The Beatles

 Paul McCartney, 15, hears a Skiffle group called The Quarrymen at a church fete in Woolton, Liverpool. Singer/Guitarist, John Lennon, 16, lubricated by several beers impresses young Paul who in return shows the group how to play Twenty Flight Rock. John thinks "He's as good as me".Two weeks later Paul joins the band.

 By 1960, they had acquired a new name, a manager and a fairly stable line-up of George Harrison on lead guitar, Stu Sutcliffe on bass and Pete Best on drums.
That same year, The Beatles secured a residency in Hamburg, a favoured haunt  for early British rockers, which  proved to be the making of the band.
The living was rough and wild, with the fresh-faced Liverpool teens exposed overnight to the pleasures of speed, Existentialism, all night drinking, fighting and the Reeperbahn's notorious red-light zone.
Most importantly of all, their punishing schedule of three sets a night turned them into seasoned professionals within only a few months. 
The existentialist input came from Stu Sutcliffe's German girlfriend Astrid Kirchherr, who created much of the early Beatles look. On their second Hamburg stint, Sutcliffe himself dropped out of the band, leaving McCartney to take over on bass.

 

The Beatles returned to Liverpool in June 1961, to find that their frenzied playing went down a storm at home as well as in Germany. Within a few months they acquired Brian Epstein as their new manager and a residency at The Cavern, where they soon became local heroes at the centre of Liverpool's beat boom.
But with their horizons opened by their time in Europe, their eyes turned to London and a national record deal. Derek Rowe of Decca has gone down in history as the man who turned down The Beatles, but he certainly wasn't the only one to reject Brian Epstein's overtures. 

 

 In fact, it was hit or miss as to whether EMI/Parlophone would sign them, but it seems that producer George Martin liked their sense of humour as much as their music (he had worked on comedy for Peter Sellers and many other acts) and decided to take a chance.

However, one final and controversial change remained: next time The Beatles returned to London's Abbey Road studios in September 1962, Ringo Starr, previously of Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, was in the drummer's seat.  The reason was as much musical as personal (whether it had anything to do with the fact that Pete Best was too good-looking for the others' liking is of course debatable) but the girls at The Cavern didn't see things this way and in  one of the ensuing punch-ups George Harrison sustained a black eye. He was still sporting it as The Beatles struggled through their first commercial recording, a Lennon and McCartney composition called Love Me Do.
Today it sounds like a pretty lightweight affair, but its refreshing directness made it stand out at a time when most British pop was compressed and reverb-laden in the Joe Meek school. It reached an unimpressive #17 and in the hope of the top slot The Beatles threw everything into their next effort, Please Please Me. 
This time there was no doubt, as it smashed in at #1 following a live appearance on the Thank Your Lucky Stars TV show. Teenage audiences were mesmerized by this fresh new group with the long hair and the buttoned-down suits: slowly but surely, Beatlemania was spreading.

 

As luck would have it, George Martin turned out to be the perfect producer for the band. Acting on instinct, he decided to make their debut album something better than the usual cash-in of the time.  Please Please Me, recorded in one marathon session, was a lively mix of their own compositions and standards from their stage act, including a frenzied version of Twist And Shout. 
By now, the Lennon and McCartney hit machine was working in overdrive, producing a string of singles including From Me To You, She Loves You and I Want To Hold Your Hand, that were both innovative and fiendishly catchy. 

By the time of the November 1963 release of their second album, With The Beatles, they were established as Britain's favourite group, on a scale that was previously unheard of.
To most outside Britain in 1963, The Beatles were an English oddity. They had weird hair and one was called Ringo, but that was about the size of it. And then in 1964 the band toured the US and played on The Ed Sullivan Show. 
The gig was tuned into by a monster American TV audience - 73 million people -and is still one of the most celebrated and literally hysterical musical moments of the 20th century. The studio audience squealed and cried as the lads powered through All My Loving, Till There Was You, She Loves You, I Saw Her Standing There and I Want To Hold Your Hand. And for viewers at home it was the same.
Back in the studio, The Beatles produced the rousing Can't Buy Me Love and then, in a frenzied bout of recording and film-making, A Hard Day's Night, the soundtrack to a brilliant study of Beatlemania directed by Richard Lester.

The public were delighted to find that as well as being talented tunesmiths with a rowdy stage act, The Beatles also looked great on the screen. However, they were already starting to move beyond the confines of their beat group image, with both Harrison and Lennon showing a strong interest in Bob Dylan. The two key forces in 60s music met for the first time that August in New York, when Dylan turned The Beatles on to the delights of dope.
Beatles For Sale, their second album of 1964, was mostly a more soulful variation of their usual fare, though Lennon's I'm A Loser showed a new emotional depth and hinted at new influences in their music. 
The catalyst arrived some time in early 1965, when The Beatles had their first encounter with LSD, an experience reflected in the density and sensual languor of their next single, Ticket To Ride. 
The experimentation continued on their soundtrack album for their second film, Help!, which boasted the Dylanesque You've Got To Hide Your Love Away and McCartney's eternal  ballad Yesterday, as well as the superb title track. After another hectic round of touring, including the Shea Stadium gig, The Beatles found themselves pushed to match a batch of summer singles from the likes of The Kinks, The Animals, TheRolling Stones, and of course Bob Dylan. 
They rose to the occasion with Rubber Soul, the first of their classic albums, and one that showed a new maturity and complexity in songs like Norwegian Wood and Nowhere Man. The accompanying single, Day Tripper, backed witthe brilliant We Can Work It Out, reinforced the image of a band working at the peak of their powers.
Following a final UK tour the band took three months off, relaxing and preparing for their next waxing. If Rubber Soul had opened minds, then Revolver, released in August 1966, was to blow them. 

 

As well as some of the finest pop songs ever recorded, it contained two tracks that set out a manifesto for the psychedelic explosion of 1967; She Said She Said, however lysergic, was at least a pop song, albeit one pushed to the limits,  Tomorrow Never Knows, however, was something completely different. On top of Ringo's hypnotic drums and a kaleidoscope of tape loops, John Lennon's mesmerizing vocal exhorted you to 'listen to the colour of your dreams'.
It was the final delight on an album that took in everything from George Harrison's bitter Taxman, to Eleanor Rigby and the obligatory singalong-a-Ringo track, Yellow Submarine.  Even the advance single, Paperback Writer, was a corker, backed by Rain, The Beatles best ever B-side, propelled by yet more innovative drum work from Ringo.
Their last concert performance was at Candlestick Park in San Francisco: on their return to the UK, they made it clear to Brian Epstein that touring was now off the agenda.  Apart from the hassles and threats, they couldn't even hear themselves play over the screaming, never mind attempt to reproduce the complexities of their new studio work.
                                                                                                                                         Next