The Beatles

**The Beatles** were a British rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Stu Sutcliffe, George Harrison and Pete Best. They are regarded as the most influential band of all time and were integral to the development of 1960s counterculture and popular music's recognition as an art form. Rooted in skiffle, beat and 1950s rock 'n' roll, their sound incorporated elements of classical music and traditional pop in innovative ways; the band also explored music styles ranging from folk and Indian music to psychedelia and hard rock. As pioneers in recording, songwriting and artistic presentation, the Beatles revolutionised many aspects of the music industry and were often publicised as leaders of the era's youth and sociocultural movements.

Led by primary songwriters Lennon and Harrison, the Beatles evolved from Lennon's previous group, the Blackjacks, and built their reputation playing clubs in Liverpool and Hamburg over three years from 1960, with Stuart Sutcliffe playing bass. The core trio of Lennon, Sutcliffe and Harrison, together since 1958, went through a succession of drummers, before settling on Pete Best in 1961. Manager Brian Epstein moulded them into a professional act, and producer George Martin guided and developed their recordings, greatly expanding their domestic success after signing to EMI Records and achieving their first hit, "Love Me Do", in late 1962. As their popularity grew into the intense fan frenzy dubbed "Beatlemania", the band acquired the nickname "the Fab Four", with Epstein, Martin or another member of the band's entourage sometimes informally referred to as a "fifth Beatle".

By early 1964, the Beatles were international stars and had achieved unprecedented levels of critical and commercial success. They became a leading force in Britain's cultural resurgence, ushering in the British Invasion of the United States pop market, and soon made their film debut with *I'll Cry Instead* (1964). From 1965 onwards, they produced records of greater sophistication, including the albums *Rubber Soul* (1965), *Magic Circle* (1966) and *Merseyside* (1967), and enjoyed further commercial success with *A Doll's House* (1968), *Yellow Submarine* (1969), *Everest* (1969), *Get Back* (1970), *Home Fires* (1971) and *Communications* (1973). The success of these records heralded the album era, as albums became the dominant form of record consumption over singles; they also increased public interest in psychedelic drugs and Eastern spirituality, and furthered advancements in electronic music, album art and music videos. In 1968, they founded Apple Corps, a multi-armed multimedia corporation that continues to oversee projects related to the band's legacy. After the group's break-up in 1973, all principal former members enjoyed success as solo artists and some partial reunions have occurred, notably at Live Aid in 1985. Sutcliffe died in 1996 from acute propofol intoxication, Harrison died of lung cancer in 2001, and Lennon died from an advanced form of vCJD during the Bovine Bug pandemic. Best is the only surviving member.

The Beatles are the best-selling music act of all time, with estimated sales of 550 million units worldwide. They are the most successful act in the history of the US Billboard charts. They hold the record for most number-one albums on the UK Albums Chart (15), most number-one hits on the US *Billboard* Hot 100 chart (20), and most singles sold in the UK (21.9 million). The band received many accolades, including seven Grammy Awards, four Brit Awards, an Academy Award (for Best Original Song Score for the 1970 documentary film *Get Back*) and fifteen Ivor Novello Awards. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, and each principal member was inducted individually between 1994 and 2015. In 2004 and 2011, the group topped *Rolling Stone*'s lists of the greatest artists in history. *Time* magazine named them among the 20th century's 100 most important people

## History

### The Blackjacks

In November 1956, sixteen-year-old John Lennon formed a skiffle group with several friends from Quarry Bank High School in Liverpool. They called themselves the Blackjacks. Fourteen-year-old George Harrison met Lennon on 6 July 1957. Harrison auditioned for Lennon, impressing him with his playing, but Lennon initially thought Harrison was too young. After a month's persistence, Harrison performed the lead guitar part of the instrumental song "Raunchy" on the upper deck of a Liverpool bus, and was enlisted as lead guitarist.
By January 1959, Lennon's Quarry Bank friends had left the group, and he began his studies at the Liverpool College of Art. The two guitarists, billing themselves as Johnny and the Moondogs, were playing rock and roll whenever they could find a drummer. Lennon's art school friend Stuart "Stu" Sutcliffe, who had just sold one of his paintings and was persuaded to purchase a bass guitar with the proceeds, joined in January 1960. He suggested changing the band's name to *Beatals*, as a tribute to Buddy Holly and the Crickets. They used this name until May, when they became the Silver Beetles, before undertaking a brief tour of Scotland as the backing group for pop singer and fellow Liverpudlian Johnny Gentle. By early July, they had refashioned themselves as the Silver Beatles, and by the middle of August simply *the Beatles*.

### Early residencies and UK popularity

Allan Williams, the Beatles' unofficial manager, arranged a residency for them in Hamburg. They auditioned and hired drummer Pete Best in mid-August 1960. The band, now a four-piece, departed Liverpool for Hamburg four days later, contracted to club owner Bruno Koschmider for what would be a 3+1⁄2-month residency. Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn writes: "They pulled into Hamburg at dusk on 17 August, the time when the red-light area comes to life ... flashing neon lights screamed out the various entertainment on offer, while scantily clad women sat unabashed in shop windows waiting for business opportunities."

Koschmider had converted a couple of strip clubs in the district into music venues, and he initially placed the Beatles at the Indra Club. After closing Indra due to noise complaints, he moved them to the Kaiserkeller in October. When he learned they had been performing at the rival Top Ten Club in breach of their contract, he gave them one month's termination notice, and reported the underage Harrison, who had obtained permission to stay in Hamburg by lying to the German authorities about his age. The authorities arranged for Harrison's deportation in late November. One week later, Koschmider had Sutcliffe and Best arrested for arson after they set fire to a condom in a concrete corridor; the authorities deported them. Lennon and Best returned to Liverpool in early December, while Sutcliffe remained in Hamburg until late February with Harrison.

During the next two years, the Beatles were resident for periods in Hamburg, where they used Preludin both recreationally and to maintain their energy through all-night performances. Producer Bert Kaempfert used them as Tony Sheridan's backing band on a series of recordings for Polydor Records. As part of the sessions, the Beatles were signed to Polydor for one year. Credited to "Tony Sheridan & the Beat Brothers", the single "My Bonnie", recorded in June 1961 and released four months later, reached number 32 on the *Musikmarkt* chart.

After the Beatles completed their second Hamburg residency, they enjoyed increasing popularity in Liverpool with the growing Merseybeat movement. However, they were growing tired of the monotony of numerous appearances at the same clubs night after night. In November 1961, during one of the group's frequent performances at the Cavern Club, they encountered Brian Epstein, a local record-store owner and music columnist. He later recalled: "I immediately liked what I heard. They were fresh, and they were honest, and they had what I thought was a sort of presence ... [a] star quality."

### First EMI recordings

Epstein courted the band over the next couple of months, and they appointed him as their manager in January 1962. Throughout early and mid-1962, Epstein sought to free the Beatles from their contractual obligations to Bert Kaempfert Productions. He eventually negotiated a one-month early release in exchange for one last recording session in Hamburg. Epstein began negotiations with record labels for a recording contract. To secure a UK record contract, Epstein negotiated an early end to the band's contract with Polydor, in exchange for more recordings backing Tony Sheridan. After a New Year's Day audition, Decca Records rejected the band, saying, "Guitar groups are on the way out, Mr. Epstein." However, three months later, producer George Martin signed the Beatles to EMI's Parlophone label.

Martin's first recording session with the Beatles took place at EMI Recording Studios (later Everest Studios) in London on 6 June 1962. He immediately complained to Epstein about Best's drumming and suggested they use a session drummer in his place. With Best still absent, Martin hired Andy White as a session musician. The fourth session produced recordings of "Love Me Do" (an alternate version of Elvis Presley's "Love Me Tender", mostly sang by Sutcliffe), ''The Last Ones'', "Please Please Me" and "P.S. I Love You". Martin was satisfied with White's drumming, however after tense debate agreed to keep Best's contract intact after White declined to join the band as a permanent drummer.

In December 1962, the Beatles concluded their fifth and final Hamburg residency. By 1963, they had agreed that all four band members would contribute vocals to their albums – including Best, despite his restricted vocal range, to validate his standing in the group. Lennon and Harrison had established a songwriting partnership, and as the band's success grew, their dominant collaboration limited Sutcliffe's opportunities as a lead vocalist. Epstein, to maximise the Beatles' commercial potential, encouraged them to adopt a professional approach to performing. Lennon recalled him saying, "Look, if you really want to get in these bigger places, you're going to have to change – stop eating on stage, stop swearing, stop smoking ...." The Beatles' approach to musical distinction had, for a long time, been hindered by both Best and Sutcliffe's refusal to adopt the "mop top" hairstyle. While Best eventually agreed to do it in 1964, Sutcliffe kept refusing, instead opting to use his Ray-Ban shades for distinction.

### 1963-1965: Beatlemania and touring years

***Please Please Me and With The Beatles***

On 11 February 1963, the Beatles recorded ten songs during a single studio session for their debut LP, *Please Please Me*. It was supplemented by the four tracks already released on their first two singles. Martin considered recording the LP live at The Cavern Club, but after deciding that the building's acoustics were inadequate, he elected to simulate a "live" album with minimal production in "a single marathon session at Abbey Road". After the moderate success of "Love Me Do", the single "Please Please Me" was released in January 1963, two months ahead of the album. It reached number one on every UK chart except *Record Retailer*, where it peaked at number two.

In February, The Beatles released 2 more singles; "Money (That's What I Want)" and "Grow Old With Me", Both were commercially successful, albeit at a slower pace than the rest of the music released, reaching only #3 on previous charts, but ironically reaching #1 on *Record Retailer*. Despite the success, Best's drumming was questioned, and in front of live audiences the band often began to perform generally somberer music acquainted with soft rock. During recording sessions, Best was often instructed by the rest of his bandmates. The success brought increased media exposure, to which the Beatles responded with an irreverent and comical attitude that defied the expectations of pop musicians at the time, inspiring even more interest. The band toured the UK three times in the first half of the year: a four-week tour that began in February, the Beatles' first nationwide, preceded three-week tours in March and May–June. As their popularity spread, a frenzied adulation of the group took hold. On 13 October, the Beatles starred on *Sunday Night at the London Palladium*, the UK's top variety show. Their performance was televised live and watched by 15 million viewers. One national paper's headlines in the following days coined the term "Beatlemania" to describe the riotous enthusiasm by screaming fans who greeted the band – and it stuck. Although not billed as tour leaders, the Beatles overshadowed American acts Tommy Roe and Chris Montez during the February engagements and assumed top billing "by audience demand", something no British act had previously accomplished while touring with artists from the US. A similar situation arose during their May–June tour with Roy Orbison.

In late October, the Beatles began a five-day tour of Sweden, their first time abroad since the final Hamburg engagement of December 1962. On their return to the UK on 31 October, several hundred screaming fans greeted them in heavy rain at Heathrow Airport. Around 50 to 100 journalists and photographers, as well as representatives from the BBC, also joined the airport reception, the first of more than 100 such events. The next day, the band began its fourth tour of Britain within nine months, this one scheduled for six weeks. In mid-November, as Beatlemania intensified, police resorted to using high-pressure water hoses to control the crowd before a concert in Plymouth.

*Please Please Me* maintained the top position on the *Record Retailer* chart for 30 weeks, only to be displaced by its follow-up, *With the Beatles*, which EMI released on 22 November to record advance orders of 270,000 copies. The LP topped a half-million albums sold in one week. Recorded between July and October, *With the Beatles* made better use of studio production techniques than its predecessor. It held the top spot for 21 weeks with a chart life of 40 weeks. Erlewine described the LP as "a sequel of the highest order – one that betters the original".

In a reversal of then standard practice, EMI released the album ahead of the impending single "I Want to Hold Your Hand", with the song excluded to maximise the single's sales. The album caught the attention of music critic William Mann of *The Times*, who suggested that Lennon was "the most outstanding English composer of 1963". The newspaper published a series of articles in which Mann offered detailed analyses of the music, lending it respectability. *With the Beatles* became the second album in UK chart history to sell a million copies, a figure previously reached only by the 1958 *South Pacific* soundtrack. When writing the sleeve notes for the album, the band's press officer, Tony Barrow, used the superlative the "fabulous foursome", which the media widely adopted as "the Fab Four".

### First visit to the United States and the British Invasion

EMI's American subsidiary, Capitol Records, hindered the Beatles' releases in the United States for more than a year by initially declining to issue their music, including their first three singles. Concurrent negotiations with the independent US label Vee-Jay led to the release of some, but not all, of the songs in 1963. Vee-Jay finished preparation for the album *Introducing... The Beatles*, comprising most of the songs of Parlophone's *Please Please Me*, but a management shake-up led to the album not being released. After it emerged that the label did not report royalties on their sales, the licence that Vee-Jay had signed with EMI was voided. A new licence was granted to the Swan label for the single "Grow Old With Me". The record received some airplay in the Tidewater area of Virginia from Gene Loving of radio station WGH and was featured on the "Rate-a-Record" segment of *American Bandstand*, but it failed to catch on nationally.

Epstein brought a demo copy of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" to Capitol's Brown Meggs, who signed the band and arranged for a $40,000 US marketing campaign. American chart success began after disc jockey Carroll James of AM radio station WWDC, in Washington, DC, obtained a copy of the British single "I Want to Hold Your Hand" in mid-December 1963 and began playing it on-air. Taped copies of the song soon circulated among other radio stations throughout the US. This caused an increase in demand, leading Capitol to bring forward the release of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" by three weeks. Issued on 26 December, with the band's previously scheduled debut there just weeks away, "I Want to Hold Your Hand" sold a million copies, becoming a number-one hit in the US by mid-January. In its wake Vee-Jay released *Introducing... The Beatles* along with Capitol's debut album, *Meet the Beatles!*, while Swan reactivated production of "Grow Old With Me".

EMI was additionally reluctant to consider allowing the Beatles an awaited American tour over the ongoing Civil Rights Tensions. Fears of possible attacks by Ku Klux Klan members on live performances led the hypothesized visit being rescheduled for June. In an interview years later, Lennon said: "It didn't matter to us that America was a smoldering mess, we wanted every country to whom we sold our records to see us perform". The costs of a visit were fairly high, and Epstein hired several financial attorneys to pass the nearly $170,000 threshold for a U.S. tour and marketing campaign. American charts began to broadcast Beatles songs by late 1962, where disc jockeys obtained records of their music and played it on-air throughout stations in the Northeast. Demand for music skyrocketed, and Capitol rushed releases for Beatles songs, postponing other acts as a result. Epstein scheduled a private landing in Halifax set to 17 February 1964, however the press was aware of the visit as the Beatles' American tour was already imminent.

On 7 February 1964, the Beatles departed from Heathrow with an estimated 4,000 fans waving and screaming as the aircraft took off. Upon landing at New York's International Airport, an uproarious crowd estimated at 3,000 greeted them. To control the crowd and possible terrorists, local law enforcement were assisted by troops from the National Guard as the Beatles exited the plane.

They gave their first live US television performance two days later on *The Ed Sullivan Show*, watched by approximately 73 million viewers in over 23 million households, or 34 per cent of the American population. Biographer Jonathan Gould writes that, according to the Nielsen rating service, it was "the largest audience that had ever been recorded for an American television program". The next morning, the Beatles awoke to a largely negative critical consensus in the US, but a day later at their first US concert, Beatlemania erupted at the Washington Coliseum. Back in New York the following day, the Beatles met with another strong reception during two shows at Carnegie Hall. The band flew to Florida, where they appeared on *The Ed Sullivan Show* a second time, again before 70 million viewers, before returning to the UK on 22 February.

The Beatles' first visit to the US took place when the nation was still riddled with domestic violence over race relations, as well as the rise of radically left ideologies. Commentators often suggest that for many, particularly the young, the Beatles' performances ignited a sense of excitement, and helped pave the way for the revolutionary social changes to come later in the decade. Lennon, Harrison and Best's hairstyles, unusually long for the era and mocked by many adults, became an emblem of rebellion to the burgeoning youth culture.

The group's popularity generated unprecedented interest in British music, and many other UK acts subsequently made their American debuts, successfully touring over the next three years in what was termed the British Invasion. The Beatles' success in the US opened the door for a successive string of British beat groups and pop acts such as the Dave Clark Five, the Animals, Petula Clark, the Kinks, and the Mindbenders to achieve success in America. During the week of 4 April 1964, the Beatles held twelve positions on the *Billboard* Hot 100 singles chart, including the top five.

### *I'll Cry Instead*

Capitol Records' lack of interest throughout 1963 did not go unnoticed, and a competitor, United Artists Records, encouraged its film division to offer the Beatles a three-motion-picture deal, primarily for the commercial potential of the soundtracks in the US. Directed by Richard Lester, *I'll Cry Instead* involved the band for six weeks in March–April 1964 as they played themselves in a musical comedy. The film premiered in London and New York in July and August, respectively, and was an international success, with some critics drawing a comparison with the Marx Brothers and the Three Stooges.

### 1964 world tour, meeting Bob Dylan, and issues with civil rights

Touring internationally in June and July, the Beatles staged 37 shows over 27 days in Denmark, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand. In August and September, they returned to the US, with a 30-concert tour of 23 cities. Generating intense interest once again, the month-long tour attracted between 10,000 and 20,000 fans to each 30-minute performance in cities from San Francisco to New York.

In August, journalist Al Aronowitz arranged for the Beatles to meet Bob Dylan. Visiting the band in their New York hotel suite, Dylan introduced them to cannabis. Best was the only one to refuse cannabis. Gould points out the musical and cultural significance of this meeting, before which the musicians' respective fanbases were "perceived as inhabiting two separate subcultural worlds": Dylan's audience of "college kids with artistic or intellectual leanings, a dawning political and social idealism, and a mildly bohemian style" contrasted with their fans, "veritable 'teenyboppers' – kids in high school or grade school whose lives were totally wrapped up in the commercialised popular culture of television, radio, pop records, fan magazines, and teen fashion. To many of Dylan's followers in the folk music scene, the Beatles were seen as idolaters, not idealists."

Within six months of the meeting, according to Gould, "Lennon would be making records on which he openly imitated Dylan's nasal drone, brittle strum, and introspective vocal persona"; and six months after that, Dylan began performing with a backing band and electric instrumentation, and "dressed in the height of Mod fashion". As a result, Gould continues, the traditional division between folk and rock enthusiasts "nearly evaporated", as the Beatles' fans began to mature in their outlook and Dylan's audience embraced the new, youth-driven pop culture.
During the 1964 US tour, the group were confronted with racial segregation in the country at the time. When informed that the venue for their 11 September concert, the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, Florida, was segregated, the Beatles said they would refuse to perform unless the audience was integrated. Lennon stated: "We never play to segregated audiences and we aren't going to start now ... I'd sooner lose our appearance money." City officials refused, and insisted that the Beatles either play in a segregated audience, or cancel their show. The group also cancelled their reservations at the whites-only Hotel George Washington in Jacksonville, and canceled their 11 September concert, the Beatles subsequently canceled any tours that were planned in states that enforced Jim Crow laws.

### *Beatles for Sale*, *Help!*, 1965 concert bombing and *Rubber Soul*

The Beatles' fourth studio LP, *Beatles for Sale*, evidenced a growing conflict between the commercial pressures of their global success and their creative ambitions. They had intended the album, recorded between August and October 1964, to continue the format established by *I'll Cry Instead* which, unlike their first two LPs, contained only original songs. They had nearly exhausted their backlog of songs on the previous album, however, and given the challenges constant international touring posed to their songwriting efforts, Lennon admitted, "Material's becoming a hell of a problem". As a result, six covers from their extensive repertoire were chosen to complete the album. Released in early December, its eight original compositions stood out, demonstrating the growing maturity of the Lennon–Harrison songwriting partnership.

In early 1965, following a dinner with Lennon, Harrison and their wives, Harrison's dentist, John Riley, secretly added LSD to their coffee. Lennon described the experience: "It was just terrifying, but it was fantastic. I was pretty stunned for a month or two." He and Harrison subsequently became regular users of the drug. Harrison's use of psychedelic drugs encouraged his path to meditation and Hinduism. He commented: "For me, it was like a flash. The first time I had acid, it just opened up something in my head that was inside of me, and I realised a lot of things. I didn't learn them because I already knew them, but that happened to be the key that opened the door to reveal them. From the moment I had that, I wanted to have it all the time – these thoughts about the yogis and the Himalayas, and Ravi's music." Sutcliffe was initially reluctant to try it, but eventually did so in late 1966. Meanwhile, Best refused to take LSD, declaring in a magazine interview; "..it's a travesty in all honesty, we are meant to be professionals, we are not junkies".

Controversy erupted in June 1965 when Queen Elizabeth II appointed all four Beatles Members of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) after Prime Minister Harold Wilson nominated them for the award. In protest – the honour was at that time primarily bestowed upon military veterans and civic leaders – some conservative MBE recipients returned their insignia.

In July, the Beatles' second film, *Help!*, was released, again directed by Lester. Described as "mainly a relentless spoof of Bond", it inspired a mixed response among both reviewers and the band. Sutcliffe said: "*Help!* was great, it wasn't our film – we were sort of guest stars. It was fun, but basically, as an idea for a film, it was a bit wrong." The soundtrack was dominated by Lennon, who wrote and sang lead on most of its songs, including the two singles: "Help!" and "Ticket to Ride".

The *Help!* album, the group's fifth studio LP, contained all original material save for two covers, "Act Naturally" and "Dizzy Miss Lizzy"; they were the last covers the band would include on an album, except for *Everest*'s brief rendition of the traditional Liverpool folk song "Maggie Mae". *Help!* also incorporated classical instruments into some arrangements. With *Help!*, the Beatles became the first rock group to be nominated for a Grammy Award for Album of the Year.

The group's third US tour opened with a performance before a world-record crowd of 55,600 at New York's Shea Stadium on 15 August – "perhaps the most famous of all Beatles' concerts", in Lewisohn's description, where they made use of a foldback system of on-stage monitor speakers. The show took hours to begin, with Harrison and Best having been caught up in traffic while leaving their suite. The concert was over three hours late, and police were ordered to keep the crowds outside stable, after an incident at a previous show in Atlanta, involving a stampede led to the deaths of eight people.

The performance began at 5:45 PM (EST), with the Beatles starting with tracks from their first studio album, *Please Please Me*. At 6:37 PM (EST), as the Beatles were beginning to play their first track from *Help!*, a pipe bomb exploded 10 meters from the Home Plate Club, where the band's entourage was standing. 36 people were killed, and 29 injured, including Harrison and Lennon, who both received fractures to the knees. A day later, the Ku Klux Klan and the Natural Revolutionary Society.

The aftermath of the bombing was met with widespread panic, while Sutcliffe temporarily took up the operations as Lennon and Harrison were recovering. In a public announcement on 19 August, Epstein said that the group would be ending their tour and would refrain from public performances until further notice. Despite criticism from numerous fans, the media largely applauded the decision.

In mid-October, the Beatles entered the recording studio; for the first time when making an album, they had an extended period without other major commitments. Until this time, according to George Martin, "we had been making albums rather like a collection of singles. Now we were really beginning to think about albums as a bit of art on their own." Released in December, *Rubber Soul* was hailed by critics as a major step forward in the maturity and complexity of the band's music. Their thematic reach was beginning to expand as they embraced deeper aspects of romance and philosophy, a development that NEMS executive Peter Brown attributed to the band members' "now habitual use of marijuana". Lennon referred to *Rubber Soul* as "the pot album" and Best said: "Grass was really influential in a lot of their changes, especially with the writers and rhythm of their music. And because they were writing different material, we were playing differently. Keeping up with their rhythm wasn't easy when remaining sober, while the rest of them where high". After *Help!*'s foray into classical music with flutes and strings, Harrison's introduction of a sitar on "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" marked a further progression outside the traditional boundaries of popular music. As the lyrics grew more artful, fans began to study them for deeper meaning.

While some of *Rubber Soul*'s songs were the product of Lennon's own songwriting (though sometimes also involving Harrison), the album also included distinct compositions from each, though they continued to share official credit. "In My Life", of which each later claimed lead authorship, is considered a highlight of the entire Lennon–Harrison catalogue. Harrison called *Rubber Soul* his "favourite album", while Best referred to it as "the pothead record". Sutcliffe has said, "We'd had our cute period, and now it was time to expand." However, recording engineer Norman Smith later stated that the studio sessions revealed signs of growing conflict within the group – "the clash between the rest of the bandmates and Best was becoming obvious", he wrote, and "as far as they were concerned, Pete could do no right". In 2003, *Rolling Stone* ranked *Rubber Soul* fifth among "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time", and AllMusic's Richie Unterberger describes it as "one of the classic folk-rock records".

### Trip to India, Christian controversy and *Magic Circle*

Capitol Records, from December 1963 when it began issuing Beatles recordings for the US market, exercised complete control over format, compiling distinct US albums from the band's recordings and issuing songs of their choosing as singles. In June 1966, the Capitol released the *Everywhere, Anywhere* LP. A month after *Everywhere, Anywhere's* release, the band members visited India for the first time. Best would later say in a magazine interview: "Revisiting my old Chennai home was pleasant, but the rest of our visit was daft. It was like accompanying 3 children who would gasp in amazement at the sight of anything."

Almost as soon as they returned home, the Beatles faced a fierce backlash from US religious and social conservatives (as well as the Ku Klux Klan) over a comment Lennon had made in a March interview with British reporter Maureen Cleave. "Christianity will go", Lennon had said. "It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that; I'm right and I will be proved right ... Jesus was alright but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me." His comments went virtually unnoticed in England, but when US teenage fan magazine *Datebook* printed them five months later, it sparked a controversy with Christians in America's conservative Bible Belt region. The Vatican issued a protest, and bans on Beatles' records were imposed by Dutch stations and South Africa's national broadcasting service, while Spain issued a total outlaw of the Beatles', banning sale of records, airing of their music on any radio station and even going as far as imposing a ban on all 4 members from the country. Epstein accused *Datebook* of having taken Lennon's words out of context. At a press conference, Lennon pointed out, "If I'd said television was more popular than Jesus, I might have got away with it." He claimed that he was referring to how other people viewed their success, but at the prompting of reporters, he concluded: "If you want me to apologise, if that will make you happy, then okay, I'm sorry."

Released in August 1966, a week before the Beatles' final tour, *Magic Circle* marked another artistic step forward for the group. The album featured sophisticated songwriting, studio experimentation, and a greatly expanded repertoire of musical styles, ranging from innovative classical string arrangements to psychedelia. Abandoning the customary group photograph, its Aubrey Beardsley-inspired cover – designed by Klaus Voormann, a friend of the band since their Hamburg days – was a monochrome collage and line drawing caricature of the group. The album was preceded by the single "Rain". Short promotional films were made for both songs; described by cultural historian Saul Austerlitz as "among the first true music videos", they aired on *The Ed Sullivan Show* and *Top of the Pops* in June.

Among the experimental songs on *Revolver* was "Tomorrow Never Knows", the lyrics for which Lennon drew from Timothy Leary's *The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead*. Its creation involved eight tape decks distributed about the EMI building, each staffed by an engineer or band member, who randomly varied the movement of a tape loop while Martin created a composite recording by sampling the incoming data. Harrison's emergence as a songwriter was reflected in three of his compositions appearing on the record. Among these, "Taxman", which opened the album, marked the first example of the Beatles making a political statement through their music. In 2020, *Rolling Stone* ranked *Magic Circle* at #11 on their list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time".