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The Beatles

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The Beatles were a highly influential and successful group of four musicians and songwriters who epitomised the popular culture of Britain and the postwar baby boom generation, and, indeed, much of the English-speaking world during the 1960s and early 1970s. Their influences in popular culture extended far beyond their roles as recording artists, as they branched out into film and even became spokesmen for their generation. The members of the group were John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr (Richard Starkey), all from Liverpool, England.

Originally a high-energy pop band (typified by the early singles "Twist and Shout" and "Please Please Me"), as the Beatles progressed their style became more sophisticated, influenced in equal measure by Bob Dylan and Chuck Berry. Their popularity was also aided by their attractive looks, distinctive personalities, and natural charisma; particularly on television where they appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show and others.

History

Lennon met McCartney on July 6, 1957 at St. Peter's Church garden fete. Lennon was in a skiffle group called The Quarry Men who were performing at the event. McCartney joined the band, and brought Harrison along soon after. In 1958, The Quarry Men recorded a demo of two songs; the first was an original Harrison/McCartney tune called "In spite of all the danger"; the other was a cover of Buddy Holly's "That'll Be The Day".

When the Quarry Men changed their name to the Beatles in 1960 (sometimes known as "the Silver Beetles"), Pete Best was drummer for the band and Stuart Sutcliffe was the band's bass player. Sutcliffe decided against continuing to perform with the band and remained in Hamburg in the Spring of 1961. McCartney, who had been playing guitar, replaced him on bass.

On December 10, 1961, Brian Epstein agreed to become the band's manager, after hearing their music for the first time two months earlier in his record store. Epstein arranged for the Beatles to audition for Decca Records on January 1, 1962. Decca, in one of the most embarrassing business decisions in music history, rejected the band.

The Beatles then signed with EMI's Parlophone label in early 1962. George Martin, who was at first unimpressed by the band's demos, fell in love with the band when he met them in person. Not only did he feel as though they had musical talent, but he felt that their wit and humor made them extremely "likeable". He did have a problem with Best however, whom he criticized for not be able to keep time. The Beatles let Best go, and immediately asked Starr, whom they had met and even performed with previously, to join the band permanently. Martin, unaware of this personnel change, hired session drummer Andy White to play drums on the Beatles' first studio session on September 11, 1962.

The Beatles recorded their first full length album, live in the studio, on February 11, 1963 in one 12 hour session. On February 22, 1963 the Beatles' second single, "Please Please Me" went straight to No. 1. On February 7, 1964 The Beatles travelled to New York for a number of U.S. television appearances and performances. Upon arriving at JFK airport, The Beatles noticed thousands of kids screaming and awaiting the plane's arrival. They assumed that there must have been someone important on the plane with them and were a bit shocked to learn that the crowds were actually there for them.

On February 9, 1964 The Beatles performed on The Ed Sullivan Show for the first time. To this day it remains one of the highest rated television programs of all time.

In March of 1964 The Beatles began filming for their first motion picture, A Hard Day's Night. They started filming their second film, Help! on February 23, 1965 in the Bahamas. On June 12, 1965, The Beatles were awarded Members of the British Empire (MBE) by the Queen. Since it was unusual for rock stars to receive the MBE, some previous recipiants complained and protested.

On August 15, 1965, The Beatles started their second North American tour at Shea Stadium, which was the first rock concert to be held in a venue that size.

A backlash by conservative religious groups occurred in the United States and other countries after John Lennon described the band as "more popular to kids than Jesus" in an interview in 1966. Radio stations banned the group's recordings, and their albums and other products were burned and destroyed. Lennon later apologized publicly and explained that he was not trying to diminish who Christ was, but was simply stating what he believed to be a fact at the time.

The Beatles began recording Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band on November 24, 1966. The album took so much time to record (for a Beatles record anyway) that the press started to suggest that the Beatles had "lost it" and had run out of creativity.

On June 25, 1967 The Beatles performed "All You Need Is Love" for the Our World television special. It was the first television special to air worldwide. Singing backup for the Beatles were a number of artists including Eric Clapton, and members of the Rolling Stones and The Who.

Towards the end of the 1960s, members of the band began to pursue their own musical interests and started writing together less and less. This became more and more obvious on releases like 1968's The Beatles (aka the "white album"), and Let It Be.

In January of 1969, The Beatles began rehearsals for a new album project (at the time entitled "Get Back"). The rehearsals were filmed for what would eventually become the "Let It Be" movie. Many ideas were thrown around for the "Get Back" album, including the idea of recording it live during a surprise concert performance on top of a submarine, or in a dancehall. Neither happened, but they did end their rehearsals with a live performance on top of the Apple Studios building in London, which was cut short when local citizens called the police. Eventually the band gave up on the project and turned the results of those sessions over to producer Phil Spector. The Beatles themselves were not extremely happy with Spector's work on the album, because he added things like an orchestra and a choir to their "stripped down" performances. The original intent of the record was to bring the band full circle, and record what was essentially a live studio performance - just as their first album had been.

In September of 1969, Russell Gibb, a radio DJ in Detroit, Michigan, announced that Paul McCartney was dead. Other DJs, television news reporters, newspapers and magazines picked up on the story and began to look for clues. This snowballed into what is commonly refered to today as the Paul Is Dead hoax. People that believed the rumors, claimed that McCartney had died in a car accident and was replaced by a look alike named William Campbell. Numerous clues were supposedly hidden in album artwork and lyrics.

The Beatles began recording their final album in July of 1969, entitled "Abbey Road". Lennon announced that he was leaving the band soon after that album's release.

The band officially broke up in 1970. The last Beatles studio session that included all four band members took place on August 20, 1969. The final Beatles session was on January 4, 1970.

EMI released "Let It Be" in May of 1970.

Several individuals who played an important role in the history or promotion of the band have at various times been called, or called themselves, the "fifth Beatle".

Two inviduals were real members of the band before the Beatles achieved international success:

Others have been associated with the Beatles in several ways. These include:

  • Murray the K - A disc jockey in New York, the first to claim to be the fifth Beatle
  • George Martin - Their producer, who translated their musical ideas into studio productions, and also did some piano work on, for example "In My Life"
  • Brian Epstein - The manager who took them from Hamburg to the world stage
  • Roy Orbison - In 1963 the American rock and roll star headlined a European tour with the Beatles. Recognizing their unique sound and extraordinary talent, and the reaction of the crowds to their performances, Orbison was instrumental in encouraging the fledgling group to come to the United States.
  • Klaus Voorman - German bassist; a friend of Stu Sutcliffe's girlfriend Astrid Kirchherr member of the Plastic Ono Band, drew the cover for Revolver.
  • Billy Preston - A piano player on "Let It Be", organist on "Get Back", first met them in their Hamburg days while touring with Little Richard

Studio Style Evolution

By 1966 the influence of the peace movement, psychedelic drugs and the studio technique of producer George Martin resulted in the albums Revolver and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, still widely regarded as classics. Particularly notable, along with the use of studio tricks such as sound processing, unconventional microphone placements, and vari-speed recording, was the Beatles' use of unconventional instruments for pop music, including string and brass elements, Indian instruments such as the sitar, and early electronic instruments. At the height of their fame in the mid-sixties, bolstered by the two films Help! and A Hard Day's Night, the band discontinued touring. The increasingly sophisticated arrangements of their songs were difficult to perform in front of thousands of screaming fans who typically made such noise that the music could not be heard anyway.

By then, the stress of their fame was beginning to tell and the band was on the verge of splitting at the time of the release of The Beatles (the "white album"), with some tracks recorded by the band members individually, and Starr taking a two-week holiday in the middle of the recording session. By 1970 the band had split, with each of the members going on to solo careers with varying degrees of success.

In the Movies

The Beatles also had a limited film career, beginning with A Hard Day's Night (1964). Directed by the up and coming American Richard Lester, it was a gritty black-and-white documentary-like account of a short period in the life of a rock-and-roll band. In 1965 came Help!, a technicolor extravaganza shot in exotic locations with a thin, if not almost transparent plot regarding Ringo's finger! The critically slammed Magical Mystery Tour (the concept of which was adapted from Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters LSD-orientated bus tour of the USA) was aired on British television in 1967, but is now considered a cult classic.

The animated Yellow Submarine followed shortly after, but had little input from the Beatles themselves (for instance, the voices of the characters in the movie were not those of the Beatles).

Finally, the documentary of a band in terminal decline, Let It Be was shot over an extended period in 1969; the music from this formed the album of the same name, which although recorded before Abbey Road, was (after much contractual to-ing and fro-ing) their final release.

Influence

The influence of the Beatles on rock music was profound. Prior to their emergence as pop superstars, it was common for rock bands to rely on professional songwriters for their material (the Brill Building in New York City was a source of many hit singles in the early 1960s). Whilst by no means the first to do so (Buddy Holly composed his hits), their example made self-composition the standard for rock bands then and since. Although they did not necessarily invent all the new ideas they incorporated in their music, they often competed with and played off of the developing ideas of other prominent acts of the period (such Bob Dylan, The Byrds, and the Beach Boys). As such, they spurred rock music, which hitherto had been largely looked down upon by older music fans, towards becoming an accepted art form. When the Sergeant Pepper album was released, it was hailed by music critics of the time as a major work of art, even compared favorably to classical musicians such as Schubert and Schuman.

In the studio, The Beatles were always experimenting with new recording techniques and even coined a few common studio phrases that are still in use today. For example, a common vocal or guitar effect where two copies of the same sound are overlapped is now known as a "flanger", thanks to John Lennon who nick named the effect in the 1960s.

Prior to the Beatles, record albums were of secondary consideration to 45s in mass marketing. Albums largely contained filler material along with one or two worthwhile songs. The Beatles, with the ability to produce albums with consistently well-liked material, helped to define the album as the preferred mechanism for releasing popular music, which in turn resulted in the development of new FM radio formats such as "Album Oriented Rock" (AOR) in the 1970s. Even album covers changed during this period, becoming increasingly artistic--works of art in their own right (The Beatles seemed to rebel against this in 1968 when they released their plain white album "The Beatles", known as the White Album). While they were not alone in promoting these developments, they were clearly at the forefront of them. The Beatles' films also anticipated the music video, the essential promotional tool of later popular musicians. In fact, the Beatles themselves began filming promotional music videos for their songs in the early 1960s, mainly because they wanted to send them to television programs so they wouldn't have to appear in person.

The popularity of the individual Beatles combined with their considerable instrumental skills led to a better knowledge in the general public of the musical contributions made by lead guitar, rhythm guitar, drums, and particularly bass guitar. Paul was not only cute and loveable, he was also an excellent bassist and listeners learned to listen more carefully because of it. While not flashy, Ringo's drumming was tasteful, precise, and imaginative. The Beatles were legendarily rejected by Decca records because "guitar bands are passé", but Lennon and Harrison refuted that.

The Beatles' album covers themselves were well thought out designs that have been copied and immitated hundreds of times; especially the covers of With The Beatles, which featured the four band members faces half darkened with shadows; Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Abbey Road.

(George Harrison of the Beatles and Michael Nesmith of The Monkees went on to become pioneering music video directors.)

The influence of the Beatles even extended beyond their music. Perhaps the most notable was their influence on male fashion. Their relatively long hair, when they burst onto the scene in 1964, was a shocking fashion statement, one that was quickly adopted by other rock bands of the time, and by the 1970s, long hair became standard fashion for men.

Surprisingly for a band as controversial, prolific and as ubiquitous as the Beatles, there have been very few noteworthy parodies of their work and style although one exception is The Rutles, an outfit created by Eric Idle (of Monty Pythons Flying Circus fame) and Neil Innes, formerly of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and a frequent Python contributor. One notable parody was recorded by the Beatles themselves, George Harrison's song named after a Lennon-McCartney publishing company, "Only a Northern Song" which included many of the swirling studio effects identified with the psychedelic-era Beatles and ironic references to excessive dependency on the recording studio:

If you think the harmony
Is a little dark and out of key
You're correct, there's nobody there.

Albums

Originally signed to Parlophone/EMI in the UK, the Beatles' (UK) official studio albums (not including compilations and the like) were:

Of note: The first four Beatles vinyl albums differ based on their location of release. Those released in the US were of lower sound quality and had some of their songs omitted. Also note: The first four Beatles albums were originally released as monaural recordings in the United Kingdom. Stereo phonographs were rare in England at the time, so Martin and the Beatles only prepared mono mixes. These albums were later remastered for the US as artificial stereo with vocals on one side and music on the other side, much to the disgust of fans. The compact Disc releases of these four albums are in the original mono mixes, released for the first time in the US. No official stereo mix of the first four albums has been released on compact disc, but there are plenty of "official looking" bootleg CDs floating around that include the US stereo mixes and even bear the "Apple" logo. Martin and the Beatles started to spend more time on mono mixes by 1965.

Films

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