The Beatles

THE FOUR AND ONLY
It’s nearly impossible to overstate the magnitude of the Beatles’ infl uence—
not just on music, but upon virtually every aspect of popular culture in the
years since the band’s worldwide breakthrough in 1964. In their initial incarnation
as cheerful, wisecracking moptops, the Fab Four revolutionized 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 infl uential 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 sacrifi cing the effortless mass appeal of their early
work. Although they scored their initial success with an unprecedented run of
classic hit singles, the Beatles were instrumental in establishing the long-playing
album as rock’s chief creative medium.
In 1964, the Beatles captured the world’s imagination, and carried their
public along on a six-year adventure whose artistic developments paralleled
the social and cultural changes of those tumultuous years. The group managed
to simultaneously be their era’s preeminent musical innovators as well as
the most popular recording act of their time, and their status remains unchallenged
to this day.
Their adventurous experimentalism established the Beatles as pied pipers of
the Aquarian age, shepherding rock’s maturation from blues-based forms to a
more eclectic and self-consciously serious approach. The band members’
interest in political and spiritual consciousness infl uenced many of their listeners
to explore those areas, cementing the Beatles’ status at the center of the
social revolutions of the 1960s. As their music grew more adventurous and
experimental, the Beatles’ humor and charisma made it easy for mainstream
audiences to embrace even their most eccentric experiments.
Although each Beatle was a notable talent in his own right, the band was
more than the sum of its parts. Although the bandmates’ differences would
fuel tension later on, for most of the group’s history, the four diverse characters
complemented one another brilliantly. As a songwriting team, John Lennon
and Paul McCartney maintained levels of craftsmanship and melodic
invention that were unprecedented in rock, and their vocal harmonies were
equally distinctive.
Upon their arrival in America in February 1964, the Beatles’ sound and
spirit seemed to hint at a brighter, more enlightened future—a welcome source
of positivity for a country still reeling from the assassination of President John
F. Kennedy just two months earlier.
The Beatles’ initial success attracted outrage and derision from various representatives
of public morality, as well as the old-guard pop mainstream that
these outsiders would soon make obsolete. Such resistance quickly proved
futile; the appeal of the Beatles’ music and personalities was too strong to
deny. Even adults who typically scorned and dismissed teenage music had to
acknowledge the Beatles’ substance and spirit, and couldn’t help but be
charmed by the musicians’ effervescent energy and cheeky humor.
Beyond their musical achievements and their infl uence in such areas as hair
length and fashion sense, the Beatles’ runaway commercial success played a
pivotal role in the music business’s growth into a multimillion-dollar industry.
By many estimates, the band remains the best-selling recording act of all time,
and the Beatles catalog continues to spin massive sales, captivating new generations
of listeners.

BIRTH OF THE FAB
The basic facts of the Beatles’ history have been retold so many times that they
have attained mythic status. But the story remains a profoundly compelling one, and the band’s achievements are no less powerful for their familiarity. By
the time the world at large had heard of the Beatles, the core of the band had
already been a performing unit for several years, honing its musical chemistry
and songwriting craft far from the mainstream spotlight.
John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, like the
rest of the generation of British rock musicians who would rise to prominence
in the 1960s, grew up in an England still recovering from the devastating
social and economic effects of World War II. England in the 1950s was still
largely a socially and culturally conservative society; that description certainly
applied to Liverpool, the Merseyside port town where the future Beatles grew
up in largely working-class surroundings. During the war, the area had been
hit by Nazi air raids, killing 2,500 people and damaging nearly half of the
area’s homes.
So it’s not surprising that the early stirrings of American rock and roll captured
the imagination of British kids, to whom the music represented a vibrant
alternative to the grey everyday reality of British life. While Elvis Presley,
Buddy Holly, Bill Haley, Eddie Cochran, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley,
and Gene Vincent became major stars in Britain in the late 1950s, the
United Kingdom failed to produce much credible homegrown rock and roll
during those years. Most British rockers in those years were pale approximations
of their Stateside counterparts, with only a handful—for example,
dreamy but edgy Billy Fury, pirate-garbed Johnny Kidd, and Cliff Richard,
whose backup band the Shadows was England’s fi rst notable English instrumental
rock and roll combo—making remotely credible music.
Liverpool teens John Lennon and Paul McCartney were both committed
rock and roll fans, but they fi rst came together to play skiffl e, the homemade
folk-blues hybrid that had taken the youth of Britain by storm in the late
1950s. Since it was played on such instruments as acoustic guitar, washboard,
and homemade tea-chest bass, skiffl e was easily accessible to working-class
kids who had no access to electric instruments, and the music’s simplicity and
energy offered an entry point for numerous young musicians who would
graduate to rock and roll.
In March 1957, Lennon formed a skiffl e group called the Quarrymen,
named after Quarry Bank Grammar School, where he was a student. That
July, he met Paul McCartney at the Woolton Garden Fête, where the Quarrymen
were performing. Although Paul was two years his junior, Lennon was
impressed with McCartney’s superior guitar abilities, and invited him to join
the Quarrymen. The following March, George Harrison—a year younger than
McCartney and even more adept on guitar—was invited to join, overcoming
Lennon’s initial reservations over the fi fteen-year-old axman’s youth.
Although the Quarrymen’s shifting membership included various Lennon
pals who drifted in and out of the lineup, the group eventually solidifi ed
around the core of Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison and moved toward
electric instruments and rock and roll. As their sound evolved, the band went
through a succession of new names —including Johnny and the Moondogs
and the Silver Beatles—before settling on the Beatles, the name being a subtle
nod to Buddy Holly’s Crickets.
In January 1960, Lennon’s art-college classmate Stuart Sutcliffe—a prodigiously
talented painter but a rudimentary musician—joined on bass. The
band played with a series of drummers before Pete Best joined that summer.
In addition to brooding good looks that would endear Best to local female
fans, his mother Mona owned the Casbah Club, a small basement club in
Liverpool where the Beatles had often played.
In May 1960, the Beatles (with short-term drummer Tommy Moore) had
gotten their fi rst touring experience, playing a series of gigs in Scotland as
backup band for British teen-idol singer Johnny Gentle. Later that year, the
band traveled to Hamburg, Germany, where manager Allan Williams had
gotten them work playing at the Indra, Kaiserkeller, and Top Ten clubs,
located on that city’s notorious red-light district, the Reeperbahn.
The extended Hamburg engagement was a punishing one, requiring the
Beatles to perform seven nights a week, for six or seven hours per night, entertaining
rough-and-tumble crowds that were demanding and often abusive.
But the grueling experience proved invaluable in turning the Beatles into a
tight, exciting performing unit, and forcing them to expand their repertoire of
American rock and roll, R&B, and pop covers. The experience also introduced
the musicians to drugs, specifi cally the amphetamines that they would
take to maintain their energy during their endless hours on stage.
The band’s fi rst Hamburg visit was cut short after the underage Harrison
was deported for lying about his age to German authorities, and McCartney
and Best were sent home after being arrested for starting a small fi re in their
squalid living quarters.
Despite their scrapes with the law, the fi ve Beatles returned to Hamburg in
April 1961. While performing at the Top Ten club, they were hired by Tony
Sheridan, an English singer/guitarist who’d achieved popularity in Germany,
to back him on a set of recordings for the German Polydor label. During the
sessions, producer Bert Kaempfert allowed the Beatles to cut two tracks without
Sheridan: a rocked-up take on the 1920s novelty tune “Ain’t She Sweet”
and the instrumental “Cry for a Shadow,” which would be the only Beatles
tune to credit Harrison and Lennon as co-writers. Although those two tracks
were not released at the time, they would be pulled out of mothballs in the
wake of the band’s subsequent success.
At the end of the second Hamburg engagement, Stu Sutcliffe chose to quit
the band and remain in Hamburg with his new German fi ancée, Astrid Kirchherr,
intending to pursue his budding career as an artist. Beyond her relationship
with Sutcliffe, photographer Kirchherr—one of a group of young local
Bohemians who’d become Beatles admirers—is notable for taking some iconic
photos of the leather-clad, dangerous-looking early Beatles, and suggesting
that the band members trade their slicked-back quiffs for soon-to-be-famous moptop hairstyles that were adopted by all of the band members except Pete
Best.
Sharpened and toughened by their experiences in Hamburg, the Beatles—with
McCartney taking over on bass—returned home a changed band. Where they
had previously been just another combo on Liverpool’s booming beat scene,
they were now one of the hottest acts in town. Their increased local popularity
was refl ected in the large crowds that turned out for the band’s local performances,
including a lunchtime residency at Liverpool’s Cavern Club—a
club located in a dank cellar—that quickly became a local institution.
The Beatles returned to Hamburg one more time, for a six-week engagement
during the spring of 1962. Upon their arrival, they were informed of Stu
Sutcliffe’s death from a brain hemorrhage.
Meanwhile, a rock and roll reworking of the Scottish folk song “My Bonnie,”
from the Beatles’ Tony Sheridan sessions, had become a hit in Germany.
Although the primitive disc was hardly an appropriate showcase for the Beatles’
rapidly developing talents, it was instrumental in bringing the band to the
attention of Brian Epstein. Epstein was manager of the record department at
NEMS (North End Music Store), a subsidiary of his family’s furniture store.
When a young Beatles fan came into NEMS seeking the “My Bonnie” single,
which had not been released in Britain, Epstein was intrigued enough to attend
one of the band’s Cavern Club gigs. Shortly thereafter, Epstein signed on as
the Beatles’ manager.
Epstein set about fi ne-tuning his new clients’ image, getting them to trade
their leather jackets for stylish tailored suits. Epstein also took advantage of
his contacts in the music business, using his status as a prominent retailer to
gain access to various record-company executives, most of whom turned him
down fl at.
Decca Records was interested enough to have the band record an audition
session in January 1962. With Decca staffer Mike Smith, the band cut fi fteen
songs in a one-hour session—a trio of Lennon/McCartney originals, plus a dozen
covers drawn from their live set, including material by Chuck Berry, Buddy
Holly, Carl Perkins, and the Coasters. Although Decca ultimately passed on
the Beatles, the audition tracks, which have circulated on bootleg releases for
decades, offer a fascinating glimpse of the band at a transitional stage.

Despite multiple rejections, Epstein persisted, and his perseverance paid off
when George Martin, producer/A&R for the EMI subsidiary Parlophone,
signed the Beatles (after three other EMI execs passed) in mid-1962. Although
Martin had little experience with rock and roll, his seasoned studio skills
would prove crucial in the Beatles’ development as a recording act. His expertise
as an arranger, keyboardist, and sonic manipulator would enable the band
to execute their most ambitious ideas on record, and Martin would remain a
key factor in the Beatles’ artistic progression for the remainder of their
career.
Martin was adamant in his lack of regard for Pete Best’s percussive abilities,
and insisted that a session drummer replace him in the studio. Apparently, this
was all that was needed for Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison to fi re Best from the band, leaving Epstein to deliver the news. It has been speculated that
Best’s dismissal was hastened by his bandmates’ resentment over his popularity
with female fans, or his refusal to adopt the distinctive hairstyle, although
a more likely explanation seems to be simple personal incompatibility.
Best’s replacement was Ringo Starr, then a member of the popular Liverpool
outfi t Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, and a longtime friend who’d sat
in with the Beatles on several occasions in Hamburg. Beyond Starr’s superior
drumming, his addition gave the band a fourth strong personality.
By then, Lennon and McCartney had become prolifi c songwriters, but it
was still rare at the time for recording artists to write their own material.
Martin initially wanted the Beatles’ debut single to be “How Do You Do It?,”
a lightweight ditty by English tunesmith Mitch Murray. But Martin relented
after the Beatles cut a lackluster version of the song, and allowed the band to
record the Lennon/McCartney original “Love Me Do” as their debut A-side
(“How Do You Do It?” subsequently became a hit for Liverpool’s Gerry
and the Pacemakers, who were also managed by Epstein and produced by
Martin).
Starr had only been a Beatle for a few weeks when the group recorded
“Love Me Do” and its B-side, Lennon and McCartney’s “P.S. I Love You,” in
September 1962. Martin was still skeptical about Starr’s abilities, so he
brought in session drummer Andy White to play on “Love Me Do,” with
Ringo relegated to tambourine; an alternate take with Ringo on drums would
become a U.S. hit eighteen months later. Lennon and McCartney would
continue to provide most of the Beatles’ material for the rest of its existence,
and would continue to share composing credits even after they began writing
individually.
The energetic but relatively primitive “Love Me Do” became a minor British
hit, peaking at number seventeen in October 1962. The Beatles fared far
better with their superior second single “Please Please Me,” which reached
the number two spot on the British charts early in 1963.
The infectious, insistent “Please Please Me” set off a massive wave of Fan
hysteria in Britain. The phenomenon was soon dubbed Beatlemania, with the
band regularly performing in front of crowds of screaming, hysterical female
fans. The commercial momentum continued through 1963, with four consecutive
chart-topping singles: “From Me to You,” “She Loves You,” “I Want
to Hold Your Hand,” and “Can’t Buy Me Love,” all Lennon/McCartney
originals.
The Beatles fi rst British LP Please Please Me —most of which was recorded
in a single day—was released in March 1963. It topped the U.K. album charts
for thirty weeks, a feat that confi rmed the band’s status, not just as England’s
biggest rock act but as a singular phenomenon with no precedent in the annals
of the British entertainment industry. A second album, With the Beatles , was
released in November, and made it clear that the Beatles’ songwriting and
musical abilities were progressing at an accelerated pace.
While the Beatles were becoming teen idols in Britain during 1963, they
remained largely unknown in America. EMI’s U.S. arm, Capitol Records, had
fi rst refusal on the Beatles’ recordings, but declined to pick up the band’s initial
output. Instead, the Beatles’ early singles were licensed variously to the
small independent labels Vee-Jay, Swan, and Tollie. Vee-Jay also released
Introducing the Beatles , a slightly reworked version of the Please Please Me
album.
In retrospect, it’s hard to think of such classic Beatles singles as “Please Please
Me,” “From Me to You,” and “She Loves You” as fl ops. But despite some
airplay on such infl uential Top Forty stations as New York’s WINS and Chicago’s
WLS, the Beatles’ early non-Capitol U.S. releases received little attention.
The Beatles’ Stateside fortunes reversed decisively in late 1963, when Brian
Epstein managed to get Ed Sullivan—a savvy talent-spotter who’d seen Beatlemania
in action during an overseas visit—to book the band for three
appearances on his hugely popular Sunday night TV variety show the following
February. Epstein parlayed the promise of this high-profi le exposure into
a commitment from Capitol to release the band’s next single, “I Want to Hold
Your Hand,” with a massive promotion campaign to prime American audiences
for the Beatles’ arrival.
On December 7, 1963—two weeks after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination—
a clip of a Beatles performance was shown on the CBS Evening
News . The clip inspired a teenager in Washington, D.C., to request a Beatles
song from a local radio station. After obtaining an import copy of “I Want to
Hold Your Hand,” the station began playing the song to overwhelming listener
response, prompting Capitol to rush-release the single on December 26.
The song took off in New York and quickly spread to other markets, selling
a million copies in its fi rst ten days of release. By the end of the month, it was
the number one song on the U.S. pop charts.
Beatlemania was a transatlantic phenomenon by February 7, 1964, when a
crowd of 4,000 fans turned up at Heathrow Airport to see the Beatles off on
their fi rst trip to America. Also on the fl ight were various photographers,
reporters, and seminal American record producer Phil Spector, who’d made a
point of booking himself on the same fl ight. Upon their arrival at the recently
renamed Kennedy International Airport, the band was met by 3,000 screaming
fans. At an airport press conference, the four musicians’ spirited banter
disarmed many of the reporters who’d previously dismissed the Beatles as a
fl ash-in-the-pan fad. Later, the band’s hotel was overrun by fans and media.
The Beatles’ fi rst performance on The Ed Sullivan Show , broadcast live on
February 9, was a landmark event, giving kids across the country their fi rst
exposure to the sound that would soon change popular culture forever. Two
days later, the band began its fi rst American concert tour at the Washington
Coliseum in Washington, D.C.
Capitol Records moved swiftly to capitalize on the buzz by releasing Meet
the Beatles , an LP comprising recent British singles and tracks from With the Beatles , in early February. Meet the Beatles began Capitol’s long-standing
practice of reworking—and, to many ears, mangling—the band’s albums for
U.S. release. While their British LPs generally included fourteen songs, Capitol’s
American editions usually held twelve. Capitol reshuffl ed and remixed
album tracks and added others from British singles and EPs, often with little
regard for cohesive sequencing or appropriate packaging. In so doing, the
company managed to spin the Beatles’ fi rst seven British albums into ten
American ones. As a result, the band’s American discography often gave a
muddled and inaccurate portrayal of their actual artistic progress. (In the CD
era, Capitol would reconfi gure the Beatles’ album catalog to correspond with
the original British versions.)
With teenage America now fi rmly in the grip of Beatlemania, the U.S. labels
that had previously released unsuccessful early Beatles singles found themselves
with late-blooming hits. The extent of the Beatles’ dominance of the
American marketplace was demonstrated in the fi rst week of April 1964,
when the top fi ve slots of the Billboard singles chart were completely occupied
by Beatles singles, with “Can’t Buy Me Love” at number one, followed by
“Twist and Shout,” “She Loves You,” “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” and
“Please Please Me.” The following week, the Beatles held fourteen positions
in Billboard ’s Top 100.
The market was soon fl ooded with all manner of products designed to cash
in on the Fab Four phenomenon. Other record companies sought to get in on
the act by releasing all manner of Beatles-related discs, recycling the band’s
press interviews and their Tony Sheridan sessions, along with countless Beatlesinspired
novelty discs and blatantly deceptive releases hinting falsely at some
Beatles connection. Discarded drummer Pete Best found himself with a solo
recording deal, and even John’s long-estranged father Freddie Lennon got to
release his own single.
Meanwhile, the shelves were fl ooded with all manner of offi cially sanctioned
and unauthorized Beatles-related merchandise, with the band’s name
and likeness attached to an array of products, from lunchboxes to candy to
Beatle wigs.
A more productive result of the Beatles’ U.S. breakthrough was rock’s British
Invasion, as record labels scrambled to sign anything with an accent. Soon
the American charts were dominated by English acts, with domestic artists fi nding
it increasingly diffi cult to gain airplay. Arriving in the Beatles’ wake were
the Liverpool combos Gerry and the Pacemakers, the Searchers, and Epstein
protêgés Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, whose access to unreleased Lennon/
McCartney songs gave them a shortcut to chart success, along with the Rolling
Stones, the Dave Clark Five, the Kinks, the Animals, the Hollies, Herman’s
Hermits, Chad and Jeremy, the Yardbirds, the Zombies, the Who, Donovan,
Freddie and the Dreamers, Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, Manfred
Mann, the Spencer Davis Group, and Peter and Gordon, who scored their
biggest hit with the Lennon/McCartney composition “A World Without Love.”

THEY’RE GONNA PUT ME IN THE MOVIES
Those who continued to dismiss the Beatles as an insubstantial fl ash in the
pan were handily refuted by the band’s fi rst feature fi lm, A Hard Day’s Night ,
released in the summer of 1964. Based around a fi ctionalized day in the band’s
life, the faux cinema vérité comedy cemented the Fab Four’s cheeky, breezy
image as well as the four Beatles’ individual personae, that is, sardonic iconoclast
Lennon; sunny diplomat McCartney; thoughtful, dry-witted Harrison;
and happy-go-lucky yet melancholy Starr.
A Hard Day’s Night had been designed as a low-budget quickie prior to the
Beatles’ U.S. breakthrough, with the intention of reaching theaters before the
band’s popularity faded. But its gritty black-and-white immediacy worked in
its favor, thanks in large part to the talents of director Richard Lester, who
gave the fi lm a kinetic pace that was well suited to the band’s energy, and
Liverpudlian screenwriter Alun Owen, whose script brilliantly captured the band’s humor and attitude. Owen made excellent use of the Beatles’ individual
personalities, giving each musician memorable solo scenes that showcased
their impressive comic skills. The result was an instant hit with critics and
audiences alike.
Beyond it cinematic qualities, A Hard Day’s Night also featured an album’s
worth of impressive new songs, including “Can’t Buy Me Love,” “And I Love
Her,” “If I Fell,” and the fi lm’s insistent title song. Many of the tunes featured
strong twelve-string guitar leads by Harrison that would soon prove infl uential
on such American folk-rock acts as the Byrds, the Turtles, the Lovin’
Spoonful, and the Beau Brummels.
The Beatles returned to the big screen with 1965’s Help! Again directed by
Lester, Help! traded its predecessor’s documentary-style grit for a globe-trotting
comic-book romp that pitted the Fab Four against a fanatical religious cult.
In mid-1964, the Beatles launched their fi rst tour of Australia without
Ringo Starr, who’d been sidelined by tonsillitis and was replaced on stage by
session drummer Jimmy Nicol. Ringo rejoined in time for the band’s subsequent
dates in New Zealand. On August 15, the Beatles performed rock’s fi rst
major stadium concert at New York’s Shea Stadium, playing to a crowd of
55,600 fans.
Nineteen sixty-four also saw the publication of Lennon’s book In His Own
Write , a collection of his surreal short stories and line drawings. Lennon’s
prose refl ected his love for absurd puns, nonsensical wordplay, and free association.
It would be followed in 1965 by a second volume of Lennon prose,
A Spaniard in the Works .
The Beatles’ growing respectability was further demonstrated in October
1965, when England’s Queen Elizabeth II awarded the prestigious Order of
the British Empire, popularly known as the MBE, to John, Paul, George, and
Ringo. The honor, which was usually bestowed upon military offi cers and
civic leaders, sparked protest among several conservative MBE recipients,
who returned their awards in protest.
The Beatles’ productivity between 1964 and 1967 was uncanny. Between a
series of hectic international tours, the band released a remarkable stream of
classic singles and albums. Beatles for Sale , Help! , Rubber Soul , and Revolver
(and their American counterparts) showed the band consistently raising the
musical stakes, exploring new sounds and lyrical subject matter. “I Feel Fine”
featured some revolutionary guitar feedback, while the muscular folk-rock
tunes “Ticket to Ride” and “Paperback Writer” demonstrated how forceful
and creative a guitarist Harrison had become, and “Rain” and “Tomorrow
Never Knows” exemplifi ed the band’s excursions into studio-manipulated
psychedelia.
Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison (who had begun to contribute his own
compositions to the band’s albums) quickly moved beyond the simple romantic
concerns of the band’s early songs to explore more complex emotional
territory. McCartney’s “Yesterday” and “Eleanor Rigby” invoked remorse and regret, and diverged from the band’s musical format to employ melancholy
string quartets. Lennon, meanwhile, had begun to write introspective,
Dylan-infl uenced lyrics on such numbers as “Help!,” “I’m a Loser,” and
“You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away.” By this point, the Beatles’ commercial
supremacy—and their bond with their audience—was such that their fans
enthusiastically went along with the band’s experiments, ensuring that each
adventurous new release would be a sales smash.
Despite their worldwide popularity, the Beatles still managed to stumble
into controversy. When the band toured the Philippines in July 1966, they
unintentionally snubbed Imelda Marcos, wife of the country’s despotic president
Ferdinand Marcos, when Epstein politely declined an invitation to a
breakfast reception at the Presidential Palace. The incident resulted in the
band being denounced on Philippine television and radio, and losing its police
protection. Upon their arrival at the airport to leave the country, the band was
attacked by a hostile crowd, and Epstein and road manager Mal Evans were
forced by authorities to return the tour’s cash receipts before the band and its
entourage could leave.
Almost immediately upon the band’s return from the Philippines, a comment
that Lennon had made in a British interview a few months earlier
launched a noisy anti-Beatles backlash in the United States. Lennon had opined
that mainstream religion was losing infl uence, and casually mentioned that
the Beatles were “more popular than Jesus now.” When news of Lennon’s
comment reached America’s Bible belt, conservative church groups organized
mass burnings of Beatles records. The resulting media furor resulted in Lennon
apologizing for his remark in a Chicago press conference on the eve of
what would be the Beatles’ fi nal tour.
Another controversy arose during the summer of 1966 over the cover photograph
for the band’s U.S.-only album Yesterday . . . and Today . The shot
depicted the band surrounded by raw meat and dismembered dolls. Capitol
manufactured thousands of copies of the original sleeve, but destroyed most
of them before releasing the album with a more conventional cover photo.
A handful of original copies reached the public nonetheless, making the
“butcher cover” (whose imagery has often been interpreted as the band’s
comment on Capitol’s butchery of their albums) one of the most sought-after
Beatles collector’s items.
Such petty controversies may have contributed to the Beatles’ decision to
quit touring at the end of their 1966 tour. The choice was borne largely of
their frustration at trying to be heard over the screams of their female fans
over the primitive public-address systems of the time, as well as their inability
to reproduce their increasingly complex and sophisticated studio recordings
as a four-piece live band.
At the time, there was widespread speculation that the Beatles were disbanding.
The rumors were fueled by the fact that the four musicians spent a
post-tour hiatus engaging in separate pursuits, with McCartney writing and recording (in collaboration with George Martin) the musical score for the
English fi lm The Family Way , and Lennon making a well-received solo acting
debut in Richard Lester’s anti-militarist satire How I Won the War .
The rumors ended with the February 1967 release of the “Penny Lane”/
“Strawberry Fields Forever” single. The disc featured some of the band’s most
ambitious work yet, venturing into moody Lennon psychedelia on the latter
track, and McCartney’s bright orchestral pop on the former. The single helped
to set the stage for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band , a musical watershed
that revolutionized the rock album’s status as a creative vehicle. One of the fi rst
rock albums to be constructed as a cohesive listening experience from start to
fi nish—as well as the fi rst Beatles LP to be released in its original form in
America— Sgt. Pepper was a giddy bundle of styles and sounds, self-consciously
arty but still full of energy, emotion, and humor.
Loosely built around an imaginary concert by the fi ctional title ensemble,
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band ranged from the candy-colored psychedelia
of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” to the cheery sing-along pop
“With a Little Help from My Friends” to the multi-tracked cacophony of
“Good Morning Good Morning” to the sentimental balladry of “She’s Leaving
Home,” to the operatic grandiosity of the album-closing “A Day in the Life.”
The album’s cutting-edge recording approach was complemented by some
modern takes on antiquarian styles, like McCartney’s bucolic music-hall excursion
“When I’m Sixty-Four” and Lennon’s loopy circus tale “Being for the Benefi
t of Mr. Kite!,” while Harrison’s recent fascination with Eastern spirituality
and Indian sitar music was refl ected on “Within You Without You.”
Sgt. Pepper ’s audacious production was all the more impressive in light of
the fact that the band and George Martin were working with four tracks,
making the album’s adventurous use of overdubbing all the more of a technical
milestone.
For many, Sgt. Pepper served as an unoffi cial soundtrack to the Summer of
Love, and the Beatles’ status as spiritual avatars of the hippie movement was
confi rmed when they premiered their fl ower-power anthem “All You Need Is
Love” on June 25, 1967, via worldwide TV satellite hook-up as part of the
TV special Our World . Broadcasting from EMI’s Abbey Road Studios, where
the band had recorded all of its EMI releases, the Beatles were joined by a
chorus of friends including Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithfull, Eric Clapton,
and Keith Moon.
The creative highs of 1967 were tainted by Brian Epstein’s death of a prescription
drug overdose in August at the age of thirty-two. The loss of Epstein’s
stabilizing infl uence helped to set the band on a less focused course that would
gradually lead to the Beatles’ unraveling.
In the wake of Epstein’s death, the Beatles’ lengthy streak of commercial
and artistic successes was broken by their next attempt at fi lmmaking, Magical
Mystery Tour . Shot with no script and no director, the hour-long fi lm was
a self-indulgent mishmash that received a single BBC broadcast in December 1967, before scathing U.K. reviews caused ABC to cancel a planned U.S. telecast;
it would not reach America for nearly a decade. Not surprisingly, Magical
Mystery Tour was partially redeemed by the new songs that the band
recorded for it.
Another Beatles-inspired fi lm, the animated feature Yellow Submarine , was
far better received in 1968, although the Beatles themselves had little involvement
with the project apart from contributing a handful of new songs.
FOUR BITES OF THE APPLE
In the wake of Sgt. Pepper , the four Beatles began to splinter somewhat, moving
in directions that refl ected their individual interests and tastes. But the
group spent the early part of 1968 together in Rishikesh, India, studying transcendental
meditation with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, although each of the
four would depart the course prior to its completion. The experience led a
disillusioned Lennon to write the vitriolic “Sexy Sadie”—originally titled
“Maharishi,” until the more reverent Harrison prevailed upon Lennon to
rename it.
Upon their return from their Indian retreat, Lennon and McCartney fl ew to
New York to announce the formation of Apple Corps, an idealistic but disastrously
impractical attempt to launch an egalitarian entertainment empire.
The Beatles’ attempt to build a utopian commercial enterprise and take control
of their economic destiny would soon become a fi nancial and logistical
nightmare.
One positive result of the band’s trip to India was that they used the time to
write a wealth of new material. The songs formed the basis of the two-LP,
thirty-song The Beatles , commonly known as the White Album for its
unadorned cover. In contrast to Sgt. Pepper ’s densely overdubbed tracks, the
White Album was largely a return to spare, guitar-based rock.
The White Album—on which the band graduated to eight-track recording—
featured some of the Beatles’ most mature and accomplished songwriting
and performances yet, but it sounded less like the work of a cohesive band
than of four talented individuals with divergent interests and temperaments.
Lennon’s compositions, including the fatalistic “Yer Blues,” the harrowing
“Happiness Is a Warm Gun,” and the psychedelic spoof “Glass Onion,” were
noticeably more edgy and personal than his previous work, previewing the
direction that he would pursue in his solo career. Lennon’s “Julia” was particularly
affecting, evoking his feelings over the his childhood loss of his
mother, while the sound collage “Revolution 9” refl ected the infl uence of his
new girlfriend, avant-garde artist Yoko Ono (whom he would marry in March
1969). McCartney’s songs on the album alternately showcased him as a
romantic balladeer (“I Will”), pop craftsman (“Blackbird”), heavy rocker
(“Helter Skelter”), retro revivalist (“Back in the U.S.S.R.”), and campy fauxvaudevillian (“Honey Pie”). Harrison made his presence felt with the epic
“While My Guitar Gently Weeps” (with guest Eric Clapton on lead guitar),
the languid ballad “Long, Long, Long,” and the withering social commentary
“Piggies.” Even Starr, who’d previously stepped forward for the occasional
lead vocal, received his fi rst solo songwriting credit with the country-rocker
“Don’t Pass Me By.”
Although they yielded much enduring music, the White Album sessions—
which also produced the classic non-LP single “Hey Jude”/“Revolution”—
saw deep divisions arise within the Beatles. One source of tension was a
general feeling that McCartney had been taking too dominant a role in the
band’s affairs in Brian Epstein’s absence. Another was the presence of Yoko
Ono at most of the sessions. The increasingly prolifi c Harrison, meanwhile,
had grown frustrated with his diffi culty in getting the band to record his songs.
The situation grew so uncomfortable that the dependable, unassuming Starr
walked out at one point, leaving McCartney to handle the drumming on some
tracks; the band talked him into returning two weeks later. George Martin
and longtime engineer Geoff Emerick also quit the sessions at other points.
Meanwhile, the four Beatles continued to clash over business issues, particularly
their choice of a new manager. McCartney wanted to turn the band’s
affairs over to Lee Eastman, father of his wife Linda. That suggestion didn’t
sit well with the other Beatles, who wanted to hire fearsome New York musicbiz
vet Allen Klein. After Klein was hired, he initially impressed the band by
renegotiating their contract with EMI, winning them the highest royalty rate
paid to artists at that time. But Klein’s abrasive style alienated many in the
band’s inner circle, as did his severe cost-cutting measures at Apple Corps.
Klein’s stewardship of the band’s career would remain controversial, particularly
with subsequent allegations of fi nancial irregularities.
In early 1969 the Beatles began working on a new recording project, initially
titled Get Back . An outgrowth of McCartney’s unsuccessful attempts to
push the band to return to live performing, Get Back was an effort to recapture
the Beatles’ earthy roots and shake the group out of its recent malaise.
Accompanied by American keyboardist Billy Preston, the band recorded in an
informal live-in-the-studio setting, running through new material as well as
classic cover tunes from the band’s early days. The sessions were recorded for
a proposed album and fi lmed for a prospective TV special.
The recording climaxed with the band playing an impromptu set on the
roof of Apple’s London headquarters, before being shut down by the police.
But the sessions were otherwise marred by unfocused performances and interband
squabbles, with Harrison quitting for a few days at one point. Not surprisingly,
the band was unhappy with the recordings and the project was
temporarily shelved.
Despite the negative feelings that surrounded the Get Back project, the
Beatles managed to rally and wrap their recording career on a high note with
their studio swan song Abbey Road , recorded in the summer of 1969 and released that September. Remarkably enough, the album—named after the
EMI studio where the band had done most of its recording—was one of their
most unifi ed and sophisticated efforts, boasting some of the most arresting
melodies and ambitious arrangements in the band’s catalog. Abbey Road also
continued George Harrison’s emergence as a signifi cant songwriter; his songs
“Something” and “Here Comes the Sun” were among the album’s most popular.
The former became the fi rst Harrison composition to occupy the A-side
of a Beatles single.
But Abbey Road ’s musical unity didn’t refl ect the mood within the band.
After fi nishing the album, Lennon released some singles with various friends as
the Plastic Ono Band, Harrison toured with American country-rock duo Delaney
and Bonnie, Starr teamed with Peter Sellers to star in the fi lm comedy The
Magic Christian , and McCartney began working on a solo album. Lennon had
announced his intention to quit the Beatles in September 1969, but was persuaded
not to make the news public.
So the public was largely shocked in April 1970, when McCartney, on the
occasion of the release of his debut solo LP McCartney , announced that he
was no longer a Beatle. At the end of 1970, McCartney sued his bandmates
to dissolve their partnership; the issue would drag through the courts for
years, sowing long-term ill will between various members and negating any
chance of a reunion.
One factor that pushed McCartney toward the announcement was his
refusal to delay McCartney ’s release date to avoid confl icting with Let It Be ,
an album drawn from the Get Back recordings, and a same-titled feature fi lm
documentary drawn from the footage originally shot for the unfi nished TV
special.
The Let It Be album was assembled by American producer Phil Spector,
who had produced Lennon’s solo single “Instant Karma!” and who’d long
coveted an opportunity to work with the Beatles. Spector did substantial overdubbing,
adding various vocals and instrumentation to several of the band’s
unadorned live tracks. McCartney was incensed by Spector’s post-production
tinkering, particularly his addition of a choir and orchestra to his “The Long
and Winding Road.” But the Let It Be fi lm, complete with scenes documenting
the band’s strained relations and the triumphant Apple rooftop performance,
was recognized as a compelling document of the Beatles’ dissolution.

SOLO IN THE 1970s
Although fans would spend much of the 1970s waiting in vain for a Beatles
reunion, the four ex-Beatles wasted no time in establishing productive solo
careers. Perhaps the Beatle who immediately benefi ted the most from his
new solo status was George Harrison, whose subordinate position within the
band had allowed him to accumulate a large body of unreleased songs.
Harrison’s backlog of quality material was suffi cient to fi ll a double album,
All Things Must Pass , which was augmented by a third LP of informal studio
jams. The album boasted rich, layered production by Phil Spector, and revealed
a distinctive sound spotlighting Harrison’s eloquent guitar work and
lyrics showcasing his abiding sense of spirituality and whimsical sense of
humor. The album produced a major hit in the prayerful “My Sweet Lord,”
which had the distinction of being the fi rst recording by an ex-Beatle to top
the American singles charts.
Harrison followed All Things Must Pass by spearheading rock’s fi rst major
charity event, the Concert for Bangladesh, a pair of all-star concerts at New
York’s Madison Square Garden to raise money to aid that famine-ravaged
nation. The shows, which also featured Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, and Bob
Dylan, produced a movie and a live triple album. Harrison continued to
record steadily through the 1970s, before settling into a more leisurely pace in
subsequent decades, keeping a relatively low public profi le and making a surprise
return to the top of the charts with 1987’s Cloud Nine . In 1988, he
scored more sales success as a member of the tongue-in-cheek supergroup the
Traveling Wilburys, alongside Dylan, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison, and Tom
Petty. Harrison also appeared frequently as a guest musician, contributing his
distinctive guitar work to albums by such friends as Eric Clapton, Leon Russell,
and Harry Nilsson, as well as projects by his early rock and roll idols Carl
Perkins and Duane Eddy. Harrison also successfully branched out into fi lm
production via his company Handmade Films.
John Lennon took advantage of his new freedom as a solo artist to establish
a standard of uncompromising personal and political forthrightness that he
would maintain for the rest of his career. Lennon was the fi rst Beatle to record
outside the group, releasing the singles “Cold Turkey” (a brutally frank
account of his battle with heroin addiction) and “Power to the People,” the
raw album Live Peace in Toronto , and a trio of avant-garde collaborations
with Yoko Ono (including Two Virgins , whose nude cover photo predictably
raised a media outcry). In 1970, he released his fi rst solo studio album, John
Lennon/Plastic Ono Band , whose unfl inching, often harrowing introspection
instantly established Lennon as a major solo voice. He continued to produce
compelling, highly personal work on such subsequent releases as Imagine ,
Mind Games , and Walls and Bridges .
Lennon, who settled in New York in the early 1970s, became active in antiwar
activism and dabbled in radical politics, using his visibility to speak out
about various social and political issues. His activism earned Lennon the
enmity of President Richard Nixon. As fi les released under the Freedom of
Information Act would later reveal, Nixon feared that Lennon would continue
to use his infl uence with America’s youth to turn them against the Vietnam
War, and attempted to have Lennon deported or arrested on drug charges.
After releasing 1975’s Rock ‘n’ Roll , an album of oldies covers paying tribute to his early musical roots, Lennon took an extended hiatus from recording,
embracing domestic family life in New York.
If Lennon used his solo work to exorcise his personal and political demons,
Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles output often seemed designed to establish him
as a crowd-pleasing all-around entertainer, indulging the mainstream showbiz
impulses that had been held in check during his Beatles years. McCartney’s
melodic skills and commercial instincts allowed him to maintain the most
consistently successful career of any ex-Beatle, scoring nine number one singles
and seven number one albums in the United States during the fi rst dozen
years of his solo career.
After releasing the charmingly rustic solo efforts McCartney and Ram ,
McCartney formed the new group Wings with his wife Linda and ex–Moody
Blues frontman Denny Laine. Wings scored massive commercial success (and
general dismissal from critics) through the 1970s, before McCartney reverted
to solo status at the end of the decade. In the years since, he’s continued to
record steadily, sporadically earning renewed critical respect with such albums
as 1982’s Tug of War , 1989’s Flowers in the Dirt , 1997’s Flaming Pie , and
2007’s Memory Almost Full . McCartney’s periodic tours since then have invariably
been greeted as major events, but his 1984 attempt at directing and starring
in the feature fi lm Give My Regards to Broad Street was roundly dismissed
as an ill-conceived vanity project and was a resounding commercial fl op.
At the time of the Beatles’ breakup, few would have expected Ringo Starr,
neither a prolifi c songwriter nor a conventionally gifted vocalist, to carve out
a durable solo career. Yet the beloved drummer’s self-effacing charm, and his
knack for getting by with a little help from his famous friends, have consistently
carried him through.
Starr launched his solo recording career in 1970 with a pair of esoteric
projects, the lushly arranged collection of 1930s and 1940s pop standards
Sentimental Journey and the Nashville-recorded country effort Beaucoups of
Blues . He subsequently hit Top Ten pay dirt with a pair of self-written 1971
singles “It Don’t Come Easy” (whose B-side “Early 1970” offered Ringo’s
good-natured perspective on the Beatles’ breakup) and “Back Off Boogaloo.”
Those were followed by 1973’s Ringo , which featured songwriting and instrumental
contributions from his three former bandmates and spawned three
more Top Ten hits, including the Harrison/Starr-penned “Photograph.”
While he has continued to release new albums, Ringo’s amiability and
comic skills also allowed him to carve out a productive acting career. In the
1990s, he reinvented himself as a frontman and touring artist, fronting various
editions of his All-Starr Band, in which he’s shared the spotlight with a
shifting cast of fellow classic-rock veterans.
John Lennon emerged from his extended hiatus in 1980, releasing Double
Fantasy , a collaboration with Yoko Ono. Despite their slick pop production,
there was no doubting the sincerity of Lennon’s heartfelt new odes to love and fatherhood. While the John Lennon of Double Fantasy was a far cry from
the boundary-pushing rabble-rouser that fans had come to know, the new
material showed him to be passionate and reenergized, having found fulfi llment
in the stable family life that he’d been deprived of in his own youth.

The fact that Lennon had achieved personal contentment intensifi ed the
crushing sense of tragedy of his death. On December 8, as Double Fantasy
and its fi rst single “(Just Like) Starting Over” were climbing the charts, Lennon
was assassinated by deranged Beatles fan Mark David Chapman, as he
and Ono were returning home from a recording session.
The event inspired a worldwide outpouring of shock, grief, and mourning.
Of the countless tributes that followed in the wake of Lennon’s death, one of
the most poignant came from George Harrison, who sang the praises of his
fallen ex-bandmate on the song “All Those Years Ago.” The song, which
appeared on Harrison’s album Somewhere in England , featured guest appearances
by Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr.
More than two decades after Lennon’s death, it was revealed that George
Harrison was suffering from an inoperable form of brain cancer. He passed
away on November 29, 2001, leaving the material world with the same low-key
dignity that he’d maintained even amid the madness of Beatlemania.

AND IN THE END . . .
The former Beatles’ long-standing legal disputes prevented any unreleased
Beatles studio recordings from being released to the public for nearly two decades
following the band’s breakup, although a massive amount of rare Beatles
tracks emerged on bootleg releases. The situation changed with the 1994
release of Live at the BBC , which collected the best of the band’s vintage radio
sessions, and the subsequent release of the epic multi-part documentary The
Beatles Anthology , broadcast on network TV in early 1995 and subsequently
released in expanded form on DVD. Assembled with the surviving band members’
active participation, the mini-series spawned a trio of double-CD
soundtrack compilations containing a wealth of rare and previously unissued
material (including the fi rst offi cial release of some of the band’s early Decca
demos, resulting in Pete Best receiving his fi rst royalties for Beatles recordings).
But the most newsworthy aspect of the Anthology discs was the presence of
two songs; “Free as a Bird’ and “Real Love,” on which McCartney, Harrison,
and Starr recorded new studio tracks to accompany a pair of 1970s-era Lennon
demos. The hybrid tracks sharply divided the opinions of fans and critics,
but both became hits, with radio programmers jumping at the chance to play
the fi rst “new” Beatles songs in a quarter-century.

While each of the former Beatles experienced commercial ups and downs in
their respective solo careers, the Beatles as a group entity has never lost its
appeal, continuing to be discovered and embraced by new generations of fans.
Ironically, the band’s premature breakup spared it from experiencing an artistic
decline, leaving the mystique of their body of work intact. The Beatles’
vintage work maintains an ageless, timeless appeal, and the band’s impact on
music and popular culture remains as strong as ever.


TIMELINE
July 6, 1957
John Lennon meets Paul McCartney at the Woolton Garden Fête at St. Peter’s Church
in Liverpool, during a performance by Lennon’s group the Quarrymen. Impressed by
Paul’s ability to tune a guitar and by his knowledge of song lyrics, John asks him to
join the group.
February 1, 1958
Paul McCartney introduces George Harrison to the Quarrymen at the basement teen
club the Morgue. He will be invited to join the group the following month.
August 1, 1960
The Beatles make their debut in Hamburg, West Germany, with Stu Sutcliffe on bass
and Pete Best on drums.
January 1, 1961
The Beatles make their first appearance at the Cavern Club in Liverpool.
November 1, 1961
Local record store manager Brian Epstein attends a Beatles performance at the Cavern
Club.
January 1, 1962
The Beatles record fi fteen songs in a one-hour studio audition session for Decca
Records, which will eventually pass on the band.
March 7, 1962
The Beatles make their radio debut performing three songs on the BBC.
April 10, 1962
Stu Sutcliffe dies of a brain hemorrhage.
June 1, 1962
The Beatles audition successfully for George Martin at Parlophone/EMI Records. He
agrees to sign the band, but insists that Pete Best be replaced on recording sessions.
August 16, 1962
At the behest of Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison, Brian Epstein informs Best that
he has been fi red from the band.
September 4, 1962
The Beatles record their fi rst single, “Love Me Do” and its B-side, “P.S. I Love You,”
at EMI’s Abbey Road studios in London.
December 1, 1963
“I Want to Hold Your Hand,” the Beatles’ fi rst American single, is released by Capitol
Records.
February 7, 1964
The Beatles arrive in America.
February 9, 1964
The Beatles make their fi rst appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show .
February 11, 1964
The Beatles begin their fi rst U.S. tour at the Coliseum in Washington, D.C.
April 4, 1964
The Beatles hold the top fi ve slots on the Billboard pop chart.
July 6, 1964
The Beatles’ fi rst feature fi lm, A Hard Day’s Night, has its world premiere in London.
July 29, 1965
The Beatles’ second fi lm, Help! , is released.
August 15, 1965
The Beatles play in front of almost 60,000 fans at Shea Stadium in New York City.
August 27, 1965:
The Beatles visit Elvis Presley at his home in Bel Air, California.
October 26, 1965
The Beatles are awarded England’s prestigious MBE (Members of the Order of the
British Empire).
March 1, 1966
London’s Evening Standard publishes an interview with John Lennon in which he
comments that the Beatles are “more popular than Jesus now.” Months later, the
quote will inspire protests in America, including the burning of Beatles records.
August 11, 1966
Lennon apologizes for his “Jesus” remarks at a press conference in Chicago, on the
eve of what will be the Beatles’ fi nal tour.
August 29, 1966
The Beatles play their fi nal concert in front of a paying audience at San Francisco’s
Candlestick Park.
June 1, 1967
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is released in Britain.
June 25, 1967
The Beatles become the fi rst band to stage a global satellite broadcast, performing
their new song “All You Need Is Love” at Abbey Road studio as part of a TV titled
Our World .
August 1, 1967
George Harrison and his wife Patti stroll through the streets of Haight-Ashbury,
bringing international media attention to the budding hippie scene.
August 27, 1967
Manager Brian Epstein dies of an accidental prescription drug overdose.
September 1, 1967
John Lennon writes “I Am the Walrus” while under the infl uence of LSD.
February 15, 1968
The Beatles depart for Rishikesh, India, for an advanced course in transcendental
meditation with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
May 1, 1968
Apple Corps opens its doors in London.
January 30, 1969
The Beatles’ fi nal public performance as a band takes place on the roof of the Apple
building during the fi lming of the documentary fi lm Let It Be .
August 20, 1969
The Beatles fi nish recording “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” for their Abbey Road album,
marking the last time that all four Beatles would be together in the same studio.
September 20, 1969
John Lennon announces his resignation to the rest of the group, but agrees not to
make his departure public.
April 10, 1970
Paul McCartney becomes the fi rst Beatle to publicly acknowledge the band’s breakup,
via a self-written interview included with pre-release promotional copies of his fi rst
solo album McCartney .
May 8, 1970
Let It Be , recorded live in the studio prior to Abbey Road , with additional overdubs by
producer Phil Spector, is released, followed by the documentary fi lm of the same name.
December 8, 1980
In New York, John Lennon is shot dead by Mark David Chapman as he and Yoko
Ono return from a recording session.
November 19, 1995
“Free as a Bird,” the fi rst new Beatles single in twenty-fi ve years, premieres as part of
the television broadcast, The Beatles Anthology . The song, a 1977 John Lennon demo
with new vocal and instrumental tracks by the three surviving Beatles, will reach number
six on the U.S. singles chart in early 1996.
March 23, 1996
“Real Love,” a 1979 John Lennon demo completed in 1995 by the other Beatles,
reaches the charts, where it will peak at number eleven.
November 29, 2001
George Harrison dies at the age of fifty-eight after a long battle with cancer.