The Beatles' recording technology developed during the 1960s and influenced the way music was recorded. Effects achieved on their recordings include sampling and Artificial Double Tracking and the creative use of multitrack recording machines. They also used classical instruments on their recordings and guitar feedback. The Beatles' attitude to the recording process was summed up by Paul McCartney: "We would say, 'Try it. Just try it for us. If it sounds crappy, OK, we'll lose it. But it might just sound good.' We were always pushing ahead: Louder, further, longer, more, different."^[1]

1960s recording technology[link]

In the early part of the 1960s, EMI's Abbey Road Studios was equipped with EMI-made British Tape Recorders (BTR)^[2] which were developed in 1948, essentially as copies of Nazi Germany wartime recorders. The BTR was a twin-track, valve (Vacuum tube) based machine. When recording on the twin-track machine there was very little opportunity for overdubbing; the recording was essentially that of a live music performance.

The first two Beatles albums, Please Please Me and With The Beatles, were recorded on the BTR two track machines;^[3] with the introduction of four-track machines in 1963 (the first 4-track Beatles recording was "I Want to Hold Your Hand"^[4]) there came a change in the way recordings were made—tracks could be built up layer by layer, encouraging experimentation in the multitrack recording process.^[5]

In 1968 eight-track recorders became available, but Abbey Road was somewhat slow in adopting the new technology and a number of Beatles tracks (including "Hey Jude") were recorded in other studios in London to get access to the new eight-track recorders.^[6]

The Beatles' final two albums, Let It Be and Abbey Road, were the only two to be recorded using a transistorised mixing console, the EMI TG12345, rather than the earlier REDD valve consoles. Engineer Geoff Emerick has said that the transistorised console played a large part in shaping these albums overall sound, lacking the aggressive edge of the valve consoles.^[7]

The Beatles' attitude[link]

The success of the Beatles meant that EMI gave them carte blanche access to the Abbey Road studios—they were not charged for studio time^[8] and could spend as long as they wanted working on music. Starting around 1965 with the Rubber Soul sessions, the Beatles increasingly used the studio as an instrument in itself, spending long hours experimenting and writing.^[5]

The Beatles also demanded a lot from the studio; John Lennon allegedly wanted to know why the bass on a certain Wilson Pickett record far exceeded the bass on any Beatles records. This prompted EMI engineer Geoff Emerick to try new techniques for "Paperback Writer".

"'Paperback Writer' was the first time the bass sound had been heard in all its excitement", said Emerick in Mark Lewisohn's book The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions. "To get the loud bass sound Paul played a different bass, a Rickenbacker. Then we boosted it further by using a loudspeaker as a microphone. We positioned it directly in front of the bass speaker and the moving diaphragm of the second speaker made the electric current." ^[9]

As early as "I Want to Hold Your Hand" the Beatles were experimenting with organ sounding guitars which was achieved by extreme compression on Lennon's rhythm guitar.^[10]

The original actual EMI RS 124 Valve compressor from Abbey Road

Engineers and other Abbey Road staff have reported that the Beatles would try to take advantage of accidental occurrences in the recording process; "I Feel Fine" and "It's All Too Much"'s feedback and "Long, Long, Long"'s resonating glass bottle (towards the end of the track) are examples of this.^[11] In other instances the group deliberately toyed with situations and techniques which would foster chance effects, such as the live (and thereby unpredictable) mixing of a UK radio broadcast into the fade of "I Am the Walrus" or the chaotic assemblage of "Tomorrow Never Knows". (The group would frequently refer to this method as 'random', although it is more correctly described as chance determinism.)^{[citation needed]}

The Beatles' song "You Like Me Too Much" has one of the earliest examples of this technique, the Beatles recorded the Steinway through a Hammond B-3's rotating Leslie speaker, a 122 or 122RV, a trick they would come back to over and over again. (At the end of the intro, the switching off of the Leslie is audible.)^[12] Also on "Tomorrow Never Knows" the vocal was sent through a Leslie speaker. This technique was used later by the Grateful Dead, Cream, The Moody Blues and others.^[13]

All of the Beatles had Brenell tape recorders at home,^[14] which allowed them to record out of the studio. Some of their home experiments were used at Abbey Road and ended up on finished masters; in particular on "Tomorrow Never Knows".^[14]

Combined with this was the conscious desire to be different. McCartney said, "Each time we just want to do something different. After Please Please Me we decided we must do something different for the next song... Why should we ever want to go back? That would be soft."^[15] The desire to "do something different" pushed EMI's recording technology through overloading the mixing desk as early as 1964 in tracks such as "Eight Days a Week" even at this relatively early date, the track begins with a gradual fade-in, a device which had rarely been employed in rock music.^[16] Paul McCartney would create interesting bass lines by overdubbing in counterpoint to Beatles tracks that were previously completed.^[17] Also overdubbed vocals were used for new artistic purposes on "Julia" with John Lennon overlapping the end of one vocal phrase with the beginning of his next.^[18]

Guitar feedback[link]

Audio feedback, in which a high-pitched electric noise can be heard, was used by composers such as Robert Ashley in the early 60s.^[19] Ashley's The Wolfman, which uses feedback extensively, was composed early in 1964, though not heard publicly until the autumn of that year.^[20] In the same year as Ashley's feedback experiments, The Beatles song "I Feel Fine", recorded on 18 October, starts with a feedback note produced by plucking the A-note on McCartney's bass guitar, which was picked up on Lennon's semi-acoustic guitar. It was distinguished from its predecessors by a more complex guitar sound, particularly in its introduction, a sustained plucked electric note that after a few seconds swelled in volume and buzzed like an electric razor. This was the very first use of feedback on a rock record.^[21] Speaking in one his last interviews — with the BBC's Andy Peebles — Lennon said this was the first intentional use of feedback on a music record. In The Beatles Anthology series, George Harrison said that the feedback started accidentally when a guitar was placed on an amplifier but that Lennon had worked out how to achieve the effect live on stage. In The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, Mark Lewisohn states that all the takes of the song included the feedback.^[22]

The Beatles continued to use feedback on later songs. "It's All Too Much", for instance, begins with sustained guitar feedback.

Classical musicians on popular albums[link]

Although strings were commonly used on pop recordings, George Martin's suggestion that a string quartet be used for the recording of "Yesterday" marked a major departure for the Beatles. McCartney recalled playing it to the other Beatles and Ringo saying it did not make sense to have drums on the track and John and George saying there was no point having extra guitars. George Martin suggested a solo acoustic guitar and a string quartet.^[23]

As the Beatles musical work developed, particularly in the studio, classical instruments were increasingly added to tracks. Lennon recalled the two way education; the Beatles and Martin learning from each other - George Martin asking if they'd heard an oboe and the Beatles saying, "No, which one's that one?"^[24]

Part of the influence of the Beatles was the bringing closer together of the classical and pop "worlds"; the mix of classical strings with electric guitars and drums used on "Strawberry Fields Forever" led Roy Wood to co-found the Electric Light Orchestra to continue where "Strawberry Fields" left off.

Geoff Emerick, documented the change in attitude to pop, as opposed to classical music during the Beatles career. In EMI at the start of the 1960s, balance engineers were either "classical" or "pop".^[25] Similarly, Paul McCartney recalled a large "Pop/Classical" switch on the mixing console.^[26] Emerick also noted a tension between the classical and pop people - even eating separately in the canteen. The tension was also increased as it was the money from pop sales that paid for the classical sessions.^[27]

Emerick was the engineer on "A Day in the Life", which used a 40 piece orchestra and recalled "dismay" amongst the classical musicians when they were told to improvise between the lowest and highest notes of their instruments (whilst wearing rubber noses).^[28] However, Emerick also saw a change in attitude at the end of the recording when everyone present (including the orchestra) broke into spontaneous applause. Emerick recalled the evening as the "passing of the torch" between the old attitudes to pop music and the new.^[29]

Artificial double tracking[link]

Artificial double tracking (ADT) was invented by Ken Townsend in 1966, during the recording of Revolver.^[30] With the advent of four-track recordings, it became possible to double track vocals whereby the performer sings along with his or her own previously recorded version of the song. Phil McDonald, a member of the studio staff, recalled that Lennon did not really like singing a song twice - it was obviously important to sing exactly the same words with the same phrasing - and after a particularly trying evening of double tracking vocals, Townsend "had an idea" while driving home one evening hearing the sound of the car in front.^[30] ADT works by taking the original recording of a vocal part and duplicating it onto a second tape machine which has a variable speed control. The manipulation of the speed of the second machine during playback introduces a delay between the original vocal and the second recording of it, giving the effect of double tracking without having to sing the part twice.

The effect had been created "accidentally" earlier, when recording "Yesterday": loudspeakers were used to cue the string quartet and some of McCartney's voice was recorded onto the string track, which can be heard on the final recording.

It has been claimed that George Martin's pseudoscientific explanation of ADT ("We take the original image and we split it through a double vibrocated sploshing flange")^[31] given to Lennon originated the phrase flanging in recording, as Lennon would refer to ADT as "Ken's flanger", although other sources^[32] claim the term originated from pressing a finger on the tape recorder's tape supply reel (the flange) to make small adjustments to the phase of the copy relative to the original.

ADT greatly influenced recording—virtually all the tracks on Revolver and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band had the treatment and it is still widely used for instruments and voices. Nowadays, the effect is more often known as automatic double tracking.

ADT can be heard on the lead guitar on "Here, There and Everywhere" and the vocals on "Eleanor Rigby" for example. The technique was used later by bands like the Grateful Dead and Iron Butterfly, amongst others.^[13]

Close miking of acoustic instruments[link]

During the recording of "Eleanor Rigby" on 28 April 1966, McCartney said he wanted to avoid "Mancini" strings. (It is possible that Mantovani was actually the style that McCartney wanted to avoid.) To fulfil this brief, Geoff Emerick close-miked the strings—the microphones were almost touching the strings. George Martin had to instruct the players not to back away from the microphones.^[33]

Microphones began to be placed closer to the instruments in order to produce a fuller sound. Ringo's drums had a large sweater stuffed in the bass drum to 'deaden' the sound while the bass drum microphone was positioned very close which resulted in the being more prominent in the mix. "Eleanor Rigby" features just Paul and a double string quartet that has the instruments miked so close to the string that 'the musicians were in horror'. In "Got to Get You into My Life", the brass were miked in the bells of their instruments then put through a Fairchild limiter.^[34]

In 1966, this was considered a radically new way of recording strings; nowadays it is common practice.^[33]

Sampling[link]

The Beatles first used samples of other music on "Yellow Submarine", the samples being added on 1 June 1966. The brass band solo was constructed from a Sousa march by George Martin and Geoff Emerick, the original solo was in the same key and was transferred to tape, cut into small segments and re-arranged to form a brief solo which was added to the song.^[35]

A similar technique was used for "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite" on 20 February 1967. To try to create the atmosphere of a circus, Martin first proposed the use of a calliope (a steam-driven organ). Such was the power of the Beatles within EMI that phone calls were made to see if a calliope could be hired and brought into the studio. However, only automatic calliopes, controlled by punched cards, were available, so other techniques had to be used. Martin came up with taking taped samples from several steam organ pieces, cutting them into short lengths, "throwing them in the air" and splicing them together. It took two trials; in the first attempt, the pieces coincidentally came back in more or less original order.

More obvious, and therefore more influential samples were used on "I Am the Walrus"—a live BBC Third Programme broadcast of King Lear was mixed into the track on 29 September 1967. McCartney has also described^[36] a lost opportunity of live sampling: the EMI studio was set up in such a way that the echo track from the echo chamber could be picked up in any of the control rooms. Paul Jones was recording in a studio whilst "I Am the Walrus" was being mixed and the Beatles were tempted to "nick" (steal) some of Jones's singing to put into the mix.

Direct input[link]

Direct input was first used by the Beatles on 1 February 1967 to record McCartney's bass on "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band". With direct input the guitar pick-up is connected to the recording console via an impedance matching DI box. Ken Townsend claimed this as the first use anywhere in the world,^[37] although Joe Meek, an independent producer from London, is known to have done it earlier (early 1960s)^[38] and in America, Motown's engineers had been using Direct Input since the early 1960s for guitars and bass guitars, primarily due to restrictions of space in their small 'Snakepit' recording studio. (Their session bassist James Jamerson can therefore claim a precedent of about 5 years on McCartney.) However, the use by the Beatles was probably the first in a major British studio, and was developed without specific knowledge of the Motown techniques.

Synchronising tape machines[link]

One way of increasing the number of tracks available for recording is to synchronise tape machines together. Nowadays SMPTE timecode is used to synchronise tape machines. Modern SMPTE controlled recorders provide a mechanism so that the second machine will automatically position the tape correctly and start and stop simultaneously with the master machine.

On 10 February 1967 during the recording of "A Day in the Life", Ken Townsend synchronised two machines so that extra tracks were available for recording the orchestra. The technique that Townsend used was to record a 50 Hz tone on the one remaining track on one machine and used that tone to control the speed of a second machine.^[39] Townsend thereby effectively used pilottone, a technique that was common in 16mm news gathering whereby a 50/60 Hz tone was sent from the movie camera to a tape recorder during filming in order to achieve lip-synch sound recording. With the simple tone used for "A Day in the Life", the start position was marked with a wax pencil on the two machines and the tape operator had to align the tapes by eye and attempt to press play and record simultaneously for each take.^[40]

Although the technique was reasonably successful, Townsend recalled that when they tried to use the tape on a different machine, the synchronisation was sometimes lost. George Martin claimed this as the first time tape machines had been synchronised, although SMPTE sychronisation for video/audio synchronisation was developed around 1967^[41] so it's probably more accurate to say that this was the first use in a major studio.

Backwards tapes[link]

As the Beatles pioneered the use of musique concrète in pop music (i.e. the sped-up tape loops in "Tomorrow Never Knows"), backward recordings came as a natural exponent of this experimentation. "Rain", the first rock song featuring a backwards vocal (Lennon singing the first verse of the song), came about when Lennon (claiming the influence of marijuana) accidentally loaded a reel-to-reel tape of the song on his machine backwards and essentially liked what he heard so much he quickly had the reversed overdub. A quick follow-up was the reversed guitar on "I'm Only Sleeping", which features a dual guitar solo by George Harrison played backwards. Harrison worked out a forward guitar part, learned to play the part in reverse, and recorded it backwards. Likewise, a backing track of reversed drums and cymbals made its way into the verses of "Strawberry Fields Forever". The Beatles' well-known use of reversed tapes led to rumours of backwards messages, including many that fueled the Paul is Dead urban myth. In fact, only "Rain" and Free as a Bird (see below) include intentional reversed lead vocal in Beatles songs.

The stereo version of George Harrison's "Blue Jay Way" (1967, Magical Mystery Tour) also includes backwards vocals, which is actually a backwards copy of the entire mix, including all instruments, which is faded up at the end of each phrase.

In an homage to the Beatles' experimentation with reversed tracks (and those rumoured), the "reunion" track "Free as a Bird" featured a backward message that sounds like "Made by John Lennon." This is only a coincidence, and the phrase that was reversed to achieve this was "Turned out nice again" (a catchphrase of George Formby; George Harrison was a great Formby fan http://www.theukuleleman.com/index-page2.html). The Beatles-inspired Cirque du Soleil show LOVE included the song "Gnik Nus," which was the vocal track to "Sun King" played in reverse, which was accidentally created when Giles Martin (George Martin's son) flipped the cymbal from "Sun King" for an effect used on the "Within You Without You / Tomorrow Never Knows" mashup and discovered he'd also flipped the vocal track. Also, the mashup track "Within You Without You / Tomorrow Never Knows" utilizes reversed cymbals, as well as reversing one of the tamboura riffs from "Within You Without You."

References[link]

Notes[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Lewisohn, Mark (1988). The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions (First Hardback ed.). EMI. ISBN 978-0-600-61207-0. 
• Hertsgaard, Mark (1995). A Day in The Life (First Hardback ed.). Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-385-31517-3. 
• Davies, Hunter (1968). The Beatles (Second Hardback ed.). Heinemann. ISBN [[Special:BookSources/978393315714|978393315714]]. 
• Emerick, Geoff (2006). Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles. Gotham Books. ISBN 978-1-59240-269-4. 
• Repsch, John (1989). The Legendary Joe Meek - The Telstar Man. Cherry Red Books. ISBN 1-901447-20-0. 

Sound recording and reproduction is an electrical or mechanical inscription and re-creation of sound waves, such as spoken voice, singing, instrumental music, or sound effects. The two main classes of sound recording technology are analog recording and digital recording. Acoustic analog recording is achieved by a small microphone diaphragm that can detect changes in atmospheric pressure (acoustic sound waves) and record them as a graphic representation of the sound waves on a medium such as a phonograph (in which a stylus senses grooves on a record). In magnetic tape recording, the sound waves vibrate the microphone diaphragm and are converted into a varying electric current, which is then converted to a varying magnetic field by an electromagnet, which makes a representation of the sound as magnetized areas on a plastic tape with a magnetic coating on it. Analog sound reproduction is the reverse process, with a bigger loudspeaker diaphragm causing changes to atmospheric pressure to form acoustic sound waves. Electronically generated sound waves may also be recorded directly from devices such as an electric guitar pickup or a synthesizer, without the use of acoustics in the recording process other than the need for musicians to hear how well they are playing during recording sessions.

Digital recording and reproduction converts the analog sound signal picked up by the microphone to a digital form by a process of digitization, allowing it to be stored and transmitted by a wider variety of media. Digital recording stores audio as a series of binary numbers representing samples of the amplitude of the audio signal at equal time intervals, at a sample rate high enough to convey all sounds capable of being heard. Digital recordings are considered higher quality than analog recordings not necessarily because they have higher fidelity (wider frequency response or dynamic range), but because the digital format can prevent much loss of quality found in analog recording due to noise and electromagnetic interference in playback, and mechanical deterioration or damage to the storage medium. A digital audio signal must be reconverted to analog form during playback before it is applied to a loudspeaker or earphones.

Frances Densmore recording Blackfoot chief Mountain Chief on a cylinder phonograph for the Bureau of American Ethnology (1916)

Prehistory[link]

Long before sound was being recorded, music was being recorded, first by means of written notation, then also in forms that made it possible for the music to be played automatically by a mechanical device. The automatic reproduction of music can be traced back as far as the 9th century, when the Banū Mūsā brothers invented "the earliest known mechanical musical instrument", in this case a hydropowered organ which played interchangeable cylinders automatically. According to Charles B. Fowler, this "cylinder with raised pins on the surface remained the basic device to produce and reproduce music mechanically until the second half of the nineteenth century."^{[1][unreliable source?]} The Banu Musa brothers also invented an automatic flute player which appears to have been the first programmable machine.^[2] According to Charles B. Fowler, the automata were a robot band which performed "more than fifty facial and body actions during each musical selection."^[1] In the 14th century, Flanders introduced a mechanical bell-ringer controlled by a rotating cylinder. Similar designs appeared in barrel organs (15th century), musical clocks (1598), barrel pianos (1805), and musical boxes (1815). In 1796, a Swiss watchmaker named Antoine Favre-Salomon described his idea for what we now call the cylinder musical box. The fairground organ, developed in 1892, used a system of accordion-folded punched cardboard books. The player piano, first demonstrated in 1876, used a punched paper scroll that could store an arbitrarily long piece of music. The most sophisticated of the piano rolls were "hand-played", meaning that the roll represented the actual performance of an individual, not just a transcription of the sheet music. This technology to record a live performance onto a piano roll was not developed until 1904. Piano rolls have been in continuous mass production since around 1898.^{[citation needed]} A 1908 U.S. Supreme Court copyright case noted that, in 1902 alone, there were between 70,000 and 75,000 player pianos manufactured, and between 1,000,000 and 1,500,000 piano rolls produced.^[3] The use of piano rolls began to decline in the 1920s although one type is still being made today.

Phonautograph[link]

	Au Clair de la Lune This 1860 phonautogram by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville is the earliest known recording of a person singing.
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

The first device that could record actual sounds as they passed through the air (but could not play them back—the purpose was only visual study) was the phonautograph, patented in 1857 by Parisian inventor Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville. The earliest known recordings of the human voice are phonautograph recordings, called "phonautograms", made in 1857. They consist of sheets of paper with sound-wave-modulated white lines created by a vibrating stylus that cut through a coating of soot as the paper was passed under it. An 1860 phonautogram of Au Clair de la Lune, a French folk song, was played back as sound for the first time in 2008 by scanning it and using software to convert the undulating line, which graphically encoded the sound, into a corresponding digital audio file.^[4][5]

Phonograph[link]

Phonograph cylinder[link]

	"Kham Hom" ("Sweet Words") Phonograph cylinder recording of Siamese (Thai) musicians visiting Berlin, Germany in 1900.
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

The first practical sound recording and reproduction device was the mechanical phonograph cylinder, invented by Thomas Edison in 1877 and patented in 1878.^[6] The invention soon spread across the globe and over the next two decades the commercial recording, distribution and sale of sound recordings became a growing new international industry, with the most popular titles selling millions of units by the early 1900s. The development of mass-production techniques enabled cylinder recordings to become a major new consumer item in industrial countries and the cylinder was the main consumer format from the late 1880s until around 1910.

Disc phonograph[link]

The next major technical development was the invention of the gramophone disc, generally credited to Emile Berliner and commercially introduced in the United States in 1889. Discs were easier to manufacture, transport and store, and they had the additional benefit of being louder (marginally) than cylinders, which by necessity, were single-sided. Sales of the Gramophone record overtook the cylinder ca. 1910, and by the end of World War I the disc had become the dominant commercial recording format. Edison, who was the main producer of cylinders, created the Edison Disc Record in an attempt to regain his market. In various permutations, the audio disc format became the primary medium for consumer sound recordings until the end of the 20th century, and the double-sided 78 rpm shellac disc was the standard consumer music format from the early 1910s to the late 1950s.

Although there was no universally accepted speed, and various companies offered discs that played at several different speeds, the major recording companies eventually settled on a de facto industry standard of nominally 78 revolutions per minute, though the actual speed differed between America and the rest of the world. The specified speed was 78.26 rpm in America and 77.92 rpm throughout the rest of the world, the difference in speeds a result of the difference in cycle frequencies of the AC power driving the synchronous motor and available gearing ratios.^[7] The nominal speed of the disc format gave rise to its common nickname, the "seventy-eight" (though not until other speeds had become available). Discs were made of shellac or similar brittle plastic-like materials, played with needles made from a variety of materials including mild steel, thorn and even sapphire. Discs had a distinctly limited playing life which was heavily dependent on how they were reproduced.

The earlier, purely acoustic methods of recording had limited sensitivity and frequency range. Mid-frequency range notes could be recorded but very low and very high frequencies could not. Instruments such as the violin transferred poorly to disc; however this was partially solved by retrofitting a conical horn to the sound box of the violin. The horn was no longer required once electrical recording was developed.

The long-playing 33¹⁄₃ rpm microgroove vinyl record, or "LP", was developed at Columbia Records and introduced in 1948. The short-playing but convenient 7-inch 45 rpm microgroove vinyl single was introduced by RCA Victor in 1949. In the US and most developed countries, the two new vinyl formats completely replaced 78 rpm shellac discs by the end of the 1950s, but in some corners of the world the "78" lingered on far into the 1960s. Vinyl was much more expensive than shellac, one of several factors that made its use for 78 rpm records very unusual, but with a long-playing disc the added cost was acceptable and the compact "45" format required very little material. Vinyl offered improved performance, both in stamping and in playback. If played with a good diamond stylus mounted in a lightweight pickup on a well-adjusted tonearm, it was long-lasting. If protected from dust, scuffs and scratches there was very little noise. Vinyl records were, over-optimistically, advertised as "unbreakable". They were not, but they were much less fragile than shellac, which had itself once been touted as "unbreakable" compared to wax cylinders.

Electrical recording[link]

RCA-44, a classic ribbon microphone introduced in 1932. Similar units were widely used for broadcasting and recording in the 1940s and are occasionally still used today.

Between the invention of the phonograph in 1877 and the advent of digital media, arguably the most important milestone in the history of sound recording was the introduction of what was then called "electrical recording", in which a microphone was used to convert the sound into an electrical signal that was amplified and used to actuate the recording stylus. This innovation eliminated the "horn sound" resonances characteristic of the acoustical process, produced clearer and more full-bodied recordings by greatly extending the useful range of audio frequencies, and allowed previously unrecordable distant and feeble sounds to be captured.

Sound recording began as a purely mechanical process. Except for a few crude telephone-based recording devices with no means of amplification, such as the Telegraphone,^[8] it remained so until the 1920s, when recent radio-related developments in electronics converged to revolutionize the recording process. These included improved microphones and auxiliary devices such as electronic filters, all dependent on electronic amplification to be of practical use in recording. In 1906 Lee De Forest invented the "Audion" triode vacuum tube, an electronic valve which could greatly amplify weak electrical signals. By 1915 it was being used in long-distance telephone circuits that made it possible to talk between New York and San Francisco with both parties being clearly heard. Refined versions of this tube were the basis of all electronic sound systems until the commercial introduction of the first transistor-based audio devices in the 1950s.

During World War I, experiments were undertaken in the United States and Great Britain to record and reproduce, among other things, the sound of a German U-boat (submarine) for training purposes. The acoustical recordings of that time proved entirely unable to reproduce the sounds, so other methods were actively sought. The earliest results were not very promising. The first electrical recording issued to the public, with little fanfare, was of the 11 November 1920 funeral services for the Unknown Soldier in Westminster Abbey, London. The microphones used were like those in contemporary telephones. They were discreetly set up in the abbey and connected by wires to recording equipment in a vehicle outside. Although electronic amplification was used, the resulting audio was weak and very unclear. The novel procedure did, however, allow a recording to be made which would otherwise not have been practical in those circumstances. For several years, this little-noted disc remained the only issued electrical recording.

Several record companies and independent inventors, notably Orlando Marsh, were experimenting with equipment and techniques for electrical recording in the early 1920s. Marsh's electrically recorded Autograph Records were already being sold to the public in 1924, a year before the first such offerings from the major record companies, but their overall sound quality was too low to demonstrate any obvious advantage over traditional acoustical methods. Marsh's microphone technique was idiosyncratic and his work had little if any impact on the systems being developed by others.^[9]

Telephone industry giant Western Electric had research laboratories (merged with the AT&T engineering department in 1925 to form Bell Telephone Laboratories) with material and human resources that no record company or independent inventor could match. They had the best microphone, a condenser type developed there in 1916 and greatly improved in 1922,^[10] and the best amplifiers and test equipment. They had already patented an electromagnetic recorder in 1917, and in the early 1920s they decided to intensively apply their hardware and expertise to developing two state-of-the-art systems for electronically recording and reproducing sound: one that employed conventional discs and another that recorded optically on motion picture film. Their engineers pioneered the use of mechanical analogs of electrical circuits and developed a superior "rubber line" recorder for cutting the groove into the wax master in the disc recording system.^[11]

By 1924 such dramatic progress had been made that Western Electric arranged a demonstration for the two leading record companies, the Victor Talking Machine Company and the Columbia Phonograph Company. Both soon licensed the system and both made their earliest published electrical recordings in February 1925, but neither actually released them until mid-year. To avoid making their existing catalogs instantly obsolete, the two long-time arch rivals agreed privately not to publicize the new process until November 1925, by which time enough electrically recorded repertory would be available to meet the anticipated demand. During the next few years the lesser record companies licensed or developed other electrical recording systems. By the end of the 1920s only the budget label Harmony was still issuing acoustically recorded discs.

Comparison of some surviving Western Electric test recordings with early commercial releases indicates that their system had been "dumbed down" by the record companies so as not to overwhelm non-electronic playback equipment, which reproduced very low frequencies as an unpleasant rattle and rapidly wore out discs with strongly recorded high frequencies.

Other recording formats[link]

In the 1920s, the early talkies featured the new sound-on-film technology which used photoelectric cells to record and reproduce sound signals that were optically recorded directly onto the movie film. The introduction of talking movies, spearheaded by The Jazz Singer in 1927 (though it used a sound on disk technique, not a photoelectric one), saw the rapid demise of live cinema musicians and orchestras. They were replaced with pre-recorded soundtracks, causing the loss of many jobs.^[12] The American Federation of Musicians took out ads in newspapers, protesting the replacement of real musicians with mechanical playing devices, especially in theatres.^[13][14]

This period also saw several other historic developments including the introduction of the first practical magnetic sound recording system, the magnetic wire recorder, which was based on the work of Danish inventor Valdemar Poulsen. Magnetic wire recorders were effective, but the sound quality was poor, so between the wars they were primarily used for voice recording and marketed as business dictating machines. In the 1930s radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi developed a system of magnetic sound recording using steel tape. This was the same material used to make razor blades, and not surprisingly the fearsome Marconi-Stille recorders were considered so dangerous that technicians had to operate them from another room for safety. Because of the high recording speeds required, they used enormous reels about one metre in diameter, and the thin tape frequently broke, sending jagged lengths of razor steel flying around the studio.

The K1 Magnetophon was the first practical tape recorder, developed by AEG in Germany in 1935. The other major invention in sound recording in this period was the optical sound-on-film system, also generally credited to Lee De Forest. Although famous early "Talkies" like The Jazz Singer used a sound-on-disc system, the film industry rapidly adopted the optical sound-on-film system and it revolutionised the movie industry in the 1930s, ushering in the era of 'talking pictures'. Optical sound-on-film, based on the photoelectric cell, became the standard film audio system throughout the world and remains so for theatrical release prints despite attempts in the 1950s to substitute magnetic recording methods. Currently all release prints on 35mm film include an analogue optical soundtrack (usually stereo with Dolby SR noise reduction). In addition an optically recorded digital soundtrack in Dolby Digital and/or Sony SDDS form is likely to be present. Optically recorded timecode is also commonly found in order to synchronise CDROMs containing a DTS soundtrack.

Magnetic tape[link]

Magnetic audio tapes: acetate vs polyester backing

Other important inventions of this period were magnetic tape and the tape recorder (Telegraphone). Paper-based tape was first used but was soon superseded by polyester and acetate backing due to dust drop and hiss. Acetate was more brittle than polyester and snapped easily. This technology, the basis for almost all commercial recording from the 1950s to the 1980s, was invented by German audio engineers in the 1930s, who also discovered the technique of AC biasing, which dramatically improved the frequency response of tape recordings. Tape recording was perfected just after the war by American audio engineer John T. Mullin with the help of Crosby Enterprises (Bing Crosby), whose pioneering recorders were based on captured German recorders, and the Ampex company produced the first commercially available tape recorders in the late 1940s.

A typical Compact Cassette

Magnetic tape brought about sweeping changes in both radio and the recording industry. Sound could be recorded, erased and re-recorded on the same tape many times, sounds could be duplicated from tape to tape with only minor loss of quality, and recordings could now be very precisely edited by physically cutting the tape and rejoining it. Within a few years of the introduction of the first commercial tape recorder—the Ampex 200 model, launched in 1948—American musician-inventor Les Paul had invented the first multitrack tape recorder, ushering in another technical revolution in the recording industry. Tape made possible the first sound recordings totally created by electronic means, opening the way for the bold sonic experiments of the Musique Concrète school and avant garde composers like Karlheinz Stockhausen, which in turn led to the innovative pop music recordings of artists such as Frank Zappa, The Beatles and The Beach Boys.

Magnetic tape allowed the radio industry for the first time to pre-record many sections of program content such as advertising, which formerly had to be presented live, and it also enabled the creation and duplication of complex, high-fidelity, long-duration recordings of entire programs. Also, for the first time, broadcasters, regulators and other interested parties were able to undertake comprehensive logging of radio broadcasts. Innovations like multitracking and tape echo enabled radio programs and advertisements to be pre-produced to a level of complexity and sophistication that was previously unattainable and the combined impact of these new techniques led to significant changes to the pacing and production style of program content, thanks to the innovations like the endless-loop broadcast cartridge.

Stereo and hi-fi[link]

In 1881, it was noted during experiments in transmitting sound from the Paris Opera that it was possible to follow the movement of singers on the stage if earpieces connected to different microphones were held to the two ears. This discovery was commercialized in 1890 with the Théâtrophone system, which operated for over forty years until 1932.

In 1931 Alan Blumlein, a British electronics engineer working for EMI, designed a way to make the sound of an actor in a film follow their movement across the screen. In December 1931 he submitted a patent including the idea, and in 1933 this became UK patent number 394,325.^[15] Over the next two years, Blumlein developed stereo microphones and a stereo disc-cutting head, and recorded a number of short films with stereo soundtracks.

Magnetic tape enabled the development of the first practical commercial sound systems that could record and reproduce high-fidelity stereophonic sound. The experiments with stereo during the 1930s and 1940s were hampered by problems with synchronization. A major breakthrough in practical stereo sound was made by Bell Laboratories, who in 1937 demonstrated a practical system of two-channel stereo, using dual optical sound tracks on film. Major movie studios quickly developed three-track and four-track sound systems, and the first stereo sound recording for a commercial film was made by Judy Garland for the MGM movie Listen, Darling in 1938.

The first movie commercially released with a stereo soundtrack was Walt Disney's Fantasia, released in 1940. The original 1941 release of this production used the "Fantasound" sound system. This system employed a separate film for the sound, which ran in synchronism with the film carrying the picture. On this sound film were four double-width optical soundtracks, three of which carried left, center and right audio while the fourth was a "control" track on which were recorded three tones which controlled the playback volume of the three audio channels. Because of the complex equipment required to present it, it was shown as a roadshow, but only in the United States. Regular releases of the film were on standard mono optical 35 mm stock until 1956 when the film was released with a stereo soundtrack using the "Cinemascope" four-track magnetic sound system.

German audio engineers working on magnetic tape are reported to have developed stereo recording by 1943, but it was not until the introduction of the first commercial two-track tape recorders by Ampex in the late 1940s that stereo tape recording became commercially feasible. However, despite the availability of multitrack tape, stereo did not become the standard system for commercial music recording for some years and it remained a specialist market during the 1950s. This changed after the late 1957 introduction of the "Westrex stereo phonograph disc", which used the groove format developed earlier by Blumlein. Decca Records in England came out with FFRR (Full Frequency Range Recording) in the 1940s which became internationally accepted and a worldwide standard for higher quality recordings on vinyl records. The Ernest Ansermet recording of Igor Stravinsky's Petrushka was key in the development of full frequency range records and alerting the listening public to high fidelity in 1946.^[16]

Most pop singles were mixed into monophonic sound until the mid 1960s, and it was common for major pop releases to be issued in both mono and stereo until the early 1970s. Many Sixties pop albums now available only in stereo were originally intended to be released only in mono, and the so-called "stereo" version of these albums were created by simply separating the two tracks of the master tape. In the mid Sixties, as stereo became more popular, many mono recordings (such as The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds) were remastered using the so-called "fake stereo" method, which spread the sound across the stereo field by directing higher-frequency sound into one channel and lower-frequency sounds into the other.

1950s to 1980s[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

Magnetic tape transformed the recording industry, and by the late-1950s the vast majority of commercial recordings were being mastered on tape. The electronics revolution that followed the invention of the transistor brought other radical changes, the most important of which was the introduction of the world's first "personal music device", the miniaturized transistor radio, which became a major consumer luxury item in the 1960s, transforming radio broadcasting from a static group experience into a mobile, personal listening activity. An early multitrack recording made using magnetic tape was "How High the Moon" by Les Paul, on which Paul played eight overdubbed guitar tracks. In the 1960s Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys, Frank Zappa and The Beatles (with producer George Martin) were among the first popular artists to explore the possibilities of multitrack recording techniques and effects on their landmark albums Pet Sounds, Freak Out! and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

The next important innovation was small cartridge based tape systems of which the compact cassette, introduced by the Philips electronics company in 1964 is the best known. It eventually entirely replaced the competing formats, the larger 8-track tape (used primarily in cars) and the fairly similar 'Deutsche Cassette' developed by the German company Grundig. This latter system was not particularly common in Europe and practically unheard of in America. The compact cassette became a major consumer audio format and advances in microelectronics eventually allowed the development of the Sony Walkman, introduced in the 1970s, which was the first personal music player and gave a major boost to the mass distribution of music recordings. Cassettes became the first successful consumer recording/re-recording medium. The gramophone record was a pre-recorded playback only medium, and reel-to-reel audio tape recording magnetic tape was too difficult for most consumers and far less portable.

A key advance in audio fidelity came with the Dolby A noise reduction system, invented by Ray Dolby and introduced in 1966. A competing system dbx, invented by David Blackmer, found most success in professional audio. A simpler variant of Dolby's noise reduction system, known as Dolby B greatly improved the sound of cassette tape recordings by reducing the practical effect of the recorded hiss inherent in the narrow tape used. It, and variants, also eventually found wide application in the recording and film industries. Dolby B was crucial to the popularisation and commercial success of the compact cassette as a domestic recording and playback medium, and became a part of the booming "hi-fi" market of the 1970s and beyond. The compact cassette also benefited enormously from developments in the tape material itself as materials with wider frequency responses and lower inherent noise were developed, often based on cobalt and/or chrome oxides as the magnetic material instead of the more usual iron oxide.

The multitrack audio cartridge had been in wide use in the radio industry, from the late 1950s to the 1980s, but in the 1960s the pre-recorded 8-track cartridge was launched as a consumer audio format by Bill Lear of the Lear Jet aircraft company (and although its correct name was the 'Lear Jet Cartridge', it was seldom referred to as such). Aimed particularly at the automotive market, they were the first practical, affordable car hi-fi systems, and could produce superior sound quality to the compact cassette. However the smaller size and greater durability — augmented by the ability to create home-recorded music "compilations" since 8-track recorders were rare — saw the cassette become the dominant consumer format for portable audio devices in the 1970s and 1980s.

There had been experiments with multi-channel sound for many years — usually for special musical or cultural events — but the first commercial application of the concept came in the early 1970s with the introduction of Quadraphonic sound. This spin-off development from multitrack recording used four tracks (instead of the two used in stereo) and four speakers to create a 360-degree audio field around the listener. Following the release of the first consumer 4-channel hi-fi systems, a number of popular albums were released in one of the competing four-channel formats; among the best known are Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells and Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon. Quadraphonic sound was not a commercial success, partly because of competing and somewhat incompatible four-channel sound systems (e.g., CBS, JVC, Dynaco and others all had systems) and generally poor quality, even when played as intended on the correct equipment, of the released music. It eventually faded out in the late 1970s, although this early venture paved the way for the eventual introduction of domestic Surround Sound systems in home theatre use, which have gained enormous popularity since the introduction of the DVD. This widespread adoption has occurred despite the confusion introduced by the multitude of available surround sound standards.

Audio components[link]

The replacement of the thermionic valve (vacuum tube) by the smaller, cooler and less power-hungry transistor also accelerated the sale of consumer high-fidelity "hi-fi" sound systems from the 1960s onward. In the 1950s most record players were monophonic and had relatively low sound quality; few consumers could afford high-quality stereophonic sound systems. In the 1960s, American manufacturers introduced a new generation of "modular" hi-fi components — separate turntables, pre-amplifiers, amplifiers, both combined as integrated amplifiers, tape recorders, and other ancillary equipment like the graphic equaliser, which could be connected together to create a complete home sound system. These developments were rapidly taken up by Japanese electronics companies, which soon flooded the world market with relatively cheap, high-quality components. By the 1980s, corporations like Sony had become world leaders in the music recording and playback industry.

Digital recording[link]

Graphical representation of a sound wave in analog (red) and 4-bit digital (black).

The invention of digital sound recording and later the compact disc in 1982 brought significant improvements in the durability of consumer recordings. The CD initiated another massive wave of change in the consumer music industry, with vinyl records effectively relegated to a small niche market by the mid-1990s. However, the introduction of digital systems was initially fiercely resisted by the record industry which feared wholesale piracy on a medium which was able to produce perfect copies of original released recordings. However, the industry had to bow to the inevitable, but not without using various protection system (principally Serial Copy Management System, or SCMS).

A digital sound recorder from Sony

The most recent and revolutionary developments have been in digital recording, with the development of various uncompressed and compressed digital audio file formats, processors capable and fast enough to convert the digital data to sound in real time, and inexpensive mass storage. This generated a new type of portable digital audio player. The minidisc player, using ATRAC compression on small, cheap, re-writeable discs was introduced in the 1990s but became obsolescent as solid-state non-volatile flash memory dropped in price. As technologies which increase the amount of data that can be stored on a single medium, such as Super Audio CD, DVD-A, Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD become available, longer programs of higher quality fit onto a single disc. Sound files are readily downloaded from the Internet and other sources, and copied onto computers and digital audio players. Digital audio technology is used in all areas of audio, from casual use of music files of moderate quality to the most demanding professional applications. New applications such as internet radio and podcasting have appeared.

Technological developments in recording and editing have transformed the record, movie and television industries in recent decades. Audio editing became practicable with the invention of magnetic tape recording, but digital audio and cheap mass storage allows computers to edit audio files quickly, easily, and cheaply. Today, the process of making a recording is separated into tracking, mixing and mastering. Multitrack recording makes it possible to capture signals from several microphones, or from different 'takes' to tape or disc, with maximized headroom and quality, allowing previously unavailable flexibility in the mixing and mastering stages for editing, level balancing, compressing and limiting, adding effects such as reverberation, equalisation, flanging, and much more.

Software[link]

There are many different digital audio recording and processing programs running under several computer operating systems for all purposes, from professional through serious amateur to casual user.

A comprehensive list of digital recording applications is available on the digital audio workstation page.

Digital dictation software for recording and transcribing speech has different requirements; intelligibility and flexible playback facilities are priorities, while a wide frequency range and high audio quality are not.

Legal status[link]

UK[link]

Since 1934, sound recordings are treated differently from musical works under copyright law.^[17] Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 defines a sound recording to mean (a) a recording of sounds, from which the sounds may be reproduced, or (b) a recording of the whole or any part of a literary, dramatic or musical work, from which sounds reproducing the work or part may be produced, regardless of the medium on which the recording is made or the method by which the sounds are reproduced or produced. It thus covers vinyl records, tapes, compact discs, digital audiotapes, and MP3s which embody recordings.

Notes[link]

Further reading[link]

• Carson, B. H.; Burt, A. D.; Reiskind, and H. I., "A Record Changer And Record Of Complementary Design", RCA Review, June 1949
• Coleman, Mark, Playback: from the Victrola to MP3, 100 years of music, machines, and money, Da Capo Press, 2003.
• Gaisberg, Frederick W., "The Music Goes Round", [Andrew Farkas, editor.], New Haven, Ayer, 1977.
• Gronow, Pekka, "The Record Industry: The Growth of a Mass Medium", Popular Music, Vol. 3, Producers and Markets (1983), pp. 53–75, Cambridge University Press.
• Gronow, Pekka, and Saunio, Ilpo, "An International History of the Recording Industry", [translated from the Finnish by Christopher Moseley], London ; New York : Cassell, 1998. ISBN 0-304-70173-4
• Lipman, Samuel,"The House of Music: Art in an Era of Institutions", 1984. See the chapter on "Getting on Record", pp. 62–75, about the early record industry and Fred Gaisberg and Walter Legge and FFRR (Full Frequency Range Recording).
• Millard, Andre J., "America on record : a history of recorded sound", Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1995. ISBN 0-521-47544-9
• Millard, Andre J., " From Edison to the iPod", UAB Reporter, 2005, University of Alabama at Birmingham.
• Milner, Greg, "Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music", Faber & Faber; 1 edition (June 9, 2009) ISBN 978-0-571-21165-4. Cf. p. 14 on H. Stith Bennett and "recording consciousness".
• "Recording Technology History: notes revised July 6, 2005, by Steven Schoenherr", San Diego University (archived 2010)

Media[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: recording

• Millard, Andre, "Edison's Tone Tests and the Ideal of Perfect Reproduction", Lost and Found Sound, interview on National Public Radio.

External links[link]

• Audio Engineering Society
• Oral history of recorded sound Interviews with practitioners in all areas of the recording industry. British Library
• History of Recorded Sound. New York Public Library
• Audio Engineering online course under Creative Commons Licence
• Archival Sound Recordings – tens of thousands of recordings showcasing audio history from 19th century wax cylinders to the present day. British Library
• International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA)

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]

	"I Want to Hold Your Hand" noicon Sample of the single "I Want to Hold Your Hand" (1963) which secured the band's international success when it achieved enormous US popularity a few weeks before their debut in the country
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

The Beatles' releases in the United States were hindered for over a year by EMI's American subsidiary, Capitol Records, who initially declined to issue their music, including the first three singles. Concurrent negotiations with the independent US labels Vee Jay and Swan led to the release of the songs in 1963,^[74] but legal issues with royalties and publishing rights proved an obstacle to the successful marketing of the group in the US.^[75] Exercising complete control over format, Capitol began to issue the material in December 1963,^[74] compiling distinct US albums from the band's recordings and issuing songs of their choosing as singles.^[76] American chart success began after Epstein arranged for a $40,000 US marketing campaign and secured the support of disk jockey Carrol James, who first played the band's records in mid-December 1963, initiating their music's spread across US radio. This caused an increase in demand, leading Capitol to rush-release "I Want to Hold Your Hand" later that month.^[77] Released 26 December 1963, "I Want to Hold Your Hand" sold a million copies and was a number one hit in the US by mid-January, with the band's previously scheduled debut there just weeks away.^[78]

The Beatles arrive at John F. Kennedy International Airport, 7 February 1964

The Beatles left the United Kingdom on 7 February 1964, with an estimated four thousand fans gathered at Heathrow, waving and screaming as the aircraft took off.^[79] At New York's John F. Kennedy Airport they were greeted by another uproarious crowd estimated at three thousand.^[80] They gave their first live US television performance two days later on The Ed Sullivan Show, watched by approximately 73 million viewers in over 23 million households,^[81] or 34 percent of the American population. According to the Nielsen rating service writes Gould, it was "the largest audience that had ever been recorded for an American television program."^[82] The next morning critical consensus in the US was generally against the group,^[83] but a day later their first US concert saw Beatlemania erupt at Washington Coliseum.^[84] Back in New York the following day, they met with another strong reception during two shows at Carnegie Hall.^[81] The band then flew to Florida and appeared on the weekly Ed Sullivan Show a second time, before another 70 million viewers, before returning to the UK on 22 February.^[85]

[edit] A Hard Day's Night

Capitol Records' lack of interest throughout 1963 had not gone unnoticed, and a competitor, United Artists Records, encouraged their film division to offer the group a three motion picture deal, primarily for the commercial potential of the soundtracks.^[86] Directed by Richard Lester, A Hard Day's Night had the group's involvement for six weeks in March–April 1964 as they played themselves in a mock-documentary.^[87] The film premiered in London and New York in July and August, respectively, and was an international success, with some critics drawing comparison with the Marx Brothers.^[88] According to Erlewine, the accompanying soundtrack album, A Hard Day's Night, saw them "truly coming into their own as a band. All of the disparate influences on their first two albums had coalesced into a bright, joyous, original sound, filled with ringing guitars and irresistible melodies."^[89] That "ringing guitar" sound was primarily the product of Harrison's 12-string electric Rickenbacker, a prototype given him by the manufacturer, which made its debut on the record. Harrison's ringing 12-string inspired Roger McGuinn, who obtained his own Rickenbacker and used it to craft the trademark sound of The Byrds.^[90]

The Beatles held twelve positions on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart during the week of 4 April, including the top five.^[91] That same week, a third American LP joined the two already in circulation; two of the three reached the first spot on the Billboard album chart, the third peaked at number two.^[92] The band's popularity generated unprecedented interest in British music, and a number of other UK acts subsequently made their own American debuts, successfully touring over the next three years in what was termed the British Invasion.^[93] The Beatles' hairstyle, unusually long for the era and mocked by many adults, was widely adopted and became an emblem of rebellion to the burgeoning youth culture.^[94]

McCartney, Harrison and Lennon perform on Dutch television in 1964

The Beatles toured internationally in June and July. Staging thirty-seven shows over twenty-seven days in Denmark, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand.^[95] Starr was briefly hospitalised after a tonsillectomy, and Jimmie Nicol sat in on drums for the first five dates.^[96] In August they returned to the US, with a thirty-concert tour of twenty-three cities.^[97] Generating intense interest once again, the month-long tour attracted between ten and twenty thousand fans to each thirty-minute performance in cities from San Francisco to New York.^[97]

In August, journalist Al Aronowitz arranged for the group to meet Bob Dylan.^[98] Visiting the band in their New York hotel suite, Dylan introduced them to cannabis.^[99] Beatles biographer Jonathan Gould points out the musical and cultural significance of this meeting, before which the musicians' respective fanbases were "perceived as inhabiting two separate subcultural worlds": Dylan's audience of "college kids with artistic or intellectual leanings, a dawning political and social idealism, and a mildly bohemian style" contrasted with their fans, "veritable 'teenyboppers'—kids in high school or grade school whose lives were totally wrapped up in the commercialized popular culture of television, radio, pop records, fan magazines, and teen fashion. They were seen as idolaters, not idealists."^[100] Within six months of the meeting writes Gould, "Lennon would be making records on which he openly imitated Dylan's nasal drone, brittle strum, and introspective vocal persona."^[100] Within a year, Dylan would "proceed, with the help of a five-piece group and a Fender Stratocaster electric guitar, to shake the monkey of folk authenticity permanently off his back ... the distinctions between the folk and rock audiences would have nearly evaporated [and the group's] audience ... [was] showing signs of growing up."^[100] In September they refused to play a show in Florida until the local promoter assured them that the audience would not be racially segregated.^[101]

[edit] Beatles for Sale, Help! and Rubber Soul

According to Gould, the band's fourth studio LP, Beatles for Sale, indicates an emerging conflict between the "intense commercial pressures" of global success, and the group's "creative aspirations".^[102] Recorded between August and October 1964,^[103] they had intended the album to continue the format established by A Hard Day's Night which, unlike the band's first two LPs, contained only original songs.^[104] However, having nearly exhausted their backlog of songs on the previous album, and the challenges posed by constant international touring to the band's songwriting efforts, Lennon admitted, "Material's becoming a hell of a problem", and as such six covers from their extensive repertoire were chosen to complete the album.^[102] Released in early December, its eight original compositions stood out, demonstrating a growing maturity in the Lennon–McCartney songwriting partnership.^[102]

In early 1965, while they were his guests for dinner, Lennon and Harrison's dentist secretly added LSD to their coffee. Lennon described the experience: "It was just terrifying, but it was fantastic. I was pretty stunned for a month or two."^[105] He and Harrison subsequently became regular users of the drug, joined by Starr on at least one occasion.^[106] McCartney was initially reluctant to try it, but eventually did so in the fall of 1966.^[106] He later became the first Beatle to discuss LSD publicly, declaring in a magazine interview that "it opened my eyes" and "made me a better, more honest, more tolerant member of society."^[107]

Controversy erupted in June 1965 when Elizabeth II appointed the four Beatles Members of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) after Prime Minister Harold Wilson nominated them for the award.^[108] In protest—the honour was at that time primarily bestowed upon military veterans and civic leaders—some conservative MBE recipients returned their own insignia.^[109]

The US trailer for Help! with (from the rear) Harrison, McCartney, Lennon and (largely obscured) Starr

The Beatles' second film, Help!, again directed by Lester, was released in July. Described as "mainly a relentless spoof of Bond",^[110] it inspired a mixed response among both reviewers and the band. McCartney said, "Help! was great but it wasn't our film—we were sort of guest stars. It was fun, but basically, as an idea for a film, it was a bit wrong."^[111] The soundtrack was dominated by Lennon, who wrote and sang lead on most of its songs, including the two singles: "Help!" and "Ticket to Ride".^[112] The accompanying album, the group's fifth studio LP, contained all original material save for two covers, including the LP's closing track, "Dizzy Miss Lizzy", which became the last cover the band would include on an album, with the exception of Let It Be's brief rendition of the traditional Liverpool folk song "Maggie Mae".^[113] Help! reflects the band's increased use of vocal overdubs and the incorporation of classical instruments into their arrangements, notably the string quartet on the pop ballad "Yesterday".^[114] Composed by McCartney, "Yesterday" would inspire the most recorded cover versions of any song ever written.^[115]

The band's third US tour opened with, "[p]erhaps the most famous of all Beatles concerts", when they performed before a world-record crowd of 55,600 at New York's Shea Stadium on 15 August 1965.^[116] A further nine successful concerts followed in other American cities. On this tour they were credited with being the first artists to use on stage or foldback monitors, at their Atlanta show. Towards the end of the tour they were granted an audience with Elvis Presley, a foundational musical influence on the band, who invited them to his home in Beverly Hills, where they discussed the music business and exchanged anecdotes.^[117][118]

	"Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" noicon Sample of "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" from Rubber Soul (1965). The use of a sitar on this song saw the band "beginning to expand the conventional instrumental parameters of the rock group".[119]
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

Released in December 1965, Rubber Soul has been hailed by critics as a major step forward in the maturity and complexity of the band's music.^[119] Musicologist Ian MacDonald observes that with the album they "recovered the sense of direction that had begun to elude them during the later stages of work on Beatles for Sale".^[120] Their thematic reach was beginning to expand as they embraced more complex aspects of romance and philosophy.^[121] Biographers Peter Brown and Steven Gaines attribute the new musical direction to "the Beatles' now habitual use of marijuana",^[122] an assertion confirmed by the band—Lennon referred to it as "the pot album",^[123] and Starr said, "Grass was really influential in a lot of our changes, especially with the writers. And because they were writing different material, we were playing differently."^[123] After Help!'s foray into the world of classical music with flutes and strings, Harrison's introduction of a sitar on "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" marked a further progression outside the traditional boundaries of popular music. As their lyrics grew more artful, fans began to study them for deeper meaning. There was speculation that "Norwegian Wood" might refer to cannabis, a claim Lennon refuted: "I was trying to be sophisticated in writing about an affair ... but in such a smokescreen way that you couldn't tell."^[124]

While many of Rubber Soul's more notable songs were the product of Lennon and McCartney's collaborative songwriting,^[125] it also featured distinct compositions from each,^[126] though they continued to share official credit. The song "In My Life", of which each later claimed lead authorship, is considered a highlight of the entire Lennon–McCartney catalog.^[127] Harrison called Rubber Soul his "favorite album"^[123] and Starr referred to it as "the departure record".^[128] McCartney said, "We'd had our cute period, and now it was time to expand."^[129] However, recording engineer Norman Smith later stated that the studio sessions revealed signs of growing conflict within the group—"the clash between John and Paul was becoming obvious", he wrote, and "as far as Paul was concerned, George could do no right".^[130] In 2003, Rolling Stone ranked Rubber Soul fifth among "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time",^[131] and Allmusic's Richie Unterberger describes it as "one of the classic folk-rock records."^[1]

Controversy, studio years and break-up (1966–1970)[link]

Events leading up to final tour[link]

In June 1966, Yesterday and Today—a compilation album created by Capitol Records for the US market—caused an uproar over its cover, which portrayed the grinning Beatles dressed in butcher's overalls, accompanied by raw meat and mutilated plastic baby dolls. It has been suggested that this was meant as a satirical response to the way Capitol had "butchered" the US versions of their albums.^[132] Thousands of copies of the album had a new cover pasted over the original; an unpeeled "first-state" copy fetched $10,500 at a December 2005 auction.^[133] In England, meanwhile, Harrison met sitar maestro Ravi Shankar, who agreed to train him on the instrument.^[134]

During a tour of the Philippines the month after the Yesterday and Today furore, they unintentionally snubbed the nation's first lady, Imelda Marcos, who had expected the group to attend a breakfast reception at the Presidential Palace.^[135] When presented with the invitation, Epstein politely declined on behalf of the group, as it had never been his policy to accept such official invitations.^[136] The group soon found that the Marcos regime was unaccustomed to taking "no" for an answer. The resulting riots endangered the band and they escaped the country with difficulty.^[137] Immediately afterward, they made their first visit to India.^[138]

Almost as soon as they returned home, they faced a fierce backlash from US religious and social conservatives (as well as the Ku Klux Klan) over a comment Lennon had made in a March interview with British reporter Maureen Cleave:^[139] "Christianity will go," Lennon said. "It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that; I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first, rock 'n' roll or Christianity. Jesus was alright but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me."^[140] The comment went virtually unnoticed in England, but when US teenage fan magazine Datebook printed it five months later—on the eve of the group's final US tour—it created a controversy with Christians in the American "Bible Belt".^[139] Epstein publicly criticised Datebook, saying they had taken Lennon's words out of context, and at a press conference Lennon pointed out, "If I'd said television was more popular than Jesus, I might have got away with it."^[141] Lennon claimed he was referring to how other people viewed their success, but when prompted by reporters he concluded by saying, "If you want me to apologise, if that will make you happy, then okay, I'm sorry."^[141]

The nature of their modest on-stage amplification meant their music could hardly be heard. Originally using the Vox AC30 amplifiers, the Beatles later received more powerful 100 watt amplifiers, specially developed by Vox for the band as they moved into larger stadiums in 1964, but these were still inadequate. The group's amplifiers struggled to compete with the volume of sound generated by screaming fans, and the band grew increasingly bored with the routine of performing live.^[142] Realizing that their shows were no longer about the music, they decided to put an end to concert touring.^[143]

[edit] Revolver and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

	"Eleanor Rigby" noicon Sample of "Eleanor Rigby" from Revolver (1966). The album involves innovative compositional approaches, arrangements and recording techniques. This song prominently features classical strings as part of a novel musical style.
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

Rubber Soul marked a major step forward; Revolver, released in August 1966 a week before the band's final tour, marked another.^[144] Lewisohn identifies it as, "The vital plateau between their "touring years" and "studio years" ... the album which ... shows the Beatles at the peak of their creativity ... a masterpiece born out of a sudden artistic and creative freedom, and the remarkable maturation of [the band]".^[145] Described by Gould as "woven with motifs of circularity, reversal, and inversion", Revolver featured sophisticated songwriting, studio experimentation, and a greatly expanded repertoire of musical styles ranging from innovative classical string arrangements to psychedelic rock.^[146] Abandoning the customary group photograph, its cover–design by Klaus Voormann "was a stark, arty, black-and-white collage that caricatured the Beatles in a pen-and-ink style beholden to Aubrey Beardsley."^[146] The album was preceded by the single "Paperback Writer", backed by "Rain".^[147] The Beatles made short promotional films for both songs, which Harrison described as "the forerunner of videos."^[148] They aired on The Ed Sullivan Show and Top of the Pops in June 1966.^[149]

Among Revolver's experimental songs was "Tomorrow Never Knows", for whose lyrics Lennon drew from Timothy Leary's The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The track's creation involved eight tape decks distributed about the EMI building, each manned by an engineer or a Beatle, who randomly varied the movement of a tape loop while Martin created a composite recording by sampling the incoming data.^[150] McCartney's "Eleanor Rigby" made prominent use of a string octet; Gould described it as "a true hybrid, conforming to no recognizable style or genre of song."^[151] Harrison was developing as a songwriter, and three of his compositions earned a place on the record. In 2003, Rolling Stone ranked Revolver as the third greatest album of all time.^[131] During the US tour that followed its release however, the band performed none of its songs.^[152] As Chris Ingham explains, they were very much "studio creations ... and there was no way a four-piece rock 'n' roll group could do them justice, particularly through the desensitising wall of the fans' screams. 'Live Beatles' and 'Studio Beatles' had become entirely different beasts."^[153] The final show, at San Francisco's Candlestick Park on 29 August, was their last commercial concert.^[154] It marked the end of a four-year period dominated by touring that included over 1,400 concert appearances internationally.^[155]

	"Within You Without You" noicon Sample of "Within You Without You" from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967). This raga rock song demonstrates the influence of Indian classical music on the band. "Strawberry Fields Forever" noicon Sample of "Strawberry Fields Forever" (1967), recorded at the beginning of the Sgt. Pepper sessions.
Problems listening to these files? See media help.

Freed from the burden of touring, the band embraced an increasingly experimental approach as they recorded Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, beginning in late-November 1966.^[156] According to engineer Geoff Emerick, the album's recording took over seven hundred hours.^[157] Emerick recalls the band's insistence "that everything on Sgt. Pepper had to be different ... [w]e had microphones right down in the bells of brass instruments and headphones turned into microphones attached to violins ... [w]e used giant primitive oscillators to vary the speed of instruments and vocals and we had tapes chopped to pieces and stuck together upside down and the wrong way around."^[158] Parts of "A Day in the Life" featured a forty-piece orchestra.^[158] The sessions initially yielded the non-album double A-side single "Strawberry Fields Forever"/"Penny Lane" in February 1967;^[159] the LP Sgt. Pepper followed in June.^[160] The musical complexity of the record, created using relatively primitive four-track recording technology, astounded contemporary artists,^[161] and was met with wide critical acclaim.^[162] Gould writes,

The overwhelming consensus is that the Beatles had created a popular masterpiece: a rich, sustained, and overflowing work of collaborative genius whose bold ambition and startling originality dramatically enlarged the possibilities and raised the expectations of what the experience of listening to popular music on record could be. On the basis of this perception, Sgt. Pepper became the catalyst for an explosion of mass enthusiasm for album-formatted rock that would revolutionize both the aesthetics and the economics of the record business".^[163]

Sgt. Pepper was the first major pop/rock LP to include its complete lyrics.^[164] In late 1967 the album was the subject of a scholarly analysis by American literary critic and professor of English Richard Poirier, who observed that his students were "listening to the group's music with a degree of engagement that he, as a teacher of literature, could only envy."^[165] Poirier identified what he termed the "mixed allusiveness" of the material: "It's unwise ever to assume that they're doing only one thing or expressing themselves in only one style ... one kind of feeling about a subject isn't enough ... any single induced feeling must often exist within the context of seemingly contradictory alternatives."^[165] McCartney said at the time, "We write songs. We know what we mean by them. But ... [y]ou put your own meaning at your own level to our songs".^[165]

Sgt. Pepper's elaborate album cover also attracted interest and study.^[166] A collage designed by pop artists Peter Blake and Jann Haworth depicted the group as the fictional band referred to in the album's title track and reprise,^[167] standing in front of a crowd of famous people.^[168] The heavy moustaches worn by the group reflected the growing influence of hippie style,^[169] while their clothing "spoofed the vogue in Britain for military fashions".^[170] In 2003, Rolling Stone ranked it number one on its list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time".^[131]

On 25 June the band performed their forthcoming single, "All You Need Is Love", to an estimated 350 million viewers during Our World, the first live global television link.^[171] Released a week later during the Summer of Love, the song was adopted as a flower power anthem.^[172] Two months later the group suffered a loss that threw their career into turmoil. Having only been introduced to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi the previous night in London, on 25 August they travelled to Bangor for his Transcendental Meditation retreat. Two days later, their manager's assistant Peter Brown phoned to inform them that Epstein had died.^[173] The coroner ruled the death an accidental carbitol overdose, though publicly it was widely rumoured a suicide.^[174] He had been in a fragile emotional state, stressed by personal issues and his working relationship with the band: worried they might not renew his management contract, due to expire in October, based on discontent with his supervision of business matters, particularly the Seltaeb fiasco.^[175] His death left the group disorientated and fearful about the future. Lennon recalled: "We collapsed. I knew that we were in trouble then. I didn't really have any misconceptions about our ability to do anything other than play music and I was scared. I thought, we've had it now."^[176]

[edit] Magical Mystery Tour, White Album and Yellow Submarine

The soundtrack to a Beatles television film, Magical Mystery Tour was released in the UK as a six-track double extended play disc (EP) in early December 1967.^[177][74] 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.^[92] 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 calls its five songs culled from the band's 1967 singles "huge, glorious, and innovative".^[178] In its first three weeks, it set a record for the highest initial sales of any Capitol LP, and is the only Capitol compilation later to be adopted in the band's official canon of studio albums.^[179] First aired on Boxing Day, the Magical Mystery Tour film brought the group their first major negative UK press. It was dismissed as "blatant rubbish" by the Daily Express, and The Daily Mail called it "a colossal conceit", while The Guardian labelled it "a kind of fantasy morality play about the grossness and warmth and stupidity of the audience".^[180] Gould describes it as "a great deal of raw footage showing a group of people getting on, getting off, and riding on a bus".^[180] Although TV viewership was respectable, broad critical consensus in the UK caused US television networks to lose interest in broadcasting it.^[181]