History Music / TheBeatles

+ [[TropeCodifier Pretty much everyone since.]]]]
]

+ Pretty much everyone since.

Arising out of the ashes of teenage skiffle group The Quarrymen, The Beatles debuted on 17 August 1960 (although, prior to that, the unit had gone through a revolving door of members and band names), with the initial stable line-up consisting of Music/JohnLennon, Music/PaulMcCartney, and Music/GeorgeHarrison sharing guitar and vocal duties, Stuart "Stu" Sutcliffe on bass, and [[ThePeteBest Pete Best]] on drums. Originally just a small-time band, they soon gained enough professionalism to secure bookings as a house band for sleazy nightclubs in UsefulNotes/{{Hamburg}}, Germany, where tough audiences and gruelling performance schedules forced them to seriously improve as performers by the time they returned to Liverpool.

A rock band of truly incalculable influence, The Beatles are credited by many with changing the very face of not just rock but popular music as a whole, while for others they were at least major pioneers of the new style of pop-rock, and were a major force of UsefulNotes/TheBritishInvasion. For a lot of people, they were also the face of TheSixties. Not bad work for four young lads from UsefulNotes/{{Liverpool}}.

+ Music/TheBeachBoys, Music/ChuckBerry, Music/JamesBrown, Music/EddieCochran, The Coasters, Music/BoDiddley, Music/FatsDomino, The Drifters, Music/BobDylan, Music/TheEverlyBrothers, Music/BuddyHolly, Music/CaroleKing, Music/LittleRichard, Music/DeanMartin, Creator/SpikeMilligan, Music/RoyOrbison, Carl Perkins, Music/ElvisPresley, Creator/PeterSellers, The Shadows, Music/RaviShankar, The Shirelles, Music/FrankSinatra, Music/PhilSpector, Music/TheSupremes, Gene Vincent, Music/FrankZappa

[[caption-width-right:350:''"We were just a band that made it very, very big, [[{{Understatement}} that's all.]]"'' [- -- '''John Lennon''' to ''Magazine/RollingStone'' magazine, 1970.[[note]]Clockwise from bottom left: Music/PaulMcCartney, Music/RingoStarr, Music/JohnLennon, and Music/GeorgeHarrison.[[/note]]-]]]

[[caption-width-right:350:''"We were just a band that made it very, very big, [[{{Understatement}} that's all.]]"'' -- '''John Lennon''' to ''Magazine/RollingStone'' magazine, 1970.[[note]]Clockwise from bottom left: Music/PaulMcCartney, Music/RingoStarr, Music/JohnLennon, and Music/GeorgeHarrison.[[/note]]]]

A rock band of truly incalculable influence, The Beatles are credited by many with changing the face of not just rock but popular music as a whole, while for others they were at least major pioneers of the new style of pop-rock, and were a major force of UsefulNotes/TheBritishInvasion. For a lot of people, they were also the face of TheSixties. Not bad work for four young lads from UsefulNotes/{{Liverpool}}.

Arising out of the ashes of teenage skiffle group The Quarrymen, The Beatles formed on 17 August 1960 (though prior to that, the band went through a revolving door of names and members), with the initial stable line-up consisting of Music/JohnLennon, Music/PaulMcCartney, and Music/GeorgeHarrison sharing guitar and vocal duties, Stuart "Stu" Sutcliffe on bass, and [[ThePeteBest Pete Best]] on drums. Originally just a small-time band, they gained enough professionalism to secure bookings as a house band for sleazy nightclubs in UsefulNotes/{{Hamburg}}, Germany, where tough audiences and gruelling performance schedules forced them to seriously improve as performers by the time they returned to Liverpool.

Sutcliffe didn't last too long, deciding not to return to Liverpool when the rest of the Beatles were forced to leave Hamburg at the end of 1960. Chas Newby briefly joined as bassist for a couple of weeks, but declined Lennon's offer to stay on in January 1961. Sutcliffe returned before quitting for good by mid-1961 to focus on his artwork, at which point [=McCartney=] switched to bass. Sutcliffe sadly wouldn't live to see his former bandmates become world-famous, dying from a brain haemorrhage in 1962.

[[caption-width-right:350:''"We were just a band who made it very, very big, [[{{Understatement}} that's all.]]"''\\
[[note]]Clockwise from bottom left: Music/PaulMcCartney, Music/RingoStarr, Music/JohnLennon, and Music/GeorgeHarrison.[[/note]]]]

* LicensedGame: ''The Beatles: VideoGame/RockBand'', which came out on September 9, 2009; it's managed to attract [[BrokenBase split opinions]], most detractors taking the ItsEasySoItSucks approach. The game features UnlockableContent in the form of picture/video galleries that are accompanied by band trivia/history.

Arising out of the ashes of teenage skiffle group The Quarrymen, The Beatles formed on 17 August 1960 (though prior to that, the band went through a revolving door of names and members), with the initial stable line-up consisting of Music/JohnLennon, Music/PaulMcCartney, and Music/GeorgeHarrison sharing guitar and vocal duties, Stuart "Stu" Sutcliffe on bass, and [[ThePeteBest Pete Best]] on drums. Originally just a small-time band, they gained enough professionalism to secure bookings as a house band for sleazy nightclubs in Hamburg, Germany, where tough audiences and gruelling performance schedules forced them to seriously improve as performers by the time they returned to Liverpool.

The ''Music/LetItBe'' sessions proved that the writing was on the wall for the Beatles, where George Harrison followed Ringo Starr's example and also briefly quit. Finally, John Lennon quit for good in September 1969, and the rest of the band broke up in 1970 due to CreativeDifferences under circumstances painful to think about, but not before managing to get it together one more time for ''Abbey Road'', considered one of their finest albums. Everyone went on to solo careers of varying success, most notably [=McCartney=] with Music/{{Wings|Band}} while Harrison topped them all in album sales with his post-breakup album, ''Music/AllThingsMustPass''. The dissolution was finalised in 1974, but Apple Corps (the Beatles' management company) was left intact. For perhaps fifteen years, few people saw any purpose for that.

The ''Music/LetItBe'' sessions proved that the writing was on the wall for the Beatles, where George Harrison followed Ringo Starr's example and also briefly quit. Finally, John Lennon quit for good in September 1969. The band broke up in 1970 due to CreativeDifferences under circumstances painful to think about. Everyone went on to solo careers of varying success, most notably [=McCartney=] with Music/{{Wings|Band}} while Harrison topped them all in album sales with his post-breakup album, ''Music/AllThingsMustPass''. The dissolution was finalised in 1974, but Apple Corps (the Beatles' management company) was left intact. For perhaps fifteen years, few people saw any purpose for that.

The Beatles were the first band in history to make music video equivalents to their own songs, which every musician does now. They played themselves in three fictional films: the [[{{Mockumentary}} pseudo-documentary]] ''Film/AHardDaysNight'' (1964), the Film/JamesBond parody ''Film/{{Help}}'' (1965), and the critically-panned surrealist television film ''Film/MagicalMysteryTour'' (1967); they were also the subject of the {{documentary}} film ''Film/LetItBe'' (1970). Their {{Celebrity Toon|s}} equivalents starred in two very different {{Band Toon}}s, each with a distinct set of character designs for the Fab Four. [[WesternAnimation/TheBeatles1965 Their wacky 1965]] AnimatedSeries was the first made-for-TV cartoon based on a real band (or any real people), and therefore both the UrExample and TropeMaker. Meanwhile, the 1968 feature ''WesternAnimation/YellowSubmarine'' brought kid-friendly psychedelic imagery to the masses.

A rock band of truly incalculable influence, The Beatles are credited by many with changing the face of rock and popular music, while for others they were at least major pioneers of the new style of pop-rock, and were a major force of UsefulNotes/TheBritishInvasion. For a lot of people, they were also the face of TheSixties. Not bad work for four young lads from UsefulNotes/{{Liverpool}}.

* BoyBand: Are sometimes referred to as this, at least for their early material, though as Ringo (among many others) have argued, this isn't really the case since they weren't manufactured by the record label, maintained full creative control, and wrote and played all their songs. (Not to mention there were four of them as opposed to five.) Still, their teenage girl audience, propensity for SillyLoveSongs, and the TV and film appearances that gave each of them distinct, slightly fictionalized personalities all ended up proving to be highly influential on boy bands to come - most directly influencing Music/TheMonkees, generally considered the UrExample of a one.

* DracoInLeatherPants: Maxwell from "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" is an in-universe example; he manages to charm everyone into liking him despite being an AxCrazy psychopath who murders people in broad daylight.

** "Taxman" from ''Music/{{{Revolver|Beatles Album}}'' used the "[[Music/{{Cream}} I Feel Free]]" method, bundling everything on the left channel, leaving tambourine and cowbell on the right, and filling the centre with vocals.

* FunWithAcronyms: The neural network used to enhance the audio for both ''Series/TheBeatlesGetBack'' and John Lennon's vocal on "Now and then" is called "Machine Assisted Learning", or MAL for short, homaging both longtime Beatles assistant Mal Evans and HAL 9000 from ''Film/2001ASpaceOdyssey''.

** In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUuPlzu_RDU an episode]] of ''Between The Lines'' about prosody, [[WebVideo/BrowsHeldHigh Kyle Kalgren]] points out how every single form of poetic meter in written verse can be applied to at least one Beatles song.

In 2016, Creator/RonHoward and Apple Corps released another documentary: ''The Beatles: Eight Days a Week'', focusing on their live shows and tours between 1962 and 1966. In addition to new interviews with Paul, Ringo, and members of their circle, it featured testimony from such young fans as Creator/WhoopiGoldberg, Creator/SigourneyWeaver, Music/ElvisCostello, and Creator/EddieIzzard.

* PosthumousCollaboration: "Real Love", "Free as a Bird" and "Now and Then" were all songs recorded by the surviving Beatles after Lennon's death (and in the case of "Now and Then", Harrison's too) based on demos recorded by Lennon as a solo act that the other Beatles added their own input.[[note]]The first two were recorded in 1994-95 as part of ''Music/TheBeatlesAnthology''; at the time there was also an attempt to record "Now and Then" but it was abandoned due to the poor quality of the Lennon demo, before it was finally recorded and released in 2023 after using AI technology to restore the demo's quality, and using Harrison's contributions from the 1994-95 sessions due to his death in 2001.[[/note]]

The legacy lives on. An installment of ''VideoGame/RockBand'' was made featuring Beatles songs and ''only'' Beatles songs. Not quite coincidentally, the entire catalogue has been remastered and was re-released on CD the same day. After years of legal disputes having to do with the "Apple" label, iTunes finally added Beatles music in 2010, which started a sequence of re-releases and various new compilations.

* PosthumousCollaboration: "Real Love", "Free as a Bird and "Now And Then".

* ProtestSong: Subverted with "Revolution," a protest about protesters (and specifically the Cultural Revolution with John's "Chairman Mao" reference.")
** Or maybe not. All versions of the song take a swipe at Mao, but Lennon's vocals in "Revolution 1" have a more ambivalent take on protest in general, with his introductory "don't you know that you can count me out" being immediately followed by a parenthetical "in."

*** Supposedly, Paul once overheard some black musicians using the term "plastic soul" to describe [[Music/TheRollingStonesBand Mick Jagger's]] singing. So the title might have also been a playful, in-joke TakeThat to the Stones.

But then [[NewbieBoom a second wave of Beatlemania gradually hit]], but unfortunately too late for John Lennon, who sadly had been getting the PosthumousPopularityPotential effect since he died in 1980--when he was murdered by a LoonyFan who took offence to his aforementioned "more popular than Jesus" remark as well as the leftist content of his solo output--but everyone else got to see it. The events leading to this, in order: the initial release of the British Beatles catalogue (plus the American version of ''Music/MagicalMysteryTour'') on CD in 1987; the Beatles being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the release of ''Music/PastMasters'' (which collects all their non-album singles and rarities), both in 1988; Paul [=McCartney=] finally embracing his Beatles heritage fully in 1989, in the process settling the last couple of lawsuits and freeing Apple Corps to ''act''; the 1993 CD reissues of the "Red" and "Blue" compilations; the release of ''Music/TheBeatlesAnthology'' across three compilation albums and a documentary from 1995 to 1996, with Beatles singles "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love" (which CoveredUp the Lennon versions); and the release of the ''1'' compilation in 2000, featuring all of the band's number one singles. Since then, Beatles-related stuff has come out just often enough, with carefully curated anticipation with each new media format, to keep second-generation fans on their toes and the fandom active and aggressive.

Once manager Brian Epstein died in 1967, the writing was on the wall for the Beatles and tensions grew. The transcendental meditation trip to UsefulNotes/{{India}} and John Lennon's fixated romance with Music/YokoOno did not help. Paul increasingly had to take a stronger hand to keep the group cohesive through work, which the others resented however necessary it was. The argument over a new manager was particularly bitter considering that John, George, and Ringo wanted the sleazy Allen Klein[[note]]Despite the fact that his former clients, Music/{{The Rolling Stones|Band}}, warned them to not to do business with him[[/note]] while Paul wanted his future Family-in-Law, the Eastmans, to do it[[note]]The rest of the band didn't want the father of Paul's girlfriend have that much pull in their affairs and thus strengthen Paul's hand against them. The fact that Paul's suspicions about Klein were proven right only served to irritate them further considering that meant that they would have to admit they were wrong and thus give Paul that much more clout[[/note]]. Meanwhile, George was chafing at being treated as the junior member of the group by Paul, John, and George Martin even while his own creative work was increasingly deserving more consideration in respect and royalty revenues. All the while, Ringo was feeling increasingly irrelevant to the band's work, often having to sit out of the way for hours until he was needed to drum.

Ringo Starr briefly quit during the making of ''Music/TheWhiteAlbum''[[note]]The others managed to coax him back and the impromptu sabbatical turned out to be for the best: Ringo learned how he was actually appreciated and during his vacation he learned some interesting things about octopuses, which inspired him to write one of his greatest songwriting efforts, the children's classic "Octopus' Garden"[[/note]], and George Harrison did the same during the ''Music/LetItBe'' sessions. Finally, John Lennon quit for good in September 1969. The band broke up in 1970 under [[CreativeDifferences circumstances painful to think about]]. Everyone went on to solo careers of varying success, most notably [=McCartney=] with Music/{{Wings|Band}} while Harrison topped them all in album sales with his post-breakup album, ''Music/AllThingsMustPass''. The dissolution was finalised in 1974, but Apple Corps (the Beatles' management company) was left intact. For perhaps fifteen years, few people saw any purpose for that.

But then [[NewbieBoom a second wave of Beatlemania gradually hit]]--too late for John Lennon, who sadly had been getting the PosthumousPopularityPotential effect since 1980 when he was murdered by a LoonyFan who took offence to his aforementioned "more popular than Jesus" remark as well as the leftist content of his solo output, but everyone else got to see it. The events leading to this, in order: the initial release of the British Beatles catalogue (plus the American version of ''Music/MagicalMysteryTour'') on CD in 1987; the Beatles being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the release of ''Music/PastMasters'' (which collects all their non-album singles and rarities), both in 1988; Paul [=McCartney=] finally embracing his Beatles heritage fully in 1989, in the process settling the last couple of lawsuits and freeing Apple Corps to ''act''; the 1993 CD reissues of the "Red" and "Blue" compilations; the release of ''Music/TheBeatlesAnthology'' across three compilation albums and a documentary from 1995 to 1996, with Beatles singles "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love" (which CoveredUp the Lennon versions); and the release of the ''1'' compilation in 2000, featuring all of the band's number one singles. Since then, Beatles-related stuff has come out just often enough, with carefully curated anticipation with each new media format, to keep second-generation fans on their toes and the fandom active and aggressive.