Life With The Beatles

In the mid-1960s, when so much was happening in the world and the volume everywhere seemed dialed up to 11, the Beatles were the biggest thing on the planet. Their fans screamed from the fences as the Fab Four walked across the airport tarmac or into a vast stadium. They wanted to touch the Beatles. They wanted to know the Beatles. Who might help them? One photographer was inside. The young Australian Robert Whitaker had been noticed by Beatles manager Brian Epstein, who then hired him. When Beatlemania exploded, Whitaker was along for the wild ride. He was backstage, he was in the studio, he went to the boys' homes, he became their friend and confidante (He grew particularly close to John). Robert Whitaker fashioned many of the iconic Beatles images, and all his pictures of the band were taken in the period that Beatles fans most like to remember: when they were fab, when they changed our culture. Bob Whitaker-a great photographer, after all-was a friend of LIFE's and made contributions to earlier books on John Lennon and George Harrison. In the months before his death in September 2011, he was collaborating with us on this book, his Beatles magnum opus. In these pages are rarely or never seen photographs and his personal reflections, which add resonance to the images. For those who once wanted to touch the Beatles, wanted to know them, this is an essential document. It is full of vitality. Beatlemania was a crazy, crazy place to be, and it is captured here in all its nutty glory. Then, too, there are the famous Whitaker album covers, including the early drafts of the notorious-and banned-Yesterday and Today jacket. It is LIFE's good fortune, and it will be our readers', that Bob Whitaker talked about all this with us and others through the years. His testimony is that of a proverbial fifth Beatle: He was there, part of the scene. He saw it all, he recorded much of it on film, and he remembered even more. Here, then, is Bob Whitaker's final word on the Beatles-all his best photographs, all his reminiscences. LIFE is proud to bring forth this book. It does what we always try to do-present great photography-and it also pays tribute to a bygone time, a bygone band that we all loved, and a man who was a dear friend.

In 1962, Pete Best, the then drummer of The Beatles, was replaced by Ringo Starr and the reconstituted band recorded its first single in Liverpool. A legend was born: John, Paul, George, and Ringo?"collectively the most popular and influential rock and roll band that the world has ever seen. The Beatles came to define their era in a way that no other band or performer has managed. The band only produced music between 1962 and 1970, but in the course of their eight remarkable years, they produced a dozen astonishing albums of original, mainly self-composed music. At least two of those albums invariably make every "all time great" chart list: Revolver and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Their success was truly global and during their heyday and for some years after, they were four of the most recognizable faces on the planet; arguably, they remain so. This British rock and roll band took the world by storm in the 60s and their timeless music remains popular today. The accompanying DVD features a mixture of interviews with the band, reportage of the travels of the "Fab Four," press conferences, and interviews with them and their entourage from 1963 onward. It also includes an extra feature, a documentary on John's "We're more popular than Jesus" remark and its aftermath.

The songs are iconic, their faces unmistakable. When John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, all cheeky young lads from Liverpool, exploded on the international stage in the 1960s, with their mop tops and infectious love songs it was a cultural earthquake. Beatlemania swept the globe. The Fab Four's music and lyrics would continue to grow in maturity and sophistication, including the albums Rubber Soul, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and Abbey Road broke new ground. After breaking up in 1970, the Beatles found both solo success and tragedy, with Lennon's 1980 assassination and Harrison's untimely death from cancer. But their music is eternal. This special edition tells their story and includes: The early days, John and Paul: friends and rivals, the women they loved, and going solo.

We didn't know where it was all going. We just didn't know. One day in September 1968 Don McCullin, then regarded as the world's most accomplished war photographer, received a commission from the Apple Corporation to spend a day photographing the Beatles.

An all-access, firsthand account of the life and music of one of history's most beloved bands--from an original mastering engineer at Abbey Road Geoff Emerick became an assistant engineer at the legendary Abbey Road Studios in 1962 at age fifteen, and was present as a new band called the Beatles recorded their first songs. He later worked with the Beatles as they recorded their singles “She Loves You” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” the songs that would propel them to international superstardom. In 1964 he would witness the transformation of this young and playful group from Liverpool into professional, polished musicians as they put to tape classic songs such as “Eight Days A Week” and “I Feel Fine.” Then, in 1966, at age nineteen, Geoff Emerick became the Beatles’ chief engineer, the man responsible for their distinctive sound as they recorded the classic album Revolver, in which they pioneered innovative recording techniques that changed the course of rock history. Emerick would also engineer the monumental Sgt. Pepper and Abbey Road albums, considered by many the greatest rock recordings of all time. In Here, There and Everywhere he reveals the creative process of the band in the studio, and describes how he achieved the sounds on their most famous songs. Emerick also brings to light the personal dynamics of the band, from the relentless (and increasingly mean-spirited) competition between Lennon and McCartney to the infighting and frustration that eventually brought a bitter end to the greatest rock band the world has ever known.

The most famous pop band in the world, even today The Beatles hold centre stage. Anyone who lived through the 1960s remembers them and the digital remastering of their output has ensured that younger generations know them too. How could they not? The songs will live forever and are regularly reused in film or TV scores, on adverts, and on radio channels everywhere. With such coverage and interest, how can there be anything new to say about the band? The Beatles: The Days of their Life manages to do so thanks to the remarkable collection of photographs housed in Mirrorpix, the library of the Daily Mirror, Britain's premier popular daily newspaper. Mirrorpix has a sensational collection of material taken to feed an insatiable desire to see the band, its families, hangers on and what they did. Record launches, publicity events, holidays, flights in and out of the country, TV broadcasts, film work, births, deaths and marriages: everything was photographed. With this sort of coverage, unsurprisingly much material was not published and it is this treasure trove that is exploited in The Bealtes: The Days of their Life. Compiled by Richard Havers, who has a great pedigree in the music business and in music publishing, the book combines great photographs with memorabilia to provide a series of visual snapshots of the Beatles' life and career as Britain's number 1 band.

"These 56 essays, excerpts, short stories and poems, collected and reprinted by the three poet-editors from diverse sources, reflect how their authors -- music critic Greil Marcus, poets David Wojan and Donald Hall, early Beatle Stuart Sutcliffe and many others -- have loved and internalized the Beatles and their music ... In his poem 'Portland Coliseum, ' Allen Ginsberg, for example, exultantly recounts attending an early Beatles concert. Indeed, the Beatles' very public February 9, 1964, appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show comes up again and again in these pages as a sort of mantra for a generation's coming of age (though Leonard Bernstein writes of how the four moptops overwhelmed a 46-year-old conductor on that winter night). Not all of the writers flatter the band -- witness Larry Neal's attempt to explain the Beatles' failure to capture the hearts of some African Americans, or Eric Gamalinda's wonderful yarn about the band's disastrous trip to the Philippines. For sheer fun and creativity, Timothy Leary's essay 'Thank God for the Beatles' alone justifies the price of admission. 'John Lennon, George Harrison, Paul McCartney, and Ringo Starr are mutants ... Revolutionary agents sent by God, endowed by mysterious powers to create a new human species.' Yeah, yeah, yeah!"

Now in paperback, Tune In is the New York Times bestseller by the world’s leading Beatles authority – the first volume in a groundbreaking trilogy about the band that revolutionized music. The Beatles have been in our lives for half a century and surely always will be. Still, somehow, their music excites, their influence resonates, their fame sustains. New generations find and love them, and while many other great artists come and go, the Beatles are beyond eclipse. So . . . who really were these people, and just how did it all happen? 'The Beatles story' is everywhere. Told wrong from early on, rehashed in every possible way and routinely robbed of its context, this is a phenomenon in urgent need of a bright new approach. In his series All These Years, Mark Lewisohn – the world-recognized Beatles historian – presses the Refresh button to relate the entire story as it’s never been told or known before. Here is a full and accurate biography at last. It is certain to become the lasting word. Tune In is book one of three, exploring and explaining a period that is by very definition lesser-known: the formative pre-fame years, the teenage years, the Liverpool and Hamburg years – in many ways the most absorbing and incredible period of them all. The Beatles come together here in all their originality, attitude, style, speed, charisma, appeal, daring and honesty, the tools with which they’re about to reshape the world. It’s the Beatles in their own time, an amazing story of the ultimate rock band, a focused and colorful telling that builds and builds to leave four sharp lads from Liverpool on the very brink of a whole new kind of fame. Using impeccable research and resources, Tune In is a magisterial work, an independent biography that combines energy, clarity, objectivity, authority and insight. The text is anti-myth, tight and commanding – just like the Beatles themselves. Here is the Beatles story as it really was. Throw away what you think you know and start afresh.