The Beatles
Formed
May 1960, Liverpool, Merseyside, United Kingdom
Disbanded
10 April 1970, London, Greater London, United Kingdom
Members
John Lennon (guitar, vocals, bass, keyboards, harmonica), Paul McCartney (bass, vocals, guitar, keyboards, drums, percussion), George Harrison (guitar, vocals, sitar, keyboards, bass), Stuart Sutcliffe (bass, 1960-61), Pete Best (drums, 1960-62), Ringo Starr (drums, percussion, vocals, keyboards, 1962-70)
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Notes
Founders of Apple Records
Also Known As
The Silver Beetles, Beatles
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tommo
"They're the Beatles man. Nothing new can be said anymore. If you go by popular opinion they will alway be the one group regarded as the greatest of all time. There'll be people who disagree with that result, but it's still an undeniably powerful statistic. In all likelihood, there will never be another band as popular and critically acclaimed. They win at music."
RYM Rough Guide for The Beatles
Biography
The Beatles have sold more records than any other musical artist in history, with EMI Records estimating more than one billion albums sold worldwide. The song "Yesterday" alone has been covered more than 3,000 times. They also hold the record for most #1 singles in the U.S. with twenty.
The story of The Beatles begins innocently enough when John Lennon got some friends together to form a Skiffle band called The Quarrymen. Skiffle was a popular early version of Rock & Roll, which was simple to play, needing just a guitar, a snare drum, a bass and two or three chords. The Quarrymen had a chronically unstable lineup, but Lennon was eventually joined by two younger musicians who shared his ambition: Paul McCartney, who was introduced to Lennon through a mutual friend in July 1957; and George Harrison, a schoolfriend of McCartney, who joined in the spring of 1958.
In 1959-60, the band gradually abandoned the Quarrymen name, performing under different names before settling with The Beatles. By this point, Stuart Sutcliffe had joined the band on bass, and Pete Best became their permanent drummer in August 1960. Performing in Liverpool and Hamburg, the Beatles became known for their raucous shows, which were a mix of covers and original tunes.
During a residency in Hamburg, Stuart Sutcliffe fell in love with a German girl and decided to stay when the band returned to England, reducing the quintet to four members. Sutcliffe would suffer a brain hemorrhage on April 10, 1962 and die at the age of 21.
Meanwhile, The Beatles' endless touring had won them over a number of fans, and they had gotten a big break by performing as a backup group for popular singer Tony Sheridan. Labeled as Tony Sheridan and the Beat Brothers, later released as The Beatles With Tony Sheridan, the single "My Bonnie" gained some popularity, particularly in Liverpool. Brian Epstein managed a large record shop in the city, and when he discovered that these Beat Brothers were a local group, he decided to go see them play. He was astonished at the reaction of the kids in the crowd and saw something special. He immediately signed on as their manager, made them change their style from a leather-jacket wearing gang to wearing matching suits while on stage, and, eventually, convinced them to drop Best as their drummer, and take on the drummer from another Liverpool band, Rory Storm & The Hurricanes, namely Richard Starkey, who used the stage name Ringo Starr.
After numerous attempts by Epstein to get The Beatles a recording contract, they were eventually signed by Parlophone and recorded their first album Please Please Me (minus their first two singles which were already recorded) in a single day, so the raw energy of their stage show could show through. They had previously released two moderately successful singles, and the album was a hit in the U.K. Meanwhile, they had a lot of trouble getting signed to a label in the U.S., and eventually a version would be released on the tiny Vee-Jay Records label. In April, 1964, however, they managed to get booked on The Ed Sullivan Show, and through some clever marketing by Epstein, and a huge boost by New York deejay Murray the K, their appearance was a smash. By now, they had been picked up by the much larger Capitol Records.
The early Beatles albums were released separately in the U.K. and the U.S. The U.K. versions invariably contained 14 songs, while the U.S. versions would contain 12. In addition, they would release numerous singles which would not appear on any U.K. album, but which would be packaged with the songs which were unreleased in the U.S., thus guaranteeing extra album sales in the U.S. With the advent of the CD, this difference would be rectified by making the U.K. versions the standard albums, and the addition of two singles and rarities compilations, Past Masters: Volume One and Past Masters: Volume Two, would make the collection complete.
The Beatles would simply pour out albums from 1963-1966. In those three years they would release six U.K. albums. They would also star in two movies during this time period, A Hard Day's Night (with a title inspired by a Ringo quote) and Help! Both spawned incredibly successful soundtrack albums. The earlier albums included a large split between Lennon/McCartney originals, covers and the occasional Harrison composition. As time wore on, there was less reliance on covers. Lennon and McCartney would write the bulk of the songs, with Harrison usually getting a couple of compositions in per album. Starr would write only two songs through the group’s history, although he was usually given a Lennon/McCartney song to sing on each album. As time wore on, although the Lennon/McCartney songwriting tag would always remain, the two would write together less and less often.
In 1967 The Beatles would release only one full album, but it is considered by many to be the seminal album of the rock era. Inspired by The Beach Boys' album Pet Sounds, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band would break new ground for the band, with music and lyrics inspired less by teenage crushes, and more by a desire to create art out of sound and by their heavy use of hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD. Songs like "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" and "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite", were swirling sound collages, and were pretty much unplayable outside of a recording studio, so The Beatles gave up on touring by this point. The members, once so close as to regularly share a bedroom, were growing apart, both artistically and as friends.
Not long after the release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Epstein was found dead of an overdose of sleeping pills. All four of The Beatles were at a meeting of the International Meditation Society in Bangor, North Wales at the time, pursuing their interest in Eastern mysticism. This fascination came primarily from George, and the following year the whole band joined him at a retreat in India with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, an Indian mystic who had founded a movement known as Transcendental Meditation.
Paul was taken by an idea to create what was basically a traveling circus on a bus and to film the entire trip. Out of this trip would come The Magical Mystery Tour; a TV movie and several new songs which would be released as a double EP in the U.K. The film was a critical disaster, and it served to push the members further apart. When they came back together to record The Beatles, better known as The White Album, the band had come to a breaking point. Paul was a perfectionist, and on a number of his songs, he performed all the instruments. Ringo briefly quit the band during the recording sessions. The album, a sprawling double disc, clearly showed that these were four people going in different directions. The White Album would be released on their new label, Apple Records.
The song "Yellow Submarine", from 1966's Revolver, was adapted into a cartoon movie in 1968. A soundtrack album accompanied it, with several new Beatles songs and a score by George Martin, The Beatles' producer.
The Beatles would record two more albums, first, Let It Be, originally titled Get Back, which was such a mess at first that it was shelved, and Abbey Road, titled after the recording studio where they had recorded the bulk of their work. Abbey Road was released first, in 1969. The Get Back tapes were turned over to a new producer, Phil Spector, who added numerous overdubs to the work, and it would be released in 1970 as Let It Be. A re-release in 2003 would strip away Spector’s overdubs and present the album in a form arguably closer to its original conception.
Meanwhile, Paul McCartney had recorded the first major solo album by a Beatle (both Lennon and Harrison had also released solo albums, but they were more experimental albums and didn't see huge mainstream success). Due to come out around the same time as Let It Be (actually two weeks before), Paul refused to delay release, and in a bizarre self-interview, announced that he was leaving The Beatles, although there are some who say John had actually quit the band some time before.
The four would never record together again, despite constant rumors of a reunion. Something of a reunion almost happened, too, when Paul happened to be visiting John in New York and the pair was watching Saturday Night Live. Producer Lorne Michaels appeared on the show in a skit, oblivious to the fact that Lennon and McCartney were together across town, and offered the band the ridiculously low sum of $3,000 to appear on the show (the band had received huge offers to reunite even for a single show). Rumor has it they had called for a taxi to bring them to the studio before deciding against it.
In 1995, Paul, George and Ringo came together again for the release of The Beatles Anthology, which included a mini-series documentary on television and three double albums of outtakes, unreleased songs and rarities. Although John Lennon had been murdered in 1980, the remaining members took two Lennon demos and added their own instrumentation and lyrics - those two songs, "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love", being the last two songs credited to "The Beatles" to see release. The death of George Harrison from cancer in 2001 put an end to any rumors of further Beatles reunions.
In 2023, Paul and Ringo would reunite again to finish off a track that was being worked on during the 1995 sessions. Like previously, a Lennon demo was used as the basis for the song. It was released as Now and Then.
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