members (once settled): John Lennon (guitar, keyboards, & vocals, Paul McCartney (bass, guitar, keyboards, & vocals), George Harrison (guitar & vocals), & Ringo Starr (drums & vocals)
former/early members: Stu Sutcliffe (bass) & Pete Best (drums)
one of the first groups to write most of its own material
they released two albums and single hits during most years
transformed the sound of rock & roll and changed what it meant to be a popular music performer
moved from simple love songs to perfectionistic studio extravaganzas (especially after they stopped touring in 1966)
the lyrics of their songs matured from boy-girl romance to questioning socio-political perspectives
simply put, the Beatles influenced every act that came after them
group name: the Beatles (echoed Buddy Holly's "Crickets"); initially, the Quarry Men, then the Silver Beetles, then John's intentional misspelling, a reference to the "Mersey Beat" sound: the Beatles
Essential Early Developments
1961: won over Brian Epstein, who agreed to be their manager
1962: convinced George Martin to produce their early recordings
1962: Ringo Starr replaced Pete Best on drums, completing the core quartet personnel
John & Paul were heavily influenced by early 1950s rock and roll and the R&B that preceded it. They built upon their love of this music by playing cover versions of may of these songs during their three Hamburg tours. This sound became part of their musical "DNA," so it influenced the sound of their own music as they began composing original songs.
Support Personnel: Manager & Producer
Brian Epstein, manager
George Martin, producer (with John Lennon; left foreground)
Introduction
John Lennon Discovers Rock 'n' Roll
Spring 1956: Michael Hill (friend of John Lennon's) visited Holland on a school trip and returned with a 78 rpm vinyl record by Little Richard: "Long Tall Sally." Make sure to listen to Paul McCartney's early cover version of this song for the Quarry Men & Silver Beetles, which will be included in the list of required recordings you will hear this semester. Within weeks after hearing this recording, Lennon had formed the Quarry Men. Lennon & McCartney shared Elvis Presley & Little Richard as musical heroes, laying the foundation for their future of collaborative songwriting.
Elvis Presley & Other First-Generation Rockers
end of 1955:
RCA Records bought out Presley's contract from Sun records for $40,000 (an unprecedented amount at the time!)
to the Beatles, Elvis was a wildly ambitious singer whose country, gospel, R&B, and rock singles delivered something fresh, colorful, and cunning
one of the Beatles' earliest aspirations was to be "bigger than Elvis," a desire that was as ridiculously hopeful as it was prophetic!
During the 1950s, for the first time in American life, teens were becoming a separate, defined part of the culture: As they had their own spending money, they were a market ,and as a market they were listened to and catered to.
The First Generation of Rockers
The Beatles considered themselves as successors to the first generation rockers, faithfully covering songs by Presley and his peers:
Chuck Berry began turning out first-person teenage soap operas in song ("Roll Over Beethoven" & "Johnny B. Goode")
Lennon especially adored Berry's driving verbal rhythms, clever wordplay, and dynamic tales
Buddy Holly wrote disarming songs ("That'll Be the Day" & "Peggy Sue") while leading his own band (The Crickets)
Holly's act became a model for the Beatles: a new paradigm, "the self-contained unit" with singer, songwriter, lead & rhythm guitar, bass, and drummer all performing in studio, onstage, and over the airwaves as a compact ensemble
like Les Paul (a renowned guitarist before him), Buddy Holly became an important technical maverick, overdubbing his own voice on songs and tinkering with electronic echo; the Beatles took up this mantel too
the Everly Brothers' vocal arrangements ("Wake Up Little Susie") and the Coasters' sound ("Searchin'" & "Young Blood") provided inspiration for the Beatles
"Hiccups" in the first generation ...
Carl Perkins had a tragic car accident in 1956
Elvis was drafted into the Army at the height of his fame (1958)
Jerry Lee Lewis took his thirteen-year-old second cousin for his third bride with the ensuing notoriety essentially ending his pop career in 1958
Little Richard kept finding religion and renouncing secular music
Buddy Holly died in an airplane crash at age 22 (early 1959)
in late 1959, Chuck Berry was arrested for violating the Mann Act by transporting a 14-year-old waitress across state lines (interpreted as seducing a minor)
Chuck Berry performing the "duck walk"
A promo photo of Buddy Holly
The Everly Brothers performing
Carl Perkins performing onstage
Elvis Presley performing at his post-military service Comeback Special (1968)
Jerry Lee Lewis playing the piano
Little Richard performing onstage
The Beatles on the BBC
1960-1962: The Beatles (with Pete Best on drums & Stu Sutcliffe on bass) toured Hamburg, Germany, several times
while touring, they made early recordings backing a singer named Tony Sheridan as the Beat Brothers
late 1962: the Beatles began making regular appearances on BBC Radio's light programs (like Saturday Club) that were aimed at young listeners; many of these performances are available on recorded collections (Live at the BBC [1995], On Air: Live at the BBC Volume 2 [2013], and The Complete BBC Sessions [1993, bootleg]
the Beatles elevated the idea of covering other peoples' songs into an act of self-definition, a glossary of their own taste and aspirations, an index of their influences, and the impulse to absorb, imitate, and expand on their models ... the materials on Live at the BBC constituted a radical picture of early rock history, if only because the Beatles were among the first to frame it
the string of songs they considered "standards" (culminating in the girl-group literature written by the Carole King-Gerry Goffin team) taught them about formal structure: the roles of introductions and smooth transitions between verses; the value of repetition in refrains and choruses; the tensions contained in bridge-ending transitions; and the means of building momentum and bringing numbers to satisfying conclusions
the BBC recordings carry an immediate, direct, and unselfconscious snapshot of the Beatles becoming the Beatles, a sense of how alive rock could be in the moment before the world caught on to what these four voracious fans were up to. Playing this music promised more than a primer in rock history; it dramatized how much rock music had to teach.
From Performance to Production and Poetic Concept (what the future has in store)
from the foundation they provided (performance, material, & arrangements), the Beatles went on to master the new studio techniques then emerging from the two-track recording systems that produced their first records to four-track machines in 1963 and eight-track machines in 1968
by Revolver (1966), their mastery of studio techniques became an important force in their artistry
concept album: the Beatles are often given credit for the first concept album (Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, 1967), which constitutes something greater than the sum of its parts, creating a sequence of tracks that goes deeper than a well-thought-out series of songs laid out across two sides of a vinyl LP
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