Though their reign atop the world of pop music continues to slowly slip into the distant past, the legacy of The Beatles continues to overshadow the history of music in the twentieth century. There's a simple reason why: no catalog of tunes from any other recording artist is as rich or as diverse as the one left behind by the four lads from Liverpool.
Inauspiciously launched in the late 1950s, The Beatles settled on their name in 1960 -- their roster sporting legends John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison alongside bassist Stu Sutcliffe and drummer Pete Best. The band famously cut their teeth in the early 1960s regularly playing live between their hometown and Hamburg, Germany. By the time they had released their first LP in England via EMI in 1963, the quintet had shed both Sutcliffe and Best, shifted McCartney to bass, and planted Ringo Starr on the drumstool. Throughout 1963, the band won over the United Kingdom and tarried in England until EMI's operation in America, manned by Capitol Records, could set the table for their first visit to America.
February 7, 1964 marks the greatest one-day turning point in the history of American music. The Beatles arrived in New York City to a genuine mob of adoring fans, and proceeded to assault American recording charts like no other artist not named Elvis Presley had before, or has since. Despite their early material leaning heavily toward a teenybopper / pop sensibility, McCartney's "aw, shucks" nice-guy persona and Lennon's edgy intensity were clearly evident from the get-go in their respective compositions. Fittingly, the band's first Number One hit (in the UK) was the Lennon-McCartney co-lead "Love Me Do." The early Lennon-led tunes that became AM radio classics were "She Loves You", "I Want To Hold Your Hand", "Please Please Me", "Twist And Shout", "A Hard Day's Night", "I Feel Fine", "Eight Days A Week." McCartney fronted "I Saw Her Standing There", "Can't Buy Me Love" and "And I Love Her", while Harrison scored with "Do You Want To Know A Secret."
By 1965, The Beatles had discovered marijuana (courtesy of Bob Dylan), which seemingly contributed the expansion of both their minds and the landscapes and direction of their musical ideas. Lennon's "Help!" and "Ticket To Ride" -- and McCartney's "Yesterday" and "We Can Work It Out" -- all scored giant chart-topping performances. Another Lennon track, "Day Tripper", rounded out the group's second consecutive year of dominating the singles chart.
In 1966 The Fab Four's evolution away from its self-perceived role as somewhat vapid purveyors of uber-commercialistic disposable pop had steered the band toward a greater focus on the composition and critical consideration of its albums. Starting with Rubber Soul, released just before the start of the year, the quartet signalled its sympathies for the hard-charging counterculture with an increasingly diverse and edgy approach to its writing and recording processes. Harrison introduced an Indian sitar on Lennon's shockingly brazen (for the era) college-dorm poem "Norwegian Wood". Soul's ballads were more poignant and the record's character was more personal, with plenty of warmth derived from a distinctly acoustic vibe. The trend continued with the summer 1966 release of Revolver, which further revealed a creeping influence of psychedelia and drugs. Daring ideas like "Eleanor Rigby" and "Taxman" had the band exploring tactics employing strings and heavier rock. Starr's "Yellow Submarine" was a chart-topper, and Lennon's non-album singles "Nowhere Man" and "Paperback Writer" did so as well.
The Beatles joined the 1960s revolution full-tilt in 1967. Amid the explosion of art and music during the halcyon Summer Of Love, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band charged into the forefront of the movement. Virtually every track on the record became an all-time classic, and among them, "With A Little Help From My Friends", "Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds" and the epic "A Day In The Life" rose in stature above the rest. Apart from the LP, McCartney's "Penny Lane" and "Hello, Goodbye", and the entire band's simple singalong "All You Need Is Love" further elevated The Beatles above every other pop act of the day.
The door to unfettered experimentation was now flung wide open for the band, who went bonkers tinkering with novel production ideas on their next two releases (Magical Mystery Tour (1967) and The Beatles (White Album) (1968)). The former featured the oom-pah title track and the downright odd pastiche-piece "I Am The Walrus", while the latter double-decker was chock-full of classics contributed by all four members. For each, McCartney's "Back In The U.S.S.R.", Lennon's "Dear Prudence", Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and Starr's "Don't Pass Me By" were the individual highlights. Non-album ballad "Hey Jude" was Number One for more than two months -- a record for the era, and Lennon's flip-side "Revolution" captured the chaos of the period brilliantly.
After having delved into Indian religion and withdrawing from live performance in their latter years, the quartet began to fracture in earnest in 1968 -- with Lennon and McCartney growing farther apart by the day. Yet the band managed to persevere through its internal turbulence to produce one final majestic effort, the great Abbey Road (1969). Side Two, produced as one long flowing musical statement, is widely regarded as the greatest album side of all time, from any band. The year's smash singles were Lennon's "Come Together" and "The Ballad Of John And Yoko", McCartney's "Get Back" and Harrison's ballad "Something".
To the immense sadness of the entire planet, The Beatles publicly announced their de facto dissolution in April 1970, and posthumously released Let It Be -- their final studio album (which had incidentally been recorded before Abbey Road) -- a month later. Fittingly titled, McCartney's melancholy and stoic-sounding "Let It Be" and "The Long And Winding Road" each topped the US charts and propelled the four members on their separate ways into the new decade.
The world's greatest band never reunited before the murder of John Lennon in 1980, and the music alone bears the immense legacy of The Beatles to all future generations.
There just isn't any other band that can touch The Beatles for what they achieved during their career and as solo artists.
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