The Beatles

In March of 1957, John Winston Lennon formed a "skiffle" group called The Quarrymen. What is "skiffle," you may be asking? It's a kind of folk music with a blues or jazz flavor that was popular in the 1950s, played by a small group and often incorporating improvised instruments such as washboards. On July 6, '57, Lennon met a guy named James. James Paul McCartney, while playing at the Woolton Parish church fete. In Britain, fêtes are traditional public festivals held outdoors and organized to raise funds for a charity. On February 6, 1958, the young up-and-coming guitarist George Harrison was invited to watch the group perform at Wilson Hall, Garston, Liverpool. He was soon brought in as a regular player. During this period, members continually joined and left the lineup. Finally, Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Stuart Sutcliffe (a classmate of Lennon at Liverpool Art College) emerged as the only constant members. One day, the members showed up to a gig wearing different colored shirts, so they decided to call themselves 'The Rainbows.' In a talent show they did in 1959, they called themselves 'Johnny and the Moondogs.' Once again, changing their name to "The Silver Beatles," they eventually decided, on August 17, 1960, on the moniker "The Beatles." Why did they choose the Beatles, Logan? They were huge fans of Buddy Holly and The Crickets – as a way of emulating their heroes, they called themselves after an insect. Right?

 

Well, According to John Lennon, "It came in a vision – a man appeared on a flaming pie and said unto them, 'from this day forward you are the Beatles with an 'A'! Thank you, mister man, they said, thanking him," he said.

 

Most of the accounts claim that Lennon's love of wordplay led them to adopt the 'a' eventually. Lennon would explain in a 1964 interview: "It was beat and beetles, and when you said it, people thought of crawly things, and when you read it, it was beat music."

 

After Lennon died in 1980, George Harrison claimed that the name came about differently in the Beatles' Anthology documentary (as is usually the case).

 

Harrison claimed that the name, 'The Beatles', came from the 1953 Marlon Brando film, The Wild One. In the film, Brando played a character called 'Johnny' and was in a gang called 'The Beetles.'

 

This answer would add up considering that the group also flirted with the name of 'Johnny and the Beetles', as well as 'Long John and the Silver Beetles.'

Their unofficial manager, Allan Williams, arranged for them to perform in clubs on the Reeperbahn in Hamburg, Germany. On August 16, 1960, McCartney invited a guy named Pete Best to become the group's permanent drummer after watching Best playing with The Blackjacks in the Casbah Club. The Casbah Club was a cellar club operated by Best's mother Mona in West Derby, Liverpool, where The Beatles had played and often visited. They started in Hamburg by playing in the Indra and Kaiserkeller bars and the Top Ten club. George, who was only seventeen years old, had lied about his age, and when this little fact was discovered, he was deported by the German authorities. Paul and Pete thought it was good to start a small fire by lighting an unused condom in their living quarters while leaving it for more luxurious rooms. Arrested and charged for arson, they too were both deported. Lennon and Sutcliffe followed suit and returned to Liverpool in December. While in Germany, they stayed in a small room with bunkbeds. George Harrison admitted in The Beatles Anthology that this made things especially awkward when he crawled under the sheets with a woman for the first time — Lennon, McCartney, and then-drummer Pete Best actually applauded for him after the deed was done. Harrison joked, "At least they kept quiet while I was doing it."

 

They went back a second time and played the Top Ten Club for three months (April-June 1961). Stuart Sutcliffe decided to remain in Germany to concentrate on painting and left the group during this time. Sutcliffe's departure led McCartney to switch from playing rhythm guitar to bass guitar. While they were playing at the Top Ten, they were recruited by singer Tony Sheridan to act as his "backing band" on a series of recordings for the German Polydor Records label, produced by famed bandleader Bert Kaempfert ("Strangers in the Night", "Danke Schoen"). Kaempfert signed the group to its own Polydor contract at the first session on June 22, 1961. On October 31, Polydor released the recording, My Bonnie (Mein Herz ist bei dir nur), which made it into the German charts under Tony Sheridan and The Beat Brothers. Around 1962, My Bonnie was mentioned in Cashbox as the debut of a "new rock and roll team, Tony Sheridan and the Beatles," and a few copies were also pressed for U.S. disc jockeys. Cashbox, also known as Cash Box, was a music industry trade magazine published initially weekly from July 1942 to November 1996. Ten years after its dissolution, it was revived and continues as Cashbox Magazine, an online magazine with weekly charts and occasional special print issues. The band's third stay in Hamburg was from April 13–May 31, 1962, when they opened The Star Club. However, that stay was dampened when Astrid Kirchherr informed them upon their arrival of Sutcliffe's death from a brain hemorrhage. Astrid, a German photographer, and friend of the Beatles, revealed that her fiancé (and former Beatles bass player) Stuart Sutcliffe had died. No one was more shocked than John Lennon, who reportedly broke out in a fit of hysterical laughter at the idea of losing his art school buddy.

 

Upon their return from Hamburg, the group was enthusiastically promoted by local promoter Sam Leach, who presented them for the next year and a half on various stages in Liverpool forty-nine times. Brian Epstein (no relation to a particular disgusting human being), took over as the group's manager in 1962 and led The Beatles' quest for a British recording contract. In one now-famous exchange, a senior Decca Records A&R executive named Dick Rowe turned Epstein down flat and informed him that "The Decca audition for guitar groups are on the way out, Mr. Epstein." Remember Decca? They were Buddy Holly's first record label that thought "rock n roll was a fad." Strike two, Decca. Strike two.

Epstein eventually met with producer George Martin of EMI's Parlophone label. Martin expressed an interest in hearing the band in the studio. So he invited the band to London's Abbey Road studios to audition on June 6. Martin wasn't particularly impressed by the band's demo recordings but instantly liked them when they met. He concluded that they had raw musical talent but said (in later interviews) that what made the difference for him that fateful day was their wit and humor in the studio.

 

Martin privately suggested to Brian Epstein that the band use another drummer in the studio. Yikes. Pete Best had some popularity and was considered attractive by many fans. Still, the three founding members had become increasingly unhappy with his popularity and personality, and Epstein had become exasperated with his refusal to adopt the distinctive hairstyle as part of their unified look. So Epstein sacked Best on August 16, 1962. Lennon and McCartney immediately asked their friend Richard Starkey, the drummer for one of the top Merseybeat groups, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, to join the band. Unfortunately, Rory Storm didn't want to release Starkey but let Starkey out of his contract. Oh... Richard Starkey would eventually be known as "Ringo Starr." He chose Ringo because of the rings he wore, and it also had a cowboy feel to it. His drum solos were referred to as Starr Time.

 

The Beatles' first EMI session on June 6 did not yield any releasable recordings, but the September sessions produced the minor U.K. hit, "Love Me Do," which peaked on the charts at number 17. The single reached the top of the United States singles chart more than 18 months later in May 1964. This single was swiftly followed by their second single, "Please Please Me." They recorded their first album (also titled Please Please Me) three months later. George Martin capitalized on the wild, live energy the boys perfected in Hamburg and recorded the entire Please Please Me LP in less than 13 hours — saving "Twist and Shout" for last so the taxing vocals wouldn't ruin Lennon's voice before the other songs were done. That’s fourteen songs. Luckily, the longest song on the album was only 2 minutes and 54 seconds long. The shortest was a minute and 47 seconds.

 

The band's first televised performance was on a program called People and Places, transmitted live from Manchester by Granada Television on October 17, 1962.

The band experienced massive popularity on the record charts in the U.K. from early 1963. However, Parlophone's American counterpart, Capitol Records (owned by EMI), refused to issue their singles "Love Me Do," "Please Please Me," and "From Me to You" in the United States. Mainly because no British act had ever had a sustained commercial impact on American audiences.

 

Vee-Jay Records, a small Chicago label, is said by some to have been pressured into issuing these initial singles. Allegedly it was part of a deal for the rights to another performer's masters. Art Roberts, music director of Chicago powerhouse radio station WLS, placed "Please Please Me" into radio rotation in late February 1963, making it possibly the first time the American people heard a Beatles record on American radio. In August 1963, the Philadelphia-based Swan Records tried again with The Beatles' "She Loves You," which failed to receive airplay.

 

After The Beatles' massive success in 1964, Vee-Jay Records and Swan Records took advantage of their previously secured rights to The Beatles' early recordings and reissued the songs they had rights to, which all reached the top ten of the charts the second time around. Then, in a shifty move, Vee-Jay Records issued some weird L.P. repackaging of the Beatles' material they had and released "Introducing… The Beatles," which was basically The Beatles' debut British album with some minor alterations.

Andi Lothian, a former Scottish music promoter, laid claim to the term in that he coined 'Beatlemania" while speaking to a reporter on October 7, 1963 at the Caird Hall in Dundee at a Beatles concert that took place during The Beatles' 1963 Mini-Tour of Scotland. Beatlemania was taking over the world.

 

In early November 1963, Brian Epstein persuaded Ed Sullivan to commit to presenting The Beatles on three editions of his show in February. He turned this guaranteed exposure into a record deal with Capitol Records. Capitol agreed to a mid-January 1964 release for "I Want to Hold Your Hand." Still, unexpected circumstances triggered premature airplay of an imported copy of the single on a Washington D.C. radio station in mid-December. Capitol brought forward the release of the record on December 26, 1963.

 

Bob Dylan introduced The Beatles to the cannabis drug in 1964 in a New York hotel room. He offered the "Fab Four" marijuana as a consequence of his misconception that the lyrics in their hit song "I Want to Hold Your Hand" from Meet the Beatles! were "I get high" instead of "I can't hide." This initial partaking in drugs grew into heavier experimentation with LSD and other substances whose psychedelic effects were commonly thought to have manifested themselves in the band's music. The Beatles, in turn, would influence Dylan's move into an electrified rock sound in his music.

 

Several New York City radio stations—first WMCA, then WINS, and finally, WABC began playing "I Want to Hold Your Hand" on its release day. The Beatlemania that had started in Washington was duplicated in New York and quickly spread to other markets. The record sold one million copies in just ten days. By January 16, Cashbox Magazine had certified The Beatle's record as number one in the edition published with the cover-date January 23, 1964.

 

This widespread phenomenon contributed to the near-hysterical fan reaction on February 7, 1964 at John F. Kennedy International Airport (which had been renamed in December 1963 from Idlewild Airport). A record-breaking seventy-three million viewers, approximately 40 percent of the U.S. population at the time, tuned in to the first Ed Sullivan Show appearance two days later on February 9. During the week of April 4, The Beatles held the top five places on the Billboard Hot 100, a feat that has never been repeated. They had an additional seven songs at lower positions. That's twelve songs on the Billboard charts at once. Of all the music acts on the charts, 12 percent of the entries consisted of Beatles songs. They were so unaware of their popularity in America that, on their arrival, they initially thought the crowds were there to greet someone else.

 

Oh, and their Concerts Often Smelled Like Urine

Apparently, the masses of young girls who turned up for their concerts, movie premieres, or to wave hello as the Beatles walked off the plane in a new city were apparently too distracted by their love for the band to care about whether or not their bladders were full. DSo, they’d pee themselves. 

In 1964, the band undertook their first appearances outside of Europe and North America, touring Australia and New Zealand, notably without Ringo Starr, who was ill and was temporarily replaced by session drummer Jimmy Nicol. When they arrived in Adelaide, The Beatles were greeted by what is reputed to be the largest crowd of their touring career, when over 300,000 people turned out to see them at the Adelaide Town Hall. Yeah, Adelaide's population was only right around 200,000. In September of that year, baseball owner Charles O. Finley paid the band the unheard-of sum of $150,000 to play in Kansas City, Missouri. That's $1,398,914.52 today and utterly unheard of at that time.

 

In 1965, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom bestowed the band the Member of the Order of the British Empire or MBE, a civil honor nominated by Prime Minister Harold Wilson.

 

On August 15, that year, The Beatles performed in the first stadium rock concert in the history of Rock n roll, playing at Shea Stadium in New York to a crowd of 55,600. The stadium's capacity is 57,333. The band later admitted that they had mainly been unable to hear themselves play or sing due to the volume of screaming and cheering. This concert is generally considered when they started disliking playing live shows.

 

In 1965, recently interested in Indian music, George Harrison purchased a sitar. He played it in the song Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown), the first instance of such an instrument being used on a rock record. He later took sitar lessons from maestro Ravi Shankar, and implemented additional elements of Eastern music and spirituality into his songs, notably Love You To and Within You Without You. These musical decisions significantly increased the influence of Indian music on popular culture in the late 1960s.

 

In July 1966, when The Beatles toured the Philippines, they unintentionally snubbed the nation's first lady, Imelda Marcos, who had expected the group to attend a breakfast reception at the Presidential Palace. Manager Brian Epstein was forced to give back all the money that the band had earned while there before being allowed to leave the country.

 

Upon returning from the Philippines, an earlier comment by John Lennon back in March of that year launched a backlash against The Beatles. In an interview with British reporter Maureen Cleave, Lennon had offered his opinion that Christianity was dying and that The Beatles were "more popular than Jesus now." Oops!

 

There was an immediate response, starting with an announcement by two radio stations in Alabama and Texas that they had banned Beatles' music from their playlists. WAQY DJ, Tommy Charles said: "We just felt it was so absurd and sacrilegious that something ought to be done to show them that they can't get away with this sort of thing." Around two dozen other stations followed suit with similar announcements. Some stations in the South (shocker) went further, organizing demonstrations with bonfires, drawing hordes of teenagers to burn their Beatles' records and other memorabilia publicly. Many people affiliated with churches in the American South took the suggestion seriously.

 

The Memphis, TN city council, aware that a Beatles' concert was scheduled at the Mid-South Coliseum during the group's upcoming U.S. tour, voted to cancel it. Rather than have "municipal facilities be used as a forum to ridicule anyone's religion" and said, "The Beatles are not welcome in Memphis." On August 13, The Ku Klux Klan nailed a Beatles' album to a wooden cross and subsequently burned it, vowing "vengeance," with conservative groups staging further public burnings of Beatles' records.

 

Young people across the United States and South Africa burned Beatles records in protest. Then, under tremendous pressure from the American media, John Lennon apologized for his remarks at a press conference in Chicago on August 11, the eve of the first performance of what turned out to be their final tour.

 

The Beatles performed their last concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco on August 29, 1966. From that point forward, they focused on recording music. They ended up pioneering more advanced, multi-layered arrangements in popular and pop music. After three months away from each other, they returned to Abbey Road Studios on November 24, 1966, to begin a 129-day recording period in making their eighth album: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, was released on June 1, 1967.

 

Along with studio tricks such as sound effects, unconventional microphone placements, automatic double-tracking, and vari-speed recording, The Beatles began to augment their recordings with unconventional instruments for rock music at the time. These instruments included string and brass ensembles, Indian instruments such as the sitar and the "swarmandel," tape loops, and early electronic devices, including the "Mellotron," which was used with flute voices on the intro to "Strawberry Fields Forever." McCartney once asked Martin what a guitar would sound like if played underwater and was serious about trying it. Lennon also wondered what his vocals would sound like if he was hanging upside down from the ceiling. Unfortunately, their ideas were ahead of the available technology at the time.

 

Beginning with the use of a string quartet (arranged by George Martin) on Yesterday in 1965, The Beatles pioneered a modern form of art-rock and art song, exemplified by the double-quartet string arrangement on "Eleanor Rigby" (1966), "Here, There and Everywhere" (1966), and "She's Leaving Home" (1967). In addition, Lennon and McCartney's interest in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach led them to use a piccolo trumpet on the arrangement of "Penny Lane" and a Mellotron at the start of "Strawberry Fields Forever."

 

On June 25, 1967, the Beatles became the first band globally transmitted on television, in front of an estimated 400 million people worldwide, in a segment within the first-ever worldwide T.V. satellite hook-up, a show entitled Our World. The Beatles were transmitted live from Abbey Road Studios, and their new song "All You Need Is Love" was recorded live during the show.

 

Following the triumphs of the Sgt. Pepper album and the global broadcast, The Beatles' situation seemingly got worse. First, their manager Brian Epstein died of an overdose of sleeping pills on August 27, 1967, at 32, and the band's business affairs began to unravel. Next, at the end of 1967, they received their first major negative press criticism in the U.K., with disparaging reviews of their surrealistic T.V. film Magical Mystery Tour. The public wasn't a fan, either.

 

The group spent the early part of 1968 in Rishikesh, Uttar Pradesh, India, studying transcendental meditation with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Upon their return, Lennon and McCartney formed Apple Corps, initially a philanthropic business venture they described as an attempt at "western communism." The middle part of 1968 saw the guys busy recording the double album, The Beatles, popularly known as "The White Album" due to its stark white cover. These sessions saw deep divisions beginning within the band, including John Lennon's new girlfriend, Yoko Ono, being at his side through much of the sessions and the feeling that Paul McCartney was becoming too dominating.

Paul McCartney gradually took more control of the group. Internal divisions within the band had been a small but growing problem during their earlier career. Most notably, this was reflected in the difficulty that George Harrison experienced in getting his songs onto Beatles' albums, and in the growing artistic and personal differences between John and Paul.

 

On the business side, Paul wanted Lee Eastman, the father of his wife, Linda Eastman, to manage The Beatles, but the other guys wanted New York manager Allen Klein to represent them. All of the band's decisions in the past were unanimous, but this time the four could not agree on a manager. Lennon, Harrison, and Starr felt the Eastmans would look after McCartney's well-being before the group's. Paul was quoted years later during the Anthology interviews, saying, "Looking back, I can understand why they would feel that was biased against them." Afterward, the band kicked themselves in the ass for the Klein decision, as Klein embezzled millions from their earnings.

 

Their final live performance was on the rooftop of the Apple building in Savile Row, London, on January 30, 1969, the next-to-last day of the problematic Get Back sessions. Mainly due to Paul McCartney's efforts, they recorded their final album, Abbey Road, in the summer of 1969.

 

John Lennon announced his departure to the rest of the group on September 20, 1969. The rest of the band talked him out of saying anything publicly. In March 1970, the band gave the "Get Back" session tapes to American producer Phil Spector, whose "Wall of Sound" production was in direct opposition to the record's original intent to appear as a stripped-down live studio performance. McCartney announced the breakup on April 10, 1970, a week before releasing his first solo album, McCartney. On May 8, 1970, the Spector-produced version of Get Back was released as the album Let It Be, followed by the documentary film of the same name. The Beatles' partnership was legally dissolved after McCartney filed a lawsuit on December 31, 1970.

Following the group's dissolution, the BBC marketed an extensive collection of Beatles recordings, mainly of original studio sessions from 1963 to 1968. Much of this material formed the basis for a 1988 radio documentary series, The Beeb's Lost Beatles Tapes. Later, in 1994, the best of these sessions were given an official EMI, released on Live at the BBC.

 

On the evening of December 8 1980, John Lennon was shot and fatally wounded in the archway of the Dakota, his home in New York City. His killer was Mark David Chapman, an American Beatles fan incensed by Lennon's lavish lifestyle and his 1966 comment that the Beatles were "more popular than Jesus." Chapman said he was inspired by the fictional character Holden Caulfield from J. D. Salinger's novel The Catcher in the Rye, a "phony-killer" who despised hypocrisy.

Chapman planned the killing over several months and waited for John at the Dakota on the morning of December 8. Early in the evening, Chapman met Lennon, who signed his copy of the album Double Fantasy and subsequently left for a recording session. Later that night, Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, returned to the Dakota. As Lennon and Ono approached the building's entrance, Chapman fired five hollow-point bullets from a .38 special revolver, four of which hit John in the back. Chapman remained at the scene reading The Catcher in the Rye until the police arrested him. John Lennon was rushed to Roosevelt Hospital in a police car, where he was pronounced dead on arrival at around 11:15 p.m.

 

In February 1994, the then-three surviving Beatles reunited to produce and record additional music for a few of John Lennon's old unfinished demos, almost as if reuniting the Beatles. "Free As A Bird" premiered as part of The Beatles Anthology, a series of television documentaries, and was released as a single in December 1995, with "Real Love" following in March 1996. These songs were also included in the three Anthology collections of C.D.s released in 1995 and 1996, each consisting of two C.D.s of never-before-released Beatles material.

 

On November 29 2001, George Harrison died at a property belonging to Paul McCartney, on Heather Road in Beverly Hills, California. He was 58 years old. As relayed in a statement by his wife Olivia and son Dhani, his final message to the world was: "Everything else can wait, but the search for God cannot wait, and love one another."

The Beatles were the best-selling popular musical act of the twentieth century. EMI estimated that by 1985, the band had sold over one billion discs or tapes worldwide. In addition, the Recording Industry Association of America has certified The Beatles as the top-selling artists of all time in the United States based on U.S. sales of singles and albums.

 

The Beatles have spent 132 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart – by far the most of any artist. Garth Brooks occupied the top spot for 52 weeks, the second most.

 

The Beatles are one of only two musical acts to have eight consecutive albums on the Billboard 200 all hit No. 1.  – the other being Eminem –

 

Anthology 1 sold 450,000 copies on its first day of release, reaching the highest volume of single-day sales ever for an album. In 2000, a compilation album named one was released, containing almost every number-one single released by the band from 1962 to 1970. The collection sold 3.6 million copies in its first week and more than 12 million in three weeks worldwide, becoming the fastest-selling album of all time and the biggest-selling album of 2000. The collection also reached number one in the United States and 33 other countries. In 1988, every Beatles member (including Pete Best and Stuart Sutcliffe) was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

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