The Beatles

On 13 October 1963, The Beatles performed a twelve-minute act on 'Sunday Night At The London Palladium' in front of a audience of 15,000,000 viewers.  They were swamped by fans when they left the theatre to the amazement of the waiting media. The following day the national papers were full of reports of the group's success and the Daily Mirror coined the phrase 'Beatlemania!'  The group's press officer Tony Barrow later told Hunter Davies, 'From that day on, everything changed.  My job was never the same again.  From spending six months ringing up newspapers and getting "No", I now had every national reporter and feature writer chasing me'.

The Beatles began life in 1958 in a series of groups, including the Quarrymen and the Johnny and the Moondogs, consisting of, among others, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison. With a rhythm section consisting of bassist Stu Sutcliffe (an art student with great looks and scant musical ability) and drummer Pete Best, the group assumed the name “the Beatles.” The group became a fixture on the Hamburg circuit  where their five-set-a-night marathons helped mold them into a tight performing unit. Their early repertoire consisted of well-chosen rock and roll and rhythm & blues covers with particular emphasis on Chuck Berry and Little Richard songs. In April 1961, Sutcliffe left and McCartney switched from guitar to bass. On the local scene in their hometown of Liverpool, the group landed a lunchtime residency at a club called the Cavern, where they were discovered by a local record merchant and entrepreneur, Brian Epstein, who became their manager in December 1961.

Epstein helped polish the group’s appearance, dressing them in dapper collarless gray suits and making them appear more friendly than menacing. After being rejected by Decca Records following a January 1962 audition, the Beatles signed with EMI-Parlophone that April, having impressed producer George Martin. In August, Ringo Starr (born Richard Starkey), who’d been drumming with Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, was brought into replace Pete Best. The group’s first single, Love Me Do/P.S. I Love You, peaked at No. 17 in October 1962, but their next single, Please Please Me, brought them to national attention reaching the Number Two spot. It was followed by four consecutive chart-topping British singles, issued throughout 1963: From Me to You, She Loves You, I Want to Hold Your Hand, Can’t Buy Me Love. They conquered the U.K., even inducing a classical music critic from the London Sunday Times to declare them “the greatest composers since Beethoven.” 

The Beatles’ conquest of America early in 1964 launched the British Invasion, as a torrent of rock and roll bands from Britain overtook the pop charts. The Fab Four’s first Number One single in the U.S. was I Want to Hold Your Hand, released on Capitol Records, EMI’s American counterpart. This was followed by 45 more Top Forty hits over the next half-dozen years. During the week of April 4, 1964, the Beatles set a record that is likely never to be broken when they occupied all five of the top positions on Billboard’s Top Pop Singles chart, with Can’t Buy Me Love ensconced at Number One. Their popularity soared still further with the release of their playfully anarchic documentary film, A Hard Day’s Night, in August 1964.

In June 1965, four Beatles were awarded the MBE and performed the first major stadium concert in the history of rock 'n' roll at Shea Stadium in New York to a crowd of 55,600. They recorded a new album, Rubber Soul, at the Abbey Road studios during October and November 1965. The album marked the transition from making albums as collections of pop songs to thinking of them as musical entities in their own right. The album was released on both sides of the Atlantic on the same day that Day Tripper/We Can Work It Out single was released.

In April 1966, the group began recording what would be their most ambitious album to date, Revolver. During the recording sessions for the album, tape looping and early sampling were introduced in a complex mix of ballad, R&B, soul, and world music. It also marked George Harrison's emergence as a songwriter with three compositions on the album.  1966 was also significant because it marked the end of The Beatles as a touring band.  They performed their last concert before paying fans at Candlestick Park in San Francisco on 29 August 1966. The concert lasted a little under 35 minutes.

From then on, The Beatles concentrated on recording. Less than seven months after recording Revolver, The Beatles returned to Abbey Road Studios on 24 November 1966 to begin the 129-day recording sessions for their eighth album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. They had originally intended their next album to be invocation of Liverpool as they remembered it from childhood.  But having completed Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever, their enthusiasm for the idea quickly began to wane.  Their next song, a McCartney number inspired by the latest London craze for Victorian militaria, would instead inspire a change of direction.  George Martin later recalled the rehearsal of St Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.  'Just an ordinary song, not particularly brilliant as songs go. When we'd finished it, Paul said: "Why don't we make the whole album as though the Pepper band really existed, as though Sergeant Pepper was doing the record.  We can dub in effects and things".  From that moment, it was as if Pepper had a life of its own'.  Released on 1 June 1967 it was a completely self-contained album meant to be played and experienced from start to finish, Sgt. Pepper broke the mold in that no singles were released from it. Drama critic Kenneth Tynan called the album a decisive moment in the history of western civilisation.  In America the New York Times declared that it heralded 'a new and golden Renaissance of Song'.

In the was pinnacle of The Beatles recording career.  The group  began to split apart particularly after the death of manager Epstein due to an overdose of sleeping pills; the release of the TV film Magical Mystery Tour, which earned the Beatles some of their first negative reviews; a trip to India to meditate with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi,and the launching in January 1968 of Apple Corps, Ltd., a disastrously mismanaged entertainment empire that helped bring down the Beatles amid a tangled maze of money matters.

Through all the chaotic events of the late Sixties, the Beatles managed to score a succession of hit singles and albums.  Indeed Hey Jude, released in August 1968, became their most popular single. The Beatles (1968), a double-LP popularly referred to as “the White Album,” reflected the deep divisions in the group.  The tension within the band during the recorded sessions led Ringo to walk out for two weeks and led to such disillusionment on John Lennon's part that he wanted to leave.  Nevertheless, it became the biggest-selling double album of all time and reached No.1 in both Britain and America selling more than six and a half million copies within the first two years of issue.  Their next project, the album and film Let It Be, recorded in 1969 but shelved until 1970, essentially documented the Beatles’ dissolution and break-up amid internal squabbles and the presence of John Lennon's new partner, Yoko Ono. Yet the Beatles came together and exited on a high note, uniting in the summer of 1969 to record their swan song, Abbey Road. It became the best-selling Beatles album with sales of approximately ten million during the decade after release. 

On April 10, 1970, Paul McCartney announced his departure from the Beatles, and the group quietly came to an end. Throughout the Seventies, fans hoped for an eventual reunion, while the group members pursued solo careers with varying degrees of artistic and commercial success. Those hopes were forever dashed by the murder of John Lennon  in New York City on December 8, 1980.

See the Beatles sing Help and Rain