The Beatles

British pop/rock group

For the Record…

Selected discography

Sources

On February 7, 1964, the Beatles arrived at Kennedy International Airport in New York City, met by 110 police officers and a mob of more than 10, 000 screaming fans. The British Invasion—and in particular, “Beatlemania” —had begun, and the “mop-topped” Beatles—John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr—wasted no time in endearing themselves to American fans and the media, though many adults remained skeptical. According to the February 24, 1964, Newsweek cover story, the Beatles’ music, already topping the charts, was “a near disaster” that did away with “secondary rhythms, harmony, and melody.” Despite such early criticism, the Beatles garnered two Grammy Awards in 1964, foreshadowing the influence they would have on the future of pop culture.

Inspired by the simple guitar-and-washboard “skiffle” music of Lonnie Doengan and later by U.S. pop artists such as Elvis, Buddy Holly, and Little Richard, John Lennon formed his own group, the Quarrymen, in 1956 with Pete Shotton and other friends. Expertise helped

For the Record…

Group originally formed as the Quarrymen in Liverpool, England, 1955, byJohn Lennon (full name, John Winston Lennon; 1940-1980);Paul McCartney (full name, James Paul McCartney; 1942—) joined group in June 1956;George Harrison (1943—) joined group in August 1958; added Stu Sutcliffe, 1960 (quit group, 1961; died, April, 1962); added drummerPete Best , 1960 (fired, 1962); drummerRingo Starr (real name, Richard Starkey; 1940—), August 1962; group performed under numerous names prior to 1962, including Johnny and the Moondogs, the Moonshiners, and Long John and the Silver Beatles.

Group performed in Liverpool, England, area prior to 1960; Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, Sutcliffe, and Best (under name Silver Beatles) performed as backup group for singer Tony Sheridan in Hamburg, Germany, 1960; group (minus Sutcliffe) returned to Liverpool to perform at Cavern Club, February 1961; first studio recording session for Capitol/EMI (produced by George Martin), September 4-11, 1962; first single, “Love Me Do,” released in England, October 5, 1962; first number one hit, “Please, Please Me,” reached top of British charts, February 1963; subsequently sold over 100 million singles and 100 million albums; conducted major world tours, 1964, 1965, and 1966; discontinued live performances, 1967; appeared in motion pictures, including A Hard Day’s Night, 1964, Help, 1965, and Let It Be, 1970; formed own record label, Apple Records, 1968; group disbanded, 1970; McCartney filed for legal dissolution of group, 1971; group legally dissolved, December 30, 1974.

Awards: Group presented with numerous awards, including numerous Grammy Awards. Individual group members decorated Order of the British Empire, 1965.

guitarist Paul McCartney, whom Shotton introduced to Lennon in 1957 at a church function, find a place in the band, and he in turn introduced Lennon to George Harrison. Only fourteen, Harrison, though a skilled guitarist, did not impress seventeen-year-old Lennon overmuch, but his perseverence finally won him a permanent niche in the developing ensemble. Stuart Sutcliffe, an artist friend of Lennon’s brought a bass guitar into the group a year later. Calling themselves Johnny and the Moondogs, the band eventually won a chance to tour Scotland, backing a little-known singer, Johnny Gentle. Renamed the Silver Beatles, they were well-received, but the pay was poor, and the end of the tour saw the exit of a disgusted drummer and the arrival of Pete Best.

With the help of Welshman Allan Williams, club owner and sometime-manager for many promising bands playing around Liverpool in 1960, the Beatles found themselves polishing their act at seedy clubs in Hamburg, West Germany. Living quarters were squalid, working conditions demanding, but instead of splintering the group, the experience strengthened them. Encouraged by their audidences’ demands to “make show,” they became confident, outrageous performers. Lennon in particular was reported to have played in his underwear with a toiled seat around his neck, and the whole band romped madly on the stage. Such spectacles by the Beatles and another English band, Rory Storme and the Hurricanes, ultimately caved in the stage at one club. The Beatles’ second trip to Hamburg, in 1961, was distinguished by a better club and a series of recordings for which they backed singer Tony Sheridan—recordings that proved critical in gaining them a full-time manager. At the end of that stay, Sutcliffe remained in Hamburg to marry, having ceded bass duties to McCartney. He died tragically the following spring, shortly after the Beatles joined up with Brian Epstein.

Intrigued by requests for Tony Sheridan’s “My Bonnie” single, featuring the Beatles, record shop manager Brain Epstein sought the band at Liverpool’s Cavern Club. Within a year of signing a managerial agreement with Epstein, the Beatles gained a recording contract from E.M.I. Records producer George Martin, and on the eve of success shuffled yet another drummer out, causing riots among Pete Best’s loyal following. The last in a long line of percussionists came in the form of the Hurricanes’ sad-eyed former drummer, Ritchie Starkey—Ringo Starr.

Despite initial doubts, Martin agreed to use Lennon and McCartney originals on both sides of the Beatles’ first single. “Love Me Do,” released on October 5, 1962, did well enough to convince Martin that, with the right material, the Beatles could achieve a number one record. He was proved correct. “Please Please Me,” released in Britain on January 12, 1963, was an immediate hit. The biweekly newspaper Mersey Beat quoted Keith Fordyce of New Musical Express, who called the song “a really enjoyable platter, full of vigour and vitality,” as well as Brian Matthew, then Britain’s most influential commentator on pop music, who proclaimed the Beatles “musically and visually the most accomplished group to emerge since the Shadows.” The Beatles’ first British album, recorded in one thirteen-hour session, remained number one on the charts for six months.

The United States remained indifferent until, one month before the Beatles’ arrival, E.M.I.’s U.S. subsidiary, Capitol Records, launched an unprecedented $50, 000 promotional campaign. It and the Beatles’ performances on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” which opened their first American tour, paid off handsomely. “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” released in the United States in January of 1964, hit number one within three weeks. After seven weeks at the top of the charts, it dropped to number two to make room for “She Loves You,” which gave way to “Can’t Buy Me Love.” As many as three new songs a week were released, until on April 4, 1964, the Beatles held the top five slots on the Billboard list of top sellers, anther seven in the top one hundred, and four albums positions including the top two. One week later, fourteen of the top one hundred songs were the Beatles’—a feat unmatched before or since.

Also in 1964, long before music videos had become commonplace, the Beatles appeared in the first of several innovative full-length feature films. Shot in black-and-white and well-received by critics, A Hard Day’s Night represented a day in the life of the group. Its release one month before the Beatles began their second U.S. tour was timely. Help, released in July of 1965, was a madcap fantasy filmed in color. Exotic locations made Help visually more interesting than the first film, but critics were less impressed. Both albums sold well, though the U.S. versions contained fewer original songs, and Help was padded with pseudo-Eastern accompanying tracks.

The 1965 and 1966 albums Rubber Soul and Revolver marked a turning point in the Beatles’ recording history. The most original of their collections to date, both combined Eastern, country-western, soul, and classical motifs with trend-setting covers, breaking any mold that seemed to contain “rock and roll.” In both albums, balladry, classical instrumentation, and new structure resulted in brilliant new concepts just hinted at in earlier works like “Yesterday” and “Rain.” Songs such as “Tomorrow Never Knows,” “Eleanor Rigby,” and the lyrically surreal “Norwegian Wood” made use of sophisticated recording techniques—marking the beginning of the end of the group’s touring, since live performances of such songs was technically impossible at the time. The Beatles became further distanced from their fans by Lennon’s comments to a London Evening Standard writer: “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that, I’m right and will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus Christ now. I don’t know which will go first, rock ’n’ roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.” While the British dismissed the statement as another “Lennonism,” American teens in the Bible Belt took Lennon’s words literally, ceremoniously burning Beatle albums as the group finished their last U.S. tour amid riots and death threats.

Acclaimed by critics, with advance sales of more than one million, the tightly produced “conceptual” album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was perhaps the high point of the Beatles’ recording career. No longer a “collection” of Lennon-McCartney and Harrison originals, the four-Grammy album was, in a stunning and evocative cover package, a thematic whole so aesthetically pleasing as to remain remarkably timeless. Imaginative melodies carried songs about many life experiences, self-conscious philosophy, and bizarre imagery, as in “A Day in the Life” —a quintessential sixties studio production. The Beatles’ music had evolved from catchy love songs to profound ballads, social commentary, and work clearly affected by their growing awareness of and experimentation with Eastern mysticism and hallucinogenic drugs. Song like “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” were pegged as drug-induced (LSD), and even Starr’s seemingly harmless rendition of “A Little Help From My Friends” included references to getting “high.” Broadening their horizons seemed an essential part of the Beatles’ lives and, influenced greatly by Harrison’s interest in Indian religion, the Beatles visited the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Bangor, Wales, in 1967. It was there that news of Brian Epstein’s death reached them.

The group’s next cooperative project was the scripting and directing of another film, Magical Mystery Tour, an unrehearsed, unorganized failure. Intended to be fresh, it drew criticism as a compilation of adolescent humor, gag bits, and undisciplined boredom. The resulting album, however, featured polished studio numbers such as McCartney’s “Fool on the Hill” and a curiosity of Lennon’s, “I Am the Walrus.” The American LP added tracks including “Penny Lane,” “Hello Goodbye,” and “Strawberry Fields Forever,” which were immortalized on short films broadcast by Ed Sullivan. Solo projects in 1967 and 1968 included the acting debuts of Lennon in How I Won the War and Starr in Candy, Harrison’s soundtrack to the film Wonderwall, and Lennon’s eventual release of his and Yoko Ono’s controversial Two Virgins albums.

Growing diversity pointed to disintegration, the early throes of which were evident in 1968 on the two-record set, The Beatles, the first album released by the group’s new record company, Apple. The White Album, as it was commonly known, showcased a variety of songs, mostly disjointed, often incomprehensible. According to George Martin, as quoted in The Beatles Forever, “I tried to plead with them to be selective and make it a really good single album, but they wouldn’t have it.” The unity seen in earlier projects was nudged aside by individuality and what appeared to be a growing rift between Lennon and McCartney. Whereas the latter contributed ballads like “Blackbird,” the former groundout antiwar statements, parodied the Maharishi, and continued to experiment with obscure production. Harrison, on the other hand, shone in “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” aided by Eric Clapton’s tasteful guitar solo. Starr, for the first time, was allotted the space for an original, the country-western “Don’t Pass Me By,” which became a number-one hit in Scandinavia where it was released as a single. Overall, critics found the White Album a letdown after the mastery of Sgt. Pepper, though Capitol claimed it was the fastest-selling album in the history of the record industry.

Despite having little to do with its making, the Beatles regained some of their lost status with Yellow Submarine, an animated feature film released in July 1968. A fantasy pitting the big-eyed, colorfully clothed Beatles against the squattish Blue Meanies, the film was visually pleasing if not initially a big money-maker. The group spent minimal time on the music, padding it with studio-session throwaways and re-releases of “All You Need Is Love” and “Yellow Submarine” itself. The remainder of 1968 and 1969 showed the individual Beatles continuing to work apart. Starr appeared in the film The Magic Christian, and Lennon performed live outside the group with Yoko Ono, whom he had married, and the Plastic Ono Band.

After spending months filming and recording the documentary that would later emerge as the Let It Be film and album, the Beatles abandoned thirty hours of tape and film to producer George Martin. Since editing it down would make release before 1970 impossible, the album was put on hold. Instead, for the final time, the Beatles gathered to produce an album “the way we used to do it,” as McCartney was quoted in Philip Norman’s book, Shout! The result was as stunning in its internal integrity as Sgt. Pepper had been. Schisms seemed to vanish on Abbey Road, with all Beatles at their best. Lennon showed himself sardonic but controlled in “Come Together” and “I Want You—She’s So Heavy,” McCartney crooned ballads and doo-wop rockers alike in “Golden Slumbers” and “Oh! Darling!” ; and Harrison surpassed both of them with “Here Comes the Sun” and “Something,” hailed by Lennon as the best track on the album. Starr, always in the background, provided vocals for “Octopus’s Garden” and uncompromising and creative drumming throughout. Wrote Schaffner, “The musicianship is always tasteful, unobtrusive, and supportive of the songs themselves…. The Beatles never sounded more together.” Yet another Grammy winner, it was a triumphal exit from the 1960s, and its declaration, “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make,” read like an epitaph until the “post mortem” release of the heavily edited Let It Be.

American producer Phil Spector took over the Let It Be clean-up project from George Martin in 1970. The resulting album, brought out after fifteen months of apathy, bickering, and legal battles, was a mixture of raw recordings, glimpses of the Beatles in an earlier era, and heavily dubbed strings and vocals—as on McCartney’s “Long and Winding Road.” Though most tracks were tightly and effectively edited, critics said the album lacked the harmony of earlier endeavors. According to Schaffner, Lennon later told Rolling Stone, “We couldn’t get into it…. I don’t know, it was just a dreadful, dreadful feeling … you couldn’t make music … in a strange place with people filming you and colored lights.” The film, which strove to show the Beatles as honestly and naturally as possible, gave further evidence of disintegration. Band members were shown quarreling, unresponsive to McCartney’s attempts to raise morale. Said Alan Smith of the New Musical Express, quoted by Roy Carr and Tony Tyler in The Beatles: An Illustrated Record, “If the Beatles soundtrack album ‘Let It Be’ is to be their last, then it will stand as a cheapskate epitaph, a cardboard tombstone, a sad and tatty end to a musical fusion which wiped clean and drew again the face of pop music.”

By the end of 1970, all four Beatles had recorded solo albums, and, in 1971, McCartney sued for the dissolution of the group. Throughout the seventies, promoters attempted to reunite them without success. The closest approximation of a reunion was Starr’s Ringo album in 1973—though never together in the studio, Lennon, Harrison, and McCartney contributed music, vocals, and backing. Any lingering hope of a joint performance or album ended with the tragic murder of John Lennon on December 8, 1980. A year before, Neil Munro, in an Oakland Press Sunday Magazine article, provided what might make a fitting epitaph, setting the Beatles into their place in history: “Their musical imagination was startling. They lived on it…. They played the songs for the best times of our lives, and always will.”

Selected discography

LPs

Introducing the Beatles, Vee Jay, 1963.

Meet the Beatles, Capitol, 1964.

The Beatles Second Album, Capitol, 1964.

A Hard Day’s Night, United Artists, 1964.

Something New, Capitol, 1964.

The Beatles Story, Capitol, 1964.

Beatles ’65, Capitol, 1964.

The Early Beatles, Capitol, 1965.

Beatles VI, Capitol, 1965.

Help, Capitol, 1965.

Rubber Soul, Capitol, 1965.

Yesterday … and Today, Capitol, 1966.

Revolver, Capitol, 1966.

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Capitol, 1967.

Magical Mystery Tour, Capitol, 1967.

The Beatles (White Album), Apple, 1968.

Yellow Submarine, Apple, 1969.

Abbey Road, Apple, 1969.

Hey Jude, Apple, 1970.

Tony Sheridan and the Beatles, Polydor, 1970.

Let It Be, Apple, 1970.

The Beatles 1962-1966, Apple, 1973.

The Beatles 1967-1970, Apple, 1973.

Rock N’ Roll Music, Capitol, 1976.

The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl, Capitol, 1976.

The Beatles Live! At the Star Club in Hamburg, Germany: 1962. Lingasong, 1977.

Love Songs, Capitol, 1977.

Rarities, Capitol, 1979.

Sources

Books

Carr, Roy and Tony Tyler, The Beatles: An Illustrated Record, Harmony Books, 1978.

Norman, Philip, Shout! The Beatles in Their Generation, Simon and Schuster, 1981.

Schaffner, Nicholas, The Beatles Forever, McGraw, 1978.

Schaumburg, Ron, Growing up With the Beatles, Harcourt, 1976.

Periodicals

Evening Standard (London), March 4, 1966.

Mersey Beat, January 31-February 14, 1963.

Newsweek, February 24, 1964.

Oakland Press Sunday Magazine, February 4, 1979.

Time, December 22, 1980.

—Meg Mac Donald

Beatles, The

Beatles, The, the most important rock group in history. Membership: John Lennon, rhythm gtr., pno., har., voc. (b. Woolton, Liverpool, England, Oct. 9, 1940; d. N.Y.C., Dec. 8, 1980); Paul McCartney, bs., pno., bjo., trpt., voc. (b. Allerton, Liverpool, June 18, 1942); George Harrison, lead gtr., sitar, pno., voc. (b. Wavertree, Liverpool, Feb. 24, 1943); Ringo Starr (b. Richard Starkey), drm., voc. (b. Dingle, Liverpool, July 7, 1940). Early members included Stuart Sutcliffe, bs. (b. Edinburgh, Scotland, June 23, 1940; d. Hamburg, Germany, April 10, 1962); Pete Best, drm. (b. Madras, India, Nov. 24, 1941).

The evolution of The Beatles began in 1956 when John Lennon formed a group called The Quarrymen. In July 1957, he met Paul McCartney, who subsequently joined the group. George Harrison joined in August 1958 and, by 1959, they were down to a trio. The group’s name changed several times during that year, eventually becoming The Silver Beatles. Bassist Stu Sutcliffe and drummer Pete Best joined the group in January and August 1960, respectively. Subsequently performing in Hamburg, Germany, for three months as The Beatles, the group later backed singer Tony Sheridan in Hamburg in June 1961 and recordings done with Sheridan were later released on albums. In Hamburg, the group completed their musical apprenticeship, playing rigorous night-long shows to unappreciative audiences; live recordings made at the Star Club in 1962 were eventually issued in 1977.

The Beatles returned to England and took up residence at The Cavern, a club in Liverpool, beginning in February 1961. In April, Stu Sutcliffe left the group; he died of a brain hemorrhage in Hamburg on April 10, 1962. In November 1961, record shop owner Brian Epstein discovered the group at The Cavern and attempted to secure them a recording contract. They were initially rejected by Decca and later picked up by the Parlophone subsidiary of EMI (British Capitol) in May 1962. That August, Ringo Starr quit Rory Storm’s Hurricanes and replaced Pete Best on drums. Best later recorded an album for Savage Records and served as “technical advisor” for the 1979 Dick Clark production The Birth of The Beatles, which aired on ABC-TV. By the late 1990s, Pete Best had formed The Pete Best Combo, recording Best for Music Club Records.

In September, with George Martin producing, The Beatles conducted their first recording session. In October, their first single, “Love Me Do,” was issued in Great Britain on Parlophone Records, becoming a modest hit. Their second single, “Please Please Me,” quickly proved a smash hit. The Beatles’ first British album, Please Please Me, issued in March 1963, remained near the top of the charts for six months. Their second album, With The Beatles, issued in November, initiated a string of 11 consecutive studio albums of new material to top the British album charts.

In the United States, the next Beatles single, “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” backed with “I Saw Her Standing There,” was released in January 1964, with heavy promotion by Capitol. The song became a top hit within two weeks and proved to be one of the fastest-selling singles of the 1960s, eventually selling 15 million copies worldwide. In February, The Beatles performed on CBS television’s Ed Sullivan Show before an estimated audience of 73 million and launched their debut U.S. tour, with massive media coverage.

The dam burst. Nothing could stop The Beatles, and in their wake followed dozens of British groups. Indeed, Lennon and McCartney provided a number of hit songs to up-and-coming British groups, including “Hello Little Girl” for The Fourmost, “Bad to Me” for Billy J. Kramer and The Dakotas, and “It’s for You” for Cilia Black. Peter and Gordon scored with their “World without Love” (a top British and American hit) and “I Don’t Want to See You Again,” and The Rolling Stones’ first major British hit came with Lennon and McCartney’s “I Wanna Be Your Man.”

For many weeks after the release of “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” The Beatles dominated the highest chart positions with the top hits “She Loves You” and “Can’t Buy Me Love” (on Capitol), “Please Please Me” and “Do You Want to Know a Secret” (on Veejay), and “Twist and Shout” and “Love Me Do,” backed with “PS. I Love You” (on Tollie). In March 1964, the group began work on their first film, A Hard Day’s Night, and John Lennon published his first book, In His Own Write. The film premiered in July and the British A Hard Day’s Night album comprised entirely songs written by Lennon and McCartney. The Beatles’ second U.S. tour began in August, and the following February and March they recorded and filmed their second movie, Help!, which opened in late July. In June, Lennon published his second book, A Spaniard in the Works. Through mid-1965, The Beatles continued their string of hit singles with the top hits “A Hard Day’s Night,” “I Feel Fine” (backed with “She’s a Woman”), “Eight Days a Week,” and “Ticket to Ride,” and the major hits “And I Love Her,” “I’ll Cry Instead,” and Carl Perkins’s “Matchbox” backed with “Slow Down.”

Increasing sophistication in the lyrics of Lennon and McCartney became evident after mid-1965. The words to the top hits “Help” and “Yesterday,” the smash hit “Nowhere Man” and the major hit “Eleanor Rigby,” and songs such as “In My Life” (from Rubber Soul) possessed a profound emotional intensity not apparent in earlier work. Completing their third North American tour in August 1965, The Beatles scored a top hit with “We Can Work It Out”/”Day Tripper” at year’s end. George Harrison’s songwriting ability began to be showcased with Revolver, which contained three of his songs: “Taxman,” “Love You To,” and “I Want to Tell You.” The Beatles conducted their final American tour in August 1966 as “Yellow Submarine” (backed with “Eleanor Rigby”) was becoming a smash hit.

With the single “Rain” (the flip side of the top hit “Paperback Writer”) and songs such as “Tomorrow Never Knows” (from Revolver), The Beatles began utilizing involved studio production techniques in their recordings. The contributions of producer- arranger George Martin became particularly strong between 1966 and 1968. Lyrically, the songs of Lennon and McCartney began a tendency toward the bizarre and surreal, often defying logical explanation. This penchant for the surreal, first evident with “Norwegian Wood” (from Rubber Soul), continued with “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, the quintessential “A Day in the Life” (from Sgt. Pepper), and the singles “Strawberry Fields Forever”/”Penny Lane” and “I Am the Walrus.”

Focusing their attention on recording, The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was issued in June 1967, with advance sales of one million plus. It remained on the American album charts for more than three years and eventually sold more then eight million copies in the United States. The first Beatles album to be identical in its British and American versions, Sgt. Pepper entailed 700 hours of studio time. As the music industry’s first recognized concept album, the record was highly acclaimed by critics and marked perhaps the high point of The Beatles’ recording career. The album included “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds/’ “With a Little Help from My Friends” (sung by Ringo), Harrison’s self-consciously philosophical “Within You, Without You,” and the quintessential 1960s production, “A Day in the Life.” The singles “All You Need Is Love” and “Hello Goodbye” became top hits before year’s end, followed by the smash “Lady Madonna” the next spring.

Individual endeavors by members of The Beatles began in 1967 with the acting debut of John Lennon in the film How I Won the War and Paul McCartney’s recording of the soundtrack to the film The Family Way. During the year, the group scripted, cast, directed, and edited the made-for-television movie Magical Mystery Tour, a conspicuous failure in its poor editing and photography. The soundtrack album, released in November in the United States only, included “The Fool on the Hill,” “I Am the Walrus,” and “All You Need Is Love.” In 1968, George Harrison composed, arranged, and recorded his own music for the soundtrack to the film Wonderwall. Lennon, now with conceptual artist Yoko Ono, recorded with her the controversial Two Virgins album. In July, the animated movie Yellow Submarine premiered. It was probably the most artistically successful film with which The Beatles were associated. Furthermore, it was one of the most engaging psychedelic movies of the late 1960s. The soundtrack album included the title song and “All You Need Is Love.”

In April 1968, The Beatles had formed their own record company, Apple. The first single for the label, “Hey Jude” (backed with “Revolution”), was released in August and became a top hit. The double-record set entitled The Beatles (also known as The White Album), issued in November, was the first album on Apple. Disjointed and revealing the tell-tale signs of a Lennon-McCartney rift, the album contained such diverse songs as “Back in the U.S.S.R.,” “Blackbird,” “Revolution,” and Harrison’s superlative “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” (recorded, without credit, with Eric Clapton). It remained on the American album charts for nearly three years and sold more than seven million copies in the United States.

During most of 1969, the individual Beatles worked apart. Ringo appeared in the movie The Magic Christian. The soundtrack album contained a solo McCartney composition, “Come and Get It,” a near-smash hit for Badfinger. In March, John Lennon married Yoko Ono and Paul McCartney married Linda Eastman. The marriages seemed to mark the informal end of The Beatles. During the year, The Beatles scored top hits with “Get Back” and “Come Together” (backed with Harrison’s smash hit “Something”) and the near-hit “The Ballad of John and Yoko.” John Lennon became the first Beatle to perform publicly outside the group in September with The Plastic Ono Band in Toronto.

The only Beatle album release of 1969, Abbey Road (named for the studio in which the group had recorded since 1962), was issued in November and became their most popular album, selling more than nine million copies in the United States. It included Lennon’s “Come Together,” Harrison’s “Something” and “Here Comes the Sun,” Ringo’s “Octopus’s Garden,” and “She Came in through the Bathroom Window.” The Abbey Road album was actually the final Beatles recording. Let It Be, initially produced by George Martin and later reworked by Phil Spector, was held up by remixing disputes and film editing problems and was eventually issued in May 1970. The album included the top hits “Let It Be,” “Get Back,” and “The Long and Winding Road,” The Beatles’ final single release.

On the last day of 1970, Paul McCartney sued for dissolution of The Beatles’ partnership, which legally ended on Jan. 9, 1975. Subsequent Beatles album releases were the live sets Live at Star Club and Live at the Hollywood Bowl (recorded in 1964 and 1965), Rarities, and various anthology sets. The individual members of The Beatles recorded a number of albums for Apple in the first half of the 1970s, most notably Paul McCartney’s McCartney (1970) and Band on the Run (with his group, Wings; 1973), George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass (1970) and The Concert for Bangladesh (1972), John Lennon’s Imagine (1971), and Ringo Starr’s Ringo (1973).

Throughout the 1970s, rumors persisted that The Beatles would reunite for touring or recordings, but such speculation finally and tragically ended with the murder of John Lennon in N.Y.C. on Dec. 8, 1980. The remaining three, plus Linda McCartney, jointly recorded the 1981 tribute to Lennon, “All Those Years Ago,” written by Harrison.

The public’s fascination with The Beatles was sustained in the early 1980s through the film documentary The Compleat Beatles (1982) and long- time associate Peter Brown’s book, The Love You Make: An Insider’s Story of The Beatles (1983). In August 1985, superstar Michael Jackson purchased the copyrights to 40, 000 songs, including over 200 Lennon-McCartney songs. During the 25th anniversary year of The Beatles’ first recording, 1987, Capitol Records issued for the first time on CD The Beatles’ first seven albums in their British versions (U.S. versions contained one to four fewer songs) and their last five albums (U.S. and British versions were identical). Sgt. Pepper, released in June, rapidly became the best-selling CD of all time.

In 1994, the movie Backbeat focused on the early days of The Beatles and Stu Sutcliffe in particular. Late in the year, Apple Records issued The Beatles’ Live at the BBC, 56 songs recorded for broadcast by the radio station between March 1962 and June 1965. Consisting largely of cover songs, the album quickly sold more than five million copies. In November 1995, the three-part special The Beatles Anthology aired on ABC television, and the end of the first program featured the debut of “Free As a Bird,” a Lennon demonstration record completed by the former Beatles, which became a near-hit. Capitol subsequently issued three double-CD sets of Anthology albums that demonstrated the remarkable popularity of a group that had disbanded a quarter of a century ago.

The most important rock group in history, The Beatles’ unprecedented commercial success was paralleled by their masterful artistic achievements and widespread cultural impact. Musically, The Beatles were the group that institutionalized many of the advances pioneered in rock music in the late 1950s, from the selfcontained music group to the use of sophisticated arrangements and studio production techniques. In encompassing so many diversified forms of music (pop love songs, ballads, novelty songs, folk, country-and-western, rhythm-and-blues) within the basic rock ’n’ roll format, The Beatles revitalized rock ’n’ roll. Their music exhibited a fresh, clean, exuberant sound that contrasted sharply with the vapid pop ballads and dance songs pervading popular music in the early 1960s. Initiating an eclecticism that was to become one of their trademarks with Something New, The Beatles went beyond the standard three-chord progression, often utilizing diminished or augmented seventh and ninth chords while devising intriguing melodies and developing engaging vocal harmonies. Particularly after the Help! album, songwriters John Lennon and Paul McCartney brought an unprecedented lyric sophistication to rock music, writing songs of a personal and emotionally evocative nature. Their frequent philosophical concerns in lyrics widened the intellectual boundaries of rock in a manner rivaled only by Bob Dylan. Beginning with the Revolver album, perhaps the most innovative rock album ever made, The Beatles introduced novel instrumental combinations into rock, explored elaborate electronic production techniques under George Martin, and sparked the use of the East Indian sitar in rock music. The landmark Sgt. Pepper album, regarded by many as the first fully realized concept album and certainly an astounding work, may be the best known rock album of all time; its intricate jacket design also set new standards for the developing field of album artwork.

Within the music industry, The Beatles’ enormous success turned the industry away from its preoccupation with individual singers performing songs written by professional songwriters toward music groups performing original material. The consistency of The Beatles’ musical performances switched the focus of the consuming public’s attention from singles to albums. The Beatles’ rise enabled dozens of other British musicians to express themselves musically and achieve popularity, thereby breaking the American stranglehold on British popular music. Perhaps most significantly, the musical and songwriting advances pioneered by The Beatles led critics to view rock music as a valid art form in and of itself, and induced the public to perceive rock music as a total, internally coherent form of conscious experience. In social terms, The Beatles brought public attention to psychedelic drugs, the peace movement, Indian music, and Eastern spiritualism. Moreover, they helped promote a growing youth culture and inspired many young people to begin playing music by and for themselves, making music an essential part of their lifestyle. The Beatles were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988. Producer George Martin was inducted in 1999.

For information on their subsequent careers, see separate entries on John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison.

Discography

EARLY BEATLES RECORDINGS: The Beatles with Tony Sheridan and Their Guests (1964; reissued as This Is Where It Started, 1966); Live at the Star Club (1962); Introducing...The Beatles (1963); Jolly What! The Beatles and Frank Ifield (1964); Songs, Pictures and Stories of the Fabulous Beatles (1964); The Beatles versus The Four Seasons (1964); Ain’t She Sweet (1964); The Early Beatles (1965); In the Beginning (1970). PETE BEST: Best of The Beatles (1966); Beyond The Beatles 1964r–66 (1996). PETE BEST COMBO: Music Club (1998). THE BEATLES: Note: The album releases for The Beatles through 1966 were significantly different in the U.K. (on Parlophone) and the U.S. (on Capitol). Capitol chose to release the British albums on CD, except in the case of Meet The Beatles. Please Please Me (1963); With The Beatles (1963); Meet The Beatles (1964); The Beatles’ Second Album (1964); A Hard Day’s Night (1964); Something New (1964); Beatles for Sale (1964); The Beatles’ Story (1964); Beatles’ ’65 (1965); Beatles VI (1965); Help! (1965); Rubber Soul (1965); Yesterday...and Today (1966); Revolver (1966); Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967); Magical Mystery Tour (1967); The Beatles (White Album) (1968); Yellow Submarine (soundtrack; 1969); Abbey Road (1969); Hey Jude (1970); Let It Be (1970); Live at the BBC (1994). BEATLES ANTHOLOGIES: 1962–1966 (1973); 1967–1970 (1973); Rock V Roll Music (1976); Live at the Hollywood Bowl (1977); Love Songs (1977); Rarities (1980); Reel Music (1982); 20 Greatest Hits (1981); Past Masters-Vol. 1, 2 (1988); The Ultimate Box Set (1988); Anthology 1 (1995); Anthology 2 (1996); Anthology 3 (1996); 1 (2000).

Writings

John Lennon, In His Own Write (N.Y., 1964); John Lennon, A Spaniard in the Works (N.Y., 1965); George Harrison, I Me Mine (N.Y., 1980); Pete Best and Patrick Don-caster, Beatlel The Pete Best Story (N.Y., 1985); John Lennon, Skywriting by Word of Mouth, and Other Writings (N.Y., 1986).

Bibliography

Brian Epstein, A Cellarful of Noise (Garden City, N.Y., 1964); Billy Shepherd, The True Story of The Beatles (N.Y., 1964); Hunter Davies, The Beatles: The Authorized Biography (N.Y., 1968); Edward E. Davis, The Beatles Book (N.Y., 1968); Julius Fast, The Beatles: The Real Story (NX, 1968); Anthony Scaduto, The Beatles (N.Y., 1968); Jann Wenner, Lennon Remembers: The Rolling Stone Interviews (San Francisco, 1971); Richard Duello, The Longest Cocktail Party: A Personal History of Apple (Chicago, 1972); Peter McCabe and Robert Schonfeld, Apple to the Core: The Unmaking of The Beatles (N.Y., 1972); Derek Taylor, As Time Goes By (San Francisco, 1973); Wilfrid Mellers, Twilight of the Goods (N.Y., 1974); Allan Williams and William Marshall, The Man Who Gave The Beatles Away (N.Y., 1975); Harry Castleman and Walter J. Podrazik, All Together Now: The First Complete Beatles’Discography 1961–1975 (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1976); Harry Castleman and Walter J. Podrazik, The Beatles Again? (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1977); Bill Harry, ed., Mersey Beat: The Beginnings of The Beatles (London, N.Y., 1977); Nicholas Schaffner, The Beatles Forever (N.Y., 1977); Roy Carr and Tony Tyler, The Beatles: An Illustrated Record (N.Y., 1975, 1978); J. Philip DiFranco, ed., The Beatles: A Hard Day’s Night (London, N.Y., 1978); Miles (comp.), The Beatles in Their Own Words (N.Y., 1978); George Martin with Jeremy Hornsby, All You Need Is Ears (N.Y., 1979); Goldie Friede, Robin Titone, and Sue Weiner, The Beatles AtoZ (N.Y., 1980); Nicholas Schaffner, The Boys from Liverpool: John, Paul, George, Ringo (N.Y., 1980); Tom Schultheiss (compiler), The Beatles: A Day in the Life: The Beatles Day-by-Day, 1960–1970 (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1980); Geoffry Stokes, The Beatles (N.Y., 1980); John Blake, All You Needed Was Love: The Beatles After The Beatles (N.Y., 1981); Philip Norman, Shout! The Beatles in Their Generation (N.Y., 1981); Charles Reinhart, You Can’t Do That! Beatles Bootlegs and Novelty Records, 1963–80 (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1981); Bob Woffinden, The Beatles Apart (London, N.Y., 1981);Bill Harry, ed., The Beatles Who’s Who (London, 1982); Jeff Russell, The Beatles Album File and Complete Discography (N.Y., 1982); Mark Wallgren, The Beatles on Record (N.Y., Schuster, 1982); Peter Brown and Steven Gaines, The Love You Make: An Insider’s Story of The Beatles (N.Y., 1983); Kevin Howlett, The Beatles on the Beeb, ’62–65: The Story of Their Radio Career (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1983); Terence J. O’Grady, The Beatles, A Musical Evolution (Boston, 1983); Charles P. Neises, éd., The Beatles Reader: A Selection of Contemporary Views, News and Reviews of The Beatles in Their Heyday (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1984); Neville Stannard, The Long and Winding Road: A History of The Beatles on Record (N. Y, 1984); John Tobler, The Beatles (N.Y., 1984); Beatlefan: The Authoritative Publication of Record for Fans of The Beatles (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1985); Carol D. Terry (editor and compiler), Here, There and Everywhere: The First International Beatles Bibliography, 1962–1982 (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1985); Harry Castleman and Walter J. Podrazik, The End of The Beatles? Ann Arbor, Mich., 1985); Robert Cepican, Yesterday—Came Suddenly: The Definitive History of The Beatles (N.Y., 1985); Hunter Davies, The Beatles (N.Y., 1978, 1985); Geoffrey Guilano, The Beatles: A Celebration (N.Y., 1986); Mark Lewisohn, The Beatles Live! (N.Y., 1986); Allen J. Wiener, The Beatles: A Recording History (Jefferson, N.C., 1986); Derek Taylor, It Was Twenty Years Ago (N.Y., 1987); Mark Lewisohn, Complete Beatles Recording Sessions (N.Y., 1988); Tim Riley, Tell Me Why: A Beatles Commentary (N.Y., 1988); Ray Coleman, The Man Who Made The Beatles: An Intimate Biography of Brian Epstein (N.Y., 1989); William J. Dowlding, Beatlesongs (N.Y., 1989); William McKeen, The Beatles: A Bio- Bibliography (N.Y., 1989); Gareth L. Pawlowski, How They Became The Beatles: A Definitive History of the Early Years, 1960–1964 (N.Y., 1989); Denny Somach, Kathleen Somach, and Kevin Gunn, Ticket to Ride (N.Y., 1989); Edward Gross, The Fab Films of The Beatles (Las Vegas, 1990); Mark Lewisohn, The Beatles: Day by Day, A Chronology 1962–1989 (N.Y., 1990); Mike Clifford, The Beatles (N.Y., 1991); Bill Harry, éd., The Ultimate Beatles Encyclopedia (N.Y., 1992); Mark Lewisohn, The Complete Beatles Chronicle (N.Y., 1992); Allen J. Wiener, The Beatles: The Ultimate Recording Guide (N.Y., 1992); Geoffrey Guilano and Brenda Guilano, The Lost Beatles Interviews (N.Y., 1994); Ian MacDonald, Revolution in the Head: The Beatles’Records and the Sixties (N.Y., 1994); George Martin, With a Little Help from My Friends: The Making of “Sgt. Pepper” (Boston, 1994); Steve Turner, A Hard Day’s Write: The Stories Behind Every Beatles Song (N.Y., 1994); Mark Hertsgaard, A Day in the Life: The Music and Artistry of The Beatles (N.Y., 1995); The Beatles: From Yesterday to Today (Boston, 1996); Jim O’Donnell, The Day John Met Paul: A Hour-by-Hour Account of How The Beatles Began (N.Y., 1996); Brandon Toropov, Who Was Eleanor Rigby? And 998 More Questions and Answers about The Beatles (N.Y., 1996); Doug Sulpy and Ray Schweighardt, Get Back: The Unauthorized Chronicle of The Beatles’Let It Be Disaster (N.Y., 1997); Richard Buskin, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to The Beatles (N.Y., 1998).

—Brock Helander

THE BEATLES

Formed: 1957, Liverpool, England; Disbanded 1970

Members: George Harold Harrison, lead guitar, vocals (born Liverpool, England, 25 February 1943; died Los Angeles, California, 29 November 2001); John Winston (later changed to Ono) Lennon, rhythm guitar, harmonica, vocals (born Liverpool, England, 9 October 1940; died New York, 8 December 1980); James "Paul" McCartney, bass, vocals (born Liverpool, England, 18 June 1942); Ringo Starr, drums (Richard Starkey Jr., born Dingle, England, 7 July 1940). Former members: Peter "Pete" Best, drums (born Liverpool, England, 24 November 1941); Stuart "Stu" Sutcliffe, bass (Stuart Fergusson Victor Sutcliffe, born Edinburgh, Scotland, 23 June 1940; died Hamburg, West Germany, 10 April 1962).

Genre: Rock, Pop

Best-selling album since 1990: The Beatles 1 (2000)

Hit songs since 1990: "Free As a Bird," "Real Love"

The Beatles were the most innovative, emulated, and successful music group of the twentieth century. The Beatles set in motion both the creative and marketing paradigms of the modern rock era—through transforming hairstyles and fashion; evolving attitudes about youth, politics, and drug culture; writing their own songs and making the first music videos to accompany them; performing the first arena rock concerts; creating the first unified rock albums alongside hit singles; and being the first rock performers who were truly considered groundbreaking artists in their own time.

British Invasion

In January 1964 New York disc jockeys such as "Murray the K" began playing the Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand" virtually nonstop, introducing it with the cryptic adage, "The Beatles are coming." The record went to number one on the music charts in early February, and a fascination developed for this new "British" sound with its raw energy, wild electric guitars, and syncopated clapping. The next month, on February 7, 1964, a plane carrying the Beatles arrived at New York's Idlewild—soon to be renamed Kennedy—Airport. More than 3,000 screaming fans were there to greet the lads from Liverpool, England, as they got off the plane and waved, quickly to be ushered into a room of waiting reporters and photographers who were assigned to cover what was then negatively referred to as the "British Invasion."

The big news at the time was the group's "mop top" hairstyle. Men's crew cuts were still common and reporters had tremendous difficulty telling one Beatle from the other. Editors thought it was a funny story: the screaming girls, the foreign lads with the insectlike group name, and the long hair. Some forty-eight hours later, 73 million curious television viewers tuned in to Sunday night's Ed Sullivan Show to watch the Beatles perform live. The next day there was hardly a teenager in the country who did not want to go out and buy a guitar and scarcely a parent around who was not horrified at the prospect of his or her son emulating, or his or her daughter loving, the Beatles. The phenomenon, pejoratively dubbed "Beatle-mania," would only grow and by the time of the group's departure back to England in late February 1964, over 60 percent of all records sold in America were Beatles records.

Liverpool Roots and Early Recordings

The group's roots extend back to the Liverpool of the late 1950s, when then teenagers John Lennon and Paul McCartney had a chance meeting at a church fete. Lennon was performing with his group the Quarrymen and McCartney was brought by a mutual friend to hear them. McCartney loved that Lennon had a band, and Lennon loved that McCartney knew more than three guitar chords. McCartney's younger schoolmate George Harrison was soon recruited as another guitarist, as was Lennon's art college friend Stu Sutcliffe, to play bass. The group broke through the Liverpool club scene and eventually made its way to Hamburg, West Germany, to play clubs there, but not before hiring drummer Pete Best to accompany them. Liverpool record shop owner Brian Epstein was getting orders for a single of "My Bonnie" (1961) that the band had made with British rock pioneer Tony Sheridan and that had charted in West Germany, and decided to check out the Beatles at Liverpool's Cavern Club. Sutcliffe, who never really learned how to play bass, remained in Hamburg, where he later died of a brain hemorrhage related to a head injury; after his departure, McCartney began playing bass. Epstein was charmed by the quartet's charisma, energy, and humor, and took them on as a manager, immediately trading in their leather look for tailored suits and long, thin ties and helping the band to polish its overall presentation.

Epstein secured studio auditions for the Beatles, but these were unsuccessful until the record label EMI decided to sign them in 1962. Comedy and novelty producer George Martin agreed to work with the group, but wanted to use a session drummer rather than Pete Best. The band then fired Best, and Liverpool drummer Ringo Starr of Rory and the Hurricanes was successfully recruited for the spot. As the group began to record, the struggle was on to convince producer Martin that its own material was as good as the cover material it was recording. Martin, for instance, thought that the group's first attempt at a number-one hit should be a song by Mitch Murray called "How Do You Do It" and the Beatles did record that number—it was never released, but did show up on Anthology 1 (1995)—but the group wanted one of their own songs to be their first big hit. Martin was skeptical, but told them that if they came up with something as good, he would consider it. The number they gave him was "Please, Please Me," which did indeed become the Beatles's first number one single, and subsequently the title of their first album (1963).

New Material, New Sounds

Martin kept his ears open, and as material warranted inclusion, the number of Beatles originals put to record kept expanding. A Hard Day's Night (1964) was the first Beatles album—indeed the first rock album by anyone—to be made up entirely of original compositions. Several had been written for the Beatles's film of the same name, which established the distinctive personalities and offbeat humor of the group in the public consciousness. The field scene of the group horsing around in fast and slow motion to "All My Loving" established a new visual language to accompany rock music that anticipated the heyday of MTV by two decades. For the acoustic ballad "Yesterday" on Help! (1965), Martin suggested the use of strings, and an arrangement for string quartet was made. This inaugurated a process in which the group took an unusual interest in the sound of its music: a constant drive to come up with new sounds, new textures. An Indian sitar, for instance, dominates "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" on Rubber Soul (1966), the Beatles's memorable take on the popular folk rock movement of the time. Revolver (1966), which many consider the Beatles's masterpiece, features the melancholic "Eleanor Rigby" accompanied by a bouncy string octet with no Beatles playing whatsoever, while "Got to Get You into My Life" features a soulful brass band; "Tomorrow Never Knows" incorporates the then common technique in avant-garde "serious" music circles of taking recorded bits of random sounds, committing them to tape, and then "looping" the bits of tape together into tape loops that could play the sound at will.

The developing complexity of the Beatles's music made it increasingly difficult for the band to reproduce what it was doing in the studio in live performance. This, combined with the incessant screaming and general chaos that accompanied Beatlemania, made the group give up touring in 1966 after setting box office records everywhere it played. The first Shea Stadium Concert (1965) was not only a record setter, but a prototype of the megaconcert spectaculars that are still commonplace among rock music's biggest acts.

No longer having to worry about reproducing their music live, the Beatles reached a climax in studio creativity with the groundbreaking Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), which took the drive for new sounds and textures to new heights. Expanding the same recording techniques that had been used on Rubber Soul and Revolver, Sgt. Pepper even incorporated a full orchestra rising to a psychedelic wall of sound in the climax of the urban melodrama "Day in the Life," banned by the BBC (British Broadcasting Company) because of its supposed drug references. Sgt. Pepper ushered in a new era not only for the Beatles, but for popular music in general with its colorful cover, double-sleeve printed song lyrics, and band cut-outs. It was not only the first rock concept album, but also the first rock album that was widely considered to be "art" by those outside the genre.

The Break-Up

The death of Beatles manager Brian Epstein in 1967 was a blow from which the group was never able to recover. Although the band continued to evolve artistically, business concerns that Epstein had always taken care of so efficiently were now left for the four to fight over. By the time of The Beatles (1968) double album, which came to be known as the "White Album" because of its plain white cover, the beginning of the end was clearly in sight. The Lennon-McCartney songwriting team was mostly writing apart, and George Harrison's own compositional style had evolved to a point where one or two tracks per album were no longer adequate to contain his talents. The creation of Apple Records, which was so mismanaged that the Beatles began hemorrhaging money, and Lennon's refusal to be anywhere—including Beatles recording sessions—without his future wife Yoko Ono, all added significantly to group tensions.

The low point came in early 1969 with sessions for the film Let It Be (1970), which showed the group literally coming apart at the seams. The band came back together that summer to record Abbey Road (1969), which turned out to be the last time the group would work together. John Lennon had privately indicated his intention to leave the group, but had hoped that the band members could continue to pool their individual creative efforts as Beatles projects. Without Lennon as a direct collaborator and with the group still unwilling to perform live, McCartney wanted to move on completely, and beat Lennon to the punch in "officially" quitting the group the following spring with the release of his McCartney (1970) album. Lennon was livid, as were Harrison and Starr, that the album was released mere weeks before the Beatles' long-dormant Let It Be (1970) was due out. Bitter litigation began, which lasted nearly a decade beyond Lennon's 1980 assassination by an obsessed fan outside of his New York apartment, and which effectively prevented any real possibility of a group reunion even while Lennon was still alive.

Compact Disc Configurations, a Reunion, and an Ongoing Feud

One of the burning issues of the 1980s involved deciding in which configurations Beatles albums should be re-released in the then-new compact disc (CD) format. In England, the Beatles had originally released material during the vinyl era on EMI singles, short albums (EPs), and long-playing albums (LPs) that rarely included the same songs. This was a bold move, as it meant that new Beatles albums were not dependent on previously known hit singles, which was in direct opposition to standard industry practice at the time. When the same Beatles piece did appear as a single and an album, the mixes—and sometimes even the takes, solos, or arrangements—would be slightly different. The original American Capitol releases of Beatles material, however, often combined material from singles and albums and sometimes in configurations that, although shorter than the British albums, were often more logically organized. The longer British LP configurations won out in the end, along with leftover single and EP material released as two separate Past Masters collections (both 1988). The initial re-release of Beatles albums on CD in the mid- and late 1980s became an event that created booms in the purchase of CD players and helped propel CD sales across the board. Few considered the CD little more than a novelty until the Beatles catalog was finally available in the format.

When Northern Songs, the publishing company that owned the entire Lennon-McCartney song catalog, came up for sale in 1984, McCartney saw a unique opportunity to finally have control over his own music. While he was still attempting to set up a bid with Lennon's widow Yoko Ono, pop icon Michael Jackson made an offer of $47.5 million with the enormous profits from his Thriller (1984) album that in effect put him in control of how and when Beatles songs would be used. The result has been an influx of Beatles songs being used for commercial purposes. Although McCartney publicly complains about this, he continues to make a 25 percent profit from the licensing of any Lennon-McCartney song.

The speculation that a Beatles reunion might take place at the group's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987 was dashed when McCartney was a conspicuous no-show. Harrison, Starr, Ono, and Lennon's sons, Julian and Sean, accepted the award together, but McCartney issued a statement that said that, with all of the unsettled legal matters that still existed between the surviving Beatles, he thought it would be hypocritical to participate in a "fake reunion."

The soundtrack to the film Imagine (1988) included all Lennon-penned Beatles numbers alongside Lennon's best post-Beatles solo material in a move clearly designed by Ono to minimize the McCartney side of the LennonMcCartney equation. McCartney responded by going out for the first time ever as a solo artist performing McCartney-penned Beatles material live alongside Wings and McCartney solo material on a gargantuan world tour that broke box office records everywhere, and which was subsequently released as a film (Get Back!, 1990) and a live double album (Tripping the Live Fantastic, 1990). All legal matters between the former Beatles having finally been settled after nearly two decades of wrangling, McCartney began speculating during the tour on the possibility of getting the Fab Three back together.

A reunion of sorts did finally occur in the mid-1990s when the surviving Beatles created music "around" some Lennon demos that were released to much anticipation and fanfare as part of The Beatles Anthology television documentary miniseries (1995) and the three-volume double CD Anthology sets (1995, 1996), which saw the group finally profiting from unreleased material, alternate takes, and demo recordings that had been available in bootleg form for years. A print account of The Beatles Anthology appeared just in time for Christmas 2000 and an expanded DVD version appeared in 2003 with unreleased footage of the truncated trio jamming together.

Harrison's death in late 2001—the first Beatle to die of natural causes—was a sobering moment for aging baby boomers. As with Lennon's death in 1980, entire magazines and television specials were devoted to the late Beatle and the Fab Four, and Beatles albums sold out seemingly everywhere. This followed upon the enormous success of The Beatles 1 (2000), a collection of all of the Beatles's number one hits packaged together, which saw new generations of listeners discovering Beatles music. McCartney's postmillennial contribution to the longstanding Lennon-McCartney feud was to reverse the order of the songwriting credits for nineteen Beatles songs on his Back in the U.S. album (2002), from the traditional "Lennon-McCartney" to "Composed by Paul McCartney and John Lennon." In 2003 long-missing stolen tapes from the Let It Be sessions were recovered in Holland, revealing a trove of "lost" Beatles performances and uncovering even more group bitterness than the film had. The ongoing interest in this material served as a reminder that nearly four decades after they first appeared on the scene, the public appetite for anything Beatles-related continued to be insatiable.

Spot Light: The Beatles Reunion

"There will be no Beatles reunion as long as John Lennon remains dead," read George Harrison's much-publicized statement made in 1990, responding to Paul McCartney's media speculation that the surviving Beatles might get back together. Yet, ironically, it would be Harrison and Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, who would come up with the means to musically raise Lennon from the dead, so to speak. After Roy Orbison died of a heart attack in 1988, Harrison and fellow Traveling Wilbury band mates Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, and Jeff Lyne investigated using some solo tracks of Orbison's voice to complete a Wilbury album when an even more bizarre idea hit Harrison: to use the voice of Elvis Presley. Presley's estate loved the idea and was willing to allow the Wilburys to strip his voice electronically from some unreleased tracks and have the Wilburys record around it. Presley himself was to have been credited as "Aaron Wilbury." In the end, the band decided it was too gimmicky of an idea, but when Harrison shared the story with Yoko Ono, she indicated that she possessed unreleased Lennon songs that were so bare that they would not need to be stripped down. In the wake of the phenomenal success of Natalie Cole's "Unforgettable" (1992) duet with her dead father Nat "King" Cole, the option of using Lennon demos that would be reworked by the other Beatles began to take on greater appeal. In February 1994, behind locked doors, McCartney, Harrison, and Ringo Starr—along with the electronic presence of John Lennon—reunited in the studio to record "new" Beatles tracks. The first of these, "Free as a Bird," had its much-anticipated unveiling at the conclusion of the first part of the 1995 prime-time week-long television airing of The Beatles Anthology, the Beatles's own documentary that had been called The Long and Winding Road while it was a work in progress for more than two decades. Secrecy was paramount, as screeners and advance releases of The Beatles Anthology did not contain the song, which was released as part of Anthology 1 a few days later and as a single. Another spruced-up Lennon demo, "Real Love," appears at the conclusion of the series and was released on Anthology 2 (1996) and as a single. All of this was a far cry from the elaborate Beatles reunion that fans and promoters had desperately hoped for throughout the 1970s when Lennon was still alive, but in light of Harrison's death in 2001, it becomes the final chapter of the Fab Four, for better or worse.

In 1964 composers Richard Rodgers and Leonard Bernstein were among the few to see the Beatles not merely as captivating performers, but as great songwriters as well. Though the Lennon-McCartney song catalog is standing the test of time and continues to enchant generations of new listeners with an undiminished freshness, its overwhelming presence set a new standard in pop and rock music by which artists were suddenly expected to write—as well as perform—their own music, for better or worse. The six-year period when the Beatles were at the peak of their powers was one of those rare, brief, and wonderful moments when popular culture and high art converged. Their ultimate influence can be seen in the fact that no subsequent act has even remotely captured the public imagination as the Beatles did, and that the creative and cultural revolution that the group helped launch remains a work in progress.

SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:

Past Masters, Volume One (Capitol, 1988); Past Masters, Volume Two (Capitol, 1988); Please, Please Me (Capitol re-release, 1990); With the Beatles (Capitol re-release, 1990); Beatles for Sale (Capitol re-release, 1990); Rubber Soul (Capitol re-release, 1990); Revolver (Capitol re-release, 1990); Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Capitol re-release, 1990); Magical Mystery Tour (Capitol re-release, 1990); The Beatles (Capitol re-release, 1990); Abbey Road (Capitol re-release, 1990); Live at the BBC (Capitol, 1994); Anthology 1 (Capitol, 1995); Anthology 2 (Capitol, 1996); Anthology 3 (Capitol, 1996); The Beatles 1 (Capitol, 2000). Soundtracks: A Hard Day's Night (Capitol re-release, 1990); Help! (Capitol re-release, 1990); Let It Be (Capitol re-release, 1990); Yellow Submarine (Capitol re-release, 1999).

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

H. Davis, The Beatles: The Authorized Biography (New York, 1968); G. Martin with J. Hornsby, All You Need Is Ears (New York, 1979); P. Norman, Shout! The Beatles in Their Generation (New York, 1981); M. Lewisohn, The Beatles Live (New York, 1986); M. Lewisohn, The Beatles Recording Sessions (New York, 1988); G. Martin with W. Pearson, With a Little Help from My Friends: The Making of Sgt. Pepper (New York, 1995); A Kozinn, The Beatles (New York, 1995); The Beatles, The Beatles Anthology (New York, 2000).

WEBSITE:

www.thebeatles.com.

dennis polkow

The Beatles

In the 1960s a new band known as the Beatles burst on the pop music scene and changed it forever. Band members included George Harrison (1943-), John Lennon (1940-1980), Paul McCartney (1942-), and Ringo Starr (1940-). With the release of three anthologies in the mid-1990s, the group remained one of the best-selling of all time.

On February 7, 1964, the Beatles arrived at Kennedy International Airport in New York City, met by 110 police officers and a mob of more than 10, 000 screaming fans. The British Invasion—and in particular, "Beatlemania"—had begun, and the "mop-topped" Beatles— John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr —wasted no time in endearing themselves to American fans and the media, though many adults remained skeptical. According to the February 24, 1964, Newsweek cover story, the Beatles' music, already topping the charts, was "a near disaster" that did away with "secondary rhythms, harmony, and melody." Despite such early criticism, the Beatles garnered two Grammy Awards in 1964, foreshadowing the influence they would have on the future of pop culture.

Inspired by the simple guitar-and-washboard "skiffle" music of Lonnie Donegan and later by U.S. pop artists such as Elvis, Buddy Holly, and Little Richard, John Lennon formed his own group, the Quarrymen, in 1956 with Pete Shotton and other friends. Expertise helped guitarist Paul McCartney, whom Shotton introduced to Lennon in 1957 at a church function, find a place in the band, and he in turn introduced Lennon to George Harrison. Only fourteen, Harrison, though a skilled guitarist, did not impress seventeen-year-old Lennon overmuch, but his perseverence finally won him a permanent niche in the developing ensemble. Stuart Sutcliffe, an artist friend of Lennon's, brought a bass guitar into the group a year later. Calling themselves Johnny and the Moondogs, the band eventually won a chance to tour Scotland, backing a little-known singer, Johnny Gentle. Renamed the Silver Beatles, they were well-received, but the pay was poor, and the end of the tour saw the exit of a disgusted drummer and the arrival of Pete Best.

With the help of Welshman Allan Williams, club owner and sometime-manager for many promising bands playing around Liverpool in 1960, the Beatles found themselves polishing their act at seedy clubs in Hamburg, West Germany. Living quarters were squalid, working conditions demanding, but instead of splintering the group, the experience strengthened them. Encouraged by their audiences' demands to "make show, " they became confident, outrageous performers. Lennon in particular was reported to have played in his underwear with a toilet seat around his neck, and the whole band romped madly on the stage. Such spectacles by the Beatles and another English band, Rory Storme and the Hurricanes, ultimately caved in the stage at one club. The Beatles' second trip to Hamburg, in 1961, was distinguished by a better club and a series of recordings for which they backed singer Tony Sheridan—recordings that proved critical in gaining them a full-time manager. At the end of that stay, Sutcliffe remained in Hamburg to marry, having ceded bass duties to McCartney. He died tragically the following spring, shortly after the Beatles joined up with Brian Epstein.

Intrigued by requests for Tony Sheridan's "My Bonnie" single, featuring the Beatles, record shop manager Brain Epstein sought the band at Liverpool's Cavern Club. Within a year of signing a managerial agreement with Epstein, the Beatles gained a recording contract from E.M.I. Records producer George Martin, and on the eve of success shuffled yet another drummer out, causing riots among Pete Best's loyal following. The last in a long line of percussionists came in the form of the Hurricanes' sad-eyed former drummer, Ritchie Starkey— Ringo Starr.

Despite initial doubts, Martin agreed to use Lennon and McCartney originals on both sides of the Beatles' first single. "Love Me Do, " released on October 5, 1962, did well enough to convince Martin that, with the right material, the Beatles could achieve a number one record. He was proved correct. "Please Please Me, " released in Britain on January 12, 1963, was an immediate hit. The biweekly newspaper Mersey Beat quoted Keith Fordyce of New Musical Express, who called the song "a really enjoyable platter, full of vigour and vitality, " as well as Brian Matthew, then Britain's most influential commentator on pop music, who proclaimed the Beatles "musically and visually the most accomplished group to emerge since the Shadows." The Beatles' first British album, recorded in one thirteen-hour session, remained number one on the charts for six months.

The United States remained indifferent until, one month before the Beatles' arrival, E.M.I.'s U.S. subsidiary, Capitol Records, launched an unprecedented $50, 000 promotional campaign. It and the Beatles' performances on The Ed Sullivan Show, which opened their first American tour, paid off handsomely. "I Want to Hold Your Hand, " released in the United States in January of 1964, hit number one within three weeks. After seven weeks at the top of the charts, it dropped to number two to make room for "She Loves You, " which gave way to "Can't Buy Me Love." As many as three new songs a week were released, until on April 4, 1964, the Beatles held the top five slots on the Billboard list of top sellers, another seven in the top one hundred, and four albums positions including the top two. One week later, fourteen of the top one hundred songs were the Beatles'—a feat unmatched before or since.

Also in 1964, long before music videos had become commonplace, the Beatles appeared in the first of several innovative full-length feature films. Shot in black-and-white and well-received by critics, A Hard Day's Night represented a day in the life of the group. Its release one month before the Beatles began their second U.S. tour was timely. Help, released in July of 1965, was a madcap fantasy filmed in color. Exotic locations made Help visually more interesting than the first film, but critics were less impressed. Both albums sold well, though the U.S. versions contained fewer original songs, and Help was padded with pseudo-Eastern accompanying tracks.

The 1965 and 1966 albums Rubber Soul and Revolver marked a turning point in the Beatles' recording history. The most original of their collections to date, both combined Eastern, country-western, soul, and classical motifs with trend-setting covers, breaking any mold that seemed to contain "rock and roll." In both albums, balladry, classical instrumentation, and new structure resulted in brilliant new concepts just hinted at in earlier works like "Yesterday" and "Rain." Songs such as "Tomorrow Never Knows, " "Eleanor Rigby, " and the lyrically surreal "Norwegian Wood" made use of sophisticated recording techniques—marking the beginning of the end of the group's touring, since live performances of such songs was technically impossible at the time. The Beatles became further distanced from their fans by Lennon's comments to a London Evening Standard writer: "Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that, I'm right and will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus Christ now. I don't know which will go first, rock 'n' roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me." While the British dismissed the statement as another "Lennonism, " American teens in the Bible Belt took Lennon's words literally, ceremoniously burning Beatle albums as the group finished their last U.S. tour amid riots and death threats.

Acclaimed by critics, with advance sales of more than one million, the tightly produced "conceptual" album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was perhaps the high point of the Beatles' recording career. No longer a "collection" of Lennon-McCartney and Harrison originals, the four-Grammy album was, in a stunning and evocative cover package, a thematic whole so aesthetically pleasing as to remain remarkably timeless. Imaginative melodies carried songs about many life experiences, self-conscious philosophy, and bizarre imagery, as in "A Day in the Life"—a quintessential sixties studio production. The Beatles' music had evolved from catchy love songs to profound ballads, social commentary, and work clearly affected by their growing awareness of and experimentation with Eastern mysticism and hallucinogenic drugs. Song like "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" were pegged as drug-induced (LSD), and even Starr's seemingly harmless rendition of "A Little Help From My Friends" included references to getting "high." Broadening their horizons seemed an essential part of the Beatles' lives and, influenced greatly by Harrison's interest in Indian religion, the Beatles visited the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Bangor, Wales, in 1967. It was there that news of Brian Epstein's death reached them.

The group's next cooperative project was the scripting and directing of another film, Magical Mystery Tour, an unrehearsed, unorganized failure. Intended to be fresh, it drew criticism as a compilation of adolescent humor, gag bits, and undisciplined boredom. The resulting album, however, featured polished studio numbers such as McCartney's "Fool on the Hill" and a curiosity of Lennon's, "I Am the Walrus." The American LP added tracks including "Penny Lane, " "Hello Goodbye, " and "Strawberry Fields Forever, " which were immortalized on short films broadcast by Ed Sullivan. Solo projects in 1967 and 1968 included the acting debuts of Lennon in How I Won the War and Starr in Candy, Harrison's soundtrack to the film "Wonderwall, " and Lennon's eventual release of his and Yoko Ono's controversial Two Virgins albums.

Growing diversity pointed to disintegration, the early throes of which were evident in 1968 on the two-record set, The Beatles, the first album released by the group's new record company, Apple. The White Album, as it was commonly known, showcased a variety of songs, mostly disjointed, often incomprehensible. According to George Martin, as quoted in The Beatles Forever, "I tried to plead with them to be selective and make it a really good single album, but they wouldn't have it." The unity seen in earlier projects was nudged aside by individuality and what appeared to be a growing rift between Lennon and McCartney. Whereas the latter contributed ballads like "Blackbird, " the former ground out antiwar statements, parodied the Maharishi, and continued to experiment with obscure production. Harrison, on the other hand, shone in "While My Guitar Gently Weeps, " aided by Eric Clapton's tasteful guitar solo. Starr, for the first time, was allotted the space for an original, the country-western "Don't Pass Me By, " which became a number-one hit in Scandinavia where it was released as a single. Overall, critics found the White Album a letdown after the mastery of Sgt. Pepper, though Capitol claimed it was the fastest-selling album in the history of the record industry.

Despite having little to do with its making, the Beatles regained some of their lost status with Yellow Submarine, an animated feature film released in July 1968. A fantasy pitting the big-eyed, colorfully clothed Beatles against the squattish Blue Meanies, the film was visually pleasing if not initially a big money-maker. The group spent minimal time on the music, padding it with studio-session throwaways and re-releases of "All You Need Is Love" and "Yellow Submarine" itself. The remainder of 1968 and 1969 showed the individual Beatles continuing to work apart. Starr appeared in the film The Magic Christian, and Lennon performed live outside the group with Yoko Ono, whom he had married, and the Plastic Ono Band.

After spending months filming and recording the documentary that would later emerge as the Let It Be film and album, the Beatles abandoned thirty hours of tape and film to producer George Martin. Since editing it down would make release before 1970 impossible, the album was put on hold. Instead, for the final time, the Beatles gathered to produce an album "the way we used to do it, " as McCartney was quoted in Philip Norman's book, Shout! The result was as stunning in its internal integrity as Sgt. Pepper had been. Schisms seemed to vanish on Abbey Road, with all Beatles at their best. Lennon showed himself sardonic but controlled in "Come Together" and "I Want You—She's So Heavy, " McCartney crooned ballads and doo-wop rockers alike in "Golden Slumbers" and "Oh! Darling!"; and Harrison surpassed both of them with "Here Comes the Sun" and "Something, " hailed by Lennon as the best track on the album. Starr, always in the background, provided vocals for "Octopus's Garden" and uncompromising and creative drumming throughout. Wrote Schaffner, "The musicianship is always tasteful, unobtrusive, and supportive of the songs themselves…. The Beatles never sounded more together." Yet another Grammy winner, it was a triumphal exit from the 1960s, and its declaration, "And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make, " read like an epitaph until the "post mortem" release of the heavily edited Let It Be.

American producer Phil Spector took over the Let It Be clean-up project from George Martin in 1970. The resulting album, brought out after fifteen months of apathy, bickering, and legal battles, was a mixture of raw recordings, glimpses of the Beatles in an earlier era, and heavily dubbed strings and vocals—as on McCartney's "Long and Winding Road." Though most tracks were tightly and effectively edited, critics said the album lacked the harmony of earlier endeavors. According to Schaffner, Lennon later told Rolling Stone, "We couldn't get into it…. I don't know, it was just a dreadful, dreadful feeling … you couldn't make music … in a strange place with people filming you and colored lights." The film, which strove to show the Beatles as honestly and naturally as possible, gave further evidence of disintegration. Band members were shown quarreling, unresponsive to McCartney's attempts to raise morale. Said Alan Smith of the New Musical Express, quoted by Roy Carr and Tony Tyler in The Beatles: An Illustrated Record, "If the Beatles soundtrack album 'Let It Be' is to be their last, then it will stand as a cheapskate epitaph, a cardboard tombstone, a sad and tatty end to a musical fusion which wiped clean and drew again the face of pop music."

By the end of 1970, all four Beatles had recorded solo albums, and, in 1971, McCartney sued for the dissolution of the group. Throughout the seventies, promoters attempted to reunite them without success. The Beatles did perform on Starr's Ringo album in 1973—though not together in the studio, Lennon, Harrison, and McCartney contributed music, vocals, and backing. The tragic murder of John Lennon on December 8, 1980, quashed any hopes of a reunion among all of the Beatles. In the mid-1990s, however, the Beatles did release new music under the original band name. The living Beatles played over taped instrumentation and vocals left by Lennon. The singles "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love" were released as parts of anthologies featuring rare material and outtakes from Beatles recording sessions. "Free as a Bird" debuted with a music video in the United States as part of a television anthology presented on ABC-TV in 1995.

Selected recordings include Introducing the Beatles, Vee Jay, 1963; Meet the Beatles, Capitol, 1964; The Beatles Second Album, Capitol, 1964; A Hard Day's Night, United Artists, 1964; Something New, Capitol, 1964; The Beatles Story, Capitol, 1964; Beatles '65, Capitol, 1964; The Early Beatles, Capitol, 1965; Beatles VI, Capitol, 1965; Help, Capitol, 1965; Rubber Soul, Capitol, 1965; Yesterday …. and Today; Revolver, Capitol, 1966; Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Capitol, 1967; Magical Mystery Tour, Capitol, 1967; The Beatles (White Album), Apple, 1968; Yellow Submarine, Apple, 1969; Abbey Road, Apple, 1969; Hey Jude, Apple, 1970; Tony Sheridan and the Beatles, Polydor, 1970; Let It Be, Apple, 1970; The Beatles 1962-1966, Apple, 1973; The Beatles 1967-1970, Apple, 1973; Rock 'N' Roll Music, Capitol, 1976; The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl, Capitol, 1976; The Beatles Live! At the Star Club in Hamburg, Germany: 1962, Lingasong, 1977; Love Songs, Capitol, 1977; Rarities, Capitol, 1979; Anthology I; Anthology II, Apple, 1996; Anthology III, Apple, 1996.

Further Reading

Contemporary Musicians: Profiles of the People in Music, Gale Research, Detroit, Michigan.

Carr, Roy and Tony Tyler, The Beatles: An Illustrated Record, Harmony Books, 1978.

Norman, Philip, Shout! The Beatles in Their Generation, Simon and Schuster, 1981.

Schaffner, Nicholas, The Beatles Forever, McGraw, 1978.

Schaumburg, Ron, Growing up With the Beatles, Harcourt, 1976.

Evening Standard, (London), March 4, 1966.

Mersey Beat, January 31-February 14, 1963.

Newsweek, February 24, 1964.

Oakland Press Sunday Magazine, February 4, 1979.

Time, December 22, 1980. □

Beatles

English rock and roll band

In the 1960s a new band known as the Beatles burst on the pop music scene and changed it forever. Band members included George Harrison (1943–2001), John Lennon (1940–1980), Paul McCartney (1942–), and Ringo Starr (1940–). With the release of three anthologies (collections) in the mid-1990s, the Beatles remain one of the best-selling musical groups of all time.

Early days

The Beatles came from Liverpool, England, and were originally inspired by the simple guitar-and-washboard style "skiffle" music. Skiffle was a lively type of acoustic (nonelectric) music that used songs from British and American folk and popular music. Later such U.S. pop artists as Elvis Presley (1935–1977), Buddy Holly (1936–1959), and Little Richard (1932–) influenced them. All four members of the Beatles had an early interest in music.

The Beatles started when John Lennon formed his own group, called the Quarrymen, in 1956. Paul McCartney joined the group as a guitarist in 1957. Fourteen-yearold George Harrison, though a skilled guitarist, did not initially impress seventeen-year-old Lennon, but eventually won a permanent spot in the developing group. The Beatles went through several additional members as well as through several name changes. After the Quarrymen they became Johnny and the Moondogs. Later they called themselves the Silver Beatles, and, eventually, simply The Beatles. They played not only in Liverpool, but also in Scotland and in Hamburg, Germany, in 1960.

When the Beatles' bass player, Stu Sutcliffe, decided to leave, McCartney took over that instrument. Upon their return to England, a record shop manager named Brian Epstein approached the band about becoming their manager. Within a year of signing Epstein on as manager, the Beatles gained a recording contract from EMI Records producer George Martin. Drummer Pete Best left the group and a sad-eyed drummer named Richard Starkey, better known as Ringo Starr, joined.

Despite initial doubts, George Martin agreed to use Lennon and McCartney originals on both sides of the Beatles' first single. "Love Me Do," released on October 5, 1962, convinced Martin that, with the right material, the Beatles could achieve a number one record. He was proven correct.

First successes

The Beatles' "Please Please Me," released in Britain on January 12, 1963, was an immediate hit. The Beatles' first British album, recorded in one thirteen-hour session, remained number one on the charts for six months. The United States remained uninterested until, one month before the Beatles' arrival, EMI's U.S. company, Capitol Records, launched an unprecedented (never done before) fifty thousand dollar promotional campaign. The publicity and the Beatles' American tour-opening performance on The Ed Sullivan Show, the most popular entertainment show on television at the time, paid off handsomely. They were given the nicknames "The Fab Four" and "The Mop Tops" (because of their hair styles). The devotion of their fans was called Beatlemania.

The Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand," released in the United States in January 1964, hit number one within three weeks. After seven weeks at the top of the charts, it dropped to number two to make room for "She Loves You," which gave way to "Can't Buy Me Love." As many as three new songs a week were released, until, on April 4, 1964, the Beatles held the top five slots on the Billboard (a recording industry publication) list of top sellers. They also had another seven songs in the top one hundred, plus four album positions, including the top two. One week later fourteen of the top one hundred songs were the Beatles'—a feat that had never been matched before, nor has it since.

New career in movies

Also in 1964 the Beatles appeared in the first of several innovative full-length feature films. Shot in black-and-white and well-received by critics, A Hard Day's Night was a fictional representation of a day in the life of the group. Critics and fans loved it. Help was released in July 1965. It was a madcap (recklessly foolish) fantasy filmed in color. Exotic locations in Europe and the Bahamas made Help visually more interesting than the first film, but critics were less impressed.

Growth and controversy

The Beatles' 1965 and 1966 albums Rubber Soul and Revolver marked a turning point in the band's recording history. The most original of their collections to date, both combined Eastern, country-western, soul, and classical motifs with trend-setting covers, breaking any mold that seemed to define "rock and roll." In both albums balladry (songs that tell stories), classical instrumentation, and new structure resulted in brilliant new concepts. Songs such as "Tomorrow Never Knows," "Eleanor Rigby," and the lyrical "Norwegian Wood" made use of sophisticated (subtle and complex) recording techniques. This was the beginning of the end for the group's touring, since live performances of such songs were technically impossible at the time.

The Beatles became further distanced from their fans, when, in an interview with a London Evening Standard writer, Lennon said, "We're more popular than Jesus Christ now." Later Lennon said he was misunderstood. Some American teenagers took Lennon's words literally, however. They burned Beatles' albums, and the group finished their last U.S. tour amid riots and death threats.

The change of rock and roll

Acclaimed by critics, with advance sales of more than one million, the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) was perhaps the high point of their recording career. It was not simply a "collection" of Lennon-McCartney and Harrison originals. Presented in a stunning and evocative album package, it was thematically (everything related to one idea) whole and artistically pleasing. Most critics believe it will remain timeless. It contains imaginative melodies and songs about many life experiences, philosophy, and unusual imagery. The Beatles' music had evolved from catchy love songs to profound ballads and social commentary. Trying new things seemed to be an essential part of the Beatles' lives. Influenced greatly by Harrison's interest in India, the Beatles visited the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in India.

The long winding road down

The Beatles' next cooperative project was the scripting and directing of another film, Magical Mystery Tour (1967) for the British Broadcasting Company (BBC). It was an unrehearsed, unorganized failure. Intended to be fresh, it drew criticism as a compilation of adolescent humor, gag bits, and undisciplined boredom. The accompanying album, however, featured polished studio numbers such as McCartney's "Fool on the Hill" and Lennon's "I Am the Walrus," as well as "Penny Lane," "Hello Goodbye," and "Strawberry Fields Forever," which were not included in the film.

Growing differences between artistic approaches pointed to the Beatles breaking up. In 1968 they recorded a two-record set, simply called The Beatles. It was the first album released by the group's new record company, Apple. The White Album, as it was commonly known, had a variety of songs that had no connection to each other and, some felt, that were often difficult to understand. There particularly appeared to be a growing break between Lennon and McCartney. McCartney contributed ballads like "Blackbird," while Lennon gave antiwar statements like "Revolution" and made fun of the Maharishi. Harrison, on the other hand, shone in "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," aided by Eric Clapton's tasteful guitar solo. For the first time Starr was allotted the space for an original, the country-western "Don't Pass Me By," which became a number-one hit in Scandinavia (northern Europe), where it was released as a single.

The Beatles' animated feature film Yellow Submarine was released in July 1968. A fantasy about the Beatles battling against the Blue Meanies, the film was visually pleasing, but did not make much money when it was first released.

The remainder of 1968 and 1969 saw the individual Beatles continuing to work apart. Starr appeared in the film The Magic Christian. Lennon performed live outside the Beatles in a group called the Plastic Ono Band with his wife Yoko Ono (1933–).

Last works

The Beatles spent months filming and recording for Let It Be. It was supposed to be a film of how the group worked together. It ended up as a film showing the group falling apart. Editing would have made release before 1970 impossible, so the project was put on hold. Instead, for the final time, the Beatles gathered to produce an album "the way we used to do it," as McCartney was quoted in Philip Norman's book, Shout! The result was as stunning as Sgt. Pepper had been. All their problems seemed to vanish on the album Abbey Road (1969). The Beatles were at their best. The album contained such classics as "Come Together," "Golden Slumbers," "Octopus's Garden," and Harrison's "Here Comes the Sun" and "Some-thing," which Lennon hailed the best track on the album. They won yet another Grammy Award.

American producer Phil Spector (1940–) took over the Beatles' Let It Be project in 1970. The resulting film and album, released in 1971, got mixed reviews. Band members were seen quarreling and unresponsive to McCartney's attempts to raise morale (spirit). By the end of 1970 all four Beatles had recorded solo albums. In 1971 McCartney sued to legally end the group. Throughout the 1970s promoters attempted to reunite them without success.

The end of an era

Mark David Chapman murdered John Lennon on December 8, 1980, in New York City, New York. In the mid-1990s, however, new music was released under the original band name. The remaining Beatles played over songs Lennon had left on tape. The singles "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love" were released as parts of anthologies featuring material from earlier Beatles recording sessions.

George Harrison died on November 29, 2001, in Los Angeles, California, of brain cancer. Both Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr continue to record. The Beatles were a major influence not only in rock and roll but also in the creation of modern popular music. The Beatles were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988. Lennon and McCartney have also been inducted as solo performers.

For More Information

The Beatles Anthology. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2000.

Davies, Hunter. The Beatles. 2nd rev. ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 1996.

Hertsgaard, Mark. A Day in the Life. New York, NY: Delacorte Press, 1995.

Knight, Judson. Abbey Road to Zapple Records: A Beatles Encyclopedia. Dallas: Taylor, 1999.

Turner, Steve. A Hard Day's Write: The Stories Behind Every Beatles Song. New York: HarperPerennial, 1999.

Venezia, Mike. The Beatles. New York: Children's Press, 1997.