The Beatles History

Many individuals don't understand that the Beatles worked as a band for only one 10 years, 1960 to 1970. Over the decade, the band from a working-class Liverpool background became the world's greatest rock band and continues to influence the contemporary music scene. The groups final lineup of 1962 was Paul McCartney on bass and piano, John Lennon on rhythm guitar, George Harrison on lead guitar, and Ringo Starr on drums. All of the Fab Four also performed vocals.

Are you aware that the Beatles' musical foundations lie with skiffle as much as with rock? Skiffle mixes country, jazz, roots, blues, and folk music on native instruments. It began in the U.S. but was made popular by England's Lonnie Donegan, where the Beatles became aware and incorporated skiffle music into their mix of rock, pop ballads, Indian music and psychedelic rock.

The earliest lineup of the Beatles featured the unlucky Stuart Sutcliffe on bass (ousted in 1961) and tragic Peter Best on drums, replaced in 1962 by Ringo. The Beatles alternated their gigs between concerts in Liverpool and in Hamburg Germany through 1963, with Brian Epstein at the reigns as manager and George Martin the producer. The song "Love Me Do" in December 1962 turned out to be their fire starter and was followed by several explosive albums through 1966. The touring years reached its peak with their "really big" performance on the Ed Sullivan Show. After tiring themselves out world touring, the Beatles ensconced exclusively into the studio, recording for the final four years of the band. Studio work not only healed the pressures of travel, but also provided a more controlled environment where the Fab Four could learn from new musicians and experiment with new sounds.

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, released in 1967, is universally regarded as their masterpiece. The album blends story-telling ("A Day in the Life"), psychedelics ("Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"), transcendental rock with sitar ("Within You Without You"), interesting solos (clarinets on "When I'm Sixty-Four", strings in "She's Leaving Home") plus so much more. Many more great albums came after, including Magical Mystery Tour, the White Album, Yellow Submarine, Abbey Road, and Let It Be.

Yoko-centered gossip accompanied their breakup in 1970, but this now seems trivial. With the murder of John Lennon in December 1980 and the death of George Harrison in November 2001 from lung cancer, the two living Beatles are now revered as a human connection to a very important part in the lives of the 60s generation. A lot of bands have arrived and departed since the Beatles, but, with maybe the exception of the Rolling Stones, none have had such profound influence on modern musical genre.