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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. 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.
The Beatles built their reputation playing
clubs in Liverpool and Hamburg over a three-year period from 1960, with
Stuart Sutcliffe initially serving as bass player. The core trio of Lennon,
McCartney and Harrison, together since 1958, went through a succession of
drummers, including Pete Best, before asking Starr to join them in 1962.
Manager Brian Epstein moulded them into a professional act, and producer
George Martin guided and developed their recordings, greatly expanding the
group's 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 next year, and by early 1964 became
international stars, leading the "British Invasion" of the United
States pop market. From 1965 onwards, the Beatles produced increasingly
innovative recordings, including the albums Rubber Soul (1965), Revolver
(1966), Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), The Beatles (also known
as the White Album, 1968) and Abbey Road (1969). After their break-up in
1970, they each enjoyed success as solo artists. Lennon was shot and killed
in December 1980, and Harrison died of lung cancer in November 2001.
McCartney and Starr remain musically active.
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.In March 1957, John Lennon,
then aged sixteen, formed a skiffle group with several friends from Quarry
Bank High 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
fifteen-year-old auditioned for Lennon, impressing him with his playing, but
Lennon initially thought Harrison was too young to join them. After a month
of Harrison's persistence, during a second meeting, arranged by McCartney, he
performed the lead guitar part for the instrumental "Raunchy" on
the upper deck of a Liverpool bus, and 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 was
persuaded to purchase 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.They used the name until 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 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,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 until June 1962, and he used them
as Tony Sheridan's backing band on a series of recordings for Polydor
Records.As part of the sessions, the Beatles were signed to Polydor for one
year. 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.
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