The Beatles

The Beatles were a British pop and rock group from Liverpool. They are widely regarded as the most important pop group of all time, having achieved broad popular success, critical acclaim and cultural influence. The group shattered many sales records and charted more than 50 top 40 hit singles, including 20 #1's in the USA alone.

Members of group as instrumentalists and composers

Most fans know Paul played bass guitar, John rhythm guitar, George lead guitar and Ringo drums. But all the Beatles had some proficiency on the piano and each used it to compose songs, which contributed to the exceptional breadth of the Beatles music catalogue.

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Paul learned to play piano as a young boy but never learned to read music. Although he is known primarily as a bass guitar player, Paul experimented with many instruments, including Moog and Mellotron synthesizers. His mastery of the piano as a compositional instrument is said to have empowered him as a composer (perhaps something only fellow pianists can begin to appreciate). George Martin and John Lennon commented that Paul was the most technically proficient musician in the band. He played piano on many Beatles' tracks including "Hey Jude", "The Fool on the Hill", "The Long and Winding Road," "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and "Let It Be". Badfinger's Tommy Evans noted that Paul deftly appropriated Johnny Parker's piano work on Humphrey Lyttleton's "Bad Penny Blues", transforming it into "Lady Madonna." Paul played drums on "The Ballad of John and Yoko", "Back in the USSR" and "Dear Prudence" (as well as bass guitar, piano and flugelhorn). "Michelle" was possibly performed entirely by Paul. He is also skilled on guitar, contributing guitar solos to, among other tracks, "Another Girl", "Ticket To Ride", "Taxman", "Back in the USSR" and "The End".

Related Topics:
Bass guitar - Moog - Mellotron

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John's primary instrument was rhythm guitar, although he also played lead occasionally. Perhaps the best known examples of his lead playing are the lead he shares with Harrison on "I Feel Fine" and the solos on "Get Back", primarily a McCartney composition, and on "Revolution 1". Given his widely acknowledged expertise and inventiveness as a songwriter, John was less proficient playing rhythmic instruments such as drums or bass. For example, during the song "Another Girl" in the movie Help! he appears to play the drums uneasily and out of rhythm (the Beatles all switch their instruments during this clip). John played piano on "I Am The Walrus" and bass on "Back in the USSR", "Let It Be" and "The Long and Winding Road" in which, if one listens closely, a few technical mistakes can be heard (these were fixed decades later on McCartney's stripped down, "un-Spectored" version Let it Be... Naked). Of course, the basic track used on the album produced by Spector was a rehearsal track never intended to be the final version of the song. The other Beatles admitted to teasing John about his timekeeping. Lennon's irregularities in rhythm can be attributed at least in part to his compositional style in which the lyrical content was dominant and the music with occasional time changes made to fit the meter of the lyric. And Lennon's also known to have introduced some of the most complex rhythms in Beatles compositions, as for example in "Happiness is a Warm Gun" on Beatles 68 (The White Album). When the remaining Beatles reunited in the mid 90s to record some of John's unreleased demo tracks, producer Jeff Lynne used studio technology to compensate for John's flexible sense of tempo (ironically, since his wonted instrumental role in the Beatles is usually characterized as rhythm guitar). But, of course, one must also recall that the tapes used for those compositions were home demo tapes never intended to be released as finished songs. Indeed, they were songs Lennon had not yet considered ready for recording.

Related Topics:
John - Help!

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George was known for excelling when playing melodic lines, riffs and fills on guitar-like string instruments ('One of the greats', in McCartney's words). In addition to lead guitar and sitar, George played tambura on "Across The Universe", bass guitar on "Birthday" and "Honey Pie", synthesiser on "Octopus's Garden", and Hammond organ on "Blue Jay Way". His usual allotment (or limit) of one or two compositions per album, however, is said to have contributed to the tensions surrounding the band's breakup.

Related Topics:
Sitar - Tambura

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Although Ringo reportedly admits his musical knowledge beyond percussion is limited, he played electric piano on the recording of his "Don't Pass Me By", as well as organ on "I'm Looking Through You". As it stands, the aforementioned "Don't Pass Me By" and "Octopus's Garden" are the only Beatles songs for which he is given sole credit. Ringo claimed to have contributed the famous line "wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door" to "Eleanor Rigby", which was thought to have been written by McCartney. A line confirmed as his is, "Look at him working, darning his socks in the night when there's nobody there." Ringo was also responsible for a number of song titles, inspired by his malapropisms of homespun Liverpudlian sayings. Some notables include "A Hard Day's Night" and "Tomorrow Never Knows". Critical appreciation of his steady, supportive drumming has increased through the decades, though he is still considered, in certain circles, to be a "butcher" of the drums. It is often disputed that Pete Best (the group's original drummer) was supplanted by Starr, because Brian Epstein believed Best was an incompetent drummer - many believe Starr was included for his looks and personality. The only drum solo he ever recorded with the Beatles appeared on "The End". (It should be noted that Starr's drumming also has many admirers, and that Mark Lewisohn in his overview of the Beatles recording career states that, in reviewing thousands of hours of recorded studio work, he found that only on a handful of occasions did Ringo make a mistake or waver in his beat.) Though he sang the lead on many Beatles classics, Ringo was, purportedly, always self-conscious about his range as a vocalist (he once said of his critics, "They say I can't bloody sing!"), and it is noted that the final "high" note on "With A Little Help From My Friends" took quite a few takes to achieve.

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Their producer George Martin composed a few fragments, and played on many songs, including Wurlitzer on "I Am The Walrus", and "In My Life", to which he contributed what sounds like a harpsichord (but in fact, was a recording of a piano, sped-up, which is apparent when one listens to the impossibly fast rolls towards the end of the instrumental break). "Hello, Goodbye" is said to have developed from an improvised piano duet by McCartney and Martin. The orchestra parts heard in some Beatles recordings were mostly composed or arranged by Martin, most notably in the case of "Eleanor Rigby". Along with Martin, Nicky Hopkins (who contributed piano to "Revolution"), Eric Clapton (who contributed some guitar (most notably the "solo") to his friend Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps") and Billy Preston, who played piano on the album Let It Be are probably the only outside musicians of note to play on Beatles records.

Related Topics:
Nicky Hopkins - Eric Clapton - Billy Preston - Let It Be

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