The Beatles



2013John Cabot UniversityIlaria Colasanti{The Beatles}The Fab Four that change the world and their biographies.centercenter TOC \o "1-3" \h \z \u Contents TOC \o "1-3" \h \z \u “I read the news today, oh boy – About a lucky men who made the grade” PAGEREF _Toc373766382 \h 3John Lennon PAGEREF _Toc373766384 \h 7Paul McCartney11George Harrison15Ringo Starr19Bibliography22center-428“I read the news today, oh boy – About a lucky men who made the grade”Who are the Beatles?The Beatles were a synergistic combination: Paul McCartney's melodic bass lines, Ringo Starr's slaphappy no-rolls drumming, George Harrison's rockabilly-style guitar leads, John Lennon's assertive rhythm guitar — and their four fervent voices. As personalities, they defined and incarnated Sixties style: smart, idealistic, playful, irreverent, eclectic. Their music, from the not-so-simple love songs they started with to their later studio extravaganzas, set new standards for both commercial and artistic success in pop. Everything started on July 6, 1957, when the Quarrymen were playing in a church of suburb of Woolton, in Liverpool. In that occasion, John Lennon met McCartney, whom he later invited to join his group. By the year's end McCartney had convinced Lennon to let George Harrison join their group. Therefore, the group was formed completely and it were called the Silver Beetles (from which "Silver" was dropped a few months later, and "Beetles" amended to "Beatles"). left27305Few years later, the Beatles had been playing regularly to packed houses at the Cavern when they were spotted on November 9 by Brian Epstein. Then, their manager Epstein cleaned up their act, eventually replacing black leather jackets, tight jeans, and pompadours with collarless gray Pierre Cardin suits and mildly androgynous haircuts. In May 1962, however, producer George Martin (b. Jan. 3, 1926, North London, Eng.) signed the group to EMI's Parlophone subsidiary. Meanwwhile, Pete Best was asked to leave the group on August 16, 1962, and Ringo Starr was added, just in time for the group's first recording session. On September 11 the Beatles cut two originals, "Love Me Do" b/w "P.S. I Love You," which became their first U.K. Top 20 hit in October. By mid-year the Beatles on a national tour, and the hysterical outbreaks of Beatlemania had begun. Late in the year "She Loves You" became the biggest-selling single in British history. Their first movie,?A Hard Day's Night?(directed by Richard Lester), opened in America in August; it grossed $1.3 million in its first week. The band was aggressively merchandised - Beatle wigs, Beatle clothes, Beatle dolls, lunch boxes, a cartoon series — from which, because of Epstein's ineptitude at business, the band made surprisingly little money. By 1965 Lennon and McCartney rarely wrote songs together, although by contractual and personal agreement songs by either of them were credited to both. With 1965's?Rubber Soul, the Beatles' ambitions began to extend beyond love songs and pop formulas. Their success led adults to consider them, along with Bob Dylan, spokesmen for youth culture, and their lyrics grew more poetic and somewhat more political. center1195070The Beatles gave up touring after an August 29, 1966, concert at San Francisco's Candlestick Park and made the rest of their music in the studio, where they had begun to experiment with exotic. "Strawberry Fields Forever" part of a double-sided single released in February 1967 to fill the unusually long gap between albums, featured an astonishing display of electronically altered sounds and hinted at what was to come. It took four months and $75,000 to record?Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Released in June 1967, it was hailed as serious art for its "concept" and its range of styles and sounds, a lexicon of pop and electronic noises; such songs as "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" and "A Day in the Life" were carefully examined for hidden meanings. In summer 1966 controversy erupted when a remark Lennon had made to a British newspaper reporter months before was widely reported in the U.S. The quote — "Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue with that; I'm right and will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now" — incited denunciations and Beatles record bonfires. In August they released McCartney's "Hey Jude" (Number One), backed by Lennon's "Revolution" (Number 12), which sold over 6 million copies before the end of 1968 — their most popular single. Meanwhile, the group had been working on the double album?The Beatles?(frequently called the White Album), which showed their divergent directions. The rifts were artistic — Lennon moving toward brutal confessionals, McCartney leaning toward pop melodies, Harrison immersed in Eastern spirituality — and personal, as Lennon drew closer to his wife-to-be, Yoko Ono. September 9, 2009 was a day of 21st century Beatlemania: Apple/EMI released remastered versions of the band's studio albums, with dramatically improved sound. Today, the Beatles are more than artists. They are legends. 21974centerGo to Slide center1182370center4340225John Lennon 1940 – 1980 When he was four years old, Lennon's parents separated and he ended up living with his Aunt Mimi. John's father was a merchant seaman. He was not present at his son's birth and did not see a lot of his son when he was small.6351384935Lennon's mother, Julia, remarried, but visited John and Mimi regularly. She taught John how to play the banjo and the piano and purchased his first guitar. He was devastated when Julia was fatally struck by a car driven by an off-duty police officer in July 1958. Her death was one of the most traumatic events in his life.As a child, Lennon was a prankster and he enjoyed getting in trouble. As a boy and young adult, Lennon enjoyed drawing grotesque figures and cripples. Lennon's school master thought that he could go to an art school for college, since he did not get good grades in school, but had artistic talent.At sixteen, Elvis Presley's explosion onto the rock music scene inspired Lennon to create the skiffle band called the 'Quarry Men', named after his school. Lennon met Paul McCartney at a church fete on 6 July 1957. John soon invited Paul to join the group and they eventually formed the most successful songwriting partnership in musical history.McCartney introduced George Harrison to Lennon the following year and he and art college buddy Stuart Sutcliffe also joined Lennon's band. Always in need of a drummer, the group finally settled on Pete Best in 1960.The first recording they made was Buddy Holly's 'That'll be the Day' in mid-1958. In fact, it was Holly's group, the Crickets, that inspired the band to change its name. Lennon would later joke that he had a vision when he was 12 years old - a man appeared on a flaming pie and said unto them "from this day on you are Beatles with an 'A.'"The Beatles were discovered by Brian Epstein in 1961 at the Cavern Club, where they were performing on a regular basis. As their new manager, Epstein secured a record contract with EMI. With a new drummer, Ringo Starr (Richard Starkey), and George Martin as producer, the group released their first single, 'Love Me Do', in October 1962. It peaked on the British charts at number 17.Lennon wrote the group's follow-up single, 'Please Please Me', inspired primarily by Roy Orbison but also fed by Lennon's infatuation with the pun in Bing Crosby's famous "Please, lend your little ears to my please." The song topped the charts in Britain. The Beatles went on to become the most popular band in Britain with the release of mega-hits like 'She Loves You' and 'I Want To Hold Your Hand'.In 1964, The Beatles became the first band to break out big in the United States, beginning with their appearance on TV's 'The Ed Sullivan Show' on 9 February 1964. Beatlemania launched a "British Invasion"' of rock bands into the U.S., which included The Rolling Stones and The Kinks. After 'Sullivan,' The Beatles returned to Britain to film their first movie, 'A Hard Day's Night', and prepare for their first world tour. right2352675The Beatles followed up with their second movie 'Help!' in 1965. In June, the Queen of England had announced that the Beatles would be awarded the MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire). In August, they performed to 55,600 fans at New York's Shea Stadium, setting a record for largest concert audience. When they returned to England, they recorded the breakthrough album 'Rubber Soul', which extended beyond love songs and pop formulas.The magic of Beatlemania had started to lose its appeal by 1966. The group's lives were put in danger when they were accused of snubbing the presidential family in the Philippines. Then, Lennon's remark that "we're more popular than Jesus now" incited denunciations and Beatles record bonfires in the U.S. bible belt. The Beatles gave up touring after a 29 August 1966 concert at San Francisco's Candlestick Park.After an extended break, the band returned to the studio to expand their experimental with drug-influenced exotic instrumentation/lyrics and tape abstractions. The first sample was the single 'Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields Forever', followed up by 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band', still considered by many to be the greatest rock album ever.The Beatles then suffered a huge blow when Epstein died of an accidental overdose of sleeping pills on 27 August 1967. Shaken by Epstein's death, the Beatles retrenched under McCartney's leadership in the fall and filmed 'Magical Mystery Tour'. While the film was panned by critics, the soundtrack album contained Lennon's 'I Am The Walrus', their most cryptic work yet.After the Magical Mystery Tour film failed, the Beatles retreated into Transcendental Meditation and the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, which took them to India for two months in early 1968. Their next effort, Apple Corps Ltd. was plagued by mismanagement. In July, the group faced its last hysterical crowds at the premiere of their film 'Yellow Submarine'. In November, their double-album 'The Beatles' (frequently called the 'White Album') showed their divergent directions.Lennon had married Cynthia Powell in August 1962 and they had a son together who they called Julian, named after John's mother. Cynthia had to keep a very low profile during Beatlemania. They divorced in 1968 and he re-married Japanese avant-garde artist Yoko Ono, whom he had met at the Indica Gallery in November 1966.2159016510John and Yoko's artist partnership began to cause further tensions within the group. Together they invented a form of peace protest by staying in bed while being filmed and interviewed, and the single recorded under the name of The Plastic Ono Band, 'Give Peace a Chance' (1969), became the national anthem for pacifists. Lennon left The Beatles in September 1969, just after the group completed recording 'Abbey Road'. The news of the breakup was kept secret until McCartney announced his departure in April 1970, a month before the band released 'Let It Be', recorded just before Abbey Road.After the Beatles broke up, Lennon released 'Plastic Ono Band', with a raw, minimalist sound that followed "primal-scream" therapy. In 1971, he followed up with 'Imagine', the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed of all John Lennon's post-Beatles efforts. The title track was later listed as the third all-time best song by Rolling Stone magazine.Peace and love, however, was not always on Lennon's agenda. Imagine also included the track 'How Do You Sleep?', a nasty response to veiled messages at Lennon in some of McCartney's solo recordings. Later, the former songwriting duo buried the hatchet, but never formally worked together again.Lennon and Ono moved to the U.S. in September 1971, but were constantly threatened with deportation by the Nixon administration. Lennon was told he was being kicked out of the country because of his 1968 marijuana conviction in Britain. But Lennon believed the true reason was his activism against the unpopular Vietnam War. Documents later proved him correct. Two years after Nixon resigned, Lennon was granted permanent U.S. residency in 1976.In 1972, Lennon performed at Madison Square Garden to benefit mentally handicapped children and continued to promote peace while battling to stay in the U.S. That immigration battle took a toll on the Lennon's marriage and in the fall of 1973, they separated. He went to Los Angeles, where he partied and took a mistress, May Pang. He still managed to release hit albums, such as 'Mind Games', 'Walls and Bridges' and 'Rock and Roll' and collaborate with David Bowie and Elton John.In the end, Lennon realized he really loved Yoko and could not live without her. They reconciled and she gave birth to their only child, Sean, on Lennon's 35th birthday. Lennon decided to leave the music business to raise his son and become a house husband.center2666365In 1980, Lennon returned to the music world with the album 'Double Fantasy', featuring the hit single '(Just Like) Starting Over'. Unfortunately, just a few weeks after its release, Lennon was shot by a deranged fan in front of his apartment complex in New York. Lennon died of the age of 40 at the Roosevelt Hospital on 8 December 1980, after receiving multiple gun shots in the back. His death affected millions of people, record sales soared, and he continues to be admired by new generations of fans.Paul McCartney 1942G215901693545rowing up in Liverpool just after World War II, Sir Paul enjoyed a happy and uneventful childhood and showed an early gift for music and also for art. He did well at primary school and was one of only four pupils in his year to pass the 11+ exam. His success earned him a place at the prestigious Liverpool Institute for Boys, which he attended from 1953 until 1960. He left school having passed A-levels in English and art.Sir Paul’s happy childhood came to an abrupt end when he was 14-years-old, and his beloved mother died very suddenly and unexpectedly from breast cancer. He was devastated by this tragic loss and turned to music and writing songs in order to try and come to terms with his mother’s death. A short while later, he was performing music at a local church fete, when he happened to meet a fellow budding musician called John Lennon. At that time, Lennon had already formed his own band, called The Quarrymen, and he was so impressed by Sir Paul’s guitar skills and versatile singing ability that he invited him to come and join his band. Over the course of the next few years, Lennon added George Harrison and Pete Best to the line-up and the band changed its name to The Beatles. The rest, as they say, is history.In the beginning, the band played most of their gigs in their home town Liverpool, at a venue called The Cavern Club, and made a brief foray over to Germany, where they played in Hamburg. By the end of 1961, the boys had decided that they needed to find a manager and chose local businessman Brian Epstein for the job. Epstein was a skilful entrepreneur and helped the boys to improve their image and make the most of their raw, unpolished talents. Epstein also replaced drummer Pete Best with Ringo Starr, and helped the boys secure a recording contract with EMI. Sir Paul became the lead vocalist with The Beatles, as well as playing a variety of instruments, including bass guitar, acoustic and electric guitar, piano and keyboards. He reportedly also played upwards of three dozen other musical instruments.Sir Paul was not only a multi-talented instrumentalist, he was also a gifted songwriter, and he and Lennon wrote many of the hit songs together during the Beatles years. Back in 1957, whilst they were still both teenagers, Lennon and Sir Paul agreed that every song they wrote together would have 50/50 ownership, and they stuck to this agreement in later years, despite the fact that such an oral contract wasn’t legally binding, as they were still both minors.righttopEven though each wrote a great many songs individually, over 200 songs that were recorded by The Beatles are still formally credited to both men. Many of the songs evolved during the band’s jamming sessions: the 1963 classic number, ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ is one such song. Sir Paul’s most famous songs have all become classics: perhaps the most famous of these are ‘Yesterday’, ‘Eleanor Rigby’, ‘Let It Be’, ‘When I’m 64’, and ‘Blackbird’. ‘Yesterday’ is arguably perhaps the most famous song ever written, since over 3,000 cover versions of it have been recorded by hundreds of artists, since it was first published. Many of the Beatles songs and cover images were quite political, and promoted values of peace, freedom and the liberation of the imagination.As well as revolutionizing the music of the day, The Beatles’ music and style had a massive impact on popular culture. As a band, they were massively popular, particularly with teenage girls, and tended to be greeted by hysterical crowds of screaming fans whenever they arrived in a city to play a gig. This phenomenon soon became known as ‘Beatlemania!’ Everything about them, their clothes, their hairstyles, was widely copied. It might well be said that they were the original ‘boy band’.In 1967, the band suffered a terrible loss, when their manager Brian Epstein died. From that point onwards, the Beatles began to lose their unified creative focus, and all four members began to develop their individual creative ambitions. In 1969, Sir Paul married his first wife Linda, whom he’d met in a London nightclub called The Bag O’Nails. Linda was a musician too, and quite soon after his marriage, he formed his own band, called Wings. Sir Paul’s first solo album, ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’ was a number one hit, and his new band Wings soon became one of the most successful groups in the world during the 1970s; the album ‘Band On The Run’ won two Grammy Awards.In 1977, Wings released ‘Mull of Kintyre’, which was number one in the UK charts for nine weeks, and became the highest selling single record for seven years. In 1979, Sir Paul teamed up with fellow musician Elvis Costello to help organise benefit concerts for the people of Cambodia.As the 1980s dawned, Sir Paul encountered a run of bad luck. In 1980, he was arrested in Tokyo for possession of marijuana and spent ten days in jail. This scandalous event provoked a massive media response throughout the world and when he was released from prison, he retreated into seclusion for the major part of the following year. Fate also struck a tragic blow in December 1980, when his former song writing buddy and fellow Beatle John Lennon was killed by an assassin’s bullet outside his apartment building in New York. The tragedy caused Sir Paul to retreat still further from the public eye, and he did not appear in public again until 1982, when he released his new album ‘Tug Of War’. Sir Paul pursued a highly successful career as a solo recording artist, and also found time to explore different forms of musical composition. During the 1990s, he composed several pieces of classical music for the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society, including ‘The Liverpool Oratorio’, which was written for a choir and symphony orchestra, and a work for solo piano entitled ‘A Leaf’. In 1994, the three surviving members of The Beatles re-united and produced John Lennon’s unpublished song ‘Free As A Bird’, which had been preserved by Yoko Ono on a tape recording made in 1977.left2815590During the 1980s and 1990s, Sir Paul and his wife Linda also made time to promote their own personal causes. The McCartneys were both committed vegetarians and spent considerable time and energy promoting vegetarianism (Linda McCartney produced her own line of vegetarian frozen foods), and raising public awareness of animal rights issues. Sir Paul and Linda raised four children - Stella, Mary, Heather and James - and enjoyed a happy marriage and family life. When he was arrested on drugs charges in Japan in 1980, he claimed that the nights he spent in prison were the only time he’d ever been separated from his wife.Sadly, in 1995, Linda was diagnosed the breast cancer, the same disease that had claimed the life of Sir Paul’s mother: he nursed her during her illness, and she fought the disease bravely, but to no avail. She died in April 1998 after a marriage of almost 30 years. Shattered by his loss, Sir Paul retreated into seclusion once again. In 2000, he released the album ‘A Garland For Linda’, which was a tribute album, the proceeds of which were donated to help survivors of cancer. He was knighted by the Queen in 1997. Since Linda’s death, Sir Paul has pursued both his interest in classical music, and his own solo recording career. He released a classical album, ‘Working Classical’ at the end of 1999, and an album of rock’n’roll covers called ‘Run Devil Run’, also in 1999. His latest classical album, ‘Ecco Cor Meum’ (Behold My Heart) was widely acclaimed and was also voted Classical Album of The Year in 2007.Also in 2000, Sir Paul was invited by the disabled former model Heather Mills to attend her birthday party. Romance blossomed, and he and Heather became engaged the following year. They married in June 2002 at a castle in Scotland and their daughter Beatrice Milly McCartney was born in October 2003. That same year, Sir Paul gave an extraordinary concert in Red Square in Moscow, called ‘Back in The USSR’. The concert was attended by the Russian president Vladimir Putin, who invited the Beatle to be guest of honour at the Kremlin.Sadly, Sir Paul’s second marriage floundered: he and Heather split up in 2005 and generated massive media attention thanks to their highly acrimonious and public divorce. In March 2008, the courts ordered that Sir Paul pay ?24.3m to Heather Mills. The judge awarded a lump sum of ?16.5 million and assets of ?7.8 million. The judge found that the total value of all Sir Paul’s assets, including his business interests, was about ?400 million and that there was no evidence at all before him that he was worth ?800 million - as had been reported in the media. His latest musical venture saw him enter the world of ballet. The musician recently announced that he would be collaborating with Peter Martins, the New York City Ballet’s master in chief, on a World Premiere Ballet. Commenting on his decision to write for a ballet, Sir Paul said: “I am always interested in new directions that I haven’t worked in before. So I became very excited about the idea. When I got back to England after meeting Peter, I started writing music and am now in the very final stages of the orchestral score.” He explained that he was enjoying writing music that conveyed emotions, as opposed to using words to depict a feeling.In 2008, Sir Paul was given an Outstanding Contribution to Music by the Brit Awards and an honorary degree - Doctor of Music - from Yale University. He also performed at a concert in Liverpool to celebrate the city being named the European Capital of Culture 2009.In 2009, the US gave Sir Paul recognition in the form of a Grammy for Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance for his live version of ‘Helter Skelter’ from ‘Good Evening New York City’. He said the news was a “big surprise” and described how he received a text telling him he had won after attending a BAFTA’s after show party. This recognition from the US was followed by Sir Paul being honoured by current US president Barack Obama on 2 June 2010, as he was given the Gershwin Prize for his contributions to popular music in a live performance at the White House. There are currently plans to record a tribute to Sir Paul, with artists including Kiss, Billy Joel and BB King, to name but a few, singing some of his songs. Sir Paul announced an 11-date tour, with three dates being played in the UK, which will start in November 2011. right562610Sir Paul has been dating Nancy Shevell since 2007, who has perhaps notably nothing to do with the show business world, and is vice president of a family-owned transportation conglomerate which owns New England Motor Freight. The couple got married on 9 October 2011 at the Old Marylebone Town Hall in London. The reception took place at his north London home, with Ringo Starr wishing them 'peace and love'. He continues to write and record music that still delights audiences the world over. He's one of the key shakers and movers in popular culture, as well as being one of the wealthiest men in Britain. He is generally acknowledged to be one of the most popular entertainers in the world today. The Guinness Book of Records has recognised his many and varied contributions to the music industry and lists him as the most successful musician and composer in popular music history. George Harrison 1943 – 2001 Kleft1746885nown first as "The Quiet Beatle," George Harrison was a great songwriter who had the misfortune to be surrounded by two stone cold geniuses whose work often obscured his talents. Yet Harrison compositions such as "Something" and "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" are as good as anything the Beatles ever recorded. And with his solo debut?All Things Must Pass, he stepped completely out of the shadows of his Beatle band mates to reveal himself a powerfully spiritual songwriter with an expansive sense of melody. Harrison was also a gifted, fluid guitarist and hugely influential in introducing the Beatles — and, by extension, the entire Sixties generation – to Eastern religion and musical influences. His devotion to Hinduism was expressed publicly through rock and roll's first massive charity event, the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh.Before all that, Harrison was a teen guitarist in thrall to Britain's 1950s skiffle revival — a working class kid with a band called the Rebels. It was Paul McCartney, a schoolmate one year ahead of Harrison, who invited the 15-year-old to jam with the Quarrymen, a group led John Lennon. (Harrison had come three years behind Lennon at his previous school.) This band would become the Beatles — and Harrison would himself become, like Lennon and McCartney, one of his generation's great seekers. His response to fame, however, was to direct that search inside of himself.As a songwriter, Harrison was continually out-gunned by Lennon-McCartney. The intense trio of songs he contributed to?Revolver?— "Taxman," "I Want to Tell You," and "Love You To" — would be his most significant contribution to a single Beatles album. He had other classics to his credit, including "Here Comes the Sun" and "Something," his first Beatles A-side, a track which would top the charts in America. (Both came off 1969'sAbbey Road) But Harrison also funneled his creativity into the guitar, a suitably introspective pursuit. From his raw, early rock-and-roll influences he extrapolated a wide-ranging and poetic style. In the late sixties, he helped introduce the slide guitar to prominence; he also popularized the 12-string Rickenbacker guitar and its ultra-distinctive sound on 1964's?A Hard Day's Night.Harrison introduced the Byrds to the Rickenbacker; they, in turn, led him to what would become a calling card: the sitar. With the Indian composer Ravi Shankar as his teacher, the guitarist introduced the instrument (which dates to the middle ages) into the Beatles, and rock music, with "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown," off 1965's?Rubber Soul. Two years later, Harrison's unique, and principal, contribution to?Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band?would be "Within You Without You," a centerpiece for sitar. It was his experimental sliver of that experimental album, but it also a declaration of his independence. In 1966, the band gave up performing live (which suited the shy, perfectionist Harrison). In 1969, during filming of recording sessions for?The Beatles, Harrison quit the band. He returned 12 days later, after negotiations, but he was the first splinter in the band as it finally broke apart in 1970.right1624965Meanwhile, Harrison lived his life increasingly under the guidance of Hinduism. Shankar, who he'd made world famous, had become a close friend, and would remain so for life. He married Pattie Boyd, who he'd met on the set for the?Hard Days Night?movie, in 1966; in 1969, he bought a private estate in Henley-on-Thames called Friar Park. Creatively, he'd clearly built a head of steam. His?Wonderwall Music?soundtrack (Wonderwall Music, 1968) was the first solo effort from a Beatle, and as a ramshackle mix of traditional Indian music and rock, hardly one for the screaming fans. For?Electronic Music?(1969), he partnered with composers like Bernie Krause for an exercise in Moog synthesizer noodling.Throat cleared, he then released?All Things Must Pass, a three-record, Number One album of songs he'd originally written for the Beatles. It would become his masterwork. Produced by Phil Spector and featuring guests Eric Clapton and Traffic's Dave Mason, the record produced "My Sweet Lord," his biggest solo hit. That this achingly tender evocation of his religious beliefs was eventually shown, in civil court, to have its melody taken from a sixties hit by Chiffons ("He's So Fine") did little to dull its resonance. (It was determined that Harrison "unknowingly" plagiarized the song. In 1976 he would have a hit withThirty Three & 1/3's "This Song," a kidding take on the lawsuit featuring vocals by Eric Idle of Monty Python.)Harrison followed this statement of faith with another, even larger-scale gesture, putting together with Ravi Shankhar a massive 1971 benefit for Bangladeshi refuges. Performers at the two Madison Square Garden concerts included Bob Dylan — who alone gave a historic show — Eric Clapton, and Ringo Starr. The shows and resulting documentary and three-record album (both called?Concert for Bangladesh) provided a minor hit for Harrison, "Bangla Desh," and millions for the intended beneficiaries. (Another asterisk: the majority of this money was held up for 10 years while Apple records was audited by the IRS.)19050-16510Picking up where "My Sweet Lord" left off — and capturing the easy-going uplift of the times, lacing it with his slide guitar — Harrison picked up another Number One single with 1973's "Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)," off?Living in the Material World. The next year he released?Dark Horse?on his own label of the same name, but despite the title track's climb to Number 15, the mellow times seemed to evaporate. Harrison and Pattie Boyd would not officially divorce until 1977, but Boyd had already taken up with Eric Clapton, whom she would later marry. In a bizarre move, Harrison had the two cover "Bye Bye Love," an Everly Brothers hit, with him. Worse yet, on his big U.S. tour with Pandit Ravi Shankar & Friends, Harrison's voice, never strong, seem to fail him. A backlash reared up. And with that, he shrunk from one major spotlight: Those were his last shows in the United States.Between 1975 and 1979, Harrison kept plugging away, to unspectacular commercial and critical results.?Extra Texture (Read All About It)?(1975) and?33 1?3?(1977) were more the work of a (still talented) journeyman than a seeker, although the latter album produced a stalwart fan favorite in "Crackerbox Palace." (Critic Robert Christgau, never a Harrison fan, wrote that the song was "the best thing he's written since 'Here Comes the Sun.'") The slick?George Harrison?(1979) didn't juice his mojo, either. But he had other things going for him: Besides his passion for Formula 1 racing (celebrated in?Harrison's "Faster"), there was his 1978 marriage to Olivia Arias, mother to his son Dhani, who he would spend the rest of his life with. In 1979, he self-published a loose memoir,?I Me Mine, and began executive producing Monty Python films. Still, his next album,?Somewhere in England, encountered trouble even before it was released. Warner Bros. (parent to Harrison's Dark Horse) demanded the replacement of four songs.On December 8, 1980, John Lennon was assassinated by Mark Chapman. Harrison hadn't reconciled with Lennon after the breakup of the Beatles.?I Me Mine?didn't even mention Lennon, and when Lennon reached out to Harrison after discovering this, Harrison did not respond. His public statement offered a reserved, if not especially profound or feeling, conclusion: "To rob life is the ultimate robbery in life." Harrison reframed "All Those Years Ago," a song originally about Ringo Starr, to honor Lennon, and added it to the reworkedSomewhere in England. The song went to Number Two.Harrison hit musical bottom with the 1982 bomb?Gone Troppo, and retreated from the studio and stage for years. He made an uncharacteristically brash return in 1987 withCloud Nine, which featured George in mirrored shades on its cover. The record went platinum and delivered a sticky Number One hit "Got My Mind Set on You," a song derived from an obscure sixties number by Rudy Clark. Whatever the state of Harrison's inner focus, it wasn't probed here. But producer Jeff Lynne (of Electric Light Orchestra) helped Harrison lay on a fine sheen, and kept him to a tidy 11 tracks.Late Eighties rock was, briefly, very good to George Harrison. Before long he and Lynne hooked up with Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, and Roy Orbison to record a song for Harrison — which led to the Traveling Wilburys, the last word on the rock super group. Their two albums — the irrepressible?Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1?(1988) and scattershot?Traveling Wilburys Vol. 3?(1990) — goosed the careers of all involved, and led to Harrison's 1991 tour of Japan with Eric Clapton, which in turn led to the solid?Live in Japan.After this, Harrison returned to quietude. In 1995, he, Paul McCartney, and Ringo Starr produced two "new" Beatles songs "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love" for?The Beatles Anthology?documentary and albums. In 1998, at Linda McCartney's funeral, the three appeared in public together for the first time in 30 years. Also in 1998, Harrison revealed he had been treated for throat cancer, and he was soon beset by more difficulty: On December 30, 1999, a mentally unstable man named Michael Abram broke into the Friar Park estate, lured Harrison out of his bedroom, and stabbed him repeatedly. The attack finally ended when Abram collapsed from injuries sustained when Olivia Harrison fought him off with a fireplace poker.Harrison continued to suffer from cancer, an on November 29, 2001, at only 58 years old, Harrison died of the disease. He was memorialized around the world. On the first anniversary of his death, McCartney, Starr and many of Harrison's other friends gathered for the Concert for George, which benefited the Material World Charitable Foundation. McCartney and Starr collaborated on "For You Blue," Eric Clapton and Jeff Lynne performed "Here Comes the Sun," and all artists at the concert gathered for several Harrison classics, including "Something" and "While My Guitar Gently Weeps."Brainwashed, which Harrison had been working on with his son Dhani just before his death, was released in 2002 to warm critical reception. In 2004 Harrison was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist (the Beatles were inducted in 1988), and in 2009 EMI released?Let it Roll: Songs by George Harrison, a career-spanning compilation.Shortly after his death, Harrison's family issued a statement that summed up his legacy: "He left this world as he lived in it, conscious of God, fearless of death and at peace, surrounded by family and friends. He often said, 'Everything else can wait but the search for God cannot wait, and love one another.'"Ringo Starr 1940Hleft1682750e was born in the poorer Dingle area of Liverpool to dock worker Richard Starkey and bakery assistant Elsie. His mother and father separated when he was three years old and Starr's mother later re-married a man called Harry Graves, who was a close stepfather to Starr, who cheekily nicked-named the older man his ‘step ladder’. In the summer of 1947, when Starr was six, he fell ill with an appendicitis, which landed him in hospital. Complications of the appendicitis led to an infection that put him in a coma, keeping him away from school for almost a year and putting him seriously behind in his schoolwork. Starr was an accident and sickness-prone child. During his hospital stay for the appendicitis, to combat the boredom of a small child, he was given a couple of toys to keep his spirits up: a little red bus and a drum. Starr was very taken with the drum, but decided to give his bus to the boy in the bed next to him as a gift. Unfortunately as he leaned out of the bed to do so, he fell and hit his head, knocking himself out.Being behind in his education, Starr could not read or write very well, so when he returned to school he was put in a class with children much younger than himself. At 13, he caught a cold that turned into pleurisy. It resulted in another trip to hospital and another slide away from literacy. Then, in 1952, he fell ill with tuberculosis. "In those days, they used to put you in what we liked to call a greenhouse in the country, the countryside. And thank God, someone had invented Streptomycin. And you just sat around for a year getting well… So to keep you entertained, once a week, they'd have like lessons: could be knitting, could be modeling, occasionally, it was music. And they'd bring in tambourines, triangles and little drums." From that moment, Starr wouldn't play in the band unless he had a drum. Drums became the love of his life. “They became the dream that one day I would have my own set, which happened. And then the other dream was that I would play with other musicians, which came true.”Like the other three Beatles, Starr became interested with the Liverpool style of music known as skiffle. He started his own group called the Eddie Clayton Skiffle Group in 1957. In 1959, he moved on to The Raving Texans. But before he was able to make money from his musical talents, Starr worked as a delivery boy for British Rail, behind a bar on a ferry and as a trainee joiner. He got the nickname Ringo around this time because of the numerous rings he wore on his pinky and ring fingers. The surname Starr arrived when he dropped the 'key' from Starkey. His stepfather bought him a new drum kit and Starr promised to become an amazing musician. He travelled from band to band, but he eventually landed a spot with Rory Storm and The Hurricanes who were a popular band at the time. It was Storm who encouraged Starr to legally changing his name to Ringo Starr.At this time, The Beatles were on the rise but they had already been through several drummers. At one point they were so desperate that they even invited strangers from the audience to fill the position. Ringo first met the boys in Hamburg in October 1960 while still with Rory Storm and The Hurricanes. The Beatles' drummer, Pete Best, was not considered by the other band members to be the greatest musician around, and they were keen to recruit Starr as his replacement. Consequently, the Beatles new A&R manager, George Martin, asked Starr to fill the position. He agreed, but when he played with The Beatles at The Cavern Club, a lot of long-time fans were still disappointed about Best's firing, Starr became known as the friendly Beatle with a great sense of humor and quotable quotes. The song title ‘Eight Days A Week’ was written after one of Starr's expressions and the band's first movie was called 'A Hard Day's Night' (1964) after a phrase he coined one evening. His inventive drumming also gave the band a distinctive sound and his down-to-earth manner made him a leveling band mate.right825500Starr has been married twice, first to Maureen Cox on 11th February, 1965. The pair had three children, Zak, Jason, and Lee, but divorced in 1975. Zak followed in his father's footsteps as a drummer for groups like Oasis and The Who. Starr's later wed Barbara Bach in 1981, to whom he remains happily married.While John Lennon and Paul McCartney were widely praised for their song writing talents, Starr's contributions were not as readily acknowledged. He was known for his strong drumming talents but he also assisted in the group's creative process and provided some of its emotional stability and good humor. Unlike past drummers, who remained firmly in the background, Starr was seen an equal part of the Fab Four. His influence would later be seen on future generations of drummers. The Beatles broke up for good in April, 1970 and by the end of the year, Starr has released two solo albums. By 1973 he had become the most commercially successful of the ex-Beatles at that time. He appeared in several feature films, and made TV commercials and voiceovers. He also continued to record and tour, under the banner of the All Starr Band. Some of Starr's hits were ‘Photograph’, ‘Back Off Boogaloo’, ‘You're Sixteen’, and ‘It Don't Come Easy’.Post-Beatles, his acting talents were explored in such films as '200 Motels' (1971), 'That'll Be the Day' (1973), and 'Son of Dracula' (1974). He also starred in the comedy 'Caveman' (1981) with Bach, whom he married. On television, he starred in two children's series, most famously as the narrator for 'Thomas the Tank Engine' and later 'Shining Time Station'.When George Harrison died in November 2001, Starr, McCartney and Eric Clapton appeared in concert to raise money for Harrison's legacy in exploration of alternative lifestyles, views and philosophies.Starr's 2008 solo album, 'Liverpool 8', generated some of the strongest reviews of his studio work since the early 1970s. The album’s title song was a sweetly melancholy reflection on his early life in Liverpool, alluding to his pre-Beatles role as drummer for Rory Storm and the Hurricanes and the years that followed in the musical cyclone that was The Beatles. An original hippy, Starr's trademark motto is 'peace and love'. He had been asked in an interview what he wanted for his birthday and replied "just more peace and love," so on his 68th birthday, celebrated in 2008, he held a peace and love festival - with cup cakes.Starr is set to perform in his home town of Liverpool, and has announced that he will be playing in the city in June 2011, although it has been suggested he may not be welcomed by all. An unnamed source was quoted in the Daily Express as saying: "Obviously Ringo is going to be asked about it before he performs there and he’s keen to set the record straight. It was a joke that got taken out of context and Ringo is going to make it clear publicly that Liverpool remains very special to him." BibliographyThe Beatles’ biography: of Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr: ................
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