April 10,1970. Gone 40 years.

Reports the Threetles planned to publish an autobiography in the fall of 2000 reignited reunion rumors that cast a pall over the 30th anniversary.

Be careful what you wish for, fools over the hill, I remember scolding.

Do you really want them coming together diminished in our celebrity-saturated culture, phoning each other as lifelines for “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” during sweeps shows for charity?

Or seated next to some starlet from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” on VH-1’s “The List” with Andy Dick?

Or being insulted by Bill Maher on a “Politically Incorrect” panel with Pauly Shore and Joan Rivers?

Two remain, Paul and Ringo.

George survived a stabbing only to succumb to a rather ordinary end, cancer.

John is coming up on the 30th anniversary of his own end at the hands of a thick disciple who thought “Happiness is a Warm Gun” was about conventional weaponry.

Lennon is the only person I can imagine following on Twitter.

The New York Post had the temerity to suggest he could be replaced by son Sean or reconstituted onstage via digital technology. Julian could pull off “A Day in the Afterlife,” but thankfully didn’t.

Our faddish cultural landscape has certainly been reordered by the decade since.
Buffy? Regis? Andy Dick? Pauly Shore? Joan Rivers?

Imagine Ryan Seacrest dishing about them on E.

They could take turns judging “American Idol” – imagine John or George cowing Simon with snide asides.

The mind reels at the thought of them on “Celebrity Apprentice” with Rod “Donny Osmond” Blagojevich, trying to manage a Harry Potter project when he can’t even turn on a computer. Let Donald Trump look Sir Paul in the eye and say, “You’re fired!”

“No, you,” McCartney retorts with a twinkle in his eye and a certainty he will never end up on a Rock of Love bus with Poison’s Bret Michaels, though if Ringo hawked Pizza Hut and wine coolers, he probably wouldn’t mind a reality show.

But let it be decades after an assassin’s bullet silenced the voice of my generation and made such speculation moot.

USA Today notably hurled its McNugget format to the wind April 14 10 years ago with “Imagine,” flooding four news pages with fact and friction, mixing interesting insights from people the four lads from Liverpool influenced with a belly flop in bathos that would make Chris “Garth Brooks” Gaines cringe.

Like the blasphemous July 1977 entry, “John and Paul have listened to a lot of disco, and it shows on the new album, ‘Just to Dance With You.’ Reaction to the album is negative: It barely goes gold, and critics blast it as derivative and needlessly trendy.”

Sounds like the panning the misguided and messy “Magical Mystery Tour” movie deservedly endured.

Or the July 1986 four songs for Live Aid at London’s Wembley Stadium, stumbling through “Get Back,” “Imagine,” “All You Need is Love” and a “peculiar medley” of “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road” and Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Relax, marking their first official live performance in 20 years.”

A Green Album of environmental concerns.

A Sex Pistols album, “Never Mind the Beatles.”

Turning down a soundtrack, “Saturday Night Fever.”

The 1989 Woodstock II, where they top a bill ranging from REM to Run-DMC, bringing to life for the first time “Revolver,” “Sgt. Pepper,” the White CD and “Abbey Road” and cover Guns N’ Roses’ “Paradise City” and Roxette’s “The Look.”

In 1993 Kurt Cobain would remind Lennon of himself as Lennon and McCartney pass up the chance to write songs for “The Lion King.”

The June 1987 sequel to Sgt. Pepper with an updated assemblage of celebrities.
Ringo’s 1973 release, “Gringo,” a set of Latin-flavored instrumentals featuring the drummer on timbales, congas and maracas along with Santana members.

Born-again Christians at a Christmas 1998 press conference convincing Lennon the Beatles are no longer bigger than Jesus.

To reach out to new fans, they accept a spot on the closing night’s bill at Woodstock ’99 between Rage Against the Machine and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

“That Sinking Feeling,” Paul’s Celine Dion-sung theme song to the 1997 movie “Titanic.”

Feel like you’ve missed anything yet?

It was the weirdest package invented since National Lampoon devoted an entire issue to parody a target as large as The Beatles.

“They wouldn’t have played Vegas like Elvis. Elvis settled into being a caricature.”Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry said.

Unless, Joe, you count the 26-track “Love” to accompany Cirque du Soleil, which opened at the Mirage in June 2006 thanks to Harrison’s interest in auto racing.

I listen to it constantly because each snippet is like a tweet tumbling out of a way-back blender.

Hot tub time machines weren’t invented yet and only deliver you to the Eighties.

George Martin and his son Giles helped legitimize this exhumation (Best Show in Las Vegas 2008 and 2009).
John’s vocal from “Nowhere Man” welded to the drowsy dirge of “Blue Jay Way,” one calliope wheeze from “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite” dissolving into “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” with a sprinkling of “Helter Skelter.”

Or a stew of “Drive My Car,” “The Word” and “What You’re Doing.”

And “Gnik Nus” – “Sun King” backward, as though red rum killed Lennon.

“Every Beatles album was an epiphany that pinpointed a moment in time. They did more by their third album than we’ll do in our whole career,” said Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler.

Flash forward a decade and Tyler is fresh from more rehab for a world tour starting in May.

Imagine if Paul and Ringo joined with Pete and Roger what creaking we would have been subjected to by The Whotles at halftime of the Super Bowl.

Art Alexakis – remember Everclear? – was 8 when our idols disbanded.

“I distinctly remember crying,” he said in 2000.

Though devastated by the split, he won’t imagine The Beatles post-1970, either.

“I like leaving that question mark,” he says. “It’s fascinating to think about, but it wasn’t meant to be. They were moving in different directions, and Abbey Road, a beautiful, dark and monumental record, was the jumping-off place. What a way to go out.”

The Beatles remain atop Mount Rockmore because their music endures.

Thanks to the remastered 13 albums, I’m enjoying the back nine on A Hard Day’s Night of “Tell Me Why,” “Any Time at All,” “I’ll Cry Instead” “When I Get Home” and “You Can’t Do That” much more than when I was 7.

We always want what we can’t have, to paraphrase the Stones, which still includes digital downloads we could have listened to while we waited to hear who shot JFK.

They expanded my realm in February 1964, quit touring in August 1966 and vanished for good the spring before I became a teen-ager.

The luster on their mythology intact, their music all made in the Sixties and preserved in amber like their fan Austin Powers.

Their mystique is like that “Seinfeld” episode where Larry David’s character experiments with leaving a room full of people wanting more.

Yet even Jerry, Elaine, Kramer and George got back for “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

The Beatles have been gone so long I work with people who only know them apart, McCartney’s band before Wings.

How many years before Sarah Palintologist hosts a Discovery channel follow-up to “Walking with Dinosaurs” that recreates Beatlemania?

The Fab Four maintained that meteoric intensity for six years.

Who needs “Survivor” when you’ve lived on adrenaline that long in the eye of a hurricane?

The notion that they could have remained on top for 30 years is ludicrous based on their solo albums – Red Rose Speedway! – and terrain trod by newer boy bonds – ‘N Sync, Backstreet Boys – and hip hop stars, who drive the big cars, U2 conceded.

Ask the Beach Boys. Are there any left besides Mike Love?

Ask the Rolling Stones, who are mining 1969 sessions for a deluxe repackaging of “Exile on Main Street” with 10 previously unreleased tracks due May 18.

Fab Four or not, MTV wouldn’t touch “Real Love” or “Free As a Bird” 15 years ago.

I’m glad all over they belonged to my generation and dodged the desperation that would have them playing disco with the Brothers Gibb.

The only souffle reheating that made sense was that “Saturday Night Live” offer for a token amount.

The Beatles kept me off drugs, and for that I’m grateful.

John Eby is Daily News managing editor. E-mail him at john.eby @leaderpub.com.