TEN Gossip

BeatleMania

Posted by WillowRaine on September 9, 2009
| 107641 Commenthttp://tengossip.com/2009/09/09/beatlemania/BeatleMania+2009-09-10+02%3A39%3A23WillowRaine

Picture it: Liverpool,England 1957, you’re 17 years old, you love music, and you see the world as your stage. What do you do? Well, better yet, what do you do, if you are John Lennon? You start a band.
His first band was “The Black Jacks”, made up entirely of classmates at Quarry Bank Grammar School in Liverpool. Almost immediately, they decided that their name wouldn’t work, so they switched it to “The Quarry Men”. In the summer of that year, they were preparing for a set in a church hall when another member of the band introduced Lennon to Paul McCartney, a 15-year-old self-taught left-handed guitar player. He auditioned for the band when they finished their set, and they instantly invited him to join the band, which he did in October, 1957.
They played “Skiffle”, a mixture of folk, jazz, and blues, which happened to be very popular in England, but it didn’t take Lennon long to drift away from that and towards Rock N Roll.
When they made that change, it prompted the band’s banjo player to leave, so McCartney introduced Lennon to his friend and former classmate, George Harrison.
By 1959 however, “The Quarry Men” were no more, but Lennon and McCartney persevered, still writing songs, not giving up hope.

By 1960 Lennon, McCartney and Harrison were joined by drummer Pete Best (Whom they had met during one of their many performances in a coffee shop, and was eventually replaced by Ringo Starr), and bassist Stu Sutcliffe, (a friend of Lennon’s from the Liverpool Art School).
They went through many band names, before finally settling on The Beatles, and I doubt they could have grasped the kind of success they were destined for, no matter how much potential they knew they had.

February of 1964, they were booked for a performance that would change their career and alter their lives, forever.
They performed on the Ed Sullivan Show, before a television audience of 73 MILLION, that coupled with the fact that they already had two number one albums in the UK under their belts, finally convinced Capitol Records to sign them to a US Record Deal.

All in all Beatlemania was coined because they released seven albums in the US and UK in 1964, all but three of them charting at #1. Two others peaked at #2, and the third, the soundtrack from a UK TV documentary (The Beatles Story) reached #7.
AND they were responsible for the concept of the stadium concert. More than 55-thousand screaming fans, the most ever to have attended a single concert in that time, packed New York’s Shea Stadium in August of 1965. Two months later, they became Members of the Order of the British Empire,which is one of the highest honors bestowed in the UK, usually only given to military and government officials.

In the summer of 1966, the Beatles would meet the beginning of their end. Their decision to turn down a Presidential breakfast, wasn’t a popular one, and Lennon’s speech during an interview, where he said that “Christianity is dying” and that the Beatles “are more popular than Jesus now.” Caused once fans to start record burning protests.

Sadly, in August of 1966, they would make what would wind up being their last public performance, at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, and it barely lasted half an hour.
While they had lost their luster, they agreed to continue focusing on songwriting and recording,but their last recording session (for Abbey Road) was in August.
In September 1969, John Lennon told the band he was leaving, and respecting their wishes not to take it public just yet, their break up announcement was made in April 1970, and documents filed on December 31, 1970 officially ended the legal entity known as The Beatles.

Today on 09-09-09, Apple Corps Ltd. and EMI Music are delighted to announce the release of the entire original Beatles catalogue, which has been digitally re-mastered for the first time, for worldwide CD, as well as the release of the widely anticipated “The Beatles: Rock Band” video game.

After all of these years, Beatlemania is still alive and well, still inspiring artists to reach for the stars.

Want proof? Just take a look at Spencer Bell, who puts me in the mind of Lennon, in SO MANY WAYS, or any of the bands that he had a hand in helping to get started, 100 Monkeys, The Stevedores, Tin Tin Can, Drew and the Medicinal Pen, not counting all of the lives that he himself touched in his short stay on this planet.
(Just as Lennon did).

If the Beatles weren’t your cup of tea, you still have to respect the effect they had on the music industry, on society as a whole.

The Beatles are timeless.

[[Image provided by google images and not the property of TEN gossip]]