Meet The Beatles

Rock 'n' Roll's revival and renaissance!

The songwriting chops of Buddy Holly. The glean of The Beach Boys. The charm of Elvis. And the electric energy of Chuck Berry.

Meet, the Fab Four:

The Quarrymen, 1956

16-year-old John Lennon had grown up in a post-war Britain, complete with bread rations and general austerity. John started his musical journey with a type of music known as skiffle.

And he wasn’t alone. Other rock great like Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin and Van Morrison were obsessed with the genre as teens, most specifically Lonnie Donegan’s skiffle:

Here’s Jimmy Page with a short explanation of Donegan’s appeal to young Brits:

Paul McCartney, also a fan of Donegan, heard of John’s skiffle band, dubbed the Quarrymen. At a gig in 1957, John played a cover Donegan’s “Putting on the Style.” Miraculously, a recording survives from that very day:

Paul was hooked, joined the band, then invited his buddy, George Harrison, to audition. John thought George was a bit too young, but he was persistent. George kept at it. And because of that, became a Rock God. I’m sure he was glad that he had grit.

The Beatles, 1959–1960

The rest of the band left for college, leaving John, Paul, and George to play live whenever they could manage to find a drummer. George was getting restless at this, and joined another band to supplement his time. During this period, they performed as Johnny and the Moondogs.

Stuart Sutcliffe joined the band around then. He was an artist, had recently sold a painting, and with the proceeds, bought a Hofner bass at John’s request. He wasn’t a naturally great musician, but the band admired his artistic sensibility, with George dubbing him their “Art Director.” John moved in with Stuart, where they listened to American records and discussed their art into the night.

Together, they renamed the band, Beatals, as a nod to Buddy Holly and the Crickets. Then for a time they were the Silver Beetles, but eventually settled on their iconic band name: The Beatles in August of 1959.

Their early manager, Allan Williams, booked them a residency in Hamburg, Germany. The Beatles, without a drummer, had to scramble. Pete Best auditioned, was hired, and was on a ferry to Germany six days later.

Here’s a photo from one of their sets at the Indra club, each performance was six to eight hours long. The Beatles were cutting their teeth and paying their dues. There’s no other way to greatness other than hard, daily work. No matter how talented you may be. You gotta get blisters on them fingers!

Stuart would later leave the band to pursue his art, leaving Paul to pick up the bass guitar in his absence. In 1962, soon after the Beatles were first played on the radio, Stuart died in his girlfriend’s arms, suffering from a brain hemorrhage on the way to the hospital.

Here’s John, grieving Stuart’s death inside of his deceased friend’s studio.

John picked fights, drank too much, and lost his voice, wondering why he couldn’t have died in Stuart’s place. Stuart’s girlfriend remarked, “Every piece of paper [sent] from Stuart, [John would stick on his bedroom] wall and [put] big photographs [of Stuart] by his bed.” (She was not a native English speaker, so I had to make a few revisions in the quote for clarity.)

Paul recalled a pact the band made, “If one of us were to die, he’d come back and let the others know if there was another side. So as Stuart was the first one to go, we did half expect him to show up. Any pans that rattled in the night could be him.”

Stuart wrote in his journal before passing, “Everyone has to go through a period of worry and struggle if he wants to go into deep water.”

Into Deep Water, 1962

A few months after Stuart’s death, the Beatles’ new manager, Brian Epstein, booked them a recording session at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios with producer George Martin.

Martin didn’t like Pete’s drumming, so they hired a pro drummer, Ringo Starr, from the rival band Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. Turns out, Martin didn’t love his drumming either.

So they hired another drummer, Andy White, and cut the songs, Love Me Do, Please Please Me, and P.S. I Love You. After tracking Please Please Me, Martin predicted, “you’ve just made your first number one.”

He was right.

Beatlemania Kicks Off the British Invasion

The Beatles retained their attitude into stardom, and their charm and irreverence won over the public alongside their music. And in 1964, they took over the U.S.A.

With about half of the US population watching, their Ed Sullivan Show performance changed the course of music history. Primed by the teen idols and surf rock sound, the edgier but poppier Beatles took America by storm:

Hear how tight the vocal harmonies are? Quite similar to the Everly Brothers, no? But with the electricity of Little Richard, the smolder of Fabian, the stage presence of Elvis, and the songwriting and melodic acuity of Buddy Holly.

The Importance of The Beatles

The Beatles are in my S-tier, alongside Bach and Beethoven (and others…). Why? It’s because they did two things:

1. Synthesis

2. Innovation

Like Bach and Beethoven, the Beatles took all the music around them and learned from it. They were simultaneously capstones and marked the changing of the guard. Historians and revolutionaries. The took the musical innovations that came before them and recombined them into something new but familiar. An aesthetic “ah ha.” They stood on the shoulders of the giants, then became giants themselves that everyone else stands atop. That is greatness.

In the next posts, we’ll talk about the flood of great British artists, the turn towards psychedelics, and the push towards the album format. Of course, the Beatles will loom over all of that, since they were the top dog. And deservedly so.

Thanks for reading, internet friends.

Scoob

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Here’s a podcast I did about my Beatles influence and recommendations for incorporating influence (not copying!) into your creative pursuits:

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(This post is part five of a long-form series on the history of rock ‘n’ roll. Check out part one, two, three, and four for more background!)

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