Why did the Beatles break up?

The Bea­t­les were active through­out the six­ties before break­ing up in 1970. 

They were just kids in Liv­er­pool when they start­ed play­ing togeth­er in the late fifties. Those Mersey­side boys honed their craft in Ham­burg, enter­tained tens of mil­lions in the Unit­ed States, and took the world by storm. 

Even though they broke up over fifty years ago, the Bea­t­les remain the best-sell­ing musi­cians of all time.

In the Beginning 

Paul McCart­ney and John Lennon were only fif­teen and six­teen years old when they first met. Lennon was in a band called the Quar­ry­men, and McCart­ney was brought in by anoth­er band mem­ber. George Har­ri­son, also fif­teen, joined the group soon after. 

Over the next few years, the group tried on dif­fer­ent names: John­ny and the Moon Dogs, The Sil­ver Bee­tles, and The Sil­ver Beats. By 1960, they had set­tled on the Bea­t­les. They went through a few dif­fer­ent drum­mers before Ringo Starr joined them in 1962.

The Bea­t­les per­formed in Ham­burg in 1960 with Pete Best as their drum­mer. Har­ri­son was deport­ed in Novem­ber for lying to Ger­man author­i­ties about his age. Just a week lat­er, McCart­ney and Best were deport­ed as well. 

They returned to Ham­burg the fol­low­ing year and returned to increased pop­u­lar­i­ty in Liv­er­pool. When they returned home to Eng­land, they were dis­cov­ered by fel­low Liv­er­pool native Bri­an Epstein. The group signed him as their man­ag­er in ear­ly 1962

The Fifth Beatle 

“If any­one was the fifth Bea­t­le,” McCart­ney once said, “it was Bri­an.”

Epstein set his sights on the world stage and cleaned up their image, swap­ping grungy clothes out for suits. He urged them to act more pro­fes­sion­al­ly as well. There would be no more eat­ing on stage, no more smok­ing or swear­ing dur­ing their per­for­mances. 

Those rag­tag Liv­er­pool kids were grow­ing up and head­ed for big­ger things.

With­in six months, their new man­ag­er land­ed the group their first record­ing con­tract. They record­ed at EMI Stu­dios on Abbey Road for the first time in June 1962. 

The first four songs to be record­ed were “Besame Mucho,” “Ask Me Why,” “PS I Love You,” and the icon­ic “Love Me Do.”

These first four songs were pro­duced by George Mar­tin, who felt that Pete Best was not up to par. The oth­er band mem­bers agreed. That sum­mer, they replaced Best with local drum­mer Richard Starkey, who had already start­ed going by the name Ringo Starr.

With the help of their new man­ag­er, the Bea­t­les were soon play­ing to big­ger crowds at bet­ter venues than they ever had before. 

In 1963, their album “Please Please Me” hit num­ber one on the Unit­ed King­dom charts, and Epstein booked the group a spot on the Ed Sul­li­van Show in the Unit­ed States

“Please Please Me” was the first of eleven con­sec­u­tive albums released in the Unit­ed King­dom to reach the top spot on the charts. Their fourth sin­gle, “She Loves You”, was their first sin­gle to sell over one mil­lion copies. 

Beatlemania

The Bea­t­les toured the Unit­ed King­dom four times in 1963, and over fif­teen mil­lion view­ers watched them per­form live in the show Sun­day Night at the Lon­don Pal­la­di­um. They left for a few days to per­form in Swe­den, and hun­dreds of scream­ing fans greet­ed them at the air­port when they returned. 

When they left for Amer­i­ca, approx­i­mate­ly four thou­sand fans went to Heathrow Air­port just to see them off. And when they land­ed in New York, thou­sands more were wait­ing to greet them.

The Bea­t­les arrived in the Unit­ed States in Feb­ru­ary 1964 and per­formed on the Ed Sul­li­van Show two days lat­er for 73 mil­lion view­ers – over one-third of the pop­u­la­tion of the Unit­ed States at that time. No tele­vi­sion pro­gram in the coun­try had ever drawn an audi­ence of that size before.

Around the World

In June and July of 1964, the Bea­t­les toured Aus­tralia, Den­mark, Hong Kong, the Nether­lands, and New Zealand. They played 37 shows in 27 days. 

After that, they returned to the Unit­ed States and per­formed in 23 cities. Over ten thou­sand fans flocked to see each of their 30 half-hour con­certs.

It was dur­ing this tour that they met the pop­u­lar folk singer Bob Dylan. After this meet­ing, both Dylan and the Bea­t­les began to incor­po­rate ele­ments of the oth­er artists’ style into their own music. It was a grad­ual meld­ing of folk music with rock and roll.