This time I want to share about The Beatles, as we all know John Lennon is a main vocalist of The Beatles. And my blog discusses about John Lennon. The Beatles is a legendary band. Though, they were popular in 60s, but their still remain legendary until now. Many musicians were influenced by their music and they still have a lot of fans all around the world. Okay, let's start to know more about The Beatles .
Formation, Hamburg, and UK popularity (1957–1962)
In March 1957 John Lennon, then aged sixteen, formed a skiffle group with several friends from Quarry Bank school. They briefly called themselves the Blackjacks, then The Quarrymen after discovering that a respected local group was already using the name. Fifteen-year-old Paul McCartney joined as a guitarist shortly after he and Lennon met that July. In February 1958 McCartney invited his friend George Harrison to watch the group. The fourteen-year-old auditioned for Lennon on the upperdeck of a bus, playing "Raunchy" by Bill Justis. While Lennon was initially impressed by his playing, he thought Harrison was too young for the band, but after about a month of persistence he joined as lead guitarist. By January 1959, Lennon's schoolfriends had left the group, and he had begun studies at the Liverpool College of Art. The three guitarists, billing themselves at least three times as "Johnny and the Moondogs", were playing rock and roll whenever they could find a drummer. Lennon's art school friend Stu Sutcliffe, who had recently sold one of his paintings and purchased a bass guitar using the proceeds, joined in January 1960, and it was he who suggested changing the band's name to "Beatals" as a tribute to Buddy Holly andThe Crickets.
According to band historian Mark Lewishon, they used the name through May, when they became "the Silver Beetles", before undertaking a brief tour of Scotland as the backing group for pop singer and fellow Liverpudlian Johnny Gentle. By early July they had changed their name to "the Silver Beatles", and by the middle of August to "the Beatles".
The lack of a full-time drummer posed a problem when the group's unofficial manager, Allan Williams, arranged a resident band booking for them in Hamburg, Germany, so before the middle of August they auditioned and hired Pete Best, and the five-piece band left four days later, contracted to club owner Bruno Koschmider, for what would be a 3½ month residency. Lewisohn writes: "They pulled into Hamburg at dusk on 17 August, the time when the red-light areacomes to life ... flashing neon lights screamed out the various entertainment on offer, while scantily clad women sat unabashed in shop windows waiting forbusiness opportunities".
Initially placing the group at the Indra Club, in October Koschmider moved them to the Kaiserkeller, after he closed the Indra due to noise complaints. When he learned they were also performing at The Top Ten Club, a rival venue and thus in breach of contract, Koschmider gave the band one month's termination notice, and reported the underage Harrison, who had obtained permission to stay in Hamburg by lying to the German authorities about his age, causing his deportation in late-November. A week later, Koschmider had McCartney and Best arrested for arson after they set fire to a tapestry on the wall in their room; they were also deported. Lennon returned to Liverpool in early December, while the newly engaged Sutcliffe remained in Hamburg through late-February, staying with his German fiancée Astrid Kirchherr. Kirchherr took the first semi-professional photos of the group, and she encouraged Sutcliffe to comb his hair forward in the pilzenkopf or "mushroom head" style popular among university students in Germany and France at the time. In 1961, during their second Hamburg engagement, she cut his hair in the "exi", or existentialist style that was later adopted by the other Beatles. When he decided to leave the band in early 1961 and resume his art studies in Germany, McCartney took up the bass. German producer Bert Kaempfert contracted what was now a four-piece group through June 1962, and he used them as Tony Sheridan's backing band on a series of recordings. Credited to "Tony Sheridan & The Beat Brothers", the single "My Bonnie", recorded in June and released four months later, reached number 32 on the Musikmarkt chart, and was group's first worldwide release.
After completing their second Hamburg stint the group enjoyed increasing popularity back home in Liverpool, particularly in Merseyside, where the Merseybeat movement was gaining popularity. However, the band were also growing tired of the monotony of numerous appearances at the same clubs night after night. In November, during one of the band's frequent appearances at the Cavern Club, they encountered Brian Epstein, a local record store owner and music columnist. Epstein would later recall: "I immediatley liked what I heard. They were fresh and they were honest, and they had what I thought was a sort of presence and ... star quality." Epstein courted the band over the next couple of months and was appointed manager in January 1962. He made efforts throughout the winter and spring to get them released from their contract obligations with Bert Kaempfert Productions. To secure an early release from the contract, Epstein negotiated for the band to provide one last recording session, at the end of May, during their next visit to Hamburg. Tragedy greeted them upon their return there in April, when a distraught Kirchherr met them at the airport with news of Sutcliffe's death the previous day from a brain haemorrhage. Kaempfert released them from the record contract the day after the session, a month before it was to expire at the end of June, and although Decca Records rejected the band in early February with the comment, "Guitar groups are on the way out, Mr. Epstein", George
Martin signed the group to EMI's Parlophone label in May.
The Beatles' first recording session under Martin's direction took place at EMI's Abbey Road Studios in London on 6 June 1962. He immediately complained to Epstein about Best's poor drumming and suggested they use a session drummer in his stead. The band, already contemplating Best's dismissal, replaced him in mid-August with Ringo Starr, who left Rory Storm and the Hurricanes to join them. A 4 September session at EMI yielded a recording of "Love Me Do" featuring Starr on drums, but a dissatisfied Martin hired drummer Andy White for the band's third session on 11 September, which produced recordings of "Love Me Do", "Please Please Me" and "P.S. I Love You". Initially, Martin selected the 4 September version of "Love Me Do" with Starr on drums for the band's first single, though subsequent re-pressings included the White version, with Starr on tambourine. Released in early October, "Love Me Do" was a top twenty UK hit, peaking at number seventeen on the Record Retailer chart. In mid-October, they made their television début with a live performance on the regional news programme People and Places, and a late-November studio session yielded their second single, "Please Please Me", after which Martin accurately predicted, "You've just made your first No.1."
In December 1962 the band concluded their fifth and final Hamburg stint. By 1963 it was agreed that all four members should contribute vocals to Beatle albums despite Starr's restricted vocal range, to "affirm his status as a full-fledged member". Lennon and McCartney had established a songwriting partnership, and as the band's success grew, their dominant collaboration limited Harrison's opportunities as a lead vocalist. Epstein, wanting to maximize their commercial potential, encouraged the group to adopt a professional attitude to performing. Lennon recalled him saying, "Look, if you really want to get in these bigger places, you're going to have to change — stop eating on stage, stop swearing, stop smoking". Lennon said, "We used to dress how we liked, on and off stage. He'd tell us that jeans were not particularly smart and could we possibly manage to wear proper trousers, but he didn't want us suddenly looking square. He'd let us have our own sense of individuality".
Now, it is about their last album Abbey Road and their break-up
Although Let It Be was the band's final album release, most of the material on it was recorded before Abbey Road. The project's impetus came from an idea Martin attributes to McCartney, who suggested they "record an album of new material and rehearse it, then perform it before a live audience for the very first time – on record and on film." Originally intended for a one-hour television program called "Beatles at Work", much of the album's content came from the extensive studio rehearsals filmed by director Michael Lindsay-Hogg. Uncharacteristically, work began at Twickenham Film Studios in January 1969, not EMI or Apple. Martin said the project, was "not at all a happy recording experience. It was a time when relations between the Beatles were at their lowest". Lennon described the largely impromptu sessions as, "hell ... the most miserable ... on Earth", and Harrison, "the low of all-time". Aggravated by both McCartney and Lennon, Harrison walked out for five days. Upon returning, he threatened to leave the band unless they "abandon all talk of live performance" and instead focus on finishing a new album, initially titled Get Back, using songs recorded for the TV special. He also demanded they cease work at Twickenham and instead commence at a newly-finished Apple Studios, the band agreed, and at this point the idea came about to salvage the footage shot for the TV production for use in a feature film.
In an effort to alleviate tensions within the band and improve the quality of their live sound, Harrison invited keyboardist Billy Preston to participate in the last nine days of sessions, and he received "label billing" on the "Get Back" single—the only musician ever to receive that acknowledgment on an official Beatles' release. At the conclusion of the rehearsals, the band could not agree on a location to film a concert, rejecting several ideas, including; a boat at sea, a lunatic asylum, theTunisian desert, and the Colosseum. Ultimately, what would be their final live performance was filmed on the rooftop of the Apple Corps building at 3 Savile Row, London, on 30 January 1969. Five weeks later, engineer Glyn Johns, whom Lewisohn describes as Get Back's "uncredited producer" began work assembling an album, having been given "free rein" while the band "all but washed their hands of the entire project."
Conflict arose regarding the appointment of a financial adviser, when Lennon, Harrison and Starr favoured Allen Klein, who had managed The Rolling Stones and Sam Cooke, while McCartney wanted John Eastman, brother of his soon to be wife Linda Eastman. Agreement could not be reached, so both were temporarily appointed, but further conflict ensued and important financial opportunities were lost. On 8 May, Klein was appointed manager of the band by three signatures.
Martin said he was surprised when McCartney asked him to produce another album, as the Get Back sessions had been "a miserable experience" and he "thought it was the end of the road", nevertheless, recording sessions for Abbey Road began in July. Lennon rejected Martin's proposed format of a "continuously moving piece of music", and wanted his and McCartney's songs to occupy separate sides of the album. The eventual format, with individually composed songs on the first side and the second consisting largely of a medley, was McCartney's suggested compromise. The completion and mixing of "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" on 20 August 1969 was the last occasion on which, "All four Beatles ... were together inside the recording studio from where they had changed the face of popular music." Lennon announced his departure to the rest of the group on 20 September, but agreed to withhold a public announcement to avoid undermining sales of the forthcoming album.
Released six days after Lennon's declaration, Abbey Road sold four million copies within three months and topped the UK charts for a total of seventeen weeks. Its second track, the ballad "Something", was issued as a single—the only Harrison composition ever to appear as a Beatles A-side. Abbey Road received mixed reviews, although the medley met with general acclaim. Unterberger considers it "a fitting swan song for the group" containing "some of the greatest harmonies to be heard on any rock record". MacDonald calls it "erratic and often hollow", despite the "semblance of unity and coherence" offered by the medley. Martin singled it out as his personal favourite of all the band's albums; Lennon said it was "competent" but had "no life in it". Recording engineer Emerick noted that the replacement of the studio's valvemixing console with a transistorized one yielded a less punchy sound, leaving the group frustrated at the thinner tone and lack of impact and contributing to its "kinder, gentler" feel relative to their previous albums.
For the still unfinished Get Back album, one last song, Harrison's "I Me Mine", was recorded on 3 January 1970. Lennon, in Denmark at the time, did not participate. In March, rejecting the work Johns had done on the project, now retitled Let It Be, Klein gave the session tapes to American producer Phil Spector, who had recently produced Lennon's solo single "Instant Karma!". McCartney was unhappy with the producer's treatment of the material and particularly dissatisfied with the lavish orchestration on "The Long and Winding Road", which included a fourteen-voice choir and a thirty-six-piece instrumental ensemble. McCartney's demands that the alterations to the song be reverted went ignored, and he publicly announced his departure from the band nine days later on 10 April 1970.
On 8 May the Spector-produced Let It Be was released. The LP and its accompanying single, "The Long and Winding Road", were the band's last. The Let It Be documentary film followed later that month, and would win the 1970 Academy Award for the Best Original Song Score. Film critic Penelope Gilliatt calls it, "a very bad film and a touching one ... about the breaking apart of this reassuring, geometrically perfect, once apparently ageless family of siblings." It was the opinion of several reviewers that some of the performances in the film sounded better than their equivalent album tracks. According to Unterberger, Let It Be is the "only Beatles album to occasion negative, even hostile reviews", though he describes it as "on the whole underrated", praising in particular the McCartney contributions "Let It Be", "Get Back", and "The Long and Winding Road", calling "Two of Us" a "highlight" and adding that "there are some good moments of straight hard rock in "I've Got a Feeling" and "Dig a Pony." McCartney filed suit for the dissolution of the band on 31 December 1970, and the partnership legally ended on 9 January 1975 .
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