The Most Famous Album in the World

In the opinion of some newspapers in early 1967, the Beatles didn’t have any more ideas. And then came Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
The title song was Paul’s. He had the idea after a trip to the United States. Bands with very long names were becoming popular there. Paul wanted the Beatles to be a different band for the album. In his mind, the album was a concert by this other band.

John and George didn’t see the album in this way. ‘It doesn’t go anywhere,’ John once said about the Sergeant Pepper idea. But there were great songs on the album.
Songs like ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’ and ‘With a Little Help From My Friends’ were happy and light.

John took almost all the words for ‘Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite’ from an old sign that he found in a shop.
The words and the music of ‘Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds’ were like a dream. The title came from a picture by John’s young son, Julian.

‘A Day in the Life’ was one of the best examples of Paul and John’s strong points. John wrote the main part of the song, beginning ‘I read the news today, oh boy.’ The idea came from two newspaper stories. Paul added the middle part. It worked perfectly in John’s song.

The album was a big step in the band’s music. They used the studio wonderfully, but this took a long time. The Beatles’ first album was made in around twelve hours, but Sergeant Pepper took over 700 hours! Both Ringo and George said later that it was sometimes boring. ‘My heart was still in India,’ George said.

Famous faces

Everything about the album was special – even the cover. It showed the band with a crowd of famous people – writers, singers, actors, thinkers. At first there was a photo of Mahatma Gandhi, but the record company asked the band to take it off. They didn’t want to make people in India angry.

Today, fans disagree about which is the best Beatles album. But most of them believe that Sergeant Pepper was the most important. The world was changing fast in 1967. While the American war in Vietnam continued, young people around the world were exploring new ideas, new sounds. The summer of 1967 became known as ‘the summer of love’. Sergeant Pepper helped to make that summer.

Life and Death

Not long after Sergeant Pepper, the Beatles were invited to play in a live television programme called Our World. Different countries had to make different parts of the show, and the makers of the programme wanted the Beatles to play for Britain’s part. John wrote the song and on 25 June 1967, about 350 million people all around the world watched the programme.
The Beatles weren’t alone in the television studio. A lot of other musicians played and it was like a big party. Eric Clapton and Mick Jagger were both there. John’s song was perfect for the programme: ‘All You Need Is Love’ was a mirror for the dreams and hopes of young people around the world in 1967.

STORY BEHIND THE SONG

At the end of ‘All You Need Is Love’, the Beatles joked about two of their old songs. John sang ‘Yesterday’ and Paul sang a line from ‘She Loves You’.
Around this time, George was continuing to learn more about Eastern ideas. He asked John and Paul to listen to a talk by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in London. The Maharishi was an Indian who taught Eastern ways of thinking.

The Beatles wanted to know more. In August, all four of them took a train to Bangor in North Wales. They wanted to spend a few days studying with the Maharishi.

A sad sign

Cynthia Lennon wanted to go too, but the usual Beatles crowds were at the train station and Cynthia missed the train. She watched as her husband left without her. For her, this was a sign of the end of their marriage.
While the Beatles were searching for the meaning of life, sad news reached them from London. Brian Epstein was dead. ‘He was one of us,’ John told a reporter.

On the Bus

Epstein’s death brought another problem. The Beatles knew nothing about business. ‘We were in trouble then,’ said John. Ringo has described the band as ‘chickens without heads’ at that time. In the middle of this difficult time, Paul had an idea. He wanted to make a television film. He was trying to help the band, but in John and George’s opinion, Paul was trying to lead them.

The idea for the film was simple. Forty-three people – with the Beatles – drove around the country in a bus. This time, they didn’t have a story to act. They just filmed what happened. There was one problem – nothing really did happen.

Magical Mystery Tour was shown on television in Britain just after Christmas, 1967. Almost fifteen million people watched. They loved the songs, like Paul’s The Fool on the Hill’ and Johns ‘I Am the Walrus’. But not many people liked the film. The color film was shown in black and white on television. But this wasn’t the reason why it wasn’t popular. For some people it was boring, for others it was too strange. For the first time, the Beatles really failed.

STORY BEHIND THE SONG

The idea for ‘I Am The Walrus’ came from Lewis Carroll’s book Alice in Wonderland. John said, ‘The words don’t say a lot…’

In February 1968, the Beatles travelled to India to study again with the Maharishi. The trip had a different meaning for each of them. Ringo went with two suitcases – one of clothes and one of English food in tins! He didn’t stay long. Paul says that he enjoyed this time in India. But John and George stayed longer. George continued to defend the Maharishi, but John soon became angry at their old teacher. A song on the band’s next album was an angry attack on him.

Back in Britain, there were no simple answers in business for the Beatles. They opened the Apple shop in London. Paul called it ‘a beautiful place where you can buy beautiful things.’ The shop lost money almost immediately. But Apple was more than a shop. It was a big company that produced music and films. The Beatles began to produce other musicians. Paul was most interested in Apple’s business. He was there more because he lived in London. But the others felt that Paul was trying to lead the band again.

Yellow Submarine

In July 1968, there was another Beatles film in cinemas. The band recorded a few new songs for Yellow Submarine, but they didn’t even do the voices in the film. In the story, the band saved a strange place called Pepperland with their music.

A New Album and a New Love

In 1968, Cynthia and John Lennon’s marriage ended. John was with Yoko Ono now. He first met the Japanese-American artist at an art show in 1966 and they slowly fell in love.

STORY BEHIND THE SONG

Paul felt sorry for Cynthia and Julian Lennon. The boy was only five. Paul wrote a song for him. He later changed the words from ‘Hey Jules’ to ‘Hey Jude’.

Everything changed for John with Yoko. He often spoke of her as his teacher. Together they explored new ideas. These were called crazy by many people, but John and Yoko weren’t worried. They made their first record together in one night. It was an exploration of sounds. But the biggest news was the cover. It showed John and Yoko without any clothes. ‘We just wanted to be together all the time,’ remembered John.

John and Yoko were together in the studio, too, as the Beatles started their next album. This soon became a problem for the other Beatles. Ringo asked him, ‘What’s this all about?’ The other two and George Martin were angrier. When Yoko was ill, John even brought a bed into the studio for her!

In 1968 the Beatles’ White Album had other problems. Ringo left the band for a time. (The band recorded a few songs without him.) In his opinion, the other Beatles didn’t need him. When they all asked him back, the drummer returned happily. ‘I loved the White Album’, he remembers now.

But not everyone had this opinion. John spoke about the start of the band’s ‘slow death’ at this time. The musical interests in the band were more and more different. The Beatles were less and less a real group. Sometimes the album was recorded in three different studios at the same time, as John, Paul and George worked on their own songs.

The double album mixed many different kinds of music. ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da’ was a happy pop song, while ‘Revolution 9′ was a strange piece of sound art.’ In ‘Back in the USSR’ the band cleverly sounded like the Beach Boys. George’s best song on the album was probably ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’. His friend Eric Clapton joined the band to play on this song.

Secret messages

Two songs from the album later became famous for the wrong reasons. In the mind of Californian Charles Manson, the songs ‘Piggies’ and ‘Helter Skelter’ were secret messages telling him to kill.

George Martin thought that there were too many different songs on the double album. He wanted it to be an excellent single album. But Paul has said, ‘It’s a fine little album.’ John also liked the simpler way of recording.

An Unhappy Film and Two Weddings
At the start of 1969, the band needed new plans. Paul was full of ideas for the band’s future. They decided to write an album and then play it on stage – all in front of cameras. This was the start of Let It Be.

It was a bad time. The band weren’t happy together, and all the cameras made everything worse. George even left the band for a short time after angry words with Paul. Things only got better when a guest musician, American Billy Preston, joined them.

The cameras filmed everything. The cameramen didn’t know it at the time, but in fact they were recording the end of the group. The film Let It Be is difficult to watch at times.

The idea of a big concert soon died. Looking for a way to end the film, the band decided to play a few songs on the Apple building’s roof. People in London looked up in surprise as the Beatles played ‘Get Back’ above them. For a short time, the old days were back! In Ringo’s words, when the music was good, they forgot all the problems. Finally, the police asked the band to stop. They never played live together again.

Producer George Martin didn’t want to touch the long Let It Be recordings. So American Phil Spector took the job. Finally, the Let It Be album came out after the end of the Beatles. Paul didn’t like Spector’s work on it. Both he and George Martin hated the strings on The Long and Winding Road’.

In 1969, Paul married for the first time and John married for the second time. Even the two marriages showed the differences between the two men.

Paul married American photographer Linda Eastman on 12 March. They wanted a quiet wedding, but nothing could be quiet for a Beatle. Hundreds of fans cried as Paul and his new wife drove away.

Weeks later, John and Yoko were married in Gibraltar. The story is told in the song ‘The Ballad of John and Yoko.’ Later, they invited reporters to a ‘bed-in’ at their hotel. They stayed in bed for seven days. They wanted people to think about the meaning of love. (At a later ‘bed-in’, they recorded the song ‘Give Peace a Chance’.)

John and Yoko gave their opinions on a lot of subjects, like the Vietnam War. John sent his MBE back to the British government. He had more and more interests in his life, and the band wasn’t one of them. But the Beatles stayed together for one more record.

The Last Album

After the troubles on Let It Be, George Martin was surprised to receive a telephone call from Paul. The band wanted to make another album. Paul and Martin agreed to do one the ‘old’ way – in the studio. The album was named after the Abbey Road studio in London, and the Beatles worked on it there during July and August 1969.

John and Paul disagreed about some of their ideas for the album. Paul wanted to join all the songs together. John just liked to do different ‘three-minute records’. To keep both men happy, only the songs on the second half of the record are joined together.

Abbey Road was a happy record to work on for most of the time. But not always. When Paul took three days to record ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’, George told him, ‘It’s only a song.’

STORY BEHIND THE SONG

Abbey Road’s ‘Something’ was the band’s first single written by George Harrison. Many people think that it is his best song. Later, Frank Sinatra often sang it on stage. He described it as his favorite Lennon and McCartney song. Telling this story, Paul once joked, ‘Thanks, Frank.’

Nobody knew it at the time, but Abbey Road was the last album. But the band ended it well. The last song was called ‘The End.’ John, Paul and George all played guitar on it. All four Beatles were playing together as a real band again. You can hear the fun in the music. Paul sang the last lines of the last album. They were about love.
Paul Is dead!

After Abbey Road arrived in the shops in October 1969, a radio station in the US started a strange story about Paul. He was dead! The ‘signs’ were on the album’s cover. Paul wasn’t wearing shoes. In some countries, dead people are dressed in clothes but not shoes.

The story grew. The hand over Paul’s head on the cover of Sergeant Pepper was, fans decided, a sign of death. A line in ‘A Day in the Life’ was also about Paul’s death. More and more signs were found.

But if Paul was dead, who was the new person on the front of Abbey Road? The story became sillier. It was a man called William Campbell. Or it was Billy Shears (a singer’s name from the title song on Sergeant Pepper). This new person looked exactly like Paul, of course.
Finally, Life magazine found Paul on his farm in Scotland. The magazine proved it. Paul wasn’t dead. Paul described himself as ‘the last to know’ about his death.

Differences of Opinion

Even before Abbey Road, the Beatles’ company Apple was losing a lot of money. Something had to change. They needed someone to manage the business.

John wanted Allan Klein, the manager of the Rolling Stones, to be the group’s manager. George and Ringo agreed, but Paul didn’t. He wanted Lee Eastman – his wife’s father – to manage Apple’s business.

Paul was still full of ideas for the band and the company, but it was too late. In one meeting, John spoke about the end of the Beatles: ‘It feels good.’
In fact, Paul ended the band in 1970. A few weeks after his first album McCartney was in the shops, he told the world. He was leaving the Beatles ‘because of personal, business and musical differences’.

The band was finished, but the fights about business and money continued in court for years. It was a sad end for the greatest band in the world.

Life After the Beatles

All four of the Beatles found success alone.
Ringo acted in a few films and he continued to make records. His 1973 album Ringo was a big success. All the other Beatles played on this album… but not at the same time. Ringo is still playing and touring with his All Starr Band. Many of Ringo’s famous friends from the world of music – and his son, Zak – have played in this band.

Many British children know and love Ringo for another reason. He was the voice of a train in a famous children’s television programme!

George seemed happy to be away from the shadows of Lennon and McCartney. His 1970 album All Things Must Pass reached number one around the world. George’s most famous song in the 1970s was ‘My Sweet Lord’, but he was taken to court because of it. In the court’s opinion, part of it was copied from an old song. In the early 1980s, George also played in the Travelling Wilburys with Bob Dylan and Roy Orbison.

George became interested in films, but not as an actor. He produced films like Monty Python’s Life of Brian and Time Bandits.
In 1999, someone failed to kill George in his home. But sadly, two years later, he died after a long illness.

Paul has had the most success after the Beatles. After the albums McCartney and Ram, he wanted to be in a real band again. In 1971 he started a new band, Wings, with his wife Linda and guitarist Denny Laine. At first, Wings drove all over Britain playing small concerts. It was like the old days of the Beatles again.

Wings soon became big. 1973’s Band on the Run was Paul’s most successful album. In 1977, the band recorded ‘Mull of Kintyre’. This song sold more than any other single in Britain before that time. Wings ended in 1981, but Paul continued making records. In 1997, he was back at Buckingham Palace. He became Sir Paul McCartney.

Paul has sold millions of records since 1970, but one of his biggest successes was his happy family life with Linda and their children. Sadly, in 1998, Linda McCartney died. Paul now has another woman, Heather Mills, in his life.

John and Yoko moved to New York. They still spoke openly on many subjects, and at one time the American government wanted to throw him out of the country. Some of John’s most interesting work was on his first two albums, John Lennon Plastic Ono Band and Imagine. On the first album, John sang painfully honest songs about his mothers death. In another song, he sang the words, ‘I don’t believe in Beatles I just believe in me.’ The title song of Imagine is probably his most famous song.

Most people think that John’s later work in the 1970s wasn’t as good. For some time, John and Yoko weren’t together. John called this his ‘lost weekend’, but it lasted eighteen months.
Back with Yoko, John didn’t make music for a few years. 

He looked after their son, Sean. He returned to the recording studio in the summer of 1980 to make Double Fantasy with Yoko. Much of the album was about family life. One of the songs from the album, ‘(Just Like) Starting Over’ was doing well when John was killed.

Friends again

The Beatles ended badly, and some of the band were angry for a long time. On 1971’s Imagine, John’s song ‘How Do You Sleep?’ was an attack on Paul. (George Harrison was angry too – he played guitar on the song.)

But finally, Paul and John became friendlier again. Paul visited John a few times in New York after Sean Lennon’s birth. In 1994, years after John’s death, both men were given an important music award. On stage, Paul read out a letter to John. In it, he remembered their past together. He ended, ‘This letter comes, with love, from your friend Paul.’

At the Top Again

The Beatles ruled the music world in the 1960s. They had twenty-two singles in Britain, and eighteen reached number one. Every album of new songs got to number one. In the United States, there were nineteen number one singles. Many people still think that they were the world’s greatest band of all time. In one list of best albums, the top five were all by the Beatles!

But the band’s success wasn’t just for their musical past. In 1995, the three living Beatles came together to record two ‘new’ Beatles songs – ‘Free as a Bird’ and ‘Real Love’. Both songs were by John. The singer recorded them, but they weren’t finished. Paul, George and Ringo worked with these recordings, adding to them. In their minds, they were finishing the music for John while he worked on something else.

Fans could buy new Beatles records again! They also loved the video for ‘Free as a Bird’. It showed people and places from the band’s past – Stu Sutcliffe, Brian Epstein, The Cavern, the street outside the Abbey Road studios. There were hundreds of memories of Beatles songs. A few are:
a cake with the number sixty-four (‘When I’m Sixty-Four’)
a man writing a book (‘Paperback Writer’)
a photo of Mao Tse Tung (a line from ‘Revolution’)
a stone with the name Eleanor Rigby (‘Eleanor Rigby’)

At the same time, the living Beatles told their story in the television programme The Beatles Anthology. More than twenty million copies of the Anthology albums were sold. In 2000, there was a very successful album of the Beatles’ number one songs. They made more money from the album than any other British artist that year. The Beatles were back in the right place – at the top!

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