Overnight success years in the making

 

And by beginnings, we mean the moment the Beatles were the Beatles but no one really knew it yet. We will not break any new ground here, as the stretch of time we are going to mention below is perhaps the most researched and analysed in the history of popular music — perhaps of music period. It relates to the early days of the Beatles, as they transformed from a local Liverpool underground band into the biggest thing in worldwide culture. And it still makes sense to discuss it, if only to highlight what made those boys become such important musicians down the line…

First, a few chronological pointers for everyone to be on the same page:

• March 1957: John Lennon starts the Quarrymen with friends. Paul McCartney joins the band in July, George Harrison in March 1958. You already have 3 Beatles right there: not too shabby.
• January 1960: Stuart Sutcliffe joins the band playing bass and rebrands it the Beatals in reference to Buddy Holly’s Crickets. He will tragically pass away from a brain haemorrhage in April 1962.
• August 1960: the boys finally decide on the name “The Beatles” and embark on a 2-year string of residencies in various Hamburg clubs.
• January 1962: Brian Epstein becomes the band’s manager and has them signed to an EMI subsidiary in a matter of months — aided by future Beatles producer George Martin.
• August 1962: Ringo Starr joins in: the Fab Four are born.
• December 1962: The Beatles end their 5th and last Hamburg residency.
• January 1963: “Please Please Me” reaches the #2 spot on the UK singles charts. The rest, as they say, is history…

There, in a nutshell, you have the starting point of arguably the most influential musical group of the 20th century. A fairly short timeline, by anyone’s standards: less than 6 years from teenage amateurism to the heights of the music charts, then on to bona fide legendary status, very few artists ever achieved any of that — if any. There are a host of reasons which could help explain that spectacular rise, including the fact that these individuals were exceptionally gifted from the start, that they got lucky on a number of occasions with Brian Epstein’s continued promotional push, or with their encounter with the genius that was Sir George Martin. That is all true.

But what we are most interested in here is the fact that the guys spent the better part of 2 and a half years toiling away in Hamburg night clubs, playing hours on end several times a day, often using powerful prescription drugs to be able to physically keep up. You may be young, but you are still not invincible. Sutcliffe sadly did not survive that phase, although his death is more likely attributable to a severe head injury than to the pace the musicians were performing at. In any event, what Lennon, McCartney and Harrison readily acknowledged in the years that followed was how profoundly useful those formative years had been in budding artists morphing into seasoned musicians, in their technical abilities becoming such that they could envisage ever more complex song structures, production ideas, artistic concepts…

In other words, there would not have been a Sgt. Pepper’s were it not for those Hamburg clubs. And we would not be celebrating the life and works of Sir Paul McCartney either. Talk about an alternate reality…