The Beatles
The origin of the phenomenon that became the Beatles can be traced back to 1957 when Paul McCartney (b. 18 June 1942, Liverpool, England) successfully auditioned at a church fête in Woolton, Liverpool for the guitarist's spot in the Quarrymen, a skiffle group featuring John Lennon (b. 9 October 1940, Liverpool, England). Within a year, two more recruits were added, a 15-year-old lead guitarist George Harrison (b. 25 February 1943, Liverpool, England) and an art school friend of Lennon's, Stuart Sutcliffe. After a brief spell as Johnny And the Moondogs, the inchoate ensemble rechristened themselves the Silver Beetles and, in April 1960, played before impresario Larry Parnes, winning the dubious distinction of a support slot on an arduous tour of Scotland with autumnal idol Johnny Gentle. 
By the summer of 1960, the group had found a permanent name, the Beatles, a full-time drummer, Pete Best, and secured a residency at Bruno Koschminder's Indra Club in Hamburg. It was during this period that they honed their repertoire of R&B favourites and during exhausting six-hour-sets performed virtually every song they could remember. Already, the musical/lyrical partnership of Lennon/McCartney was bearing fruit, anticipating a body of work unparalleled in modern popular music. The image of the group was also subtly changing, most noticeably in their French-styled fringed haircuts or, as they were later known, the ‘mop-tops’, allegedly the creation of Sutcliffe's German fiancée Astrid Kirchherr. The first German sojourn ended when the under-age Harrison was deported in December 1960 and the others lost their work permits. During this turbulent period, they also parted company with quasi-manager Allan Williams, who had arranged many of their early gigs. Following a couple of months recuperation, the group reassembled for regular performances at the Cavern Club in Liverpool and briefly returned to Germany where they performed at the Top Ten club and backed Tony Sheridan on the single My Bonnie. Meanwhile, Sutcliffe elected to leave the group and remain in Germany, surrendering his bass to the more accomplished McCartney. 
During November 1961, local entrepreneur Brian Epstein saw the Beatles at the Cavern Club and soon after became their manager. Despite Epstein's enthusiasm, several major record companies passed on the Beatles, although the group were granted an audition with Decca on New Year's Day 1962. After some prevarication, the A&R department, headed by Dick Rowe, rejected the group in favour of Brian Poole And The Tremeloes. Other companies were even less enthusiastic than Decca which had at least taken the group seriously enough to finance a recording session. On 10 April, further bad news was forthcoming when the group heard that their erstwhile bassist Stuart Sutcliffe had died of a brain haemorrhage. The following day, the Beatles flew to Germany and opened a seven-week engagement at Hamburg's Star Club. By May, Epstein had at last found a Beatles convert in EMI producer George Martin, who signed the group to the Parlophone label. Three months later, drummer Pete Best was sacked amid considerable controversy and a public outcry from his vociferous local following. His replacement was Ringo Starr (b. Richard Starkey, 7 July 1940, Liverpool, England), the extrovert drummer from Rory Storm And The Hurricanes. 
Towards the end of 1962, the Beatles broke through to the UK charts with their debut single, Love Me Do, and during the same month played the Star Club for the final time. Meanwhile, Epstein completed a deal with music publisher Dick James which led to the formation of the lucrative Northern Songs. 
On 13 February 1963, the Beatles appeared on UK television's 'Thank Your Lucky Stars' to promote their new single, Please Please Me, and were seen by six million viewers. It was a pivotal moment in their career at the start of a year in which they would spearhead a working-class assault on music, fashion and the peripheral arts. Please Please Me, with its distinctive harmonic blend and infectious group beat, soon topped the charts, signalling the imminent overthrow of the solo singer in favour of an irresistible wave of Mersey talent. From thereon, the Beatles would progress artistically and commercially with each successive record. After seven weeks at the top with From Me To You, they released the strident, wailing She Loves You, a rocker with a magical catchphrase ('Yeah, Yeah, Yeah') that was echoed in ever more frequent newspaper headlines. She Loves You hit number 1, went down, then returned to the top seven weeks later as Beatlemania gripped the nation. The disc was finally dispatched by I Want To Hold Your Hand, which boasted advance sales in excess of one million and entered the charts at number 1. Already, the Beatles were on their way to becoming the most consistent chart toppers of all time. 
Until 1964 America had proven a barren ground for aspiring British pop artists with only fluke hits like the Tornados' Telstar of any note. The Beatles changed that abruptly and decisively. I Want To Hold Your Hand succeeded in America and backed by an airing on the top-rated 'Ed Sullivan Show', even eclipsed sales in the UK. Overnight, the group reached a level of popularity that even outshone their pre-eminence in Britain. By April, they held the first five places in the Billboard Hot 100, while in Canada they boasted nine records in the Top 10. Although the Beatles' chart statistics were fascinating in themselves, they barely articulated the group's importance. Single-handedly, they had established Liverpool as the music capital of the world and the beat boom soon traversed the UK and inexorably towards the USA. In common with Bob Dylan, the Beatles had taught the world that pop music could be intelligent and was worthy of serious consideration beyond the screaming hordes of teendom. With the onslaught of Beatles' merchandising, which spread to badges, dolls, chewing gum and even cans of Beatle breath, the group underlined the rich rewards that could be won and lost in the sale of ancillary goods. Perhaps most importantly of all, however, they broke the Tin Pan Alley monopoly of songwriting by steadfastly composing their own material. From the moment they overruled their producer and rejected Mitch Murray's How Do You Do It? in favour of their own Please Please Me, Lennon/McCartney set in motion significant changes in the music publishing world which effectively revolutionized the industry. So prolific was their composing skill that they had sufficient surplus quality material to provide hits for fellow artists such as Billy J. Kramer, Cilla Black, the Fourmost and Peter And Gordon. As well as providing the Rolling Stones with one of their earliest hits, I Wanna Be Your Man, the Beatles encouraged their rivals to put pen to paper and win themselves some mechanical composers’ royalties in the process. 
By 1965, Lennon/McCartney's writing had matured to a startling degree and their albums were relying less on extraneous material. Previously, compositions by Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins, Bacharach And David, Leiber And Stoller and Goffin And King had nestled comfortably alongside instant Beatle standards, but with each successive release the group were leaving their earlier influences behind and moving towards uncharted pop territory. They carried their mass audience with them, and even while following traditional pop routes they always invested their work with originality. Their first two films, A Hard Day's Night and Help!, were not the usual pop celluloid cash-ins but were witty and inventive and achieved critical acclaim as well as box office success. The national affection bestowed upon the lovable mop tops was perhaps best exemplified by their 1965 appearance in the Queen's Honours List where they were each awarded MBEs for services to British industry. The year ended with the release of their first double-sided number 1, We Can Work It Out/Day Tripper, the coupling indicating how difficult it had now become to choose between a and b-sides. 
What was most impressive about the Beatles was their symmetry, at once oppositional and complementary. On the ballad side there was McCartney, the composer of such sentimental standards as Yesterday and I'll Follow The Sun, while Lennon displayed a more despairing personal angst on the bleak Baby's In Black and the deceptively uptempo Help!, the first pop single to use the word ‘insecure’. Both writers were massive influences on each other and showed themselves equally adept at crafting ballads and rockers, either alone or together. Even their handling of cover versions from Paul's wailing Kansas City to John's screaming Twist And Shout emphasized a dual talent at tackling diverse material. 
Christmas 1965 saw the Beatles using the album format not as a collection of would-be hits or favourite covers, but as an artistic statement in itself. RUBBER SOUL was a startlingly diverse collection, ranging from the pointed satire of Nowhere Man and the reflective In My Life to the much covered Michelle, which provided the Overlanders with a UK number 1. As ever with the Beatles, there were some musical pointers to the future, not least Harrison's use of sitar on the punningly titled, quirky love song Norweigan Wood. That same year, the Byrds, Yardbirds and Rolling Stones would incorporate Eastern-influenced sounds into their work and the music press would tentatively mention the decidedly unpoplike Ravi Shankar. Significantly, Shankar's champion George Harrison was allowed two writing credits on RUBBER SOUL, Think For Yourself and If I Needed Someone (also a hit for the Hollies). 
During 1966, the Beatles continued performing their increasingly complex arrangements before scarcely controllable screaming fans, but the novelty of fandom was wearing frustratingly thin. In Tokyo, the group incurred the wrath of militant reactionary students who objected to their performance at Budokan. Several death threats were forthcoming and the quartet left Japan in poor spirits, unaware that worse was to follow. A visit to Manila ended in a near riot when the Beatles neglected to attend a palace party thrown by President Ferdinand Marcos, and before leaving the country they were set upon by angry patriots. Weeks later, they received further shock, news indicating that Beatles records were being ceremoniously burned in the redneck southern states of America. The cause of the furore was Lennon's flippant observation on contemporary spiritual impoverishment: ‘We are more popular than Jesus now’. Although his words passed unnoticed in Britain, their unfortunate reproduction in an American teenzine instigated assassination threats and a massed campaign by members of the Ku Klux Klan to stamp out the Beatle menace. By the summer of 1966, the group were exhausted and defeated and played their last official performance at Candlestick Park, San Francisco on 29 August. 
The controversy surrounding their live performances did not detract from the quality of their recorded output. Paperback Writer was another step forward with its gloriously elaborate harmonies and charmingly prosaic theme. It was soon followed by a double-sided chart topper, Yellow Submarine/Eleanor Rigby, the former a self-created nursery rhyme complete with mechanical sounds, and the latter a brilliantly orchestrated narrative of loneliness, untainted by mawkishness. The attendant album, REVOLVER, was equally varied with Harrison's caustic Taxman, McCartney's plaintive For No One and Here, There And Everywhere and Lennon's drug-influenced She Said She Said and Tomorrow Never Knows, arguably the most effective evocation of an LSD experience ever captured on disc. After 1966, the Beatles retreated into the studio, no longer bound by the restriction of having to perform live. Their image as pin-up pop stars was also undergoing metamorphosis and when they next appeared in photographs, all four boasted moustaches, while Lennon unashamedly wore his notorious round glasses. A long hiatus was broken with their first recording in over six months, Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields Forever, arguably their finest single. Ironically, it broke their long run of consecutive UK number 1 hits, being held off the top by Engelbert Humperdinck's schmaltzy Release Me. Nevertheless, the double-sided single was a landmark, brilliantly capturing the twin talents of Lennon and McCartney. Although their songwriting styles were increasingly contrasting, it was still the similarities that struck home most forcibly. Both songs were paeons to an old Liverpool, Paul recalling childhood memories of Penny Lane and John immortalising the orphanage Strawberry Fields. There were also absurdist elements in each song with Penny Lane presenting a bustling landscape populated by various occupants including a fire fighter wary of a shower of rain and a nurse selling poppies, who not only feels as though she is in a play, but actually is. Strawberry Fields Forever was more philosophical with Lennon adopting an epiphenomenalist outlook (‘Nothing is real’) and dramatizing an inner dialogue characterized by stumbling qualifications (‘That is, I think, I disagree’). Musically, the songs were similarly intriguing with Penny Lane boasting the inclusion of a piccolo trumpet and shimmering percussive fade-out, while Strawberry Fields Forever fused two radically different versions of the same song using reverse taped cellos to eerie effect. 
It was intended that the Beatles' most innovative of singles would be the jewel in the crown of their next album, but by the summer of 1967 they had sufficient material to release 13 new tracks. SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND turned out to be no mere pop album but a cultural icon embracing the constituent elements of '60s youth culture: pop art, garish fashion, drugs, instant mysticism and freedom from parental control. The packaging of the album was a revelation in itself. Although the Beatles had previously experimented with collages on BEATLES FOR SALE and REVOLVER, they took the idea to its logical extreme on SGT. PEPPER which included photos of every significant influence on their lives that they could remember. The album also offered a gatefold sleeve, cardboard cut-out figurines and, for the first time on a pop record, printed lyrics. The music itself was even more extraordinary and refreshing. Instead of the traditional breaks between each song, one track merged into the next, linked by studio talk, laughter, electronic noises and animal sounds—a continuous, chaotic activity of sound, ripped forth from the ingenuity of producer George Martin. The songs were essays in innovation and diversification, embracing the cartoon psychedelia of Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, the music hall pastiche of When I'm 64, the circus atmosphere of Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite, the eastern philosophical promise of Within You, Without You and even a modern morality tale in She's Leaving Home. Audio tricks and surprises abounded involving steam organs, orchestras, sitars and even farmyard animals and a pack of foxhounds in full cry at the end of Good Morning, Good Morning. The album closed with the epic Day In The Life, the Beatles' most ambitious work to date, which used as its coda what Lennon described as ‘a sound building up from nothing to the end of the world’. As a final gimmick, the orchestra was recorded beyond a 20,000 hertz frequency taking the final note beyond human ears to an audible level appreciated by canines. Even the phonogram was not allowed to interfere with the proceedings, for a record groove was cut back to repeat slices of backwards recorded tape which played on into infinity. 
The summer of 1967 was astonishingly eventful, even by Beatles standards. While SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND topped the album charts, the group appeared on a live television broadcast playing their anthem of the period, All You Need Is Love. The following week it entered the charts at number 1, echoing the old days of Beatlemania. There was sadness too that summer, for on 21 August, Brian Epstein was found dead, the victim of a cumulative overdose of the drug Carbitrol. With spiritual guidance from the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the Beatles took Epstein's death calmly and elected to look after their business affairs without a manager. The first fruits of their post-Epstein labour was the film Magical Mystery Tour, screened on Boxing Day 1967. While the phantasmogorical movie elicited mixed reviews, nobody could cavil about the music, initially released in the unique form of a double EP, featuring six well-crafted songs. The EPs effortlessly rose to number 2 in the UK, making chart history in the process. Ironically, the package was robbed of the top spot by the traditional Beatles' Christmas single, this time in the form of the catchy Hello Goodbye. 
1968 proved another notable year with the Beatles pursuing their latest project: Apple Corps. A mismanaged boutique came and went and on the record front they reverted to rock ‘n’ roll for their eleventh transatlantic number 1, Lady Madonna. Later that year, the first Apple single emerged in the form of the rivetting Hey Jude, a moving ballad that evolved into a free-for-all singalong, clocking in at over seven minutes, with the distinction of being longest ever number 1 record at that time. There was also a third motion picture, Yellow Submarine, which took the form of a cartoon, the graphics being acclaimed as a milestone in animation technique. The soundtrack album contained a few desultory tracks issued the following year. With their prolific output, the group crammed the remainder of their most recent material on to a double album, THE BEATLES, released in a stark white cover. George Martin's perceptive overview of the work was that it would have made an excellent single album. It had some brilliant moments which displayed the broad sweep of Beatle talent from Back In The USSR, the affectionate tribute to Chuck Berry and the Beach Boys, to Lennon's tribute to his mother, Julia, and one of McCartney's finer moments as a tunesmith, Blackbird. For once, Harrison vied with his partners for the best track nomination, courtesy of the shimmering While My Guitar Gently Weeps, which featured the additional guitar skills of Eric Clapton. Predictably, there was an ideal cover tune, Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, which Marmalade gratefully took to number 1 in the UK, plus the breathless Helter Skelter, which took on symbolic force in the deranged mind of the psychotic Charles Manson. There were also a number of average songs which gave the impression that they required something more, plus some ill-advised doodlings such as the extraordinarily experimental Revolution No. 9 and the quirky Goodnight. What THE BEATLES revealed was four musicians already working in an isolated neutrality. 
The Beatles’ profound fallibility as business executives was exemplified by the parlous state of their Apple empire which required the ruthlessness of Allen Klein to restore a semblance of order. The new realism that permeated the portals of Beatledom was even evident in their art. Like several contemporary artists, including Bob Dylan and the Byrds, they chose to end the '60s with a reversion to less complex musical forms. The return-to-roots minimalism was spearheaded by the appropriately titled, chart topping, Get Back, which included Billy Preston guesting on organ. During their next recording sessions, cameras were present and the Beatles ran through dozens of songs, many of which they had not played since the Hamburg days. When the sessions ended there were countless spools of tape which would not be reassembled until the following year. In the meantime, a select few witnessed the foursome's last ‘public’ performance on the rooftops of the Apple headquarters in Savile Row, London. Amid the uncertainty of 1969, the Beatles enjoyed their final UK number 1 with the wry Ballad Of John And Yoko, on which only Lennon and McCartney performed. 
In a sustained attempt to cover the cracks that were becoming increasingly visible in their personal and musical relationships, the foursome reconvened for ABBEY ROAD. The album was dominated by the song cycle on side 2 in which such fragmentary compositions as Mean Mr. Mustard, Polythene Pam, She Came In Through The Bathroom Window and Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight gelled uneasily into a convincing whole. The concomitant hit single coupled Lennon's suggestive Come Together with Harrison's McCartneyesque standard Something. Significantly, the record only reached number 4 in the UK, the group's lowest chart-placing since Love Me Do back in 1962. Such considerations were small compared to the fate of their other songs. The group could only watch helplessly as a wary Dick James surreptitiously sold Northern Songs to ATV. The priceless catalogue would continue to change hands over the years and not even the combined financial force of McCartney and Yoko Ono could finally wrest it from the outstretched hands of that millionaire superstar speculator Michael Jackson 
With various solo projects in the offing, the Beatles stumbled through 1970, their disunity betrayed to the world in the film Let It Be. The album, finally pieced together by producer Phil Spector, was a controversial and bitty affair, initially housed in a cardboard box containing a lavish book which increased the retail price to an alarmingly prohibitive level. Musically, the work revealed the Beatles looking back, poignantly and sadly, to better days. There was the sparse Two Of Us and the primitive The One After 909, a song they used to play as the Quarrymen. There was an orchestrated Long And Winding Road which provided a last US number 1 although McCartney pointedly preferred the non-orchestrated film version. And there was the aptly titled last official single, Let It Be, which entered the UK charts at number 2, only to drop to number 3 the following week. For many that was the final anti-climax before the inevitable yet still unexpected split. The acrimonious dissolution of the Beatles, like that of no other group before or since, symbolized the end of an era that they had dominated and helped create.