Доклад: Beatles

The Beatles

The English ROCK MUSIC group The Beatles gave the 1960s its characteristic

musical flavor and had a profound influence on the course of popular music,

equaled by few performers. The guitarists John Winston Lennon, Oct. 9,

1940; James Paul McCartney, June 18, 1942; and George Harrison, Feb. 25,

1943; and the drummer Ringo Starr, Richard Starkey, July 7, 1940, were all

born and raised in Liverpool. Lennon and McCartney had played together in a

group called The Quarrymen. With Harrison, they formed their own group, The

Silver Beatles, in 1959, and Starr joined them in 1962. As The Beatles, they

developed a local following in Liverpool clubs, and their first recordings,

"Love Me Do" (1962) and "Please Please Me" (1963), quickly made them

Britain's top rock group. Their early music was influenced by the American

rock singers Chuck BERRY and Elvis PRESLEY, but they infused a hackneyed

musical form with freshness, vitality, and wit.

The release of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" in 1964 marked the beginning of the

phenomenon known as "Beatlemania" in the United States. The Beatles' first

U.S. tour aroused a universal mob adulation. Their concerts were scenes of

mass worship, and their records sold in the millions. Their first film, the

innovative A Hard Day's Night (1964), was received enthusiastically by a wide

audience that included many who had never before listened to rock music.

Composing their own material (Lennon and McCartney were the major creative

forces), The Beatles established the precedent for other rock groups to play

their own music. Experimenting with new musical forms, they produced an

extraordinary variety of songs: the childishly simple "Yellow Submarine";

the bitter social commentary of "Eleanor Rigby"; parodies of earlier pop

styles; new electronic sounds; and compositions that were scored for

cellos, violins, trumpets, and sitars, as well as for conventional guitars

and drums. Some enthusiasts cite the albums Rubber Soul (1965) and Revolver

(1966) as the apex of Beatle art, although Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts

Club Band (1967), perhaps the first rock album designed thematically as a

single musical entity, is more generally considered their triumph. The group

disbanded in 1970, after the release of their final album, Let It Be, to

pursue individual careers. On Dec. 8, 1980, John Lennon was fatally shot in

New York City. In 1991, Paul McCartney's classical composition Liverpool

Oratorio was performed to some acclaim in Britain and the United States.

Igor Popov gr.3.1