The Beatles (band): Difference between revisions
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[[File:the-beatles.jpg|frame|Clockwise from bottom left: [[Paul McCartney]], [[Ringo Starr]], [[John Lennon]] and [[George Harrison]].]]
{{quote|''And in the end''
''The love you take''
''Is equal to''
''The love you make''
|"[[Grand Finale|The End]]"}}
''[[Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (album)|Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band]]'' is considered by many critics to be the greatest album in history and is credited with really changing the way people listened to pop music; it also has one of the most parodied and homaged album covers in the history of music. The simpler image on the cover of ''Abbey Road'' of [[Abbey Road Crossing|the band walking in near-lockstep across the street]] is a close competitor for most homaged cover, as is the half-shadowed band portrait that was used on the British album ''With the Beatles'' and its American equivalent/[[Macekre]] ''Meet the Beatles''.
The Beatles were the first band in history to make music video equivalents to their own songs, which every musician does now. They played themselves in three fictional films: the [[Mockumentary|pseudo-documentary]] ''[[A Hard Day's
The band broke up in 1970 under [[Creative Differences|circumstances painful to think about]]. Everyone went on to solo careers. The dissolution was finalized in 1974, but Apple Corps (the Beatles' management company) was left intact. For perhaps fifteen years, few people saw any purpose for that...
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On December 24 2015, their music became available on most streaming services.<ref>[http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35166985 BBC News article]</ref>
[[File:The Beatles logo.svg|thumb|200px]]
{{discography|Their complete discography (as available in the 9/9/09 remastered box sets) is:}}
* ''Please Please Me'' (1963)
* ''With The Beatles'' (1963)
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* ''[[Across the Universe (film)|Across the Universe]]'', a Mamma-Mia style musical using parsed lyrics to cobble together a loose plot
* ''[[I Am Sam]]'', a [[Sean Penn]] movie whose mentally disabled protagonist loves the Beatles
* ''[[Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (film)|Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band]]'', a 1978 [[Jukebox Musical]]
{{tropenamer|The Beatles are the [[Trope Namers|Trope Namer]] for:}}
* [[Abbey Road Crossing]] (The album cover from ''Abbey Road'')
* [[Bigger Than Jesus]] (Although [[John Lennon]] [[Beam Me Up, Scotty|didn't actually say that]])
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* [[Yoko Oh No]] (John's wife [[Yoko Ono]])
{{creatortropes|The Beatles provide examples of the following tropes:}}
* [[Alliteration]]: Mean Mr. Mustard and Polythene Pam.
** Bungalow Bill and Rocky Raccoon. And Sexy Sadie.
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** Sometimes they had two songs that were so strong they wouldn't even say one was the A and the other the B: "We Can Work It Out"/"Day Tripper", and, even more powerfully, "Strawberry Fields Forever"/"Penny Lane". This practice was invented by the Beatles, and is now usually referred to as a "Double-A Side".
* [[Call-and-Response Song]]: "It Won't Be Long", "With a Little Help From My Friends", "Getting Better", "Baby You're a Rich Man" and many others.
* [[Call Back]]: In the middle of "Carry That Weight" they break into a new verse of an earlier '
** The lyrics of "Glass Onion" consist almost entirely of references to the band's previous songs, including "I Am the Walrus", "She Loves You", "The Fool on the Hill", "Fixing a Hole", and "Strawberry Fields Forever". In the latter case the song even includes a little snatch of flute as a musical echo of the original's introduction.
** "She Loves You" is also quoted at the end of "All You Need Is Love"
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* [[Cash Cow Franchise]]: During the sixties and since 1989. A re-release by the Beatles is as newsworthy as a new release by [[U2]].
** [[Crack is Cheaper]]: Lowest "introduction" package is at least $250 for the [[Limited Special Collectors' Ultimate Edition|2009 remasters box set]] (stereo<ref>Every album in stereo, whether it was originally mixed in stereo or not ([[They Changed It, Now It Sucks]], as some would say)</ref> or mono<ref>Every album originally in mono, a form which many consider purest to the group's intent. However, you don't get any albums that were originally in stereo</ref>--many aficionados will argue that you really need both) and DVDs of ''[[A Hard Day's Night]]'', ''[[Help!]]!'' and ''[[Yellow Submarine]]'' (which will demand quite some search as it hasn't been reissued since 1999). And you can damage your wallet even further (Books! The ''Anthology'' documentary! ''[[Magical Mystery Tour]]'' and other DVDs! ''The Beatles [[Rock Band]]''!).
** For the technically-minded Beatles fans and music recording geeks, there is the handy, epic tome ''Recording The Beatles
* [[Celebrity Toons]]: As noted above.
* [[Christmas Episode]]/[[Missing Episode]]: The Beatles sent flexidiscs with holiday greetings and [[Sketch Comedy]] to their fan club between 1963 and 1969, which were compiled onto an LP (also a fan club exclusive) in 1971. All these releases are long out of print. They've never been legally available to the general public, except for the first one, which is unlockable content in ''The Beatles: [[Rock Band]]''.
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* [[Everything's Better with Chocolate]]: "Savoy Truffle".
* [[Everything Sounds Sexier in French]]: "Michelle" has a line in French, and a line in English, that mean the same ("these are words that go together well") and are sung to the same tune.
* [[Evolving Music]]: "Revolution 1" was initially recorded as a single, despite being a loping, ten-minute blues number that morphed into a chaotic sound collage. The Beatles decided to put this version aside, and instead recorded "Revolution" for the single - a faster, harder-rocking version of the same song. "Revolution 1" eventually appeared on ''[[The White Album]]'' with its first four minutes standing alone, and portions of the bizarre ending incorporated into the separate "Revolution 9."
** John Lennon's "Child of Nature" was originally conceived and demoed by the band following their trip to India in 1968, but never released. Three years later both was rerecorded with entirely new lyrics and released as "Jealous Guy" on Lennon's ''Imagine'' album. Likewise, George Harrison's "Not Guilty" was originally recorded for the ''The Beatles'' ("[[The White Album]]") in 1968, but never released until Harrison revived it, gave it a much bluesier take, and released it on his self-titled solo album in 1979
** A number of Beatles songs had their genesis in their early days but did not get album releases until much later into their career. "I'll Follow the Sun" and "Michelle" (released on ''Beatles for Sale'' and ''Rubber Soul'' in 1964 and 1965, respectively) date back to at least 1960, where it shows up on home recordings made by Paul McCartney. "The One After 909" even went through a number of studio takes in 1963 before being scrapped. It was returned to for the ''Let It Be'' album in 1970.
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** "Paperback Writer" and "Rain" is probably the best example of this - both are in the key of G, both are full of special effects, neither uses that many chords, and neither is a love song. However, where "Paperback Writer" is a gritty, fast-paced, journalistic sorta-first person letter, "Rain" is a mystical, slow-paced third-person rant. It's even better if you compare both songs with "Taxman", Harrison's first song on the album that follows, which is again very similar and very different to both.
** "We Can Work It Out" is the best example of this, with Paul writing the optimistic, yet arrogant refrain - "Try to see it my way...We can work it out" - while John wrote the pessimistic "Life is very short, and there's no time..." middle eight (with the time signature change as George's sole contribution to the song).
* [[Four
* [[Four-Temperament Ensemble]]: Paul is choleric, John--despite his witty, loud-mouthed, smart-aleck facade--was really melancholic, George was phlegmatic, Ringo is sanguine.
** Interestingly, early on their personas were presented as Paul being sanguine, John being choleric, George being melancholic, and Ringo being phlegmatic.
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** Hell, everything about Julian Lennon. Both he and his father were born to parents too young and immature to raise a child; both were pretty much abandoned by their parents (though Julian did still live with his mother); and then, by the time they had mended their respective relationships, both times the parent gets killed by someone else. And Julian looks like his mother, Cynthia, and sounds a lot like his father.
** His younger half-brother Sean did better, at least from an artistic POV. Sean's 1998 indie rock effort ''Into the Sun'' was different enough from not only Julian's more pop efforts, but also the works of [[Oasis (band)|a certain other band who played the same genre as him]] who were endlessly indebted to his father, that it wound up being very well received.
*** Sean unfortunately has decided to imitate his parents in his own [https://web.archive.org/web/20100822082516/http://www.thetripwire.com/news/2009/09/10/sean-lennon-rips-off-john-lennon/ pretty creepy way]. (Link NSFW).
** There's also Dhani Harrison, who is half of the alternative rock duo, thenewno2. And by the way, his voice sounds nearly identical to that of his father. And he somehow looks just like George.
*** He looks so much like George that during the big tribute concert that Eric Clapton arranged a year after George's death, Paul quipped that with Dhani onstage alongside himself, Ringo, Eric Clapton, Tom Petty, and a lot of George's other longtime friends, "It looks like George stayed young and all the rest of us got old."
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** He was described as an ADD monster.
** Reports of what a complete tool he could be are especially glaring in light of the modern picture of him as being St. John of Peace.
* [[Jerk with a Heart of Gold]]: Paul. See [[
** Despite being an infamous control freak after "Sgt. Pepper", he did his best to hold the crumbling band together after manager Brian Epstein passed away.
** John's neglected son Julian has admitted that he was much closer with Paul than his father.
* [[Jukebox Musical]]: Three [[All The Tropes:There Is No Such Thing as Notability|of note]], not counting ''Yellow Submarine''.
** ''[[Sgt. Pepper's
** ''LOVE'' (2006)
** ''[[Across the Universe (film)|Across the Universe]]'' (2007)
*** Having said that, if you are a big fan of The Beatles in general and don't mind a few lyrical changes, you're bound to at least enjoy the songs.
** There's also "All this and World War II", which is a WWII documentary with covers of Beatles songs. It largely has a reputation for making no sense.
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** "Strawberry Fields Forever" is the canonical example. It fades out with a gorgeous swarmandel before fading back in with a dissonant mellotron, vicious drumming, trumpets that sound like ambulance sirens, and (most disturbingly) John Lennon's slowed-down voice saying "CRANBERRY SAUCE".
*** Even worse if you're a little kid and you think it's "I buried Paul." Ever since then, that song's end is the sound of death to her.
** "Helter Skelter" is a different sort of [[Last-Note Nightmare]], as it finishes with Ringo throwing his drumsticks across the room and ''screaming'' "'''I GOT BLISTERS ON MY FINGERS!!'''" The version that wound up on
** The
** The manic laughing sound effect at the end of "Within You Without You", meant to bring relief to the heaviness of the lyrics. It didn't work.
* [[Lead Bassist]]: Sir Paul is a Type A, B, and C
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{{reflist}}
{{Grammy Award for Best New Artist}}
{{Grammy Award for Album of the Year}}
[[Category:The Seventies]]
[[Category:Musicians]]
[[Category:Baroque Pop]]
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