The Beatles :: Essay on The Beatles

The The English ROCK MUSIC group The Beatlesgave the 1960s its trait musical flavor and had aprofound influence on the melody of popular music, equaledby few per lay downers. The guitarists John 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 every(prenominal) bornand raised in Liverpool. Lennon and McCartney had playedtogether in a group called The Quarrymen. With Harrison,they formed their own group, The Silver Beatles, in 1959,and Starr joined them in 1962. As The Beatles, theydeveloped a local following in Liverpool clubs, and their startlerecordings, "Love Me Do" (1962) and "Please Please Me"(1963), quickly made them Britains light up rock group. Theirearly music was influenced by the American rock singers throw up BERRY and Elvis PRESLEY, but they infused ahackneyed musical form with freshness, vitality, and wit. Therelease of " I Want to Hold Your Hand" in 1964 pronounced thebeginning of the phenomenon known as "Beatlemania" in theUnited States. The Beatles first U.S. journey aroused auniversal mob adulation. Their concerts were scenes of massworship, and their records sold in the millions. Their first film,the innovative A Hard Days Night (1964), was receivedsky-high by a wide audience that included many whohad never before listened to rock music. Composing theirown material (Lennon and McCartney were the major productive forces), The Beatles established the precedent forother rock groups to play their own music. Experimentingwith red-hot musical forms, they produced an extraordinaryvariety of songs the childishly simple "Yellow sub"the bitter social commentary of "Eleanor Rigby" parodies ofearlier pop styles new electronic sounds and compositionsthat were scored for cellos, violins, trumpets, and sitars, aswell as for conventional guitars and drums. Some enthusiastscite the albums refuge Soul (1965) and Revolver (1966) asthe apex of Beatle art, although Sergeant Peppers Lonely police wagon Club Band (1967), perhaps the first rock albumdesigned thematically as a single musical entity, is more for the most part considered their triumph. The group disbanded in1970, after the release of their final album, Let It Be, andduring the seventies pursued individual careers. On Dec. 8,1980, John Lennon was fatally shot right(prenominal) his Manhattanapartment by Mark Chapman, a 25-year-old former mental diligent who, earlier that same day, had asked Lennon for hisautograph. Lennons murder was universally mourned withan intensity of feeling usually inspired only by political andspiritual leaders. Bibliography The Beatles Complete, 2