The Beatles

The Beatles were an English rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960. With members John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, they became widely regarded as the foremost and most influential act of the rock era. Their sound was a combination of skiffle, beat, and 1950s rock and roll.

The Beatles would experiment with several musical styles, ranging from pop ballads and Indian music to psychedelia and even hard rock. In a few songs, the Beatles even incorporated some classical elements in innovative ways. In the early 1960s, their enormous popularity first emerged as “Beatlemania”, but as the group’s music grew in sophistication, led by primary songwriters Lennon and McCartney, they came to be perceived as an embodiment of the ideals shared by the counterculture of the 1960s.

In March 1957, John Lennon, then aged sixteen, formed a skiffle group with several friends from Quarry Bank school. They briefly called themselves the Blackjacks, before changing their name to the Quarrymen after discovering that a respected local group was already using the other name.

Fifteen-year-old Paul McCartney joined as a rhythm guitarist shortly after he and Lennon met that July. In February 1958, McCartney invited his friend George Harrison to watch the band. The fourteen-year-old auditioned for Lennon, impressing him with his playing, but Lennon initially thought Harrison was too young to join them.

After a month of Harrison’s persistence, they enlisted him as their lead guitarist. By January 1959, Lennon’s Quarry Bank friends had left the group, and Lennon began studies at the Liverpool College of Art. The three guitarists, billing themselves at least three times as Johnny and the Moondogs, were playing rock and roll whenever they could find a drummer. Lennon’s art school friend Stuart Sutcliffe, who had recently sold one of his paintings and was persuaded to purchase a bass guitar, joined in January 1960, and it was he who suggested changing the band’s name to Beatals, as a tribute to Buddy Holly and the Crickets.  They used the name until May, when they became the Silver Beetles, before undertaking a brief tour of Scotland as the backing group for pop Johnny Gentle. By early July, they had changed their name to the Silver Beatles and by the middle of August to the Beatles.

Allan Williams was the Beatles’ unofficial manager during these early days. He arranged a residency for them in Hamburg. However, they still needed a full time drummer. They auditioned and hired Pete Best in mid-August 1960.

During the next two years, the Beatles were resident for periods in Hamburg, where they used Preludin both recreationally and to maintain their energy through all-night performances. In 1961, during their second Hamburg engagement, Kirchherr cut Sutcliffe’s hair in the “exi” style, later adopted by the other Beatles.

When Sutcliffe decided to leave the band early that year and resume his art studies in Germany, McCartney took up the bass. Producer Bert Kaempfert contracted what was now a four-piece group through June 1962, and he used them as Tony Sheridan’s backing band on a series of recordings for Polydor Records.

As part of the sessions, the Beatles were signed to Polydor for one year. Credited to “Tony Sheridan & the Beat Brothers”, the single “My Bonnie”, recorded in June 1961 and released four months later, reached number 32 on the Musikmarkt chart. Freed lost his radio show on WABC, and was later fired from the station altogether on November 21, 1959.

He also was fired from his television show (which for a time continued with a different host). In 1960, payola was made illegal. In 1962, Freed pleaded guilty to two charges of commercial bribery, for which he received a fine and a suspended sentence.

After the Beatles completed their second Hamburg residency, they enjoyed increasing popularity in Liverpool with the growing Merseybeat movement.

However, they were also growing tired of the monotony of numerous appearances at the same club night after night. In November 1961, during one of the group’s frequent performances at the Cavern Club, they encountered Brian Epstein, a local record-store owner and music columnist.

They appointed him as their official manager in January 1962.Throughout early and mid-1962, Epstein fought to free the Beatles from their contract with Bert Kaempfert Productions. He eventually negotiated a one-month-early release from their contract in exchange for one last recording session in Hamburg.

Tragedy greeted them on their return to Germany in April, when a distraught Kirchherr met them at the airport with news of Sutcliffe’s death the previous day from what would later be determined to have been a brain hemorrhage.   Epstein began negotiations with record labels for a recording contract. In order to secure a UK record contract, Epstein negotiated an early end to the band’s contract with Polydor, in exchange for more recordings backing Tony Sheridan.

After a New Year’s Day audition, Decca Records rejected the band, with the comment “Guitar groups are on the way out, Mr. Epstein.”  However, three months later, producer George Martin signed the Beatles to EMI’s Parlophone label.

Martin’s first recording session with the Beatles took place at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios in London on June 6, 1962. Martin immediately complained to Epstein about Best’s drumming and suggested they use a session drummer in his place.

Already contemplating Best’s dismissal, the Beatles replaced him in mid-August with Ringo Starr, who left Rory Storm and the Hurricanes to join them. On September 4 a session at EMI yielded a recording of “Love Me Do” featuring Starr on drums, but a dissatisfied Martin hired drummer Andy White for the band’s third session a week later, which produced recordings of “Love Me Do”, “Please Please Me” and “P.S. I Love You”.

Martin initially selected the Starr version of “Love Me Do” for the band’s first single, though subsequent re-pressings featured the White version, with Starr on tambourine. Released in early October, “Love Me Do” peaked at number seventeen on the Record Retailer chart.

Their television debut came later that month with a live performance on the regional news program People and Places. “Please Please Me” would be their first number 1 single.

Their commercial success brought increased media exposure, to which the Beatles responded with an irreverent and comical attitude that defied the expectations of pop musicians at the time, inspiring even more interest.

As their popularity spread, a frenzied adulation of the group took hold. Greeted with riotous enthusiasm by screaming fans, the press dubbed the phenomenon “Beatlemania”. Although not billed as tour leaders, the Beatles overshadowed American acts Tommy Roe and Chris Montez during the February engagements and assumed top billing “by audience demand”, something no British act had previously accomplished while touring with artists from the US.

A similar situation arose during their May–June tour with Roy Orbison.  In late October, the Beatles began a five-day tour of Sweden, their first time abroad since the final Hamburg engagement of December 1962. On their return to the UK on October 31, according to Lewisohn, “several hundred screaming fans” greeted them in heavy rain at Heathrow Airport.

Around 50 to 100 journalists and photographers as well as representatives from the BBC also joined the airport reception, the first of more than 100 such events. In mid-November, as Beatlemania intensified, police resorted to using high-pressure water hoses to control the crowd before a concert in Plymouth.

On February 7, 1964, the Beatles left the United Kingdom with an estimated 4000 fans gathered at Heathrow, waving and screaming as the aircraft took off.

Upon landing at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport, an uproarious crowd estimated at 3000 greeted them. They gave their first live US television performance two days later on The Ed Sullivan Show, watched by approximately 73 million viewers in over 23 million households, or 34 per cent of the American population.

Biographer Jonathan Gould writes that, according to the Nielsen rating service, it was “the largest audience that had ever been recorded for an American television program”. The next morning, the Beatles awoke to a negative critical consensus in the US, but a day later their first US concert saw Beatlemania erupt at Washington Coliseum.

Back in New York the following day, the Beatles met with another strong reception during two shows at Carnegie Hall.  The band then flew to Florida and appeared on the weekly Ed Sullivan Show a second time, before another 70 million viewers, before returning to the UK on 22 February.

Capitol Records’ lack of interest throughout 1963 had not gone unnoticed, and a competitor, United Artists Records, encouraged their film division to offer the group a three-motion-picture deal, primarily for the commercial potential of the soundtracks.

Directed by Richard Lester, A Hard Day’s Night involved the band for six weeks in March–April 1964 as they played themselves in a mock-documentary.

The film premiered in London and New York in July and August, respectively, and was an international success, with some critics drawing comparison with the Marx Brothers. According to Erlewine, the accompanying soundtrack album, A Hard Day’s Night, saw them “truly coming into their own as a band.

Capitol Records’ lack of interest throughout 1963 had not gone unnoticed, and a competitor, United Artists Records, encouraged their film division to offer the group a three-motion-picture deal, primarily for the commercial potential of the soundtracks.

Directed by Richard Lester, A Hard Day’s Night involved the band for six weeks in March–April 1964 as they played themselves in a mock-documentary.

The film premiered in London and New York in July and August, respectively, and was an international success, with some critics drawing comparison with the Marx Brothers. According to Erlewine, the accompanying soundtrack album, A Hard Day’s Night, saw them “truly coming into their own as a band.

During the week of April 4, 1964, the Beatles held twelve positions on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, including the top five.

Their popularity generated unprecedented interest in British music, and a number of other UK acts subsequently made their own American debuts, successfully touring over the next three years in what was termed the British Invasion.

Their hairstyle, unusually long for the era and mocked by many adults, became an emblem of rebellion to the burgeoning youth culture.

Released in July, the Beatles’ second film, Help!, was again directed by Lester. Described as “mainly a relentless spoof of Bond”, it inspired a mixed response among both reviewers and the band. McCartney said: “Help! was great but it wasn’t our film – we were sort of guest stars. It was fun, but basically, as an idea for a film, it was a bit wrong.” The soundtrack was dominated by Lennon, who wrote and sang lead on most of its songs, including the two singles: “Help!” and “Ticket to Ride.  The band expanded their use of vocal overdubs on Help! and incorporated classical instruments into some arrangements, notably a string quartet on the pop ballad “Yesterday”.  Composed by McCartney, “Yesterday” would inspire the most recorded cover versions of any song ever written. 

The group’s third US tour opened with a performance before a world-record crowd of 55,600 at New York’s Shea Stadium on August 15, 1965. Nine successful concerts followed in other American cities. The band’s final concert at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park on August 29 was their last commercial concert. It marked the end of a four-year period dominated by almost nonstop touring that included over 1,400 concert appearances internationally.

 

Freed from the burden of touring, the Beatles embraced an increasingly experimental approach as they recorded Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, beginning in late November 1966. He recalled the band’s insistence “that everything on Sgt. Pepper had to be different.” Parts of “A Day in the Life” featured a 40-piece orchestra. The sessions initially yielded the non-album double A-side single “Strawberry Fields Forever”/”Penny Lane” in February 1967; the Sgt. Pepper LP followed in June. On 25 June 1967, the Beatles performed their forthcoming single, “All You Need Is Love”, to an estimated 350 million viewers on Our World, the first live global television link. Released a week later, during the Summer of Love, the song was adopted as a flower power anthem.

Magical Mystery Tour, the soundtrack to a forthcoming Beatles television film, was released in the UK as a six-track double extended play disc (EP) in early December 1967. In the United States, the six songs were issued on an identically titled LP that also included five tracks from the band’s recent singles.

In its first three weeks, the album set a record for the highest initial sales of any Capitol LP, and it is the only Capitol compilation later to be adopted in the band’s official canon of studio albums. First aired on Boxing Day, the Magical Mystery Tour film, largely directed by McCartney, brought the group their first major negative UK press.

It was dismissed as “blatant rubbish” by the Daily Express; the Daily Mail called it “a colossal conceit”; and The Guardian labelled the film “a kind of fantasy morality play about the grossness and warmth and stupidity of the audience”. Although the viewership figures were respectable, its slating in the press led US television networks to lose interest in broadcasting the film.

In January 1968, the Beatles filmed a cameo for the animated movie Yellow Submarine, which featured cartoon versions of the band members and a soundtrack with eleven of their songs, including four unreleased studio recordings that made their debut in the film.

Released in June 1968, the film was praised by critics for its music, humor and innovative visual style. It would be seven months, however, before the film’s soundtrack album appeared.

The Beatles, known as the White Album for its minimalist cover, conceived by pop artist Richard Hamilton “in direct contrast to Sgt. Pepper”, while also suggesting a “clean slate”. Creative inspiration for the album came from a new direction: without Epstein’s guiding presence, the group had briefly turned to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi as their guru.

At his ashram in Rishikesh, India, a “Guide Course” scheduled for three months marked one of their most prolific periods, yielding numerous songs including a majority of the 30 included on the album. However, Starr left after only ten days, likening it to Butlins, and McCartney eventually grew bored and departed a month later.

For Lennon and Harrison, creativity turned to questioning when an electronics technician known as Magic Alex suggested that the Maharishi was attempting to manipulate them. When he alleged that the Maharishi had made sexual advances to women attendees, a persuaded Lennon left abruptly just two months into the course, bringing an unconvinced Harrison and the remainder of the group’s entourage with him.

In anger, Lennon wrote a scathing song titled “Maharishi”, renamed “Sexy Sadie” to avoid potential legal issues. McCartney said, “We made a mistake. We thought there was more to him than there was.” During recording sessions for the White Album, which stretched from late May to mid-October 1968, relations between the Beatles grew openly divisive. McCartney has recalled that the album “wasn’t a pleasant one to make”.

Both he and Lennon identified the sessions as the start of the band’s break-up. Issued in November, the White Album was the band’s first Apple Records album release, although EMI continued to own their recordings. The record attracted more than 2 million advance orders, selling nearly 4 million copies in the US in little over a month, and its tracks dominated the playlists of American radio stations. Despite its popularity, it did not receive flattering reviews at the time.

Although Let It Be was the Beatles’ final album release, it was largely recorded before Abbey Road. The project’s impetus came from an idea Martin attributes to McCartney, who suggested they “record an album of new material and rehearse it, then perform it before a live audience for the very first time – on record and on film”

Originally intended for a one-hour television program to be called Beatles at Work, much of the album’s content came from extensive rehearsals filmed by director Michael Lindsay-Hogg at Twickenham Film Studios, beginning in January 1969. Lennon described the largely impromptu sessions as “hell … the most miserable … on Earth”, and Harrison, “the low of all-time”. Irritated by both McCartney and Lennon, Harrison walked out for five days.

Upon returning, he threatened to leave the band unless they “abandon[ed] all talk of live performance” and instead focused on finishing a new album, initially titled Get Back, using songs recorded for the TV special.He also demanded they cease work at Twickenham and relocate to the newly finished Apple Studio.

The other band members agreed, and the idea came about to salvage the footage shot for the TV production for use in a feature film. Ultimately, what would be their final live performance was filmed on the rooftop of the Apple Corps building at 3 Savile Row, London, on January 30, 1969.

The break-up itself was a cumulative process throughout 1968 to 1970, marked by rumors of a split and ambiguous comments by the Beatles themselves regarding the future of the group.

Although in September 1969 John Lennon privately informed the other Beatles that he was leaving the group, there was no public acknowledgement of the break-up until Paul McCartney announced on April 10, 1970 he was leaving the Beatles.