Liverpool, Merseyside, England July 6, 1957 16-year old John Lennon meets 15-year old Paul McCartney at a church garden party. Lennon’s band The Quarrymen had just played a set, and Paul had been impressed enough to come up to chat with him. As it turns out, McCartney was a musician, too, and performed a song for Lennon backstage.
Lennon was also impressed, and asked McCartney to join the group as a rhythm guitarist. McCartney said yes. The two quickly got along due to their shared love for American rock and roll.
In February 1958, McCartney invited his buddy George Harrison to watch the band. Harrison loved what he saw, and also wanted in. After impressing the band with his amazing guitar skills, they enlisted him as lead guitarist.
By January 1959, Lennon’s buddies who had formed the original band were out of the picture, and it was just him, Paul, and George. They continued to perform, though, sometimes performing as Johnny and the Moondogs. Whenever they could find a random drummer, they would play a show.
Meanwhile, Lennon had began studying at Liverpool College of Art, and there he met a dude named Stuart Sutcliffe. They became friends, and Sutcliffe joined the band on bass. He was actually the one who convinced the band to change their name to Beatals, yes.
. . spelled that way.
Later they were the Silver Beetles, then the Silver Beatles, and then finally just The Beatles by August of 1960. It was around this time that they got a residency in the famous red-light district of Hamburg, West Germany. They also got a drummer- Pete Best.
For the next three and a half months, the now five-piece band played LOTS of shows in Hamburg. Even though they were all back in Liverpool in early 1961, they’d be back to Hamburg several times over the next couple years. Around that time, Sutcliffe left the band to go back to school and pursue painting, and McCartney took over bass.
Tragically, Sutcliffe would die from a brain hemorrhage the next year. Throughout 1961, the Beatles began to build up a following with the growing Merseybeat movement. A producer named Bert Kaempfert hired The Beatles, now a four-piece, to tour as Tony Sheridan’s backing band for some recordings for Polydor Records.
In November, a local record-store owner and music journalist named Brian Epstein first saw them perform and was extremely impressed. By January 1962, he was their manager, and was trying to get them out of their contract with Bert Kaempfert. By May, they were free of that contract, and Epstein had already been arranging auditions for the Beatles with new record labels.
Epstein and the Beatles were rejected by Columbia Records, HMV, Pye Records, Phillips Records, Oriole Records, and others. The band auditioned for Decca Records, who famously rejected them by telling Epstein that “guitar groups are on the way out” and “the Beatles have no future in show business. ” However, producer George Martin thought otherwise.
He signed the band to EMI’s Parlophone label. As the band began a recording session at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios in June 1962, Martin complained about Best’s drumming, saying it wasn’t the best. I mean, he was Best, but apparently not THE best to Martin.
Ok that was bad. Sorry. Ultimately, the Beatles had politely fired him from the band in August, replacing him with a dude named Ritchie Starkey, aka his stage name Ringo Starr, who had previously played drums for Rory Storm and the Hurricanes.
The band recorded a few songs in September, and of those Martin chose the song “Love Me Do” to be their first single, releasing it on October 5, 1962. McCartney had actually originally written that song when he was 16, so yeah The Beatles first single was written before the Beatles even existed. “Love Me Do” was a success, peaking at number 17 on the Record Retailer chart.
The band made their first television appearance on the regional news show People and Places. By the end of 1962, Epstein had convinced the band to stop swearing and smoking on stage. .
. oh and to dress more professionally on stage. The band had also convinced each other that they’d be better if everyone helped out with not only the singing, but also the songwriting, although it’d mostly just be Lennon and McCartney doing most of the songwriting over the years.
Parlophone released their second single, “Please Please Me,” on January 11, 1963. This one was a bigger hit, reaching number one on both the New Musical Express and Melody Maker charts. On February 11, the Beatles recorded ten songs in one day for their debut LP, also called Please Please Me because it featured the hit single.
Wait, did he say ten songs in one day? Yes, I said ten songs in one day. They recorded them live and knew the songs well.
George Martin was still in shock, saying “I don't know how they do it. We've been recording all day but the longer we go on the better they get. ” Parlophone released the album on March 22, 1963.
By May, Please Please Me had hit the top of the United Kingdom album charts, and stayed there for 30 weeks before being replaced by their next album. Yep, this is when Beatlemania began. Beatlemania describes the insane popularity the Beatles experienced over the next few years, typically symbolized by screaming teenage girls chasing them around.
The bigger they got, the crazier the hysteria and high-pitched screaming by their mostly young fans. Please Please Me had two more huge hits: “From Me to You” and “She Loves You. ” Beatlemania went next level with their second album, With the Beatles, which Parlophone released on November 22, 1963.
It eventually became just the second album in the United Kingdom to sell a million copies, and stayed at the top of the album charts for 21 weeks. Though the album had no singles, it was even more critically acclaimed than their debut album, and also featured Harrison’s first recorded solo composition. Oh yeah, and this was the album that described them as the “fabulous foursome” in the liner notes.
And thus, the Fab Four nickname was born. While The Beatles were huge in Europe, that success didn’t quite translate to the United States. But that changed with their single “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” which Capitol Records released in the United States the day after Christmas of 1963.
The song was the band’s first American number 1 hit. In January, Vee-Jay released Introducing. .
. The Beatles and Capitol released both Meet the Beatles! and Twist and Shout in North America.
These three albums had stuff from the Beatles first two albums but also some other gems. And then, on February 9, 1964. .
. one of the most famous television performances in history. (screaming) The Beatles made their American television debut on The Ed Sullivan Show to a screaming, wild crowd.
Around 73 million people, or around 45% of all American television viewers, saw the live performance. It was clear that Beatlemania had crossed the Atlantic ocean and soon other British bands- like The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, and The Zombies -would as well in what became known as the British Invasion. One thing I should probably mention before we go on- most young Americans didn’t have haircuts like this in early 1964.
This hairstyle ending up becoming a subtle symbol of rebellion for a growing youth culture. Capitol suddenly realized they had a sensation on their hands, and in the spring hurried to throw together another release to make some money, The Beatles’ Second Album, even though it was not technically their second album, and in fact their third album released in the United States. The label also quickly released The Beatles’ Long Tall Sally exclusively in Canada.
All of these thrown together albums were hugely successful. By April, the Beatles had 14- that’s right, 14- songs on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart all at once. Around that time, United Artists Records gave the Beatles a deal to make three movies.
Yep, now the Beatles were actors. The first movie was a musical comedy based off what they were really experiencing called A Hard Day’s Night, and was a smash hit, of course. The soundtrack for the film was officially their third studio album, released on July 10, 1964.
The soundtrack had four singles: the title track, “I’ll Cry Instead,” “And I Love Her,” and even the instrumental version of “And I Love Her. ” And then Capitol Records was like, “hey we need some more money, we haven’t released a Beatles album for a couple months,” and threw some more songs together to release Something New on July 20, 1964. The band toured heavily that summer, playing 37 shows over 27 days around the world.
In August, the Beatles began a big tour of North America. It was on that tour they got to meet Bob Dylan, and he introduced them to his friend cannabis. Dylan ended up having a big influence on the band’s later music.
Also on that tour, the band found themselves confronting racial segregation in the American South. They threatened to not play a show in Jacksonville, Florida, after hearing the audience would be segregated, and due to this, city officials gave in and agreed to allow an integrated audience. On December 4, Parlophone released Beatles for Sale, their fourth studio album.
As the name of the album suggests, it kind of showed the rising conflict between the pressure to keep selling records and keep up their creativity. It actually featured songs not about love on it, and even offered a bit of cynicism. Still, it instantly hit number one on the UK albums chart.
Capitol released Beatles ‘65 a couple weeks later, which featured most of the songs off Beatles for Sale. In April 1965, John Lennon and his wife Cynthia and George Harrison and his girlfriend Pattie Boyd were hanging out with George’s dentist, John Riley. Riley apparently secretly added LSD to their coffee.
Boy was that a surprise trip for the bunch. Regardless, after this Lennon and Harrison would be regular users of the drug, and later Starr and McCartney also tried it with them. You’ll notice that 1965 marks a more dramatic beginning of a shift in their music, although they never would abandon making just flat-out darn catchy songs.
On June 14 of that year, Capitol Records released another compilation to continue cashing in in North America called Beatles VI (6), even though it was their 7th Beatles release. Uahhh That same month, Queen Elizabeth sparked controversy by appointing all four Beatles Members of the Order of the British Empire. Later that summer, the band starred in their second film, Help!
. The soundtrack to that film would be their fifth studio album, released on August 6, 1965. Although the whole album is a classic that gots tons of perfect reviews, the three biggest hits off it were the title track, “Ticket to Ride,” and “Yesterday.
” According to the Guiness Book of World Records, “Yesterday” remains the most covered song in history. The movie was another comedy that followed the group as they struggled to record a new album, all while logically protecting Ringo from a cult and a pair of mad scientists. The band toured regularly promoting the album, playing one of their most famous shows on August 15 at New York’s Shea Stadium to a record crowd of 55,600 people.
In September, ABC began airing a Saturday morning cartoon about the band. It was the first weekly show to feature animated versions of real, living people. In October, George Martin and the band decided that, instead of just making albums that were really just a collection of singles, they were going to focus on making a complete album.
Also, for the first time in their entire careers, they were able to take their time recording, free of tour, radio, or film commitments. The result was a masterpiece, Rubber Soul, their sixth studio album released on December 3, 1965. Critics praised the album, of course, saying it marked a new threshold of complexity and maturity of the band’s sound.
Later, Lennon joked this was “the pot album,” as apparently the band was regularly smoking pot while recording it. Many fans say this explains the dramatic change of direction of Rubber Soul, an album that was folkier, featured new instruments, brighter guitar tones, and complex arrangements. Some of the bigger hits on the album included “We Can Work It Out,” Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown),” “Nowhere Man,” and “Michelle.
” In March 1966, The Evening Standard, a London-based newspaper, published an interview with John Lennon. Lennon would later cause quite a bit of controversy when he said “We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first – rock 'n' roll or Christianity. ” Well those words would haunt the band throughout the rest of the year.
Lennon implying the Beatles were more popular than Jesus, even though the comment was taken out of context, led to protests, death threats, and the public burning of the bands’ albums. To add to their controversy, on June 20, Capitol released another compilation album called Yesterday and Today with this controversial cover. Despite this, hundreds of thousands of screaming fans continued to come to their shows.
In fact, those screaming fans were so loud that the band had a hard time hearing themselves playing. This, combined with the fact they’d become a bit bored with the routine of performing live and that these live shows were no longer about the music anyway, influenced them to decide to make their tour for their upcoming album, Revolver, their last tour ever. Revolver, released on August 5, 1966 and the bands’ seventh studio album, continued the experimental trend that Rubber Soul started.
It was another masterpiece, featuring a dive into psychedelic rock and again featuring complex arrangements that pushed popular music forward in a completely new direction. Basically, the Beatles were at the top of their game and everyone else was playing catch up. Many music critics have said it is literally the greatest album of all time.
The cover of Revolver was even radically different. Two of the bigger hits on the album were “Eleanor Rigby” and “Paperback Writer” which even had a music video made for it. It was one of the earliest music videos.
The Beatles played their last concert before a paying audience at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park on August 29th, 1966. After four years of nonstop touring and more than 1,400 concerts, they were now a studio band. They went back to Abbey Road Studios in November, and this time took their own sweet time recording, wanting to make their most experimental and well produced record yet.
And take their time they did, spending over 700 hours in the studio, 55 hours of that on just one song: “Strawberry Fields Forever. ” However, that song didn’t make the cut for what would become their eighth studio album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, released on May 26, 1967.
To say this was another masterpiece is almost an understatement. Remember how I said that many music critics said Revolver is the greatest album of all time? Well many music critics also have said Sgt.
Pepper’s is the greatest album of all time. The album’s cover is certainly among the most famous of all time. It was the first album to print the lyrics of every song in the artwork.
It might have single-handedly both started progressive rock and the entire 1960s counterculture movement. It made the concept album popular. Simply put, it literally changed pop music forever.
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band remains the United Kingdom's best-selling studio album. On June 25, 1967, the Beatles performed a new single, “All You Need Is Love,” to, you know, just 350 million people via the first-ever live global television link.
That song ended up becoming a flower power anthem, by the way, sung by hippies at Vietnam War protests around the world. Tragically, on August 27, the band received news that their manager, Brian Epstein, had died of a drug overdose at the young age of 32. This devastated the band, and seriously made their future uncertain.
In fact, they were so lost after Epstein’s death that they made a crappy movie where they filmed themselves touring the country in a psychedelic bus with a random cast of strange characters. Well, that film, called Magical Mystery Tour, was the first project the Beatles ever did that critics completely trashed, calling it “blatant rubbish” and a “witless home movie. ” However, the soundtrack to the film of the same name, released on November 27, 1967, was praised by critics and another commercial success.
Meanwhile, the band had been spending more and more time following the guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. In February 1968, they even traveled to Rishikesh, India to hang out with him and attend his seminars on Transcendental Meditation. Starr and McCartney didn’t stay there as long as Lennon and Harrison, though, and this ultimately caused some tension in the band.
In the spring, Lennon came back to London and began to heavily use more damaging drugs like heroin, and left his wife Cynthia for his new infatuation, a young artist named Yoko Ono. For the next two years, Yoko Ono was always by his side, to a point where it even further added tension to the band. Still, on May 14, 1968, Lennon and McCartney appeared on The Tonight Show to announce their new multimedia company called Apple Corps (get it, like apple core?
). They launched the conglomerate to help new artists, but ultimately its record label, Apple Records, would be just a creative outlet for the Beatles. On July 17, a somewhat trippy animated film featuring the band called Yellow Submarine, named after their previously released song, premiered at theaters in London.
In October, the band finished up recording a huge batch of new songs, so huge that they would make up a double album. . .
their only double album. . .
their only double album, in fact. Simply called The Beatles, their ninth studio album would eventually just be known as The White Album because. .
. well look at it. It had no graphics or text other than the band’s name.
They released it on their own label on November 22, 1968. The recording process was again long and drawn out, and the members of the band increasingly found themselves getting annoyed with each other, even showing up on different days to record different parts. In fact, just 16 of the album’s 30 songs have all four band members performing.
Even though there were no official singles off the album, two of the bigger hits on it included “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” and “While My Guitar Gently Weeps. ” It was another masterpiece praised by most critics, by the way. Oh, and of course eventually sold millions.
Not until January 13, 1969, did they release the soundtrack to the movie released the previous year, Yellow Submarine. It was their tenth studio album, and only got mixed reviews, mostly because the Beatles kind of just threw some leftover songs on it. On Billboard’s album chart, the Yellow Submarine soundtrack reached number 2, just behind The White Album which held at the number one position.
Around that time, McCartney really wanted the Beatles to start playing live again, believing all this studio work was hurting the band’s chemistry. The rest of the band kind of agreed and went along with the idea of touring again. However, rehearsals often did not go well.
Sure, Yoko Ono famously got a lot of the blame for distracting Lennon, but all four of the Beatles were distracted. January 1969 was actually a busy month for the band. In addition to rehearsals, they started recording some songs how they used to in the early years.
On January 30, 1969, the band, along with soul musician Billy Preston, played a surprise rooftop concert, right on top of the Apple headquarters in London. The 42-minute set would be the last public performance by the Beatles. Yep, they soon abandoned the idea of touring again.
In late February, they decided to record a new batch of songs the way they recorded the White Album. Recording sessions would occur sporadically over the next few months. Preston often joined them, becoming another fifth Beatle.
As the months went on, it was clear the band was drifting further and further apart. The last time that all four members worked together under the same roof was recording their song “The End,” on August 18, 1969. The end?
Huh, yeah that fits. By the end of 1969, each member already had their own solo projects going in full swing. Lennon was first to officially leave the band, privately telling theme on September 20.
But the general public didn’t know this. Six days later, the band released their eleventh studio album, Abbey Road, which had this legendary cover, where they were crossing. .
. ya know. .
. Abbey Road. .
. taken just outside Abbey Road Studios. The album was another huge success, but got mixed reviews from critics.
George Harrison finally got some praise for this one with the two hits he wrote: “Something” and “Here Comes the Sun. ” Within three months, Abbey Road had sold 4 million copies. But by that time, the remaining three members barely saw each other.
They did have a bunch of recordings from before the Abbey Road sessions they wanted to release, though. They recorded one last song together in January called “I Me Mine. ” The legendary producer Phil Spector came in to help that spring put a new album together.
It would be their last. On April 10, 1970, the Beatles formally announced their breakup. A month later, they released their twelfth and final studio album, Let It Be.
They also released a documentary of the same name a few days later. That film followed them around during their struggles in the final months of the band, with a highlight being footage of their famous rooftop concert from the previous January. Let It Be was a commercial success, with the hit ballads “The Long and Winding Road” and the title track.
But this one definitely got some more negative reviews. News of the breakup of the Beatles devastated fans around the world. But fortunately for them, all four of them had thriving careers as solo artists and with other bands.
All of them had hits at some point or another, but the releases of the Beatles would always overshadow their work. An insane fan murdered John Lennon outside of his apartment building on December 8, 1980. George Harrison died from lung cancer on November 29, 2001.
Paul McCartney died in 1966. Just kidding. He’s still kicking it.
In fact, both he and Ringo Starr are still performing and releasing music, and recently reunited to record a song that John Lennon wrote the last year of his life and played a couple songs live together last summer in Los Angeles. Though there were many Beatles compilations and films released in the decades since the band broke up, a couple big ones of note were The Beatles Anthology and 1. The Beatles Anthology was a television documentary, set of double albums, and a book that examined the history of the band in way more depth than this video has.
Oh, and McCartney, Harrison, and Starr were involved with the whole process. 1 was a compilation of all the band’s number one singles. It came out November 13, 2000, and ended up being the best-selling album of the decade, eventually selling more than 31 million copies.
George Harrison: We just wanted to get guitars, get in a band, 'cause we really didn't have proper jobs at the time. (laughs) Anyway, it sort of turned out fine, and uh it's got a little bit bigger than any of us expected. So of course The Beatles were inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
But also. . .
all four individual members have been inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Today, the Beatles are widely considered to be the most influential band of all time. They defined an entire generation, and transformed popular music forever.
Former Rolling Stone editor Robert Greenfield wrote: “in the form of popular music, no one will ever be more revolutionary, more creative and more distinctive. ” The band even changed how people LISTEN to music. What’s particularly impressive about the Beatles is that were both critically acclaimed and extremely popular.
Critics universally adored them, and oh they also just happened to be the best-selling musicians in the history of the world, selling more than 800 million albums worldwide. Probably no other musicians will ever accomplish what they accomplished. They are simply the greatest band of all time.
Don’t believe me? Google “greatest band of all time” and see what comes up. This video is sponsored by Skillshare, an online learning community for creatives, where millions come together to take the next step in their creative journey.
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Thanks to Skillshare for sponsoring this video. So, who was the true “Fifth Beatle? ” Who is your favorite Beatle?
What did I leave out? Obviously I can’t include everything in these videos so I do appreciate the additional information. Also, look for more of these in 2020.
And I’ve decided I’m going to commit to release at least one video a month on this channel. Thanks for watching everybody!
