Introduction
Music is the greatest thing which connects people over the world. It hasn’t nationality or citizenship. It’s common human property. For most part of people listening to music is very enjoyable way of leisure. And each of us has own musical preferences, favorite music styles, groups or singers. Today I want to tell you about my favorite music band. Everyone is sure to hear of them. This group’s name is The Beatles.
Who are they? Or maybe it would be more logic to ask – who were they? Because they don’t exist as a creative union for more than 40 years, and two of them, two brightest personalities and ingenious musicians died. Nevertheless the world dances, laughs and weeps to their music, as their art lives alongside with us. So – who ARE they, the four young Englishmen called ”the fabulous four”?
The answers may be numerous.
Well, some may say they are four young long-haired hooligans singing primitive rock’n’roll tunes like “Can’t buy me love”. The others may put them in the same rank with the greatest composers, such as Mozart, Beethoven and Bach, taking into account their album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”. Still the others may call them outstanding pacifists, philosophers and optimists remembering texts of their compositions, their mode of life and their obvious influence on the young generation in the sixties.
Let us try to find our own answer to this question.
Surely, they are four boys from Liverpool, who decided to play and sing together. None of them got any special musical education. Each and every has got his own strong and sometimes strange individuality. 15 years of joint life and work, several concerts at the greatest TV-studios, concert-halls and stadiums of the World, some more than 200 songs, - and the super-popularity which doesn’t fade away after so many years of their break-up.
They are: energetic, always fighting John, romantic and fantastically talented Paul, philosophical and bit religious George, always smiling and friendly Ringo. Rebels and idols, clowns and villains, magicians, quarrelers and spiritual leaders.
Well, what’s the use of all that talk? – They are THE BEATLES. Have you never heard of them?
The main part
The story that I would like to tell you is the story of a high school skiffle band that woke up one day in the rarified air of international superstardom. The story of The Beatles is a story of friendships made and lost, musical barriers broken, and lives permanently altered.
It's a long way from Liverpool to legend. The journey has been the subject of thousands of books, articles, interviews, college courses, discussion groups, and late night bull sessions. And well it should be. When you add up all of the Beatles albums, singles, CDs and videos that have ever been sold, the total surpasses 1-billion.
1957-1959: Before They Were Beatles
John Lennon was just 17 when he formed his first band, The Quarry men. They played skiffle music, a mixture of folk, jazz, and blues which was popular in England at the time.
In the summer of 1957, The Quarry Men were setting up for a performance in a church hall when another member of the band introduced Lennon to Paul McCartney, then a 15-year-old self-taught left-handed guitar player. He auditioned for the band when they finished their set, and was immediately invited to join, which he did in October, 1957.
By February 1958 Lennon was moving increasingly away from skiffle and toward rock 'n' roll. This prompted the band's banjo player to leave, giving McCartney the opportunity to introduce Lennon to his friend and former classmate, George Harrison.
The band, which then consisted of Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and other members recorded a demo consisting of Buddy Holly's "That'll Be the Day" and a Lennon-McCartney original, "In Spite of All the Danger."
Pre-Beatlemania: 1960-1963
In 1960, Lennon, McCartney and Harrison were joined by drummer Pete Best (whose mother owned The Casbah Coffee Club where the three had played many times) and bassist Stu Sutcliffe, a friend of Lennon's from the Liverpool Art School. They went through a lot of names -Long John and The Beatles, The Silver Beetles, The Beat Brothers - before settling on The Beatles.
After touring Scotland the group was invited to play the first of a series of club dates in Hamburg, Germany. They returned to Hamburg twice more in 1961 and 1962, after which they became increasingly popular on the Liverpool club circuit.
Soon Sutcliffe left the band to pursue his art studies so it was Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Best who met and auditioned for Parlophone Records producer George Martin in June 1962, at the Abbey Road Studios where they would eventually do most of their recording.
Martin liked everything about the band except Best, who by this time was not on the best of terms with the other band members either. Ringo Starr, the drummer for another popular Liverpool band, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, was recruited to replace Best.
In September, 1962, the band's first single, "Love Me Do" was released, eventually reaching #17 in the UK. It would be almost two years until the song was released (and became a #1 hit) in the USA.
Their first album, Please Please Me was released in the UK in March 1963. The singles, "Please Please Me" and "She Loves You" received scattered, limited airplay in the US. The teen audience reacted to "She Loves You" by laughing at the band's "mop top" haircuts.
After their second album, With The Beatles became only the second album ever to sell a million copies in the UK, Vee Jay Records, obtained the US rights to most of the songs from Please Please Me, and released them on an album titled Introducing. The Beatles in January 1964.
Beatlemania: 1964-1965
A booking on Ed Sullivan's popular CBS network variety show in February 1964 (watched by an estimated 73-million people) and the fact that the band had two #1 albums in the UK the previous year, finally convinced Capitol Records to sign The Beatles to a US record deal.
By April, 1964, the band's singles occupied the top five spots on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. That summer, they toured New Zealand and Australia, where their arrival was greeted by a crowd estimated at more than 300,000. The first Beatles movie, A Hard Day's Night was released in 1964.
Beatlemania was responsible for the concept of the stadium concert. More than 55-thousand screaming fans - at the time, the most ever to have attended a single concert - packed New York's Shea Stadium in August 1965. Two months later, the Fab Four became Members of the Order of the British Empire, one of the highest honors bestowed in the UK, usually to military and government officials.
The Beatles' second movie, Help! came out in 1965, and the soundtrack was one of the four albums the band released that year.
Beginning of the End: 1966-1968
The band released just two albums in 1966. One of them, Revolver, is considered to be one of the Beatles' best albums, the sands beneath the Beatlemania behemoth were obviously beginning to shift.
In the summer of 1966 the band was attacked by an angry crowd in the Philippines after turning down an invitation to breakfast at the Presidential Palace. That disastrous tour had no sooner ended when Lennon set off a huge wave of record burning protests when he suggested in an interview that "Christianity is dying" and that the Beatles "are more popular than Jesus now."
In August 1966, the band made what would turn out to be its last public performance - at Candlestick Park in San Francisco - lasting barely over a half hour. The decision was made to stop touring and concentrate on writing and recording.
Although they had lost some of their luster, The Beatles continued to produce critically and commercially successful albums: in 1967, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and the soundtrack from their third feature film, Magical Mystery Tour.
The band spent the first part of 1968 in India, studying transcendental meditation under the tutelage of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. When they returned, they announced the creation of their own label, Apple Records, and went to work on the double album, called The White Album which was released in November 1968.
The End and Beyond: 1969-present
Disputes, disagreements and disharmony among band members had been gradually increasing, become especially apparent during the White Album recording sessions. The band's last performance together outside the studio came in January 1969. Their last recording session (for Abbey Road) followed in August.
In September 1969, Lennon told the band that he was leaving. The others persuaded him not to go public until they made one more effort to get an acceptable version of their final album, Let It Be, which had been recorded several months before Abbey Road but shelved after two attempts by producer George Martin to put it in final form.
The band's breakup was announced in April 1970, a month before Let It Be was released. Documents filed on December 31, 1970 officially ended the legal entity known as The Beatles.
After the Beatles broke up, each of the band members followed separate creative paths. Paul McCartney formed a band called Wings with his wife, Linda; they recorded numerous hit songs, including "Live and Let Die". John Lennon achieved great success as a solo artist, with classic songs like "Imagine." Tragically, he was killed by an obsessive fan, Mark David Chapman, in 1980. George Harrison recorded many solo albums over the years, and died of cancer in 2001.
Conclusion
The Beatles are widely acknowledged as one of the world's most influential bands, and are frequently played on classic rock radio stations today. More recent bands, including Oasis, have achieved great success by copying the Beatles' sound. Though often imitated, the creativity and skill that the Beatles brought to rock music has never been replicated.
This band, their great music means a lot for me. And not only for me. Many people all over the world love Beatles. So I can say with sure that they exist because their music is loved till our days. Part of themselves lives in people hearts and will be remain there forever.
