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steel driving hammer wrote:
True?

The Beatles first began performing in the late 1950s in jazz clubs in England and West Germany. These clubs, always located in the seediest part of the cities, served as a marketplace for prostitution and the circulation of drugs. Beatle biographer Philip Norman writes: "Their only regular engagement was a strip club. The club owner paid them ten shillings each to strum their guitars while a stripper named Janice grimly shed her clothes before an audience of sailors, guilty businessmen and habitues with raincoat-covered laps." (Philip Norman, Shout! The Beatles in Their Generation, p. 81)

The Beatles got their first big break in Germany, in August 1960, when they obtained a booking at a jazz club in Hamburg's notorious Reeperbahn district. Describing the area Norman writes it had, "red-lit windows containing whores in every type of fancy dress, all ages from nymphet to granny...Everything was free. Everything was easy. The sex was easy... Here it came after you." (Philip Norman, Shout! The Beatles in Their Generation, p. 91)

Far from the picture of innocence, the Beatles, even in their first performances, were always high on a drug called Preludin, "John (Lennon), would be foaming at the mouth, he'd have so many pills inside him...John, began to go berserk on stage, prancing and groveling...The fact that the audience could not understand a word he said, provoked John into cries of `Sieg Heil!' and `F____ing Nazis' to which the audience invariably responded by laughing and clapping." (Philip Norman, Shout! The Beatles in Their Generation, pp. 152,91)

Off the stage, the Beatles were just as evil. Norman continues, "while in Hamburg, John, each Sunday would stand on the balcony, taunting the churchgoers as they walked to St. Joseph's. He attached a water-filled contraceptive to an effigy of Jesus and hung it out for the churchgoers to see. Once he urinated on the heads of three nuns."(Philip Norman, Shout! The Beatles in Their Generation, p. 152)

While in Hamburg, in June of 1962 the Beatles received a telegram from their manager, a homosexual named Brian Epstein, who was back in England. "Congratulations," Epstein's message read. "EMI requests a recording session." EMI was one of Europe's largest record producers, and their role in promoting the Beatles would be key in the future.

Under the the strict guidance of EMI's recording director George Martin, and Brian Epstein, the Beatles were scrubbed, washed, and their hair styled into the Beatles cut. EMI's Martin created the Beatles in his recording studio.

Martin was a trained classical musician, and had studied the oboe and piano at the London School of Music. The Beatles could neither read music nor play any instrument other than guitar. For Martin, the Beatles musicianship was a bad joke. On their first hit record, "Love Me Do," Martin replaced Ringo on the drums with a studio musician. Martin said Ringo, "couldn't do a [drum] roll to save his life." From then on, Martin would take the simple little tunes the Beatles would come to him with, and turn them into hit records.

Lockwood and EMI

EMI, led by aristocrat Sir Joseph Lockwood, stands for Electrical and Mechanical Instruments, and is one of Britain's largest producers of military electronics. Martin was director of EMI's subsidiary, Parlophone. By the mid-sixties EMI, now called Thorn EMI, created a music divison which had grown to 74,321 employees and had annual sales of $3.19 billion.

EMI was also a key member of Britain's military intelligence establishment.

After the war, in 1945, EMI's European production head Walter Legge virtually took over control of classical music recordings, signing up dozens of starving German classical musicians and singers to EMI contracts. Musicians who sought to preserve the performance tradition of Beethoven and Brahms, were relegated to obscurity while "ex-Nazi" Party members were promoted. Legge signed and recorded Nazi member, the late Herbert Von Karajan, promoting him to superstar status, while great conductors such as Wilhelm Furtwangler were ignored.

From the beginning, EMI created the myth of the Beatles' great popularity. In August of 1963, at their first major television appearance at the London Palladium, thousands of their fans supposedly rioted. The next day every mass-circulation newspaper in Great Britain carried a front page picture and story stating, "Police fought to hold back 1,000 squealing teenagers." Yet, the picture displayed in each newspaper was cropped so closely that only three or four of the "squealing teenagers" could be seen. The story was a fraud. According to a photographer on the scene, "There were no riots. I was there. We saw eight girls, even less than eight." (Philip Norman, Shout! The Beatles in Their Generation, p. 188)

In February 1964, the Beatles myth hit the United States, complete with the orchestrated riots at Kennedy Airport, previously mentioned. To launch their first tour, the media created one of the largest mass audiences in history. For an unprecedented two Sundays in a row, on the Ed Sullivan Show, over 75 million Americans watched the Beatles shake their heads and sway their bodies in a ritual which was soon to be replicated by hundreds of future rock groups.

On returning to England, the Beatles were rewarded by the British aristocracy they served so well . In October 1965, the four were inducted into the Order of Chivalry, and were personally awarded the accolade of Member of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham palace.


[Edited by steel driving hammer]

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Col wrote:
Were the Beatles real rock'n'rollers who sold out to fame and fortune(who wouldn't)?

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