The Beatles - "Twist & Shout", charted #2, 1964
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. With members John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, they became widely regarded as the foremost and most influential music band in history. Rooted in skiffle, beat and 1950s rock and roll, the Beatles later experimented with several musical styles, ranging from pop ballads and Indian music to psychedelia and hard rock, often incorporating classical elements and unconventional recording techniques in innovative ways. In 1963, their enormous popularity first emerged as "Beatlemania"; as the group's music grew in sophistication, led by primary songwriters Lennon and McCartney, the band became integral to pop music's evolution into an art form and to the development of the counterculture of the 1960s.
The Beatles built their reputation playing clubs in Liverpool and Hamburg over a three-year period from 1960, with Stuart Sutcliffe initially serving as bass player. The core trio of Lennon, McCartney and Harrison, together since 1958, went through a succession of drummers, including Pete Best, before asking Starr to join them in 1962. Manager Brian Epstein molded them into a professional act, and producer George Martin guided and developed their recordings, greatly expanding the group's popularity in the United Kingdom after their first hit, "Love Me Do", in late 1962. They acquired the nickname "the Fab Four" as Beatlemania grew in Britain over the next year, and by early 1964 became international stars, leading the "British Invasion" of the United States pop market. From 1965 onwards, the Beatles produced increasingly innovative recordings, including the albums Rubber Soul (1965), Revolver (1966), Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), The Beatles (also known as the "White Album", 1968) and Abbey Road (1969). After their break-up in 1970, they each enjoyed success as solo artists. Lennon was shot and killed in December 1980, and Harrison died of lung cancer in November 2001. McCartney and Starr remain musically active.
The Beatles are the best-selling band in history, with estimated sales of over 800 million physical and digital albums worldwide. They have had more number-one albums on the British charts and sold more singles in the UK than any other act. They are also the best-selling music artists in the United States, with 178 million certified units. In 2008, the group topped Billboard magazine's list of the all-time most successful artists; as of 2017, they hold the record for most number-one hits on the Hot 100 chart with twenty. They have received seven Grammy Awards, an Academy Award for Best Original Song Score and fifteen Ivor Novello Awards. The group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, and all four main members were inducted individually from 1994 to 2015. They were also collectively included in Time magazine's compilation of the twentieth century's 100 most influential people.
Released in early October, 1962, "Love Me Do" peaked at number seventeen on the Record Retailer chart. Their television debut came later that month with a live performance on the regional news programme People and Places. After Martin suggested rerecording "Please Please Me" at a faster tempo, a studio session in late November yielded that recording of which Martin accurately predicted, "You've just made your first No.1.
On 11 February 1963, the Beatles
recorded ten songs during a single studio session for their debut LP, Please
Please Me. The album was supplemented by the four tracks already released
on their first two singles. Martin originally considered recording the Beatles'
debut LP live at The Cavern Club, but after deciding that the building's acoustics
were inadequate, he elected to simulate a "live" album with minimal
production in "a single marathon session at Abbey Road". After the
moderate success of "Love Me Do", the single "Please Please
Me" met with a more emphatic reception. Released in January 1963, two
months ahead of the album of the same name, the song reached number one on
every chart in London except Record Retailer, where it peaked at number two.
Recalling how the Beatles "rushed to deliver a debut album, bashing out
Please Please Me in a day", All Music's Stephen Thomas Erlewine comments,
"Decades after its release, the album still sounds fresh, precisely because
of its intense origins." 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."
Released in March 1963, the album initiated a run during which eleven of their
twelve studio albums released in the United Kingdom through 1970 reached number
one. The band's third single, "From Me to You", came out in April
and was also a chart-topping hit, starting an almost unbroken string of seventeen
British number-one singles for the Beatles, including all but one of the eighteen
they released over the next six years. Issued 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. It became their first single to sell a million copies, and remained
the biggest-selling record in the UK until 1978.Their commercial success brought
increased media exposure, to which the Beatles responded with an irreverent
and comical attitude that defied the expectations of pop musicians at the
time, inspiring even more interest.
"Please, Please Me", charted #2 in the UK in March and the album
charted #1, 1963
"From Me To You", 1st #1 hit in the UK in May, 1963.
"She Loves You", 2nd #1 hit in the UK, October, 1963
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