Oldies Music

Another very popular and well known band is The Beatles. A very inspirational band to many of our bands today.

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The history of The Beatles can be traced all the way back to 1957 when John Lennon and his childhood friend, Pete Shotton, started a band called “The Black Jacks”. They soon after that changed the name to “The Quarry Men”. Most of their gigs were neighborhood events. They did skiffle music.  In 1957 “The Quarry Men” were setting up a show in a church hall when another member of the band introduced Lennon to Paul McCartney. He was at the time a 15 year old, self taught, left handed, guitar player. He later on auditioned for the band and was immediately invited to join, which he did in October, 1957. By February, 1958, they started moving away from the skiffle music and more towards the rock and roll. Which prompted there banjo player to leave the band which then gave McCartney the opportunity to introduce Lennon to his friend and former classmate, George Harrison. The band then, which at the time consisted of Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, piano player Duff Lowe and the drummer Colin Hanton recorded their first demo, consisting of Buddy Holly’s “That’ll Be the Day” and a Lennon-McCartney original, “In Spite of All the Danger.” The Quarry men broke up in 1959. Lennon and McCartney continued to write songs. Harrison then joined a band called “The Les Stewart Quartet”. They band soon reunited when Harrisons band broke up. When the gig ended they continued then as “Johnny and the Moon Dogs”. In 1960 Lennon and McCartney were introduced to their new drummer, Pete Best and bassist, Stu Sutcliffe.

They went through a long line of names, The Long Johns, The Silver Beatles, and The Beat Brothers, before settling on the name, The Beatles. After touring Scotland with a backing singer, Johnny Gentle, they came back with an invite to play at clubs in Hamburg, Germany. Stucliffe left the band soon after that to pursue his life as a photographer. Leaving only Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Best. Who then went and auditioned for Parlophone Records; where they eventually did most of their recording. Their first album, Please Please Me, was released in the UK in 1963. The singles, “Please Please Me” and “She Loves You” received scattered, limited airplay in the U.S. On Dick Clark’s show “American Bandstand”, the teen audience reacted to the band by laughing at there mop top hair cuts. Their second album, “With the Beatles”, was the second only album in the UK to sell only a million copies. By April, 1964, the band’s singles occupied the top five spots on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. They then toured Australian and New Zealand, where their arrival in Adelaide was greeted by a crowd of more than 300,000. The first Beatles more was released in 1964, “A Hard Day’s Night”. The band released 7 albums in 1964 in the U.S. and U.K., all but 3 of them charting at #1. In 1969 Lennon told the band that he was leaving, the band persuaded him to stay a little longer until their album, “Let It Be.” The band breakup was announced in April, 1970.

There are many more bands that are influenced by our bands today. So don’t judge old music, no matter how small.

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