Rise of the Beatles

Now we turn to the Beatles. I suspect some students jumped straight to this lecture because the Beatles are so popular and you want to hear about their music. For me this is one of the most interesting chapters in the course; many people already know the story.

The Beatles formed in Liverpool at the end of the 1950s. As an industrial city in northern England, Liverpool counts as a middle-class city. The Beatles were not from poverty; sometimes they are painted like Dickensian waifs, but that is not accurate. They had solid schooling, enough to eat and wear, and grew up with middle-class advantages—not rich, but middle class. After the band formed they played many hard shows in Hamburg. Hard because Hamburg’s Reeperbahn was to Europe a bit like Las Vegas to America—“what happens in Hamburg stays in Hamburg”—so demand for music was constant. Germans wanted American rock, but bringing American bands was expensive, so they brought bands from London; when London ran out, from elsewhere in Britain. Hamburg is a port; so is Liverpool; there was lots of trade between them, so finding a Liverpool band was relatively easy. Many bands were taken from Liverpool to Hamburg; the Beatles were certainly not the first.

Anyway they got the job, young and inexperienced. George Harrison was still a minor, only 17. Stuart Sutcliffe was in the band; Ringo had not joined yet; the drummer was Pete Best. In Hamburg they played long hours—six sets a night sometimes; when they could not play straight through they traded off with other bands—about six sets a day, over twelve hours. With songs roughly two or three minutes long, you need a huge repertoire for six hours a night, six days a week. With many return customers you keep cycling in new material. In many ways the Beatles were like graduate students of pop: learning song after song, drilling details, covers very close to the originals. Then they returned to Liverpool and began playing the Cavern Club. Because they presented as a German band, people kept saying how good their English was—John Lennon loved telling that story.

Back in northern England their popularity soared. Brian Epstein, who had never managed a band, signed them. His family ran furniture chains across the north; every store had a record counter. Epstein worked the Liverpool counter and took on the Beatles because he wanted into the pop business. He got them a Decca audition—his stores sold a lot of Decca records, so they might do him a favor. Decca scheduled 1 January 1962; I guess on New Year’s Day no one else was using the studio, so they could invite the lads up from Liverpool. They made a demo; Epstein tried to sell it in London and hit walls everywhere. Decca’s Dick Rowe delivered the then-famous rejection: “Guitar groups are on the way out.” He signed Brian Poole and the Tremeloes from Brighton instead—the train to Brighton was shorter than to Liverpool. In the end he is remembered as the man who turned down the Beatles.

When almost everyone in town had refused them, George Martin finally chose the Beatles. He was a producer at EMI’s Parlophone label in the 1950s mainstream system; he saw something in them and began working with them. Stuart Sutcliffe stayed in Hamburg; Pete Best was replaced by Ringo. By late 1962 they had a decent chart single, “Love Me Do,” at No. 17. Then 1963’s “Please Please Me,” “From Me to You,” and “She Loves You” scored bigger; by year’s end came “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” 1963 was crucial; that summer things went so well British media coined Beatlemania. Their success had knock-on effects: in 1963 many British bands in so-called beat music began to hit. They could not call it a British Invasion—you cannot invade your own country. Merseybeat—beat-style bands—really took off; not only the Rolling Stones, but Gerry and the Pacemakers, the Dave Clark Five, and others had hits. Success for the Beatles and bands following them effectively opened year one of British pop: British bands began to outnumber American ones at the top of the British charts. So on many levels the Beatles’ domestic success was historically memorable; before they came to America and conquered the world, they mattered in Britain—they showed British musicians and listeners that British music could match American music, or even top it.

By autumn 1963 good things piled up: they appeared on Sunday Night at the London Palladium (analogous to America’s Ed Sullivan Show), then performed for the royal family. Introducing “Twist and Shout,” John Lennon delivered the famous line that people in the cheap seats should clap and the rest could rattle their jewelry. Interestingly, their Liverpool accents and everything tied to Liverpool made their relatively modest origins and British charm work together—ordinary backgrounds, a bit at odds with aristocratic authority, underdogs in a sense, not as worldly as typical Londoners. But when they reached America we could not tell Liverpool from the Queen’s English; we thought they were like James Bond—traveled, worldly, smarter and more sophisticated than us. The image that won in Britain differed from the American one. In 1964 the Beatles came to America; on 9 February 1964 they were on the Ed Sullivan Show. That show was huge—only three networks then, and Sullivan ranked high. Remarkably they appeared three weeks running: first 9 February, next week in Miami (Ed liked winter shows there), then another week—three consecutive weeks, a huge success. The first show is famous; reports said New York crime was unprecedentedly low while they were on—accurate or not, the story is often retold. George Harrison said even the criminals paused a minute to watch the Beatles on Sullivan. Anyway “I Want to Hold Your Hand” gave them a No. 1. After the “the Beatles are coming” campaign, Capitol finally released a Beatles record in America—“I Want to Hold Your Hand.” Their first four hit singles had been issued in the U.S. by independents Vee-Jay and Swan; Capitol thought Americans would not want British music, then finally gave in. Capitol was actually affiliated with EMI, same group as Parlophone. Forced to release and promote, then Sullivan, they suddenly became bigger than anyone had imagined. The next Elvis was not an American singer, not the folk revival, not teen idols, not surf, not girl groups—none of those. The next Elvis was the Beatles, from a place that had never had this kind of commercial impact in America.

So when we talk about the Beatles’ musical influence in these years, I think we should say that their 1963 achievements changed Britain: British artists could compete with Americans, sometimes even win. They changed not only listeners but musicians’ thinking. And their 1964 arrival created a run of opportunities for other British artists. The Beatles came to America and brought what we call the British Invasion—but at the time no one knew they would be the best Invasion band. Waves of bands poured into the U.S., mop-tops, suits, British accents; the press kept wanting to write that the Beatles were fading, that Herman’s Hermits were the hot new act, and so on. No one knew the Beatles would survive and become this important. Next lecture: what the Beatles learned from American pop, and how from 1964 to 1966 they overturned the typical image of the rock musician.