Andrew Lloyd Webber
Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber is an English composer and impresario of musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both on Broadway, he has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of variations, two film scores, a Latin Requiem Mass. Several of his songs have been recorded and were hits outside of their parent musicals, notably "The Music of the Night" and "All I Ask of You" from The Phantom of the Opera, "I Don't Know How to Love Him" from Jesus Christ Superstar, "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina" from Evita, "Any Dream Will Do" from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, "Memory" from Cats. In 2001 The New York Times referred to him as "the most commercially successful composer in history". Ranked the "fifth most powerful person in British culture" by The Daily Telegraph in 2008, the lyricist Don Black stated "Andrew more or less single-handedly reinvented the musical."He has received a number of awards, including a knighthood in 1992, followed by a peerage from Queen Elizabeth II for services to Music, six Tonys, three Grammys, an Academy Award, fourteen Ivor Novello Awards, seven Olivier Awards, a Golden Globe, a Brit Award, the 2006 Kennedy Center Honors, the 2008 Classic Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music.
He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, is an inductee into the Songwriter's Hall of Fame, is a fellow of the British Academy of Songwriters and Authors. He is one of only fifteen people to have won an Emmy, Oscar and Tony, his company, the Really Useful Group, is one of the largest theatre operators in London. Producers in several parts of the UK have staged productions, including national tours, of the Lloyd Webber musicals under licence from the Really Useful Group. Lloyd Webber is the president of the Arts Educational Schools London, a performing arts school located in Chiswick, West London, he is involved in a number of charitable activities, including the Elton John AIDS Foundation, Nordoff Robbins, Prostate Cancer UK and War Child. In 1992 he set up the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation which supports the arts and heritage in the UK. Andrew Lloyd Webber was born in Kensington, the elder son of William Lloyd Webber, a composer and organist, Jean Hermione Johnstone, a violinist and pianist.
His younger brother, Julian Lloyd Webber, has had a notable career as a solo cellist. Lloyd Webber started writing his own music at a suite of six pieces at the age of nine, he put on "productions" with Julian and his Aunt Viola in his toy theatre. His aunt Viola, an actress, took him to see many of her shows and through the stage door into the world of the theatre, he had set music to Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats at the age of 15. In 1965, Lloyd Webber was a Queen's Scholar at Westminster School and studied history for a term at Magdalen College, although he abandoned the course in the winter of 1965 to study at the Royal College of Music and pursue his interest in musical theatre. In 1965, when Lloyd Webber was a 17-year-old budding musical-theatre composer, he was introduced to the 20-year-old aspiring pop-song writer Tim Rice, their first collaboration was The Likes of Us, a musical based on the true story of Thomas John Barnardo. They produced a demo tape of that work in 1966. Although composed in 1965, The Likes of Us was not publicly performed until 2005, when a production was staged at Lloyd Webber's Sydmonton Festival.
In 2008, amateur rights were released by the National Operatic and Dramatic Association in association with the Really Useful Group. The first amateur performance was by a children's theatre group in Cornwall called "Kidz R Us". Stylistically, The Likes of Us is fashioned after the Broadway musical of the 1950s. In this respect, it is markedly different from the composer's work, which tends to be either predominantly or wholly through-composed, closer in form to opera than to the Broadway musical. In the summer of 1967 Alan Doggett, a family friend of the Lloyd Webbers who had assisted on The Likes of Us and, the music teacher at the Colet Court school in London, commissioned Lloyd Webber and Rice to write a piece for the school's choir. Doggett requested a "pop cantata" along the lines of Herbert Chappell's The Daniel Jazz and Michael Hurd's Jonah-Man Jazz, both of, published by Novello and were based on the Old Testament; the request for the new piece came with a 100-guinea advance from Novello.
This resulted in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, a retelling of the biblical story of Joseph, in which Lloyd Webber and Rice humorously pastiched a number of pop-music styles such as Elvis-style rock'n'roll and country music. Joseph began life as a short cantata that gained some recognition on its second staging with a favourable review in The Times. For its subsequent performances and Lloyd Webber revised the show and added new songs to expand it to a more substantial length. Continued expansion culminated in a 1972 stage musical and a two-hour-long production being staged in the West End in 1973 on the back of the success of Jesus Christ Superstar. In 1969, Rice and Lloyd Webber wrote a song for the Eurovision Song Contest called "Try It and See", not selected. With rewritten lyrics it became "King Herod's Song" in Jesus Christ Superstar; the planned follow-up to Jesus Chr
Glam rock
Glam rock is a style of rock music that developed in the United Kingdom in the early 1970s performed by musicians who wore outrageous costumes and hairstyles platform shoes and glitter. Glam artists drew on diverse sources across music and throwaway pop culture, ranging from bubblegum pop and 1950s rock and roll to cabaret, science fiction, complex art rock; the flamboyant clothing and visual styles of performers were camp or androgynous, have been described as playing with nontraditional gender roles. "Glitter rock" was another term used to refer to a more extreme version of glam. The UK charts were inundated with glam rock acts from 1971 to 1975, with glam manifesting in all areas of British popular culture during this period; the March 1971 appearance of T. Rex frontman Marc Bolan on the BBC's music show Top of the Pops, wearing glitter and satins, is cited as the beginning of the movement. Other British glam rock artists include David Bowie, Freddie Mercury of Queen, Mott the Hoople, Slade, Elton John, Roxy Music and Gary Glitter.
In the US the scene was much less prevalent, with Alice Cooper and Lou Reed the only American artists to score a hit. Other US glam artists include Iggy Pop and Jobriath, it declined after the mid-1970s, but influenced other musical genres including punk rock, glam metal, New Romantic and gothic rock. Glam rock has sporadically revived since the 1990s. Glam rock can be seen as a fashion as well as musical subgenre. Glam artists rejected the revolutionary rhetoric of the late 1960s rock scene, instead glorifying decadence and the simple structures of earlier pop music. Artists drew on such musical influences as bubblegum pop, the brash guitar riffs of hard rock, stomping rhythms, 1950s rock and roll, filtering them through the recording innovations of the late 1960s, it became diverse, varying between the simple rock and roll revivalism of figures like Alvin Stardust to the complex art pop of Roxy Music. In its beginning, however, it was a youth-oriented reaction to the creeping dominance of progressive rock and concept albums – what Bomp! called the "overall denim dullness" of "a deadly boring, prematurely matured music scene".
Visually it was a mesh of various styles, ranging from 1930s Hollywood glamour, through 1950s pin-up sex appeal, pre-war cabaret theatrics, Victorian literary and symbolist styles, science fiction, to ancient and occult mysticism and mythology. Glam is most noted for its sexual and gender ambiguity and representations of androgyny, beside extensive use of theatrics, it was prefigured by the flamboyant English composer Noël Coward his 1931 song "Mad Dogs and Englishmen", with music writer Daryl Easlea stating, "Noël Coward's influence on people like Bowie, Roxy Music and Cockney Rebel was immense. It suggested style and surface were as important as depth and substance. Time magazine noted Coward's'sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic and poise', it reads like a glam manifesto." Showmanship and gender identity manipulation acts included the Cockettes and Alice Cooper, the latter of which combined glam with shock rock. Glam rock emerged from the English psychedelic and art rock scenes of the late 1960s and can be seen as both an extension of, a reaction against, those trends.
Its origins are associated with Marc Bolan, who had renamed his acoustic duo T. Rex and taken up electric instruments by the end of the 1960s. Bolan was, in the words of music critic Ken Barnes, "the man who started it all". Cited as the moment of inception is Bolan's appearance on the BBC music show Top of the Pops in March 1971 wearing glitter and satins, to perform what would be his second UK Top 10 hit, "Hot Love"; the Independent states that Bolan's appearance on Top of the Pops “permitted a generation of teeny-boppers to begin playing with the idea of androgyny”. T. Rex's 1971 album. In 1973, a few months after the release of the album Tanx, Bolan captured the front cover of Melody Maker magazine with the declaration "Glam rock is dead!". From late 1971 a minor star, David Bowie developed his Ziggy Stardust persona, incorporating elements of professional makeup and performance into his act. Bowie, in a 1972 interview in which he noted that other artists described as glam rock were doing different work, said "I think glam rock is a lovely way to categorize me and it's nicer to be one of the leaders of it".
Bolan and Bowie were soon followed in the style by acts including Roxy Music, Slade, Mott the Hoople and Alvin Stardust. The popularity of glam rock in the UK was such that three glam rock bands had major UK Christmas hit singles. Glam was not only a successful trend in UK popular music, it became dominant in all other aspects of British popular culture during the 1970s. A heavier variant of glam rock, emphasising guitar riff centric songs, driving rhythms and live performance with audience participation, were represented by bands like Slade and Mott the Hoople, with followers such as Def Leppard, Cheap Trick, Kiss, Bon Jovi, Quiet Riot, some of which either covered Slade compositions or composed new songs based on Slade templates. While successful in the single charts in the UK few of these musicians were able to make a serious impact in the US.
Grammar school
A grammar school is one of several different types of school in the history of education in the United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries a school teaching Latin, but more an academically-oriented secondary school, differentiated in recent years from less academic secondary modern schools. The original purpose of medieval grammar schools was the teaching of Latin. Over time the curriculum was broadened, first to include Ancient Greek, English and other European languages, natural sciences, history and other subjects. In the late Victorian era grammar schools were reorganised to provide secondary education throughout England and Wales. Grammar schools of these types were established in British territories overseas, where they have evolved in different ways. Grammar schools became the selective tier of the Tripartite System of state-funded secondary education operating in England and Wales from the mid-1940s to the late 1960s and continuing in Northern Ireland. With the move to non-selective comprehensive schools in the 1960s and 1970s, some grammar schools became independent and charged fees, while most others were abolished or became comprehensive.
In both cases, many of these schools kept "grammar school" in their names. More a number of state grammar schools still retaining their selective intake gained academy status, meaning that they are independent of the Local Education Authority; some parts of England retain forms of the Tripartite System, a few grammar schools survive in otherwise comprehensive areas. Some of the remaining grammar schools can trace their histories to before the 16th century. Although the term scolae grammaticales was not used until the 14th century, the earliest such schools appeared from the sixth century, e.g. the King's School and the King's School, Rochester. The schools were attached to cathedrals and monasteries, teaching Latin – the language of the church – to future priests and monks. Other subjects required for religious work were added, including music and verse and mathematics and law. With the foundation of the ancient universities from the late 12th century, grammar schools became the entry point to a liberal arts education, with Latin seen as the foundation of the trivium.
Pupils were educated in grammar schools up to the age of 14, after which they would look to universities and the church for further study. Three of the first schools independent of the church – Winchester College, Oswestry School and Eton College – were tied to the universities. An example of an early grammar school founded by an early modern borough corporation unconnected with church or university is Bridgnorth Grammar School, founded in 1503 by Bridgnorth Borough Corporation. During the English Reformation in the 16th century, most cathedral schools were closed and replaced by new foundations funded from the dissolution of the monasteries. For example, the oldest extant schools in Wales – Christ College and the Friars School, Bangor – were established on the sites of former Dominican monasteries. King Edward VI made an important contribution to grammar schools, founding a series of schools during his reign. A few grammar schools were established in the name of Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth I.
King James I founded a series of "Royal Schools" in Ulster, beginning with The Royal Armagh. In theory these schools offered free tuition to those who could not pay fees. In the Scottish Reformation schools such as the Choir School of Glasgow Cathedral and the Grammar School of the Church of Edinburgh passed from church control to burgh councils, the burghs founded new schools. With the increased emphasis on studying the scriptures after the Reformation, many schools added Greek and, in a few cases, Hebrew; the teaching of these languages was hampered by a shortage of non-Latin type and of teachers fluent in the languages. During the 16th and 17th centuries the setting-up of grammar schools became a common act of charity by nobles, wealthy merchants and guilds. Many of these are still commemorated in annual "Founder's Day" services and ceremonies at surviving schools; the usual pattern was to create an endowment to pay the wages of a master to instruct local boys in Latin and sometimes Greek without charge.
The school day ran from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. with a two-hour break for lunch. Most of the day was spent in the rote learning of Latin. To encourage fluency, some schoolmasters recommended punishing any pupil; the younger boys learned the parts of speech and Latin words in the first year, learned to construct Latin sentences in the second year, began translating English-Latin and Latin-English passages in the third year. By the end of their studies at age 14, they would be quite familiar with the great Latin authors, with Latin drama and rhetoric. Other skills, such as arithmetic and handwriting, were taught in odd moments or by travelling specialist teachers such as scriven
Irish Travellers
Irish Travellers are a traditionally itinerant ethnic group who maintain a set of traditions. Although predominantly English-speaking, many use Shelta, they live in Ireland as well as comprising large communities in the United Kingdom and the United States. Traveller rights groups have long pushed for ethnic status from the Irish government succeeding in 2017; as of 2016, there are 30,987 Travellers within Ireland, this has led to them becoming recognized as a minority group in Ireland. Travellers refer in Irish as an Lucht Siúil. "Pikey" or "pikie" is a slang term, pejorative and considered by many to be a slur. It is used in the UK and Ireland to refer to Travellers. In a pejorative sense it means "a lower-class person", perhaps'coarse' or'disreputable', it is not well received among Irish Romani, as it is considered an ethnic slur. The historical origins of Irish Travellers as a distinct group is still unknown, it continues to be the subject of popular debate. Research has been complicated by the fact that the group appears to have no written records of its own.
Deeper documentation of Shelta and the Travellers dates to the 1830s, but knowledge of Irish Travellers has been seen from the 1100s, as well as the 1500s-1800s. Many decrees against begging in England were directed at Travellers, passed by King Edward VI around 1551. One such decree was the “Acte for tynckers and pedlers”; the identity of Irish Travellers resembles other itinerant communities, some aspects being self-employment, family networks, birth and burial rituals and folklore. Because they worked with metal, Travellers had to travel throughout Ireland and work on making various items such as ornaments and horse harnesses to make a living; as a result, by 1175 they were referred to as “tinkler,” “tynkere,” or Tinkers as well as Gypsies all of which are derogative names to refer to their itinerant way of life. Many different theories have been put forward to explain the origins of Ireland's itinerant population. A suggestion that they might be of Romani extraction is not supported by genetic evidence, which finds no connection to Romani groups.
One idea is of them being distantly related to a Celtic group. Another theory is of a pre-Gaelic origin, where Travellers are descended from a community that lived in Ireland before the arrival of the Celts. Once Ireland was claimed as Celtic, this group was seen as lower class. There is a theory that an indigenous, community of craftsmen are the ancestors of Travellers, they never settled down like the Celts. Other speculations on their origin are that they were descended from those Irish who were made homeless during the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland in the 1650s, or made homeless in either the 1741 or the 1840s famine due to eviction. Genetic research has ruled these events out as the founding events for Travellers, however it cannot rule out the displacement of the population along with most of the Irish population during these events, it has since been recognised that no single explanation is to be adequate in answering this complex question. Current scholarship is investigating the background of Gaelic Ireland before the English Tudor conquest.
The mobile nature and traditions of a Gaelic society based on pastoralism rather than land tenure before this event implies that Travellers represent descendants of the Gaelic social order marginalised during the change-over to an English landholding society. An early example of this mobile element in the population, how displacement of clans can lead to increased nomadism within aristocratic warrior societies, is that of the Clan Murtough O' Connors, displaced after the Norman invasion. Present genetic evidence indicates. In 2011, researchers at the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin and the University of Edinburgh analyzed DNA samples from 40 Travellers; the study provided evidence that Irish Travellers are a distinct Irish ethnic minority, who have been distinct from the settled Irish community for at least 1000 years. This apparent distance though may be the effect of genetic drift within a small homogeneous population and may therefore exaggerate the distance between the two populations.
A genetic analysis of Irish Travellers found evidence to support: Irish ancestry. In 2017 a further genetic study using profiles of 50 Irish Travellers, 143 European Roma, 2232 settled Irish, 2039 British and 6255 European or worldwide individuals confirmed ancestral origin within the general Irish population. An estimated time of divergence between the settled population and Travellers was set at a minimum of 8 generations ago, with generations at 30 years, hence 240 years and a maximum of 14 generations or 420 years ago; the best fit was estimated at 360 years ago. This date coincides well with the final destruction of Gaelic society following the 1641 Rebellion and during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms in which Cromwell's forces devastated the country. Irish Travellers are not an homogeneous group instead reflecting some of the variation seen in the settled population. Four distinct genetic clusters were identified in the 2017 study, these match social groupings within the community. Genetic studies by Miriam Murphy, David Croke, other researchers identified certain genetic diseases such as galactosemia that are more common in the Irish Traveller population, invo
Fletcher Christian
Fletcher Christian was master's mate on board HMS Bounty during Lieutenant William Bligh's voyage to Tahiti during 1787–1789 for breadfruit plants. In the mutiny on the Bounty, Christian seized command of the ship from Bligh on 28 April 1789. Christian was born on 25 September 1764, at his family home of Moorland Close, near Cockermouth in Cumberland, England. Fletcher's father's side had originated from the Isle of Man and most of his paternal great-grandfathers were historic Deemsters, their original family surname McCrystyn. Fletcher was the brother to Edward and Humphrey, being the three sons of Charles Christian of Moorland Close and of the large Ewanrigg Hall estate in Dearham, Cumberland, an attorney-at-law descended from Manx gentry, his wife Ann Dixon. Charles's marriage to Ann brought with it the small property of Moorland Close, "a quadrangle pile of buildings... half castle, half farmstead." The property can be seen to the north of the Cockermouth to Egremont A5086 road. Charles died in 1768.
Ann proved herself grossly irresponsible with money. By 1779, when Fletcher was fifteen, Ann had run up a debt of nearly £6,500, faced the prospect of debtors' prison. Moorland Close was lost and Ann and her three younger children were forced to flee to the Isle of Man, to their relative's estate, where English creditors had no power; the three elder Christian sons managed to arrange a £40 per year annuity for their mother, allowing the family to live in genteel poverty. Christian spent seven years at the Cockermouth Free School from the age of nine. One of his younger contemporaries there was Cockermouth native William Wordsworth, it is misconceived that the two were "school friends". His mother Ann died on the Isle of Man in 1819. See here for a comparison of assignments to William BlighFletcher Christian began his naval career at a late age, joining the Royal Navy as a cabin boy when he was seventeen years old, he served for over a year on a third-rate frigate along with his future commander, William Bligh, posted as the ship's sixth lieutenant.
Christian next became a midshipman on the sixth-rate post ship HMS Eurydice and was made Master's Mate six months after the ship put to sea. The muster rolls of HMS Eurydice indicate; the ship's muster shows Christian's conduct was more than satisfactory because "some seven months out from England, he had been promoted from midshipman to master's mate". After Eurydice had returned from India, Christian was reverted to midshipman and paid off from the Royal Navy. Unable to find another midshipman assignment, Christian decided to join the British merchant fleet and applied for a berth on board William Bligh's ship Britannia. Bligh had himself been was now a merchant captain. Bligh accepted Christian on the ship's books as an able seaman, but granted him all the rights of a ship's officer including dining and berthing in the officer quarters. On a second voyage to Jamaica with Bligh, Christian was rated as the ship's Second Mate. Although Bligh had known Christian for only a little over a year, in 1787 he approached him to serve on board HMAV Bounty for a two-year voyage to transport breadfruit from Tahiti to the West Indies.
Bligh had every intention of Christian serving as the ship's Master, but the Navy Board turned down this request due to Christian's low seniority in service years and appointed John Fryer instead. Christian was retained as Master's Mate; the following year, halfway through the Bounty's voyage, Bligh appointed Christian as acting lieutenant, thus making him senior to Fryer. On 28 April 1789, Fletcher Christian led a mutiny on board the Bounty and from this point forward was considered an outlaw, he was formally stripped of his naval rank in March 1790 and discharged after Bligh returned to England and reported the mutiny to the Admiralty Board. In 1787, Christian was appointed master's mate on Bounty, on Bligh's recommendation, for the ship's breadfruit expedition to Tahiti. During the voyage out, Bligh appointed him acting lieutenant. Bounty arrived at Tahiti on 26 October 1788 and Christian spent the next five months there. Bounty set sail with its cargo of breadfruit plantings on 4 April 1789.
Some 1,300 miles west of Tahiti, near mutiny broke out on 28 April 1789, led by Christian. According to accounts, the sailors were attracted to the "idyllic" life and sexual opportunities afforded on the Pacific island of Tahiti, it has been argued that they were motivated by Bligh's harsh treatment of them. Eighteen mutineers set Bligh afloat in a small boat with eighteen of the twenty-two crew loyal to him. Following the mutiny, Christian attempted to build a colony on Tubuai, but there the mutineers came into conflict with natives. Abandoning the island, he stopped in Tahiti, where he married Maimiti, the daughter of one of the local chiefs, on 16 June 1789. While on Tahiti, he dropped off sixteen crewmen; these sixteen included four Bligh loyalists, left behind on Bounty and two who had neither participated in, nor resisted, the mutiny. The remaining nine mutineers, six Tahitian men and eleven Tahitian women sailed eastward. In time, they landed on Pitcairn Island, where they stripped Bounty of all that could be floated ashore before Matthew Quintal set it on fire, stranding them.
The resulting sexual imbalance, combined with the effective enslavement of the Tahitian men by the mutineers, led to insurrection and the deaths of most of the men. The American seal-hunting ship Topaz visited Pitcairn in 18
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. The line-up of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr led the band to be regarded as the foremost and most influential in history. With a sound rooted in skiffle, beat and 1950s rock and roll, the group were integral to the evolution of pop music into an art form, to the development of the counterculture of the 1960s, they incorporated elements of classical music, older pop forms, unconventional recording techniques in innovative ways, in years experimented with a number of musical styles ranging from pop ballads and Indian music to psychedelia and hard rock. As they continued to draw influences from a variety of cultural sources, their musical and lyrical sophistication grew, they came to be seen as embodying the era's sociocultural movements. Led by primary songwriters Lennon and McCartney, the Beatles built their reputation playing clubs in Liverpool and Hamburg over a three-year period from 1960 with Stuart Sutcliffe playing bass.
The core trio of Lennon, McCartney and Harrison, together since 1958, went through a succession of drummers, including Pete Best, before asking Starr to join them in 1962. Manager Brian Epstein moulded them into a professional act, producer George Martin guided and developed their recordings expanding their domestic success after their first hit, "Love Me Do", in late 1962; as their popularity grew into the intense fan frenzy dubbed "Beatlemania", the band acquired the nickname "the Fab Four", with Epstein and other members of the band's entourage sometimes given the informal title of "fifth Beatle". By early 1964, the Beatles were international stars, leading the "British Invasion" of the United States pop market, breaking numerous sales records, they soon made their motion-picture debut with A Hard Day's Night. From 1965 onwards, they produced innovative recordings, including the albums Rubber Soul, Sgt. Pepper's The Beatles and Abbey Road. In 1968, they founded Apple Corps, a multi-armed multimedia corporation that continues to oversee projects related to the band's legacy.
After the group's break-up in 1970, all four members enjoyed success as solo artists. Lennon was shot and killed in December 1980. McCartney and Starr remain musically active; the Beatles are the best-selling band in history, with estimated sales of over 800 million records worldwide. They are the best-selling music artists in the US, with certified sales of over 178 million units, have had more number-one albums on the British charts, have sold more singles in the UK, than any other act; the group were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, all four main members were inducted individually between 1994 and 2015. In 2008, the group topped Billboard magazine's list of the all-time most successful artists; the band have received an Academy Award and fifteen Ivor Novello Awards. They were collectively included in Time magazine's compilation of the twentieth century's 100 most influential people. In March 1957, John Lennon aged sixteen, formed a skiffle group with several friends from Quarry Bank High School in Liverpool.
They called themselves the Blackjacks, before changing their name to the Quarrymen after discovering that a respected local group was using the other name. Fifteen-year-old Paul McCartney joined them as a rhythm guitarist shortly after he and Lennon met that July. In February 1958, McCartney invited his friend George Harrison to watch the band; the fifteen-year-old auditioned for Lennon, impressing him with his playing, but Lennon thought Harrison was too young for the band. After a month of Harrison's persistence, during a second meeting, he performed the lead guitar part of the instrumental song "Raunchy" on the upper deck of a Liverpool bus, they enlisted him as their lead guitarist. By January 1959, Lennon's Quarry Bank friends had left the group, he began his studies at the Liverpool College of Art; the three guitarists, billing themselves at least three times as Johnny and the Moondogs, were playing rock and roll whenever they could find a drummer. Lennon's art school friend Stuart Sutcliffe, who had just sold one of his paintings and was persuaded to purchase a bass guitar, joined in January 1960, it was he who suggested changing the band's name to Beatals, as a tribute to Buddy Holly and the Crickets.
They used this name until May, when they became the Silver Beetles, before undertaking a brief tour of Scotland as the backing group for pop singer and fellow Liverpudlian Johnny Gentle. By early July, they had refashioned themselves as the Silver Beatles, by the middle of August shortened the name to The Beatles. Allan Williams, the Beatles' unofficial manager, arranged a residency for them in Hamburg, but lacking a full-time drummer they auditioned and hired Pete Best in mid-August 1960; the band, now a five-piece, left four days contracted to club owner Bruno Koschmider for what would be a 31⁄2-month residency. Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn writes: "They pulled into Hamburg at dusk on 17 August, the time when the red-light area comes to life... flashing neon lights screamed out the various entertainment on offer, while scantily clad women sat unabashed in shop windows waiting for business opportunities." Koschmider had converted a couple of strip clubs in the district into music venues, he placed the Beatles at the Indra Club.
After
Eleven-plus
The eleven-plus is an examination administered to some students in England and Northern Ireland in their last year of primary education, which governs admission to grammar schools and other secondary schools which use academic selection. The name derives from the age group for secondary entry: 11–12 years; the eleven-plus was once used throughout England and Wales, but is now only used in counties and boroughs in England that offer selective schools instead of comprehensive schools. Known as the transfer test, it is associated with the Tripartite System, in use from 1944 until it had been phased out across most of the UK by 1976; the examination tests a student's ability to solve problems using a test of verbal reasoning and non-verbal reasoning, with most tests now offering papers in mathematics and English. The intention was that the eleven-plus should be a general test for intelligence similar to an IQ test, but with the addition of testing for taught curriculum skills; the test now measures aptitude for school work.
Introduced in 1944, the examination was used to determine which type of school the student should attend after primary education: a grammar school, a secondary modern school, or a technical school. The base of the Tripartite System was the idea that skills were more important than financial resources in determining what kind of schooling a child should receive: different skills required different schooling; the Tripartite System of education, with an academic, a technical and a functional strand, was established in the 1940s. Prevailing educational thought at the time was that testing was an effective way to discover to which strand a child was most suited; the results of the exam would be used to match children's secondary schools to their abilities and future career needs. When the system was implemented, technical schools were not available on the scale envisaged. Instead, the Tripartite System came to be characterised by fierce competition for places at the prestigious grammar schools; as such, the eleven-plus took on a particular significance.
Rather than allocating according to need or ability, it became seen as a question of passing or failing. This led to the exam becoming resented by some although supported by others; the structure of the eleven-plus varied over time, among the different counties which used it. It consisted of three papers: Arithmetic – A mental arithmetic test. Writing – An essay question on a general subject. General Problem Solving – A test of general knowledge, assessing the ability to apply logic to simple problems; some exams have: Non-Verbal VerbalMost children took the eleven-plus in their final year of primary school: at age 10 or 11. In Berkshire and Buckinghamshire it was possible to sit the test a year early – a process named the ten-plus; the test was voluntary. In Northern Ireland, pupils were awarded grades in the following ratios to pupils sitting the exam: A, B1, B2, C1, C2, D and there was no official distinction between pass grades and fail grades. There are 164 remaining grammar schools in various parts of England, 69 in Northern Ireland.
In counties in which vestiges of the Tripartite System still survive, the eleven-plus continues to exist. Today it is used as an entrance test to a specific group of schools, rather than a blanket exam for all pupils, is taken voluntarily. For more information on these, see the main article on grammar schools. Eleven-plus and similar exams vary around the country but will use some or all of the following components: Verbal Reasoning Non-Verbal reasoning Mathematics English Eleven-plus tests take place in September of children's final primary school year with results provided to parents in October to allow application for secondary schools. In Lincolnshire children will sit the Verbal Non-Verbal Reasoning. In Buckinghamshire children sit tests in Verbal Reasoning and Non-Verbal reasoning. In Kent, where the eleven-plus test is more known as the Kent Test, children sit all four of the above disciplines. In the London Borough of Bexley from September 2008, following a public consultation, pupils sitting the Eleven-Plus exam are only required to do a Mathematics and Verbal Reasoning paper.
In Essex, where the examination is optional, children sit Verbal Reasoning and English. Other areas use different combinations; some authorities/areas operate an opt-in system, while others operate an opt-out system where all pupils are entered unless parents decide to opt out. In the North Yorkshire, Harrogate/York area, children are only required to sit two tests: Verbal and Non-Verbal Reasoning. Independent schools in England select children at the age of 13, using a common set of papers known as the Common Entrance Examination About ten do select at eleven; these have the Common entrance exam name. England has 164 grammar schools, 85% of which are academies at liberty to set their own individual admissions criteria including the type of entrance tests they set and what weighting is given to each one. Schools form consortia to set a common test or get the local authority to administer it but despite this there might be about 70 different 11+ tests set each year across the country meaning it is no longer possible to talk about the eleven plus test as a single entity.
The actual marks from these tests, referred to as raw marks, are never disclosed, instead parents ar
