The Beatles :: Essay on The Beatles

The The English ROCK euphony group The Beatlesgave the 1960s its characteristic musical flavor and had a wakeless influence on the course of popular music, equaledby few performers. The guitarists tooshie Winston Lennon, b.Oct. 9, 1940 James Paul McCartney, b. June 18, 1942and George Harrison, b. Feb. 25, 1943 and the drummerRingo Starr, b. Richard Starkey, July 7, 1940, were all bornand raised in Liverpool. Lennon and McCartney had playtogether in a group called The Quarrymen. With Harrison,they formed their protest group, The smooth Beatles, in 1959,and Starr joined them in 1962. As The Beatles, theydeveloped a local following in Liverpool clubs, and their offset printingrecordings, "Love Me Do" (1962) and " occupy Please Me"(1963), quickly made them Britains top vibrate group. Theirearly music was influenced by the American rock singersChuck BERRY and Elvis PRESLEY, but they infused ahackneyed musical form with freshness, vitality, and wit. The stretch fort h of "I Want to stimulate Your Hand" in 1964 marked thebeginning of the phenomenon known as "Beatlemania" in theUnited States. The Beatles first U.S. tour aroused auniversal backpack adulation. Their concerts were scenes of massworship, and their records sold in the millions. Their first film,the innovative A unwaveringly Days Night (1964), was receivedenthusiastically by a wide consultation that included many whohad never before listened to rock music. Composing theirown material (Lennon and McCartney were the majorcreative forces), The Beatles established the precedent forother rock groups to play their own music. Experimentingwith new musical forms, they produced an extraordinaryvariety of songs the childishly simple "Yellow Submarine"the bitter social commentary of "Eleanor Rigby" parodies of prior pop styles new electronic sounds and compositionsthat were scored for cellos, violins, trumpets, and sitars, aswell as for accomplished guitars an d drums. Some enthusiastscite the albums Rubber Soul (1965) and Revolver (1966) asthe extremum of Beatle art, although Sergeant Peppers LonelyHearts Club Band (1967), perhaps the first rock albumdesigned thematically as a individual(a) musical entity, is moregenerally considered their triumph. The group disbanded in1970, after the release of their final album, Let It Be, andduring the 1970s pursued individual careers. On Dec. 8,1980, tooshie Lennon was fatally shot outside his Manhattanapartment by Mark Chapman, a 25-year-old former mentalpatient who, earlier that same day, had asked Lennon for hisautograph. Lennons murder was universally mourned withan intensity of feeling usually inspired only by semipolitical andspiritual leaders. Bibliography The Beatles Complete, 2