The Beatles
From ePedia, the electronic encyclopedia
left to right:
George Harrison,
Paul McCartney,
John Lennon,
Ringo Starr
Their earliest compositions were mainly rock ‘n’ roll or R&B-rooted pop songs with the occasional ballad. But they grew increasingly eclectic as composers, arrangers and performers over the years. They composed songs and arranged them in a wide array of musical styles – occasionally fusing genres. The constant factor in the vast majority of their songs was their focus on melody. Despite the wide array of musical styles utilised, Beatles recordings were readily identifiable because of their distinctive vocals. In addition to their core pop and rock styles, The Beatles' canon included songs flavoured with folk, country, rockabilly, blues, soul, doo-wop, ska and many other musical genres. They were also pioneers of new musical directions such as psychedelia (with "Strawberry Fields Forever") and early heavy metal (with "Helter Skelter" and "Revolution"). Their use of George Martin’s chamber and baroque orchestrations on songs such as "Yesterday", "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and "Eleanor Rigby" was another first in contemporary popular music.
They also pioneered many innovative production techniques and their epoch-making 1967 LP Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is often cited as one of the first concept albums. Their clothes, hairstyles and choice of musical instruments made them trendsetters throughout the decade; their growing social awareness, reflected in the development of their music, saw their influence extended far beyond the music scene into the social and cultural revolutions of the 1960s; and their enduring popularity with successive generations of both fans and musicians has cemented their reputation for being one of the most influential music artists of all time. The group disbanded in 1970 amid much strife. Thirty-five years later, in 2005, the American entertainment industry magazine Variety named them the most iconic entertainers of the 20th century.
History
In March 1957, John Lennon formed a skiffle group, The Blackjacks, who later became The Quarrymen. That year, Lennon met Paul McCartney while playing at the Woolton Parish Church Garden Fete, and shortly afterwards, Lennon invited McCartney to join his fledgling group. The lineup that McCartney joined featured Lennon, Eric Griffiths on guitar, Len Garry on "tea-chest" bass, Pete Shotton on "washboard" and Colin Hanton on drums. In February 1958 the young guitarist George Harrison joined the group, which was then playing under a variety of names. Recordings of Lennon, McCartney and Harrison from that year still exist. During this period, members continually joined and left the line up. Lennon, McCartney and Harrison were the only constant members. Hanton left in 1959.
The first regular gigs for the group were at a club named The Casbah, created by Mona Best in the basement of her family's home. Best had noticed the number of young friends visiting her son, Pete, at the house and decided to turn part of the cellar into a private club, which eventually developed into a club for young people with live groups. It was one of the first cellar clubs in Liverpool to present rock 'n' roll groups exclusively, as opposed to the strict policy of jazz for venues such as The Cavern and the Cat A Coombs. The Cavern was one of the more well-known spots where the band performed during their independent years. The Casbah Coffee Club opened in August 1959, and the resident group was The Quarrymen — John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ken Brown on drums, who would soon be cast off.
The Quarrymen went through a progression of names: Johnny and The Moondogs, The Silver Beetles, and eventually arriving at The Beatles. The origin of the name "The Beatles" with its unusual spelling is usually credited to John Lennon, who said in a piece written in the first issue of Mersey Beat,
"Many people ask what are Beatles? Why Beatles? Ugh, Beatles how did the name arrive? So we will tell you. It came in a vision - a man appeared in a flaming pie and said unto them 'From this day on you are Beatles with an A'. 'Thank you, Mister Man,' they said, thanking him."
The group's name was a combination word-play on "Beetles" (vs. "Crickets" according to John Lennon the word "Silver" was added to add glitter) and the word "beat" which in the late 1950s and early 1960s carried both musical connotations (the beat of a song) and pop-cultural connotations (relating to the Beat generation). In 1960, their unofficial manager, Allan Williams, arranged for them to perform in clubs on the Reeperbahn in Hamburg, Germany. In August 1960, McCartney invited Pete Best to become the group's drummer. In Hamburg (particularly at the infamous Kaiserkeller club) they honed their skills as performers and broadened their reputation. While in Hamburg, The Beatles were recruited by singer Tony Sheridan to act as his backing band on a series of recordings for the German Polydor Records label, produced by famed bandleader Bert Kaempfert. Kaempfert signed the group to its own Polydor contract at the first session in June 1961. On 23 October, Polydor published the song "My Bonnie (Mein Herz ist bei dir nur)", which made it into the German charts (#5, according to a Paul McCartney interview). They were deported from Germany on one occasion in 1960, when their work permits had expired, and it was discovered that Harrison was underage.
Upon their return from Hamburg, the group was enthusiastically promoted by Sam Leach, who presented them over the next year and a half on various stages in Liverpool 49 times, including the famed "Operation Big Beat in 1961", at which 3000 people paid to see The Beatles perform along with Rory Storm and The Hurricanes, Taylor and The Dominoes, Gerry and The Pacemakers and others at the Tower Ballroom, New Brighton.
Brian Epstein, manager of the record department at NEMS, his family's furniture store, took over as the group's manager in 1962 and intensified The Beatles' quest for a British recording contract. After one last session for Polydor in May 1962, Epstein and Kaempfert jointly agreed to cancel the group's contract with the German label. On 6 June, after being rejected by almost every other record company in the UK, he brought the quartet to London's Abbey Road studios, having secured the interest of George Martin, principal producer with EMI's Parlophone label, then noted for its production of novelty records. After considerable thought Martin decided to grant The Beatles their first UK recording contract. Pete Best was fired in favour of Ringo Starr. The reason given at the time was that, whilst Best looked the part, his drumming was poor. This did not convince his army of fans back home in Liverpool.
The Beatles' first sessions in September 1962 produced a minor UK hit, "Love Me Do", which charted. ("Love Me Do" subsequently reached the top of the US singles chart in May 1964.) This was swiftly followed by the recording of their second single Please Please Me. Three months later they recorded their first album (also titled Please Please Me), a mix of original songs by Lennon and McCartney along with some covers. The band's first televised performance was on a programme called People and Places transmitted live from Manchester by Granada Television on 17 October 1962.
Although the band experienced great popularity in the record charts in Britain from early 1963 onwards, Parlophone's American counterpart, Capitol Records (which was owned by EMI), refused to issue the singles "Love Me Do", "Please Please Me" and "From Me To You" in the United States, partly because no British act had ever had a sustained impact on American audiences beyond one-off hits.
Vee-Jay Records, a small Chicago label, is said by some to have been pressured into issuing these singles as part of a deal for the rights to another performer's masters. Art Roberts, music director of Chicago powerhouse radio station WLS, placed "Please Please Me" into rotation in late February 1963, making it possibly the first time a Beatles' record was heard on American radio. Other US stations played Beatles records sporadically, but to no real effect. Vee-Jay's rights to The Beatles were cancelled for non-payment of royalities.
In August 1963 the Philadelphia-based Swan label tried again with The Beatles' "She Loves You", which also failed to receive airplay. A testing of the song on his TV show American Bandstand resulted in laughter and scorn from American teenagers when they saw the group's unusual haircuts. Murray the K featured "She Loves You" on his 1010 WINS record revue in October to an underwhelming response.
Following Brian Epstein's success in early November in persuading Ed Sullivan to commit to presenting The Beatles on three editions of his show in February (even though the group had no American record label at the time of Sullivan's commitment), Epstein parlayed this guaranteed exposure into a record deal with Capitol Records. He by-passed Dave Dexter, the A&R executive who had rejected the group four times by then, and dealt directly with Capitol president Alan Livingstone, who was impressed by what Epstein had lined up. He committed to a mid-January release for "I Want To Hold Your Hand", with the expectation that by the date of The Beatles' first appearance on Sullivan (scheduled for February 9) the disc might have reached the Hot Hundred and thus be boosted higher up the charts by the consecutive TV appearances. There was obviously no expectation that a completely unknown foreign artist could climb to the number one position just three weeks after the scheduled mid-January release.
The Beatles were scheduled for Ed Sullivan and Carnegie Hall, both in New York. Capitol convinced New York's WMCA, the top pop station in the US, to play "I Want To Hold Your Hand" on December 26, airing just before 1pm. WINS and WABC soon followed and Beatlemania broke in New York and quickly spread to other markets. The disc was an immediate success on New York radio, especially with school children who, because they were on Christmas break, heard the record more frequently in daytime than they would otherwise have done. The record sold one million copies in just 10 days, and by January 16 Cashbox Magazine had certified The Beatles record #1 (in the edition with the cover-date January 23).
The record had been number one for three weeks prior to The Beatles' arrival in America, leading to the hysterical fan reaction at JFK Airport on February 7, 1964. The Beatlemania that had gripped the United States since late December was immeasurably boosted with the three consecutive national television appearances by the group on The Ed Sullivan Show. A record-breaking 73 million viewers — approximately 40% of the US population at the time — tuned in to the first Sullivan appearance on February 9. This remains one of the largest viewing audiences ever in the US. The band had become a worldwide phenomenon, with worshipful fans and angry denunciations by cultural observers and established performers such as Frank Sinatra, sometimes on grounds of the music (which was thought crude and unmusical) or their appearance (their hair was considered 'scandalously long'). Despite the naysayers, during the week of April 4, 1964 The Beatles held the top five places on the Billboard Hot 100, a feat that has never been repeated.
In mid-1964 the band undertook their first world tour, which included Australia and New Zealand. Just before the tour began, Ringo was briefly hospitalised with a severe attack of pharyngitis, so drummer Jimmy Nicol was drafted in for several concerts on the Australian leg. When they arrived in Adelaide, The Beatles were greeted by what is reputed to be the largest crowd of their touring career, when over 300,000 people — about one-third of the entire population of the city at that time — turned out to see them.
In 1965 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II bestowed upon them the MBE, sparking some conservative MBE recipients to return their awards in protest. On August 15 of that year, The Beatles performed at the first stadium concert in modern rock, playing at Shea Stadium to a crowd of 56,000. Lennon, Harrison, and Starr began experimenting with LSD later that year. Lennon and Harrison were given their first dose unknowingly at a dinner party when their host (a dentist) spiked their drinks, while Starr took his first trip at a party with Peter Fonda and members of The Byrds. McCartney followed suit in November 1966.
In July 1966 an out-of-context comment caused a backlash against The Beatles from religious and social conservatives, when in a serious interview Lennon offered his opinion that Christianity was dying and that the group was "more popular than Jesus". Many religious groups, including the Holy See, voiced strong objections, and Beatles records were banned and burned in cities and towns across America and around the world. These events, along with threats from racist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, eventually forced Lennon to apologise for his remarks several times, including at a Chicago press conference. Lennon tried to point out that he was merely commenting on the Beatlemania phenomenon, not trying to literally equate the group to Jesus, saying about his own comment that "It was wrong, or it was taken wrong."
The Beatles performed their last concert before paying fans in Candlestick Park in San Francisco on 29 August 1966. From this time until the group dissolved in early 1970, The Beatles concentrated on recording music. The group's compositions and musical experiments raised their artistic reputations while they retained their tremendous popularity. However, The Beatles' financial situation took a turn for the worse when manager Brian Epstein died in 1967 at the age of thirty-two, and the band's affairs began to unravel. That same year, on 25th of June, The Beatles became the first band ever globally transmitted on television, in front of over 200 million people worldwide. The event took place at the Abbey Road Studios in London. Among the guests were Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Marianne Faithfull, Eric Clapton and Keith Moon. At the end of 1967, they suffered their first major critical flop with the TV film Magical Mystery Tour.
In 1968, the group spent the early part of the year in Rishikesh, Uttar Pradesh, India studying transcendental meditation with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Starr left India after a week, and Paul after a month. The trip as a whole ended in controversy after three months when unsubstantiated claims that the Maharishi had attempted to seduce a female student at the camp led to the departure of the two remaining Beatles. Upon their return, Lennon and McCartney took a trip to New York in order to announce the formation of Apple Corps, an initially altruistic business venture which they described at the time as an attempt at "western communism". The latter part of 1968 saw the band busy recording the double album The Beatles, popularly known as The White Album due to its stark white cover. These sessions saw deep divisions opening within the band for the first time. Their final live performance was on the rooftop of the Apple building in Savile Row, London in January 1969 during the difficult "Get Back" sessions (later used as a basis for the Let It Be album). Largely due to McCartney's efforts, they recorded their final album, Abbey Road in the summer of 1969. The band officially broke up in April 1970, and one month later Let It Be followed as their last commercial album release.
Following the breakup, the only album to feature all four Beatles (although not on the same song) was Ringo, a 1973 Starr solo album. Any hopes of a reunion were dashed when Lennon was murdered by Mark David Chapman, a mentally-ill fan, on December 8, 1980. However, a virtual reunion occurred in 1995 with the release of two original Lennon recordings which had the additional contributions of the remaining Beatles mixed in to create two hit singles, "Free As A Bird" and "Real Love". Three volumes (six CDs in total) of unreleased material and studio outtakes were also released, as well as a documentary and television miniseries, in a project known as The Beatles Anthology. On December 15, 2005, McCartney and Starr, along with the families of Lennon and Harrison (who died 29 November 2001) sued EMI in a royalties dispute in which Apple Corps claimed EMI owes The Beatles £30 million.
Studio style evolution
Many observers have noted that understanding the success of The Beatles and their music begins and ends with an appreciation for the diverse ways in which they (especially Lennon and McCartney) blended their voices as instruments.
The role of producer George Martin is often cited as a crucial element in the success of The Beatles. He used his experience to bring out the potential in the group, recognising and nurturing their creativity rather than imposing his views. His earlier production experience, ranging from acts such as Jimmy Shand to comedy recordings with members of The Goons, is said to have prepared him for the open-minded, sometimes experimental studio approach The Beatles developed as they became more experienced. Martin's work on solo projects with Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan of The Goons impressed The Beatles, who were fans. Martin later said he was initially attracted to the group because they were "very charming people".
In 1966, at the height of their fame and bolstered by the two films A Hard Day's Night and Help!, the band stopped touring. Performing for thousands of fans whose screaming typically drowned out the music had led to disillusionment and they decided to retire from touring and concentrate on making records.
Their demands to create new sounds with every recording, personal experiments with psychedelic drugs and the studio expertise of EMI staff engineers including Norman Smith, Ken Townshend and Geoff Emerick all played significant parts in the innovative qualities of the albums Rubber Soul (1965), Revolver (1966) and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), all of which still regularly appear in critics' listings of the best albums ever made.
While most recording artists of the time were satisfied with using two, three or four tracks in the studio, The Beatles began to use linked pairs of four-track decks, and ping-ponging tracks two and three times became common. (EMI delayed the introduction of eight-track recording, already becoming common in American studios, until 1968 at Abbey Road.) Along with studio tricks such as sound effects, unconventional microphone placements, automatic double tracking and vari-speed recording, The Beatles began augmenting their recordings using instruments considered unconventional for pop music at the time, including string and brass ensembles, Indian instruments such as the sitar and the swarmandel, tape loops and early electronic instruments, including John Lennon's Mellotron (later used by Trent Reznor to record Nine Inch Nails's The Downward Spiral) and George Harrison's Moog Synthesizer.
The group gradually took greater charge of their own productions and McCartney's growing dominance in this role, especially after the death of Epstein, played a part in the eventual split of the group. Internal divisions within the band had been a small but growing problem during their earlier career; most notably, this was reflected in the difficulty that George Harrison experienced in getting his own songs onto Beatles albums, and in the growing artistic and personal estrangement between Lennon and McCartney.
Drug use, personal factors and, above all, the unrelenting pressures and demands of their worldwide fame inevitably intensified these stresses. By the time of the sessions for The Beatles ("The White Album"), released in late 1968, the once close-knit members were clearly drifting apart both musically and personally. Several tracks were cut as de facto solo recordings by the principal composer, with the other band members more or less relegated to the role of session musician. This isolation is probably most notable on "Revolution 9", a wildly experimental John Lennon/Yoko Ono concoction of tape loops, "found sounds", and other studio trickery that the other Beatles reportedly despised and tried to keep off the album, however, Paul McCartney also dabbled in avante garde music.
Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" even featured an outside musician (his friend Eric Clapton) performing the guitar solo; Clapton was reportedly brought in as the result of a bitter dispute between Harrison and Lennon, who at the time was reportedly considering sacking Harrison from the band. The friction eventually drove Starr to take a two-week hiatus (this is generally reported as him temporarily quitting the band). During this time McCartney played drums on some of the tracks on the album, including "Back in the USSR".
The rapidly deteriorating relationships marred the troubled Get Back sessions in January 1969 — Lennon later colourfully denounced them as being the worst recordings of their career — and the project was made even more stressful by the presence of a film crew hired to capture the proceedings for a planned movie (which eventually became the Let It Be documentary).
By this time another very significant factor had emerged — Lennon's passionate affair with Japanese artist Yoko Ono. The couple quickly became inseparable and Lennon further alienated the other Beatles by bringing Ono to almost every recording session, breaking the band's long-standing rule against outsiders at sessions. Due to the adverse reporting of this situation in later years, Ono came to be singled out as "the woman who broke up the Beatles". However, the band's differences were more or less put aside later in the year for the recording of what became their valedictory album, Abbey Road, which the group later recalled as being among the most enjoyable of their career.
By the end of 1969 both Lennon and McCartney had effectively left the band and McCartney made the move official at the start of 1970 when he began legal proceedings to dissolve the band's business partnership. Each Beatle went on to successful solo careers.
In film
The Beatles had a largely successful film career, beginning with A Hard Day's Night (1964), a loosely scripted comic farce, sometimes compared to the Marx Brothers in style. It focused on Beatlemania and their hectic touring lifestyle, and was directed in a quasi-documentary style in black-and-white by an up-and-coming Richard Lester, who was known for having directed a television version of the successful BBC radio series The Goon Show as well as the offbeat short film "The Running, Jumping and Standing Still Film".
In 1965 came Help!, a Technicolor extravaganza, also directed by Lester, shot in exotic locations (such as Salisbury Plain, with Stonehenge visible in the background; the Bahamas; and Salzburg and the Tyrol region of the Austrian Alps) in the style of a James Bond spoof along with even more Marx Brothers-style zaniness. For example, the film is dedicated "to Elias Howe, who in 1846 invented the sewing machine".
Both of their first two films contained frequent show-stoppers when The Beatles would gather and sing their songs, which often (aside from the title tracks) had nothing whatsoever to do with the plot of the movie, defying the conventional approach of musical films.
In 1966, Lennon "went solo" as a supporting character in a film called How I Won the War, again directed by Lester, a satire of World War II movies. (Lester described the film as "not an anti-war film but an anti-war-film film.") The dry, ironic British humour of this film may have been a bit over the heads of the American audience in those pre-Monty Python times, as it was not nearly as well received as the American-made Korean War satire M*A*S*H would be a few years later.
The Magical Mystery Tour film was essentially Paul McCartney's idea, outlined as he returned from a trip the US in the late spring of 1967 and loosely inspired by press coverage McCartney had read about Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters' LSD-fuelled American bus odyssey. McCartney envisaged taking this idea and blending it with the peculiarly English working class tradition of charabanc mystery tours. The film was critically panned when it aired on the BBC's premier television network, BBC-1, on Boxing Day — a day primarily for traditional cosy family entertainment. The film appeared radically avant-garde by those standards, and instead of showcasing the lovable moptops The Beatles had been up 'til recently, it showed them as part of the hippie counterculture of 1967 that was at odds with the British establishment of the era. Compounding this culture clash was the fact that BBC-1 at that time still only transmitted programmes in black & white, while Tour was in colour, and the colour was integral to appreciation of the film. The film was repeated a few days later on the BBC's secondary channel (BBC-2) in colour, receiving more appreciation, but the initial media reaction is what is most remembered. With the passage of time (and the fact that so many mainstream films subsequently incorporated many of the film's unusual filming and editing motifs), it is now considered a cult classic.
The animated Yellow Submarine followed in 1968, but had little direct input from The Beatles, save for a live-action epilogue and the contribution of four new songs (including one holdover from the Sgt. Pepper sessions, "Only A Northern Song"). The movie was intended, and became a movie for mainly younger children, though it was pleasing to men and women of all ages. It was acclaimed for its boldly innovative graphic style and clever humour, along with the soundtrack. The Beatles are said to have been pleased with the result and attended its highly publicised London premiere.
Let It Be was an ill-fated documentary of the band shot over a four-week period in January 1969. The documentary — which was originally intended to be simply a chronicle of the evolution of an album and the band's possible return to live performance — instead captured the prevailing tensions between the band members. In this respect it unwittingly became a document of the beginning of their break-up. The band initially shelved both the film and the album, instead recording and issuing Abbey Road. But with so much money spent on the project, it was decided to finish and release the film and album (the latter with considerable post-production by Phil Spector) in the spring of 1970. When the film finally appeared, it was after the break-up had been announced, and it was viewed by disappointed fans through the prism of that recent news.
Influences and music
As youths, the members of The Beatles were enthusiastic followers of Elvis Presley, first and foremost, and later, of British rock-and-rollers, notably Cliff Richard and The Shadows, whose stage presence and female following were often cited by the band as one of their inspirations to begin performing publicly. In comments recorded for the Anthology TV series all four band members spoke of him in glowing terms, with Paul McCartney saying "Seeing Elvis was like seeing the messiah arrive". They also recorded a number of Presley covers at Abbey Road studios, and although these were not released officially until after the group split, bootleg copies have existed since the late 1960s. It has long been argued that Presley's musical influence on The Beatles could have been indirect, with opinions somewhat split; although few had denied there was an influence, the extent of it had been the subject of debate among fans and music historians. However, in Paul McCartney's most recent (early 2005) interview with Larry King, McCartney affirmed that Presley had an enormous impact on both him and Lennon. When asked who of the early rockers had influenced him the most: "He was my favourite [...] He was the one who did it for me". In other interviews over the years, one or the other of The Beatles has stated that if there had not been Elvis Presley, there probably would not have been The Beatles.
Many of the band's influences were American in origin, especially the music of Chuck Berry. They recorded covers of Berry songs "Roll Over Beethoven" and "Rock and Roll Music" on their early albums, and also performed many other of his classics in their live repertoire. Chuck Berry's influence is also heard (in altered form) on later recordings such as "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey" (1968) and "Come Together" (1969). After "Come Together" was released, music publisher Morris Levy sued John Lennon for copyright infringement of his song "You Can't Catch Me", ultimately resulting in Lennon agreeing to record covers of Levy's songs for his solo album Rock 'n' Roll so that Levy could receive royalties.
In their early days as performers, the band took some cues from local Liverpool favourites Rory Storm and The Hurricanes, who Starr played with prior to joining The Beatles.
George Harrison had a fondness for American rockabilly music, particularly that of Eddie Cochran and Carl Perkins. The band's early stage shows featured several Perkins tunes; some of these (notably "Honey Don't" featuring an early Starr vocal) they eventually recorded for their albums. Moreover, Harrison's guitar work remained highly influenced by rockabilly styles throughout the band's tenure.
The Beatles' distinctive vocal harmonies were also influenced by those of early Motown artists in America. Early Beatles staples included faithful versions of Barrett Strong's Motown recording of "Money (That's What I Want)" and The Marvelettes' hit "Please Mr. Postman".
While many of these American influences drew from the blues music form, The Beatles, unlike their contemporaries The Rolling Stones, were seldom directly influenced by the blues. Drawing inspiration from an eclectic variety of sources, their home idiom was closer to pop music (during their early fame they were sometimes referred to as a "mod" band, a label they seem to have resisted).
The Beatles were also fond of Little Richard and some of their songs (especially in their early repertoire) featured falsetto calls similar to his, most notably on McCartney's rendition of his song "Long Tall Sally". In 1962 Richard socialised with The Beatles around Hamburg and they performed together at the Star Club. "Long Tall Sally" became a permanent fixture in The Beatles' concert performances, and McCartney's singing on their recorded version is widely regarded as among his best rock and roll vocal performances.
Apart from the up-beat, optimistic rock and roll sound of Little Richard and others, McCartney's influences include ragtime and music hall, owing much to his father's musical interests. Their impact is apparent in songs like "When I'm Sixty-Four" (composed during The Quarrymen period), "Honey Pie", and "Maxwell's Silver Hammer". Of their early single, "From Me to You", McCartney said, "It could be done as an old ragtime tune... especially the middle-eight. And so we're not writing the tunes in any particular idiom". His songwriting was also influenced in part by Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys, who was in turn spurred on by The Beatles' work. Wilson acknowledged that the American version of Rubber Soul challenged him to make Pet Sounds, an album which then inspired McCartney's vision of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The song "Back in the USSR" was based on a suggestion by Beach Boy Mike Love to McCartney and contains overt allusions to the Beach Boys' "California Girls". The song "Here, There and Everywhere" is said to have been written the evening that Lennon and McCartney first listened to Pet Sounds.
The Everly Brothers were another influence. Lennon and McCartney consciously copied Don and Phil Everly's distinctive two-part harmonies. Their vocals on "Love Me Do" and "Please Please Me" were inspired by the Everlys' powerful vocal innovation on "Cathy's Clown" (1960), the first recording to ever reach number one simultaneously in the USA and England. "Two of Us", the opening track on Let It Be is overtly composed in the Everly style and McCartney acknowledges this in the recording with a spoken "Take it Phil". McCartney later namechecked 'Phil and Don' in his solo track, "Let Em In".
The song-writing of Gerry Goffin and Carole King was yet another influence. Some say that one of The Beatles' many achievements was to marry the relative sophistication of Goffin and King's songs (which used major-seventh chords, for example) with the straightforwardness of Buddy Holly, Berry and the early rock-and-roll performers. Lennon and McCartney's goal when they first began writing together was to become "the next Goffin and King".
John Lennon's early style has clear relationships to Buddy Holly and Roy Orbison ("Misery" from 1963 and "Please Please Me" from 1963). Holly's "That'll Be the Day" was the first song Lennon learned to play and sing accurately and the first song the proto-Beatles ever put to vinyl. The naming of The Beatles was Lennon's tribute to Buddy Holly's band, The Crickets. The Beatles covered Holly's "Words of Love" on their album Beatles for Sale.
Starting with Help!'s "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" and then Rubber Soul's "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" from 1965, Lennon was heavily influenced by Bob Dylan. Lennon is said to have been stunned by "Subterranean Homesick Blues", and wondered how he could ever outdo it. He started exploring more complex topics and lyrics and incorporated "folkier" musical styles in some of his songs. And perhaps as a sign of respect, Lennon stopped playing harmonica when Dylan became iconically associated with the instrument. The growing complexity of the group's lyrics after 1965 owe much to Dylan.
Lennon is conventionally portrayed as having played the major role in steering The Beatles towards psychedelia ("Rain" and "Tomorrow Never Knows" from 1966, and "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "I Am the Walrus" from 1967). Again following the lead set by Bob Dylan, Lennon renewed his interest in rootsy "good old rock and roll" forms towards the close of The Beatles' career (e.g. "Yer Blues" from 1968 and "Don't Let Me Down" from 1969).
Paul McCartney is usually cast as the group's romantic balladeer, and he displays a singular ear for melody and an arguably unrivalled facility for writing classic pop songs in a wide range of genres, ranking alongside Irving Berlin, Cole Porter and the Gershwin brothers as one of the greatest popular song writers of the 20th century. However, in recent years he has insisted in a number of media interviews that he was far more involved in the London avant garde scene than was Lennon, and that he was in some respects the more "experimental" of the two.
Beginning with his evocative but understated use of a string quartet on "Yesterday" (1965), McCartney pioneered a modern form of art song, exemplified by the remarkable double-quartet string arrangement on "Eleanor Rigby" (1966), (which was strongly influenced by Bernard Herrmann's score for the Francois Truffaut film Fahrenheit 451), "Here, There and Everywhere" (1966) and "She's Leaving Home" (1967). He also created many of the tape loops used on "Tomorrow Never Knows" and experimented extensively with musique concrete techniques and electronic instruments both at home and in the studio, as well as creating many experimental audiovisual works. His interest in the music of Bach led him to use a piccolo trumpet in his arrangement of "Penny Lane" and, although the Mellotron at the start of "Strawberry Fields Forever" belonged to Lennon, it was McCartney who played it.
McCartney retained his affection for the driving R&B of Little Richard in a series of songs Lennon dubbed "potboilers", from "I Saw Her Standing There" (1963) to "Lady Madonna" (1968). "Helter Skelter" (1968), arguably an early heavy metal song, is also a McCartney composition. McCartney's lyrical style evolved a more detached, literary stance than in the increasingly personal and confessional work of Lennon, and Lennon was reported to have become more critical of McCartney's writing in the mid-Sixties.
George Harrison derived his early guitar style from 1950s rockabilly figures such as Carl Perkins, Scotty Moore (who worked with Elvis Presley) and Duane Eddy, but his single biggest influence as a guitarist came from country guitar legend Chet Atkins. "All My Loving" (1963) and "She's a Woman" (1964) are prime examples of Harrison's early rockabilly-influenced guitar work.
In 1965 Harrison broke new ground in pop by playing an Indian sitar on "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)". His long collaboration with Sri Ravi Shankar, a famous Hindustani Musician, influenced several of his compositions, some of which were based on Hindustani forms — most notably "Love You To" (1966), "Within You Without You" (1967) and "The Inner Light" (1968). Indian music and culture also influenced Lennon and McCartney, with the use of swirling tape loops, droning bass lines and mantra-like vocals on "Tomorrow Never Knows" (1966) and "Dear Prudence" (1968). Harrison's interest in Indian music was an important influence on the popularisation of the so-called world music genre in the years that followed.
Harrison retained Western musical forms in his later compositions, emerging as a significant pop composer in his own right, although occasionally reprising major themes indicating his relationship with Hindustani music and the Hindu god Krishna. His later guitar style, while not displaying the virtuosity of Jimi Hendrix or Eric Clapton, was distinctive with its use of clear melodic lines and subtle fills as in "Something" (1969) and "Let It Be" (1970), contrasting with the increasingly distorted riffs and rapid-fire guitar solo work of his contemporaries.
Ringo Starr rarely wrote songs, but he possessed a gentle, somewhat comic baritone; his best-known vocal performances are "Yellow Submarine" (1966), "With A Little Help From My Friends" (1967) and "Octopus's Garden" (1969). In addition to his skilled (and arguably underrated) drumming and his comical everyman image, he was also a considerable influence on Lennon's songwriting due to his quirky and often amusing turns of phrase. Three of these were immortalised in the songs "A Hard Day's Night", "Eight Days A Week" and "Tomorrow Never Knows". As evidenced by his Beatles vocal performance on Help! (their cover of Buck Owens' "Act Naturally"), Starr was a dedicated country music fan and was largely responsible for the group's occasional forays into the genre in songs such as "What Goes On" (1965) and "Don't Pass Me By" (1968).
Later Beatles material shifted away from dance music and the pace of the songs is often more moderate, with interest tending to come from melody and harmonic texture rather than the rhythm ("Penny Lane" from 1967 is an example). Throughout their career The Beatles' songs were rarely riff (or ostinato)-driven; "Day Tripper" (1965) and "Hey Bulldog" (1969, recorded 1968) are among the notable exceptions.
The decision to stop touring in 1966 caused an abrupt change in musical direction. Reportedly stung by criticism of "Paperback Writer", The Beatles poured their creative energies into the recording studio. They had already shown a clear trend towards progressively greater complexity in technique and style but this accelerated noticeably in their Revolver album. The subject matter of the post-touring songs branched out as well, as all manner of subjects were introduced, from home repair and circuses to nonsense songs and others defying description.
The extreme complexity of Sgt. Pepper's reached its height on the Yellow Submarine soundtrack album, parts of which (for example "It's All Too Much" and "Only a Northern Song") were left over from 1967 and were apparently used because The Beatles themselves weren't much interested in the animated film as a project and weren't inclined to exert themselves by producing much new material for it.
After the Revolver/Sgt. Pepper's phase, came the double LP The Beatles, known to most as "The White Album" because of its plain white sleeve. Partly written in India, it involved some simpler subjects (for example "Birthday"), and some of the songs (for example "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?" and "Wild Honey Pie") were far less complex than their material of just a year or two before. In 1969 the band became less united during sessions for the abortive Get Back project (which eventually emerged in 1970, much altered, as Let It Be). This had been intended as a return to more basic songs and an avoidance of thorough editing or otherwise "artificial" influences on the final output. Ironically Let It Be was heavily overdubbed and edited by producer Phil Spector in his wall of sound technique. With Get Back behind them, George Martin was asked to produce the last album The Beatles recorded, Abbey Road, representing a mature attempt to integrate what they knew and use recording studio techniques to improve the songs rather than experiment to see what happened.
For many, the group's musical appeal lay in the interaction of Lennon and McCartney's voices and musical styles. It is sometimes said they not only supplied missing bits and pieces for each other's songs, but shared a competitive edge that brought out the best in them both. Harrison's lead guitar and vocals along with Starr's understated and faithful drumming contributed their own chemistry. Finally, The Beatles' stage presence and charm as a group kindled their live shows, as well as relationships with key people in their careers. After the group dissolved some critics cited their solo releases as a demonstration of how important this group collaboration had been: together they sparked each other to reach heights rarely attained on the later solo releases.
Song catalogue
In 1963 The Beatles gave their song publishing rights to Northern Songs, a company created by Brian Epstein and music publisher Dick James. Northern Songs went public in 1965 with Lennon and McCartney each holding 15% of the company's shares while 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 back the company, James and Silver sold Northern Songs to British TV company Associated TeleVision (ATV), in which Lennon and McCartney received stock.
In 1985 ATV's music catalogue was sold to Michael Jackson for a reported $47 million (beating McCartney's bid), including the publishing rights to over 200 Beatles songs. A decade later Jackson and Sony merged their music publishing businesses. Since 1995 Jackson and Sony/ATV Music Publishing have jointly owned most of The Beatles' songs. 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 standard songwriter shares of the royalties.
Although the Jackson-Sony catalogue includes most of The Beatles' greatest hits, a few of the early songs weren't included in the original ATV deal 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".
Harrison and Starr didn't 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 classics such as "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and "Something".
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