The Beatles were an English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. With members John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, they became widely regarded as the foremost and most influential music band in history.[1] Rooted in skiffle, beat and 1950s rock and roll, the Beatles later experimented with several musical styles, ranging from pop ballads and Indian music to psychedelia and hard rock, often incorporating classical elements and unconventional recording techniques in innovative ways. In 1963, their enormous popularity first emerged as "Beatlemania"; as the group's music grew in sophistication, led by primary songwriters Lennon and McCartney, the band were integral to pop music's evolution into an art form and to the development of the counterculture of the 1960s.
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The Beatles are the best-selling band in history, with estimated sales of over 800 million physical and digital albums worldwide. They have had more number-one albums on the British charts and sold more singles in the UK than any other act. They are also the best-selling music artists in the United States, with 178 million certified units. In 2008, the group topped Billboard magazine's list of the all-time most successful artists; as of 2017, they hold the record for most number-one hits on the Hot 100 chart with twenty. They have received seven Grammy Awards, an Academy Award for Best Original Song Score and fifteen Ivor Novello Awards. The group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, and all four main members were inducted individually from 1994 to 2015. They were also collectively included in Time magazine's compilation of the twentieth century's 100 most influential people.
1957–1962: Formation, Hamburg, and UK popularity
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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.[14] 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."[15]
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.[16] 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,[17] and reported the underage Harrison, who had obtained permission to stay in Hamburg by lying to the German authorities about his age.[18] The authorities arranged for Harrison's deportation in late November.[19] One week later, Koschmider had McCartney and Best arrested for arson after they set fire to a condom in a concrete corridor; the authorities deported them.[20] Lennon returned to Liverpool in early December, while Sutcliffe remained in Hamburg until late February with his German fiancée Astrid Kirchherr,[21] who took the first semi-professional photos of the Beatles.[22]
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.[23] In 1961, during their second Hamburg engagement, Kirchherr cut Sutcliffe's hair in the "exi" (existentialist) style, later adopted by the other Beatles.[24][25] When Sutcliffe decided to leave the band early that year and resume his art studies in Germany, McCartney took up the bass.[26] Producer Bert Kaempfert contracted what was now a four-piece group until June 1962, and he used them as Tony Sheridan's backing band on a series of recordings for Polydor Records.[12][27] As part of the sessions, the Beatles were signed to Polydor for one year.[28] Credited to "Tony Sheridan & the Beat Brothers", the single "My Bonnie", recorded in June 1961 and released four months later, reached number 32 on the Musikmarkt chart.[29]
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Epstein began negotiations with record labels for a recording contract. In order to secure a UK record contract, Epstein negotiated an early end to the band's contract with Polydor, in exchange for more recordings backing Tony Sheridan.[36] After a New Year's Day audition, Decca Records rejected the band with the comment "Guitar groups are on the way out, Mr. Epstein."[37] However, three months later, producer George Martin signed the Beatles to EMI's Parlophone label.[35]
A flight of stone steps leads from an asphalt car park up to the main entrance of a white two-story building. The ground floor has two sash windows, the first floor has three shorter sash windows. Two more windows are visible at basement level. The decorative stonework around the doors and windows is painted grey.
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Martin's first recording session with the Beatles took place at EMI's Abbey Road Studios in London on 6 June 1962.[38] Martin immediately complained to Epstein about Best's poor drumming and suggested they use a session drummer in his place.[39] Already contemplating Best's dismissal,[40] the Beatles replaced him in mid-August with Ringo Starr, who left Rory Storm and the Hurricanes to join them.[38] 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".[38] 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.[38] Released in early October, "Love Me Do" peaked at number seventeen on the Record Retailer chart.[41] Their television debut came later that month with a live performance on the regional news programme People and Places.[42] After Martin suggested rerecording "Please Please Me" at a faster tempo,[43] a studio session in late November yielded that recording,[44] of which Martin accurately predicted, "You've just made your first No.1."[45]
In December 1962, the Beatles concluded their fifth and final Hamburg residency.[46] 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.[47] 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.[48] Epstein, in an effort to maximise the Beatles' commercial potential, encouraged them to adopt a professional approach to performing.[49] 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 ..."[37] 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."[37]
1963–1966: Beatlemania and touring years
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. Martin originally considered recording the Beatles' debut LP live at The Cavern Club, but after deciding that the building's acoustics were inadequate, he elected to simulate a "live" album with minimal production in "a single marathon session at Abbey Road".[51] After the moderate success of "Love Me Do", the single "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 peaked at number two.[52] 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."[53] 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."[54]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.[57] 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.[58] 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.[59] It became their first single to sell a million copies, and remained the biggest-selling record in the UK until 1978.[60][nb 1] 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.[61] The band toured the UK three times in the first half of the year: a four-week tour that began in February, the Beatles' first nationwide, preceded three-week tours in March and May–June.[62] 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".[63] Although not billed as tour leaders, the Beatles overshadowed American acts Tommy Roe and Chris Montez during the February engagements and assumed top billing "by audience demand", something no British act had previously accomplished while touring with artists from the US.[64] A similar situation arose during their May–June tour with Roy Orbison.[65]
McCartney, Harrison, Swedish pop singer Lill-Babs and Lennon on the set of the Swedish television show Drop-In, 30 October 1963[66]
In late October, the Beatles began a five-day tour of Sweden, their first time abroad since the final Hamburg engagement of December 1962.[67] On their return to the UK on 31 October 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.[68] The next day, the band began its fourth tour of Britain within nine months, this one scheduled for six weeks.[69] In mid-November, as Beatlemania intensified, police resorted to using high-pressure water hoses to control the crowd before a concert in Plymouth.[70]
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,[71] which EMI released on 22 November to record advance orders of 270,000 copies. The LP topped a half-million albums sold in one week.[72] Recorded between July and October, With the Beatles made better use of studio production techniques than its predecessor.[73] It held the top spot for 21 weeks with a chart life of 40 weeks.[74] Erlewine described the LP as "a sequel of the highest order – one that betters the original".[75] In a reversal of then standard practice, EMI released the album ahead of the impending single "I Want to Hold Your Hand", with the song excluded to maximise the single's sales.[76] 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".[73] The newspaper published a series of articles in which Mann offered detailed analyses of the music, lending it respectability.[77] 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.[78] 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".
The Best songs of the Beatles
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