The Beatles
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| The Beatles |
The Beatles in 1964
Top: Lennon, McCartney
Bottom: Harrison, Starr
|
| Background information |
| Origin |
Liverpool, England |
| Genres |
Rock, pop |
| Years active |
1960–70 |
| Labels |
Parlophone, Swan, Vee-Jay, Capitol, United Artists, Apple |
| Associated acts |
The Quarrymen, Billy Preston, Plastic Ono Band |
| Website |
thebeatles.com |
|
| Past members |
|
The Beatles were an English
rock band that formed in
Liverpool, in 1960. With
John Lennon,
Paul McCartney,
George Harrison and
Ringo Starr, they became widely regarded as the greatest and most influential act of the rock era.
[1] Rooted in
skiffle,
beat and 1950s
rock and roll, the Beatles later experimented with several
genres, ranging from
pop ballads to
psychedelic and
hard rock, often incorporating
classical elements in innovative ways. In the early 1960s, their enormous popularity first emerged as "
Beatlemania", but as their songwriting grew in sophistication they came to be perceived as an embodiment of the ideals shared by the
era's sociocultural revolutions.
From 1960, the Beatles built their reputation playing clubs in Liverpool and
Hamburg over a three-year period. Manager
Brian Epstein moulded them into a professional act and producer
George Martin enhanced their musical potential. They gained popularity in the United Kingdom after their first hit, "
Love Me Do",
in late 1962. They acquired the nickname "the Fab Four" as Beatlemania
grew in Britain over the following year, and by early 1964 they had
become international stars, leading the "
British Invasion"
of the United States pop market. From 1965 onwards, the Beatles
produced what many critics consider their finest material, including the
innovative and widely influential albums
Rubber Soul (1965),
Revolver (1966),
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967),
The Beatles (commonly known as the White Album, 1968) and
Abbey Road (1969). After their
break-up in 1970, they each enjoyed successful musical careers. Lennon was
shot and killed
in December 1980, and Harrison died of lung cancer in November 2001.
McCartney and Starr, the surviving members, remain musically active.
According to the
RIAA, the Beatles are the
best-selling band in the United States,
with 177 million certified units. They have had more number-one albums
on the British charts and sold more singles in the UK than any other
act. In 2008, the group topped
Billboard magazine's list of the all-time most successful "
Hot 100" artists; as of 2014, they hold the record for
most number-one hits on the Hot 100 chart with twenty. They have received ten
Grammy Awards, an
Academy Award for
Best Original Score and fifteen
Ivor Novello Awards. Collectively included in
Time magazine's compilation of
the twentieth century's 100 most influential people, they are the
best-selling band in history, with estimated sales of over 600 million records worldwide.
[2][3] In 2004,
Rolling Stone ranked the Beatles as the greatest artist of all time.
History
1957–62: formation, Hamburg, and UK popularity
In March 1957,
John Lennon, then aged sixteen, formed a
skiffle group with several friends from
Quarry Bank school. They briefly called themselves the Blackjacks, before changing their name to
the Quarrymen after discovering that a respected local group was already using the other name.
Fifteen-year-old
Paul McCartney joined as a rhythm guitarist shortly after he and Lennon met that July. In February 1958, McCartney invited his friend
George Harrison
to watch the band. The fourteen-year-old auditioned for Lennon,
impressing him with his playing, but Lennon initially thought Harrison
was too young to join. After a month of Harrison's persistence, they
enlisted him as their lead guitarist. By January 1959, Lennon's Quarry Bank friends had left the group, and he began studies at the
Liverpool College of Art. The three guitarists, billing themselves at least three times as Johnny and the Moondogs, were playing
rock and roll whenever they could find a drummer. Lennon's art school friend
Stuart Sutcliffe,
who had recently sold one of his paintings and purchased a bass guitar,
joined in January 1960, and it was he who suggested changing the band's
name to Beatals, as a tribute to
Buddy Holly and
the Crickets.
[12]
They used the name through May, when they became the Silver Beetles,
before undertaking a brief tour of Scotland as the backing group for pop
singer and fellow Liverpudlian
Johnny Gentle. By early July, they had changed their name to the Silver Beatles and by the middle of August to the Beatles.
Allan Williams,
the Beatles' unofficial manager, arranged a residency for them in
Hamburg, but lacking a full-time drummer they auditioned and hired
Pete Best in mid-August 1960. The band, now a five-piece, left four days later, contracted to club owner
Bruno Koschmider for what would be a 3½-month residency. Beatles historian
Mark Lewisohn writes: "They pulled into Hamburg at dusk on 17 August, the time when the
red-light area
comes to life ... flashing neon lights screamed out the various
entertainment on offer, while scantily clad women sat unabashed in shop
windows waiting for business opportunities."
Koschmider had converted a couple of strip clubs in the district into music venues, and he initially placed the Beatles at the
Indra Club. After closing the Indra due to noise complaints, he moved them to the
Kaiserkeller in October. When he learned they had been performing at the rival
Top Ten Club in breach of their contract, he gave the band one month's termination notice,
and reported the underage Harrison, who had obtained permission to stay
in Hamburg by lying to the German authorities about his age. The authorities arranged for Harrison's deportation in late November.
One week later, Koschmider had McCartney and Best arrested for arson
after they set fire to a tapestry on the wall in their room; the
authorities deported them.
Lennon returned to Liverpool in early December, while Sutcliffe
remained in Hamburg through late February with his German fiancée
Astrid Kirchherr, who took the first semi-professional photos of the Beatles.
During the next two years, the Beatles were resident for periods in Hamburg, where they used
Preludin both recreationally and to maintain their energy through all-night performances. In 1961, during their second Hamburg engagement, Kirchherr cut Sutcliffe's hair in the "exi" (
existentialist) style, later adopted by the other Beatles. When Sutcliffe decided to leave the band early that year and resume his art studies in Germany, McCartney took up the bass. Producer
Bert Kaempfert contracted what was now a four-piece group through June 1962, and he used them as
Tony Sheridan's
backing band on a series of recordings.
[12][nb 1]
After the Beatles completed their second Hamburg residency, they enjoyed increasing popularity in Liverpool with the growing
Merseybeat movement. However, they were also growing tired of the monotony of numerous appearances at the same clubs night after night. In November 1961, during one of the group's frequent performances at the
Cavern Club, they encountered
Brian Epstein, a local record-store owner and music columnist.
He later recalled: "I immediately liked what I heard. They were fresh,
and they were honest, and they had what I thought was a sort of
presence ... [a] star quality." Epstein courted the band over the next couple of months, and they appointed him as their manager in January 1962. After an early February audition,
Decca Records rejected the band with the comment "Guitar groups are on the way out, Mr. Epstein."
[nb 2]
Tragedy greeted them on their return to Germany in April, when a
distraught Kirchherr met them at the airport with news of Sutcliffe's
death the previous day from what would later be determined a
brain haemorrhage. The following month, producer
George Martin signed the Beatles to
EMI's
Parlophone label.
Abbey Road Studios main entrance
Martin's first recording session with the Beatles took place at EMI's
Abbey Road Studios in London on 6 June 1962. Martin immediately complained to Epstein about Best's poor drumming and suggested they use a
session drummer in his place. Already contemplating Best's dismissal, the Beatles replaced him in mid-August with
Ringo Starr, who left
Rory Storm and the Hurricanes to join them. A 4 September session at EMI yielded a recording of "
Love Me Do" featuring Starr on drums, but a dissatisfied Martin hired drummer
Andy White for the band's third session a week later, which produced recordings of "Love Me Do", "
Please Please Me" and "
P.S. I Love You".
Martin initially selected the Starr version of "Love Me Do" for the
band's first single, though subsequent re-pressings featured the White
version, with Starr on tambourine. Released in early October, "Love Me Do" peaked at number seventeen on the
Record Retailer chart. Their television debut came later that month with a live performance on the regional news programme
People and Places. A studio session in late November yielded another recording of "Please Please Me", of which Martin accurately predicted, "You've just made your first No.1."
In December 1962, the Beatles concluded their fifth and final Hamburg residency.
By 1963, they had agreed that all four band members would contribute
vocals to their albums – including Starr, despite his restricted vocal
range, to validate his standing in the group.
Lennon and McCartney had established a songwriting partnership, and as
the band's success grew, their dominant collaboration limited Harrison's
opportunities as a lead vocalist.
Epstein, in an effort to maximise the Beatles' commercial potential,
encouraged them to adopt a professional approach to performing.
Lennon recalled him saying, "Look, if you really want to get in these
bigger places, you're going to have to change – stop eating on stage,
stop swearing, stop smoking ..."
Lennon said: "We used to dress how we liked, on and off stage. He'd
tell us that jeans were not particularly smart and could we possibly
manage to wear proper trousers, but he didn't want us suddenly looking
square. He'd let us have our own sense of individuality."
1963–66: Beatlemania and touring years
Please Please Me and With the Beatles
Their logo was based on an impromptu sketch by instrument retailer and designer Ivor Arbiter.
On 11 February 1963, the Beatles recorded ten songs during a single studio session for their debut LP,
Please Please Me. The album was supplemented by the four tracks already released on their first two singles.
[nb 3]
After the moderate success of "Love Me Do", "Please Please Me" met with
a more emphatic reception. Released in January 1963, two months ahead
of the album of the same name, the song reached number one on every
chart in London except
Record Retailer, where it stalled at number two. Recalling how the Beatles "rushed to deliver a debut album, bashing out
Please Please Me in a day",
AllMusic's
Stephen Thomas Erlewine comments, "Decades after its release, the album still sounds fresh, precisely because of its intense origins." Lennon said little thought went into composition at the time; he and McCartney were "just writing songs
à la Everly Brothers,
à la Buddy Holly, pop songs with no more thought of them than that – to create a sound. And the words were almost irrelevant."
Released in March 1963, the album initiated a run during which eleven
of their twelve studio albums released in the United Kingdom through
1970 reached number one. The band's third single, "
From Me to You",
came out in April and was also a chart-topping hit, starting an almost
unbroken string of seventeen British number-one singles for the Beatles,
including all but one of the eighteen they released over the next six
years. Issued in August, the band's fourth single, "
She Loves You",
achieved the fastest sales of any record in the UK up to that time,
selling three-quarters of a million copies in under four weeks. It became their first single to sell a million copies, and remained the biggest-selling record in the UK until 1978, when "
Mull of Kintyre", by McCartney's post-Beatles band
Wings, surpassed it in sales.
Their commercial success brought increased media exposure, to which the
Beatles responded with an irreverent and comical attitude that defied
the expectations of pop musicians at the time, inspiring even more
interest.
[nb 4]
As their popularity spread, a frenzied adulation of the group took
hold. Greeted with riotous enthusiasm by screaming fans, the press
dubbed the phenomenon "
Beatlemania".
[nb 5]
McCartney, Harrison, Swedish pop singer
Lill-Babs and Lennon on the set of the Swedish television show
Drop-In, 30 October 1963
In late October, the Beatles began a five-day tour of Sweden, their
first time abroad since the final Hamburg engagement of December 1962. On their return to the UK on 31 October, according to Lewisohn, "several hundred screaming fans" greeted them in heavy rain at
Heathrow Airport. Around 50 to 100 journalists and photographers as well as representatives from the
BBC also joined the airport reception, the first of more than 100 such events. The next day, the band began its fourth tour of Britain within nine months, this one scheduled for six weeks.
In mid-November, as Beatlemania intensified, police resorted to using
high-pressure water hoses to control the crowd before a concert in
Plymouth.
Please Please Me maintained the top position on the
Record Retailer chart for 30 weeks, only to be displaced by its follow-up,
With the Beatles, the release of which EMI delayed until sales of
Please Please Me had subsided.
[nb 6] Recorded between July and October,
With the Beatles made better use of studio production techniques than its predecessor. It held the top spot for 21 weeks with a chart life of 40 weeks. Erlewine described the LP as "a sequel of the highest order – one that betters the original".
[nb 7] The album caught the attention of music critic
William Mann of
The Times, who suggested that Lennon and McCartney were "the outstanding English composers of 1963". The newspaper published a series of articles in which Mann offered detailed analyses of the music, lending it respectability.
With the Beatles became the second album in UK chart history to sell a million copies, a figure previously reached only by the 1958
South Pacific soundtrack. When writing the sleeve notes for the album, the band's press officer,
Tony Barrow, used the superlative the "fabulous foursome", which the media widely adopted as "the Fab Four".
"British Invasion"
EMI's American subsidiary,
Capitol Records,
hindered the Beatles' releases in the United States for more than a
year by initially declining to issue their music, including their first
three singles. Concurrent negotiations with the independent US labels
Vee-Jay and
Swan led to the release of the songs in 1963, but legal issues with royalties and publishing rights proved an obstacle to the successful marketing of the group in the US.
[nb 8]
American chart success began after Epstein arranged for a $40,000 US
marketing campaign and secured the support of disc jockey Carrol James,
who first played the band's records in mid-December 1963. Late that same
month, the Beatles were introduced in the Tidewater area of Virginia by
Gene Loving of radio station
WGH-AM,
accompanied by a full marketing campaign, including Beatles shirt
giveaways. Within days, almost every other song played on the station
was a Beatles recording. It was not until the end of first week of
January 1964 that their records were played in New York City (also
accompanied by a major marketing campaign and with similar play
frequency), and then the rest of the country, initiating their music's
spread across US radio. This caused an increase in demand, leading
Capitol to rush-release "
I Want to Hold Your Hand" later that month.
Issued on 26 December 1963, with the band's previously scheduled debut
there just weeks away, "I Want to Hold Your Hand" sold a million copies,
becoming a number-one hit in the US by mid-January.
The Beatles arrive at John F. Kennedy International Airport, 7 February 1964
On 7 February 1964, the Beatles left the United Kingdom with an
estimated 4000 fans gathered at Heathrow, waving and screaming as the
aircraft took off. Upon landing at New York's
John F. Kennedy Airport, an uproarious crowd estimated at 3000 greeted them. They gave their first live US television performance two days later on
The Ed Sullivan Show, watched by approximately 73 million viewers in over 23 million households, or 34 per cent of the American population. Biographer Jonathan Gould writes that, according to the
Nielsen rating service, it was "the largest audience that had ever been recorded for an American television
program". The next morning, the Beatles awoke to a negative critical consensus in the US, but a day later their first US concert saw Beatlemania erupt at
Washington Coliseum. Back in New York the following day, the Beatles met with another strong reception during two shows at
Carnegie Hall. The band then flew to Florida and appeared on the weekly
Ed Sullivan Show a second time, before another 70 million viewers, before returning to the UK on 22 February.
A Hard Day's Night
Capitol Records' lack of interest throughout 1963 had not gone unnoticed, and a competitor,
United Artists Records, encouraged
their film division to offer the group a three-motion-picture deal, primarily for the commercial potential of the soundtracks. Directed by
Richard Lester,
A Hard Day's Night involved the band for six weeks in March–April 1964 as they played themselves in a
mock-documentary.
The film premiered in London and New York in July and August,
respectively, and was an international success, with some critics
drawing comparison with the
Marx Brothers. According to Erlewine, the accompanying soundtrack album,
A Hard Day's Night,
saw them "truly coming into their own as a band. All of the disparate
influences on their first two albums had coalesced into a bright,
joyous, original sound, filled with ringing guitars and irresistible
melodies." That "ringing guitar" sound was primarily the product of Harrison's
12-string electric Rickenbacker, a prototype given to him by the manufacturer, which made its debut on the record.
[nb 9]
During the week of 4 April 1964, the Beatles held twelve positions on the
Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, including the top five.
[nb 10]
Their popularity generated unprecedented interest in British music, and
a number of other UK acts subsequently made their own American debuts,
successfully touring over the next three years in what was termed the
British Invasion. Their hairstyle, unusually long for the era and mocked by many adults,
[12] became an emblem of rebellion to the burgeoning youth culture.
McCartney, Harrison and Lennon perform on Dutch television in 1964
Touring internationally in June and July, the Beatles staged 37 shows
over 27 days in Denmark, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Australia and New
Zealand.
[nb 11] In August they returned to the US, with a 30-concert tour of 23 cities.
Generating intense interest once again, the month-long tour attracted
between 10,000 and 20,000 fans to each 30-minute performance in cities
from San Francisco to New York.
In August, journalist
Al Aronowitz arranged for the Beatles to meet
Bob Dylan. Visiting the band in their New York hotel suite, Dylan introduced them to
cannabis.
Gould points out the musical and cultural significance of this meeting,
before which the musicians' respective fanbases were "perceived as
inhabiting two separate subcultural worlds": Dylan's audience of
"college kids with artistic or intellectual leanings, a dawning
political and social idealism, and a mildly bohemian style" contrasted
with their fans, "veritable '
teenyboppers'
– kids in high school or grade school whose lives were totally wrapped
up in the commercialised popular culture of television, radio, pop
records, fan magazines, and teen fashion. They were seen as idolaters,
not idealists."
Within six months of the meeting, Gould writes, "Lennon would be making
records on which he openly imitated Dylan's nasal drone, brittle strum,
and introspective vocal persona". Within a year, Dylan would "proceed, with the help of
a five-piece group and a Fender Stratocaster electric guitar, to shake the monkey of folk
authenticity
permanently off his back ... the distinctions between the folk and rock
audiences would have nearly evaporated [and the group's] audience ...
[was] showing signs of growing up."
[nb 12]
Beatles for Sale, Help! and Rubber Soul
According to Gould,
Beatles for Sale,
the Beatles' fourth studio LP, evidenced a growing conflict between the
commercial pressures of their global success and their creative
ambitions. They had intended the album, recorded between August and October 1964, to continue the format established by
A Hard Day's Night which, unlike the group's first two LPs, contained only original songs.
The band had nearly exhausted their backlog of songs on the previous
album, however, and given the challenges constant international touring
posed to their songwriting efforts, Lennon admitted, "Material's
becoming a hell of a problem".
As a result, six covers from their extensive repertoire were chosen to
complete the album. Released in early December, its eight original
compositions stood out, demonstrating the growing maturity of the
Lennon–McCartney songwriting partnership.
In early 1965, while they were his guests for dinner, Lennon and Harrison's dentist secretly added
LSD
to their coffee. Lennon described the experience: "It was just
terrifying, but it was fantastic. I was pretty stunned for a month or
two."
He and Harrison subsequently became regular users of the drug, joined
by Starr on at least one occasion. McCartney was initially reluctant to
try it, but eventually did so in late 1966.
He became the first Beatle to discuss LSD publicly, declaring in a
magazine interview that "it opened my eyes" and "made me a better, more
honest, more tolerant member of society".
Controversy erupted in June 1965 when
Queen Elizabeth II appointed all four Beatles
Members of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) after Prime Minister
Harold Wilson nominated them for the award.
In protest – the honour was at that time primarily bestowed upon
military veterans and civic leaders – some conservative MBE recipients
returned their own insignia.
The US trailer for
Help! with (from the rear) Harrison, McCartney, Lennon and (largely obscured) Starr
Released in July, the Beatles' second film,
Help!, was again directed by Lester. Described as "mainly a relentless spoof of
Bond", it inspired a mixed response among both reviewers and the band. McCartney said: "
Help!
was great but it wasn't our film – we were sort of guest stars. It was
fun, but basically, as an idea for a film, it was a bit wrong." The soundtrack was dominated by Lennon, who wrote and sang lead on most of its songs, including the two singles: "
Help!" and "
Ticket to Ride". The accompanying album, the group's fifth studio LP, contained all original material save for two covers, "
Act Naturally" and "
Dizzy Miss Lizzy"; they were the last covers the band would include on an album, with the exception of
Let It Be's brief rendition of the traditional Liverpool folk song "
Maggie Mae". The band expanded their use of vocal overdubs on
Help! and incorporated classical instruments into some arrangements, notably a string quartet on the pop ballad "
Yesterday". Composed by McCartney, "Yesterday" would inspire the most recorded cover versions of any song ever written.
The group's third US tour opened with a performance before a world-record crowd of 55,600 at New York's
Shea Stadium on 15 August 1965 – "perhaps the most famous of all Beatles' concerts", in Lewisohn's description.
A further nine successful concerts followed in other American cities.
At a show in Atlanta, the Beatles gave one of the first live
performances ever to make use of a
foldback system of on-stage monitor speakers. Towards the end of the tour, they were granted an audience with
Elvis Presley, a foundational musical influence on the band, who invited them to his home in
Beverly Hills.
[nb 13]
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Sample of "Norwegian Wood" from Rubber Soul (1965). Harrison's use of a sitar on this song is representative of the Beatles' incorporation of unconventional instrumentation into rock music.
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| Problems playing this file? See media help. |
In mid-October 1965, the Beatles entered the recording studio; for
the first time when making an album, they had an extended period without
other major commitments. Released in December,
Rubber Soul has been hailed by critics as a major step forward in the maturity and complexity of the band's music. Their thematic reach was beginning to expand as they embraced deeper aspects of romance and philosophy. Biographers
Peter Brown and
Steven Gaines attribute the new musical direction to "the Beatles' now habitual use of marijuana", an assertion confirmed by the band – Lennon referred to it as "the pot album",
and Starr said: "Grass was really influential in a lot of our changes,
especially with the writers. And because they were writing different
material, we were playing differently." After
Help!'s foray into the world of classical music with flutes and strings, Harrison's introduction of a
sitar on "
Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)"
marked a further progression outside the traditional boundaries of
popular music. As their lyrics grew more artful, fans began to study
them for deeper meaning. Of "Norwegian Wood" Lennon commented: "I was
trying to be sophisticated in writing about an affair ... but in such a
smokescreen way that you couldn't tell."
While many of
Rubber Soul's more notable songs were the product of Lennon and McCartney's collaborative songwriting, it also featured distinct compositions from each, though they continued to share official credit. The song "
In My Life", of which each later claimed lead authorship, is considered a highlight of the entire Lennon–McCartney catalogue. Harrison called
Rubber Soul his "favourite album" and Starr referred to it as "the departure record". McCartney has said, "We'd had our cute period, and now it was time to expand." However, recording engineer
Norman Smith
later stated that the studio sessions revealed signs of growing
conflict within the group – "the clash between John and Paul was
becoming obvious", he wrote, and "as far as Paul was concerned, George
could do no right". In 2003,
Rolling Stone ranked
Rubber Soul fifth among "
The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time", and AllMusic's
Richie Unterberger describes it as "one of the classic
folk-rock records".
1966–70: controversy, studio years and break-up
Events leading up to final tour
In June 1966,
Yesterday and Today
– one of the compilation albums created by Capitol Records for the US
market – caused an uproar with its cover, which portrayed the grinning
Beatles dressed in butcher's overalls, accompanied by raw meat and
mutilated plastic baby dolls. It has been suggested that this was meant
as a satirical response to the way Capitol had "butchered" the US
versions of their albums.
Thousands of copies of the LP had a new cover pasted over the original;
an unpeeled "first-state" copy fetched $10,500 at a December 2005
auction. In England, meanwhile, Harrison met sitar maestro
Ravi Shankar, who agreed to train him on the instrument.
During a tour of the Philippines the month after the
Yesterday and Today furore, the Beatles unintentionally snubbed the nation's first lady,
Imelda Marcos, who had expected them to attend a breakfast reception at the
Presidential Palace.
When presented with the invitation, Epstein politely declined on the
band members' behalf, as it had never been his policy to accept such
official invitations.
They soon found that the Marcos regime was unaccustomed to taking no
for an answer. The resulting riots endangered the group and they escaped
the country with difficulty. Immediately afterwards, the band members visited India for the first time.
Almost as soon as they returned home, the Beatles faced a fierce
backlash from US religious and social conservatives (as well as the
Ku Klux Klan) over a comment Lennon had made in a March interview with British reporter
Maureen Cleave.
"Christianity will go," Lennon had said. "It will vanish and shrink. I
needn't argue about that; I'm right and I will be proved right. We're
more popular than Jesus
now; I don't know which will go first, rock 'n' roll or Christianity.
Jesus was alright but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them
twisting it that ruins it for me." The comment went virtually unnoticed in England, but when US teenage fan magazine
Datebook
printed it five months later – on the eve of the group's August US tour
– it sparked a controversy with Christians in the American "
Bible Belt". The
Vatican
issued a protest, and bans on Beatles' records were imposed by Spanish
and Dutch stations and South Africa's national broadcasting service. Epstein accused
Datebook
of having taken Lennon's words out of context; at a press conference
Lennon pointed out, "If I'd said television was more popular than Jesus,
I might have got away with it."
Lennon claimed that he was referring to how other people viewed their
success, but at the prompting of reporters, he concluded: "If you want
me to apologise, if that will make you happy, then okay, I'm sorry."
As preparations were made for the US tour, the Beatles knew that their music would hardly be heard. Having originally used
Vox AC30 amplifiers, they later acquired more powerful 100-watt amplifiers, specially designed by
Vox
for them as they moved into larger venues in 1964, but these were still
inadequate. Struggling to compete with the volume of sound generated by
screaming fans, the band had grown increasingly bored with the routine
of performing live. Recognising that their shows were no longer about the music, they decided to make the August tour their last.
Revolver and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
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Sample of " Eleanor Rigby" from Revolver
(1966). The album involves innovative compositional approaches,
arrangements and recording techniques. This song, primarily written by
McCartney, prominently features classical strings in a novel fusion of
musical styles.
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| Problems playing this file? See media help. |
Rubber Soul had marked a major step forward;
Revolver, released in August 1966 a week before the Beatles' final tour, marked another.
Pitchfork's
Scott Plagenhoef identifies it as "the sound of a band growing into
supreme confidence" and "redefining what was expected from popular
music".
Revolver
featured sophisticated songwriting, studio experimentation, and a
greatly expanded repertoire of musical styles, ranging from innovative
classical string arrangements to
psychedelic rock. Abandoning the customary group photograph, its cover – designed by
Klaus Voormann,
a friend of the band since their Hamburg days – "was a stark, arty,
black-and-white collage that caricatured the Beatles in a pen-and-ink
style beholden to
Aubrey Beardsley", in Gould's description. The album was preceded by the single "
Paperback Writer", backed by "
Rain".
Short promotional films were made for both songs; described by cultural
historian Saul Austerlitz as "among the first true music videos", they aired on
The Ed Sullivan Show and
Top of the Pops in June 1966.
Among the experimental songs that
Revolver featured was "
Tomorrow Never Knows", the lyrics for which Lennon drew from
Timothy Leary's
The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
Its creation involved eight tape decks distributed about the EMI
building, each manned by an engineer or band member, who randomly varied
the movement of a
tape loop while Martin created a composite recording by sampling the incoming data. McCartney's "Eleanor Rigby" made prominent use of a
string octet; Gould describes it as "a true hybrid, conforming to no recognisable style or genre of song". Harrison was developing as a songwriter, and three of his compositions earned a place on the record. In 2003,
Rolling Stone ranked
Revolver as the third greatest album of all time. During the US tour that followed its release, however, the band performed none of its songs.
As Chris Ingham writes, they were very much "studio creations ... and
there was no way a four-piece rock 'n' roll group could do them justice,
particularly through the desensitising wall of the fans' screams. 'Live
Beatles' and 'Studio Beatles' had become entirely different beasts." The band's final concert at San Francisco's
Candlestick Park on 29 August was their last commercial concert.
It marked the end of a four-year period dominated by almost nonstop
touring that included over 1400 concert appearances internationally.
Freed from the burden of touring, the Beatles embraced an increasingly experimental approach as they recorded
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, beginning in late November 1966. According to engineer
Geoff Emerick, the album's recording took over 700 hours. He recalled the band's insistence "that everything on
Sgt. Pepper
had to be different. We had microphones right down in the bells of
brass instruments and headphones turned into microphones attached to
violins. We used giant primitive oscillators to vary the speed of
instruments and vocals and we had tapes chopped to pieces and stuck
together upside down and the wrong way around." Parts of "
A Day in the Life" featured a 40-piece orchestra. The sessions initially yielded the non-album
double A-side single "
Strawberry Fields Forever"/"
Penny Lane" in February 1967; the
Sgt. Pepper LP followed in June.
The musical complexity of the records, created using relatively primitive
four-track recording technology, astounded contemporary artists. For
Beach Boys leader
Brian Wilson, then in the midst of a personal crisis and struggling at the time to complete the ambitious
Smile, hearing "Strawberry Fields" was reported as one of many elements that contributed to the project's collapse.
[nb 14] Among music critics, acclaim for the album was virtually universal. Gould writes:
The overwhelming consensus is that the Beatles had created a popular
masterpiece: a rich, sustained, and overflowing work of collaborative
genius whose bold ambition and startling originality dramatically
enlarged the possibilities and raised the expectations of what the
experience of listening to popular music on record could be. On the
basis of this perception, Sgt. Pepper became the catalyst for an
explosion of mass enthusiasm for album-formatted rock that would
revolutionise both the aesthetics and the economics of the record
business in ways that far outstripped the earlier pop explosions
triggered by the Elvis phenomenon of 1956 and the Beatlemania phenomenon
of 1963.
Front cover of
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, "the most famous cover of any music album, and one of the most imitated images in the world".
Sgt. Pepper was the first major pop/rock LP to include its complete lyrics, which appeared on the back cover.
Those lyrics were the subject of critical analysis; for instance, in
late 1967 the album was the subject of a scholarly inquiry by American
literary critic and professor of English
Richard Poirier,
who observed that his students were "listening to the group's music
with a degree of engagement that he, as a teacher of literature, could
only envy".
Poirier identified what he termed its "mixed allusiveness": "It's
unwise ever to assume that they're doing only one thing or expressing
themselves in only one style ... one kind of feeling about a subject
isn't enough ... any single induced feeling must often exist within the
context of seemingly contradictory alternatives."
McCartney said at the time: "We write songs. We know what we mean by
them. But in a week someone else says something about it, and you can't
deny it. ... You put your own meaning at your own level to our songs." In 2003,
Rolling Stone ranked it number one on its list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time".
Sgt. Pepper's elaborate cover also attracted considerable interest and study. A collage designed by
pop artists Peter Blake and
Jann Haworth, it depicted the group as the fictional band referred to in the album's
title track standing in front of
a crowd of famous people. The heavy moustaches worn by the group reflected the growing influence of
hippie style,
while cultural historian Jonathan Harris describes their "brightly
coloured parodies of military uniforms" as a knowingly
"anti-authoritarian and anti-establishment" display.
On 25 June 1967, the Beatles performed their forthcoming single, "
All You Need Is Love", to an estimated 350 million viewers on
Our World, the first live global television link. Released a week later, during the
Summer of Love, the song was adopted as a
flower power anthem. Two months later, the group suffered a loss that threw their career into turmoil. Having been introduced to
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi only the previous night in London, on 25 August they travelled to
Bangor for his
Transcendental Meditation retreat. Two days later, their manager's assistant, Peter Brown, phoned to inform them that Epstein had died. The coroner ruled the death an accidental
carbitol overdose, although it was widely rumoured to be a suicide.
Epstein had been in a fragile emotional state, stressed by personal
issues and concern that the band might not renew his management
contract, due to expire in October, over discontent with his supervision
of business matters, particularly regarding
Seltaeb, the company that handled their US merchandising rights.
His death left the group disoriented and fearful about the future.
Lennon recalled: "We collapsed. I knew that we were in trouble then. I
didn't really have any misconceptions about our ability to do anything
other than play music, and I was scared. I thought, 'We've had it now.'"
Magical Mystery Tour, the White Album and Yellow Submarine
Magical Mystery Tour, the soundtrack to a forthcoming Beatles television film, was released in the UK as a six-track double
extended play disc (EP) in early December 1967.
In the United States, the six songs were issued on an identically
titled LP that also included five tracks from the band's recent singles. Unterberger says of the US
Magical Mystery Tour, "the psychedelic sound is very much in the vein of
Sgt. Pepper, and even spacier in parts (especially the sound collages of '
I Am the Walrus')" and he calls its five songs culled from the band's 1967 singles "huge, glorious, and innovative".
In its first three weeks, the album set a record for the highest
initial sales of any Capitol LP, and it is the only Capitol compilation
later to be adopted in the band's official canon of studio albums. First aired on
Boxing Day, the
Magical Mystery Tour
film, largely directed by McCartney, brought the group their first
major negative UK press. It was dismissed as "blatant rubbish" by the
Daily Express; the
Daily Mail called it "a colossal conceit"; and
The Guardian labelled the film "a kind of fantasy morality play about the grossness and warmth and stupidity of the audience". Gould describes it as "a great deal of raw footage showing a group of people getting on, getting off, and riding on a bus".
Although the viewership figures were respectable, its slating in the
press led US television networks to lose interest in broadcasting the
film.
In January 1968, the Beatles filmed a cameo for the animated movie
Yellow Submarine,
which featured cartoon versions of the band members and a soundtrack
with eleven of their songs, including four unreleased studio recordings
that made their debut in the film. Released in June 1968, the film was praised by critics for its music, humour and innovative visual style. It would be seven months, however, before the film's soundtrack album appeared.
The Beatles, known as the White Album for its minimalist cover, conceived by pop artist
Richard Hamilton "in direct contrast to
Sgt. Pepper", while also suggesting a "clean slate".
In the interim came
The Beatles, a double LP commonly known as the White Album for its virtually featureless cover.
Creative inspiration for the album came from a new direction: without
Epstein's guiding presence, the group had briefly turned to Maharishi
Mahesh Yogi as their
guru. At his
ashram in
Rishikesh, India, a "Guide Course" scheduled for three months marked
one of their most prolific periods, yielding numerous songs including a majority of the 30 included on the album. However, Starr left after only ten days, likening it to
Butlins, and McCartney eventually grew bored and departed a month later. For Lennon and Harrison, creativity turned to questioning when an electronics technician known as
Magic Alex suggested that the Maharishi was attempting to manipulate them.
When he alleged that the Maharishi had made sexual advances to women
attendees, a persuaded Lennon left abruptly just two months into the
course, bringing an unconvinced Harrison and the remainder of the
group's entourage with him. In anger, Lennon wrote a scathing song titled "Maharishi", renamed "
Sexy Sadie" to avoid potential legal issues. McCartney said, "We made a mistake. We thought there was more to him than there was."
During recording sessions for the White Album, which stretched from
late May to mid-October 1968, relations between the Beatles grew openly
divisive. Starr quit for two weeks, and McCartney took over the drum kit for "
Back in the U.S.S.R." (on which Harrison and Lennon drummed as well) and "
Dear Prudence". Lennon had lost interest in collaborating with McCartney, whose contribution "
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" he scorned as "granny music shit". Tensions were further aggravated by Lennon's romantic preoccupation with
avant-garde artist
Yoko Ono,
whom he insisted on bringing to the sessions despite the group's
well-established understanding that girlfriends were not allowed in the
studio.
Describing the double album, Lennon later said: "Every track is an
individual track; there isn't any Beatle music on it. [It's] John and
the band, Paul and the band, George and the band." McCartney has recalled that the album "wasn't a pleasant one to make". Both he and Lennon identified the sessions as the start of the band's break-up.
Issued in November, the White Album was the band's first
Apple Records album release, although EMI continued to own their recordings. The new label was a subsidiary of
Apple Corps, which Epstein had formed as part of his plan to create a tax-effective business structure.
The record attracted more than 2 million advance orders, selling nearly
4 million copies in the US in little over a month, and its tracks
dominated the playlists of American radio stations. Despite its popularity, it did not receive flattering reviews at the time. According to Gould:
The critical response ... ranged from mixed to flat. In marked contrast to Sgt. Pepper,
which had helped to establish an entire genre of literate rock
criticism, the White Album inspired no critical writing of any note.
Even the most sympathetic reviewers ... clearly didn't know what to make
of this shapeless outpouring of songs. Newsweek's Hubert Saal, citing the high proportion of parodies, accused the group of getting their tongues caught in their cheeks.
General critical opinion eventually turned in favour of the White Album, and in 2003,
Rolling Stone ranked it as the tenth greatest album of all time.
Pitchfork's Mark Richardson describes it as "large and sprawling,
overflowing with ideas but also with indulgences, and filled with a
hugely variable array of material ... its failings are as essential to
its character as its triumphs."
Erlewine comments: "The [band's] two main songwriting forces were no
longer on the same page, but neither were George and Ringo", yet "Lennon
turns in two of his best ballads", McCartney's songs are "stunning",
Harrison had become "a songwriter who deserved wider exposure", and
Starr's composition was "a delight".
The
Yellow Submarine
LP, issued in January 1969, contained only the four previously
unreleased songs that had debuted in the film, along with the title
track (already issued on
Revolver), "All You Need Is Love" (already issued as a single and on the US
Magical Mystery Tour LP) and seven instrumental pieces composed by Martin.
Because of the paucity of new Beatles music, AllMusic's Unterberger and
Bruce Eder suggest the album might be "inessential" but for Harrison's "
It's All Too Much": "the jewel of the new songs ... resplendent in swirling
Mellotron, larger-than-life percussion, and tidal waves of feedback guitar ... a virtuoso excursion into otherwise hazy psychedelia".
Abbey Road, Let It Be, and break-up
Although
Let It Be was the Beatles' final album release, it was largely recorded before
Abbey Road.
The project's impetus came from an idea Martin attributes to McCartney,
who suggested they "record an album of new material and rehearse it,
then perform it before a live audience for the very first time – on
record and on film". Originally intended for a one-hour television programme to be called
Beatles at Work, much of the album's content came from extensive rehearsals filmed by director
Michael Lindsay-Hogg at
Twickenham Film Studios, beginning in January 1969.
Martin has said that the project was "not at all a happy recording
experience. It was a time when relations between the Beatles were at
their lowest ebb."
Lennon described the largely impromptu sessions as "hell ... the most
miserable ... on Earth", and Harrison, "the low of all-time".
Irritated by both McCartney and Lennon, Harrison walked out for five
days. Upon returning, he threatened to leave the band unless they
"abandon[ed] all talk of live performance" and instead focused on
finishing a new album, initially titled
Get Back, using songs recorded for the TV special. He also demanded they cease work at Twickenham and relocate to the newly finished
Apple Studio.
The other band members agreed, and the idea came about to salvage the
footage shot for the TV production for use in a feature film.
In an effort to alleviate tensions within the band and improve the quality of their live sound, Harrison invited keyboardist
Billy Preston to participate in the last nine days of sessions. Preston received label billing on the "
Get Back" single – the only musician ever to receive that acknowledgment on an official Beatles release.
At the conclusion of the rehearsals, the band could not agree on a
location to film a concert, rejecting several ideas, including a boat at
sea, a lunatic asylum, the Tunisian desert, and the
Colosseum. Ultimately, what would be their
final live performance was filmed on the rooftop of the Apple Corps building at 3
Savile Row, London, on 30 January 1969. Five weeks later, engineer
Glyn Johns, whom Lewisohn describes as
Get Back's
"uncredited producer", began work assembling an album, given "free
rein" as the band "all but washed their hands of the entire project".
New strains developed between the band members regarding the
appointment of a financial adviser, the need for which had become
evident without Epstein to manage business affairs. Lennon, Harrison and
Starr favoured
Allen Klein, who had managed
the Rolling Stones and
Sam Cooke; McCartney wanted John Eastman, brother of
Linda Eastman,
whom McCartney married on 12 March. Agreement could not be reached, so
both were temporarily appointed, but further conflict ensued and
financial opportunities were lost. On 8 May, Klein was named sole manager of the band.
Martin stated that he was surprised when McCartney asked him to produce another album, as the
Get Back sessions had been "a miserable experience" and he had "thought it was the end of the road for all of us". The primary recording sessions for
Abbey Road began on 2 July 1969.
Lennon, who rejected Martin's proposed format of a "continuously moving
piece of music", wanted his and McCartney's songs to occupy separate
sides of the album. The eventual format, with individually composed songs on the first side and the second consisting largely of a
medley, was McCartney's suggested compromise. On 4 July, the first solo single by a Beatle was released: Lennon's "
Give Peace a Chance", credited to the
Plastic Ono Band. The completion and mixing of "
I Want You (She's So Heavy)" on 20 August 1969 was the last occasion on which all four Beatles were together in the same studio.
Lennon announced his departure to the rest of the group on 20
September, but agreed to withhold a public announcement to avoid
undermining sales of the forthcoming album.
Released six days after Lennon's declaration,
Abbey Road sold 4 million copies within three months and topped the UK charts for a total of seventeen weeks. Its second track, the ballad "
Something", was issued as a single – the only Harrison composition ever to appear as a Beatles A-side.
Abbey Road received mixed reviews, although the medley met with general acclaim.
Unterberger considers it "a fitting swan song for the group",
containing "some of the greatest harmonies to be heard on any rock
record".
Musicologist and author
Ian MacDonald calls the album "erratic and often hollow", despite the "semblance of unity and coherence" offered by the medley.
Martin has singled it out as his personal favourite of all the band's
albums; Lennon said it was "competent" but had "no life in it".
Recording engineer Emerick notes that the replacement of the studio's
valve
mixing console with a transistorised one yielded a less punchy sound,
leaving the group frustrated at the thinner tone and lack of impact and
contributing to its "kinder, gentler" feel relative to their previous
albums.
For the still unfinished
Get Back album, one last song, Harrison's "
I Me Mine", was recorded on 3 January 1970. Lennon, in Denmark at the time, did not participate. In March, rejecting the work Johns had done on the project, now retitled
Let It Be, Klein gave the session tapes to American producer
Phil Spector, who had recently produced Lennon's solo single "
Instant Karma!"
In addition to remixing the material, Spector edited, spliced and
overdubbed several of the recordings that had been intended as "live".
McCartney was unhappy with the producer's approach and particularly
dissatisfied with the lavish orchestration on "
The Long and Winding Road", which involved a fourteen-voice choir and 36-piece instrumental ensemble. McCartney's demands that the alterations to the song be reverted were ignored, and he publicly announced his departure from the band on 10 April 1970, a week before the release of his first,
self-titled solo album.
On 8 May, the Spector-produced
Let It Be was released. Its
accompanying single, "The Long and Winding Road", was the Beatles' last;
it was released in the United States, but not Britain. The
Let It Be documentary film followed later that month, and would win the 1970 Academy Award for
Best Original Song Score.
Sunday Telegraph critic
Penelope Gilliatt
called it "a very bad film and a touching one ... about the breaking
apart of this reassuring, geometrically perfect, once apparently ageless
family of siblings". Several reviewers stated that some of the performances in the film sounded better than their analogous album tracks. Describing
Let It Be
as the "only Beatles album to occasion negative, even hostile reviews",
Unterberger calls it "on the whole underrated"; he singles out "some
good moments of straight hard rock in '
I've Got a Feeling' and '
Dig a Pony'", and praises "
Let It Be", "Get Back", and "the folky '
Two of Us', with John and Paul harmonising together". McCartney filed suit for the dissolution of the Beatles' contractual partnership on 31 December 1970. Legal disputes continued long after their break-up, and the dissolution was not formalised until 29 December 1974.
1970–present: after the break-up
1970s
Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr all released solo albums in
1970. Their solo records sometimes involved one or more of the others; Starr's
Ringo
(1973) was the only album to include compositions and performances by
all four ex-Beatles, albeit on separate songs. With Starr's
participation, Harrison staged
the Concert for Bangladesh in New York City in August 1971.
Other than an unreleased jam session in 1974, later
bootlegged as
A Toot and a Snore in '74, Lennon and McCartney never recorded together again.
[248]
Two double-LP sets of the Beatles' greatest hits, compiled by Klein,
1962–1966 and
1967–1970, were released in 1973, at first under the Apple Records imprint. Commonly known as the
Red Album and
Blue Album, respectively, each have earned a
Multi-Platinum certification in the United States and a Platinum certification in the United Kingdom.
Between 1976 and 1982, EMI/Capitol released a wave of compilation
albums without input from the ex-Beatles, starting with the double-disc
compilation
Rock 'n' Roll Music. The only one to feature previously unreleased material was
The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl
(1977); the first officially issued concert recordings by the group, it
contained selections from two shows they played during their 1964 and
1965 US tours.
[nb 15]
The music and enduring fame of the Beatles has been commercially
exploited in various other ways, again often outside their creative
control. In April 1974, the musical
John, Paul, George, Ringo … and Bert, written by
Willy Russell and featuring singer
Barbara Dickson,
opened in London. It included, with permission from Northern Songs,
eleven Lennon-McCartney compositions and one by Harrison, "
Here Comes the Sun". Displeased with the production's use of his song, Harrison withdrew his permission to use it. Later that year, the off-Broadway musical
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band on the Road opened.
[256] All This and World War II
(1976) was an unorthodox nonfiction film that combined newsreel footage
with covers of Beatles songs by performers ranging from
Elton John and
Keith Moon to the
London Symphony Orchestra. The Broadway musical
Beatlemania, an unauthorised nostalgia revue, opened in early 1977 and proved popular, spinning off five separate touring productions. In 1979, the band sued the producers, settling for several million dollars in damages.
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978), a musical film starring the
Bee Gees and
Peter Frampton, was a commercial failure and an "artistic fiasco", according to Ingham.
1980s
After the December 1980
murder of Lennon, Harrison rewrote the lyrics to his song "
All Those Years Ago" in Lennon's honour. With Starr on drums and McCartney and his wife,
Linda, contributing backing vocals, the song was released as a single in May 1981. McCartney's own tribute, "
Here Today", appeared on his
Tug of War album in April 1982. In 1987, Harrison's
Cloud Nine album included "
When We Was Fab", a song about the Beatlemania era.
When the Beatles' studio albums were released on CD by EMI and Apple
Corps in 1987, their catalogue was standardised throughout the world,
establishing a canon of the twelve original studio LPs as issued in the
UK plus the US LP version of
Magical Mystery Tour (1967).
All the remaining material from the singles and EPs which had not
appeared on the original studio albums was gathered on the two-volume
compilation
Past Masters (1988). Except for the
Red and
Blue albums, EMI deleted all its other Beatles compilations – including the
Hollywood Bowl record – from its catalogue.
In 1988, the Beatles were inducted into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, their first year of eligibility. Harrison and Starr attended the ceremony with Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, and his two sons,
Julian and
Sean.
[264]
McCartney declined to attend, citing unresolved "business differences"
that would make him "feel like a complete hypocrite waving and smiling
with them at a fake reunion".
The following year, EMI/Capitol settled a decade-long lawsuit filed by
the band over royalties, clearing the way to commercially package
previously unreleased material.
1990s
Live at the BBC, the first official release of unissued Beatles performances in seventeen years, appeared in 1994. That same year McCartney, Harrison and Starr collaborated on the
Anthology project.
Anthology was the culmination of work begun in 1970, when Apple Corps director
Neil Aspinall, their former road manager and personal assistant, had started to gather material for a documentary with the working title
The Long and Winding Road. Documenting their history in the band's own words, the
Anthology
project included the release of several unissued Beatles recordings.
McCartney, Harrison and Starr also added new instrumental and vocal
parts to two songs recorded as demos by Lennon in the late 1970s and
early 1980s.
During 1995–96, the project yielded a television miniseries, an
eight-volume video set, and three two-CD box sets featuring artwork by
Klaus Voormann. The two songs based on Lennon demos, "
Free as a Bird" and "
Real Love",
were issued as new Beatles singles. The releases were commercially
successful and the television series was viewed by an estimated 400
million people. In 1999, to coincide with the re-release of the 1968 film
Yellow Submarine, a new soundtrack compilation CD,
Yellow Submarine Songtrack, was issued.
2000s
The Beatles'
1,
a compilation album of the band's British and American number-one hits,
was released on 13 November 2000. It became the fastest-selling album
of all time, with 3.6 million sold in its first week and 13 million within a month. It topped albums charts in at least 28 countries, including the UK and US. As of April 2009, the compilation had sold 31 million copies globally, and was the best-selling album of the decade in the United States.
Harrison died from
metastatic lung cancer in November 2001. McCartney and Starr were among the musicians who performed at the
Concert for George, organised by
Eric Clapton and Harrison's widow,
Olivia. The tribute event took place at the
Royal Albert Hall
on the first anniversary of Harrison's death. In addition to songs he
composed for the group and during his solo career, the concert included a
celebration of
Indian classical music, which had significantly influenced Harrison.
In 2003,
Let It Be... Naked, a reconceived version of the
Let It Be
album, with McCartney supervising production, was released. One of the
main differences with the Spector-produced version was the omission of
the original string arrangements.
It was a top ten hit in both Britain and America. The US album
configurations from 1964–65 were released as box sets in 2004 and 2006 –
The Capitol Albums, Volume 1 and
Volume 2
included both stereo and mono versions based on the mixes that were
prepared for vinyl at the time of the music's original American release.
As a soundtrack for
Cirque du Soleil's
Las Vegas Beatles stage revue,
Love, George Martin and his son
Giles remixed and
blended
130 of the band's recordings to create what Martin called "a way of
re-living the whole Beatles musical lifespan in a very condensed
period". The show premiered in June 2006, and the
Love album was released that November when McCartney discussed his hope that "
Carnival of Light", a fourteen-minute experimental recording made at Abbey Road in 1967, would receive an official release.
A rare live performance involving two ex-Beatles took place in April
2009 at a benefit concert organised by McCartney at New York's
Radio City Music Hall, where he was joined by Starr for three songs.
On 9 September 2009, the Beatles' entire back catalogue was reissued
following an extensive digital remastering process that lasted four
years. Stereo editions of all twelve original UK studio albums, along with
Magical Mystery Tour and the
Past Masters compilation, were released on compact disc both individually and
as a box set. Comparing the new releases with the 1987 CDs, which had been widely criticised for their lack of clarity and dynamism,
Mojo's
Danny Eccleston wrote, "the remastered vocals are purer, more
natural-sounding and give the illusion of sitting slightly higher in the
mix." A second collection,
The Beatles in Mono, included remastered versions of every Beatles album released in true mono along with the original 1965 stereo mixes of
Help! and
Rubber Soul (which Martin had remixed for the 1987 editions).
The Beatles: Rock Band, a music video game in the
Rock Band series, was issued on the same day. In December 2009, the band's catalogue was officially released in
FLAC and MP3 format in
a limited edition of 30,000 USB flash drives.
2010s
Owing to a long-running royalty disagreement, the Beatles were among
the last major artists to sign deals with online music services. Residual disagreement emanating from
Apple Corps' dispute with Apple, Inc.,
iTunes'
owners, over the use of the name "Apple" was also partly responsible
for the delay, although in 2008, McCartney stated that the main obstacle
to making the Beatles' catalogue available online was that EMI "want[s]
something we're not prepared to give them". In 2010, the official canon of thirteen Beatles studio albums,
Past Masters, and the
Red and
Blue greatest-hits albums were made available on iTunes.
In 2012, EMI's recorded music operations were sold to
Universal Music Group. In order for Universal Music to acquire EMI, the
European Union, for
antitrust
reasons, forced EMI to spin off assets including Parlophone. EMI was
allowed to keep the Beatles' recorded music catalogue, which is expected
to be managed in the UK by a newly formed Capitol Records unit of
Universal Music. Also in 2012, EMI reissued the entire original Beatles album catalogue on vinyl, available either individually or as a box set.
December 2013 saw the release of another 59 Beatles recordings on iTunes. The set, titled
The Beatles Bootleg Recordings 1963,
had the opportunity to gain a 70-year copyright extension conditional
on the songs being published at least once before the end of 2013. Apple
Records released the recordings on 17 December to prevent them from
going into the public domain and had them taken down from iTunes later
that same day. Fan reactions to the release were mixed, with one blogger
saying "the hardcore Beatles collectors who are trying to obtain
everything will already have these."
[296][297]
On 26 January 2014, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr performed McCartney's "
Queenie Eye" at the
Grammy Awards.
[298] The following day,
The Night That Changed America: A Grammy Salute to The Beatles television special was taped at the
Ed Sullivan Theater
site of the Beatles' first US television appearance. It aired on 9
February, the exact date of – and at the same time, and on the same
network as – the original broadcast, 50 years earlier. The special
included performances of Beatles songs by current artists, archival
footage, and McCartney and Starr being interviewed by
David Letterman.
[299][300]
Musical style and development
In
Icons of Rock: An Encyclopedia of the Legends Who Changed Music Forever, Scott Schinder and Andy Schwartz describe the Beatles' musical evolution:
In their initial incarnation as cheerful, wisecracking moptops, the
Fab Four revolutionised the sound, style, and attitude of popular music
and opened rock and roll's doors to a tidal wave of British rock acts.
Their initial impact would have been enough to establish the Beatles as
one of their era's most influential cultural forces, but they didn't
stop there. Although their initial style was a highly original,
irresistibly catchy synthesis of early American rock and roll and
R&B, the Beatles spent the rest of the 1960s expanding rock's
stylistic frontiers, consistently staking out new musical territory on
each release. The band's increasingly sophisticated experimentation
encompassed a variety of genres, including folk-rock, country,
psychedelia, and baroque pop, without sacrificing the effortless mass
appeal of their early work.
In
The Beatles as Musicians,
Walter Everett
describes Lennon and McCartney's contrasting motivations and approaches
to composition: "McCartney may be said to have constantly developed –
as a means to entertain – a focused musical talent with an ear for
counterpoint and other aspects of craft in the demonstration of a
universally agreed-upon common language that he did much to enrich. Conversely, Lennon's mature music is best appreciated as the daring
product of a largely unconscious, searching but undisciplined artistic
sensibility."
Ian MacDonald describes McCartney as "a natural melodist – a creator
of tunes capable of existing apart from their harmony". His melody lines
are characterised as primarily "vertical", employing wide,
consonant
intervals which express his "extrovert energy and optimism".
Conversely, Lennon's "sedentary, ironic personality" is reflected in a
"horizontal" approach featuring minimal, dissonant intervals and
repetitive melodies which rely on their harmonic accompaniment for
interest: "Basically a realist, he instinctively kept his melodies close
to the rhythms and cadences of speech, colouring his lyrics with bluesy
tone and harmony rather than creating tunes that made striking shapes
of their own."
MacDonald praises Harrison's lead guitar work for the role his
"characterful lines and textural colourings" play in supporting Lennon
and McCartney's parts, and describes Starr as "the father of modern
pop/rock drumming".
Influences
The band's earliest influences include Elvis Presley,
Carl Perkins,
Little Richard and
Chuck Berry. During the Beatles' co-residency with Little Richard at the
Star-Club in Hamburg, from April to May 1962, he advised them on the proper technique for performing his songs.
Of Presley, Lennon said, "Nothing really affected me until I heard
Elvis. If there hadn't been Elvis, there would not have been the
Beatles."
Other early influences include Buddy Holly,
Eddie Cochran, Roy Orbison and the Everly Brothers.
The Beatles continued to absorb influences long after their initial
success, often finding new musical and lyrical avenues by listening to
their contemporaries, including Bob Dylan,
Frank Zappa,
the Lovin' Spoonful,
the Byrds and the Beach Boys, whose 1966 album
Pet Sounds amazed and inspired McCartney. Martin stated, "Without
Pet Sounds,
Sgt. Pepper wouldn't have happened ...
Pepper was an attempt to equal
Pet Sounds".
Ravi Shankar, with whom Harrison studied for six weeks in India in late
1966, had a significant effect on his musical development during the
band's later years.
Genres
Originating as a skiffle group, the Beatles quickly embraced 1950s
rock and roll and Merseybeat (the latter being a genre pioneered by the
band),
[315] and their repertoire ultimately expanded to include a broad variety of pop music. Reflecting the range of styles they explored, Lennon said of
Beatles for Sale, "You could call our new one a Beatles country-and-western LP", while Gould credits
Rubber Soul as "the instrument by which legions of folk-music enthusiasts were coaxed into the camp of pop".
Although the 1965 song "Yesterday" was not the first pop record to
employ orchestral strings, it marked the group's first recorded use of
classical music elements. Gould observes: "The more traditional sound of
strings allowed for a fresh appreciation of their talent as composers
by listeners who were otherwise allergic to the din of drums and
electric guitars." They continued to experiment with string arrangements to various effect;
Sgt. Pepper's "
She's Leaving Home", for instance, is "cast in the
mold of a sentimental Victorian ballad", Gould writes, "its words and music filled with the clichés of musical melodrama".
The band's stylistic range expanded in another direction with their 1966 B-side "Rain", described by
Martin Strong as "the first overtly psychedelic Beatles record". Other psychedelic numbers followed, such as "Tomorrow Never Knows" (recorded before "Rain"), "Strawberry Fields Forever", "
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "I Am the Walrus". The influence of
Indian classical music was evident in Harrison's "
The Inner Light", "
Love You To" and "
Within You Without You"; Gould describes the latter two as attempts "to replicate the
raga form in miniature".
Innovation was the most striking feature of their creative evolution,
according to music historian and pianist Michael Campbell: "'A Day in
the Life' encapsulates the art and achievement of the Beatles as well as
any single track can. It highlights key features of their music: the
sound imagination, the persistence of tuneful melody, and the close
coordination between words and music. It represents a new category of
song – more sophisticated than pop ... and uniquely innovative. There
literally had never before been a song – classical or vernacular – that
had blended so many disparate elements so imaginatively."
Philosophy professor Bruce Ellis Benson agrees: "the Beatles ... give
us a wonderful example of how such far-ranging influences as Celtic
music, rhythm and blues, and country and western could be put together
in a new way."
Author Dominic Pedler describes the way they crossed musical styles:
"Far from moving sequentially from one genre to another (as is sometimes
conveniently suggested) the group maintained
in parallel their
mastery of the traditional, catchy chart hit while simultaneously
forging rock and dabbling with a wide range of peripheral influences
from Country to vaudeville. One of these threads was their take on folk
music, which would form such essential groundwork for their later
collisions with Indian music and philosophy."
As the personal relationships between the band members grew
increasingly strained, their individual tastes became more apparent. The
minimalistic cover artwork for the White Album contrasted with the
complexity and diversity of its music, which encompassed Lennon's "
Revolution 9", whose
musique concrète approach was influenced by Yoko Ono; Starr's
country song "
Don't Pass Me By"; Harrison's
rock ballad "
While My Guitar Gently Weeps"; and the "
proto-metal roar" of McCartney's "
Helter Skelter".
Contribution of George Martin
George Martin's close involvement in his role as producer made him one of the leading candidates for the informal title of the "
fifth Beatle".
He applied his classical musical training in various ways, and
functioned as "an informal music teacher" to the progressing
songwriters, according to Gould.
Martin suggested to a sceptical McCartney that the arrangement of
"Yesterday" should feature a string quartet accompaniment, thereby
introducing the Beatles to a "hitherto unsuspected world of classical
instrumental colour", in MacDonald's description.
Their creative development was also facilitated by Martin's willingness
to experiment in response to their suggestions, such as adding
"something
baroque" to a particular recording.
In addition to scoring orchestral arrangements for recordings, Martin
often performed on them, playing instruments including piano, organ and
brass.
Collaborating with Lennon and McCartney required Martin to adapt to
their different approaches to songwriting and recording. MacDonald
comments, "while [he] worked more naturally with the conventionally
articulate McCartney, the challenge of catering to Lennon's intuitive
approach generally spurred him to his more original arrangements, of
which '
Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!' is an outstanding example." Martin said of the two composers' distinct songwriting styles and his own stabilising influence:
Compared with Paul's songs, all of which seemed to keep in some sort
of touch with reality, John's had a psychedelic, almost mystical
quality ... John's imagery is one of the best things about his work –
'tangerine trees', 'marmalade skies', 'cellophane flowers' ... I always
saw him as an aural Salvador Dalí,
rather than some drug-ridden record artist. On the other hand, I would
be stupid to pretend that drugs didn't figure quite heavily in the
Beatles' lives at that time ... they knew that I, in my schoolmasterly
role, didn't approve ... Not only was I not into it myself, I couldn't
see the need for it; and there's no doubt that, if I too had been on
dope, Pepper would never have been the album it was. Perhaps it was the combination of dope and no dope that worked, who knows?
Harrison echoed Martin's description of his stabilising role: "I
think we just grew through those years together, him as the straight man
and us as the loonies; but he was always there for us to interpret our
madness – we used to be slightly avant-garde on certain days of the
week, and he would be there as the anchor person, to communicate that
through the engineers and on to the tape."
In the studio
Making innovative use of technology while expanding the possibilities
of recorded music, the Beatles urged experimentation by Martin and his
recording engineers. Seeking ways to put chance occurrences to creative
use, accidental guitar feedback, a resonating glass bottle, a tape
loaded the wrong way round so that it played backwards – any of these
might be incorporated into their music.
Their desire to create new sounds on every new recording, combined with
Martin's arranging abilities and the studio expertise of EMI staff
engineers Norman Smith,
Ken Townsend and Geoff Emerick, all contributed significantly to their records from
Rubber Soul and, especially,
Revolver onwards. Along with innovative studio techniques such as
sound effects, unconventional microphone placements, tape loops,
double tracking and
vari-speed
recording, the Beatles augmented their songs with instruments that were
unconventional in rock music at the time.
These included string and
brass ensembles as well as Indian instruments such as the sitar in
"Norwegian Wood" and the
swarmandal in "Strawberry Fields Forever".
They also used early electronic instruments such as the Mellotron, with
which McCartney supplied the flute voices on the "Strawberry Fields"
intro, and the
clavioline, an electronic keyboard that created the unusual oboe-like sound on "
Baby, You're a Rich Man".
Legacy
Former
Rolling Stone associate editor
Robert Greenfield compared the Beatles to
Picasso,
as "artists who broke through the constraints of their time period to
come up with something that was unique and original ... [I]n the form of
popular music, no one will ever be more revolutionary, more creative
and more distinctive ..." They not only sparked the British Invasion of the US, they became a globally influential phenomenon as well.
[nb 16]
Their musical innovations and commercial success inspired musicians worldwide. Many artists have acknowledged the Beatles' influence and enjoyed chart success with
covers of their songs. On radio, their arrival marked the beginning of a new era; in 1968 the programme director of New York's
WABC radio station forbade his DJs from playing any "pre-Beatles" music. They helped to redefine the album as something more than just a few hits padded out with "
filler", and they were primary innovators of the modern music video. The Shea Stadium show with which they opened their
1965 North American tour attracted an estimated 55,600 people,
then the largest audience in concert history; Spitz describes the event
as a "major breakthrough ... a giant step toward reshaping the concert
business". Emulation of their clothing and especially their hairstyles, which became a mark of rebellion, had a global impact on fashion.
According to Gould, the Beatles changed the way people listened to
popular music and experienced its role in their lives. From what began
as the Beatlemania fad, the group's popularity grew into what was seen
as an embodiment of sociocultural movements of the decade. As icons of
the
1960s counterculture, Gould continues, they became a catalyst for
bohemianism and activism in various social and political arenas, fuelling movements such as
women's liberation,
gay liberation and
environmentalism.
According to Peter Lavezzoli, after the "more popular than Jesus"
controversy in 1966, the Beatles felt considerable pressure to say the
right things and "began a concerted effort to spread a message of wisdom
and higher consciousness".
Awards and achievements
In 1965, Queen Elizabeth II appointed Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr
Members of the Order of the British Empire (MBE). The film
Let It Be (1970) won the 1971 Academy Award for
Best Original Song Score. The recipients of seven Grammy Awards and fifteen
Ivor Novello Awards, the Beatles have been awarded six
Diamond albums, as well as 24
Multi-Platinum albums, 39
Platinum albums and 45
Gold albums in the United States. In the UK, the Beatles have four
Multi-Platinum albums, four
Platinum albums, eight
Gold albums and one
Silver album. They were inducted into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988.
The
best-selling band in history, the Beatles have sold between 600 million
[2][3] and (at EMI estimates) over 1 billion units worldwide. They have had more number-one albums on the British charts, fifteen, and sold more singles in the UK, 21.9 million, than any other act. In 2004,
Rolling Stone ranked the Beatles as the best artist of all time. They ranked number one on
Billboard
magazine's list of the all-time most successful Hot 100 artists,
released in 2008 to celebrate the US singles chart's 50th anniversary. As of 2012, they hold the record for most number-one hits on the
Billboard Hot 100, with twenty. The
Recording Industry Association of America certifies that the Beatles have sold 177 million units in the US, more than any other artist. They were collectively included in
Time magazine's compilation of
the twentieth century's 100 most influential people. In 2014, they received the
Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
[358]
Discography
Original UK LPs
See also the EP
Long Tall Sally (1964) and the double-EP
Magical Mystery Tour (1967), which contain music not released on the original UK LPs. When the above albums were reissued on CDs, the American
Magical Mystery Tour album was issued on CD globally and the double CD compilation set
Past Masters was issued so every Beatle track commercially released would be available on CD.
- See also
Song catalogue
Through 1969, the Beatles' catalogue was published almost exclusively by
Northern Songs Ltd., a company formed in February 1963 by music publisher
Dick James
specifically for Lennon and McCartney, though it later acquired songs
by other artists. The company was organised with James and his partner,
Emmanuel Silver, owning a controlling interest, variously described as
51% or 50% plus one share. McCartney had 20%. Reports again vary
concerning Lennon's portion – 19 or 20% – and Brian Epstein's – 9 or 10%
– which he received in lieu of a 25% band management fee.
In 1965, the company went public. Five million shares were created,
of which the original principals retained 3.75 million. James and Silver
each received 937,500 shares (18.75% of 5 million); Lennon and
McCartney each received 750,000 shares (15%); and Epstein's management
company, NEMS Enterprises, received 375,000 shares (7.5%). Of the 1.25
million shares put up for sale, Harrison and Starr each acquired 40,000.
At the time of the stock offering, Lennon and McCartney renewed their
three-year publishing contracts, binding them to Northern Songs until
1973.
Harrison created
Harrisongs
to represent his Beatles compositions, but signed a three-year contract
with Northern Songs that gave it the copyright to his work through
March 1968, which included "
Taxman" and "Within You Without You". The songs on which Starr received co-writing credit before 1968, such as "
What Goes On" and "
Flying", were also Northern Songs copyrights. Harrison did not renew his contract with Northern Songs when it ended, signing instead with
Apple Publishing
while retaining the copyright to his work from that point on.
Harrisongs thus owns the rights to his later Beatles songs such as "
While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and "Something". That year, as well, Starr created
Startling Music, which holds the rights to his Beatles compositions, "Don't Pass Me By" and "
Octopus's Garden".
In March 1969, James arranged to sell his and his partner's shares of Northern Songs to the British broadcasting company
Associated Television (ATV), founded by impresario
Lew Grade,
without first informing the Beatles. The band then made a bid to gain
controlling interest by attempting to work out a deal with a consortium
of London brokerage firms that had accumulated a 14% holding.
The deal collapsed over the objections of Lennon, who declared, "I'm
sick of being fucked about by men in suits sitting on their fat arses in
the
City."
By the end of May, ATV had acquired a majority stake in Northern Songs,
controlling nearly the entire Lennon–McCartney catalogue, as well as
any future material until 1973. In frustration, Lennon and McCartney sold their shares to ATV in late October 1969.
In 1981, financial losses by ATV's parent company, ACC, led it to
attempt to sell its music division. According to authors Brian Southall
and Rupert Perry, Grade contacted McCartney, offering ATV Music and
Northern Songs for $30 million.
According to an account McCartney gave in 1995, he met with Grade and
explained he was interested solely in the Northern Songs catalogue, if
Grade were ever willing to "separate off" that portion of ATV Music.
Soon afterwards, Grade offered to sell him Northern Songs for £20
million, giving the ex-Beatle "a week or so" to decide. By McCartney's
account, he and Ono countered with a £5 million bid that was rejected.
According to reports at the time, Grade refused to separate Northern
Songs, and turned down an offer of £21–25 million from McCartney and Ono
for ATV Music. In 1982, ACC as a whole was sold to Australian business
magnate
Robert Holmes à Court for £60 million.
Three years later,
Michael Jackson
purchased ATV for a reported $47.5 million. The acquisition gave him
control over the publishing rights to more than 200 Beatles songs, as
well as 40,000 other copyrights. In 1995, in a deal that earned him a reported $110 million, Jackson merged his music publishing business with
Sony, creating a new company,
Sony/ATV Music Publishing,
in which he held a 50% stake. The merger made the new company, then
valued at over half a billion dollars, the third largest music publisher
in the world.
Despite the lack of publishing rights to most of their songs,
Lennon's estate and McCartney continue to receive their respective
shares of the writers' royalties, which together are 33⅓% of total
commercial proceeds in the US and which vary elsewhere around the world
between 50 and 55%.
Two of Lennon and McCartney's earliest songs – "Love Me Do" and "P.S. I
Love You" – were published by an EMI subsidiary, Ardmore &
Beechwood, before they signed with James. McCartney acquired their
publishing rights from Ardmore in the mid-1980s, and they are the only two Beatles songs owned by McCartney's company MPL Communications.
