They were the first boy band in history, and similar to bands like boys to men as far as the massive PR campaigns that propelled them into the hearts of millions of teeny boppers around the world. When the Beatles were in concert in the early years they could not even be heard by their audiences. Screaming, fainting young girls were everywhere simply because of the great PR machine created by their manager Brian Epstein. Later in their career there was a riff between McCartney and Lennon over the music they would produce. McCartney wanted to keep churning out meaningless pop songs as they had been doing, but Lennon wanted to use their songs to bring about change. This more than any other reason is what caused the Beatles to break up.
Well I dunno dood, I would differ at the beginning and the end. They weren't "launched by PR"; rather their success
created the idea of launching other people by PR. We did this a bit back in
36; they basically showed up at the right time doing the right thing that would strike a nerve. Brian Epstein was a record store manager; he had never managed a band before.
All five of them were swept up by serendipitous circumstances; the mood was ripe. The US had just suffered a deep emotional blow with the Kennedy assassination (on the exact same day their second UK album was released to such demand that their US affiliate label Capitol had to rethink their judgement that the band was "too English" and would never sell) and we were in a deep funk, that is, ripe for something fresh. The breakthrough would come 2½ months later famously on the Ed Sullivan show.
How stale had pop music become, with Elvis having disappeared into the army, with Buddy Holly and a couple of other budding stars dead in a plane crash, with Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis in legal troubles and blacklisted?
This is how stale: on November 22, 1963, the number one song in the U.S. was Dominique by the Singing Nun. That's an atmosphere ripe for revolution. And make no mistake; the Beatles and their sound was
wild for its time. The like had never been heard.
They did that, not a PR machine. The PR machine we now know was basically
born out of that success, by music "industry" copycats who flocked to England (which before this point was
never a source of US pop music) to find the next 'product' in the marketing ploy they called the "British Invasion". But make no mistake; the Beatles and their revolutionary sound, developed largely in Hamburg, was the horse that led that cart.
Brian Epstein was competent enough (though his recording contracts were weak by modern standards) but he was basically lucky to be along for the ride.
Now on part two--
Later in their career there was a riff between McCartney and Lennon over the music they would produce. McCartney wanted to keep churning out meaningless pop songs as they had been doing, but Lennon wanted to use their songs to bring about change. This more than any other reason is what caused the Beatles to break up.
Well -- not really. Lennon and McCartney had been working separately (and occasionally together) since
at least 1964 in a sort of friendly rivalry. It's true they had different tastes; Lennon the cynic absolutely detested McCartney's
Maxwell's Silver Hammer for instance, and McCartney was less that thrilled with
Revolution 9 being on the album, but they were already collaborating as musicians regardless whose song it was, because the success of the band was always more important. Each simply pursued his own material for the goal of collective success.
The dynamics that broke them up had to do with business decisions (a schism having developed between McCartney on one side and the other three on the other), plus Lennon being distracted by his evolving relationship with Yoko -- whose presence in the studio aggravated the whole environment. So it's true they had artistic differences, but those had always existed; what broke them up was the mundane world of business, personal egos and new marriages making four lives more complex than the simpler days of 'all for one and one for all'. It was personal issues, rather than artistic ones, that spelled the end.
In a way this dynamic was ironically and poignantly summed up in the very last Beatles song to be recorded while they were all alive (and the only one recorded in the 1970s), which was Harrison's
I Me Mine ("all through the day.. 'I, Me, Mine, I, Me, Mine, I, Me, Mine"). Harrison was sick of it; they all were. The song didn't even have Lennon on it; it was done as an obligation for the film. But it articulates in a simple way the personal rancor that was by then tearing them apart. Three months later McCartney released his own solo album and announced that the band was finished.
Harrison had another tune about the personal strife, which the group recorded while still together but wasn't released until Harrison's solo career; the lyrics are more obvious references to the personal situation:
[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bM72ozezNsg"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bM72ozezNsg[/ame]
