BEATLES.

The explosion of Beatlemania, in Britain in 1963 and the rest of the world the next year, remains unparalleled. No popular musicians before or since have approached the Beatles' achievement of both unprecedented commercial dominance and near-universal acclaim for their artistry. The group sustained its status as the bellwether of its era until an acrimonious breakup in 1970.

The ascendancy of the Beatles is attributable in large part to the band containing not one but two of the finest singers and songwriters in the history of popular music, John Lennon (1940–1980) and bassist Paul McCartney (b. 1942), who met in 1957 in their native Liverpool, which visiting sailors had exposed to a wide range of music. Guitarist George Harrison (1943–2001) would emerge as a major songwriter as well. But only after a grueling period of constant live performance between 1960 and 1962 in Liverpool and an even more wide-open port city on the continent, Hamburg, did the ensemble's talents jell. At that point, Ringo Starr (née Richard Starkey; b. 1940) replaced drummer Pete Best (b. 1941) for reasons never fully clarified, just before the sessions leading to the group's first British releases.

At a time when rock and roll had very nearly been killed off by manufactured teen idols, the example of this fulsome collective writing its own songs and doing all the singing and playing on them established the very idea of the rock group. The "British invasion" spearheaded by the Beatles in the United States amounted to the resuscitation of rock and roll from its moribund condition in the early 1960s, when the original rock and rollers were dead (Buddy Holly), disgraced (Jerry Lee Lewis), imprisoned (Chuck Berry), retired (Little Richard), or sold-out (Elvis Presley). Along with other self-contained "British beat" groups such as the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, and the Who, the Beatles created a uniquely ebullient rock and roll that the United States supposedly embraced as a tonic after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, though the music was an international success, too.

A further attribute of the Beatles that made them unique and even startling was their musical synthesis, compelled by the arduous Liverpool and Hamburg gigs, of virtually every element in early rock and roll. To the heavy beat of rock and roll and up-tempo rhythm and blues (Little Richard, Larry Williams), the Beatles added early soul (Arthur Alexander), including Motown (the Miracles), and the vocal harmonies of doo-wop and surf music, usually worked out with producer George Martin, whose musical expertise remained crucial throughout their existence. The result was leavened with the sprightliness of girl groups (the Shirelles) and friendly white rockers such as Holly, as well as the jangle of country and western and rockabilly (Carl Perkins). Lennon and McCartney's songwriting was inspired by Brill Building teams such as Gerry Goffin and Carole King, who supplied the cutting-edge producer Phil Spector.

After rejuvenating rock and roll through four albums in this vein by the end of 1964, and achieving a surprising critical success with the film AHard Day's Night, the Beatles fully established their regnancy by stunningly reinventing themselves with Rubber Soul (1965) and Revolver (1966), more subtle, complex, experimental albums that essentially reflected their discovery of the drug LSD. (Lennon and McCartney had also diverged as songwriters, taking on the "harder" and "softer" qualities, respectively, attributed to them ever since.) The electronic cacophony of "Tomorrow Never Knows" drew inspiration from psychedelia, a music and culture originating in San Francisco that was likewise inspired by hallucinogenic drugs and established the classic 1960s package of anti-militarism, free love, and Eastern mysticism. In late 1966 the group abandoned touring and devoted itself entirely to studio work, having wearied of the physical danger posed by hysterical fans whose screaming, moreover, prevented the group from hearing itself onstage.

The first result in 1967, the single "Strawberry Fields Forever," was greeted as a psychedelic masterpiece, and the intense international anticipation of the subsequent album, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, made the week it was released, the rock critic Langdon Winner wrote, "the closest Western Civilization has come to unity since the Congress of Vienna in 1815." But the Beatles had begun to follow as much as lead; hence they took an already stereotypical turn to the East by consorting with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in 1967 and 1968. Sgt Pepper, in retrospect, was simply the most elaborately produced manifestation of psychedelia at the time, and its chief impact was to give birth to the pretensions of "art rock" over the next decade. When The Beatles appeared in 1968, a collection of clearly individually authored, in some cases individually performed, songs, it was apparent that the tension between Lennon and McCartney, along with Harrison's growth, had caused the band to fragment. They pulled together one last time in 1969 to make one of their finest albums, Abbey Road, a testimonial to a collective talent that may never be equaled.

See alsoPopular Culture; Rolling Stones.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cohn, Nik. Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: The Golden Age of Rock. New York, 2001.

Friedman, Robert, and Robert Sullivan, eds. The Beatles: From Yesterday to Today. New York, 2001.

Frith, Simon, and Howard Horne. Art into Pop. New York, 1987.

Lewisohn, Mark. The Complete Beatles Chronicle. London, 2000.

Marcus, Greil. "The Beatles." In The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll, edited by Anthony DeCurtis et al., 209–222. New York, 1992.

Neil Nehring