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Here follows a full Beatles timeline, from their humble beginnings to becoming the superstars whose musical prowess was only surpassed by their adoring fans.

Our Beatles newspaper book is a great way to remember the great times of Beatlemania, and how the events were reported at the time.

The Beatles, pictured in 1965. From L-R, John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney and George Harrison
Image: Wikimedia

Humble Beginnings

The Beatles were an English four-piece rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960.

The members of the band were John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, with John and Ringo playing the guitar, Paul on bass guitar and Ringo on the drums.

In March 1956, John Lennon, aged 16, and a few of his friends from school played in a skiffle band called the Quarrymen. After meeting John in the July of that year, Paul McCartney joined the band as a rhythm guitarist and invited his friend George Harrison to watch the band perform. George then auditioned to be in the band, but John thought that he was too young, however, after several months of persistence, he performed lead guitar in a performance as was enlisted as their lead guitarist.

By January 1959, John's friends from school had left, and he began studying at Liverpool College of Art. The three guitarists, John, Paul and George, were playing under the name Johnny and the Moondogs, and playing rock and roll whenever they could find a drummer.

Stuart Sutcliffe, an art college friend of John and band member, suggested that the band name should be Beatals, as a tribute to Buddy Holly and the Crickets. They used this name until May of 1959, where they went to the Silver Beetles, the Silver Beatles and then in August, shortened to simply The Beatles.
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The Early 1960s

In August 1960, their unofficial manager Allan Williams had booked a residency for the band in Hamburg, but without a full-time drummer, they had to audition for a new band member. They auditioned and hired Pete Best in the same month. Six days after hiring Pete, they left for Hamburg for a 3 and a half month residency. The Beatles played in Hamburg in several different locations, but mainly in the red-light district.

Stuart Sutcliffe decided to leave the band early, in 1961, making Paul the bassist, and they were signed into another contract in Hamburg until June 1962. After their second residency, they became increasingly popular in Liverpool with the Merseybeat movement, but they were growing tired of playing the same clubs night after night.

During one of their performances at The Cavern Club, they met Brian Epstein - a local store owner and music columnist. He became their manager in 1962, after courting them for a couple of months. Brian eventually released the band from contractual obligations in Hamburg a month early in exchange for a recording session.

In April, the band was met with horrific news: Sutcliffe had died suddenly from a brain haemorrhage.

Three months later, Brian negotiated a deal with George Martin, the owner of EMI's Parlophone label. Their first recording session with George Martin took place on 6th June 1962, at EMI's Abbey Road Studios. Martin immediately complained about Best's drumming ability, and suggested a session drummer in his place. The band was already considering dismissing Best, and therefore hired Ringo Starr in August 1962. Starr left his band, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, to join them.

During their third session with Martin, The Beatles recorded Love Me Do, Please Please Me and P.S. I Love You with Starr on the drums, but George was dissatisfied and got Andy White, a session drummer, to take Ringo's place in the song, with Ringo on the tambourine. Love Me Do was released, and peaked at number 17 on the Record Retailer chart. Martin suggested that Please Please Me should be a faster tempo, and recording took place in November. Martin accurately predicted "you've just made your first number one."

In 1963, the band decided that all four members should contribute vocals to their albums, despite Starr's limited vocal range. As Lennon and McCarthy established a songwriting partnership, it meant that it limited Harrison's opportunities as lead vocalist. George Martin suggested that, if they were to be a success, they should change their ways - stop eating, swearing and smoking on stage.
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Beatlemania

On 11th February 1963, The Beatles recorded ten songs during a single studio session for their debut album, Please Please Me. After the positive reaction to their first single Love Me Do , the single Please Please Me was met with a bigger reaction, and reached number one on every UK chart except Record Retailer, where it reached number two.

Due to their commercial success, it increased their media exposure - the Beatles became known for their comical attitude as this was different to other pop artists at the time. Due to their attitude and behaviour, they become even more of an interest to their fans. When they performed live and toured the UK, the band was greeted with screaming fans, which the press dubbed Beatlemania. Whilst supporting Tommy Roe and Chris Montez, the Beatles overshadowed the artists and assumed top billing 'by audience demand' - this was something that had never happened to a British act whilst touring with artists from the US.

After a 5-day tour in Sweden, the band was met by hundreds of screaming fans and around 100 journalists and photographers. Due to the fans, police had to resort to using high-pressure water hoses at a concert in Plymouth.

Please Please Me maintained at the top of the charts for 30 weeks, to be displaced with its follow up, With the Beatles.

In 1964, The Beatles made their US debut on The Ed Sullivan Show on 9th February 1964 - where around 74 million viewers (around half of the US population) watched the performance.

The Beatles visited America when the nation was still mourning the assassination of President John F. Kennedy the previous year, and commentators have suggested that the band reignited the excitement within the country and helped make way for the revolutionary changes to come in the next decade. The interest in the Beatles generated unprecedented interest in British music, and groups such as the Rolling Stones, the Kinks and the Animals made their American debuts within the next three years.

The Beatles' songs filled the top 5 places on the American Top 40 chart, a feat which has, to this day, never been matched.

The band stopped touring in 1966 as they were getting tired of the audience screaming so loudly that the music couldn't be heard. It marked the end of four years of non-stop touring, and a total of 1,400 appearances internationally.

The Beatles arriving at JFK Airport, New York
Image source: Wikimedia
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The Beatles' Separation

After tensions between the band members grew after disagreements over who would manage their finances, on 20th September 1969, Lennon announced that he would leave the band. It was agreed that he would withhold an announcement to the public, avoiding the potential drop in sales of their upcoming album. This important event is documented in our 1969 timeline , joined with other iconic moments that happened in that year.

Abbey Road was released on 26th September and sold more than four million copies within three months - it also topped the UK charts for seventeen weeks in total.

On the 31st December 1970 , Paul McCartney filed for the dissolution of the Beatles' contractual partnership. It was met with legal difficulties and it was not formalised until 29th December 1974, where John Lennon signed the paperwork whilst on holiday with his family at Walt Disney World Resort, in Florida.
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A History of the Beatles - Historic Newspapers

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Here follows a full Beatles timeline, from their humble beginnings to becoming the superstars whose musical prowess was only surpassed by their adoring fans. Our Beatles newspaper book is a great way to remember the great times of Beatlemania, and how the events were reported at the time.

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Take a look back at how the Fab Four conquered American pop culture.

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Proscenium Films

This essay was originally published in the Britannica Book of the Year for 2013. It was subsequently updated.

The year 2013 marked the 50th anniversary of the year that the Beatles emerged from being the object of affection of a few hundred teenagers in a provincial English town to becoming a phenomenon that engulfed Britain and Europe. The year 1963 was the one in which the group began to make its massive worldwide footprint on popular culture and laid the foundations for its enduring popularity. As of January the group had released just one single (a vinyl disc containing two songs: "Love Me Do" and "P.S. I Love You") that had scraped the lower regions of the U.K. record charts. The Beatles were practically unknown except to devotees in their Liverpool hometown, but by year's end an unprecedented tidal wave of popularity dubbed "Beatlemania" was sweeping the Continent. As improbable as it was, the last five days of 1963 saw the start of an even greater tsunami of fervour in the U.S. that within weeks would replicate and even surpass the group's initial breakthrough.

The speed and depth of the Beatles' rise to fame had no precedent in British entertainment. Formed under the name the Quarrymen in late 1956 by then 16-year-old John Lennon, the group evolved into a tight-knit ensemble over the years-taking the name the Beatles in August 1960. They initially played their own version of American rock and roll, but by 1962 they were increasingly performing songs composed by Lennon and bandmate Paul McCartney. The core trio of Lennon, McCartney, and George Harrison was in place by February 1958, and in August 1962 the familiar lineup was finally set with the recruitment of drummer Ringo Starr.

Even with their natural teenage daydreams of conquering the world, the "Fab Four" faced immense odds in their quest to succeed. They were just one of more than 300 such groups in Liverpool. The British entertainment industry was London-centric and disdainful of aspirants from a working-class city in England's impoverished north. It was this sheer mountain face that the group surveyed at the start of 1963. However, the resolve and self-belief that had fueled them for five long years were an integral part of their determination to defy all the odds. A convergence of forces and circumstances resulted in the fission that detonated the Beatles' explosion. In songwriting, although Lennon and McCartney had started out simply emulating their musical heroes, their innate creativity resulted in compositions that conveyed experiences and emotions with an authenticity, an originality, and a verve that were beyond the scope of their early influences. As performers the quartet exuded an exuberant optimism. The principal team supporting the group was also crucial to their breakthrough. Manager Brian Epstein, who discovered them in November 1961, had polished their rough presentational edges (without impinging on their music) to make them accessible to a mass audience and was their indefatigable evangelist, accurately predicting that they would become "bigger than Elvis." Producer George Martin harnessed, nurtured, and shaped their nascent talent.

In the course of a few recordings-all brimming with the same insouciant energy-Martin captured the Beatles on audiotape. Their early songs were released approximately every three months. The jubilant qualities in the recordings were fresh to the audience's ears, accustomed at that time to anodyne American pop and its anemic British imitations. Coinciding with the release of their records was Epstein's orchestration of a virtual blitzkrieg of the airwaves by the group. Their natural energy made them compelling listening on radio. Their appearance rendered them even more effective on television, with their very unusual "moptop" hairstyles and collarless suits. Their most striking quality, though, was their charisma and the sheer joy they took in performing, a characteristic that was so different from the glazed "showbizzy" smiles of most entertainers.

The combination of so many songs bubbling with self-confidence and the wide exposure of the public to the Beatles resulted in an ever-growing succession of chart-topping hits for the group and a matching hysteria at their numerous live appearances. After "Please Please Me" topped the U.K. charts in February, the floodgates opened. A best-selling album (in March) followed rapidly by the singles "From Me to You" (in April) and "She Loves You" (in August) transformed the Beatles first into a teen fad, then into a pop-cultural phenomenon, and finally into a national treasure performing for Britain's royal family in a plush theatre in the heart of London.

For many years British pop music had been under the control of middle-aged puppet masters, who churned out obedient teen idols singing assembly-line ditties and reciting scripted pabulum when interviewed. The Beatles were self-contained as writers and musicians and refreshingly and patently spontaneous free spirits when they met the media. The mixture of self-confidence and self-deprecation was endearing and proved to be a winning combination.

Nothing summed up the cheeky spirit of the Beatles more than their much-anticipated appearance at Britain's Royal Variety Performance that November. How would the notoriously mischievous Lennon behave toward the cream of British aristocracy, nobility, and conspicuous wealth? Lennon exhorted the audience to join in on their final song: "Would the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? And the rest of you-if you'll just rattle your jewelry." The Beatles were not only vivacious but also naturally witty.

In the latter months of 1963, the Beatles' attention was also turning to the U.S. Capitol Records, the American subsidiary of the group's U.K. record company, had thrice turned down requests from London to release Beatles recordings-branding them unsuitable for the American market. Consequently, smaller American labels had released the Beatles' discs but had enjoyed no success, a factor that compounded the belief that the group's next offering, "I Want to Hold Your Hand," would also fail to interest American ears. Nevertheless, Epstein persevered and took a different tack. In mid-November meetings in New York City with Ed Sullivan, the producer-host of the country's foremost variety show, Epstein personally persuaded him to book the Beatles for an unprecedented three consecutive appearances in February 1964. Armed with Sullivan's commitment, Epstein then persuaded Capitol to sign the Beatles and commit considerable promotional resources to launching the group in January 1964.

AP Images

The Beatles' American aspirations would not have been part of their 1963 history but for a set of fateful circumstances. Their first record on Capitol was scheduled for release in mid-January 1964 as a ramp-up to their Sullivan debut appearance on Sunday, February 9. When U.S. Pres. John F. Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963, the tragedy set in motion a chain of events that led American news anchor Walter Cronkite to play a short film sequence from Britain about the Beatles on the CBS Evening News on Tuesday, December 10. Cronkite reasoned that a lighthearted segment about four English youngsters sporting quirky haircuts and playing rock and roll might help cheer up a nation still stricken with grief. The story did much more than that. It triggered an immediate demand from American youngsters to hear more of this brashly optimistic quartet. As an avalanche of interest grew quite naturally, unprompted by the record label, Capitol then made a savvy decision. It rushed the Beatles single to market on December 26-three weeks earlier than scheduled-and the record became an instant sensation on radio. Teenagers in a grieving nation were immediately captivated by this jubilant, uplifting record, which in its first five days of release, sold over a quarter of a million copies.

In 1964 the Beatles-already soaring into the skies-would streak through the entertainment stratosphere on what would become an Apollonian voyage into total cultural domination. Six more active years lay ahead of the group, who would both artistically and commercially break the boundaries of song composition, audio recording, and live performance. Their social and political passions and their quests for spiritual and artistic growth inspired changes in multiple spheres beyond those of the arts and entertainment. Then, defying all the previously known laws of celebrity physics, they became evergreens in popular culture. Though they disbanded in 1970, their popularity remains undimmed, and their influence continues to be profoundly felt. Fifty years on, their music and spirit appear to be timeless.

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The Birth of Beatlemania: Observing a Fifty-Year (1963-2013) Milestone

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This essay was originally published in the Britannica Book of the Year for 2013. It was subsequently updated. The year 2013 marked the 50th anniversary of the year that the Beatles emerged from being the object of affection of a few hundred teenagers in a provincial English town to becoming a phenomenon that engulfed Britain and Europe.

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60 Years Ago: The Beginning of Beatlemania in America - Houston Symphony

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“Ladies and gentlemen, here are four of the nicest young kids we’ve ever had on our stage. The Beatles!”—Ed Sullivan, February 1964 The Fab Four from Liverpool then step into a frame on one of the biggest stages in 1964. Playfully strumming to the tune of “She Loves You,” audiences everywhere tune into see the … Continued

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the Beatles, British musical quartet and a global cynosure for the hopes and dreams of a generation that came of age in the 1960s. The principal members were John Lennon (b. October 9, 1940, Liverpool, Merseyside, England-d. December 8, 1980, New York, New York, U.S.), Paul McCartney (in full Sir James Paul McCartney; b. June 18, 1942, Liverpool), George Harrison (b. February 25, 1943, Liverpool-d. November 29, 2001, Los Angeles, California, U.S.), and Ringo Starr (byname of Richard Starkey; b. July 7, 1940, Liverpool). Other early members included Stuart Sutcliffe (b. June 23, 1940, Edinburgh, Scotland-d. April 10, 1962, Hamburg, West Germany) and Pete Best (b. November 24, 1941, Madras [now Chennai], India).

Formed around the nucleus of Lennon and McCartney, who first performed together in Liverpool in 1957, the group grew out of a shared enthusiasm for American rock and roll. Like most early rock-and-roll figures, Lennon, a guitarist and singer, and McCartney, a bassist and singer, were largely self-taught as musicians. Precocious composers, they gathered around themselves a changing cast of accompanists, adding by the end of 1957 Harrison, a lead guitarist, and then, in 1960 for several formative months, Sutcliffe, a promising young painter who brought into the band a brooding sense of bohemian style. After dabbling in skiffle, a jaunty sort of folk music popular in Britain in the late 1950s, and assuming several different names (the Quarrymen, the Silver Beetles, and, finally, the Beatles), the band added a drummer, Best, and joined a small but booming "beat music" scene, first in Liverpool and then, during several long visits between 1960 and 1962, in Hamburg-another seaport full of sailors thirsty for American rock and roll as a backdrop for their whiskey and womanizing.

In autumn 1961 Brian Epstein, a local Liverpool record store manager, saw the band and fell in love. Unshakably convinced of their commercial potential, Epstein became their manager and proceeded to bombard the major British music companies with letters and tape recordings of the band, finally winning a contract with Parlophone, a subsidiary of the giant EMI group of music labels. The man in charge of their career at Parlophone was George Martin, a classically trained musician who from the start put his stamp on the Beatles, first by suggesting the band hire a more polished drummer (they chose Starr) and then by rearranging their second recorded song (and first big British hit), " Please Please Me," changing it from a slow dirge into an up-tempo romp.

Throughout the winter and into the spring of 1963, the Beatles continued their rise to fame in England by producing spirited recordings of original tunes and also by playing classic American rock and roll on a variety of British Broadcasting Corporation radio programs. In these months, fascination with the Beatles-at first confined to young British fans of popular music-breached the normal barriers of taste, class, and age, transforming their recordings and live performances into matters of widespread public comment. In the fall of that year, when they belatedly made a couple of appearances on British television, the evidence of popular frenzy prompted British newspapermen to coin a new word for the phenomenon: Beatlemania. In early 1964, after equally tumultuous appearances on American television, the same phenomenon erupted in the United States and provoked a so-called British Invasion of Beatles imitators from the United Kingdom.

Beatlemania was something new. Musicians performing in the 19th century certainly excited a frenzy-one thinks of Franz Liszt-but that was before the modern mass media created the possibility of collective frenzy. Later pop music idols, such as Michael Jackson in the mid-1980s and Garth Brooks in the 1990s, sold similarly large numbers of records without provoking anything approaching the hysteria caused by the Beatles. By the summer of 1964, when the Beatles appeared in A Hard Day's Night, a movie that dramatized the phenomenon of Beatlemania, the band's effect was evident around the world as countless young people emulated the band members' characteristic long hair, flip humour, and whimsical displays of devil-may-care abandon. Indeed, their transformative social and cultural influence was even recognized among the upper echelons of political power. In 1965 each of the four Beatles was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE), having been recommended for the honour by British Prime Minister Harold Wilson (and despite a brief storm of protest by some previous recipients, mainly military veterans, against what they perceived as a lowering of the dignity of the royal order).

The popular hubbub proved to be a spur, convincing Lennon and McCartney of their songwriting abilities and sparking an outpouring of creative experimentation all but unprecedented in the history of rock music, which until then had been widely regarded, with some justification, as essentially a genre for juveniles. Between 1965 and 1967 the music of the Beatles rapidly changed and evolved, becoming ever more subtle, sophisticated, and varied. Their repertoire in these years ranged from the chamber pop ballad " Yesterday" and the enigmatic folk tune " Norwegian Wood" (both in 1965) to the hallucinatory hard rock song " Tomorrow Never Knows" (1966), with a lyric inspired by Timothy Leary's handbook The Psychedelic Experience (1964). It also included the carnivalesque soundscape of " Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! " (1967), which featured stream-of-consciousness lyrics by Lennon and a typically imaginative arrangement (by George Martin) built around randomly spliced-together snippets of recorded steam organs-a tour de force of technological legerdemain quite typical of the band's studio work in this era.

In 1966 the Beatles retired from public performing to concentrate on exploiting the full resources of the recording studio. A year later, in June 1967, this period of widely watched creative renewal was climaxed by the release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, an album avidly greeted by young people around the world as indisputable evidence not only of the band's genius but also of the era's utopian promise. More than a band of musicians, the Beatles had come to personify, certainly in the minds of millions of young listeners, the joys of a new counterculture of hedonism and uninhibited experimentation-with music and with new ways of life. (Various members of the band in these years flirted with mind-expanding drugs such as LSD and also with exotic spiritual exercises such as transcendental meditation, a technique taught to them by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a barnstorming guru from India.)

In those years the Beatles effectively reinvented the meaning of rock and roll as a cultural form. The American artists they admired and chose to emulate- Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Elvis Presley, the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, the pioneering rock composers Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, the influential soul songwriter Smokey Robinson, and, after 1964, folksinger and topical songwriter Bob Dylan -became widely regarded as canonic sources of inspiration, offering "classical" models for aspiring younger rock musicians. At the same time, the original songs the Beatles wrote and recorded dramatically expanded the musical range and expressive scope of the genre they had inherited. Their close vocal harmonies, subtle arrangements, and clever production touches, combined with an elemental rhythm section anchored by Starr's no-nonsense drumming, created new standards of excellence and beauty in a form of music previously known for amateurism.

After 1968 and the eruption of student protest movements in countries as different as Mexico and France, the Beatles insensibly surrendered their role as de facto leaders of an inchoate global youth culture. They nevertheless continued for several more years to record and release new music and maintained a level of popularity rarely rivaled before or since. In 1968 they launched their own record label, Apple; hoping to nurture experimental pop art, they instead produced chaos and commercial failure, apart from the work of the Beatles themselves. The band continued to enjoy widespread popularity. The following year Abbey Road went on to become one of the band's best-loved and biggest-selling albums.

Meanwhile, personal disagreements magnified by the stress of symbolizing the dreams of a generation had begun to tear the band apart. Once the collaborative heart and soul of the band, Lennon and McCartney fell into bickering and mutual accusations of ill will. By now millions of dollars were at stake, and the utopian aura of the performers was in jeopardy, given the discrepancy between the band's symbolic stature as idols of a carefree youth culture and their newfound real status as pampered plutocrats.

In the spring of 1970 the Beatles formally disbanded. In the years that followed, all four members went on to produce solo albums of variable quality and popularity. Lennon released a corrosive set of songs with his new wife, Yoko Ono, and McCartney went on to form a band, Wings, that turned out a fair number of commercially successful recordings in the 1970s. Starr and Harrison, too, initially had some success as solo artists. But, as time went by, the Beatles became as much of a historical curio as Al Jolson or Bing Crosby or Frank Sinatra or Elvis Presley before them.

In 1980 Lennon was murdered by a demented fan outside the Dakota, an apartment building in New York City known for its celebrity tenants. The event provoked a global outpouring of grief. Lennon is memorialized in Strawberry Fields, a section of Central Park across from the Dakota that Yoko Ono landscaped in her husband's honour.

In the years that followed, the surviving former Beatles continued to record and perform as solo artists. McCartney in particular remained musically active, both in the pop field, producing new albums every few years, and in the field of classical music-in 1991 he completed Liverpool Oratorio; in 1997 he supervised the recording of another symphonic work of large ambition, Standing Stone; and in 1999 he released a new classical album, Working Classical. McCartney was knighted by the queen of England in 1997. Starr was also very visible in the 1990s, touring annually with his All-Star Band, a rotating group of rock veterans playing their hits on the summertime concert circuit. Beginning in 1988, Harrison recorded with Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, and Roy Orbison in a loose amalgam known as the Traveling Wilburys, but, for most of the 1980s and '90s, he had a low profile as a musician while acting as the producer of several successful films. After surviving a knife attack at his home in 1999, Harrison succumbed to a protracted battle with cancer in 2001.

Early in the 1990s McCartney, Harrison, and Starr had joined to add harmonies to two previously unreleased vocal recordings by Lennon. These new songs by "the Beatles" served as a pretext for yet another publicity blitz, aimed at creating a market for a lavishly produced quasi-historical series of archival recordings assembled under the supervision of the band and released in 1995 and 1996 as The Beatles Anthology, a collection of six compact discs that supplemented a 10-hour-long authorized video documentary of the same name. A compilation of the band's number one singles, 1, appeared in 2000 and enjoyed worldwide success, topping the charts in such countries as England and the United States. The afterglow of Beatlemania may have disappeared, but the iconography of an era of youthful tumult had been reverently preserved for posterity.

The Beatles were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, and Lennon (1994), McCartney (1999), Harrison (2004), and Starr (2015) were also inducted as individuals. In September 2009, specially packaged digitally remastered versions of the Beatles' entire catalog and a Beatles version of the popular electronic music game Rock Band were released simultaneously. After it was reported in February 2010 that the financially troubled EMI was soliciting buyers for its Abbey Road Studios, where the Beatles made the great majority of their recordings, the British Department for Culture, Media, and Sport declared the recording complex a historic landmark. EMI subsequently announced that it would retain ownership of the iconic studio while seeking outside investment to improve its facilities.

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Beatles | Members, Songs, Albums, & Facts

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Beatles, British musical quartet of enduring popularity.

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It's undeniable that The Beatles changed popular culture forever. Formed in Liverpool in 1960, they went on to become an international pop sensation, creating legions of teenage fans. Their hype became so big that fan culture became known as Beatlemania and gave rise to a new kind of fandom that still permeates today.

Text by Christine Feldman-Barrett, Cover Photo by Mark Charnock.

Beatlemania was the name given to describe the ecstatic, female-led fan culture surrounding the Beatles between 1963 and 1966. The term first circulated throughout British media in late 1963 and was used in order to capture the teenage excitement that followed the Liverpool band as they toured the UK. This "mania," whether witnessed in Newcastle or Portsmouth, was attributed to screaming girls who assembled anywhere the Beatles performed or appeared. Young women reacted passionately to the Beatles' energetic "Merseybeat" style of rock 'n' roll and found the band's softer, masculine style irresistible. The early Beatle image of "Mop top" hairstyles, matching bespoke suits, and chunky, Cuban heel boots further exemplified the band's perceived sensibilities. The global fervour of Beatlemania was unprecedented and set the tone for all subsequent music-based fan cultures.

Beatlemania exploded internationally as a result of the group's televised performances on the American Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964, the first of which on February 9th garnered a record-breaking 73.9 million viewers. Sold-out tours throughout North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region soon followed. While the Beatles did not disband until 1970, the Beatlemania era of their career ended with a final stadium concert at San Francisco's Candlestick Park on August 29, 1966.

Beatlemania's origins stem from the fanbase that developed around the Beatles in their hometown of Liverpool. The Beatles were popular, regular performers at the city's Cavern Club and played there 292 times between 1961 and 1963. The Beatles' frenetic sets - combining rock 'n' roll, rhythm and blues, pop standards and Lennon and McCartney originals - captivated their audiences. Many girls found the band members attractive and often chose a "favourite Beatle." Whether it was rhythm guitarist John Lennon, bassist Paul McCartney, lead guitarist George Harrison, Pete Best (the band's original drummer), or Ringo Starr (who replaced Best in 1962), female fans often vyed to secure a space near the stage in the hopes of requesting songs or making eye contact. The band's talent and charisma eventually caught the eye of local businessman Brian Epstein, who became the Beatles' manager in January 1962. It was through Epstein that both a record contract with EMI was secured and, later, the pivotal Ed Sullivan Show appearance was scheduled.

The Beatles' music was a departure from that of previous pop acts as all the group's singles were written by band members. The songwriting team of John Lennon and Paul Mccartney produced a string of number one hits. Though their first British number one single, in late February 1963, was "Please Please Me," it was "She Loves You" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand" that epitomised Beatlemania in Britain, America and beyond. Both songs' lyrics emphasised dating and courtship (which appealed to girls), foregrounded vocal harmonies, and contained memorable, visceral hooks - like the unified "yeah-yeah-yeahs" and "oohs" of "She Loves You" and the hand claps and repetitive "I can't hide" of "I Want to Hold Your Hand." While "She Loves You" is the song most associated with British Beatlemania, "I Want to Hold Your Hand" both marked the first time a British rock group topped the US Billboard charts and launched the Beatles' career stateside.

In 1964, as reporters throughout the Western world were busy calling upon "experts" to help explain this new youth phenomenon, calculating profiteers produced Beatles products en masse. Fans could soon buy specially published fan magazines, posters, dolls, badges, dresses, boots, wallpaper, lunch boxes, wigs, games, gum and nearly any trinket imaginable. Girls could outfit themselves and their bedrooms entirely with Beatles-branded merchandise. For some fans, the ultimate goal was to meet the band. Beatlemaniacs created ploys to sneak into the hotels where the band stayed while touring or stormed security barricades at concerts. Other fans channeled their love of the band into hobbies. Alongside forming fan clubs, some American teenagers created the "Beatle Bobbies," a group that monitored frantic fan behaviour at concerts and outside hotels. Others formed all-girl rock bands that aspired to emulate the Beatles' jubilant sound and spirit. Bands such as the Pleasure Seekers (USA), the Nursery Rhymes (Sweden), and Dara Puspita (Indonesia) are notable examples.

The Beatlemania era of the band's career set a new precedent for fan culture and is one of the few examples of a youth scene or subculture that was instigated and dominated by girls. The phenomenon of Beatlemania set the stage for the marketing of "boy bands" from the Monkees to One Direction. More importantly, the focused, emphatic fan practices set into motion around the Beatles became the blueprint for how bands, performers and their fans would interact in the decades that followed. The open displays of passionate devotion - whether screaming at concerts or waiting for hours to catch a glimpse of the stars in question - became commonplace whether for the Marc Bolan in the 1970s, Duran Duran in the 1980s, the Backstreet Boys in the 1990s, or Justin Bieber in the 2000s. While reading teen magazines and plastering posters to one's bedroom walls remain popular practices among teenage girls, the Internet now offers online fans sites, e-zines, social media groups, and countless other virtual spaces to congregate and express their fandom.

Christine Feldman-Barrett is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Griffith University in Australia. She examines histories of twentieth-century youth cultures within the English-speaking world and in Germany, with a particular focus on uncovering 'lost histories' of young women's experiences. She is the author of 'We are the Mods': A Transnational History of a Youth Subculture (Peter Lang, 2009) and is currently working on her next book, A Women's History of the Beatles, which is under contract with Bloomsbury.

This essay was curated by The Subcultures Network, which was formed in 2011 to facilitate research on youth cultures and social change, and commissioned as part of the National Lottery Heritage Funded project to build the online Museum of Youth Culture. Being developed by YOUTH CLUB, the Museum of Youth Culture is a new destination dedicated to celebrating 100 years of youth culture history through photographs, ephemera and stories.

The National Lottery Heritage Fund invests money to help people across the UK explore, enjoy and protect the heritage they care about - from the archaeology under our feet to the historic parks and buildings we love, from precious memories and collections to rare wildlife.

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The Rise of Beatlemania - Museum of Youth Culture

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It's undeniable that The Beatles changed popular culture forever. Formed in Liverpool in 1960, they went on to become an international pop sensation, creating

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At the start of 1964, the Beatles were at the top of the charts in the UK, but had just started to attract audiences overseas with songs from their first two albums Please Please Me and With the Beatles. Radio airplay and a broad marketing campaign in the U.S. quickly drove huge record sales and enormous enthusiasm among new fans -- the band and their sound were something new and exciting, and they were coming to America. John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney and George Harrison set off on a series of tours in 1964, starting in Europe, later visiting the United States, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand. Beatles fans were so excited and determined to see the band that police sometimes resorted to using fire hoses to hold them back. Their first televised concert in the U.S. was on the Ed Sullivan Show, on February 9, 1964. 73 million viewers watched that performance -- 34 percent of the American population. Below are images of the Beatles' big year, in roughly chronological order, as the world discovered Beatlemania. This is the third of five entries focusing on events of the year 1964 this week (and next Monday). Later entries will feature images from Alaska's Good Friday earthquake and the New York World's Fair.

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At the start of 1964, the Beatles were at the top of the charts in the UK, but had just started to attract audiences overseas with songs from their first two albums Please Please Me and With the Beatles. Radio airplay and a broad marketing campaign in the U.S.

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The Beatles were an English rock band, started in Liverpool, England in 1960. The members of the band were John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. Most people say they are the most successful and influential band in the history of popular music. The group were a main part of the creation of 1960s counterculture. They began as a skiffle and beat band and were influenced by 1950s American rock and roll. They later used parts of classical music and Indian music.

Their main songwriters were Lennon and McCartney. Before The Beatles became popular, they played in clubs in Liverpool and Hamburg over three years between 1960 and 1963, with Stuart Sutcliffe playing bass. They went through many drummers, including Pete Best, before finally asking Ringo Starr to join in 1962. Sutcliffe also quit, meaning Paul McCartney started playing the bass instead. Brian Epstein was their manager and George Martin produced most of their music. Their first single was "Love Me Do", in late 1962. It was a hit and they became popular in the United Kingdom. As they became more popular, the press called the popularity "Beatlemania".

By 1964, the Beatles were worldwide stars and led the " British Invasion" of the United States. They brought out some of the best-selling albums of the 1960s, with twelve studio albums. They broke-up in 1970. John Lennon was later murdered in New York City in 1980 and George Harrison died of lung cancer in 2001. McCartney and Starr still make music.

History of the Beatles

Starting in 1956, John Lennon and several of his friends played in a British band called the Quarrymen. Over the next few years, the members of the band changed, and by 1960, the band was called the Beatles. They did not have their first hit until 1962. In February 1963 their song, "Please Please Me", reached the number 1 position on the British charts. This was the first of a record 15 British number 1 singles. They first came to the United States in 1964. They were met at the airport by thousands of screaming American teenagers. The Beatles were so popular that they were attacked by screaming fans everywhere they went around the world. The effect they had on their fans was known as 'Beatlemania'. The Beatles made their first live American television appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on 9 February 1964. About 74 million viewers - about half of the American population - watched the group perform on the show. Beatles songs soon filled the top 5 places on the American top 40 chart - a record that has never been matched.

After the Beatles became so popular in the United States, other British bands, such as The Rolling Stones, The Animals, The Kinks and Gerry and the Pacemakers had songs become hits there as well. So many British bands became popular after the Beatles' success that this time became known in America as the " British Invasion".

Towards the mid 1960s, The Beatles became bolder with their style of music. This largely started in 1965, with the release of the album "Rubber Soul", and hit a peak in 1967 with the release of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", which was named as the greatest album of all time by Rolling Stone Magazine. They were also named the most influential artists of all time by Rolling Stone magazine, because their music, clothing style, and attitudes shaped much of what was popular among young people in the 1960s.

The Beatles became so popular that no regular concert venue was big enough for their concerts. This led to them playing the first ever stadium rock concert at Shea Stadium in America, to around 50,000 people. The Beatles stopped touring and playing live music in 1966 because they were sick of audiences screaming so loudly that their music could not be heard. They were also tired of the pressures of touring. Among other things, they were so popular that thousands of people would gather outside the hotels they stayed in day and night meaning that they could never leave their rooms unless they were playing a concert.

The Beatles broke up in 1970 because of the pressures of fame and each member becoming more independent both in their personal lives and musically. In 1973 the two-disc sets "1962-1966" (the "Red Album") and "1967-1970" "(the "Blue Album") were released. These were both re-released on CD in 1993.

After breaking up

The band was still very popular all over the world after they broke up. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, they are the highest-selling recording artists ever. They have sold more than one billion records, including albums and singles. Their music is still important and still influences many musicians. Musicians today perform cover versions of Beatles songs, and people everywhere still listen to their music. Their song 'Yesterday' has been recorded by more artists than any other song. It is also the song that has been played the most on radio ever.

The Beatles made thirteen albums and twenty-six singles together. They also started their own record label, Apple Records. They made two movies, A Hard Day's Night and Help!, where they appeared as actors. Later they made Magical Mystery Tour, a television special. Yellow Submarine was a cartoon movie based on their music. showed them working on a new album.

After the Beatles broke up in 1969, all four members started their own solo careers.

John Lennon became a famous peace activist in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He wrote successful songs including "Give Peace a Chance", " Imagine", and "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)". John Lennon was murdered on December 8, 1980 outside his home in New York. Part of Central Park in New York and an airport in Liverpool are named in his honor.

The other three Beatles got together in the 1990s to make two new records. They used demo recordings of two John Lennon songs and added their own new parts. Producer Jeff Lynne helped them so all four members could appear on the songs. The songs were "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love". Both were top 5 hits in the UK in 1995 and 1996.

Paul McCartney started the band "Wings" with his wife Linda. In 1977 his song, "Mull of Kintyre", became the biggest selling single in British history. It sold even more copies than the Beatles' singles. Paul McCartney was knighted in 1997.

George Harrison and Ringo Starr had early success as solo artists but were less successful later on. George formed the group the Traveling Wilburys in the 80s with other rock legends Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, and Jeff Lynne. George Harrison died of cancer on November 29, 2001. Ringo still tours the world with his "All Starr Band" and was knighted in 2018.

Now and Then

In June 2023, McCartney announced plans to release "the final Beatles record", using Jackson's de-mixing technology to extract Lennon's voice from an old demo of a song that he had written as a solo artist. In October 2023, the song was revealed to be " Now and Then", with a physical and digital release date of 2 November 2023. The official music video for "Now and Then" was released the following day, garnering upwards of 8 million views in its first 12 hours, as the song arrived on Spotify's rankings as one of the most-streamed current songs. "Now and Then" debuted simultaneously across music, alternative, news/talk and sports stations. The song's premiere achieved the record for the most radio stations to simulcast a music track.

Interesting facts about The Beatles

Initially called the Quarrymen, they changed the groups name to The Beatles as a tribute to Buddy Holly and the Crickets. They wanted a "bug related name" too. It was The Silver Bealtes first, then shortened to just "The Beatles".

Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney are the members of the band still living.

The Beatles are the best-selling music act of all time, with estimated sales of 600 million units worldwide.

Ringo Starr's real name is Richard Starkey.

Ringo wrote the song Octopus's Garden which is very popular with children.

Ringo narrated some of the Thomas the Tank Engine series.

Paul McCartney and John Lennon wrote the children's song Yellow Submarine

The Beatles' last live performance was in 1966 at Candlestick Park, San Francisco.

Compilations

They also sold many singles (45s).

A Hard Day's Night (1964), directed by Richard Lester, co-starred Wilfrid Brambell, Norman Rossington, John Junkin, Lionel Blair, Victor Spinetti, and Derek Nimmo

Help! (1965), directed by Lester, co-starred Leo McKern, Eleanor Bron, Victor Spinetti and Roy Kinnear

Magical Mystery Tour (1967), hour-long TV special, with Ivor Cutler and Jessie Robins

(1970), documentary film about the making of the album with the same name; producer George Martin and road manager Mal Evans appear briefly on camera, as do Yoko Ono and Heather McCartney

Children of the Beatles

Paul McCartney's daughter Stella McCartney has had a successful career as a clothing designer.

John Lennon's sons Sean Lennon and Julian Lennon have had successful musical careers. Sean has been involved in a number of bands: Cibo Matto, and Dopo Yume.

Related pages
Band (rock and pop)
Images for kids

The Beatles arrive at John F. Kennedy International Airport, 7 February 1964

McCartney, Harrison and Lennon perform on Dutch television in 1964

Apple Corps building at 3 Savile Row, site of the Let It Be rooftop concert

American soul musician Billy Preston (pictured in 1971) was, for a short time, considered a fifth Beatle during the recording of Get Back.

Starr and McCartney introduced the video game The Beatles: Rock Band at the 2009 E3 convention.

A Höfner "violin" bass guitar and Gretsch Country Gentleman guitar, models played by McCartney and Harrison, respectively; the Vox AC30 amplifier behind them is the model the Beatles used during performances in the early 1960s

In Spanish: The Beatles para niños