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No band on planet earth has had an impact on a par with that of The Beatles. Over the 10-year period from 1960 to 1970, the Liverpool band affectionately known as the Fab Four transformed the pop and rock world and cemented their place in the history books.
In 1960, guitarists Paul McCartney, John Lennon and George Harrison began playing with drummer Pete Best and bassist Stuart Sutcliffe in Hamburg. By 1962, Sutcliffe had left the band, with McCartney taking his role on bass guitar. The classic Beatles lineup was complete later that year when manager Brian Epstein and producer George Martin met with Lennon, McCartney and Harrisson to discuss a replacement for Best, who struggled to keep time. Enter, Richard Starkey, aka Ringo Starr.
Please Please Me his shelves in March 1963 and, despite taking some time to make its mark, the album helped book The Beatles their now-legendary three-night stand on the Ed Sullivan Show. As Beatlemania set in, the band released With The Beatles, A Hard Day’s Night, Beatles for Sale and Help! over the next 24 months, making the ‘60s pop-rock sound their own.
As pop acts around the world began to imitate Liverpool’s greatest custodians, The Beatles’ later works began to deconstruct the very same pop-rock formula they had created. Starting with 1965 album Rubber Soul, the band started to incorporate more experimental and psychedelic sounds into their work. In the next five years, they would release Revolver, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The White Album and Abbey Road, four albums that are widely regarded as among the best of all time.
During sessions for Abbey Road and Let it Be, tensions between the band members began to show. McCartney’s thoughts on producer Phil Spector’s contributions to Let it Be are well known, and Yoko Ono, Lennon’s girlfriend, was also central to the Lennon-McCartney fallout. In September 1969, Lennon confirmed his departure, and early in 1970 McCartney announced the band’s breakup.
All four members continued to create music after the band’s split, to varying degrees of success. Lennon’s works throughout the 1970s are considered by many to be as good as The Beatles’ efforts, while McCartney’s material with Wings was limited to a James Bond theme and light pop that paled in comparison to his former band. Harrisson’s All Things Must Pass arguably eclipsed the tracks he penned for The Beatles, with My Sweet Lord and Isn’t it a Pity? both hitting number one, while Starr i better known for narrating episodes of Thomas the Tank Engine than he was for his handful of solo albums.
Rumours of a Beatles reunion circulated throughout the 1970s but were dashed in December 1980 when Lennon was gunned down outside his New York home. In 1999, Harrisson was stabbed by an attacker in his Henley-On-Thames home, puncturing a lung. Though he survived the ordeal, he fell victim to cancer in 2001, leaving the Beatles legacy in the hands of the two remaining members.
EMI has been sold to private equity group Terra Firma, the buyout vehicle of financier Guy Hands. Terra Firma needed to convince at least 90% of EMI’s shareholders by an August 1 deadline and has subsequently declared its £2.4 billion bid successful
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