For a band with such a seismic influence on music and popular culture, The Beatles had a comparatively short life. USA TODAY’s Marco R. della Cava identifies the eight indelible moments that mattered most.
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PAUL MEETS JOHN | On July 6, 1957, Paul McCartney, 15, turned up at a fair in honor of the Rose Queen at St. Peter’s Church in Liverpool. There, he met 16-year-old John Lennon, who had taken the stage with a few mates to hammer out skiffle songs. He would soon be asked to join Lennon’s band, The Quarrymen (seen here at the Casbah in 1959), thereby founding one of the greatest songwriting partnerships of all time.
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THE BEATLES SIGN WITH BRIAN | Although The Beatles had logged long hours playing to enthralled fans in Hamburg and Liverpool, they hadn’t arrived until the scion of a family record-store chain, Brian Epstein (left, just visible over Ed Sullivan’s shoulder), took note of their talent and signed them to a management contract in January 1962. Epstein went on to guide the lads’ looks and public relations blitz, earning him “fifth Beatle” praise from Paul McCartney. Epstein died of an accidental drug overdose in 1967.
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RINGO REPLACES PETE | The earliest incarnation of The Beatles featured drummer Pete Best. The Liverpudlian’s run lasted from 1960 to 1962, when he was replaced by another experienced regular on the local music scene, Ringo Starr. The reasons for Best’s dismissal date to The Beatles’ first sessions at Abbey Road Studios, where producer George Martin criticized the band’s backbeat. Ultimately, Starr’s quirky, cheerful personality proved to be among the greatest contributions to the Fab Four’s success.
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THE RECORDING OF ‘LOVE ME DO’ | Released on Oct. 5, 1962, The Beatles’ first single was the flash of lightning before a raging storm. Though the song itself, a simple Lennon-McCartney ditty, doesn’t stand up against later work, the choice of ‘Love Me Do’ as a debut single speaks volumes about the band’s faith in its own material. (The lads in 1963, with their silver disc for debut album ‘Please Please Me.’)
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FIRST ‘ED SULLIVAN SHOW’ APPEARANCE | For many Boomers, Feb. 9, 1964, endures as a seminal Beatles moment: the night of the band’s first appearance on American television. A clearly impressed Ed Sullivan introduced the hitmakers, and before they could get more than a few beats into ‘All My Loving,’ screams that could drown out a jet engine filled CBS-TV Studio 50 in New York.
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ROCKING SHEA STADIUM | Today, we think nothing of hot rock bands filling huge arenas. But such mass musical gatherings were unheard of until The Beatles packed New York’s Shea Stadium on Aug. 15, 1965, playing before a crowd of more than 55,000. The concert, which yielded a short documentary called ‘The Beatles at Shea Stadium,’ is most revealing in that it featured a group of musicians who clearly were put off by an environment in which their music was being drowned out. Barely a year later, a 1966 show at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park would prove to be the end of The Beatles’ in-concert era.
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‘SGT. PEPPER’ RELEASED | Relieved of the rigors of touring, The Beatles settled into the studio to push the envelope of modern pop music. The result was ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,’ released June 1, 1967, a conceptual and sonic masterpiece that is considered by many critics the most influential album of all time.
APPLE ROOFTOP CONCERT | At midday on a gray Jan. 30, 1969, most Londoners were heading out to lunch. The Beatles were heading to the roof of their Apple Corps headquarters on tony Savile Row. In that small space, one of the greatest bands in the world had come together for a final impromptu concert, so off-the-cuff that John Lennon (left, with Paul McCartney) had to borrow Yoko Ono’s fur coat to keep warm. For 42 minutes, the quartet, aided by keyboardist Billy Preston, ripped through songs ranging from ‘Get Back’ to ‘Danny Boy.’ But the writing was on the crumbling wall. The band soon fractured and initiated various solo projects. In late 1970, McCartney sued his former bandmates, officially marking the end of The Beatles.
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