The Beatles
From Infocentral
In July 1966, when the Beatles toured the Philippines, they unintentionally snubbed the nation's first lady, Imelda Marcos, who had expected the group to attend a breakfast reception at the Presidential Palace.<ref name="Spitzp619"> Spitz 2005. p619</ref> When presented with the invitation, Brian Epstein politely declined on behalf of the group, as it had never been the group's policy to accept such "official" invitations.<ref name="Spitzp620"> Spitz 2005. p620</ref> The group soon found that the Marcos regime was unaccustomed to accepting "no" for an answer. After the 'snub' was broadcast on Philippine television and radio, all of the Beatles' police protection disappeared. The group and their entourage had to make their way to Manila airport on their own. At the airport, roadie Mal Evans was beaten and kicked, and the band members were pushed and jostled about by a hostile crowd.<ref name="Spitzp623"> Spitz 2005. p623</ref> Once the group boarded the plane, Epstein and Evans were ordered off, and Evans said, "Tell my wife that I love her."<ref name="Spitzp624"> Spitz 2005. p624</ref> Epstein was forced to give back all the money that the band had earned while they were there before being allowed back on the plane.<ref name="Spitzp625"> Spitz 2005. p625</ref>
Almost as soon as they returned from the Philippines, an earlier comment by Lennon made in March that year launched a backlash against the Beatles from religious and social conservatives in the United States. In an interview with British reporter Maureen Cleave,<ref>"The John Lennon I Knew" from the Telegraph, 5 October 2006. Retrieved: 29 January 2007 </ref> Lennon had offered his opinion that Christianity was dying and that the Beatles were "more popular than Jesus now."<ref>Cleave, Maureen (1966). "How Does a Beatle Live? John Lennon Lives Like This". London Evening Standard 4 March 1966. Retrieved: 29 January 2007 </ref> Afterwards, a radio station in Birmingham, Alabama, ran a story on burning Beatles records, in what was considered to be a joke. However, many people affiliated with rural churches in the American South started taking the suggestion seriously. Towns across the United States and South Africa started to burn Beatles records in protest. Attempting to make light of the incident, McCartney said, "They've got to buy them before they can burn them." Under tremendous pressure from the American media, Lennon apologised for his remarks at a press conference in Chicago on August 11, the eve of the first performance of what turned out to be their final tour.<ref name="MilesPage293-295"> Miles 1998. pp293-295.</ref>
The group's two-year series of Capitol compilations also took a strange twist in the United States when one of their publicity shots, used for a Yesterday and Today album and a poster promoting the UK release of "Paperback Writer", created an uproar, as it featured the band draped in meat and plastic dolls. Thousands of these copies had to be withdrawn. Years later, the cover shot was linked with the group's interest in German expressionism.<ref name="MilesPage293-295"> Miles 1998. pp293-295.</ref>
Elvis Presley disapproved of the Beatles's anti-war activism and open use of drugs, later asking President Nixon to ban all four members of the group from entering the United States. Peter Guralnick writes, "The Beatles, Elvis said, [...] had been a focal point for anti-Americanism. They had come to this country, made their money, then gone back to England where they fomented anti-American feeling."<ref>Peter Guralnick, Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley, 420.</ref> Guralnick adds, "Presley indicated that he is of the opinion that the Beatles laid the groundwork for many of the problems we are having with young people by their filthy unkempt appearances and suggestive music while entertaining in this country during the early and middle 1960s."<ref>Guralnick, Careless Love, p.426. On Presley badmouthing the Beatles to President Nixon, see also Geoffrey Giuliano and Vmda Devi, Glass Onion: The Beatles in Their Own Words-Exclusive Interviews With John, Paul, George, Ringo and Their Inner Circle (1999).</ref> Despite Elvis' remarks, Lennon still had some positive feeling towards him: "Before Elvis, there was nothing."<ref> CNN.com Elvis is still everywhere August 16, 2002. [1]</ref>
Contents |
The studio years
In April 1966, the group began recording what would be their most ambitious album to date, Revolver. During the recording sessions for the album, tape looping and early sampling were introduced in a complex mix of ballad, R&B, soul and world music.
The Beatles performed their last concert before paying fans at Candlestick Park in San Francisco on 29 August 1966.<ref name="MilesPage293-295"> Miles 1998. pp293-295.</ref> McCartney asked Tony Barrow to tape the event, but the 30-minute tape he used ran out halfway through the last song. The concert lasted a little under 35 minutes.<ref>Barrow, Tony. John, Paul, George, Ringo & Me. ISBN 1-86200-238-X</ref>
From then on, the Beatles concentrated on recording. Less than seven months after recording Revolver, the Beatles returned to Abbey Road Studios on 24 November 1966 to begin the 129-day recording sessions for their eighth album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, released on 1 June 1967.
On 25 June 1967, the Beatles became the first band globally transmitted on television—before an estimated 400 million people worldwide. The band appeared in a segment within the first-ever worldwide TV satellite hook-up, a show titled Our World. The Beatles were transmitted live from Abbey Road Studios, and their new song "All You Need Is Love" was recorded live during the show.
The band's business affairs began to unravel after manager Brian Epstein died of an accidental prescription drug overdose on 27 August 1967 at the age of 32. At the end of 1967, they received their first major negative press in the UK with disparaging reviews of their surrealistic TV film Magical Mystery Tour.<ref>Magical Mystery TourRetrieved: 29 January 2007 </ref> Part of the criticism arose because colour was an integral part of the film, but in 1967 few viewers in the UK had colour televisions. The film's soundtrack, which features one of the Beatles' few instrumental tracks ("Flying"), was released in the United Kingdom as a double EP, and in the United States as a full LP (the LP is now the official version).
The group spent the early part of 1968 in Rishikesh, Uttar Pradesh, India, studying transcendental meditation with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.<ref name="MilesPage397"> Miles 1998. p397</ref> Upon their return, Lennon and McCartney went to New York to announce the formation of Apple Corps. The middle of 1968 saw the band busy recording the double album The Beatles, popularly known as The White Album because of its plain white cover. These sessions saw deep divisions opening within the band, with Starr temporarily walking out. The band carried on, with McCartney recording the drums on the songs "Martha My Dear", "Wild Honey Pie", "Dear Prudence" and "Back in the USSR". Among the other causes of dissension were that Lennon's new girlfriend, Yoko Ono, was at his side through almost all of the sessions, and that the others felt that McCartney was becoming too dominating.<ref>Spitz 2005. pp777–779. </ref> Internal divisions within the band had been a small but growing problem during their early years; most notably, this was reflected in the difficulty that George Harrison experienced in getting his own songs onto Beatles albums.
On the business side, McCartney wanted Lee Eastman, the father of his then-girlfriend Linda Eastman, to manage the Beatles, but the other members wanted New York manager Allen Klein. All past Beatles' decisions had been unanimous, but this time the four could not agree. Lennon, Harrison and Starr felt the Eastmans would put McCartney's interests before those of the group. In 1971 it was discovered that Klein, who had been appointed manager, had stolen £5 million from the Beatles' holdings. Years later, during the Anthology interviews, McCartney said of this time, "Looking back, I can understand why they would feel that he [Lee Eastman] was biased against them."
Their final live performance was on the rooftop of the Apple building in Savile Row, London, on 30 January 1969, the next-to-last day of the difficult Get Back sessions. Most of the performance was filmed and later included in the film Let It Be. While the band was playing, the local police were called because of complaints about the noise. Although the group was simply asked to end their performance, the band members later remarked in the Anthology video that they were disappointed they were not arrested — pointing out that the police hauling the band members off in handcuffs would have been "an appropriate ending" for the film.
The Beatles recorded their final album, Abbey Road, in the summer of 1969. The completion of the song "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" for the album on 20 August was the last time all four Beatles were together in the same studio.
Their final new song was Harrison's "I Me Mine", recorded 3 January 1970 and released on the Let It Be album. It was recorded without Lennon, who was in Denmark when the song was recorded.<ref>Mark Lewisohn. The Beatles Box Set booklet</ref>
Breakup
Template:Main John Lennon announced his departure to the rest of the group on 20 September 1969 but agreed that no announcement was to be publicly made until a number of legal matters were resolved.
In March 1970 the Get Back session tapes were given to American producer Phil Spector, who had produced Lennon's solo single "Instant Karma!". Spector's "Wall of Sound" production values went against the original intent of the record, which had been to record a stripped-down live performance. McCartney was deeply dissatisfied with Spector's treatment of "The Long and Winding Road", and unsuccessfully attempted to halt release of Spector's version of the song. McCartney publicly announced the break-up on 10 April 1970, a week before releasing his first solo album, McCartney. Pre-release copies included a press release with a self-written interview explaining the end of the Beatles and his hopes for the future.<ref name="Spitzp853"> Spitz 2005. p853</ref> On 8 May 1970, the Spector-produced version of Get Back was released as Let It Be, followed by the documentary film of the same name. The Beatles' partnership was finally dissolved in 1975.<ref>The Beatles' partnership was legally dissolved in 1975bbc.co.uk - Retrieved: 26 January 2007 </ref>
1970–present: After The Beatles
Shortly before and after the official dissolution of the group, all four Beatles released solo albums, including Lennon's John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, McCartney's McCartney, Starr's Sentimental Journey, and Harrison's All Things Must Pass. Some of their albums featured contributions by other former Beatles; Starr's Ringo (1973) was the only one to include compositions and performances by all four, albeit on separate songs.
Other than an unreleased jam session in 1974 (later bootlegged as A Toot and a Snore in '74), Lennon and McCartney never recorded together again.
In the wake of the expiration in 1975 of the Beatles' contract with EMI-Capitol, the American Capitol label, rushing to cash in on its vast Beatles holdings and freed from the group's creative control, released five LPs: Rock 'n' Roll Music (a compilation of their more uptempo numbers), The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl (containing portions of two unreleased shows at the Hollywood Bowl), Love Songs (a compilation of their slower numbers), Rarities (a compilation of tracks that either had never been released in the U.S. or had gone out of print), and Reel Music (a compilation of songs from their films). There was also a non-Capitol-EMI release of a show from the group's early days at the Star Club in Hamburg captured on a poor-quality tape. Of all these post-breakup LPs, only the Hollywood Bowl LP had the approval of the group members. Upon the American release of the original British CDs in 1986, these post-breakup Capitol American compilation LPs were deleted from the Capitol catalogue.
John Lennon was shot and killed by Mark David Chapman on 8 December 1980 in New York City. Shortly afterward, in 1981, the three surviving Beatles reunited to record "All Those Years Ago", released as a George Harrison solo single. Its original lyrics had been rewritten as a tribute to Lennon.
The BBC has a large collection of Beatles recordings, mostly comprising original studio sessions from 1963 to 1968. Much of this material formed the basis for a 1988 radio documentary series The Beeb's Lost Beatles Tapes. In 1989, many outtakes from the Beatles sessions appeared on the radio series The Lost Lennon Tapes. Later, in 1994, the best of the BBC sessions were given an official EMI release on Live at the BBC.
In 1988 the Beatles were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a group (not as individual performers) during their first year of eligibility.<ref>Hall of FameRetrieved: 29 January 2007 </ref> On the night of their induction, Harrison and Starr appeared to accept their award along with Lennon's widow Yoko Ono and his two sons. McCartney stayed away, issuing a press release citing "unresolved difficulties" with Harrison, Starr, and Lennon's estate. Solo Beatles later inducted were Lennon in 1994, McCartney in 1999 and Harrison in 2004.
George Harrison died of cancer on 29 November 2001.
More recently, in 2006, George Martin and his son Giles Martin remixed original Beatles recordings to create a soundtrack to accompany Cirque du Soleil's theatrical production Love.
Musical evolution
The Beatles' constant demands to create new sounds on every new recording, combined with George Martin's arranging abilities and the studio expertise of EMI staff engineers such as Norman Smith, Ken Townshend and Geoff Emerick, all played significant parts in the innovative sounds of the albums Rubber Soul (1965), Revolver (1966) and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967).
The Beatles continued to absorb influences long after their initial success, often finding new musical and lyrical avenues by listening to their contemporaries. Among those influences were Bob Dylan, who influenced songs such as "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" and "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)".<ref>GeocitiesRetrieved: 29 January 2007 </ref> Other contemporary influences included the Byrds and the Beach Boys, whose album Pet Sounds was a favourite of McCartney's.<ref name="Milesp280-281"> Miles 1998. pp280–281.</ref>
Along with studio tricks such as sound effects, unconventional microphone placements, tape loops, double tracking and vari-speed recording, the Beatles began to augment their recordings with instruments that were unconventional for rock music at the time. These included string and brass ensembles as well as Indian instruments such as the sitar and the swarmandel. They also used early electronic instruments such as the Mellotron, with which McCartney supplied the flute voices on the intro to "Strawberry Fields Forever", and the ondioline, an electronic keyboard that created the unusual oboe-like sound on "Baby You're a Rich Man".
Beginning with the use of a string quartet (arranged by George Martin with input from McCartney) on "Yesterday" in 1965, the Beatles pioneered a modern form of art song, exemplified by the double-quartet string arrangement on "Eleanor Rigby" (1966), "Here, There and Everywhere" (1966) and "She's Leaving Home" (1967). A televised performance of Bach's Brandenberg Concerto No. 2 directly inspired McCartney's use of a piccolo trumpet on the arrangement of "Penny Lane". The Beatles moved towards psychedelia with "Rain" and "Tomorrow Never Knows" from 1966, and "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "I Am the Walrus" from 1967.
Influence on popular culture
Lifestyle
The Beatles' lifestyles were greatly altered by their success and the income they earned.Template:Specify The availability of the first oral contraceptive and illegal drugs changed many people's opinions — including the Beatles' — about life, marriage, and sexual relationships.<ref name="MilesPage142"> Miles 1998. p142</ref>
Recreational drug use
In Hamburg, the Beatles used "prellies" (Preludin) both recreationally and to maintain their energy through all-night performances.<ref name="MilesPage66-67"> Miles 1998. pp66–67.</ref> McCartney would usually take one, but Lennon would often take four or five.<ref name="MilesPage66-67"/> Bob Dylan introduced them to cannabis during a 1964 visit to New York.<ref name="MilesPage185"> Miles 1998. p185</ref> McCartney remembered them all getting "very high" and giggling.<ref name="MilesPage188-189"> Miles 1998. pp188–189</ref> The Beatles occasionally smoked a spliff in the car on the way to the studio during the filming of Help!, which often made them forget their lines.<ref name="Milesp198"> Miles 1998. p198.</ref>
In April 1965, Lennon and Harrison were introduced to LSD by an acquaintance, dentist John Riley.<ref>Independent.co.ukRetrieved: 29 January 2007 </ref> Lennon in particular became an avid "tripper", claiming in a 1970 interview in Rolling Stone to have taken LSD hundreds of times. McCartney was more reluctant to try the drug, but finally did so in 1966 and was the first Beatle to talk about it in the press.
The Beatles added their names to an advertisement in The Times, on 24 July 1967, which asked for the legalisation of cannabis, the release of all prisoners imprisoned because of possession, and research into marijuana's medical uses. The advertisement was sponsored by a group called Soma, and was signed by 65 people, including Brian Epstein, Graham Greene, R.D. Laing, 15 doctors, and two MPs.<ref name="Tokyo">Paul McCartney’s arrest in JapanRetrieved: 29 January 2007 </ref> On a sailing trip to Greece, in 1967, the whole band sat around on the boat and took acid.<ref name="MilesPage379"> Miles 1998. p379</ref>
Meditation
On 24 August 1967, the Beatles met the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at the London Hilton, and a few days later went to Bangor, in North Wales, to attend a weekend 'initiation' conference.<ref>Beatles in Bangor bbc.co.uk 16 November, 2006. Retrieved: 29 January 2007 </ref> There, the Maharishi gave each of them a mantra.<ref name="MilesPage396"> Miles 1998. p396</ref> Their time in early 1968 at the Maharishi's ashram in India was highly productive from a musical standpoint, as practically all of the songs that would later be recorded for The White Album and Abbey Road were composed there by Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison.<ref name="MilesPage397"> Miles 1998. p397 BY DARKEVANGILE</ref>
Discography
Official CD catalogue
In 1987, EMI released all 12 of the Beatles' studio albums — as originally released in the UK — on CD worldwide. (North American releases were on EMI's American subsidiary Capitol Records). It was a considered decision by Apple Corps to standardise the Beatles catalogue throughout the world. Because there were tracks that had been released in the UK on singles and EPs that had not been released on the original UK albums, in order for all their recordings to be available on CD it was necessary to create three further CDs that would contain the missing tracks.
One CD was of a 1967 US compilation album that featured the 6-track 1967 UK EP Magical Mystery Tour and the various singles released in that year. The other two CDs were new compilations that gathered together all the other singles, EP tracks and recordings from 1962–1970 that had not been issued on the original British studio albums.
- Magical Mystery Tour - 8 August 1987<ref>LP version originally released in the United States on 27 November 1967.</ref>
- Past Masters, Volume One - 7 March 1988
- Past Masters, Volume Two - 7 March 1988
According to EMI and the Guinness Book of Records, the Beatles have sold in excess of one billion units (1,010,000,000, including cassettes, records, CDs and bootlegs).
Beginning in 2004, the US album configurations were released as a series of box sets from Capitol Records (The Capitol Albums, Volume 1 & Volume 2); these included both stereo and mono versions based on the mixes that were prepared for vinyl at the time of their original 1960s releases.
Song catalogue
Template:Main In 1963 Lennon and McCartney agreed to assign their song publishing rights to Northern Songs, a company created by music publisher Dick James. The company was administered by James' own company Dick James Music. Northern Songs went public in 1965, with Lennon and McCartney each holding 15% of the company's shares whilst Dick James and the company's chairman, Charles Silver, held a controlling 37.5%. In 1969, following a failed attempt by Lennon and McCartney to buy the company, James and Silver sold Northern Songs to British TV company Associated TeleVision (ATV), from which Lennon and McCartney received stock.
In 1985, after a short period in which the parent company was owned by Australian business magnate Robert Holmes à Court, ATV Music was sold to Michael Jackson for a reported $47 million (trumping a joint bid by McCartney and Yoko Ono), including the publishing rights to over 200 songs composed by Lennon and McCartney.
A decade later Jackson and Sony merged its music publishing businesses. Since 1995, Jackson and Sony/ATV Music Publishing have jointly owned most of the Lennon-McCartney songs recorded by the Beatles. Sony later reported that Jackson had used his share of their co-owned Beatles' catalogue as collateral for a loan from the music company. Meanwhile, Lennon's estate and McCartney still receive their respective songwriter shares of the royalties. (Despite his ownership of most of the Lennon-McCartney publishing, Jackson has only recorded one Lennon-McCartney composition himself, "Come Together" which was featured in his film Moonwalker.)
Although the Jackson-Sony catalogue includes most of The Beatles' greatest hits, four of their earliest songs had been published by one of EMI's publishing companies prior to Lennon and McCartney signing with Dick James — and McCartney later succeeded in personally acquiring the publishing rights to "Love Me Do", "Please Please Me", "P.S. I Love You" and "Ask Me Why" from EMI.
Harrison and Starr did not renew their songwriting contracts with Northern Songs in 1968, signing with Apple Publishing instead. Harrison later created Harrisongs, his own company which still owns the rights to his post-1967 songs such as "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and "Something". Starr also created his own company, called Startling Music. It holds the rights to his two post-1967 songs recorded by the Beatles, "Don't Pass Me By" and "Octopus's Garden".
Hit singles
Audio samples
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On film
The Beatles appeared in several films, all of which featured associated soundtrack albums.
The band played themselves in two films directed by Richard Lester, A Hard Day's Night (1964) and Help! (1965). The group produced and starred in the hour-long television movie Magical Mystery Tour (1967), while the documentary Let It Be (released 1970) followed the recording sessions for the Get Back project in early 1969. In addition, the psychedelic animated film Yellow Submarine (1968) followed the adventures of a cartoon version of the band; the members did not provide their own voices, appearing only in a brief live-action epilogue.
Other projects
Anthology
Love
Instrumentation
- Rickenbacker, Gretsch, Epiphone, Gibson, Fender, and C.F. Martin & Company guitars
- Höfner, Fender and Rickenbacker basses
- Vox, Fender, and Selmer amplifiers
- Premier and Ludwig drums
- Zildjian cymbals
- Steinway, and Blüthner pianos
- Hammond, Vox and Lowrey electric organs
- Fender Rhodes, Wurlitzer, and Hohner Pianet electric pianos
- Moog Modular synthesiser
- Mellotron Polyphonic Keyboard
- Neumann, AKG, and STC microphones
Notes
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References
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Further reading
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- Dimery, Martin. Being John Lennon. SAF books, 2002. ISBN 0-946719-43-8.
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- Kirchherr, Astrid & Voormann, Klaus. Hamburg Days. Genesis Publications, 1999. ISBN 0-904351-73-4. [Chronicals The Beatles early years spent performing at Hamburg's Kaiserkeller, Top Ten Club, and the Star Club, 1960-1962. With Foreword by George Harrison and Afterword by Paul McCartney.]
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- Alan J. Porter Before They Were Beatles: The Early Years 1956–1960. Xlibris. ISBN 1-4134-3056-2.
- Ryan, Kevin, and Brian Kehew. Recording the Beatles: The Studio Equipment and Techniques Used to Create Their Classic Albums. Houston: Curvebender Publishing, 2006. ISBN 0-9785200-0-9.
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- Turner, Steve. A Hard Day's Write. 3rd ed. New York: Harper Paperbacks, 2005. ISBN 0-06-084409-4. [Discusses the inspiration for or interprets every Beatles song.]
See also
- The Beatles line-ups
- The Beatles' London
- The Beatles' influence on music recording
- The Beatles' influence on popular culture
- Beatles instrumentation
- The Rutles
External links
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- The Beatles Official site
- The Beatles - Let it Be at Soundboard.com- with music clips of Let It Be Album
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