The Beatles Case Study

 

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1957-1962

“The story began in Harold Macmillan’s “never had it so good” ’50s Britain. It should be fiction: four teenagers with no more than eight O’Levels between them, running and biking and busing and busking all over Liverpool in search of new chords and old guitars and half-decent drum kit and any gig at all."

We didn’t dream it... though it came out of John’s dream of the “man on a flaming pie” who said “You are Beatles with an ‘A’”. It did all happen. The whole wonderful thing did happen, a long time ago, on the Mersey, on the Elbe, by the Thames and the Hudson River.

1963

They leave their Cavern Club and within months they take the ascendancy in the British pop world, and start to live the life of Riley in London. They play the Palladium, the Royal Albert Hall, The Royal Variety Show, sing Moonlight Bay with Morecombe and Wise, give a spare hit to the Rolling Stones, play hundreds of concerts in Britain, nip over to Sweden, invent Beatlemania, record I Want to Hold Your Hand (their 4th British number one in a year) and, as if in a dream – while their conquering Paris – the record goes to Number One in America three weeks before the Ed Sullivan Show in New York.

1964

They play for no more than half an hour per concert. A Hard Days Night has guaranteed them star status in the cinema and they laughed their way through Help! in Technicolour. Paul dreams that he has written Yesterday – and has. They are the first band to play a baseball stadium, Shea in New York, breaking records for crowd fever, numbers and good cheer. Oh, and they go to Buckingham Palace to receive medals from the Queen and, by now, more or less accept it as their due.

1968

The Beatles started their own company, Apple Corps with five creative divisions – records, films etc – and then went public with an offer that anyone with an artistic need could come to them and get help.

The promise was that all sincere supplicants would be given encouragement, succour, a contract and maybe an envelope full of money. At the same time, the Beatles flew to foothills of the Himalayas to learn meditation. There, between sessions with the Maharishi, they wrote songs for what would become The ‘White’ Album.
When recording started, the songs had come in such profusion that, famously, The White Album had thirty of them – enough for two high-class musicals. They sped from one track to another, content that the unity of the album would transcend the disparity in the style and content of the tracks.

1969
In the inevitable breaking down of old liaisons, there was room for growth. John met and married Yoko; Paul met and married Linda. George matured far beyond his years, settled into his spiritual space and expressed himself writing classic songs; Ringo was now writing his own numbers and was widely acknowledged as a supreme drummer and a very good actor.

They not only changed what rock 'n roll music was about but also help change what society was going through in the insane sixties. The Beatles first really came about in 1955 when Paul McCartney joined up with John Lennon's band, The Quarrymen. Lennon played lead guitar, McCartney was on rhythm guitar with Stu Sutcliffe on bass and several fill-in drummers. A short time later thirteen year old George Harrison joined them and took over the lead guitar job from Lennon. Peter Best became their regular drummer in 1960. Also around this time they changed the band's name to "The Silver Beatles", then shortly after that to just "The Beatles". They first made their mark playing clubs night after night in Hamburg, Germany. In 1961 Sutcliffe left the band and McCartney took over the bass duties.

Their first single, "Love Me Do"/"P.S. I Love You," was recorded in September, 1962. The song was written by Lennon/McCartney, something almost unheard of in rock at the time. Up till then most rock bands only did cover songs. The song barely made the British top 20. The Beatles phenomenon didn't truly kick in until "Please Please Me" hit number one on the British charts in early 1963.

The Beatles sound did change somewhat in the mid sixties, around the time of Rubber Soul's release. Their "good boy" image, pressed upon them by Epstein, was now also a thing of the past. Drug intake by the band members, which was always a part of their lives, was no longer covered up, in fact, it would start to show up more so than in the past in their song's lyrics. In 1967, the album some claim to be rock's best ever, Sgt. Peppers Lonely Heart Club Band, was released. But not all good things would take place that year. Epstein would die of a drug overdose

There was of course several sides to the Beatles. They not only changed how music was written, put out and sounded, but helped to lead the baby boomers to social change and rebellion against the establishment. They may not have started the hippie moment, but they did help made it popular. They also were amongst the first to publicly speak out about their drug use and question the stiff, unjust drug laws. They would in turn pay the price for those views with their own drug arrests.