The Beatles Years (Volumes 1 & 2 out of 4)
Vol 1: From Skiffle Room to the Birth of Beatlemania (132 pages, 99.4 mb)
Vol 2: Movies, Mania and MBEs (132 pages, 88 mb)
It's 60 years since the 19-year-old John Lennon sat in his flat in Gambier Terrace, Liverpool, and conjured up the name of the band that would become a global phenomenon. "I was looking for a name like The Crickets that meant two things," he said " ... when you said it people thought of crawly things, when you read it, it was beat music."
Six decades on and no band has left such a profound musical legacy as The Beatles. Across their recording career, they created a back catalogue that is without equal. The Beatles emerged with a uniquely raw and infectious sound but their greatest achievement was the staggering pace of their creative development. Each new album and single was a game-changer, as they consistently forged bold new sonic ground.
In the first of four volumes, we chart the band's early years, from skiffle outfit The Quarrymen through to their gruelling apprenticeship in Hamburg and the screaming hysteria-fuelled height of Beatlemania at the close of 1963. By then, John, Paul, George and Ringo were household names. Within weeks, they would be taking America by storm.
Issue two of The Beatles Years focuses on 1964 to 1965 and opens with this first visit to the US, where the coast-to-coast broadcast of their iconic appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show would galvanise their Stateside success. We chart their exhilarating, yet exhaustive, US and world tours, their prolific songwriting, the making of the films A Hard Day's Night and Help!, their relationship with the press, the controversial awarding of MBEs to the band, and their appearance at the first-ever stadium rock concert in front of 55,600 fans at Shea Stadium.
