[custom_adv] The Beatles were an English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. With members John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, they became widely regarded as the foremost and most influential music band in history. [custom_adv] Rooted in skiffle, beat and 1950s rock and roll, the Beatles later experimented with several musical styles, ranging from pop ballads and Indian music to psychedelia and hard rock, often incorporating classical elements and unconventional recording techniques in innovative ways. [custom_adv] In 1963, their enormous popularity first emerged as "Beatlemania"; as the group's music grew in sophistication, led by primary songwriters Lennon and McCartney, the band were integral to pop music's evolution into an art form and to the development of the counterculture of the 1960s. [custom_adv] The Beatles built their reputation playing clubs in Liverpool and Hamburg over a three-year period from 1960, with Stuart Sutcliffe initially serving as bass player. The core trio of Lennon, McCartney and Harrison, together since 1958, went through a succession of drummers, including Pete Best, before asking Starr to join them in 1962. [custom_adv] Manager Brian Epstein moulded them into a professional act, and producer George Martin guided and developed their recordings, greatly expanding the group's popularity in the United Kingdom after their first hit, "Love Me Do", in late 1962. [custom_adv] They acquired the nickname "the Fab Four" as Beatlemania grew in Britain over the next year, and by early 1964 became international stars, leading the "British Invasion" of the United States pop market. From 1965 onwards, the Beatles produced increasingly innovative recordings, including the albums Rubber Soul (1965), Revolver (1966), Sgt. [custom_adv] Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), The Beatles (also known as the "White Album", 1968) and Abbey Road (1969). After their break-up in 1970, they each enjoyed success as solo artists. Lennon was shot and killed in December 1980, and Harrison died of lung cancer in November 2001. McCartney and Starr remain musically active. [custom_adv] The Beatles are the best-selling band in history, with estimated sales of over 800 million physical and digital albums worldwide. They have had more number-one albums on the British charts and sold more singles in the UK than any other act. [custom_adv] They are also the best-selling music artists in the United States, with 178 million certified units. In 2008, the group topped Billboard magazine's list of the all-time most successful artists; as of 2017, they hold the record for most number-one hits on the Hot 100 chart with twenty. [custom_adv] They have received seven Grammy Awards, an Academy Award for Best Original Song Score and fifteen Ivor Novello Awards. The group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, and all four main members were inducted individually from 1994 to 2015. [custom_adv] They were also collectively included in Time magazine's compilation of the twentieth century's 100 most influential people.In March 1957, John Lennon, then aged sixteen, formed a skiffle group with several friends from Quarry Bank High School. [custom_adv] They briefly called themselves the Blackjacks, before changing their name to the Quarrymen after discovering that a respected local group was already using the other name. [custom_adv] Fifteen-year-old Paul McCartney joined as a rhythm guitarist shortly after he and Lennon met that July. In February 1958, McCartney invited his friend George Harrison to watch the band. The fifteen-year-old auditioned for Lennon, impressing him with his playing, but Lennon initially thought Harrison was too young to join them. [custom_adv] After a month of Harrison's persistence, during a second meeting, arranged by McCartney, he performed the lead guitar part for the instrumental "Raunchy" on the upper deck of a Liverpool bus,[5] and they enlisted him as their lead guitarist [custom_adv] Magical Mystery Tour, the soundtrack to a forthcoming Beatles television film, was released in the UK as a six-track double extended play disc (EP) in early December 1967.In the United States, the six songs were issued on an identically titled LP that also included five tracks from the band's recent singles. [custom_adv] Unterberger says of the US Magical Mystery Tour, "the psychedelic sound is very much in the vein of Sgt. Pepper, and even spacier in parts (especially the sound collages of 'I Am the Walrus')" and he calls its five songs culled from the band's 1967 singles "huge, glorious, and innovative". [custom_adv] In its first three weeks, the album set a record for the highest initial sales of any Capitol LP, and it is the only Capitol compilation later to be adopted in the band's official canon of studio albums.First aired on Boxing Day, the Magical Mystery Tour film, largely directed by McCartney, brought the group their first major negative UK press. [custom_adv] It was dismissed as "blatant rubbish" by the Daily Express; the Daily Mail called it "a colossal conceit"; and The Guardian labelled the film "a kind of fantasy morality play about the grossness and warmth and stupidity of the audience". [custom_adv] In January 1968, the Beatles filmed a cameo for the animated movie Yellow Submarine, which featured cartoon versions of the band members and a soundtrack with eleven of their songs, including four unreleased studio recordings that made their debut in the film. Released in June 1968, the film was praised by critics for its music, humour and innovative visual style. It would be seven months, however, before its soundtrack album appeared.
