History of The Beatles The Quarrymen In Hamburg At The Cavern Club Decca audition Beatlemania in the United Kingdom North American releases In the United States 1966 More popular than Jesus Studio years In India Break-up Reunions Line-ups Religious beliefs Timeline This box: view talk edit

The religious beliefs of The Beatles describes the evolving spiritual and religious beliefs held by members of the English rock band The Beatles: Paul McCartney, George Harrison, John Lennon and Ringo Starr.

Background[link]

Paul McCartney and George Harrison were both baptised as Roman Catholics during childhood, although McCartney was raised non-denominationally; his mother was Roman Catholic and his father was a Protestant turned agnostic.^[1]

Harrison was raised Roman Catholic.^[2]

John Lennon attended St. Peter's Anglican church. He sang in the choir, attended Sunday School and joined the Bible Class. He was confirmed at the age of fifteen of his own free will.^[3]

Starr attended an Evangelical Anglican church during his childhood.^[4]

The Beatles years[link]

If the band's press officer, Derek Taylor, is to be believed, all four Beatles had abandoned their religious upbringings by 1964. In an interview for the Saturday Evening Post, in August of that year, he stated that The Beatles were "completely anti-Christ. I mean, I am anti-Christ as well, but they're so anti-Christ they shock me which isn't an easy thing." ^[5][6]

In February 1965, the band gave an interview to Playboy magazine, in which they defended themselves against claims that they were anti-religious, while at the same time emphatically declaring themselves to be agnostic.^[7]

McCartney: "We probably seem antireligious because of the fact that none of us believe in God."
Lennon: "If you say you don't believe in God, everybody assumes you're antireligious, and you probably think that's what we mean by that. We're not quite sure 'what' we are, but I know that we're more agnostic than atheistic."
Playboy: "Are you speaking for the group, or just for yourself."
Lennon: "For the group."
Harrison: "John's our official religious spokesman."
McCartney: "We all feel roughly the same. We're all agnostics."
Lennon: "Most people are, anyway."

Arguably, Ringo then went on to hint that some members of the band were in fact atheist, but felt unable to say so.

McCartney: "In America, they're fanatical about God. I know somebody over there who said he was an atheist. The papers nearly refused to print it because it was such shocking news that somebody could actually be an atheist... yeah... and admit it."
Starr: "He speaks for all of us."

It was also in February 1965 that filming for Help! began, on location in the Bahamas. During filming, a Hindu devotee presented each Beatle with a book about reincarnation. The incident is widely regarded as having instigated the band's interest in Indian culture.^[8]

A year later, in August 1966, and on the eve of an American tour, the American teen magazine, Datebook, published Lennon's remark that the Beatles had become "more popular than Jesus". Lennon had, in fact, originally made the remark to a British newspaper and when it was first published in the United Kingdom, in March 1966, his words had provoked no public reaction. After Datebook quoted his comments five months later, however, vociferous protests broke out in the United States. The Beatles' records were publicly burned, threats were made and some radio stations refused to play their music. The protest also spread to other countries including Mexico, South Africa and Spain.^[9][10][11]

Two press conferences were held in the US, where both Brian Epstein and Lennon expressed their regret that Lennon's words had been taken out of context and offence taken. At one of the conferences, Lennon described his own belief in God by quoting the Bishop of Woolwich, saying, "... not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us."^[12] The US tour went ahead as planned, although there was some disruption and picketing of their concerts.

Harrison's interest in Indian culture expanded to Hinduism and after the 1966 American tour, until the commencement of the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album, he and his first wife went on a pilgrimage to Mumbai where Harrison studied sitar, visited various holy places and met several gurus, including Maharishi. Two years later, in 1968 all four Beatles travelled to Rishikesh in northern India to study meditation with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Although the band later fell out with the Maharishi, Harrison continued his interest in Eastern philosophy. He embraced the Hare Krishna tradition and, in the summer of 1969, produced the single "Hare Krishna Mantra", performed by the devotees of the London Radha Krishna Temple.^[13]

Starr probably spoke least of all about his personal beliefs, but he did take part in some religious mockery and parody during his time with the Beatles. In 1969 he co-starred in The Magic Christian, a Peter Sellers movie based on a Terry Southern book.

Post-Beatles[link]

George Harrison, Shyamasundara Dasa and Mukunda Goswami in front of Jiva Goswami Samādhi in Vrindavan, India, 1996.

Harrison continued to embrace the Hare Krishna tradition (particularly japa-yoga chanting with beads) and became a lifelong devotee, being associated with it until his death in 2001.^[14] Harrison was also a vegetarian, on religious grounds, from 1968 until his death.^[15]

Speaking at the Grammy Museum, Los Angeles, in February 2010, Starr stated that he had recently returned to monotheism, saying “I stepped off the path there for many years and found my way [back] onto it, thank God.”^[16]

John Lennon continued to reject religious teaching and organised religions. His solo single, Imagine, has been described as an 'atheist anthem',^[17][18] while his song God contained the lyrics "I don't believe in Jesus", "I don't believe in Bible", "I don't believe in tarot", and "I don't believe in mantra/Gita/yoga". Although he commonly rejected the notion of a god, he did maintain a form of spirituality. After his death in 1980, his wife, Yoko Ono said "John loved and prayed for the human race. Please pray the same for him."^[19]

Paul McCartney pursued a kind of secular spirituality later in life, praying for his wife Linda when she had trouble giving birth to their daughter Stella, and declaring in the 1990s "I'm not religious, but I'm very spiritual." His 2001 song "Freedom", written in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, spoke of freedom as "a right given by God". (He had been waiting on board an airliner at Kennedy Airport, when other airliners were being hijacked to make the attacks.)

See also[link]

• The Beatles in India
• More popular than Jesus

External links[link]

• St Peter's church website - John Lennon's former church.

References[link]

The Beatles
The Beatles in 1964 Top: John Lennon, Paul McCartney Bottom: George Harrison, Ringo Starr
Background information
Origin	Liverpool, England
Genres	Rock, pop
Years active	1960 (1960)–1970 (1970)
Labels	Parlophone, Swan, Vee-Jay, Capitol, United Artists, Apple
Associated acts	The Quarrymen, Plastic Ono Band
Website	thebeatles.com
Members
Principal John Lennon (1960–69) Paul McCartney (1960–70) George Harrison (1960–70) Ringo Starr (1962–70) Other Stuart Sutcliffe (1960–61) Pete Best (1960–62)

The Beatles were an English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960 and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music.^[1] The group's best-known lineup consisted of John Lennon (rhythm guitar, vocals), Paul McCartney (bass guitar, vocals), George Harrison (lead guitar, vocals) and Ringo Starr (drums, vocals). Rooted in skiffle and 1950s rock and roll, the group later worked in many genres ranging from pop ballads to psychedelic rock, often incorporating classical and other elements in innovative ways. Their enormous popularity first emerged as "Beatlemania"; as their songwriting grew in sophistication, by the late 1960s they came to be perceived by many fans and cultural observers as an embodiment of the ideals shared by the era's sociocultural revolutions.

As a five-piece line-up of Lennon, McCartney and Harrison on guitar and vocals, with Stuart Sutcliffe (bass) and Pete Best (drums), the band built their reputation playing clubs in Liverpool and Hamburg over a three-year period from 1960. Sutcliffe left the group in 1961, and Best was replaced by Starr the following year. Moulded into a professional act by manager Brian Epstein, their musical potential was enhanced by the creativity of producer George Martin. They gained popularity in the United Kingdom after their first single, "Love Me Do", became a modest hit in late 1962, and they acquired the nickname the "Fab Four" as Beatlemania grew in Britain over the following year. By early 1964 they had become international stars, leading the "British Invasion" of the United States pop market. The band toured extensively around the world until August 1966, when they performed their final commercial concert. From 1966 they produced what many critics consider to be some of their finest material, including the innovative and widely influential albums Revolver (1966), Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), The Beatles (1968) and Abbey Road (1969). After their break-up in 1970, the ex-Beatles each found success in individual musical careers. Lennon was murdered in 1980, and Harrison died of cancer in 2001. McCartney and Starr remain active.

The Beatles are the best-selling band or musical act in history, with estimated sales of over one billion units according to Guinness World Records.^[2] They have had more number-one albums on the UK charts and have held the top spot longer than any other musical act. According to the RIAA, as of 2012 they have sold 177 million units in the US, more than any other artist, and in 2008 they topped Billboard magazine's list of the all-time most successful Hot 100 artists. As of 2012, they hold the record for most number-one hits on the Hot 100 chart with 20. They have received 7 Grammy Awards from the American National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, an Academy Award for Best Original Song Score and 15 Ivor Novello Awards from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors. They were collectively included in Time magazine's compilation of the 20th century's 100 most influential people.

[edit] Formation, Hamburg, and UK popularity (1957–1962)

In March 1957 John Lennon, then aged sixteen, formed a skiffle group with several friends from Quarry Bank school. They briefly called themselves the Blackjacks, before changing their name to The Quarrymen after discovering that a respected local group was already using the name.^[3] Fifteen-year-old Paul McCartney joined as a guitarist shortly after he and Lennon met that July.^[4] In February 1958 McCartney invited his friend George Harrison to watch the group. The fourteen-year-old auditioned for Lennon, who was impressed by his playing but initially thought him too young for the band. After a month of persistence, Harrison joined as lead guitarist.^[5][6] By January 1959 Lennon's Quarry Bank friends had left the group, and he began studies at the Liverpool College of Art.^[7] The three guitarists, billing themselves at least three times as "Johnny and the Moondogs",^[8] were playing rock and roll whenever they could find a drummer.^[9] Lennon's art school friend Stu Sutcliffe, who had recently sold one of his paintings and purchased a bass guitar, joined in January 1960, and it was he who suggested changing the band's name to "Beatals" as a tribute to Buddy Holly and The Crickets.^[10] According to band historian Mark Lewisohn, they used the name through May, when they became "the Silver Beetles", before undertaking a brief tour of Scotland as the backing group for pop singer and fellow Liverpudlian Johnny Gentle. By early July they changed their name to "the Silver Beatles", and by the middle of August to "the Beatles".^[11]

Their lack of a full-time drummer posed a problem when the group's unofficial manager, Allan Williams, arranged a resident band booking for them in Hamburg, Germany, so before the middle of August they auditioned and hired Pete Best. The five-piece band left four days later, contracted to club owner Bruno Koschmider for what would be a 3½-month residency.^[12] Lewisohn writes: "They pulled into Hamburg at dusk on 17 August, the time when the red-light area comes to life ... flashing neon lights screamed out the various entertainment on offer, while scantily clad women sat unabashed in shop windows waiting for business opportunities".^[13]

Initially placing the group at the Indra Club, in October Koschmider moved them to the Kaiserkeller, after he closed the Indra due to noise complaints.^[14] When he learned they had been performing at The Top Ten Club, a rival venue and thus in breach of contract, Koschmider gave the band one month's termination notice,^[15] and reported the underage Harrison,^[16] who had obtained permission to stay in Hamburg by lying to the German authorities about his age, causing his deportation in late-November.^[17] A week later, Koschmider had McCartney and Best arrested for arson after they set fire to a tapestry on the wall in their room; they were also deported.^[18] Lennon returned to Liverpool in early December, while the newly engaged Sutcliffe remained in Hamburg through late-February, staying with his German fiancée Astrid Kirchherr.^[19] Kirchherr took the first semi-professional photos of the group,^[20] and she encouraged Sutcliffe to comb his hair forward in the pilzkopf or "mushroom head" style popular among university students in Germany and France at the time.^[21] In 1961, during their second Hamburg engagement, she cut his hair^[22] in the "exi", or existentialist style that was later adopted by the other Beatles.^[23] When he decided to leave the band in early 1961 and resume his art studies in Germany, McCartney took up the bass.^[24] Producer Bert Kaempfert contracted what was now a four-piece group through June 1962, and he used them as Tony Sheridan's backing band on a series of recordings.^[25] Credited to "Tony Sheridan & The Beat Brothers", the single "My Bonnie", recorded in June and released four months later, reached number 32 on the Musikmarkt chart, and was group's first worldwide release.^[26]

After completing their second Hamburg stint the group enjoyed increasing popularity back home in Liverpool, particularly in Merseyside, where the Merseybeat movement was gaining popularity. However, the band were also growing tired of the monotony of numerous appearances at the same clubs night after night.^[27] In November, during one of the band's frequent appearances at the Cavern Club, they encountered Brian Epstein, a local record store owner and music columnist.^[28] Epstein later recalled: "I immediately liked what I heard. They were fresh and they were honest, and they had what I thought was a sort of presence and ... star quality."^[29] Epstein courted the band over the next couple of months and was appointed manager in January 1962.^[30] He made efforts throughout the winter and spring to get them released from their contractual obligations to Bert Kaempfert Productions, and he negotiated for the band to provide one last recording session, at the end of May, during their next visit to Hamburg, to secure an early release from the contract.^[31] Tragedy greeted them upon their return there in April, when a distraught Kirchherr met them at the airport with news of Sutcliffe's death the previous day from a brain haemorrhage.^[32] After Decca Records rejected the band in early February with the comment "Guitar groups are on the way out, Mr. Epstein",^[33] George Martin signed the group to EMI's Parlophone label in May.^[32]

Abbey Road Studios main entrance

The Beatles' first recording session under Martin's direction took place at EMI's Abbey Road Studios in London on 6 June 1962.^[34] He immediately complained to Epstein about Best's poor drumming and suggested they use a session drummer in his stead.^[35] The band, already contemplating his dismissal,^[36] replaced him in mid-August with Ringo Starr, who left Rory Storm and the Hurricanes to join them.^[34] A 4 September session at EMI yielded a recording of "Love Me Do" featuring Starr on drums, but a dissatisfied Martin hired drummer Andy White for the band's third session on 11 September, which produced recordings of "Love Me Do", "Please Please Me" and "P.S. I Love You".^[34] Initially, Martin selected the 4 September version of "Love Me Do" with Starr on drums for the band's first single, though subsequent re-pressings included the White version, with Starr on tambourine.^[34] Released in early October, "Love Me Do" was a top twenty UK hit, peaking at number seventeen on the Record Retailer chart.^[37] In mid-October, they made their television début with a live performance on the regional news programme People and Places,^[38] and a late-November studio session yielded their second single, "Please Please Me",^[39] after which Martin accurately predicted, "You've just made your first No.1."^[40]

In December 1962 the band concluded their fifth and final Hamburg stint.^[41] By 1963 it was agreed that all four members should contribute vocals to Beatle albums despite Starr's restricted vocal range, to "affirm his status as a full-fledged member".^[42] Lennon and McCartney had established a songwriting partnership, and as the band's success grew, their dominant collaboration limited Harrison's opportunities as a lead vocalist.^[43] Epstein, wanting to maximize their commercial potential, encouraged the group to adopt a professional attitude to performing.^[44] Lennon recalled him saying, "Look, if you really want to get in these bigger places, you're going to have to change—stop eating on stage, stop swearing, stop smoking".^[45] Lennon said, "We used to dress how we liked, on and off stage. He'd tell us that jeans were not particularly smart and could we possibly manage to wear proper trousers, but he didn't want us suddenly looking square. He'd let us have our own sense of individuality".^[45]

Beatlemania and touring years (1963–1966)[link]

[edit] Please Please Me and With The Beatles

After the moderate success of "Love Me Do", "Please Please Me" met with a more emphatic reception. Released in January 1963, it reached number one on every national chart except Record Retailer, where it stalled at number two.^[46] Martin originally considered recording their debut LP live at the Cavern Club, but after deciding that the building's acoustics were inadequate he elected to simulate a "live" album with minimal production in "a single marathon session at Abbey Road".^[47] Ten songs were recorded for Please Please Me, accompanied by the four tracks already released on their two singles.^[47] Recalling how the band "rushed to deliver a debut album, bashing out Please Please Me in a day", Allmusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine comments, "Decades after its release, the album still sounds fresh, precisely because of its intense origins."^[48] Lennon said little thought went into composition at the time; he and McCartney were "just writing songs à la Everly Brothers, à la Buddy Holly, pop songs with no more thought of them than that—to create a sound. And the words were almost irrelevant."^[49]

Their logo was based on an impromptu sketch by instrument retailer and designer Ivor Arbiter.^[50]

Released in March 1963, the album reached number one on the top four British charts, initiating a run during which eleven of their twelve studio albums released in the United Kingdom through 1970 reached number one.^[51] The band's third single, "From Me to You", came out in April and was also a chart-topping hit, starting an almost unbroken string of seventeen British number one singles for the band, including all but one of the eighteen they released over the next six years.^[52] Released in August, the band's fourth single, "She Loves You", achieved the fastest sales of any record in the UK up to that time, selling three-quarters of a million copies in under four weeks.^[53] It became their first single to sell a million copies, and remained the biggest-selling record in the UK until 1978 when it was surpassed by "Mull of Kintyre", by McCartney's post-Beatles band, Wings.^[54] Their popularity brought increasing press attention, to which the band members responded with an irreverent and comical attitude that defied what was expected of pop musicians at the time, inspiring even more interest.^[55]

The band toured the UK three times in the first half of the year: a four-week stint that began in February, the band's first nationwide tour, preceded three-week tours in March and May–June.^[56] As their popularity spread, a frenzied adulation of the group took hold; they were greeted with riotous enthusiasm by screaming fans—a phenomenon dubbed "Beatlemania".^[57] Although not billed as tour leaders, they overshadowed American acts Tommy Roe and Chris Montez during the February engagements and assumed top billing "by audience demand", something no British act had previously accomplished while touring with artists from the US.^[58] A similar situation arose during the band's May–June tour with Roy Orbison.^[59]

McCartney, Harrison, Swedish pop singer Lill-Babs and Lennon on the set of the Swedish television show Drop-In, 30 October 1963^[60]

In late October the band began a five-day tour of Sweden, their first time abroad since the final Hamburg engagement of December 1962.^[61] Upon their return to the UK on the 31st, they were greeted in heavy rain at Heathrow Airport by "several hundred screaming fans", and fifty to a hundred journalists and photographers as well as representatives from the BBC, "the first of a hundred so-called 'airport receptions'".^[62] The next day, they began their fourth tour of Britain within nine months, this one scheduled for six weeks.^[63] As Beatlemania intensified, police found it necessary to use high-pressure water hoses to control the crowd before a concert in Plymouth in mid–November.^[64]

Please Please Me maintained the top position on the Record Retailer chart for thirty weeks, only to be displaced by their follow-up, With The Beatles, which EMI delayed the release of until sales of Please Please Me had subsided.^[65] With The Beatles was released in late-November to record advance orders of 270,000 copies, topping the half-million mark in one week.^[66] It held the top spot for twenty-one weeks with a chart life of 40 weeks.^[67] Recorded between July and October, the album made better use of studio production techniques than its "deliberately primitive" predecessor.^[68] Erlewine describes With The Beatles as "a sequel of the highest order—one that betters the original".^[69] In a reversal of then standard practice, the album was released ahead of the impending single "I Want to Hold Your Hand", with the song excluded in order to maximize the single's sales.^[70] With The Beatles caught the attention of The Times' music critic William Mann, who suggested that Lennon and McCartney were "the outstanding English composers of 1963".^[68] The newspaper published a series of articles in which Mann offered detailed analyses of the music, lending it respectability.^[71] With The Beatles became the second album in UK chart history to sell a million copies, a figure previously reached only by the 1958 South Pacific soundtrack.^[72] In writing the sleeve notes for the album, the band's press officer Tony Barrow used the superlative "the fabulous foursome", which the media widely adopted as "the Fab Four".^[73]

"British Invasion"[link]