The Beatles 

The Greatest Band in the world.

Origin : Liverpool, England

1960–1970

Members of This Band : John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr.

In March 1957, When  John Lennon aged sixteen, formed askiffle group with several friends from Quarry Bank school. They briefly called themselves the Blackjacks, before changing their name to 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 ability, 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 rollwhenever 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 "The Beetles" as a tribute to Buddy Holly and The Crickets. According to Beatles expert Mark Lewishon, they used the name "Beatals", 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 Beatles first recording session under Martin's direction took place at EMI's Abbey Road Studios in London in June 1962. Martin immediately complained to Epstein about Best's drumming and suggested they use a session drummer in the studio. The band had already been contemplating Best's dismissal, so he was replaced byRingo Starr, who left Rory Storm and the Hurricanes to join them, but had previously performed with them during Best's occasional absences. A dissatisfied Martin hired session drummer Andy White, who played on the band's first single, "Love Me Do" and "P.S. I Love You".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 Epstein, Martin, and the group had agreed that all four members should contribute vocals to their 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".

The most sad news, Lennon was shot and killed on 8 December 1980, in New York City. In a personal tribute, Harrison wrote new lyrics for his song "All Those Years Ago", which had been recorded the month before Lennon's death. With McCartney and his wife, Linda, contributing backing vocals, and Starr on drums, the song was overdubbed with the new lyrics and released as a single in May 1981.McCartney's own tribute, "Here Today", appeared on his Tug of War album in April 1982.In 1987, Harrison'sCloud Nine album included "When We Was Fab", a song about the Beatlemania era.

The Beatles were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, their first year of eligibility.Harrison and Starr attended the ceremony along with Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, and his two sons, Julian and Sean.McCartney declined to attend, issuing a press release that said, "The Beatles still have some business differences which I had hoped would have been settled by now. Unfortunately, they haven't been, so I would feel like a complete hypocrite waving and smiling with them at a fake reunion. The following year, EMI/Capitol settled a decade-long lawsuit filed by the band over royalties, clearing the way to commercially package previously unreleased material.

The Beatles' influence on popular culture was—and remains—immense. Former Rolling Stoneassociate editor Robert Greenfield said, "People are still looking at Picasso ... at artists who broke through the constraints of their time period to come up with something that was unique and original. In the form that they worked in, in the form of popular music, no one will ever be more revolutionary, more creative and more distinctive."From the 1920s, the United States had dominated popular entertainment culture throughout much of the world, via Hollywood movies, jazz, the music ofBroadway and Tin Pan Alley and, later, the rock and roll that first emerged in Memphis, Tennessee. The Beatles not only triggered the British Invasion of the US, but themselves became a globally influential phenomenon.

Their musical innovations, as well as their commercial success, inspired musicians worldwide. A large number of artists have acknowledged them as an influence, or have had chart successes withcovers of Beatles songs.On radio, their arrival marked the beginning of a new era; program directors like Rick Sklar of New York's WABC went so far as to forbid DJs from playing any "pre-Beatles" music.The Beatles redefined the album as something more than just a few hits padded out with "filler".They were primary innovators of the music video.The Shea Stadium date with which they opened their 1965 North American tour attracted what was then the largest audience in concert history and is seen as a "landmark event in the growth of the rock crowd."Emulation of their clothing and especially their hairstyles, which became a mark of rebellion, had a global impact on fashion.

The Beatles changed the way people listened to popular music and experienced its role in their lives.From what began as the Beatlemania fad, the group grew to be perceived by their young fans across the industrialized world as the representatives, even the embodiment, of ideals associated with cultural transfiguration.As icons of the 1960s counterculture, they became a catalyst forbohemianism and activism in various social and political arenas, fuelling such movements as women's liberation, gay liberation and environmentalism.Particularly after the "more popular than Jesus" controversy in 1966, the Beatles felt considerable pressure to say the right things and "began a concerted effort to spread a message of wisdom and higher consciousness."