John Lennon formed his first band, the Quarry Men, as a lark when he was in high school in 1957. Around the same time, Paul dragged his brother onto a Butlin's Holiday Camp stage because he couldn't resist the opportunity to sing. George joined the rebels in order to emulate his hero, Carl Perkins, and Ringo played drums for a living because that was all he knew how to do. Individually, they were monomaniacally determined to play rock 'n' roll, and when the four of them finally found each other, the combination was magical. As John would recall, "What we generated was fantastic when we played straight rock, and there was no one to touch us in Britain." 

The Beatles were part of a Liverpool phenomenon the press tagged "Merseybeat," a grassroots flowering of musical organizations similar to those of San Francisco in 1966, and of London a decade later. Merseybeat began in 1956 with a British singer named Lonnie Donegan, who adapted the African-derived blues of such American singers as Leadbelly for British consumption, evolving a style called skiffle. Skiffle's distinguishing features were a simple but infectious rhythm and an ensemble that featured acoustic guitar, washboard percussion, and tea-chest bass (a string attached to a wooden shipping crate pulled taut by a broomstick). The skiffle fad swept across Britain, paving the way for arrival of rock 'n' roll two years later and leaving in its wake scores of teenagers inspired by the possibility of overnight stardom. 

The Quarry Men were one of the more enduring skiffle outfits. Under John's leadership, the group steadily upgraded its roster, adding Paul McCartney, then fifteen years old, on guitar and piano in late 1957. The following year, guitarist George Harrison, one year Paul's junior, was invited to join. By 1959, through a combination of choice and attrition, John, Paul, and George were the group's only steady members. Opportunities to perform were scarce, but they continued to play, sometimes as a trio but usually with one of several occasional drummers. (Drum kits were expensive, and few schoolboys could afford one.) 

A friend of John's from the Liverpool Art College, bass player Stu Sutcliffe, became a steady member in early 1960, and the band went through a series of name changes. Finally they settled on the Silver Beatles, a double-entendre incorporating references to both beat music and Buddy Holly's Cricket. ("Silver" was retained to blunt the effect of such an odd sounding name.) 

During the early years, the Beatles were not regarded as the best of the Mersey bands. In fact, before their first trip to Hamburg in August 1960, for which they took on drummer Pete Best, they were known as one of the worst. It was only after their return that the denizens of Liverpool's clubs began to take notice; over a hundred nights of eight-hour performances in the rough-and-tumble clubs of the Reeperbahn had honed the Silver Beatles' musical skills and showmanship to a fine edge. 

John, Paul, George, and Pete returned from their second stint in Hamburg in the summer of 1961 without Stu, but with a record they had made backing singer Tony Sheridan, a hepped-up arrangement of "My Bonnie (Lies Over the Ocean)." When Brian Epstein, manager of the Liverpool branch of Northern England Music Stores (NEMS), began getting requests for the record, he decided to step around the block to the Cavern Club to see what the fuss was all about. Epstein didn't know anything about rock 'n' roll, but he felt overwhelmed by the Beatles. He was convinced that if he dressed them in suits and taught them to take proper bows after each song, the rest of the world would feel that way, too. 

For six months, Epstein tried to interest one record company after another in his boys. Every time, he was rejected. A deal with Decca records, for whom the Beatles recorded an audition on New Year's Day, 1962, slipped through his fingers. 

Finally, in April, a chance meeting with a music publisher earned him an audience with George Martin, then a producer of oddball comedy records with EMI's backwater label, Parlophone. Martin was impressed not by the Beatles' music, but by their personalities. He offered them a recording contract. In the years before they signed with Parlophone, the band had performed incessantly throughout the Mersyside area. Once they had a contract, they undertook a series of grueling national tours with newly recruited drummer Ringo Starr and, little by little, their record began to sell in Britain. They continued to tour throughout 1963, at the same time inundating the British radio and television airwaves with interviews, special performances, and publicity stunts. As 194 began, Capitol Records agreed to distribute their recordings in the U.S., and waged a huge promotional campaign. By the time they appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, success in America was a forgone conclusion. 

With the American market firmly in hand, the Beatles' success spread across the world with a speed and intensity so fierce that there seemed to be nothing they couldn't achieve. Their wit impressed the pundits, their charm won over the skeptics, and their music made people listen who had never considered popular music worthy of their attention. Each new record topped the charts, and the critics agreed that it was better than the last. By 1965 their concerts, invariably sold out, were no longer held in cinemas and concert halls, but in sports arenas, where writhing masses of teenagers gathered to shriek in ecstasy as the Beatles, inaudible, played behind rows of police officers. Their movies, first A Hard Day's Night and Help! and later, were inevitably hailed as innovations in entertainment. 

But there was a downside to this phenomenal rise to fame. While the Beatles were on tour, they were confined to their hotel rooms, only to have fans climb up drainpipes to get into their windows. When they were in London, they were mobbed in the streets, and fans would sneak into their homes to steal their personal effects. Paternity suits mounted, and jealous boyfriends of female fans even took pot shots at them. Their every word was repeated, interpreted, misquoted, and often misunderstood. Reporters bombarded them with personal, insulting, or just plain stupid questions. 
Everyone, it seemed, wanted a piece of the action: Fans expressed their adoration, businessmen sought their endorsement for products, and musicians imitated their haircuts. The Beatles found themselves at a the center of a cynical bid for political support when British Prime Minister Harold Wilson, on October 26, 1965, awarded each Beatle the prestigious MBE (Member of the British Empire), an honor usually reserved for war heroes. The fans were delighted, the Beatles embarrassed; several prominent MBE-holders returned their medals in protest. What had begun as an adolescent whim, a chance to dress up in leather and sing favorite songs in front of a dancing, sweating crowd, had in many ways become a cage. 

And the music was changing. It took on subtleties that couldn't be adequately represented before a stadium full of screaming children, stylistic features that didn't lend themselves to Top Ten radio, intentions that the Beatles themselves didn't quite understand. On August 29, 1966, they made their last official concert appearance and retired from the stage to concentrate on their recordings. 

With the Beatles sequestered at Abbey Road Studios, the artistic growth that characterized their work in 1965's Rubber Soul continued at an accelerated pace. Revolver (1966) plumbed depths of emotional expression ("Eleanor Rigby") and technical expertise ("Tomorrow Never Knows") unprecedented in modern popular music. The landmark Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), with its aural illusions, seamless segues, and extensive use of unusual instruments and sounds, represented a new pinnacle in the coloristic and imaginative aspects of recorded music. 
With the sprawling White Album (1968), a new Beatles emerged, one completely unfettered by the expectations of the listening public. This impression, suggested by the eight-minute abstract sound collage "Revolution 9," was soon confirmed by solo projects such as John and Yoko's Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins [US: Apple T-)] and George's Electronic Sounds [US: Zapple ST-)]. As those records also indicate, the individual Beatles were no longer content to submerge their personalities for the benefit of the whole. The Fabs, which John had once called "four parts of the same person," had begun to disintegrate. 

The jet-set elite had introduced them to psychoactive drugs-marijuana via Bob Dylan in 1964, LSD via their dentist in early 1965-which they embraced as both an escape from, and a transcendence of, what they had become. Searching for a sense of purpose higher than that which they had achieved through their music, they became momentary disciples of the Maharishi Mehesh Yogi in 1967, which alienated them further from the mainstream audience. Brian Epstein, who had struggled to keep the Fab Four out of controversy, now watched in resignation as his boys grew facial hair, admitted to dropping acid, and announced their opposition to U.S. involvement in Vietnam. As the group spent more time involved in esoteric pursuits and less in maintaining their public image, Epstein's life, once dedicated to the Fab Four, became increasingly insular and chaotic. On August 17, 1967, he died of an accidental overdose of barbiturates. 
Epstein's death was the beginning of the end of the Beatles. They never recovered from the loss of the man whose faith and vision had been the driving force behind their fame. Bravely, perhaps foolishly, they decided to manage themselves. When their first independent movie, the self-produced and directed TV film Magical Mystery Tour, proved frivolous and self-indulgent, it became evident-for the first time-that the Beatles weren't infallible. 

Finding their earnings subject to a 90-percent tax rate, the Beatles decided to invest their income in an entertainment conglomerate which they named Apple Corps Ltd. The company, which Paul dubbed an exercise in "Western Communism" on the May 15, 1968 broadcast of The Tonight Show, was their statement to the mainstream world about the proper relationship between art and commerce; Apple was a place where artists of all styles and media could obtain finances for their ideas. The Beatles signed a stable of old friends and young up-and-comers to Apple Records, bought script for Apple Films,d an Apple Boutique, and solicited projects in newspaper advertisements. After a short time, however, the organization was overrun with charlatans and hangers-on. In desperation, the Beatles hired the Rolling Stones' former manager, Allen Klein, to pare down Apple's operations and personnel to bare essentials. 

Despite the optimism that surrounded the post-Sgt. Pepper era, the Beatles' artistic vision became increasingly less focussed, their business affairs a tangle of greed and naivete, and their personal affairs alarmingly complex. John's all-consuming relationship with his second wife Yoko Ono, and Paul's with his wife Linda Eastman, effectively ended the symbiosis between the principal Beatles. In addition, George had long since tired of being a Beatle, and was eager to move beyond the shadows of Lennon and McCartney. At the dawn of 1969, entering into what would become a seventeen-month effort to make the Let It Be album and film, the Fab Four found themselves unwilling to continue to fulfill the role of the world's most celebrated entertainers. By the end of 1970, Paul McCartney found it necessary to sue his partners in order to avoid having his affairs managed by Klein, the man chosen by the other three Beatles. With the legal and personal dissolution of their partnership, John, Paul, George, and Ringo left what remained of the Beatles to be picked clean by lawyers, accountants, record companies, and the popular press. In the decades since, their popularity has shown no signs of fading, and rereleases of their hits periodically rise to the top of the charts. Hopes of a reunion, fed by small-scale collaborations on Ringo's occasional solo albums, were dashed by John's tragic death in December 1980. Nonetheless, 1990 found both Paul and Ringo performing Beatle songs onstage once again (albeit not together), and the reactivation of George's career revived perennial hopes that the three remaining Beatles might one day make music together again. The three remaining Beatles came together in mid-nineties to record two new songs-Real Love and Free as a Bird-which, along with some previously unreleased tracks, were released with Beatles Anthology.