Well, it all started in 1957, in a town called Liverpool, with a seventeen year old John Lennon who started his first band called The Black Jacks in which the band members consisted of Lennon's classmates from Quarry Bank Grammar School. The band started off playing skiffle but progressed towards rock-and-roll later. Skiffle was a "kind of souped up folk music that had started a craze among British teenagers" (Spitz 2). They used homemade instruments like washtubs with string and broom attachment. The music produced was an strange assortment of American
Blues, folk songs, and spirituals. They eventually changed their name to The Quarry Men. Paul McCartney, a fifteen year old, self-taught guitar player tried out for the band and joined in October 1957. McCartney then introduced George Harrison into the band as it moved away from skiffle and trudged foward into rock-and-roll. Although The Quarry Men eventually split in 1959, Lennon and McCartney continued to write songs together while Harrison had left to join another band. The three rejoined after George Harrison's band broke up and together the three took up a number of gigs performing as Johnny and the Moondogs. In 1960, drummer Pette Best and bassist Stu Sutcliffe joined the group. The group changed their names several times to Long John and the Beatles, the Silver Beetles, The Beat Brothers, until they found a name that stuck, The Beatles (Spitz Eighteen months later, Sutcliffe left the band and all that remained were Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Best. In June 1962, The Beatles auditioned for Parlophone Records at the Abbey Road Studio. Shortly after, Best was replaced with a better talent, Ringo Star and they recorded their first song together, Love Me Do in 1962. The final band consisted of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Star, and Harrison and became know as The Beatles and they recorded their first song together in 1962. The rest is history from there.
Let It Be...The Beatles?
The name, The Beatles was a wordplay on the "beat" (like the infamous New York and San Francisco beatniks such as the poet Allen Ginsberg and the novelist Jack Kerouac. Also because the name had a double meaning and had a name that resembled a bug like that of Buddy Holly's band, the Crickets (Stark 75).
The British Are Coming!!
The Beatles originated in England and worked their way to fame by playing gigs at clubs. The early Beatles performed shows in Hamburg, Germany and Liverpool, England, playing covers of early American rock and roll plus original songs by Lennon and McCartney. Their song, "She Loves You" released in 1963 charted number one and became the biggest hit in the U.K. In November 1963, Marsha Albert wrote a letter to a local radio station requesting to hear a song by The Beatles. No one had ever heard of The Beatles at the station but an intern hunted down an imported copy. On December 17, 1963 WWDC played "I Want To Hold Your Hand" for the first time ever in America. After the song was played, the switchboard went crazy with the amount of people calling in about the new song they heard (Spitz). In 1964, they went on a tour in the U.S. which led to sold out tickets and large crowds awaiting the group. Beatlemania had begun ("The Beatles").
HELP!
Even though The Beatles had been extremely sucessful, they eventually split. The band members grew sick of each other over the years and on January 10, 1969, eight days after a concert at Twickenham Studios, Harrison quit. Their recording studio, Apple Corps began to have financial problems. They began to feud over business and personal issues, who they would chose to record with, and eventually they began to separate, with each musician going their own way, working solo or joining another band. Their split took place during 1969, 1970, and 1971. Paul McCartney also sued John, George, and Ringo to get rid of his partnership with The Beatles and of Allen Klein (who was in charge of sorting out the band's financial problems). The Beatles partnership was officially over on April 10,1975 (Ingham 53-55).
