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The Beatles
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The Beatles adalah salah satu grup musik rock paling awal sekaligus paling berpengaruh di era modern. Beranggotakan John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, dan Ringo Starr, kebanyakan lagu mereka ditulis oleh Lennon dan McCartney. Popularitas mereka sedemikian tingginya di Britania Raya sehingga di tahun 1963 pers menelurkan istilah "Beatlemania". Mereka juga kemudian meraih sukses di Amerika Serikat dan seluruh dunia.

Dibentuk di Liverpool tahun 1959 dengan formasi awal John Lennon (Vokal, Gitar), Paul Mc Cartney (Vokal, Gitar), George Harrison (Vokal, Gitar), Stuart Sutcliffe (Bass) dan Pete Best (Drum). Namun tak lama kemudian Stuart Sutcliffe mengundurkan diri (hijrah ke Jerman dan menikahi Astrid Kircherr dan meninggal disana tahun 1962 akibat pendarahan di otak). Lalu pada tahun 1962 Pete Best hengkang dari The Beatles, dan posisinya digantikan oleh Richard Starkey alias Ringo Starr

Manager The Beatles, Brian Eipstein, pertama kali mengenal Beatles lewat banyaknya request pembeli piringan hitam di toko musiknya. Pertama kali Brian mencoba menawarkan Beatles kepada Decca Record, label besar perusahaan rekaman kala itu. Audisi bisa didapat, hanya saja manajemen Decca berpendapat bahwa kelompok musik gitar sudah lewat masa tenarnya. Kendati keempat pemuda menjadi patah arang, Brian akhirnya bisa mendapatkan audisi bagi mereka di satu label rekaman, Parlophone, yang sejatinya adalah perusahaan rekaman untuk siaran radio. George Martin, manajer Parlophone, setuju, dan dimulailah perekaman untuk album pertama The Beatles yang bertajuk "Please Please Me". Lagu Please Please Me dan Love Me Do merupakan andalan untuk album tersebut.
The Beatles
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This article is about the band. For other uses, see The Beatles (disambiguation).
The Beatles
Four greyscale images of young men with "moptop" haircuts, separated by a white border. John Lennon (top left) is smiling and looking towards the left of the frame (his right). Paul McCartney (top right) is facing forward with an opened mouth and excited expression. Ringo Starr (bottom right) is smiling, and his left eye is closed as if winking or blinking. George Harrison (bottom left) is looking up, with his tongue stuck out slightly as if licking his lips. All four are dressed in white shirts, black ties, and dark coats.
The Beatles in 1964.
Clockwise (from top left): John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, George Harrison
Background information
Origin Liverpool, England
Genres Rock, pop
Years active 1960–1970
Labels EMI, Parlophone, Capitol, Odeon, Apple, Vee-Jay, Polydor, Swan, Tollie, UA
Associated acts The Quarrymen, Plastic Ono Band, The Dirty Mac, Wings, The Fireman, Traveling Wilburys, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band
Website www.TheBeatles.com
Members
John Lennon
Paul McCartney
George Harrison
Ringo Starr
Former members
Stuart Sutcliffe
Pete Best
History of The Beatles

The Quarrymen
The Beatles in Hamburg
The Beatles at The Cavern Club
Beatlemania in the United Kingdom
American releases
The Beatles in the United States
1966
Studio years
Breakup
Reunions
Line-ups
Timeline
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The Beatles were an English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960, who became one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music.[1] During their years of international stardom, the group consisted of John Lennon (rhythm guitar, vocals), Paul McCartney (bass guitar, vocals), George Harrison (lead guitar, vocals) and Ringo Starr (drums, vocals). Rooted in skiffle and 1950s rock and roll, the group later worked in many genres ranging from folk rock to psychedelic pop, often incorporating classical and other elements in innovative ways. The nature of their enormous popularity, which first emerged as the "Beatlemania" fad, transformed as their songwriting grew in sophistication. The group came to be perceived as the embodiment of progressive ideals, seeing their influence extend into the social and cultural revolutions of the 1960s.

With an early five-piece line-up of Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, Stuart Sutcliffe (bass) and Pete Best (drums), The Beatles built their reputation in Liverpool and Hamburg clubs over a three-year period from 1960. Sutcliffe left the group in 1961, and Best was replaced by Starr the following year. Moulded into a professional outfit by music store owner Brian Epstein after he offered to act as the group's manager, and with their musical potential enhanced by the hands-on creativity of producer George Martin, The Beatles achieved UK mainstream success in late 1962 with their first single, "Love Me Do". Gaining international popularity over the course of the next year, they toured extensively until 1966, then retreated to the recording studio until their breakup in 1970. Each then found success in an independent musical career. McCartney and Starr remain active; Lennon was shot and killed in 1980, and Harrison died of cancer in 2001.

During their studio years, The Beatles produced what critics consider some of their finest material including the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), widely regarded as a masterpiece. In 2003 Rolling Stone magazine selected Sgt. Pepper as the greatest album of all time, with three other Beatles albums also in the top ten. Nearly four decades after their breakup, The Beatles' music continues to be popular, and September 2009 saw the release of a newly remastered discography as well as the video game The Beatles: Rock Band.[2]

The Beatles have had more number one albums on the UK charts, and held down the top spot longer, than any other musical act.[3] According to RIAA certifications, they have sold more albums in the US than any other artist.[4] In 2008, Billboard magazine released a list of the all-time top-selling Hot 100 artists to celebrate the US singles chart's fiftieth anniversary, with The Beatles at number one.[5] They have been honoured with 7 Grammy Awards,[6] and they have received 15 Ivor Novello Awards from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors.[7] The Beatles were collectively included in Time magazine's compilation of the 20th century's 100 most important and influential people.[8]History
[edit] Formation and early years (1957–1962)

Aged sixteen, singer and guitarist John Lennon formed the skiffle group The Quarrymen with some Liverpool schoolfriends in March 1957.[1] Fifteen-year-old Paul McCartney joined as a guitarist after he and Lennon met that July.[9] When McCartney in turn invited George Harrison to watch the group the following February, the fourteen-year-old joined as lead guitarist.[10][11] By 1960 Lennon's schoolfriends had left the group, he had begun studies at the Liverpool College of Art and the three guitarists were playing rock and roll whenever they could get a drummer.[12] Joining on bass in January, Lennon's fellow student Stuart Sutcliffe suggested changing the band name to "The Beetles" as a tribute to Buddy Holly and The Crickets, and they became "The Beatals" for the first few months of the year.[13][14] After trying other names including "Johnny and the Moondogs", "Long John and The Beetles" and "The Silver Beatles", the band finally became "The Beatles" in August.[15] The lack of a permanent drummer posed a problem when the group's unofficial manager, Allan Williams, arranged a resident band booking for them in Hamburg, Germany.[16] Before the end of August they auditioned and hired drummer Pete Best,[17] and the five-piece band left for Hamburg four days later, contracted to fairground showman Bruno Koschmider for a 48-night residency. "Hamburg in those days did not have rock'n'roll music clubs. It had strip clubs", says biographer Philip Norman.

Bruno had the idea of bringing in rock groups to play in various clubs. They had this formula. It was a huge nonstop show, hour after hour, with a lot of people lurching in and the other lot lurching out. And the bands would play all the time to catch the passing traffic. In an American red-light district, they would call it nonstop striptease.

Many of the bands that played in Hamburg were from Liverpool...It was an accident. Bruno went to London to look for bands. But he happened to meet a Liverpool entrepreneur in Soho, who was down in London by pure chance, and he arranged to send some bands over.[18]

Harrison, only seventeen in August 1960, obtained permission to stay in Hamburg by lying to the German authorities about his age.[19] Initially placing The Beatles at the Indra Club, Koschmider moved them to the Kaiserkeller in October after the Indra was closed down due to noise complaints.[20] When they violated their contract by performing at the rival Top Ten Club, Koschmider reported the underage Harrison to the authorities, leading to his deportation in November.[21][22] McCartney and Best were arrested for arson a week later when they set fire to a condom hung on a nail in their room; they too were deported.[23] Lennon returned to Liverpool in mid-December, while Sutcliffe remained in Hamburg with his new German fiancée, Astrid Kirchherr, for another month. Kirchherr took the first professional photos of the group and cut Sutcliffe's hair in the German "exi" (existentialist) style of the time, a look later adopted by the other Beatles.[24][25]

During the next two years, the group were resident for further periods in Hamburg. They used Preludin both recreationally and to maintain their energy through all-night performances.[26] Sutcliffe decided to leave the band in early 1961 and resume his art studies in Germany, so McCartney took up bass.[25][27][28] German producer Bert Kaempfert contracted what was now a four-piece to act as Tony Sheridan's backing band on a series of recordings.[29] Credited to "Tony Sheridan and The Beat Brothers", the single "My Bonnie", recorded in June and released four months later, reached number 32 in the Musikmarkt chart.[30][31] The Beatles were also becoming more popular back home in Liverpool. During one of the band's frequent appearances there at The Cavern Club, they encountered Brian Epstein, a local record store owner and music columnist.[32] When the band appointed Epstein manager in January 1962, Kaempfert agreed to release them from the German record contract. After Decca Records rejected the band with the comment "Guitar groups are on the way out, Mr. Epstein", producer George Martin signed the group to EMI's Parlophone label.[32][33][34] News of a tragedy greeted them on their return to Hamburg in April.[35] Meeting them at the airport, a stricken Kirchherr told them of Sutcliffe's death from a brain haemorrhage.[36]
A flight of stone steps leads from an asphalt car park up to the main entrance of a white two-story building. The ground floor has two sash windows, the first floor has three shorter sash windows. Two more windows are visible at basement level. The decorative stonework around the doors and windows is painted grey.
Abbey Road Studios main entrance

The band had its first recording session under Martin's direction at Abbey Road Studios in London in June 1962. Martin complained to Epstein about Best's drumming and suggested the band use a session drummer in the studio.[37] Instead, Best was replaced by Ringo Starr. Starr, who left Rory Storm and the Hurricanes to join The Beatles, had already performed with them occasionally when Best was ill.[38] Martin still hired session drummer Andy White for one session,[39] and White played on "Love Me Do" and "P.S. I Love You". Released in October, "Love Me Do" was a top twenty UK hit, peaking at number seventeen on the chart.[40] After a November studio session that yielded what would be their second single, "Please Please Me", they made their TV debut with a live performance on the regional news programme People and Places.[41]

The band concluded their last Hamburg stint in December 1962.[18] By now it had become the pattern that all four members contributed vocals, although Starr's restricted range meant he sang lead only rarely.[42] Lennon and McCartney had established a songwriting partnership; as the band's success grew, their celebrated collaboration limited Harrison's opportunities as lead vocalist.[43] Epstein, sensing The Beatles' commercial potential, encouraged the group to adopt a professional attitude to performing. Lennon recalled the manager saying, "Look, if you really want to get in these bigger places, you're going to have to change—stop eating on stage, stop swearing, stop smoking."[44] Lennon said, "We used to dress how we liked, on and off stage. He'd tell us that jeans were not particularly smart and could we possibly manage to wear proper trousers, but he didn't want us suddenly looking square. He'd let us have our own sense of individuality ... it was a choice of making it or still eating chicken on stage."[44]
[edit] Beatlemania and touring years (1963–1966)
[edit] UK popularity, Please Please Me and With The Beatles

In the wake of the moderate success of "Love Me Do", "Please Please Me" met with a more emphatic reception, reaching number two in the UK singles chart after its January 1963 release. Martin originally intended to record the band's debut LP live at The Cavern Club. Finding it had "the acoustic ambience of an oil tank",[45] he elected to create a "live" album in one session at Abbey Road Studios. Ten songs were recorded for Please Please Me, accompanied on the album by the four tracks already released on the two singles.[45] Recalling how the band "rushed to deliver a debut album, bashing out Please Please Me in a day", an Allmusic reviewer comments, "Decades after its release, the album still sounds fresh, precisely because of its intense origins."[46] Lennon said little thought went into composition at the time; he and McCartney were "just writing songs à la Everly Brothers, à la Buddy Holly, pop songs with no more thought of them than that—to create a sound. And the words were almost irrelevant."[47]

Released in March 1963, the album reached number one on the British chart. This began a run during which eleven of The Beatles' twelve studio albums released in the United Kingdom through 1970 hit number one. The band's third single, "From Me to You", came out in April and was also a chart-topping hit. It began an almost unbroken run of seventeen British number one singles for the band, including all but one of those released over the next six years. On its release in August, the band's fourth single, "She Loves You", achieved the fastest sales of any record in the UK up to that time, selling three-quarters of a million copies in under four weeks.[48] It became their first single to sell a million copies, and remained the biggest-selling record in the UK until 1978 when it was topped by "Mull of Kintyre", performed by McCartney and his post-Beatles band Wings.[49]