The Beatles

The Beatles

We do not have enough time or room to cover all of the Beatles history and contributions to Rock and Roll this week (or even in this course). But I will at least split this discussion and leave some of their later works for next week.

Early Beatles

The Beatles were essentially started by John Lennon. He was heavily influenced by Elvis, and tried to look the part of the rebellious teenager. However, when Lonnie Donegan had a smash hit with a skiffle style song called Rock Island Line

Links to an external site.. This is a mix between C&W, folk, ballad style stories, rockabilly, rock vocals, and, well, pretty much everything else from the early 50s. Hopefully you can hear those influences.

Anyway, John Lennon started a skiffle band called the Quarry Men. In 1957, John was introduced to Paul McCartney, who also took after Elvis, but also Carl Perkins, Little Richard, and the Everly Brothers. At this point, skiffle had kind of run its course, and the Quarry Men and the other groups in Liverpool switched over to rock. Also in 1957, a friend of Paul's, George Harrison (then, 14 years old) started hanging around the band as well. Stu Sutcliffe started hanging around the band trying to join, pretending to be a bass player. When a tour manager suggested that they needed a name change, Stu suggested the name "The Beetles", in homage to Buddy Holly's Crickets. They went with it, eventually becoming "Long John and the Silver Beetles". Eventually John suggested altering the name and spelling to "The Beatles", to make a pun on the musical term "beat".

This is going to go too long before getting to any of their music, so in summary, they had a couple of tours in Germany, got better as a group, and got new management with Brian Epstein in 1962. In January 1962, they bombed their first attempts to record in the Decca record label studios failed miserably, and Decca, EMI, and Phillips all passed on the Beatles. Their bassist, Stu Sutcliffe, died of a brain hemorrhage in April. But in June, they got another audition with Parlophone Records, managed by George Martin. He was impressed enough to offer the minimum contract at the time - one year, four songs, 1 penny in royalties for every record sold. In August, they as a group decided that Pete Best, their current drummer, wasn't fitting in, and needed to be replaced. They replaced him with Ringo Starr, one of Liverpool's best known drummers. And now, the group known as The Beatles, managed by Brian Epstein, and produced by George Martin, was finally put into place.

First Hits

The first song they released as a single (linked below) did pretty well, up to #17 on the UK charts

• Love Me Do

But soon after, their third single (linked below), reached number 1 on the UK charts.

• Please Please Me

With this early success, they quickly recorded a full album, mostly originals, but also with a cover an Isley Brothers hit from the Dance Craze:

• Twist and Shout

With this one, George Martin wanted the rawest vocals he could get. He also knew that it was vocally very challenging for John Lennon, so he purposefully waited until the end of the day's recording session. John already didn't have much voice left, and could only manage two takes. You can hear where his voice is almost failing. It almost hurts to listen to, but it turned out to be one of their most popular early songs.

When Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr did record the song in 1963, the song’s growling vocal performance nearly put John Lennon’s vocal cords out of action for good. “The last song nearly killed me,” Lennon confirmed in 1976. “My voice wasn’t the same for a long time after— every time I swallowed it was like sandpaper.”

(Far Out Magazine, https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/beatles-song-ruined-john-lennon-voice/

Links to an external site.)

But their biggest breakthrough was their fourth hit (linked below), which shot straight to number 1 on the UK charts, and started the UK version of Beatlemania.

• She Loves You

They quickly moved on to a new album, With The Beatles, and had a huge hit with:

• I Want to Hold Your Hand

While some of their previous songs had been released in the US on minor labels to almost no success, this was the hit the broke open the American Market. Well, the song plus persistent badgering from Brian Epstein to Capitol Records to release I Want to Hold Your Hand in the American market. By the time The Beatles made their way to New York in December 1963, the song had been number 1 in the US for a week, and overcapacity crowds welcomed them at the airport. Applications for the Ed Sullivan live show topped 50,000 - the theatre only held 700. US DJs started playing Beatle records non-stop. Beatlemania had begun.