THE BEATLES – PHENOMENAL FOUR
Surely there is not a single person in the civilized world who has ever heard of The Beatles.
The phenomenon of this four is still trying to unravel music historians, critics and music lovers.
Can anyone explain such a massive popularity and truly popular love for British musicians who in the 1960s turned the world upside down.
At the origins of The Beatles
It is impossible to even imagine the culture of the past century without the legendary four The Beatles. For at least 20 years they have been a role model not just for musical groups and individual performers, but for entire generations of young people. They were the ones who managed to instill love and peace into the Europeans tormented by the war of the soul of Europeans. It is difficult to overestimate the significance of The Beatles in world culture. Could even one of the members of the group have guessed which peak they would fly to when they met each other and decided to create together.
And it all started back in 1957. Then the very young Paul McCartney met a little older John Lennon. He, at 17, was the leader of the Quarrymen band and a rock and roll fan. The group adhered to the skiffle trend in their work – it was a British rock and roll model. The Beatles Paul made an impression on a new acquaintance – he knew the chords and words of all the rock and roll hits, knew how to play the trumpet and was trained to play the piano. A few months later, they began a joint performance, joined by one of Paul McCartney’s friends, George Harrison. So the permanent foundation of the future band The Beatles appeared, and later they were joined by bassist Stuart Sutcliff – John’s classmate at the College of Art.
In search of a name
After several appearances at city events, young people decided that they had already become a close-knit team of like-minded people and began to develop musical skills. Of course, there were no real concerts, I only had to dream about recording a record, but this did not bother the ambitious comrades.
The musicians began to actively establish contacts to join the club life of Liverpool and begin concert performances. They did not miss a single more or less significant creative competition, but even this did not bring the expected results. And then the guys thought about changing the name of the group. First Quarrymen turned into Johnny and the Moondogs, then into Silver Beetles, and eventually became simply The Beatles. The origin of this name is still debated. The Beatles group The Beatles themselves said that it was a joint idea of John and Stuart. They wanted to come up with a word that would have a double meaning. They took beetles as the basis, and then replaced one letter in it and got beatles. It sounded the same, but beat root meant beat music.
It is impossible to unequivocally state that the change of name influenced the activity of the group, but soon after this the musicians began to receive offers of performances. In early 1960, the group even went on a short tour of Scotland. They just needed to break out of a number of Liverpool’s many unknown bands who performed similar music.
With a new image in a new life
In the summer of 1960, a new stage begins in the work of The Beatles – the group was invited to perform in Hamburg, which meant that there was a great chance to show themselves to Europe. Just on the eve of the German tour, a long search for a drummer was successful and Pete Best was accepted into the group. A trip to Germany and the first performances abroad became a real test of strength for the team. The Beatles spent seven months in Hamburg, where they were first met by visitors to the Indra Club, and then by regulars Kaiserkeller.
The Beatles; Astrid Kircherr and The Beatles
The busy schedule did not give the musicians a day to relax, the concerts in the clubs continued non-stop, some groups replaced the others, and the Liverpool people had to constantly improve so as not to disgrace themselves before the German public. On stage, they performed jazz compositions, blues, pop and even folk songs in rock and roll processing. It was the German tour that helped hone the skill of the performers, which was immediately noticed by music lovers in their hometown.
Another event in the history of The Beatles happened in the glorious port city. There, the musicians met a couple of students at a local art college – Klaus Forman and Astrid Kircherr. The girl soon began a romantic relationship with Stuart Sutcliffe, she also made the group’s first professional photo shoot in Hamburg Park, and during their next tour in 1961, invited the musicians to change their image. The transformation consisted of creating new hairstyles with hair pulled down over the forehead and ears and replacing concert costumes with jackets without lapels and collars, which the famous Pierre Cardin promoted. Thus, Astrid actually became their first real image maker.
