sales, he reported, were coming from college students and young adults.

The concerts themselves — scream fests like the Beatles’ 1964 Coliseum performance — proceeded smoothly. In each show, the green-and-grey-suited moptops sang and played 11 songs for a half hour, following 90 minutes of opening acts: the Remains (“Don’t Look Back”), the Cyrkle (“Red Rubber Ball”), the Ronettes (“Be My Baby”) and soul singer Bobby Hebb (“Sunny”).

The afternoon show drew only 8,200 fans, but 14,382 attended the evening sellout. The shows grossed $118,071 ($1.2 million today), at the time the largest one-day take in Seattle entertainment history. The Beatles, whose share was $73,718 ($760,000 today), were in and out of town in less than a day.

Intriguingly, to promote a primary-election measure that fall, each Beatle wore a “Yes Stadium NOW” button, with KJR-AM disc jockey and emcee Pat O’Day tantalizing crowds with: “How would you like to see the Beatles in a 50,000-seat domed stadium?”

The measure failed, but another passed in 1968. Fittingly, after the Kingdome opened on March 27, 1976, the first concert it hosted, on June 10, featured Paul McCartney and Wings.

Today, McCartney and the other surviving octogenarian Liverpool lad, Ringo Starr, still tour.

Yeah yeah yeah!