1.
The Beatles
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The Beatles were an English rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960. With members John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, the Beatles built their reputation playing clubs in Liverpool and Hamburg over a three-year period from 1960, with Stuart Sutcliffe initially serving as bass player. The core of Lennon, McCartney and Harrison went through a succession of drummers, including Pete Best, before asking Starr to join them. They acquired the nickname the Fab Four as Beatlemania grew in Britain the next year, from 1965 onwards, the Beatles produced increasingly innovative recordings, including the albums Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles and Abbey Road, after their break-up in 1970, they each enjoyed successful musical careers of varying lengths. McCartney and Starr, the members, remain musically active. Lennon was shot and killed in December 1980, and Harrison died of cancer in November 2001. The Beatles are the band in history, with estimated sales of over 600 million records worldwide. They have had more number-one albums on the British charts and sold more singles in the UK than any other act, according to the RIAA, the Beatles are also the best-selling music artists in the United States, with 178 million certified units. In 2008, the group topped Billboard magazines list of the all-time most successful Hot 100 artists, as of 2016 and they have received ten Grammy Awards, an Academy Award for Best Original Song Score and fifteen Ivor Novello Awards. The group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 and they were also collectively included in Time magazines compilation of the twentieth centurys 100 most influential people. In March 1957, John Lennon, then aged sixteen, formed a group with several friends from Quarry Bank school. They briefly called themselves the Blackjacks, before changing their name to the Quarrymen after discovering that a local group was already using the other name. Fifteen-year-old Paul McCartney joined as a rhythm guitarist shortly after he, in February 1958, McCartney invited his friend George Harrison to watch the band. The fourteen-year-old auditioned for Lennon, impressing him with his playing, after a month of Harrisons persistence, they enlisted him as their lead guitarist. By January 1959, Lennons Quarry Bank friends had left the group, 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. They used the name until May, when they became the Silver Beetles, before undertaking a tour of Scotland as the backing group for pop singer. By early July, they had changed their name to the Silver 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
2.
Rubber Soul
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Rubber Soul is the sixth studio album by the Beatles, and the tenth released in North America. Produced by George Martin, Rubber Soul incorporates a mix of 1960s pop, soul, the albums name comes from the term plastic soul, which popular African American soul musicians coined to describe Mick Jagger, a white musician singing soul music. It was the second Beatles album – after the British version of A Hard Days Night – to contain original material. The project marked the first time that the Beatles focused on creating an album as an artistic work, in 2012, Rubber Soul was ranked number five on Rolling Stone magazines list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. In 2013, after the British Phonographic Industry changed their sales award rules, virtually all of the albums songs were composed immediately after the Beatles return to London following their North American tour. The Beatles expanded their sound on the album, with influences drawn from African-American soul music, the folk rock of Bob Dylan and the Byrds. Rubber Soul also saw the band expanding rock and rolls instrumental resources and he had been introduced to it via the instrumental score for their 1965 film Help. Harrisons interest was fuelled by fellow Indian music fans Roger McGuinn and David Crosby of the Byrds, Harrison would eventually be transfixed by all things Indian, taking sitar lessons from renowned Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar. Author Andrew Grant Jackson describes Rubber Soul as the Beatles synthesis of folk, rock, soul, baroque, proto-psychedelia, for the country-styled What Goes On, Starr received his first songwriting credit, as a co-composer with Lennon and McCartney. Lyrically, the album represents a progression in the Beatles music. Author James Decker considers it significant that Rubber Soul took its cues more from folk crossovers such as Bob Dylan. In particular, the relationships between the sexes moved from simpler boy-girl love songs to more nuanced and negative portrayals, songs such as Nowhere Man and Harrisons Think for Yourself explored subject matter that had nothing to do with romance at all. Recording for Rubber Soul began on 12 October 1965, at EMIs Abbey Road Studios, with final production, produced by George Martin, the album was one of the first projects he undertook after leaving EMIs staff and co-founding Associated Independent Recording. Martin later described Rubber Soul as the first album to present a new, growing Beatles to the world, adding, For the first time we began to think of albums as art on their own, as complete entities. This was the final Beatle album that recording engineer Norman Smith worked on before he was promoted by EMI to record producer. Lennon later said that Rubber Soul was the first album on which the Beatles were in complete control during recording, with enough studio time to develop. Before the recording sessions, McCartney was given a new guitar, a solid-body Rickenbacker 4001. Harrison used a Fender Stratocaster for the first time, most notably in his guitar part on Nowhere Man
3.
Abbey Road Studios
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Abbey Road Studios is a recording studio at 3 Abbey Road, St Johns Wood, City of Westminster, London, England. It was established November 1931 by the Gramophone Company, a predecessor of British music company EMI, Abbey Road Studios is most notable as being the 1960s venue for innovative recording techniques adopted by the Beatles, Pink Floyd, the Hollies, Badfinger and others. One of its earliest world-famous-artist clients was Paul Robeson, who recorded December 1931, towards the end of 2009, the studio came under threat of sale to property developers. However, the British Government protected the site, granting it English Heritage Grade II listed status in 2010, originally a nine-bedroom Georgian townhouse built in 1831 on the footpath leading to Kilburn Abbey, the building was later converted to flats where the most flamboyant resident was Maundy Gregory. In 1931, the Gramophone Company acquired the premises and converted it into studios, pathé filmed the opening of the studios when Sir Edward Elgar conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in recording sessions of his music. In 1934, inventor of stereo sound, Alan Blumlein, recorded Mozarts Jupiter Symphony which was conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham at the studios, the neighbouring house is also owned by the studio and used to house musicians. During the mid-20th century, the studio was used by leading British conductor Sir Malcolm Sargent. The Gramophone Company amalgamated with Columbia Graphophone Company to form EMI and it was under this name that in 1936 cellist Pablo Casals became the first to record Johann Sebastian Bachs Cello Suites No.1 &2 at the command of EMI head Fred Gaisberg. The recordings went on to spur a revolution among Bach aficionados, in 1958, Studio Two at Abbey Road became a centre for rock and roll music when Cliff Richard and the Drifters recorded Move It there, and later pop music material. The Beatles named their 1969 album Abbey Road, after the street where the studio is located, the studio was renamed Abbey Road Studios in 1970 after the Beatles album had made it famous. Iain Macmillan took the cover photograph outside the studios, with the result that the nearby zebra crossing has become a place of pilgrimage for Beatles fans. It has been a tradition for visitors to pay homage to the band by writing on the wall in front of the even though it is painted over every three months. December 2010, the crossing at Abbey Road was given a Grade II listed status. Pink Floyd recorded most of their late 1960s to mid-1970s albums here, the Shadows named their Live at Abbey Road album after the studio, with the cover spoofing the Beatles album. The chief mastering engineer at Abbey Road was Chris Vinyl Blair, in 1979, EMI commissioned the British jazz fusion band Morrissey-Mullen to record Britains first digitally recorded single record at Abbey Road Studios. From July 18 to September 11,1983, the public had an opportunity to see inside the legendary Studio Two where The Beatles made most of their records. While a new mixing console was being installed in the control room, the soundtrack to the video had a number of recordings that were not made commercially available until the release of The Beatles Anthology project over a decade later. The Red Hot Chili Peppers used a photograph of the walking across the zebra crossing naked on the front of The Abbey Road E. P. which was released in 1988
4.
Folk rock
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It has also been influential in those parts of the world with close cultural connections to Britain and gave rise to the genre of folk punk. By the 1980s the genre was in decline in popularity. When English bands of the late 1960s and early 1970s defined themselves as electric folk they were making a distinction with the existing folk rock. Folk rock was what they had already been producing, American or American style singer-songwriter material played on instruments, as undertaken by Bob Dylan. They drew the distinction because they were focusing on indigenous songs, the result of this hybridisation was an exchange of specific features drawn from Traditional music and Rock music. For example, electric folk groups, while using traditional material as their source for lyrics and tunes. In the same year, The Beatles began incorporating overt folk influences into their music, the Beatles and other British Invasion bands, in turn, influenced the Californian band The Byrds, who began playing folk-influenced material and Bob Dylan compositions with rock instrumentation. The Byrds recording of Dylans Mr Tambourine Man was released in April 1965 and reached #1 on the U. S. and UK singles charts, setting off the mid-1960s folk rock movement. The Beatles late 1965 album, Rubber Soul, contained a number of songs clearly influenced by the American folk rock boom, such as Nowhere Man and If I Needed Someone. Folk rock became an important genre among emerging English bands, particularly those in the London club scene towards the end of the 1960s. Like the American revival, it was often overtly left wing in its politics, most important among their responses were the foundation of folk clubs in major towns, starting with London where MacColl began the Ballads and Blues Club in 1953. These clubs were usually urban in location, but the songs sung in them often hearkened back to a rural pre-industrial past, in many ways this was the adoption of abandoned popular music by the middle classes. This meant that there were, by the later 1960s, a group of performers with musical skill and knowledge of a variety of traditional songs. The result was an interpretation of the song A Sailors Life. The rapid expansion of electric folk that followed in the wake of Liege, five Hand Reel a band formed out of the remnants of Spencers Feat proved to be one of the more successful and influential folk rock bands. Releasing 4 albums with Topic/RCA records they were popular in Europe. He then quit that and eventually formed the Albion Country Band, later the Albion Band, a much smaller group of English bands were formed in emulation of existing electric rock bands. Fiddlers Dram were often dismissed as one hit wonders for their single Day Trip to Bangor, most of their career, from that point until they disbanded in 1979, was one of declining profile and sales
5.
Parlophone
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Parlophone Limited is a German-British record label that was founded in Germany in 1896 by the Carl Lindström Company as Parlophon. The British branch of the company was formed in 8 August 1923 as The Parlophone Co. Ltd. which developed a reputation in the 1920s as a jazz record label. In 5 October 1926, the Columbia Graphophone Company acquired Parlophones business, name, Columbia Graphophone later merged with the Gramophone Company in 31 March 1931 to become Electric & Musical Industries Limited. George Martin joined EMI in 1950 as assistant label manager, taking over as manager in 1955, Martin produced and released a mix of product including comedy recordings of the Goons, the pianist Mrs Mills, and teen idol Adam Faith. For a long time Parlophone claimed the best-selling UK single She Loves You, peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, both by The Beatles. The label also achieved placement of seven singles at No.1 during 1964, Parlophone continued as a division of EMI until it was merged into the Gramophone Co. Ltd. on 1 July 1965. On 1 July 1973, the Gramophone Co. Ltd. was renamed EMI Records Limited, on 28 September 2012, regulators officially approved Universal Music Group s planned acquisition of EMI, on condition that its EMI Records Ltd. group would be divested from the combined group. EMI Records Ltd. included Parlophone and other labels to be divested and were for a time operated in a single entity known as the Parlophone Label Group. Warner Music Group later acquired Parlophone and PLG in 7 February 2013, making Parlophone their new third flagship label, alongside Warner Bros. Records, PLG was renamed as the Parlophone Records Limited group in May 2013. Parlophone is now the oldest of WMGs three flagship record labels, Parlophone was founded in Germany in 1896 by the Carl Lindström Company as Parlophon. The name Parlophon had been used for gramophones before the company began making records of their own. The labels ₤ trademark is a German L that stands for its original founder Lindström and it has coincidentally been said to resemble the British pound sign, which itself is derived from the letter L for the Ancient Roman unit of measurement Libra, which means pound in Latin. During World War I, the Transoceanic Trading Company was set up in the Netherlands to look after its overseas assets, on 8 August 1923, the British branch of Parlophone was established, led by artists and repertoire manager Oscar Preuss. Parlophone established a leasing arrangement with the co-owned United States-based record label Okeh Records. The CLPGS has published a list of Parlophone titles issued between the years of 1923 and 1956, in 1927, the Columbia Graphophone Company acquired a controlling interest in the Carl Lindström Company and in Parlophone. In 31 March 1931, Columbia Graphophone merged with the Gramophone Company to form Electric & Musical Industries Ltd, under EMI, Parlophone initially maintained its status as a jazz label. In about 1929 or 1930, the Rhythm Style Series started, besides the Okeh recordings, Parlophone also issued recordings from Columbia Records and Brunswick Records, as well as a few sessions produced at Decca Records. As time went on, the label also released speciality recordings of word and comedy recordings, including the comedy recordings of the Goons and Flanders
6.
Hammond organ
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The Hammond organ is an electric organ, invented by Laurens Hammond and John M. Hanert and first manufactured in 1935. Various models have been produced, most of use sliding drawbars to create a variety of sounds. Around two million Hammond organs have been manufactured, the organ is commonly used with, and associated with, the Leslie speaker. The organ was originally marketed and sold by the Hammond Organ Company to churches as a lower-cost alternative to the pipe organ. It quickly became popular with jazz musicians in organ trios. Organ trios were hired by jazz club owners, who found that organ trios were a cheaper alternative to hiring a big band. The Hammond Organ Company struggled financially during the 1970s as they abandoned tonewheel organs and these instruments were not as popular with musicians as the tonewheels had been, and the company went out of business in 1985. The Hammond name was purchased by the Suzuki Musical Instrument Corporation and this culminated in the production of the New B-3 in 2002, which provided an accurate recreation of the original B-3 organ using modern digital technology. Hammond-Suzuki continues to manufacture a variety of organs for both players and churches. Other companies, such as Korg, Roland and Clavia, have achieved success in providing emulations of the original tonewheel organs. The sound of a tonewheel Hammond can also be emulated using software such as Native Instruments B4. A number of distinctive Hammond organ features are not usually found on other keyboards like the piano or synthesizer, Some are similar to a pipe organ, but others are unique to the instrument. Most Hammond organs have two 61-note keyboards called manuals, as with pipe organ keyboards, the two manuals are arrayed on two levels close to each other. There is no difference in volume regardless of how heavily or lightly the key is pressed, the keys on each manual have a lightweight action, which allows players to perform rapid passages more easily than on a piano. In contrast to piano and pipe organ keys, Hammond keys have a flat-front profile, Early Hammond console models had sharp edges, but starting with the B-2 these were rounded, as they were cheaper to manufacture. The M series of spinets also had waterfall keys, but later models had diving board style keys which resembled those found on a church organ. Modern Hammond-Suzuki models use waterfall keys, Hammond console organs come with a wooden pedalboard played with the feet, for bass notes. Most console Hammond pedalboards have 25 notes, with the note a low C
