Biographic - Sunday July 19, 2009 Comic Strip Licensing and Permissions

Transcript

Having played together as schoolboys in The Quarrymen skiffle group, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison continued to make music together, initially as Johnny & The Moondogs, and then The Silver Beetles. They Drafted in John's art school friend Stu Sutcliffe on bass, and by the time they left their native Liverpool, England, for a 1960 residency in Hamburg, Germany, they had recruited Pete Best and changed their name to The Beatles. When Sutcliffe decided to stay in Germany at the end of the group's second Hamburg Club Residency in 1961, they chose to continue as a quartet, with McCartney on bass. Tragically, within a year, Sutcliffe was dead of a brain hemorrhage, at the age of 21. Back in Liverpool, The Beatles were now the city's hottest band, appearing regularly at The Cavern Club. IT was there that they teamed up with manager Brian Epstein. Discarding Best for drummer Ringo Starr, The Beatles teamed up with producer George Martin within a few short months, the band was a chart-topping sensation and a genuine cultural phenomenon, with "Beatlemania" raging throughout the U.K. In 1964, they conquered the states, at one point occupying the top five spots on the charts! Setting trends in music and fashion, the "Fab Four" spearheaded a cultural revolution. The most famous young men on the planet, when the group split up in 1970, it was front-page news worldwide. All four went on to enjoy hugely successful solo careers, although, sadly Lennon and Harrison are no longer with us. But the music lives on. Lennon and McCartney are the most successful songwriters of all time, and with sales of over 1 billion, The Beatles are the best-selling artists in history.

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