1 : The Beatles
2 : A Condensed History
2.1 : The early years
2.2 : Beatlemania
2.3 : The beginning of The End
3 : Studio style evolution
4 : In the movies
5 : Achievements
6 : The music
7 : Song influences
8 : UK discography
9 : Related topics
10 : External links
The Beatles are among the most influential popular music artists of modern times, initially affecting the culture of Britain and the U.S., the postwar baby boom generation, and then of the rest of the world, especially during the 1960s and early 1970s. Certainly they are the most successful, with global sales exceeding 1.3 billion albums (as of 2004). Their influences on popular culture extended far beyond their roles as recording artists, as they branched out into film and even semi-willingly 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. The effect of the Beatles on Western culture (and by extension on the rest of the world) has been immeasurable.
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, very high in the UK after their return from Hamburg, was aided by their attractive looks, distinctive personalities, and natural charisma; particularly on television where they appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show and others.
Beatlemania began in the UK and exploded following the appearance of the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show in the United States. The pop-music band became a worldwide phenomenon with worshipful fans, hysterical adulation, and denunciations by culture commentators, and others such as Frank Sinatra. None of this had much to do with music and was regarded by the band members with both awe and resentment.
A Condensed History
Main Article: History of the Beatles
The early years
Lennon met McCartney at a 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, and a few songs they later recorded as the Beatles were also written around this time.
After a brief split, the Quarry Men regrouped as The Fabulous Silver Beetles, later shortened to The Beatles. The reformed band consisted of Lennon, McCartney and Harrison, plus Stuart Sutcliffe on bass, with Pete Best joining them shortly before they left for Hamburg on tour. Later Sutcliffe left and McCartney replaced him on bass.
Brian Epstein became the band's manager, after receiving requests for the band's music earlier in his record store and watching them perform. Epstein arranged for the Beatles to audition for Decca Records on January 1, 1962. Decca rejected the band, on the grounds that guitar music was "on the way out".
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 group when he met them in person. He did have a problem with Best however, and Best was let go and replaced by Starr who had made an impression on the Beatles.
Beatlemania
The Beatles recorded their first full length album, live in the studio in one 12 hour session. In 1963 the Beatles' second single, "Please Please Me" went straight to No. 1. On February 9, 1964 The Beatles performed on The Ed Sullivan Show for the first of four live appearances on the show that would span many months. Two days later, the Beatles made their first live stage appearance in the United States. In the same year, the Beatles set a record that has yet to be broken when they occupied all five top positions on Billboard's Top Pop Singles chart.
In early 1965, Lennon and Harrison had their first experience with LSD and in the ensuing years, the Beatles met with psychedelic counterculture icon Timothy Leary, experimented extensively with LSD and released two heavily LSD-influenced albums.
Later, the Beatles were individually created Members of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) by Queen Elizabeth II, causing some other MBE-holders to return theirs, claiming it had been "devalued". Lennon returned his in 1969 to protest Britain's involvement in the Vietnam War.
In 1966, John Lennon became part of a controversy which he claimed that Christianity was shrinking, and would eventually die, as well as that the Beatles were already more popular than Jesus. When Lennon's words were published in the U.S., there was a huge public outrage, and the Vatican denounced Lennon's statement. In the same year, Lennon held a press conference in Chicago in order to address the growing furor. He apologised and claimed that he was not saying the Beatles were bigger or greater than Jesus in any way.
The beginning of The End
The band performed their last concert in 1966. With the distractions of touring behind them, The Beatles began recording Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in November of the same year.
Manager Brian Epstein died of a drug overdose in 1967. Epstein had managed every aspect of the Beatles' career, and his absence was immediately noticeable. The Beatles' business affairs began to unravel. In January 1968, The Beatles launched Apple Corps, a disastrously mismanaged entertainment company. In addition to Beatles records, Apple released albums by some other artists.
Towards the end of the 1960s, members of the band began to pursue their own musical interests and were writing together less and less. In 1968, they released the ground-breaking White Album, and the following year began rehearsals for a project which was at the time entitled ''Get Back''. Eventually the band gave up on the project, and Lennon turned the sessions over to producer Phil Spector.
The Beatles began recording their final album in July of 1969, entitled Abbey Road, returning to the EMI studios in West London and the production team led by George Martin, and was released with much public acclaim.
In September of 1969, Russell Gibb, a radio DJ in Detroit, Michigan, announced that Paul McCartney was dead, sparking a media frenzy which snowballed into what is commonly referred to today as the Paul Is Dead hoax. Beatle fans began their quest to find clues that were supposedly hidden in album artwork, lyrics, and recordings themselves.
The band officially broke up in 1970. The last Beatles studio session that included all four band members took place on August 20, 1969. EMI released Let It Be, the result of the Spector rework of the Get Back sessions, in May of 1970, and the film of the same name shortly after. The Beatles were dissatisfied with the result, particularly McCartney with "The Long and Winding Road".
On December 8, 1980, John Lennon was murdered in front of his New York City apartment by a mentally deranged fan, Mark David Chapman, forever crushing any hope of a Beatles reunion. His death was mourned by millions of fans around the world.
Then, in 1994, through the magic of digital technology, "new" Beatles songs were created from original John Lennon demos as part of the multimedia miniseries The Beatles Anthology, a documentary about the band told almost exclusively from their own point of view.
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, tape loops 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--sometimes reported as a temporary break-up--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, save for a live-action epilogue at the film's conclusion, and the contribution of five new songs for the film, including a holdover from the "Sgt. Pepper" sessions, "Only A Northern Song". Nonetheless, it was acclaimed for its boldly innovative graphic style and clever humour as well as the soundtrack.
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.
Achievements
Throughout their relatively short time recording and performing together, The Beatles set a number of world records - most of which have yet to be broken. The following is a partial list.
- The Beatles are the best-selling musical group of all time, estimated by EMI to be over one billion discs and tapes sold worldwide.
- The most multi-platinum selling albums for any artist or musical group (13 in the U.S. alone)
- The Beatles have had more number one singles than any other artist or musical group (22 in the U.S., 23 in Australia, 23 in The Netherlands, 22 in Canada, 21 in Norway, 18 in Sweden). Ironically, the Beatles could easily have had even more number ones, because they were often competing with their own singles. For example, The Beatles' "Penny Lane" and "Strawberry Fields Forever" were released as a "double A" sided single, which caused sales and airplay to be divided between the two songs instead of being counted collectively. Even so, they reached number two with the singles.
- The Beatles have had more number one albums than any other act (19 in the U.S., 15 in the U.K.)
- The Beatles spent the highest number of weeks at number one in the albums chart (132 in the U.S. and 174 in the U.K.)
- The most successful first week of sales for a double album (The Beatles Anthology Volume 1), which sold 855,473 copies in the U.S. from November 21 to November 28, 1995).
- In terms of charting positions, Lennon and McCartney are the most successful songwriters in history, with 32 number one singles in the U.S. for McCartney, and 26 for Lennon (23 of which were written together). Lennon was responsible for 29 number one singles in the U.K., and McCartney was responsible for 28 (25 of which were written together).
- During the week of April 4, 1964, The Beatles held the top 5 positions on the Billboard singles chart. No one had ever done anything like this before, and it is doubtful that the conditions will ever exist for anyone to do it again. The songs were "Can't Buy Me Love", "Twist and Shout", "She Loves You", "I Want to Hold Your Hand", and "Please Please Me".
- The next week, April 11, 1964, the Beatles held 14 positions on the Billboard Hot 100. Before the Beatles, the highest number of concurrent singles by one artist on the Hot 100 was nine (by Elvis Presley, December 19, 1956).
- The Beatles are the only artist to have back-to-back-to-back number one singles on Billboard's Hot 100. Boyz II Men and Elvis Presley have succeeded themselves on the chart, but the Beatles are the only artist to three-peat.
- The Beatles' "Yesterday" is the most covered song in history, appearing in the Guinness Book of Records with over 3000 recorded versions.
- The Beatles had the fastest selling single of all time with "I Want To Hold Your Hand". The song sold 250,000 units within 3 days in the U.S., one million in 2 weeks. (10,000 copies per hour in New York City alone for the first 20 days)
- The Beatles have the fastest selling CD of all time with "1". It sold over 13 million copies in 4 weeks.
- The largest number of advance orders for a single, at 2.1 million copies in the U.S. for "Can't Buy Me Love" (it sold 940,225 copies on its first day of release in the U.S. alone)
- Sgt. Pepper`s Lonely Hearts Club Band is the best selling album of all time in the U.K. (over 4.5 million copies sold)
- With their performance at Shea Stadium in 1965, The Beatles set new world records for concert attendance (55,600+) and revenue.
- The Beatles broke television ratings records in the U.S. with their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan show.
- On June 12, 1965, The Beatles were awarded the order of Member of the British Empire (MBE) by the Queen.
- On July 2, 1966, The Beatles became the first musical group to perform at the Nippon Budokan Hall in Tokyo.
The music
Unlike their contemporaries the Rolling Stones, the Beatles were seldom directly influenced by blues. Though they drew inspiration from an eclectic variety of sources, their home idiom was closer to pop music. Their distictive vocal harmonies were influenced by early Motown artists in the US. Chuck Berry was perhaps the most fundamental progenitor of the Beatles' sound; The Beatles covered "Roll Over Beethoven" and "Rock And Roll Music" early in their careers on record (with most other Berry classics heard in their live repetoire). Chuck Berry's influence is also heard, in an altered form, in later songs such as "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me And My Monkey" (1968) and "Come Together" (1969). (When "Come Together" was released, Chuck Berry successfully sued the Beatles for copyright infringement of his song "You Can't Catch Me".)
A significant and acknowledged musical influence was the Beach Boys, who were in turn spurred on by the work of the Beatles. The song Back in the USSR contains an overt allusion to the Beach Boys, but many other songs exhibit the kind of attention to vocal harmony for which the Beach Boys are also famous.
Individually, the four Beatles drew further inspiration from different sources. John Lennon's early style owed a huge debt to Buddy Holly and Roy Orbison ("Misery" from 1963 and "Please Please Me" from 1963). After becoming acquainted with the work of Bob Dylan, Lennon became influenced heavily by folk music ("You've Got To Hide Your Love Away" and "Norwegian Wood" from 1965). Lennon played the major role in steering the group toward psychedelia ("Strawberry Fields Forever" and "I Am The Walrus" from 1967), and renewed his interest in earlier rock forms at the close of the Beatles' career ("Don't Let Me Down" 1969).
Paul McCartney is perhaps best known as the group's romantic balladeer: beginning with "Yesterday" (1965) he pioneered a modern form of art song, exemplified by "Eleanor Rigby" (1966) and "She's Leaving Home" (1967). Meanwhile, Paul maintained an affection for the driving R&B of Little Richard, in a series of songs which John Lennon dubbed "potboilers", from "I Saw Her Standing There" (1963) to "Lady Madonna" (1968). "Helter Skelter" (1968), which is the closest the Beatles ever came to heavy metal music, is a McCartney composition.
George Harrison derived his early guitar style from 1950's rockabilly greats such as Carl Perkins, Scotty Moore (who worked with Elvis Presley), and Duane Eddy. "All My Loving" (1963) and "She's A Woman" (1964) are prime examples of Harrison's early rockabilly guitar work.
In 1965, George Harrison broke new ground by recording with an Indian sitar on "Norwegian Wood". Many of his following compositions were based on Indian forms, most notably "Love You To" (1966), "Within You, Without You" (1967), and "The Inner Light" (1968). Indian music also influenced the band as a whole, with the use of swirling tape loops, droning bass lines, and mantra-like vocals on "Tomorrow Never Knows" (1966) and "Dear Prudence" (1968). George returned to Western musical forms in his later compositions, where he emerged as a significant pop composer in his own right. His later guitar style, while not displaying the virtuosity of Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton, became distinctive with its use of clear melodic lines and subtle fills ("Something" (1969), "Let It Be" (1970)) in constrast to the increasingly distorted riffs and rapid fire guitar solo work of his contemporaries.
Ringo Starr's contributions to the Beatles' sound are widely underestimated. While he is mostly appreciated for his gentle comic baritone ("Yellow Submarine" 1966, "Octopus's Garden" 1969), steady drumming, and everyman image, he was likely responsible for the group's occasional interest in surprisingly authentic country sounds ("What Goes On" 1965; "Don't Pass Me By" 1968).
In their later music the pace of the songs tends to be moderate, with more of the interest usually (but not always) coming from the melody and the orchestration than the rhythm. Penny Lane (1967) is a good example of this style; it is a song you might emulate if you wanted to create a recognizably "Beatlesque" sound. Their earlier songs were often a bit faster paced. Throughout their career, their songs were rarely riff-driven. "Day Tripper" (1965) and "Hey Bulldog" (1968) are among the exceptions.
Song influences
As stated above, a lot of Beatles songs had some psychedelia in them ("Yellow Submarine", "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", " I am the Walrus" from 1967) but these also link to The Goon Show and the work of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear. Both "Penny Lane" and "Strawberry Field(s)" are places in Liverpool, but the song In My Life (1965) also invokes such ideas. The song "Being For the Benefit of Mr Kite" (1967) is based on a Music Hall poster and the song "All Together Now" (1968) is based around children's rhymes. A handful of Beatles' songs both musically and lyrically border on the dadaist or absurd ("Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me and My Monkey", "You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)", and "Why Don't We Do It In The Road", from 1968).
While romantic themes permeate The Beatles' work, in contrast to the Rolling Stones, The Who, and The Doors, songs with overtly sexual themes are rare in The Beatles' catalogue. "Norwegian Wood" very obliquely refers to sexual infidelity, and "Lovely Rita" (1967) alludes to casual sex. "Happiness is a Warm Gun" (1968) is a rare Beatles' song that deals with erotic imagery. The "Ballad Of John and Yoko" (1969) also raised some eyebrows with a sexual pun ("we're only trying to get us some peace"), as well as the use of Christ as an expletive in the chorus.
UK discography
Related topics
External links
- The Official site, by Apple Corps
- beatles-discography.com Contains their complete UK and US discography, and a day-by-day diary of their entire career.
- Steve's with comprehensive lyrics for all songs released so far.
- Steve A large informational site for Beatles collectors and fans. All aspects of Beatlemania featured.
- RealBeatles.com has a forum, film archive, and more.
- Beatlesweb.de Contains a small biography.
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