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... Beatles embarked on their final U. S. tour, playing their last live show at San Francisco's Candlestick Park on August 29 th.
From then on, the band announced, they were going to keep away from live performances to concentrate on more elaborate studio productions. Rumors were spread in the media as the band disappeared from the public. The Beatles spent much of early 1967 in the studio, recording their amazing, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
This groundbreaking concept album completely changed the way rock albums were created. It used numerous studio effects, placed the emphasis on the album as a whole rather than on singles, and rewrote the standard for cover art with its famous cardboard cutout-based photo collage. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band later won four Grammys, On August 27, 1967 Beatles manger Brian Epstein was found dead of a drug overdose, possibly intentional. The band was shaken, but decided not to hire a new manager, assuming complete control over their own career. Their first project without Epstein's guidance, the concept album and BBC TV special Magical Mystery Tour, was attacked by critics, and was probably the beginning of the end for the Beatles.
By 1968 the group had formed its own record label, Apple, and they were recording tracks for a new double album. Sessions were filled with tension as members of the group periodically stormed out and often failed to record together, turning in tracks recorded independently. The bizarre result, popularly referred to as The White Album but officially called The Beatles, was released in November of 1968, and featured a guest appearance by Eric Clapton on the single "While My Guitar Gently Weeps. " That same month John Lennon released a solo album recorded with his controversial new lover, Japanese artist Yoko Ono, entitled Unfinished Music No. 1 - Two Virgins. Late in 1968 an animated film inspired by the song "Yellow Submarine" was released in theaters. Despite the cheery tone of the film, created with little band involvement, the real Beatles were hardly speaking, spending more time on their personal lives and their own musical projects than on the group. In January 1969 the weary band began preparing to record a new album live in the studio, without any overdubs, tentatively entitled Get Back.
For an accompanying film, the Beatles performed on the roof of their studio, their last public appearance ever. While preparing the album, the group began to fight over creative issues, and the project was shelved, while the group continued to deteriorate. On March 12, McCartney married American photographer Linda Eastman; several days later Lennon formally married Yoko Ono. By May the Beatles's intuition worsened when the group appointed Allen Klein as their new business manager, despite objections by Paul McCartney, who wanted to give the job to his new father-in-law. Though conflict continued to haunt the group, the Beatles returned one last time to EMI Studios to record Abbey Road with George Martin, an amazingly together album.
By early 1970 each of the four Beatles was working on a solo album, but each publicly denied rumors of a split. In September 1969, Lennon told his bandmates that he wanted to quit, but because the group was renegotiating with EMI at the time, the breakup was temporarily put aside. Meanwhile, rampant rumors spread across America that Paul McCartney had died in an auto accident several years earlier and had been secretly replaced by a look-alike; the alleged "clues" hidden in lyrics and cover art were quickly proved to be the product of overactive imaginations. Sadly, internal tension resurfaced in the Beatles when Allen Klein brought in Phil Spector to produce and overdub Get Back (released in May 1970 as Let It Be) against Paul's wishes, also demanding that Paul delay the release of McCartney, his solo debut, in order to avoid detracting from sales of Let It Be.
In anger, McCartney released his album in April, before Let It Be, and publicly announced that he was quitting the group. On December 31, 1970 McCartney filed suit against Klein to break up the Beatles, which upset the other three, who had considered periodically recording as a group while continuing their solo careers -- now any chance of a reunion was gone, at least for quite a while. Apple Records became a financial and legal mess. During the 1970 s each of the Beatles released solo albums.
Paul, performing with wife Linda in the group Wings, was the most commercially successful. John recorded on and off with Yoko Ono, and continued to attract attention for his radical politics (though he semi-retired from music in 1975 to spend time with his newborn son, Sean). Throughout the decade there was idle talk of a reunion, peaking around 1976 when a Beatlesque Australian group named Klaatu was rumored to be the Fab Four under a false name (they weren't, though their manager and record company encouraged the rumor) and Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels half-seriously offered the Beatles $ 3, 000 to perform on his show. Though all four Beatles did contribute to the 1973 Ring Starr song "I'm the Greatest, " no real reunion ever took place.
On December 8, 1980 all chances of that happening were ended when a deranged fan, Mark David Chapman shot and killed John Lennon outside his Although the Beatles had not released any new albums since 1970, interest in the group remained high into the ' 90 s, their back catalog selling millions of copies a year and providing Capitol with a large part of their annual income. Publishing rights to all Lennon-McCartney compositions were sold during the ' 80 s for hundreds of millions of dollars, at one point passing through the hands of Michael Jackson. Though Capitol issued singles / out -takes compilations such as Past Masters and Rarities, a lot more unreleased material remained unavailable due to ongoing legal problems, and ended up on illegal bootlegs. By the early ' 90 s Paul, George, Ringo and Yoko Ono settled their disagreements about contracts, permitting the re-release of long unavailable recordings. In 1994 Capitol issued a double CD of early Beatles recordings for the BBC. Phenomenal sales of Live at the BBC inspired more exploitation of the Beatles legacy.
In 1995 the surviving Beatles came together to contribute to a TV documentary about the group and select material for a planned rarities anthology of out-takes and demos. While together, Paul, George and Ringo laid down music for two John Lennon demo out-takes, "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love. " Though the sound quality was often abysmal, the material inferior, and the surrounding hype insulting, America's aging Beatles fans ate up the three 1996 double-album releases, Beatles Anthology 1, 2, and 3, which sold over 15 million copies in less than a year. Capitol once again insists that there is no more Beatles material that will Even though one of the Fab Four has passed away, they live on, almost vividly, in the hearts of the youth in the world. Nothing before or since the Beatles has affected people in such a huge way. Forty years ago, four young lads from Liverpool, England got together and grew and grew until they were bigger than anything thats ever been seen in the music industry. They live forever in me, the world, in music, in everything.
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