The Beatles

The Beatles

While many musical artists quickly come and go from pop music scene, not many artists can maintain public appeal for an entire decade. The Beatles, however, are an entirely different story. Greatly impacted by their own lives and the influenced by the circumstances of their generation, the Beatles became possibly the most popular pop band of all time. The group employed several constituent parts of drama with in their musical career: spectacle and character delineation. Spectacle seems to be an aspect of drama the group was naturally blessed with, but it was in their later works that they were able to use character delineation in their work.

In 1957, at a church picnic, John Lennon, 17, was introduced to Paul McCartney, 15. McCartney began showing Lennon several guitar cords and from that moment the two began on a journey to musical fame and success. The name of their original pair was The Quarry Men, after the high school Lennon attended, Quarry Bank High. George Harrison would soon join the two in their musical endeavors along with Pete Best on drums, would become The Beatles, a name created as a pun in honor of Buddy Holly's band, The Crickets. In 1960, the group played at the Liverpool College of Art, where Lennon was completing his third year, every Friday afternoon. After being hired by Larry Parnes and Billy Fury, the group went on their first tour with Johnnie Gentle, followed by a four month trip to Hamburg, Germany where the group spent their time honing their skills and perfecting their sound, then made their first recording with Tony Sheridan, an English Singer.

From the very beginning of this groups' musical career, they had certain qualities that set them apart from the other Elvis impersonators, so popular in England at the time. The furious energy with which they resurrected original style rock and roll, the intelligence with which Lennon and McCartney jointly pursued the craft of popular songwriting, and the way the group defied typical showbiz conventions, demanding the right to create their own kind of art in their own way (Miller, 192). Brian Epstein, a local owner of a family record store wandered next door one day, to the Cavern, a local "beat" club where the Beatles played most of their pre-1963 British gigs, and was impressed by these original qualities, shortly after he became the Beatle's manager. His first line of duty as their manager was to secure them a recording contract and he quickly set up auditions for them with Decca A & R executive, Dick Rowe. The group chose to sing several Coasters songs, demonstrating their love of comic irony, as well as a profound understanding of Leiber and Stoller's musical theatrics (193). "The Coasters were, in effect, the first rock group to dramatize successfully the disparate vocal personalities of each of its separate members: a talent that Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and (later) Ringo Starr would perfect as well" (193). Dick Rowe wasn't highly impressed by the group though and made the decision to pass, as well as nearly every other London recording company. George Martin however, saw something in the group and offered them a provisional contract with Parlophone. After a second audition at EMI studios, the groups' raw talent captured Martin's attention and a final contract was made, even though Martin had several concerns about the groups' song-writing capabilities. Martin replaces the current drummer, Pete Best, with Ringo Starr, and encouraged Lennon and McCartney to write with more concentration, in particular with structural areas such as creating a chorus, the main selling point of most pop songs of the time.

The Beatle's first huge success came with the release of their second single, "Please Please Me". The song quickly reached number one on Britain's single charts and groups' commercial success story began.

To understand the Beatles success, one must first understand the generation that adored them. The Beatles generation was unplanned, unforeseen, and unprecedented in a world still repairing itself after World War II. The art schools which several members of the group attended were created by Great Britain for people with poor academic credentials and no other professional prospects were able to learn the commercial arts in a low-key atmosphere of bohemian experimentation (181). With this art focused background, the Beatles were able to offer themselves as a spontaneous representation, at first quite unconsciously, of a new kind of culture emerging from the mainstream, a kind of "counterculture": a culture of prescriptive youthfulness, committed not to reason or beauty or sober good taste, but rather to whimsy, freedom and fun, the crazier, the better (206). The phenomenon of the Beatles, their importance as a cultural touchstone became clear over the period of several hectic months. "The Beatles breached the normal barriers of taste, class, and age, transforming their recordings and live performances from events of strictly parochial interest into a matter of much wider public importance" (206).

It was those same unique qualities that first caught Brian Epstein's attention, that was now mesmerizing all of Britain, and soon America would catch on to this new pop sensation. As if their music hadn't been enough to seal their success in the music industry, their intelligence and sense of humor added to their over all appeal and charm. "Most pop stars before John Lennon had a problem sustaining a conversation beyond the bland talk of their latest record and their narcissism. Lennon single-handedly stood that credo on its head. In his speech alone, pop music grew up" (206). In England, the album that featured "Twist and Shout" remained at the top of the pop charts for 30 weeks. Part of what aided this phenomenon, was the fact that, in England, television broadcasting was not a hugely accessible division of entertainment yet. Most families' main source of nightly entertainment was still the radio. Similar to the success of Frank Sinatra in 1942 and 1943 when during the second World War put a hold on the distribution of newly recorded albums, which resulted in Sinatra becoming the first major teen idol due to live radio broadcasts in America. Between 1962 and 1965, the Beatles were featured on 52 BBC radio programs and throughout the summer of 1963, they also hosted their own series of radio shows, Pop Go the Beatles, singing their original music, along with vintage fifties rock and roll music.

Throughout their success in the music industry, the Beatles became more than just a bubble gum pop group, they also had the ability to incorporate theatrical aspects into their music. Part of their profound success can