Showing posts with label beatles music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label beatles music. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 07, 2010

The Beatles HELP! Promo Video 1965 REMASTERED

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beatles Help

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Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber: Killer video stars

Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber: Killer video stars


Lady Gaga Biography Birth name Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta Born March 28, 1986 (1986-03-28) (age 24) Origin Manhattan, New York City, U.S. Genres Pop, dance, electronica Occupations Singer, songwriter, musician, dancer Instruments Vocals, piano, synthesizer, keytar Years active 2006-present Labels Interscope, Streamline, Kon Live, Cherrytree, Def Jam Website http://www.ladygaga.com Lady Gaga (born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta; March 28, 1986) is an American recording artist. She had enrolled at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts to study music, but left the college and began performing in the rock music scene of New York City's Lower East Side. She soon signed with Streamline Records, an imprint of Interscope Records, upon its establishment in 2007. During her early time at Interscope, she worked as a songwriter for fellow label artists and captured the attention of Akon, who recognized her vocal abilities, and got her signed to his own label, Kon Live Distribution. Her debut album, The Fame, was released on August 19, 2008. In addition to receiving generally positive reviews, it reached number one in Canada, Austria, Germany and Ireland, and topped the Billboard Top Electronic Albums chart. Its first two singles, "Just Dance" and "Poker Face", co-written and co-produced with RedOne, became international number-one hits, topping the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States as well as the charts of other countries. The album later earned a total of six Grammy Award nominations and won awards for Best Electronic/Dance Album and Best Dance Recording. In early 2009 she embarked on her first headlining tour, The Fame Ball Tour. By the fourth quarter of the year, she had released her second studio album The Fame Monster, with the global chart-topping lead single "Bad Romance", as well as having embarked on her second headlining tour of the year, The Monster Ball Tour. Lady Gaga is inspired by glam rock musicians such as David Bowie and Freddie Mercury, as well as pop music artists such as Madonna and Michael Jackson. She has also stated fashion is a source of inspiration for her songwriting and performances. In December, 2009 Lady Gaga was ranked the #73rd Artist of the Decade by Billboard Magazine. As of May 2010, she had sold over 11.5 million albums and over 40 million singles worldwide. In May 2010, Time magazine included Gaga in its annual Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world. Contents 1 Biography 1.1 1986-2004: Early life 1.2 2005-07: Career beginnings 1.3 2008 onwards: The Fame and The Fame Monster 2 Musical style and influences 2.1 Public image 3 Discography 4 Tours 5 Awards and nominations ==Biography== 1986-2004: Early life Stefani Germanotta was born on March 28, 1986, the eldest child of Italian American parents Joseph and Cynthia Germanotta (née Bissett), in New York City. She learned to play piano from the age of four, went on to write her first piano ballad at 13 and began performing at open mike nights by age 14. At the age of 11, Germanotta attended Convent of the Sacred Heart, a private Roman Catholic school. An avid thespian in high school musicals, Germanotta portrayed lead roles as Adelaide in Guys and Dolls and Philia in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. She described her academic life in high school as "very dedicated, very studious, very disciplined" but also "a bit insecure" as she told in an interview, "I used to get made fun of for being either too provocative or too eccentric, so I started to tone it down. I didn’t fit in, and I felt like a freak." Acquaintances dispute that she did not fit in school. "She had a core group of friends; she was a good student. She liked boys a lot, but singing was No. 1", recalled a former high school classmate. Referring to her "expressive, free spirit", Gaga told Elle magazine "I'm left-handed!" At age 17, Germanotta gained early admission to the New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. There she studied music, and improved her songwriting skills by composing essays and analytical papers focusing on topics such as art, religion, social issues and politics. Germanotta lived in a NYU dorm on 11th Street but felt that she was more creative than some of her classmates. "Once you learn how to think about art, you can teach yourself," she said. By the second semester of her sophomore year, she withdrew from the school to focus on her musical career. Her father agreed to pay her rent for a year, on the condition that she re-enroll for Tisch, if she was unsuccessful. "I left my entire family, got the cheapest apartment I could find, and ate shit until somebody would listen," she said. 2005-07: Career beginnings Germanotta had initially signed with Def Jam Recordings at the age of 19, after Island Def Jam Music Group Chairman and CEO L. A. Reid heard her singing down the hallway from his office. After three months, she was dropped from Def Jam, although they introduced her to songwriter and producer RedOne, whom they also managed. The first song she produced together with RedOne was "Boys Boys Boys", a mash-up inspired by Mötley Crüe's "Girls, Girls, Girls" and AC/DC's "T.N.T.". She moved into an apartment on the Lower East Side, and from there she started the Stefani Germanotta Band with some friends from NYU. They recorded an EP of their Fiona Apple-esque ballads, at a studio underneath a liquor store in New Jersey, becoming a local fixture at the downtown LES club scene. She began taking drugs soon after, while performing at burlesque shows. Her father did not understand the reason behind her drug addiction and could not look at her for several months. Music producer Rob Fusari, who helped her write some of her earlier songs, compared her vocal style to that of Freddie Mercury. Fusari helped create the moniker Gaga, after the Queen song "Radio Ga Ga". One day, Germanotta was in the process of trying to come up with a stage name, when she received a text message from Fusari that read "Lady Gaga". He explained, "Every day, when Stef came to the studio, instead of saying hello, I would start singing 'Radio Ga Ga.' That was her entrance song. Lasy Gaga was actually a glitch; I typed 'Radio Ga Ga' in a text and it did an autocorrect so somehow 'Radio' got changed to 'Lady'. She texted me back, "That's it." After that day, she was Lady Gaga. She’s like, "Don’t ever call me Stefani again." Gaga performing at a barShe was known thereafter as Lady Gaga. Throughout 2007, Gaga collaborated with performance artist Lady Starlight, who helped create her onstage fashions. The pair began playing gigs at downtown club venues like the Mercury Lounge, The Bitter End, and the Rockwood Music Hall, with their live performance art piece known as "Lady Gaga and the Starlight Revue". Billed as "The Ultimate Pop Burlesque Rockshow", their act was a low-fi tribute to 1970s variety acts. In August 2007, Gaga and Starlight were invited to play at the American Lollapalooza music festival. The show was critically acclaimed, and their performance received positive reviews. Having initially focused on avant-garde, and electronic dance music, Gaga found her musical niche when she began to incorporate pop melodies and the vintage glam rock of David Bowie and Queen into her music. Fusari sent the songs he produced with Gaga to his friend, producer and record executive Vincent Herbert. Herbert was quick to sign her to his label Streamline Records, an imprint of Interscope Records. She credited Herbert as the man who discovered her, adding "I really feel like we made pop history, and we're gonna keep going". Having already served as an apprentice songwriter under an internship at Famous Music Publishing, which was later acquired by Sony/ATV Music Publishing, Gaga subsequently struck a music publishing deal with Sony/ATV. As a result, she was hired to write songs for Britney Spears, and labelmates New Kids on the Block, Fergie, and the Pussycat Dolls. While Gaga was writing at Interscope, singer-songwriter Akon recognized her vocal abilities, when she sang a reference vocal for one of his tracks in studio. He then convinced Interscope-Geffen-A&M Chairman and CEO Jimmy Iovine to form a joint deal, by having her also sign with his own label Kon Live Distribution, and later called her his "franchise player." Gaga continued her collaboration with RedOne, by working with him in the studio for a week on her debut album, spawning the future singles "Just Dance" and "Poker Face". She also joined the roster of Cherrytree Records, an Interscope imprint established by producer and songwriter Martin Kierszenbaum, after co-writing four songs with Kierszenbaum including the single "Eh, Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say)". 2008 onwards: The Fame and The Fame Monster By 2008, Gaga had relocated to Los Angeles, working closely with her record label to finalize her debut album The Fame. She combined a lot of different genres on the album, "from Def Leppard drums and hand claps to metal drums on urban tracks." The Fame received positive reviews from critics; according to the music review aggregation of Metacritic, it garnered an average score of 71/100. The album peaked at number one in Austria, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Ireland, and the top-five in Australia and the United States. Its lead single "Just Dance", topped the charts in six countries Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States and later received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Dance Recording. The following single, "Poker Face", was an even greater success, reaching number-one in almost all major music markets in the world, including the United Kingdom and the United States. It won the award for Best Dance Recording at the 52nd Grammy Awards, over nominations for Song of the Year and Record of the Year. The Fame was nominated for Album of the Year; it won the Grammy Award for Best Electronic/Dance Album. Although her first concert tour happened as an opening act for fellow Interscope pop group, the reformed New Kids on the Block, she ultimately headlined her own concert tour, The Fame Ball Tour, which began on March 2009. Gaga at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards.The cover of the annual 'Hot 100' issue of Rolling Stone in May 2009, featured a semi-nude Gaga wearing only strategically placed plastic bubbles. In the issue she discussed that while she was beginning her career in the New York club scene, she was romantically involved with a heavy metal drummer. She described their relationship and break-up, saying of it, "I was his Sandy, and he was my Danny of Grease, and I just broke." He later became an inspiration behind some of the songs on The Fame. She was nominated for a total of nine awards at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, winning the award for "Best New Artist", while her single "Paparazzi" won two awards for "Best Art Direction" and "Best Special Effects." In October 2009, Gaga received Billboard magazine's Rising Star of 2009 award. She attended the Human Rights Campaign's "National Dinner" on October 10, 2009, before marching in the National Equality March in Washington, D.C. In November 2009, Gaga released The Fame Monster, a collection of eight songs that dealt with the darker side of fame as experienced by her over the course of 2008-09, while travelling around the world and are expressed through a monster metaphor. Her second concert tour, The Monster Ball Tour, was announced in support of The Fame Monster and began in November 2009. "Bad Romance" was released as the first single from the album and topped the charts in eighteen countries, while reaching the top-two in the United States, Australia and New Zealand. "Speechless", a song from The Fame Monster, was performed at The 2009 Royal Variety Performance where Gaga met and sang for Queen Elizabeth II. Gaga performing on The Monster Ball TourGaga was chosen as of one the '10 Most Fascinating People of 2009' by Barbara Walters during Walters' annual ABC News special. When interviewed by the journalist, the singer went to dismiss the claim that she is intersex as an urban legend, responding to a question on this issue by stating: "At first it was very strange and everyone sorta said, 'That's really quite a story!' But in a sense, I portray myself in a very androgynous way, and I love androgyny." On January 7, 2010, she was named chief creative officer for a line of imaging products for Polaroid, stating that she will create fashion, technology and photography products. In the wake of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Gaga donated all of her proceeds from the January 24 show of The Monster Ball (ticket sales, merchandise, etc.), and from her online store; the total amount donated was over $500,000. She also collaborated with artist Cyndi Lauper, for MAC AIDS Fund's VIVA Glam campaign, which raised over $160 million to fight against AIDS and HIV, and bring awareness about the diseases to women around the world. The second single "Telephone", which features R&B singer Beyoncé, became her fourth UK number-one single, while reaching the top three in Australia, France, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Canada and the United States. On March 19, 2010, Rob Fusari sued Gaga's production company Mermaid Music LLC, claiming that he was entitled to a 20% share of its earnings. Gaga's lawyer Charles Ortner described the agreement with Fusari as "unlawful" and declined to comment. In an interview with MTV United Kingdom, Gaga stated that she had begun work on her new studio album. She said that shes "already written the core of it" and that "it's certainly my best work to date." On April 16, 2010, her music videos gained over one billion viral views, becoming the first artist to reach this milestone. Later that month, Gaga was named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people of the year. Cyndi Lauper, who wrote the article in TIME about Gaga, called her "a performance artist" saying that "she herself is the art, she is the sculpture." ==Musical style and influences== Gaga has been influenced by glam rock musicians such as David Bowie and Freddie Mercury, as well as pop music artists such as Madonna and Michael Jackson. The Queen song "Radio Ga Ga" inspired her stage name, "Lady Gaga". She commented: "I adored Freddie Mercury and Queen had a hit called 'Radio Gaga'. That's why I love the name Freddie was unique one of the biggest personalities in the whole of pop music." Madonna told Rolling Stone that she sees "herself in Lady Gaga." In response to the comparisons between herself and Madonna, Gaga stated: "I don't want to sound presumptuous, but I've made it my goal to revolutionise pop music. The last revolution was launched by Madonna 25 years ago." Actress and singer Grace Jones was also cited as an inspiration by her. She has often been likened to Blondie singer Debbie Harry. Gaga's vocals have drawn frequent comparison to Madonna and Gwen Stefani, while the structure of her music is said to be reminiscent of classic 1980s pop and 1990s Europop. While reviewing her debut album The Fame, The Sunday Times asserted "in combining music, fashion, art and technology, Lady GaGa evokes Madonna, Gwen Stefani circa 'Hollaback Girl', Kylie Minogue 2001 or Grace Jones right now." Similarly, The Boston Globe critic Sarah Rodman commented that she draws "obvious inspirations from Madonna to Gwen Stefani... in her girlish but sturdy pipes and bubbly beats." Though her lyrics are said to lack intellectual stimulation, "she does manage to get you moving and grooving at an almost effortless pace." Music critic Simon Reynolds wrote that "Everything about Gaga came from electroclash, except the music, which wasn't particularly 1980s, just ruthlessly catchy noughties pop glazed with Auto-Tune and undergirded with R&B-ish beats. Gaga has stated that she is "very into fashion" and that it is "everything" to her. She considers Donatella Versace her muse. Gaga has her own creative production team called the Haus of Gaga, which she handles personally. The team creates many of her clothes, stage props, and hairdos. Her love of fashion came from her mother, who she stated was "always very well kept and beautiful." She said that: "When I'm writing music, I'm thinking about the clothes I want to wear on stage. It's all about everything altogether performance art, pop performance art, fashion. For me, it's everything coming together and being a real story that will bring back the super-fan. I want to bring that back. I want the imagery to be so strong that fans will want to eat and taste and lick every part of us." The Global Language Monitor named 'Lady Gaga' as the Top Fashion Buzzword with her trademark 'no pants' coming in at No. 3. Entertainment Weekly put her outfits on its end of the decade "best-of" list, saying, "Whether it's a dress made of Muppets or strategically placed bubbles, Gaga's outré ensembles brought performance art into the mainstream." ==Public image== Gaga wearing a plastic bubble dress while performing on The Fame Ball Tour.Contrary to her subsequent outré style, the New York Post described her early look as like "a refugee from Jersey Shore" with "big black hair, heavy eye makeup and tight, revealing clothes." Gaga is a natural brunette, however she bleached her hair blonde, because she was often mistaken for Amy Winehouse. She often refers to her fans as her 'little monsters' and got a tattoo with that inscription as a tribute. She has another six known tattoos, among them a peace symbol, which was inspired by the late John Lennon who she stated was her hero, and a curling German script on her left arm which quotes the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, her "favorite philosopher," commenting that his "philosophy of solitude" spoke to her: In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spreads its roots, the answer, and ask yourself, must I write? Rainer Maria Rilke Toward the end of 2008, comparisons were made between the fashions of Lady Gaga and recording artist Christina Aguilera, noting similarities in their styling, hair, and make-up. Aguilera later said she was "completely unaware of Gaga" and "didn't know if it was a man or a woman." Gaga released a statement in which she welcomed the comparisons, due to the attention providing useful publicity, saying, "She's such a huge star and if anything I should send her flowers, because a lot of people in America didn't know who I was until that whole thing happened. It really put me on the map in a way." Comparisons continued into 2010 when Christina released the music video of her single "Not Myself Tonight". Critics noted similarities between the song and its accompanying music video with Gaga's video for "Bad Romance". Gaga delivers a speech at the National Equality March, October 11, 2009.Gaga attributes much of her early success as a mainstream artist to her gay fans and is considered to be a rising gay icon. Early in her career she had difficulty getting radio airplay, and stated, "The turning point for me was the gay community. I've got so many gay fans and they're so loyal to me and they really lifted me up. They'll always stand by me and I'll always stand by them. It's not an easy thing to create a fanbase." She thanked FlyLife, a Manhattan-based LGBT marketing company with whom her label Interscope works, in the liner notes of her debut studio album, The Fame, saying, "I love you so much. You were the first heartbeat in this project, and your support and brilliance means the world to me. I will always fight for the gay community hand in hand with this incredible team." One of her first televised performances was in May 2008 at the NewNowNext Awards, an awards show aired by the LGBT television network Logo, where she sang her song "Just Dance". In June of the same year, she performed the song again at the San Francisco Pride event. After The Fame was released, she revealed that the song "Poker Face" was about her bisexuality. In an interview with Rolling Stone, she spoke about how her boyfriends tended to react to her bisexuality, saying "The fact that I’m into women, they’re all intimidated by it. It makes them uncomfortable. They’re like, 'I don’t need to have a threesome. I’m happy with just you'." When she appeared as a guest on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in May 2009, she praised DeGeneres for being "an inspiration for women and for the gay community". She proclaimed that the October 11, 2009, National Equality March rally on the national mall was "the single most important event of her career." As she exited, she left with an exultant "Bless God and bless the gays," similar to her 2009 MTV Video Music Awards acceptance speech for Best New Artist a month earlier. ==Discography== Main article: Lady Gaga discography The Fame (2008) The Fame Monster (2009) Tours The Fame Ball Tour (2009) The Monster Ball Tour (2009-2011) Awards and nominations Main article: List of awards and nominations received by Lady Gaga Related Websites: http://www.ladygaga.com/ http://www.ladygaga.com/telephone/ http://www.ladygaga.com/news/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Gaga http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrO4YZeyl0I http://twitter.com/ladygaga http://www.facebook.com/ladygaga?v=app_157391050947062 http://www.myspace.com/ladygaga http://www.mtv.com/music/artist/lady_gaga/artist.jhtml
Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber: Killer video stars

Most viewed: Videos by Lada Gaga and Justin Bieber have compiled some astounding statistics
An odder pop couple doesn't exist: Justin Bieber with his heartthrob looks and Mayberry sweetness, and Lady Gaga with her outrageous costumes and kinky persona.
And yet behold the king and queen of today's music video scene, taking over for MTV-era monarchs Michael Jackson and Madonna.
At their torrid mouse-click pace — in September, Bieber was getting 3.7 million views a day, Gaga 1.8 million — the singers will be the first entertainers to top 1 billion YouTube views each, Gaga by Oct. 25 and Bieber by Nov. 3, says David Burch of TubeMogul, which monitors online video traffic.

IN THE SPOTLIGHT: Justin Bieber and Susan Boyle
Contributing heavily to their staggering stats are Bieber's Baby, with 353 million views (with a playing time of 3:45, that's roughly 2,518 years of screen time), and Gaga's Bad Romance, which has tallied 291 million views (at 5:08, 2,832 years).
The distant runners-up? Jackson and Britney Spears, each with about 600 million total views.
"No one comes close to Gaga and Bieber in terms of compiling this sort of statistic in this short a time," Burch says. "Clearly, they are tapping into something big."
That would be a keen understanding of the interactive nature of today's media consumers. In contrast to the passive days of watching videos on TV or hearing songs on the radio, today's music fans can actively promote an artist through repeated viewings and forwarding videos to friends, says Monica Herrera, news editor at Billboard.
"Today's model involves keeping the content coming in short bursts and staying very visible with fans, compared to days when being unseen might be viewed as cool," Herrera says. "When you click on your mouse, you get to be with the star."
YouTube spokesman Chris Dale says that for many music fans, "clicking on a video is like a form of competition — the more they do it, the more they wind up helping their favorite artist," he says. "Bieber and Gaga have figured out that there's a core overlap between what they do and what this generation wants."
Video is central to the careers of both stars. Gaga's elaborate creations, which often enlist the help of divas such as Beyoncé, almost demand to be seen more than heard.
And Bieber literally owes his livelihood to YouTube: Amateur videos of him singing are what led to his being signed by R&B star Usher. It also appears the teen is angling for a career in front of the camera: He's playing a troubled teenager in episodes of CBS' CSI.
"Justin Bieber is the first teen phenomenon in the era of universal access" to stars, says Bob Lefsetz, author of music-industry watchdog blog the Lefsetz Letter. "He's showing that the Internet really is providing new opportunities for the music business.

"And the production values of (Gaga's) clips prove the music video is not dead."

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Saturday, August 14, 2010

Julia Roberts News - Julia Roberts' Motherly Routine


Julia Roberts' Motherly Routine

PHOTO AND NEWS PLUS-PRETTY WOMAN JULIA ROBERTS WALLPAPER -1932 X 1024 beatles music, chicago tribune, digital spy, dvd, eat pray love, julia roberts, julia roberts news, mtv. amazon, vancouver sun
Julia Roberts News - Julia Roberts' Motherly Routine

Contactmusic.com - ‎3 hours ago‎

Julia Roberts desn't mind having sacrificed her spare time for motherhood because she enjoys being a parent so much. The 'Eat Pray Love' actress - who has ...

Video: Julia Roberts: How Eat Pray Love Could Have 'Collapsed' People.com
The Evolution Of Julia Roberts: A Look Back At The 'Eat Pray Love' Star's ... MTV.com
Digital Spy - Chicago Tribune - Vancouver Sun
 
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Saturday, March 27, 2010

New Songs Like The Beatles

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The Beatles


The Beatles in 1964
George Harrison
Background information
OriginLiverpool, England
GenresRock, pop
Years active 1960 - 1970
Labels EMI, Parlophone, Capitol, Odeon, Apple, Vee-Jay, Polydor, Swan,
Tollie, UA
Associated acts The Quarrymen, Plastic Ono Band
Websitewww.TheBeatles.com
Members
John Lennon
Paul McCartney
George Harrison
Ringo Starr
Former members
Stuart Sutcliffe
Pete Best
History of The Beatles

The Quarrymen

The Beatles in Hamburg

The Beatles at The Cavern Club

Beatlemania in the United Kingdom

American releases

The Beatles in the United States

1966

Studio years

Breakup

Reunions

Line-ups

Timeline


The Beatles were an English rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, who became one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the
history of popular music. In their heyday, the group consisted of John Lennon (rhythm guitar, vocals), Paul McCartney (bass guitar, vocals), George Harrison
(lead guitar, vocals) and Ringo Starr (drums, vocals). Rooted in skiffle and 1950s rock and roll, the group later worked in many genres ranging from folk
rock to psychedelic pop, often incorporating classical and other elements in innovative ways. The nature of their enormous popularity, which first emerged as
the "Beatlemania" fad, transformed as their songwriting grew in sophistication. The group came to be perceived as the embodiment of progressive ideals, seeing
their influence extend into the social and cultural revolutions of the 1960s. With an early five-piece line-up of Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, Stuart
Sutcliffe (bass) and Pete Best (drums), The Beatles built their reputation in Liverpool and Hamburg clubs over a three-year period from 1960. Sutcliffe left
the group in 1961, and Best was replaced by Starr the following year. Moulded into a professional outfit by music store owner Brian Epstein after he offered
to act as the group's manager, and with their musical potential enhanced by the hands-on creativity of producer George Martin, The Beatles achieved UK
mainstream success in late 1962 with their first single, "Love Me Do". Gaining international popularity over the course of the next year, they toured
extensively until 1966, then retreated to the recording studio until their breakup in 1970. Each then found success in an independent musical career.
McCartney and Starr remain active; Lennon was shot and killed in 1980, and Harrison died of cancer in 2001.
During their studio years, The Beatles produced what critics consider some of their finest material including the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
(1967), widely regarded as a masterpiece. Nearly four decades after their breakup, The Beatles' music continues to be popular. The Beatles have had more
number one albums on the UK charts, and held down the top spot longer, than any other musical act. According to RIAA certifications, they have sold more
albums in the US than any other artist. In 2008, Billboard magazine released a list of the all-time top-selling Hot 100 artists to celebrate the US singles
chart's fiftieth anniversary, with The Beatles at number one. They have been honoured with 7 Grammy Awards, and they have received 15 Ivor Novello Awards
from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors. The Beatles were collectively included in Time magazine's compilation of the 20th century's
100 most important and influential people.



==History==
Formation and early years (1957 - 1962)
Aged sixteen, singer and guitarist John Lennon formed the skiffle group The Quarrymen with some Liverpool schoolfriends in March 1957. Fifteen-year-old
Paul McCartney joined as a guitarist after he and Lennon met that July. When McCartney in turn invited George Harrison to watch the group the following
February, the fourteen-year-old joined as lead guitarist. By 1960,Lennon's schoolfriends had left the group, he had begun studies at the Liverpool
College of Art and the three guitarists were playing rock and roll whenever they could get a drummer. Joining on bass in January, Lennon's fellow student
Stuart Sutcliffe suggested changing the band name to "The Beetles" as a tribute to Buddy Holly and The Crickets, and they became "The Beatals" for the first few
months of the year. After trying other names including "Johnny and the Moondogs", "Long John and The Beetles" and "The Silver Beatles", the band
finally became "The Beatles" in August. The lack of a permanent drummer posed a problem when the group's unofficial manager, Allan Williams, arranged a
resident band booking for them in Hamburg, Germany. Before the end of August they auditioned and hired drummer Pete Best, and the five-piece band left
for Hamburg four days later, contracted to fairground showman Bruno Koschmider for a 48-night residency. "Hamburg in those days did not have rock'n'roll music
clubs. It had strip clubs", says biographer Philip Norman. Bruno had the idea of bringing in rock groups to play in various clubs. They
had this formula. It was a huge nonstop show, hour after hour, with a lot of people lurching in and the other lot lurching out. And the bands would play
all the time to catch the passing traffic. In an American red-light district, they would call it nonstop striptease.
Many of the bands that played in Hamburg were from Liverpool...It was an accident. Bruno went to London to look for bands. But he happened to meet a
Liverpool entrepreneur in Soho, who was down in London by pure chance. And he arranged to send some bands over.
Harrison, only seventeen in August 1960, obtained permission to stay in Hamburg by lying to the German authorities about his age. Initially placing The
Beatles at the Indra Club, Koschmider moved them to the Kaiserkeller in October after the Indra was closed down due to noise complaints. When they violated
their contract by performing at the rival Top Ten Club, Koschmider reported the underage Harrison to the authorities, leading to his deportation in
November. McCartney and Best were arrested for arson a week later when they set fire to a condom hung on a nail in their room; they too were
deported. Lennon returned to Liverpool in mid-December, while Sutcliffe remained in Hamburg with his new German fiancée, Astrid Kirchherr, for another
month. Kirchherr took the first professional photos of the group and cut Sutcliffe's hair in the German "exi" (existentialist) style of the time, a look
later adopted by the other Beatles.
During the next two years, the group were resident for further periods in Hamburg. They used Preludin both recreationally and to maintain their energy
through all-night performances. Sutcliffe decided to leave the band in early 1961 and resume his art studies in Germany, so McCartney took up
bass. German producer Bert Kaempfert contracted what was now a four-piece to act as Tony Sheridan's backing band on a series of recordings.
Credited to "Tony Sheridan and The Beat Brothers", the single "My Bonnie", recorded in June and released four months later, reached number 32 in the
Musikmarkt chart. The Beatles were also becoming more popular back home in Liverpool. During one of the band's frequent appearances there at The Cavern
Club, they encountered Brian Epstein, a local record store owner and music columnist. When the band appointed Epstein manager in January 1962,
Kaempfert agreed to release them from the German record contract. After Decca Records rejected the band with the comment "Guitar groups are on the way out,
Mr. Epstein", producer George Martin signed the group to EMI's Parlophone label. News of a tragedy greeted them on their return to Hamburg in
April. Meeting them at the airport, a stricken Kirchherr told them of Sutcliffe's death from a brain haemorrhage.

Abbey Road Studios main entranceThe band had its first recording session under Martin's direction at Abbey Road Studios in London in June 1962. Martin
complained to Epstein about Best's drumming and suggested the band use a session drummer in the studio. Instead, Best was replaced by Ringo Starr. Starr, who
left Rory Storm and the Hurricanes to join The Beatles, had already performed with them occasionally when Best was ill. Martin still hired session drummer
Andy White for one session, and White played on "Love Me Do" and "P.S. I Love You". Released in October, "Love Me Do" was a top twenty UK hit, peaking at
number seventeen on the chart. After a November studio session that yielded what would be their second single, "Please Please Me", they made their TV debut
with a live performance on the regional news programme People and Places. The band concluded their last Hamburg stint in December 1962. By now it had
become the pattern that all four members contributed vocals, although Starr's restricted range meant he sang lead only rarely. Lennon and McCartney had
established a songwriting partnership; as the band's success grew, their celebrated collaboration limited Harrison's opportunities as lead vocalist.
Epstein, sensing The Beatles' commercial potential, encouraged the group to adopt a professional attitude to performing. Lennon recalled the manager saying,
"Look, if you really want to get in these bigger places, you're going to have to change ”stop eating on stage, stop swearing, stop smoking." Lennon said, "We
used to dress how we liked, on and off stage. He'd tell us that jeans were not particularly smart and could we possibly manage to wear proper trousers, but he
didn't want us suddenly looking square. He'd let us have our own sense of individuality ... it was a choice of making it or still eating chicken on
stage."

Beatlemania and touring years (1963 - 1966)
UK popularity, Please Please Me and With The Beatles McCartney, Harrison, Swedish pop singer Lill-Babs and Lennon on the set of the
Swedish television show Drop-In, 30 October 1963In the wake of the moderate success of "Love Me Do", "Please Please Me" met with a more emphatic reception,
reaching number two in the UK singles chart after its January 1963 release. Martin originally intended to record the band's debut LP live at The Cavern
Club. Finding it had "the acoustic ambience of an oil tank", he elected to create a "live" album in one session at Abbey Road Studios. Ten songs were
recorded for Please Please Me, accompanied on the album by the four tracks already released on the two singles. Recalling how the band "rushed to
deliver a debut album, bashing out Please Please Me in a day", an Allmusic reviewer comments, "Decades after its release, the album still sounds fresh,
precisely because of its intense origins." Lennon said little thought went into composition at the time; he and McCartney were "just writing songs à la
Everly Brothers, a la Buddy Holly, pop songs with no more thought of them than that ”to create a sound. And the words were almost irrelevant."
Released in March 1963, the album reached number one on the British chart. This began a run during which eleven of The Beatles' twelve studio albums released in
the United Kingdom through 1970 hit number one. The band's third single, "From Me to You", came out in April and was also a chart-topping hit. It began an
almost unbroken run of seventeen British number one singles for the band,including all but one of those released over the next six years. On its release
in August, the band's fourth single, "She Loves You", achieved the fastest sales of any record in the UK up to that time, selling three-quarters of a million
copies in under four weeks. It became their first single to sell a million copies, and remained the biggest-selling record in the UK until 1978 when it was
topped by "Mull of Kintyre", performed by McCartney and his post-Beatles band Wings. The popularity of the Beatles' music brought with it increasing press
attention. They responded with a cheeky, irreverent attitude that defied what was expected of pop musicians and inspired even more interest.

The Beatles' drop-T logo The Beatles' iconic "drop-T" logo, based on an impromptu sketch by instrument retailer and designer Ivor Arbiter, also made its debut in
1963. The logo was first used on the front of Starr's bass drum, which Epstein and Starr purchased from Arbiter's London shop. The band toured the UK
three times in the first half of the year: a four-week tour that began in February preceded three-week tours in March and May–June. As their popularity
spread, a frenzied adulation of the group took hold, dubbed "Beatlemania". Although not billed as tour leaders, they overshadowed other acts including
Tommy Roe, Chris Montez and Roy Orbison, US artists who had established great popularity in the UK. Performances everywhere, both on tour and at many
one-off shows across the UK, were greeted with riotous enthusiasm by screaming fans. Police found it necessary to use high-pressure water hoses to control
the crowds, and there were debates in Parliament concerning the thousands of police officers putting themselves at risk to protect the group. In late
October, a five-day tour of Sweden saw the band venture abroad for the first time since the Hamburg chapter. Returning to the UK, they were greeted at
Heathrow Airport in heavy rain by thousands of fans in "a scene similar to a shark-feeding frenzy", attended by fifty journalists and photographers and a BBC
Television camera crew. The next day, The Beatles began yet another UK tour, scheduled for six weeks. By now, they were indisputably the headliners.
Please Please Me was still topping the album chart. It maintained the position for thirty weeks, only to be displaced by With The Beatles which itself held the
top spot for twenty-one weeks. Making much greater use of studio production techniques than its "live" predecessor, the album was recorded between July and
October. With The Beatles is described by Allmusic as "a sequel of the highest order ”one that betters the original by developing its own tone and adding
depth." In a reversal of what had until then been standard practice, the album was released in late November ahead of the impending single "I Want to
Hold Your Hand", with the song excluded in order to maximize the single's sales. With The Beatles caught the attention of Times music critic William
Mann, who went as far as to suggest that Lennon and McCartney were "the outstanding English composers of 1963". The newspaper published a series of
articles in which Mann offered detailed analyses of The Beatles' music, lending it respectability. With The Beatles became the second album in UK chart
history to sell a million copies, a figure previously reached only by the 1958 South Pacific soundtrack.

==The British Invasion==
Beatles releases in the United States were initially delayed for nearly a year when Capitol Records, EMI's American subsidiary, declined to issue either
"Please Please Me" or "From Me to You". Negotiations with independent US labels led to the release of some singles, but issues with royalties and
derision of The Beatles' "moptop" hairstyle posed further obstacles. Once Capitol did start to issue the material, rather than releasing the LPs in
their original configuration, they compiled distinct US albums from an assortment of the band's recordings, and issued songs of their own choice as
singles. American chart success came suddenly after a news broadcast about British Beatlemania triggered great demand, leading Capitol to rush-release "I
Want to Hold Your Hand" in December 1963. The band's US debut was already scheduled to take place a few weeks later.

The Beatles arrive at John F. Kennedy International Airport, 7 February 1964 When The Beatles left the United Kingdom on 7 February 1964, an estimated four
thousand fans gathered at Heathrow, waving and screaming as the aircraft took off. "I Want to Hold Your Hand" had sold 2.6 million copies in the US over
the previous two weeks, but the group were still nervous about how they would be received. At New York's John F. Kennedy Airport they were greeted by another
vociferous crowd, estimated at about three thousand people. They gave their first live US television performance two days later on The Ed Sullivan Show,
watched by approximately 74 million viewers—over 40 percent of the American population. The next morning one newspaper wrote that The Beatles "could
not carry a tune across the Atlantic", but a day later their first US concert saw Beatlemania erupt at Washington Coliseum. Back in New York the
following day, they met with another strong reception at Carnegie Hall. The band appeared on the weekly Ed Sullivan Show a second time, before returning to the
UK on 22 February. During the week of 4 April, The Beatles held twelve positions on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, including the top five.
That same week, a third American LP joined the two already in circulation; all three reached the first or second spot on the US album chart. The band's
popularity generated unprecedented interest in British music, and a number of other UK acts subsequently made their own American debuts, successfully touring
over the next three years in what was termed the British Invasion. The Beatles' hairstyle, unusually long for the era and still mocked by many adults,
was widely adopted and became an emblem of the burgeoning youth culture. The Beatles toured internationally in June. Staging thirty-two concerts over
nineteen days in Denmark, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand, they were ardently received at every venue. Starr was ill for the first half of
the tour, and Jimmy Nicol sat in on drums. In August they returned to the US, with a thirty-concert tour of twenty-three cities. Generating intense
interest once again, the month-long tour attracted between ten and twenty thousand fans to each thirty-minute performance in cities from San Francisco to
New York. However, their music could hardly be heard. On-stage amplification at the time was modest compared to modern-day equipment, and the band's small
Vox amplifiers struggled to compete with the volume of sound generated by screaming fans. Forced to accept that neither they nor their audiences could
hear the details of their performance, the band grew increasingly bored with the routine of concert touring.
At the end of the August tour they were introduced to Bob Dylan in New York at the instigation of journalist Al Aronowitz. Visiting the band in their hotel
suite, Dylan introduced them to cannabis. Music historian Jonathan Gould points out the musical and cultural significance of this meeting, before which
the musicians' respective fanbases were "perceived as inhabiting two separate subcultural worlds": Dylan's core audience of "college kids with artistic or
intellectual leanings, a dawning political and social idealism, and a mildly bohemian style" contrasted with The Beatles' core audience of "veritable
'teenyboppers'kids in high school or grade school whose lives were totally wrapped up in the commercialized popular culture of television, radio, pop
records, fan magazines, and teen fashion. They were seen as idolaters, not idealists." Within six months of the meeting, "Lennon would be making records on
which he openly imitated Dylan's nasal drone, brittle strum, and introspective vocal persona." Within a year, Dylan would "proceed, with the help of a
five-piece group and a Fender Stratocaster electric guitar, to shake the monkey of folk authenticity permanently off his back"; "the distinction between the
folk and rock audiences would have nearly evaporated"; and The Beatles' audience would be "showing signs of growing up".

==A Hard Day's Night, Beatles for Sale, Help! and Rubber Soul==
Capitol Records' lack of interest throughout 1963 had not gone unnoticed, and a competitor, United Artists Records, encouraged United Artists' film division to
offer The Beatles a motion picture contract in the hope that it would lead to a record deal. Directed by Richard Lester, A Hard Day's Night had the group's
involvement for six weeks in March April 1964 as they played themselves in a boisterous mock-documentary of the Beatles phenomenon. The film premiered in
London and New York in July and August, respectively, and was an international success. The Observer's reviewer, Penelope Gilliatt, noted that "the way the
Beatles go on is just there, and that's it. In an age that is clogged with self-explanation this makes them very welcome. It also makes them naturally
comic." According to Allmusic, the accompanying soundtrack album, A Hard Day's Night, saw The Beatles "truly coming into their own as a band. All of the
disparate influences on their first two albums had coalesced into a bright, joyous, original sound, filled with ringing guitars." That "ringing guitar"
sound was primarily the product of Harrison's 12-string electric Rickenbacker, a prototype given him by the manufacturer, which made its debut on the record.
Harrison's ringing 12-string inspired Roger McGuinn, who obtained his own Rickenbacker and used it to craft the trademark sound of The Byrds.
Beatles for Sale, the band's fourth studio album, saw the emergence of a serious conflict between commercialism and creativity. Recorded between August and
October 1964, the album had been intended to continue the format established by A Hard Day's Night which, unlike the band's first two LPs, had contained no
cover versions. Acknowledging the challenge posed by constant international touring to the band's songwriting efforts, Lennon admitted, "Material's becoming
a hell of a problem". Six covers were eventually included on the album. Released in early December, its eight self-penned numbers nevertheless stood
out, demonstrating the growing maturity of the material produced by the Lennon-McCartney partnership.

In April 1965, Lennon and Harrison's dentist spiked their coffee with LSD while they were his guests for dinner. The two later deliberately experimented
with the drug, joined by Starr on one occasion. McCartney was reluctant to try it, but eventually did so in 1966, and later became the first Beatle to
discuss it publicly. Controversy erupted in June 1965 when Queen Elizabeth II appointed the four Beatles Members of the Order of the British Empire (MBE)
after Prime Minister Harold Wilson nominated them for the award. In protest”the honour was at that time primarily bestowed upon military veterans
and civic leaders”some conservative MBE recipients returned their own insignia.

The US trailer for Help! with (from the rear) Harrison, McCartney, Lennon and (largely obscured) Starr The Beatles' second film, Help!, again directed by
Lester, was released in July. Described as "mainly a relentless spoof of Bond", it inspired a mixed response among both reviewers and the band.
McCartney said, "Help! was great but it wasn't our film ”we were sort of guest stars. It was fun, but basically, as an idea for a film, it was a bit
wrong." The soundtrack was dominated by Lennon, who was lead singer and songwriter on the majority of songs, including the two singles performed on it:
"Help!" and "Ticket to Ride". The accompanying album, the group's fifth studio LP, again contained a mix of original material and covers. Help! saw the
band making increased use of vocal overdubs and incorporating classical instruments into their arrangements, notably the string quartet on the pop
ballad "Yesterday". Composed by McCartney, "Yesterday" would inspire the most recorded cover versions of any song ever written. The LP's closing
track, "Dizzy Miss Lizzy", became the last cover the band would include on an album. With the exception of Let It Be's brief rendition of the traditional
Liverpool folk song "Maggie Mae", all of their subsequent albums would contain only self-penned material.
On 15 August, The Beatles' third US visit opened with the first major stadium concert in history when they performed before a crowd of 55,600 at Shea Stadium,
New York. A further nine successful concerts followed in other US cities. Towards the end of the tour the group were introduced to Elvis Presley, a
foundational musical influence on the band, who invited them to his home. Presley and the band set up guitars in his living room, jammed together,
discussed the music business and exchanged anecdotes. September saw the launch of an American Saturday morning cartoon series featuring the Beatles and
echoing A Hard Day's Night's slapstick antics. Original episodes appeared for the next two years, and reruns aired through 1969.

Rubber Soul, released in early December, was hailed by critics as another major step forward in the maturity and complexity of the band's music. Biographer
and music critic Ian MacDonald observes that with Rubber Soul, The Beatles "recovered the sense of direction that had begun to elude them during the later
stages of work on Beatles for Sale". After Help!'s foray into the world of classical music with flutes and strings, Rubber Soul's introduction of a sitar
on "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" marked a further progression outside the traditional boundaries of rock music. The album also saw Lennon and
McCartney's collaborative songwriting increasingly supplemented by distinct compositions from each (though they continued to share official credit). Their
thematic reach was expanding as well, embracing more complex aspects of romance and other concerns. As their lyrics grew more artful, fans began to study
them for deeper meaning. There was speculation that "Norwegian Wood" might refer to cannabis. In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine's "The 500 Greatest Albums of
All Time" ranked Rubber Soul at number five, and the album is today described by Allmusic as "one of the classic folk rock records". According to
both Lennon and McCartney, however, it was "just another album". Recording engineer Norman Smith saw clear signs of growing conflict within the group
during the Rubber Soul sessions; Smith later said that "the clash between John and Paul was becoming obvious" and "as far as Paul was concerned, George could
do no right."

==Controversy, studio years and breakup (1966-1970)==
Events leading up to final tour In June 1966, Yesterday and Today ”one of the compilation albums created by
Capitol Records for the US market ”caused an uproar with its cover, which portrayed the smiling Beatles dressed in butcher's overalls, accompanied by raw
meat and mutilated plastic dolls. A popular, though apocryphal, story was that this was meant as a response to the way Capitol had "butchered" their
albums. Thousands of copies of the album had a new cover pasted over the original; an uncensored copy fetched $10,500 at a December 2005 auction.
During a tour of the Philippines the month after the Yesterday and Today furore, The Beatles unintentionally snubbed the nation's first lady, Imelda Marcos, who
had expected the group to attend a breakfast reception at the Presidential Palace. When presented with the invitation, Epstein politely declined on
behalf of the group, as it had never been his policy to accept such official invitations. The group soon found that the Marcos regime was unaccustomed
to taking "no" for an answer. The resulting riots endangered the group and they escaped the country with difficulty.
Almost as soon as they returned home, they faced a fierce backlash from US religious and social conservatives (as well as the Ku Klux Klan) over a comment
Lennon had made in a March interview with British reporter Maureen Cleave. Lennon had offered his opinion that Christianity was dying and that The Beatles
were "more popular than Jesus now". The comment went virtually unnoticed in England, but when US teenage fan magazine Datebook printed it five
months later” on the eve of the group's final US tour ”it created a controversy in the American South's "Bible belt". South Africa also banned airplay of
Beatles records, a prohibition that would last until 1971. Epstein publicly criticised Datebook, saying they had taken Lennon's words out of context,
and at a press conference Lennon pointed out, "If I'd said television was more popular than Jesus, I might have got away with it." Lennon said he had only been
referring to how other people saw The Beatles, but "if you want me to apologise, if that will make you happy, then okay, I'm sorry."
Revolver and Sgt. Pepper

Rubber Soul had marked a major step forward; Revolver, released in August 1966 a week before the band's final tour, marked another. Pitchfork identifies it
as "the sound of a band growing into supreme confidence" and "redefining what was expected from popular music." Described by Gould as "woven with motifs
of circularity, reversal, and inversion", Revolver featured sophisticated songwriting and a greatly expanded repertoire of musical styles ranging from
innovative classical string arrangements to psychedelic rock. Abandoning the group photograph that had become the norm, its cover designed by Klaus
Voorman, a friend of the band since their Hamburg days ”was a "stark, arty, black-and-white collage that caricatured the Beatles in a pen-and-ink style
beholden to Aubrey Beardsley." The album was preceded by the single "Paperback Writer", backed by "Rain". The Beatles shot short promo films for
both songs, described as "among the first true music videos", which aired on Top of the Pops and The Ed Sullivan Show.
Among Revolver's most experimental tracks was "Tomorrow Never Knows", for whose lyrics Lennon drew from Timothy Leary's The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual
Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The song's creation involved eight tape decks distributed about the recording studio building, each manned by an
engineer or band member, who randomly varied the movement of a tape loop while Martin created a composite recording by sampling the incoming data.
McCartney's "Eleanor Rigby" made prominent use of a string octet; it has been described as "a true hybrid, conforming to no recognizable style or genre of
song." Harrison was developing as a songwriter, and three of his compositions earned a place on the record. In 2003, Rolling Stone ranked
Revolver as the third greatest album of all time. On the US tour that followed, The Beatles played none of its songs. The final show, at
Candlestick Park, San Francisco, on 29 August, was their last commercial concert. It marked the end of a four-year period dominated by touring that
included nearly 60 US concert appearances and over 1400 internationally.

Freed from the burden of touring, the band's creativity and desire to experiment grew as they recorded Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, beginning in
December 1966. Emerick recalled, "The Beatles insisted that everything on Sgt. Pepper had to be different. We had microphones right down in the bells of brass
instruments and headphones turned into microphones attached to violins. We used giant primitive oscillators to vary the speed of instruments and vocals and we
had tapes chopped to pieces and stuck together upside down and the wrong way round." Parts of "A Day in the Life" required a forty-piece orchestra.
Nearly seven hundred hours of studio time were devoted to the sessions. They first yielded the non-album double A-side single "Strawberry Fields
Forever"/"Penny Lane" in February 1967; Sgt. Pepper followed in June. The musical complexity of the records, created using only four-track recording
technology, astounded contemporary artists seeking to outdo The Beatles. For Beach Boys leader Brian Wilson, in the midst of a personal crisis and
struggling to complete the ambitious Smile, hearing "Strawberry Fields" was a crushing blow and he soon abandoned all attempts to compete. Sgt.
Pepper met with great critical acclaim. In 2003, Rolling Stone ranked it number one among its "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" and it is widely regarded
as a masterpiece. Jonathan Gould describes it as a rich, sustained, and overflowing work of collaborative genius whose bold
ambition and startling originality dramatically enlarged the possibilities and raised the expectations of what the experience of listening to popular music
on record could be. On the basis of this perception, Sgt. Pepper became the catalyst for an explosion of mass enthusiasm for album-formatted rock that
would revolutionize both the aesthetics and the economics of the record business in ways that far outstripped the earlier pop explosions triggered by
the Elvis phenomenon of 1956 and the Beatlemania phenomenon of 1963.

Front cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, "probably the most famous album cover in popular musical history" Sgt. Pepper was the first major pop
album to include its complete lyrics, which were printed on the back cover. Those lyrics were the subject of intense analysis; fans speculated, for
instance, that the "celebrated Mr K." in "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" might in fact be the surrealist fiction writer Franz Kafka. The American
literary critic and professor of English Richard Poirier wrote an essay, "Learning from the Beatles", in which he observed that his students were
"listening to the group's music with a degree of engagement that he, as a teacher of literature, could only envy." Poirier identified what he termed
the "mixed allusiveness" of the material: "It's unwise ever to assume that they're doing only one thing or expressing themselves in only one style ... one
kind of feeling about a subject isn't enough ... any single induced feeling must often exist within the context of seemingly contradictory alternatives."
McCartney said at the time, "We write songs. We know what we mean by them. But in a week someone else says something about it, and you can't deny it ... You
put your own meaning at your own level to our songs". Sgt. Pepper's remarkably elaborate album cover also occasioned great interest and deep
study. The heavy moustaches worn by the band swiftly became a hallmark of hippie style. Cultural historian Jonathan Harris describes their "brightly
coloured parodies of military uniforms" as a knowingly "anti-authoritarian and anti-establishment" display.
On 25 June, the band performed their newest single, "All You Need Is Love", to TV viewers worldwide on Our World, the first live global television link.
Appearing amid the Summer of Love, the song was adopted as a flower power anthem. Two months later the group suffered a loss that threw their
career into turmoil. After being introduced to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, they travelled to Bangor for his Transcendental Meditation retreat. During the
retreat, Epstein's assistant Peter Brown called to tell them Epstein had died. The coroner ruled Epstein's death an accidental overdose, but it was
widely rumoured that a suicide note had been discovered among his possessions. Epstein had been in a fragile emotional state, stressed by
both personal issues and the state of his working relationship with The Beatles. He worried that the band might not renew his management contract,
due to expire in October, based on discontent with his supervision of business matters. There were particular concerns over Seltaeb, the company that handled
Beatles merchandising rights in the United States. Epstein's death left the group disoriented and fearful about the future. Lennon said later, "I didn't
have any misconceptions about our ability to do anything other than play music and I was scared." He also looked back on Epstein's death as marking the
beginning of the end for the group: "I knew that we were in trouble then ... I thought, We've fuckin' had it now."

==Magical Mystery Tour, White Album and Yellow Submarine==
Magical Mystery Tour, the soundtrack to a forthcoming Beatles television film, appeared as a six-track double extended play disc (EP) in early December
1967. In the United States, the six songs were issued on an identically titled LP that also included tracks from the band's recent singles. Allmusic
says of the US Magical Mystery Tour, "The psychedelic sound is very much in the vein of Sgt. Pepper, and even spacier in parts (especially the sound collages of
'I Am the Walrus')", and calls its five songs culled from the band's 1967 singles "huge, glorious, and innovative". It set a new US record in its
first three weeks for highest initial sales of any Capitol LP, and it is the one Capitol compilation later to be adopted in the band's official canon of studio
albums. Aired on Boxing Day, the Magical Mystery Tour film, largely directed by McCartney, brought The Beatles their first major negative UK press.
It was dismissed as "blatant rubbish" by the Daily Express, which described it as "a great deal of raw footage showing a group of people getting on, getting
off, and riding on a bus". The Daily Mail called it "a colossal conceit", while the Guardian labelled it "a kind of fantasy morality play about the
grossness and warmth and stupidity of the audience". It fared so dismally that it was withheld from the US at the time. In January, the group filmed
a cameo for the animated movie Yellow Submarine, a fantasia featuring a cartoon version of The Beatles. The group's only other involvement with the film was the
contribution of several unreleased studio recordings. Released in June 1968, it was well received for its innovative visual style and humour in addition to its
music. It would be seven months, however, before the film's soundtrack album appeared.

McCartney, Starr, Harrison and Lennon in the trailer for Yellow Submarine. Their cameo was filmed 25 January 1968, three weeks before they left for India.In
the interim came The Beatles, a double LP popularly known as the White Album for its virtually featureless cover. Creative inspiration for the album came from an
unexpected quarter when, with Epstein's guiding presence gone, the group turned to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi as their guru. At his ashram in Rishikesh, India,
a three-month "Guide Course" became one of their most creative periods, yielding a large number of songs including most of the thirty recorded for the
album. Starr left after ten days, likening it to Butlins, and McCartney eventually grew bored with the procedure and departed a month later. For
Lennon and Harrison, creativity turned to questioning when Yanni Alexis Mardas, the electronics technician dubbed Magic Alex, suggested that the Maharishi was
attempting to manipulate the group. After Mardas alleged that the Maharishi had made sexual advances to women attendees, Lennon was persuaded and left
abruptly, taking the unconvinced Harrison and the remainder of the group's entourage with him. In his anger Lennon wrote a pointed song called
"Maharishi", but later modified it to avoid a legal suit, resulting in "Sexy Sadie". McCartney said, "We made a mistake. We thought there was more to
him than there was."

During recording sessions for the album, which stretched from late May to mid-October 1968, relations among the band's members grew openly divisive. Starr
quit for a period, leaving McCartney to perform drums on several tracks. Lennon's romantic preoccupation with avant-garde artist Yoko Ono contributed to
tension within the band and he lost interest in co-writing with McCartney. Flouting the group's well-established understanding that they would not take
partners into the studio, Lennon insisted on bringing Ono, anyway disliked by Harrison, to all of the sessions. Increasingly contemptuous of McCartney's
creative input, he began to identify the latter's compositions as "granny music", dismissing "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" as "granny shit". Recalling the
White Album sessions, Lennon gave a curiously foreshortened summing-up of the band's history from that point on, saying, "It's like if you took each track off
it and made it all mine and all Paul's... just me and a backing group, Paul and a backing group, and I enjoyed it. We broke up then." McCartney also
recalled that the sessions marked the start of the breakup, saying, "Up to that point, the world was a problem, but we weren't" which had always been "the best
thing about The Beatles". Issued in November, the White Album was the band's first Apple Records album release. The new label was a subsidiary of
Apple Corps, formed by the group on their return from India, fulfilling a plan of Epstein's to create a tax-effective business structure. The record
attracted more than two million advance orders, selling nearly four million copies in the US in little over a month, and its tracks dominated the playlists
of US radio stations. Despite its popularity, it did not receive flattering reviews at the time. According to Jonathan Gould,
The critical response... ranged from mixed to flat. In marked contrast to Sgt. Pepper, which had helped to establish an entire genre of literate rock
criticism, the White Album inspired no critical writing of any note. Even the most sympathetic reviewers... clearly didn't know what to make of this
shapeless outpouring of songs. Newsweek's Hubert Saal, citing the high proportion of parodies, accused the group of getting their tongues caught in
their cheeks.

General critical opinion eventually turned in favor of the White Album, and in 2003 Rolling Stone ranked it as the tenth greatest album of all time.
Pitchfork describes the album as "large and sprawling, overflowing with ideas but also with indulgences, and filled with a hugely variable array of material
... its failings are as essential to its character as its triumphs." Allmusic observes, "Clearly, the Beatles' two main songwriting forces were no
longer on the same page, but neither were George and Ringo"; yet "Lennon turns in two of his best ballads", McCartney's songs are "stunning", Harrison is seen
to have become "a songwriter who deserved wider exposure" and Starr's composition is "a delight".
By now the interest in Beatles lyrics was taking a serious turn. When Lennon's song "Revolution" had been released as a single in August ahead of the White
Album, its messages seemed clear: "free your mind", and "count me out" of any talk about destruction as a means to an end. In a year characterized by
student protests that stretched from Warsaw to Paris to Chicago, the response from the radical left was scathing. However, the White Album version of the
song, "Revolution 1", added an extra word, "count me out ... in", implying a change of heart since the single's release. The chronology was in fact
reversed the ambivalent album version was recorded first but some felt that The Beatles were now saying that political violence might indeed be
justifiable.
The Yellow Submarine LP finally appeared in January 1969. It contained only four previously unreleased songs, along with the title track (already issued on
Revolver), "All You Need Is Love" (already issued as a single and on the US Magical Mystery Tour LP) and seven instrumental pieces composed by Martin.
Because of the paucity of new Beatles music, Allmusic suggests the album might be "inessential" but for Harrison's "It's All Too Much", "the jewel of the new
songs... resplendent in swirling Mellotron, larger-than-life percussion, and tidal waves of feedback guitar... a virtuoso excursion into otherwise hazy
psychedelia".

==Abbey Road, Let It Be and breakup==
Apple Corps building at 3 Savile Row, site of the Let It Be rooftop concertAlthough Let It Be was the band's final album release, most of it was
recorded before Abbey Road. Initially titled Get Back, Let It Be originated from an idea Martin attributes to McCartney: to prepare new material and "perform it
before a live audience for the very first time on record and on film. In other words make a live album of new material, which no one had ever done
before." In the event, much of the album's content came from studio work, many hours of which were captured on film by director Michael Lindsay-Hogg.
Martin said that rehearsals and recording for the project, which occupied much of January 1969, were "not at all a happy ... experience. It was a time when
relations between the Beatles were at their lowest ebb." Aggravated by both McCartney and Lennon, Harrison walked out for a week. He returned with
keyboardist Billy Preston, who participated in the last ten days of sessions and was credited on the "Get Back" single”the only other musician to receive such
acknowledgment on an official Beatles recording. The band members had reached an impasse on a concert location, rejecting among several concepts a boat at sea,
the Tunisian desert and the Colosseum. Ultimately, the final live performance by The Beatles, accompanied by Preston, was filmed on the rooftop of the Apple
Corps building at 3 Savile Row, London, on 30 January 1969. Engineer Glyn Johns worked for months assembling various iterations of a Get
Back album, while the band turned to other concerns. Conflict arose regarding the appointment of a financial adviser, the need for which had become evident
without Epstein to manage business affairs. Lennon favoured Allen Klein, who had negotiated contracts for The Rolling Stones and other UK bands during the
British Invasion. McCartney's choice was John Eastman, brother of Linda Eastman, whom McCartney married on 12 March (eight days before Lennon and Ono wed).
Agreement could not be reached, so both were appointed, but further conflict ensued and financial opportunities were lost.
Martin was surprised when McCartney contacted him and asked him to produce another album, as the Get Back sessions had been "a miserable experience" and he
had "thought it was the end of the road for all of us... they were becoming unpleasant people ”to themselves as well as to other people." Recording
sessions for Abbey Road began in late February. Lennon rejected Martin's proposed format of "a continuously moving piece of music", and wanted his own
and McCartney's songs to occupy separate sides of the album. The eventual format, with individually composed songs on the first side and the second
largely comprising a medley, was McCartney's suggested compromise. On 4 July, while work on the album was in progress, the first solo single by a member
of The Beatles appeared: Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance", credited to the Plastic Ono Band. The completion of the Abbey Road track "I Want You (She's So Heavy)"
on 20 August was the last time all four Beatles were together in the same studio. Lennon announced his departure to the rest of the group on 20 September,
but agreed that no public announcement would be made until a number of legal matters were resolved.

Released six days after Lennon's declaration, Abbey Road sold four million copies within two months and topped the UK chart for eleven weeks. Its
second track, the ballad "Something", was also issued as a single ”the first and only song by Harrison to appear as a Beatles A side. Abbey Road received
mixed reviews, although the medley met with general acclaim. Allmusic considers it "a fitting swan song for the group" containing "some of the
greatest harmonies to be heard on any rock record". MacDonald calls it "erratic and often hollow": "Had it not been for McCartney's input as designer
of the Long Medley... Abbey Road would lack the semblance of unity and coherence that makes it appear better than it is." Martin singled it out as his
personal favourite of all the band's albums; Lennon said it was "competent" but had "no life in it", calling "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" "more of Paul's granny
music". Recording engineer Geoff Emerick noted that the replacement of the studio's valve mixing console with a transistorised one produced a less
punchy sound, leaving the group frustrated at the thinner tone and lack of impact.

For the still uncompleted Get Back album, the final new Beatles song, Harrison's "I Me Mine", was recorded on 3 January 1970. Lennon, in Denmark at the time, did
not participate. To complete the album, now retitled Let It Be, in March Klein gave the Get Back session tapes to American producer Phil Spector. Known
for his Wall of Sound approach, Spector had recently produced Lennon's solo single "Instant Karma!" In addition to remixing the Get Back material, Spector
edited, spliced and overdubbed several of the recordings that had been intended as "live". McCartney was unhappy with Spector's treatment of the material and
particularly dissatisfied with the producer's orchestration of "The Long and Winding Road", which involved a choir and thirty-four-piece instrumental
ensemble. He unsuccessfully attempted to halt the release of Spector's version. McCartney publicly announced his departure from the band on 10
April, a week before the release of his first, self-titled solo album. Pre-release copies of McCartney's record included a press statement with a
self-written interview, explaining the end of his involvement with The Beatles and his hopes for the future.
On 8 May, the Spector-produced Let It Be was released. The accompanying single, "The Long and Winding Road", was the band's last; it was released in the United
States, but not Britain. The Let It Be documentary film followed later in the month; at the Academy Award ceremony the next year, it would win the Oscar for
Best Original Song Score. The Sunday Telegraph called it "a very bad film and a touching one ... about the breaking apart of this reassuring,
geometrically perfect, once apparently ageless family of siblings." More than one reviewer commented that some of the Let It Be tracks sounded better in
the film than on the album. Observing that Let It Be is the "only Beatles album to occasion negative, even hostile reviews", Allmusic describes it as "on
the whole underrated... McCartney in particular offers several gems: the gospel-ish 'Let It Be', which has some of his best lyrics; 'Get Back', one of
his hardest rockers; and the melodic 'The Long and Winding Road', ruined by Spector's heavy-handed overdubs." McCartney filed a suit for the
dissolution of The Beatles on 31 December 1970. Legal disputes continued long after the band's breakup, and the dissolution of the partnership did not
take effect until 1975.

==Post-breakup (since 1970)==
See also: Collaborations between ex-Beatles 1970s
Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr all released solo albums in 1970. Further albums followed from each, sometimes with the involvement of one or more of the
others. Starr's Ringo (1973) was the only album to include compositions and performances by all four, albeit on separate songs. With Starr's collaboration,
Harrisonstaged The Concert for Bangladesh in New York City in August 1971 with sitar maestro Ravi Shankar. 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.

Two double-LP sets of The Beatles' greatest hits compiled by Allen Klein, 1962 - 1966 and 1967 - 1970, were released in 1973, at first under the Apple Records
imprint. Commonly known as the Blue Album and Red Album respectively, each earned a Multi-Platinum certification in the United States and a Platinum
certification in the United Kingdom. Between 1976 and 1982, EMI/Capitol released a wave of Beatles compilation albums without input from the
band members. The only one to feature previously unreleased material was The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl (1977). The first officially issued concert
recordings by the group, it contained selections from two shows The Beatles played during their 1964 and 1965 US tours. After the international release of
the original British albums on CD in 1987, EMI deleted this latter group of compilations ”including the Hollywood Bowl record from its catalogue.
The Beatles' music and enduring fame were commercially exploited in various other ways, outside the band members' creative control. The Broadway musical
Beatlemania, a nostalgia revue featuring four musicians performing as The Beatles, opened in early 1977 and proved popular, spinning off five separate
touring productions. The Beatles tried and failed to block the 1977 release of Live! at the Star-Club in Hamburg, Germany; 1962. The independently
issued album compiled recordings made during the group's Hamburg residency, taped on a basic recording machine with one microphone. Sgt. Pepper's
Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978), a musical film starring the Bee Gees and Peter Frampton, was a commercial failure and "artistic fiasco". In 1979, the band
sued the producers of Beatlemania, settling for several million dollars in damages. "People were just thinking The Beatles were like public domain", said
Harrison. "You can't just go around pilfering The Beatles' material.

==1980s==
Lennon was shot and killed on 8 December 1980, in New York City. In a personal tribute Harrison wrote new lyrics for "All Those Years Ago", a song about his
time with The Beatles recorded the month before Lennon's death. With McCartney and his wife, Linda, contributing backing vocals, and Starr on drums, the song
was overdubbed with the new lyrics and released as a single in May 1981.
McCartney's own tribute, "Here Today", appeared on his Tug of War album in April 1982.

The Beatles were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, their first year of eligibility. Harrison and Starr attended the ceremony along
with Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, and his two sons, Julian and Sean. McCartney declined to attend, issuing a press release saying, "After 20 years, the Beatles
still have some business differences which I had hoped would have been settled by now. Unfortunately, they haven't been, so I would feel like a complete
hypocrite waving and smiling with them at a fake reunion." The following year, EMI/Capitol settled a decade-long lawsuit by The Beatles
concerning royalties, clearing the way to commercially package previously unreleased material.

==1990s==
Live at the BBC, the first official release of previously unissued Beatles performances in 17 years, appeared in 1994. That same year McCartney, Harrison
and Starr reunited for the Anthology project, the culmination of work begun in the late 1960s by Neil Aspinall. Initially The Beatles' road manager, and
then their personal assistant, Aspinall began to gather material for a documentary after he became director of Apple Corps in 1968. The Long and
Winding Road, as Aspinall provisionally titled his Beatles history, was shelved, but as executive producer for the Anthology project Aspinall was able to
complete his work. Documenting the history of The Beatles in the band's own words, the project saw the release of many previously unissued Beatles
recordings; McCartney, Harrison and Starr also added new instrumental and vocal parts to two demo songs recorded by Lennon in the late 1970s. During 1995
and 1996 the project yielded a five-part television series, an eight-volume video set and three two-CD box sets. The two songs based on Lennon demos, "Free
as a Bird" and "Real Love", were each released as singles. The CD box sets featured artwork by Klaus Voorman, creator of the Revolver album cover in 1966.
The releases were commercially successful and the television series was viewed by an estimated 400 million people worldwide.

==2000s==
1, a compilation album of every Beatles number one British and American hit, was released on 13 November 2000. It became the fastest-selling album of all time,
with 3.6 million sold in its first week and over 12 million in three weeks worldwide. It was a number one chart hit in at least 28 countries, including the
UK and the US. As of April 2009, it had sold 31 million copies globally, and is the highest selling album of the decade in the United States.
Harrison died from lung cancer on 29 November 2001. McCartney and Starr were among the musicians who performed at the Concert for George,
organized by Eric Clapton and Harrison's widow, Olivia. The tribute event took place at the Royal Albert Hall on the first anniversary of Harrison's death. As
well as songs he composed for The Beatles and his own solo career, the concert included a celebration of Indian classical music, Harrison's interest in which
had influenced the band. In 2003, Let It Be, a reconceived version of the album with McCartney supervising production, was released to mixed
reviews. It was a top ten hit in both the UK and the US.

As a soundtrack for Cirque du Soleil's Las Vegas Beatles stage revue Love, George Martin and his son Giles remixed and blended 130 of the band's recordings
to create "a way of re-living the whole Beatles musical lifespan in a very condensed period". The show premiered in June 2006, and the Love album was
released that November. Attending the show's first anniversary, McCartney and Starr were interviewed on Larry King Live along with Ono and Olivia
Harrison. Also in 2007, reports circulated that McCartney was hoping to complete "Now and Then", a third Lennon demo worked on during the Anthology
sessions. It would be credited as a "Lennon/McCartney composition" with the addition of new verses, and feature a new drum track by Starr and archival
recordings of Harrison playing guitar.
Lawyers for The Beatles sued in March 2008 to prevent the distribution of unreleased recordings purportedly made during Starr's first performance with the
group at Hamburg's Star-Club in 1962. In November, McCartney discussed his hope that "Carnival of Light", a 14-minute experimental recording The Beatles
made at Abbey Road Studios in 1967, would receive an official release.
McCartney headlined a charity concert on 4 April 2009 at Radio City Music Hall for the David Lynch Foundation with guest performers including Starr. The
Beatles: Rock Band, a music video game in the style of the Rock Band series, was released on 9 September 2009. On the same day, remastered versions of the
band's twelve original studio albums plus Magical Mystery Tour and the compilation Past Masters were issued.

==Musical style and evolution==
See also: Lennon/McCartney
In Icons of Rock: An Encyclopedia of the Legends Who Changed Music Forever, Scott Schinder and Andy Schwartz sum up The Beatles' musical evolution:
In their initial incarnation as cheerful, wisecracking moptops, the Fab Four revolutionized the sound, style, and attitude of popular music and opened rock
and roll's doors to a tidal wave of British rock acts. Their initial impact would have been enough to establish the Beatles as one of their era's most
influential cultural forces, but they didn't stop there. Although their initial style was a highly original, irresistibly catchy synthesis of early
American rock and roll and R&B, the Beatles spent the rest of the 1960s expanding rock's stylistic frontiers, consistently staking out new musical
territory on each release. The band's increasingly sophisticated experimentation encompassed a variety of genres, including folk-rock, country,
psychedelia, and baroque pop, without sacrificing the effortless mass appeal of their early work.
In The Beatles as Musicians, Walter Everett points out Lennon and McCartney's contrasting motivations and approaches to composition: "McCartney may be said to
have constantly developedas a means to entertain ”a focused musical talent with an ear for counterpoint and other aspects of craft in the demonstration of a
universally agreed-upon common language that he did much to enrich. Conversely, Lennon's mature music is best appreciated as the daring product of a largely
unconscious, searching but undisciplined artistic sensibility."Ian MacDonald, comparing the two composers in Revolution in the Head, describes
McCartney as "a natural melodist ”a creator of tunes capable of existing apart from their harmony". His melody lines are characterised as primarily "vertical",
employing wide, consonant intervals which express his "extrovert energy and optimism". Conversely, Lennon's "sedentary, ironic personality" is reflected in
a "horizontal" approach featuring minimal, dissonant intervals and repetitive melodies which rely on their harmonic accompaniment for interest: "Basically a
realist, he instinctively kept his melodies close to the rhythms and cadences of speech, colouring his lyrics with bluesy tone and harmony rather than creating
tunes that made striking shapes of their own." MacDonald praises Harrison's lead guitar work for the role his "characterful lines and textural colourings"
play in supporting Lennon and McCartney's parts, and describes Starr as "the father of modern pop/rock drumming... His faintly behind-the-beat style subtly
propelled The Beatles, his tunings brought the bottom end into recorded drum sound, and his distinctly eccentric fills remain among the most memorable in pop
music."

==Influences==
The band's earliest influences include Elvis Presley, Little Richard and Chuck Berry, whose songs they covered more often than any other artist's in
performances throughout their career. During their co-residency with Little Richard at the Star Club in Hamburg from April to May 1962, he advised them on
the proper technique for performing his songs. Of Presley, Lennon said, "Nothing really affected me until I heard Elvis. If there hadn't been Elvis,
there would not have been The Beatles". Other early influences include Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran, Carl Perkins and Roy Orbison. The Beatles
continued to absorb influences long after their initial success, often finding new musical and lyrical avenues by listening to their contemporaries, including
Bob Dylan, Frank Zappa, The Byrds and The Beach Boys, whose 1966 album Pet Sounds amazed and inspired McCartney. Martin stated, "Without Pet
Sounds, Sgt. Pepper wouldn't have happened... Pepper was an attempt to equal Pet Sounds."

==Genres ==
A Hoffner "violin" bass guitar and Gretsch Country Gentleman guitar, models played by McCartney and Harrison, respectively. The small Vox amplifier behind
them is the kind The Beatles used in concert.Originating as a skiffle group, The Beatles soon embraced 1950s rock and roll. The band's
repertoire ultimately expanded to include a broad variety of pop music. Reflecting the range of styles they explored, Lennon said of Beatles for Sale,
"You could call our new one a Beatles country-and-western LP", while Allmusic credits the band, and Rubber Soul in particular, as a major influence
on the folk rock movement. Beginning with the use of a string quartet on Help!'s "Yesterday", they also incorporated classical music elements. As
Jonathan Gould points out however, it was not "even remotely the first pop record to make prominent use of ”although it was the first Beatles
recording to do so ... it was rather that the more traditional sound of strings allowed for a fresh appreciation of their talent as composers by listeners who
were otherwise allergic to the din of drums and electric guitars." The group applied strings to various effect. Of "She's Leaving Home", for instance,
recorded for Sgt. Pepper, Gould writes that it "is cast in the mold of a sentimental Victorian ballad, its words and music filled with the cliches of
musical melodrama."

The band's stylistic range expanded in another direction in 1966 with the B-side to the "Paperback Writer" single: "Rain", described by Martin Strong in The
Great Rock Discography as "the first overtly psychedelic Beatles record". Other psychedelic numbers followed, such as "Tomorrow Never Knows" (actually
recorded before "Rain"), "Strawberry Fields Forever", "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", and "I Am the Walrus". The influence of Indian classical music was
evident in songs such as Harrison's "Love You To" and "Within You Without You", whose intent, writes Gould, was "to replicate the raga form in miniature".
Summing up the band's musical evolution, music historian and pianist Michael Campbell identifies innovation as its most striking feature. He writes, "'A Day
in the Life' encapsulates the art and achievement of the Beatles as well as any single track can. It highlights key features of their music: the sound
imagination, the persistence of tuneful melody, and the close coordination between words and music. It represents a new category of song ”more sophisticated
than pop, more accessible and down to earth than pop, and uniquely innovative. There literally had never before been a song classical or vernacular—that had
blended so many disparate elements so imaginatively." Music theorist Bruce Ellis Benson agrees: "Composers may be able to conceive new rhythms and chord
progressions, but these are usually improvisations upon current rhythms and chord progressions. The Beatles ... give us a wonderful example of how such
far-ranging influences as Celtic music, rhythm and blues, and country and western could be put together in a new way."
In The Songwriting Secrets of The Beatles, Dominic Pedler also emphasizes the importance of the way they combined genres: "One of the greatest of The Beatles'
achievements was the songwriting juggling act they managed for most of their career. Far from moving sequentially from one genre to another (as is sometimes
conveniently suggested) the group maintained in parallel their mastery of the traditional, catchy chart hit while simultaneously forging rock and dabbling
with a wide range of peripheral influences from Country to vaudeville. One of these threads was their take on folk music, which would form such essential
groundwork for their later collisions with Indian music and philosophy." As the personal relationships between the band members grew increasingly strained,
their individual influences became more apparent. The minimalistic cover artwork for the White Album contrasted with the complexity and diversity of its music,
which encompassed Lennon's "Revolution 9", whose musique concrate approach was influenced by Yoko Ono; Starr's country song "Don't Pass Me By"; Harrison's rock
ballad "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"; and the "proto-metal roar" of McCartney's "Helter Skelter".

==Contribution of George Martin==
George Martin's close involvement with The Beatles in his role as producer made him one of the leading candidates for the informal title of "fifth Beatle".
He brought his classical musical training to bear in various ways. The string quartet accompaniment to "Yesterday" was his idea ”the band members were
initially unenthusiastic about the concept, but the result was a revelation to them. Gould also describes how, "as Lennon and McCartney became
progressively more ambitious in their songwriting, Martin began to function as an informal music teacher to them". This, coupled with his willingness to
experiment in response to their suggestions ”such as adding "something baroque" to a particular recording ”facilitated their creative development. As well
as scoring orchestral arrangements for Beatles recordings, Martin often performed, playing instruments including piano, organ and brass.
Looking back on the making of Sgt. Pepper, Martin said, "'Sergeant Pepper' itself didn't appear until halfway through making the album. It was Paul's song,
just an ordinary rock number and not particularly brilliant as songs go ... Paul said, 'Why don't we make the album as though the Pepper band really existed, as
though Sergeant Pepper was making the record? We'll dub in effects and things.' I loved the idea, and from that moment on it was as though Pepper had a life of
its own." Recalling how strongly the song contrasted with Lennon's compositions, Martin spoke too of his own stabilising influence:
Compared with Paul's songs, all of which seemed to keep in some sort of touch with reality, John's had a psychedelic, almost mystical quality ... John's
imagery is one of the best things about his work—"tangerine trees", "marmalade skies", "cellophane flowers" ... I always saw him as an aural Salvador Dalí,
rather than some drug-ridden record artist. On the other hand, I would be stupid to pretend that drugs didn't figure quite heavily in The Beatles' lives
at that time. At the same time they knew that I, in my schoolmasterly role, didn't approve ... Not only was I not into it myself, I couldn't see the need
for it; and there's no doubt that, if I too had been on dope, Pepper would never have been the album it was.
Harrison echoed Martin's description of his stabilising role: "I think we just grew through those years together, him as the straight man and us as the
loonies; but he was always there for us to interpret our madness ”we used to be slightly avant-garde on certain days of the week, and he would be there as the
anchor person, to communicate that through the engineers and on to the tape."

==In the studio==
See also: The Beatles' recording technology
The Beatles made innovative use of technology, treating the studio as an instrument in itself. They urged experimentation by Martin and their recording
engineers, regularly demanding that something new be tried because "it might just sound good". At the same time they constantly sought ways to put
chance occurrences to creative use. Accidental guitar feedback, a resonating glass bottle, a tape loaded the wrong way round so that it played backwards—any
of these might be incorporated into their music. The Beatles' desire to create new sounds on every new recording, combined with Martin's arranging
abilities and the studio expertise of EMI staff engineers such as Norman Smith, Ken Townsend and Geoff Emerick, all contributed significantly to their records
from Rubber Soul and, especially, Revolver forward. Along with studio tricks such as sound effects, unconventional microphone placements, tape loops,
double tracking and vari-speed recording, The Beatles augmented their songs 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 in "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" and the swarmandel in "Strawberry Fields
Forever". They also used early electronic instruments such as the Mellotron, with which McCartney supplied the flute voices on the "Strawberry
Fields" intro, and the clavioline, an electronic keyboard that created the unusual oboe-like sound on "Baby, You're a Rich Man".

==Legacy==
See also: The Beatles' influence on popular culture
The Beatles' influence on popular culture was and remains immense. Former Rolling Stone associate editor Robert Greenfield said, "People are still looking
at Picasso ... at artists who broke through the constraints of their time period to come up with something that was unique and original. In the form that they
worked in, in the form of popular music, no one will ever be more revolutionary, more creative and more distinctive than The Beatles were." From the 1920s,
the United States had dominated popular entertainment culture throughout much of the world, via Hollywood movies, jazz, the music of Broadway and Tin Pan Alley
and, later, the rock and roll that first emerged in Memphis, Tennessee. Drawing on their rock and roll roots, The Beatles not only triggered the British
Invasion of the US, but themselves became a globally influential phenomenon.
The Beatles' musical innovations, as well as their commercial success, inspired musicians worldwide. A large number of artists have acknowledged The
Beatles as an influence or have had chart successes with covers of Beatles songs. On radio, the arrival of The Beatles marked the beginning of a new
era; program directors like Rick Sklar of New York's WABC went as far as forbidding DJs from playing any "pre-Beatles" music. The Beatles redefined
the album as something more than just a few hits padded out with "filler". They were primary innovators of the music video. The Shea Stadium date with
which they opened their 1965 North American tour attracted what was then the largest audience in concert history and is seen as a "landmark event in the
growth of the rock crowd." Emulation of their clothing and especially their hairstyles, which became a mark of rebellion, had a global impact on
fashion.

More broadly, The Beatles changed the way people listened to popular music and experienced its role in their lives. From what began as the Beatlemania
fad, the group grew to be perceived by their young fans across the industrialized world as the representatives, even the embodiment, of ideals
associated with cultural transformation. As icons of the 1960s counterculture, they became a catalyst for bohemianism and activism in various
social and political arenas, fueling such movements as women's liberation, gay liberation and environmentalism.

==Awards and recognition==
See also: List of awards and nominations received by The Beatles In 1965, Queen Elizabeth II appointed the four Beatles Members of the Order of
the British Empire (MBE). The Beatles film Let It Be (1970) won the 1971 Academy Award for Best Original Song Score. The Beatles have received 7
Grammy Awards and 15 Ivor Novello Awards. They have been awarded 6 Diamond albums, as well as 24 Multi-Platinum albums, 39 Platinum albums and 45 Gold
albums in the United States, while in the UK they have 4 Multi-Platinum albums, 4 Platinum albums, 8 Gold albums and 1 Silver album.
The group were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988. In 2008, Billboard magazine released a list of the all-time top-selling Hot 100 artists
to celebrate the US singles chart's fiftieth anniversary—The Beatles ranked number one. In 2009, the Recording Industry Association of America certified
that The Beatles have sold more albums in the US than any other artist. The Beatles have had more number one albums, 15, on the UK charts and held down the
top spot longer, 174 weeks, than any other musical act. The Beatles were collectively included in Time magazine's compilation of the 20th century's 100
most influential people.

==Discography==
Main article: The Beatles discography
Further information: List of The Beatles songs, List of The Beatles' record sales, and The Beatles bootlegs
Original UK LPs
Please Please Me (1963)
With The Beatles (1963)
A Hard Day's Night (1964)
Beatles for Sale (1964)
Help! (1965)
Rubber Soul (1965)
Revolver (1966)
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)
The Beatles (aka White Album) (1968)
Yellow Submarine (1969)
Abbey Road (1969)
Let It Be (1970)
(For Magical Mystery Tour, see CD releases below.)
CD releases

==1980s==
In 1987, EMI and Apple Corps released all of The Beatles' studio albums on CD. With this release, the band's catalogue was standardized throughout the world,
establishing a canon composed of the twelve original studio albums as issued in the United Kingdom (listed above), as well as the US album version of Magical
Mystery Tour (1967), which had been released as a shorter double EP in the UK. All the remaining Beatles material from the singles and EPs which had
not been issued on the original studio albums was gathered on the two-volume compilation Past Masters (1988).

==2000s==
The US album configurations from 1964 - 1965 were released as box sets in 2004 and 2006 (The Capitol Albums Volume 1 and Volume 2 respectively); these included
both stereo and mono versions based on the mixes that were prepared for vinyl at the time of the music's original American release.
On 9 September 2009, The Beatles' entire back catalogue was reissued following an extensive digital remastering process that lasted four years. Stereo
editions of all twelve original UK studio albums, along with Magical Mystery Tour and Past Masters, were released on compact disc both individually and as a
box set. A second collection included all mono titles along with the original stereo mixes of Help! and Rubber Soul. For a limited time, a brief video
documentary about the remastering was included on each CD. In Mojo, Danny Eccleston wrote, "Ever since The Beatles first emerged on CD in 1987, there have
been complaints about the sound". In support of the opinion that the original vinyl had significant advantages over the early CDs in clarity and dynamism, he
suggested, "Compare 'Paperback Writer'/'Rain' on crackly 45, with its weedy Past Masters CD version, and the case is closed." Prior to the release of the 2009
remasters, Abbey Road Studios invited Mojo reviewers to hear a sample of the work, advising, "You're in for a shock." In his release-day review of the full
product, Eccleston reported that "brilliantly, that's still how it feels a month later."

==Digital music==
The Beatles are among the few major artists whose recorded catalogue is not available through online music services such as iTunes and Napster. Apple
Corps' dispute with Apple, Inc. (owners of iTunes) over the use of the name "Apple" is partly responsible, although in November 2008 McCartney said the main
obstacle was that EMI "want something we're not prepared to give them." In March 2009, The Guardian reported that "the prospect of an independent,
Beatles-specific digital music store" has been raised by Harrison's son, Dhani, who said, "We're losing money every day... So what do you do? You have to have
your own delivery system, or you have to do a good deal with Apple, Inc. CEO Steve Jobs... He says that a download is worth 99 cents, and we
disagree." On 30 October, Wired.com reported that an online service, BlueBeat, was making available the entire Beatles catalogue, via both
purchasable downloads and free streaming. Neither EMI nor Apple Corps had authorized the distribution, and within a week BlueBeat was legally barred
from handling the band's music. In December 2009, The Beatles' catalogue was officially released in FLAC and MP3 format in a limited edition of 30,000
USB flash drives.

==Song catalogue==
In 1963 Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr agreed to assign their song publishing rights to Northern Songs, a company created by music publisher Dick
James. Administered by his company Dick James Music, Northern Songs went public in 1965 with Lennon and McCartney each holding 15% of the company's
shares and James and the company's chairman, Charles Silver, holding a controlling 37.5%. After a failed attempt by Lennon and McCartney to buy the
company, James and Silver sold Northern Songs in 1969 to British TV company Associated TeleVision (ATV), in which Lennon and McCartney received stock.
Briefly owned by Australian business magnate Robert Holmes à Court, ATV Music was sold in 1985 to Michael Jackson for a reported $47 million (trumping a joint
bid by McCartney and Yoko Ono), giving him control over the publishing rights to more than 200 songs composed by Lennon and McCartney.
Jackson and Sony merged their music publishing businesses in 1995, becoming joint owners of most of the Lennon-McCartney songs recorded by The Beatles,
although Lennon's estate and McCartney still receive their respective shares of the royalties. Although the Jackson-Sony catalogue includes most of The Beatles'
greatest hits, some of their earliest songs were published by an EMI subsidiary, Ardmore & Beechwood, before Lennon and McCartney signed with James. McCartney
acquired the publishing rights to "Love Me Do" and "P.S. I Love You" from Ardmore in the 1980s. Harrison and Starr allowed their songwriting
contracts with Northern Songs to lapse in 1968, signing with Apple Publishing instead. Harrison created Harrisongs, which still owns the rights to his
post-1967 songs such as "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and "Something", while Starr's Startling Music holds the rights to his own post-1967 songs recorded by
The Beatles, "Don't Pass Me By" and "Octopus's Garden".

Posted by Nelio Inacio at 5:08 AM
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