Four Liverpool players became history’s top-selling act
The Beatles—Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, Starr—formed in Liverpool in 1960 and are widely called the most influential rock band ever. Estimated sales exceed 600 million units, unmatched on the U.S. Billboard charts, after Hamburg club apprenticeships and a 1966 exit from touring.
Lennon’s Quarrymen skiffle outfit began in November 1956 at Quarry Bank High School; McCartney and Harrison joined before Ringo closed the classic lineup. Lennon–McCartney songs drove studio ambition until live shows felt impossible to refine further. Post-tour albums treated the studio as instrument.
By January 1959 Lennon was at Liverpool College of Art and his school friends had drifted away; the three guitarists played as Johnny and the Moondogs whenever they could find a drummer. Lennon's art-school friend Stuart Sutcliffe bought a bass with money from selling a painting and joined in January 1960, proposing the name Beatals in homage to Buddy Holly's Crickets; by May they were the Silver Beetles.
Allan Williams, their unofficial manager, booked them into Hamburg, and in mid-August 1960 they hired drummer Pete Best and left four days later for a residency with club owner Bruno Koschmider on the Reeperbahn, first at the Indra and then the Kaiserkeller. Across two years of stints there they fuelled all-night sets with Preludin, and Kirchherr gave Sutcliffe the combed-forward existentialist cut the others later copied. Sutcliffe left the band early in 1961.
Brian Epstein, a local record-shop manager, saw them at the Cavern Club in November 1961 and became their manager in January 1962. Decca turned them down, reportedly saying guitar groups were on the way out, but George Martin signed them to EMI. After the first session at EMI's London studios on 6 June 1962, Martin criticised Best's drumming, and in mid-August Ringo Starr replaced him. Love Me Do reached number 17 that October, and in December they wrapped up the last of five Hamburg stints, at the Star-Club.
Source: The Beatles
