The impact of the Beatles --   not only on rock & roll but on all of Western culture -- is simply incalculable.   They were the first of the British Invasion and as musicians they proved that rock & roll could embrace a limitless variety of harmonies, structures, and sounds; virtually every rock experiment has some  precedent on Beatles records. As a unit they were a musically synergistic combination: Paul McCartney’s melodic bass lines, Ringo Starr’s slaphappy no-rolls drumming, George Harrison’s  rockabilly-style guitar leads, John Lennon’s assertive rhythm guitar -- and their four fervent voices.

    One of the first rock groups to write most of its material, they inaugurated the era of self-contained bands and  forever centralized pop. And as personalities, they defined and incarnated Sixties style: smart, idealistic, playful, irreverent, eclectic. Their music, from the not-so-simple love songs they started with to their later perfectionistic studio extravaganzas, set new standards for both commercial and artistic success in pop. Although many of their sales and  attendance records have since been surpassed, no group has so radically transformed the sound and meaning of rock & roll.

        Lennon was performing with his amateur skiffle  group the Quarrymen at a church picnic on July 6,  1957, in the Liverpool suburb of Woolton when he  met McCartney, whom he later invited to join his  group; soon they were writing songs together, such  as "The One After 909." By the year’s end   McCartney had convinced Lennon to let Harrison join    their group, the name of which was changed to  Johnny and the Moondogs in 1958. In 1960 anart-school friend of Lennon’s, Stu Sutcliffe, became  their bassist. Sutcliffe couldn’t play a note but had recently sold one of his paintings for a considerable sum, which the group, now rechristened the Silver  Beetles (from which "Silver" was dropped a few  months later, and "Beetles" amended to "Beatles"),  used to upgrade its equipment. Tommy Moore was  their drummer until Pete Best replaced him in August 1960.

             Once Best had joined, the band made its first of four trips to Hamburg, Germany. In December Harrison was deported back to England for being underage and lacking a work permit, but by then their 30-set weeks on the stages of Hamburg beerhouses had  honed and strengthened their repertoire (mostly Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Carl Perkins, and Buddy Holly covers), and on February 21, 1961, theydebuted at the Cavern club on Mathew Street in Liverpool, beginning a string of nearly 300 performances there over the next couple of years.

        In April 1961 they again went to Hamburg, where  Sutcliffe (the first of the Beatles to wear his hair in   the long, shaggy style that came to be known as the Beatle haircut or they were affectionately referred to as "mop-tops) left the group to become a painter,while McCartney switched from rhythm guitar to bass. The Beatles returned to Liverpool as a quartet in July. Sutcliffe died from a brain hemorrhage in  Hamburg less than a year later.

          The Beatles had been playing regularly to packed  houses at the Cavern when they were spotted on  November 9 by Brian Epstein (b. Sep. 19, 1934, Liverpool). After being discharged from the British  Army on medical grounds, Epstein had attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London for a year  before returning to Liverpool to manage his father’s record store.

           The request he received for a German import single entitled "My Bonnie" (which the Beatles hadrecorded a few months earlier in Hamburg, backing singer Tony Sheridan and billed as the Beat Boys)convinced him to check out the group. Epstein was surprised to discover not only that the Beatlesweren’t German but that they were one of the most popular local bands in Liverpool. Within two monthshe became their manager. Epstein cleaned up their act, eventually replacing black leather jackets, tight jeans, and pompadours with collarless gray Pierre Cardin suits.

        Epstein tried landing the Beatles a record contract,but nearly every label in Europe rejected the group. In May 1962, however, producer George Martin (b. Jan. 3, 1926, North London, Eng.) grew interested in the quartet and signed it to EMI’s Parlophone subsidiary. Pete Best was asked to leave thegroup on August 16, 1962, and Ringo Starr, drummer with a popular Liverpool group, RoryStorme and the Hurricanes, was added, just in time for the group’s first recording session. On September 11 the Beatles cut two originals, "Love  Me Do" b/w "P.S. I Love You," which became their first U.K. Top Twenty hit in October. In early 1963 "Please Please Me" went to #2, and they recordedan album of the same name in one 10-hour session on February 11,1963. With the success of their thirdEnglish single, "From Me to You" (#1), the British  record industry coined the term "Merseybeat" for groups like Gerry and the Pacemakers, Billy J.  Kramer and the Dakotas, and the Searchers, who also hailed from Liverpool on the Mersey River. By  midyear the Beatles were given billing over RoyOrbison on a national tour, and the hysterical outbreaks of "Beatlemania" had begun. Followingtheir first tour of Europe in October, they moved to London with Epstein. Constantly mobbed byscreaming fans, the Beatles required police  protection almost any time they were seen in public. Late in the year "She Loves You" became the  biggest-selling single in British history. In November 1963 the group performed before the Queen Mother  at the Royal Command Variety Performance.

        EMI’s American label, Capitol, had not released the group’s 1963 records (which Martin licensed to independents like Vee-Jay and Swan with little  success) but was finally persuaded to release its fourth single, "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and Meet  the Beatles in January 1964 and to invest $50,000 in  promotion for the then unknown British act. The album and the single became the Beatles first U.S. chart-toppers. On February 7 screaming mobs met them at New York’s Kennedy Airport, and more than 70 million people watched each of their appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9 and 16. In April 1964 "Can’t Buy Me Love" became the first record to top American and British charts simultaneously, and that same month the Beatles held the top five positions on Billboard’s singles chart ( "Can’t Buy Me Love," "Twist and Shout,"  "She Loves You," "I Want to Hold Your Hand,"
"Please Please Me").

        Their first movie, A Hard Day’s Night (directed by Richard Lester), opened in America in August; it grossed $1.3 million in its first week. The band was  aggressively merchandised -- Beatle wigs, Beatle  clothes, Beatle dolls, junk food, lunch pails, a cartoon series -- from which, because of Epstein’s ineptitude, it made surprisingly little. The Beatles  also opened the American market to such British  Invasion groups as the Dave Clark Five, the Rolling Stones, and the Kinks.

        By 1965 Lennon and McCartney rarely wrote songs together, although by contractual and personal agreement songs by either of them were credited to both. The Beatles toured Europe, North America, the Far East, and Australia that year. Their second movie, Help! (again directed by Lester), was filmed in England, Austria, and the Bahamas in the spring and opened in the U.S. in August. On August 15 they performed to 55, 600 fans at New York’s Shea Stadium, setting a record for largest concert audience. McCartney’s "Yesterday" (#1, 1965) would become one of the most often covered songs ever written. In June the Queen had announced that the Beatles would be awarded the MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire). The announcement sparked some controversy -- some MBE holders  returned their medals -- but on October 26, 1965, the ceremony took place at Buckingham Palace. (Lennon returned his medal in 1969.)

        With 1965’s Rubber Soul, the Beatles’ ambitions began to extend beyond love songs and pop  formulas. Their success led adults to consider them,  along with Bob Dylan, spokesmen for youth culture; and their lyrics grew more poetic and somewhat more political. In summer 1966 controversy eruptedwhen a remark Lennon had made to a British newspaper reporter months before was widely reported in the U.S. Lennon said, "Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about  that, I’m right and will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus Christ right now." The remark  incited denunciations and Beatles record bonfires. Lennon later apologized, although "the remark" had been taken widely out of context by the insuing media reports.

        The Beatles gave up touring after an August 29,1966, concert at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park and made the rest of their music in the studio, where they had begun to experiment with exotic instrumentation ("Norwegian Wood," 1965, had  featured sitar) and tape abstractions such as the reversed vocal tracks on "Rain." "Strawberry Fields Forever," part of a double-sided single released in February 1967 to fill the unusually long gap between albums, featured an astonishing display of electronically altered sounds and hinted at what was to come. With "Taxman" and "Love You To" on Revolver, Harrison began to emerge as a songwriter.

           It took four months and $75,000 to record Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band using a
then-state-of-the-art four-track tape recorder and building each cut layer by layer. Released in June 1967, it was hailed as serious art for its "concept" and its range of styles and sounds, a lexicon of pop and electronic noises; such songs as "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "A Day in the Life" were  carefully examined for hidden meanings. The album spent 15 weeks at #1 (longer than any of their others) and has sold over eight million copies. On June 25, 1967, the Beatles recorded their new single, "All You Need Is Love," before an international television audience of 400 million, as part of a broadcast called Our World.

     On August 27, 1967 -- while the four were in Wales beginning their six-month involvement with   transcendental meditation and the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (which took them to India for two months in early 1968) -- Epstein died alone in his London flat from an overdose of sleeping pills, later ruled accidental. Shaken by Epstein’s death, the  Beatles retrenched under McCartney’s leadership in the fall and filmed Magical Mystery Tour, which was aired by BBC-TV on December 26, 1967, and later  released in the U.S. as a feature film. Although the  telefilm was panned by British critics, fans, and Queen Elizabeth herself, the soundtrack album contained their most cryptic work yet in "I Am the Walrus."

        As the Beatles’ late-1967 single "Hello Goodbye"went to #1 in both the U.S. and Britain, the group launched the Apple clothes boutique in London. McCartney called the retail effort "Western communism," but the boutique closed in July 1968. Like their next effort, Apple Corps Ltd. (formed in  January 1968 and including Apple Records, which  signed James Taylor, Mary Hopkin, and Badfinger), it was plagued by mismanagement. In July the group faced its last hysterical crowds at the premiere of Yellow Submarine, an animated film by German poster artist Heinz Edelmann featuring four new Beatles songs.

       In August they released McCartney’s "Hey Jude"(#1), backed by Lennon’s "Revolution" (#12), which sold over six million copies before the end of 1968 --their most popular single. Meanwhile, the group had been working on the double album The Beatles (frequently called the White Album), which showed their divergent directions. The rifts were artistic -- Lennon moving toward brutal confessionals,  McCartney leaning toward pop melodies, Harrison immersed in Eastern spirituality -- and personal, as Lennon drew closer to his wife-to-be, Yoko Ono. Lennon and Ono’s Two Virgins (with its full frontal and back nude cover photos) was released the same month as The Beatles and stirred so much outrage that the LP had to be sold wrapped in brown paper bags. (The Beatles went to #1, Two Virgins peaked at #124.)

        The Beatles attempted to smooth over their  differences in early 1969 at filmed recording
sessions. When the project fell apart hundreds of hours of studio time later, no one could face editing the tapes (a project that eventually fell to Phil Spector), and "Get Back" (#1, 1969) was the only  immediate release. Released in spring 1970, Let It Be is essentially a documentary of their breakup, including an impromptu January 30, 1969, rooftop concert at Apple Corps headquarters, their last public performance.

         By spring 1969 Apple was losing thousands of pounds each week. Over McCartney’s objections, the other three brought in manager Allen Klein to straighten things out; one of his first actions was to package non-album singles as Hey Jude. With money matters temporarily out of mind, the four joined forces in July and August 1969 to record  Abbey Road, featuring an extended suite as well as more hits, including Harrison’s much-covered  "Something" (#3, 1969). While its release that fall  spurred a "Paul Is Dead" rumor based on clues supposedly left throughout their work, Abbey Road became the Beatles’ best-selling album, at nine million copies. Meanwhile, internal bickering  persisted. In September Lennon told the others, "I’m leaving the group. I’ve had enough. I want a divorce."

    But he was persuaded to keep quiet while their business affairs were untangled. On April 10, 1970, McCartney released his first solo album and publicly announced the end of the Beatles. At the same time, Let It Be finally surfaced, becoming the group’s 14th #1 album (a postbreakup compilation would become their 15th in 1973) and yielding the Beatles’ 18th and 19th chart-topping singles, "Let It Be" and "The Long and Winding Road."

      Throughout the Seventies, as repackages of Beatles music continued to sell, the four were hounded by  bids and pleas for a reunion. Lennon’s murder by a mentally disturbed fan on December 8, 1980, ended those speculations.

         In 1988 the Beatles were inducted into the Rock and  Roll Hall of Fame. McCartney, citing business conflicts with the two other surviving members, did not attend. Relations between him and Harrison, in particular, had been strained for some time. But in January 1994 Goldmine magazine reported that McCartney, Harrison, and Starr had begun recording music for a long-rumored Beatles documentary the previous August, with more secret sessions  scheduled. George Martin was said to be the  producer. Later that year Live at the BBC was  released, featuring 56 songs the Beatles performed on British radio between 1962 and 1965. It debuted  at #1 in the U.K.; in the U.S., it debuted and peaked at #3. In March 1995 McCartney confirmed that he,  Harrison, and Starr were recording new songs. When released, they will be the first new Beatles songs since 1969.

    In 1999, the last excuse for mass media coverage came with the release of a remixed Yellow Submarine. The  remastered film delighted a new audience who were stunned with its still incredibly original effects. The accompanying album dispensed with the George Martin instrumentals and instead reverted to the order of tracks  featured in the film. Later in the year they were confirmed as the most successful recording act of the 20th century in the U.S., with album sales of over 106 million. In the course of history the Rolling Stones and countless other major groups are loved, but the Beatles are universally   and unconditionally adored.