the Beatles

To say that the Beatles changed pop music would be an understatement. From the time they came together at the end of the Fifties until their breakup in 1970, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr repeatedly demonstrated what was possible in pop. Their journey from shaggy rock & roll through opulent and multi-textured albums like Revolver and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band journeyed where few rock bands had gone before and set new standards in record making. The Beatles were also arguably the first major rock band to write its own material, and many of those songs—most by Lennon and McCartney, with some contributions from Harrison--have become standards: “Yesterday,” ‘Come Together,” “Get Back,” “Eleanor Rigby,” “Here Comes the Sun,” “Something,” just a small sampling, have been covered by artists in nearly every genre over many decades.

Born in Liverpool, as were Harrison and Starr, the acerbic Lennon and the cheerier McCartney met at a church picnic in 1957. The two were magically complementary, and Harrison, original drummer Pete Best and then Starr all eventually came into the fold. Starting with their first recording for EMI’s Parlophone label, “Love Me Do” in 1962, the Beatles injected coltish energy, melodic punch, cheeky humor, and harmonic sophistication into the then-moribund rock & roll. The Beatlemania that greeted them, crystalizing when they appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in America in 1964 and continuing with their foppish and charming movies A Hard Day’s Night and Help!, was so intense that they stopped touring; the deafening scream at their shows were simply too much. But with their devoted and encouraging producer, George Martin, they began using the studio as an instrument in a way few had before. They utilized backwards guitars and tapes in Revolver, invented the rock-era concept album with Sgt. Pepper and devoted an entire side of Abbey Road to a seamless suite.

The group disbanded acrimoniously, never to formally reunite, although each man went onto solo careers with varied success. Lennon was assassinated by an obsessed fan in 1980, and Harrison died of lung cancer in 2001. But their songs, records, innovations and vitality would hover over pop for decades to come. —David Browne