08-20-2012, 03:05 AM
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Too old to care
Industry Role:
Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: On the sofa, watching TV or doing my jigsaws.
Posts: 52,943
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Robbie
The Beatles only played together for less than 2 years before they released their first single "Love Me Do".
You're correct about bands not paying their dues these days...but you're exaggerating it a bit when you insinuate The Beatles were together a long time before they hit it big.
2 years is like the blink of an eye. But you're right when compared to today. Hell, look at Justin Bieber. lol
Back when I was touring around the country I used to play a bar in Flynt Michigan called "The Silver Dollar Saloon".
And on the wall were the contracts for all the bands throughout the years that played the club.
Aerosmith played there, ZZ Top, Rush, Kiss, etc.
And you'd see where they played all week long for $1,500 lol
That's back when bands used to pay their dues playing clubs all over the country for very little money and honing their craft in front of live audiences.
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Quote:
In March 1957 John Lennon, then aged sixteen, formed a skiffle 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 respected local group was already using the name.[3] Fifteen-year-old Paul McCartney joined as a rhythm guitarist shortly after he and Lennon met that July.[4] In February 1958 McCartney invited his friend George Harrison to watch the group. The fourteen-year-old auditioned for Lennon, who was impressed by his playing but initially thought him too young for the band. After a month of persistence, Harrison joined as lead guitarist.[5][6] By January 1959 Lennon's Quarry Bank friends had left the group, and he began studies at the Liverpool College of Art.[7] The three guitarists, billing themselves at least three times as Johnny and the Moondogs,[8] were playing rock and roll whenever they could find a drummer.[9] Lennon's art school friend Stu Sutcliffe, who had recently sold one of his paintings and purchased a bass guitar, joined in January 1960, and it was he who suggested changing the band's name to Beatals as a tribute to Buddy Holly and the Crickets.[10] They used the name through 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 changed their name to the Silver Beatles, and by the middle of August to The Beatles.[11]
Their lack of a full-time drummer posed a problem when the group's unofficial manager, Allan Williams, arranged a resident band booking for them in Hamburg, Germany, so in mid August they auditioned and hired Pete Best. The band, now a five-piece, left four days later, contracted to club owner Bruno Koschmider for what would be a 3½-month residency.[12] Beatles' historian Mark Lewisohn wrote, "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".[13]
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Bit longer than 2 years.
Still I see your point. They were experienced before thrown into the charts. we did have a few over night bands in the 60s and 70s, they came and went. Very fast. |
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