The Beatles
So it goes like this . . . Paul
McCartney, 15, hears a Skiffle
group called The Quarrymen at a church fete in Woolton, Liverpool.
Singer/Guitarist, John Lennon, 16, lubricated by several beers,
impresses young Paul who in return shows the group how to play Twenty
Flight Rock. John thinks "He's as good as me". Two
weeks later Paul joins the band.
By 1960, they had acquired a new
name, a manager and a fairly stable line-up of George Harrison on
lead guitar, Stu Sutcliffe on bass and Pete Best on drums. That
same year, The Beatles secured a residency in Hamburg, a favoured
haunt for early British rockers, which proved to be the making of
the band.
The living was rough and wild, with the fresh-faced Liverpool
teens exposed overnight to the pleasures of speed, Existentialism,
all night drinking, fighting and the Reeperbahn's notorious
red-light zone. Most importantly of all, their punishing schedule
of three sets a night turned them into seasoned professionals
within only a few months.
The existentialist input came from Stu
Sutcliffe's German girlfriend Astrid Kirchherr, who created much
of the early Beatles look. On their second Hamburg stint,
Sutcliffe himself dropped out of the band, leaving McCartney
to
take over on bass.
The Beatles returned to Liverpool in June 1961, to find that
their frenzied playing went down a storm at home as well as in
Germany. Within a few months they acquired Brian Epstein as their
new manager and a residency at The Cavern, where they soon became
local heroes at the centre of Liverpool's beat boom.
But with their horizons opened by their time in Europe, their
eyes turned to London and a national record deal. Derek Rowe of
Decca has gone down in history as the man who turned down The
Beatles, but he certainly wasn't the only one to reject Brian Epstein's overtures. In fact, it was hit or miss as to whether
EMI/Parlophone would sign them, but it seems that producer George
Martin liked their sense of humour as much as their music (he had
worked on comedy for Peter Sellers and many other acts) and
decided to take a chance.
However, one final and controversial
change remained: next time The Beatles returned to London's Abbey
Road studios in September 1962, Ringo Starr, previously of Rory
Storm and the Hurricanes, was in the drummer's seat.
 The reason was as much musical as personal (whether it had
anything to do with the fact that Pete Best was too good-looking
for the others' liking is of course debatable) but the girls at
The Cavern didn't see things this way and in one of the ensuing
punch-ups George Harrison sustained a black eye. He was still
sporting it as The Beatles struggled through their first
commercial recording, a Lennon and McCartney composition called Love
Me Do.
Today it sounds like a pretty lightweight affair, but its
refreshing directness made it stand out at a time when most
British pop was compressed and reverb-laden in the Joe Meek
school. It reached an unimpressive Number 17 and in the hope of
the top slot The Beatles threw everything into their next effort, Please
Please Me.
This time there was no doubt, as it smashed in at
Number 1 following a live appearance on the Thank Your Lucky
Stars TV show. Teenage audiences were mesmerised by this fresh
new group with the long hair and the buttoned-down suits: slowly
but surely, Beatlemania was spreading.
As luck would have it, George
Martin turned out to be the
perfect producer for the band. Acting on instinct, he decided to
make their debut album something better than the usual cash-in of
the time.
Please Please Me, recorded in one marathon
session, was a lively mix of their own compositions and standards
from their stage act, including a frenzied version of Twist And
Shout.
By now, the Lennon and McCartney hit machine was working in
overdrive, producing a string of singles including From Me To
You, She Loves You and I Want To Hold Your Hand,
that were both innovative and fiendishly catchy. By the time of
the November 1963 release of their second album, With The Beatles,
they were established as Britain's favourite group, on a scale that
was previously unheard of.
To most outside Britain in 1963, The Beatles were an English
oddity. They had weird hair and one was called Ringo, but that was
about the size of it. And then in 1964 the band toured the US and
played on The Ed Sullivan Show.
The gig was tuned into by a
monster American TV audience - 73 million people -and is still one
of the most celebrated and literally hysterical musical moments of
the 20th century. The studio audience squealed and cried as the
lads powered through All My Loving, Till There Was You,
She Loves You, I Saw Her Standing There and I
Want To Hold Your Hand. And for viewers at home it was the
same.
Back in the studio, The Beatles produced the rousing Can't
Buy Me Love and then, in a frenzied bout of recording and
film-making, A Hard Day's Night, the soundtrack to a
brilliant study of Beatlemania
directed by Richard Lester. The
public were delighted to find that as well as being talented
tunesmiths with a rowdy stage act, The Beatles also looked great
on the screen.
However, they were already starting to move beyond the confines
of their beat group image, with both Harrison and Lennon showing a
strong interest in Bob Dylan. The two key forces in 60s music met
for the first time that August in New York, when Dylan turned The
Beatles on to the delights of dope.
Beatles For Sale, their second album of 1964, was mostly
a more soulful variation of their usual fare, though Lennon's I'm
A Loser showed a new emotional depth and hinted at new
influences in their music.
The catalyst arrived some time in early
1965, when The Beatles had their first encounter with LSD, an
experience reflected in the density and sensual languor of their
next single, Ticket To Ride. The experimentation continued
on their soundtrack album for their second film, Help!,
which boasted the Dylanesque You've Got To Hide Your Love Away
and McCartney's eternal ballad Yesterday, as well as the
superb title track.
After another hectic round of touring, including the Shea
Stadium gig (yes, they gave us the horrors of stadium rock too),
The Beatles found themselves pushed to match a batch of summer
singles from the likes of The Kinks, The
Animals, The Rolling Stones, and of course
Bob Dylan.
They rose to the occasion with Rubber
Soul, the first of their classic albums, and one that showed a
new maturity and complexity in songs like Norwegian Wood
and Nowhere Man. The accompanying single, Day Tripper,
backed with the brilliant We Can Work It Out, reinforced
the image of a band working at the peak of their powers.
Following a final UK tour the band took three months off,
relaxing and preparing for their next waxing. If Rubber Soul had
opened minds, then Revolver, released in August 1966, was
to blow them.
As well as some of the finest pop songs ever
recorded, it contained two tracks that set out a manifesto for the
psychedelic explosion of 1967; She Said She Said, however
lysergic, was at least a pop song, albeit one pushed to the
limits, Tomorrow Never Knows, however, was something
completely different.
On top of Ringo's hypnotic drums and a
kaleidoscope of tape loops, John Lennon's
mesmerising vocal
exhorted you to 'listen to the colour of your dreams'. It was the
final delight on an album that took in everything from George
Harrison's bitter Taxman, to Eleanor Rigby and the
obligatory singalong-a-Ringo track, Yellow Submarine. Even
the advance single, Paperback Writer, was a corker, backed
by Rain, The Beatles best ever B-side, propelled by yet
more innovative drum work from Ringo.
Ironically, at a time when The Beatles were achieving new
heights in the studio, they were packed off on a demoralising
world tour, which saw them physically assaulted in the Philippines
(for allegedly insulting Imelda Marcos), then facing
demonstrations and death threats in the States, following John
Lennon's offhand remark that the band were now "bigger than
Jesus".
Their last concert performance was at Candlestick Park in San
Francisco: on their return to the UK, they made it clear to Brian Epstein
that touring was now off the agenda. Apart from the
hassles and threats, they couldn't even hear themselves play over
the screaming, never mind attempt to reproduce the complexities of
their new studio work.
With unlimited studio time available to them at Abbey Road, The
Beatles set about topping their previous efforts. By this time,
Lennon was so spaced out from the acid that McCartney had taken
over as de facto leader of the group, but the old tensions in
their relationship were pushing each other to new heights, as
could be heard on their next double A-side single, Penny Lane
b/w Strawberry Fields Forever.
Both were registered as
Lennon and McCartney compositions, but the lazy psychedelic swirl
of Strawberry Fields was as obviously Lennon as the bouncy
melody of Penny Lane was McCartney. Astonishingly, it was
their first single since 1962 not to hit the top slot: the great
British record-buying public preferred Engelbert
Humperdinck's ballad, Release Me. The single however, was merely a
foretaste of The Beatles big statement, Sergeant Pepper's
Lonely Hearts' Club Band.
If ever an album perfectly summed up the times this was it.
Acid-drenched from start to finish, it was the definitive
crystallisation of the mood of 1967's Summer of Love.
Though it
had little real integrity as a concept album, bar the opening
track and its reprise, the conceptual link was in the wash of
echoed and reverbed sound, heavy with Harrison's Indian
instrumentation and underlaid by the wet tea-towel clump of
Ringo's drums to stop the whole thing levitating off the
turntable.
Songs like Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, With A
Little Help From My Friends and A Day In The Life marked
the culmination of five years of intense recording activity, but
from these towering heights there could only be one direction -
down.
The rest of the year was spent in a stoned reverie, although
the hours of good-natured studio experimentation did produce two
classics in the form of All You Need Is Love, broadcast
live as Britain's contribution to the first global satellite
link-up, and Lennon's remarkable I Am The Walrus, the
product of a drug-twisted consciousness imploding into adolescent
psycho-goo.
The recording was given extra emotional bite by being
made only a few days after the death of Brian Epstein, a
sobering shock amidst the love and peace vibes of that hot,
incense-scented summer. Without his leadership, The Beatles were
left to their own devices, a situation that would lead to
financial crisis in the following year and the ultimate collapse
of group spirit.
In the immediate aftermath of Epstein's death, The Beatles
decided to press ahead with The Magical Mystery Tour, a
film project inspired by the charabanc coach trips to Blackpool of
their Liverpool youth. The somewhat amateurish results were
screened on Boxing Day to a hostile reception, though today it
comes over as an engaging period piece. The Mystery Tour's
destination turned out to be a disused airfield at West Malling in
Kent, where the memorable I Am The Walrus clip was filmed
with forty dwarfs and a military band (!?).
Early in 1968 The Beatles decamped to Rishikesh, to the
Maharishi's meditation centre on the banks of the Ganges.
Predictably, Ringo was the first to tire of the endless prayer,
chanting and vegetarian curry, but Lennon and
Harrison stuck it
out for a full three months, before realising that the Maharishi
was extremely attentive to the spiritual needs of his female
devotees.
Their stay might have ended in disillusionment, but it was to
prove extremely productive in song writing terms. Freed from the
entertainments of Swinging London, they had come up with enough
material for a double album. Back in London, they resumed work at
Abbey Road and set about developing Apple Corps, a company that
was to handle all their collective interests. As McCartney said,
it was to be 'a controlled weirdness . . . a kind of western
communism'.
Apple Records launched with a bang on August 11, with Hey
Jude, one of the finest Beatles singles. Yet, despite this
testament to oneness, The Beatles were starting to come apart at
the seams.
If the demands of running a business weren't enough to contend
with, John's relationship with Yoko Ono (who was now present at
most of their recording sessions) was another source of friction,
which was to boil over during the making of the new album,
officially called The Beatles, but more usually known as The
White Album.
Weeks of tension culminated with the walkout of Ringo, who was
of course persuaded to re-join, though the bad vibes refused to go
away. The album however was a fascinating display of the different
facets of the group, often in the form of solo performances backed
by the other three. As well as rockers such as Back In The USSR
and Helter Skelter, The White Album was stuffed full
of more reflective gems like Dear Prudence, Julia
and Blackbird, not to mention the complete one-off, Happiness
Is A Warm Gun.
The recording of The White Album was such a lengthy
bad-tempered affair that it left the group completely exhausted
musically and close to breaking point. When the band reconvened in
January 1969 the idea of returning to live performance was seen as
a panacea for the group's ills.
Various exotic venues were
suggested before they settled on the idea of filming themselves
rehearsing and recording a 'live' album/film, to be called Get
Back, in a freezing film studio in Twickenham. The sessions
were a disaster, with McCartney and Harrison at each other's
throats, while the beatific John and Yoko looked on
dispassionately. Not even Ringo's good-natured humour could stop
the rot.
Fed up, Harrison walked out and the sessions ended in chaos.
When everyone had calmed down, they returned to their Apple
headquarters at Savile Row in the hope of better vibes, but it was
obvious that the magic had gone.
They struggled on with a mixed
bag of material, enlivened as ever by some great songs, as well as
the presence of organist Billy Preston. It was to be over a year,
however, before the proceedings, edited down and controversially
overdubbed by Phil Spector, was to reach the shops as the farewell
album, Let It Be (1970).
However, January did produce one legendary performance, on the
rooftop of Apple, to the delight of passers-by. The band gave it
their best shot, until the arrival of the Blue Meanies put an end
to the proceedings. It was to be the last live Beatles show ever
culminating in John's comment, "I'd like to say thank you on
behalf of the group and ourselves, and I hope we've passed the
audition."
The Beatles story was more or less over, but despite the
aggravation they couldn't face bowing out with the shambles of Let
It Be. Later in 1969, George Martin was astonished to get a
phone call from McCartney asking him to produce an album 'the way
we used to do it'. He responded cautiously, but the Abbey Road
sessions proved to be astonishingly fruitful.
Harrison contributed
two of his best songs, Something and Here Comes The Sun,
and there was strong competition from Lennon's Come Together
and from Paul, who contributed most of the 'Long Medley' on the
second side. George Martin's immaculate touch at the controls gave
a glittering sheen to the whole set.
Such a return to form made the band's final break-up, announced
by Paul McCartney on April 10, 1970, seem even more like the end
of an era.
All four Beatles pursued solo careers: John with the Plastic
Ono Band and Imagine albums, followed by a marked
decline and disappearance into domesticity and drink; Paul with
the less acclaimed but more commercially successful Wings;
George
with a handful of albums followed by a steady career as sideman;
and even Ringo was dragged away from the bar to bang out a few
sentimental favourites.
There was regular speculation about a
reunion, but a decade of accumulated resentments and the Byzantine
legal actions that dogged the affairs of Apple made it difficult
to get all four in the same room together.
On December 8, 1980, a blunt report was received by the NYPD:
"Man shot. One West 72nd". When police arrived at New
York's Dakota apartments, they found John Lennon bleeding from
seven bullet wounds; Yoko Ono desperate to save his life; and
murderer, Mark Chapman, 25, calmly reading Catcher in the Rye.
The Beatles catalogue forms perhaps the most important body of
work in popular music. They are the ultimate pop group and one of
the few bands that produce music that is truly universal. Yet at
the heart of the Beatles odyssey is the story of two lads who
became the best of friends and were split up by marriage. It could
be any young man's rite of passage, except that the people
involved happened to be two of the greatest songwriters of the
late twentieth century.
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