The Beatles: All About the Members of the Legendary Band

The Beatles is one of the biggest rock groups in history thanks to hits like “Here Comes the Sun” and “Yesterday”

Bettmann Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney, John Lennon and George Harrison, circa 1965.

Arguably no group in rock history has had a bigger impact than The Beatles.

Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, a.k.a. The Fab Four, produced 19 No. 1 albums, scored 20 No. 1 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 and became the best-selling music artists of all time, per the Recording Industry Association of America.

Founding members McCartney and Lennon met in Liverpool, England, on July 6, 1957. That day, McCartney played with Lennon’s band, The Quarrymen, and they bonded over their love of songwriting.

“I turned round to him right then on first meeting and said, ‘Do you want to join the group?’ ” Lennon said of his bandmate in The Beatles Anthology. “And he said ‘yes’ the next day as I recall it.”

McCartney brought his school friend, Harrison, into the fold in 1958, according to Far Out Magazine. After The Quarrymen rebranded as The Beatles in 1960, the group went through several more early lineup changes — including the addition of Starr and brief tenures of bass player Stuart Sutcliffe and drummer Pete Best. The Beatles released their debut album, Please Please Me, in 1963.

Proof of the band’s international success came on Feb. 9, 1964, when a record-breaking 73 million viewers tuned in to watch them perform on The Ed Sullivan Show. They went on to release 12 more albums and spawned hit after hit, including “Here Comes the Sun,” “Come Together,” “Let It Be,” “Hey Jude” and “Yesterday.”

The group won seven Grammys and was honored with titles as Members of the Order of the British Empire in 1965. In 2014, The Beatles were recognized with a lifetime achievement award from the Recording Academy.

Jeff Hochberg/Getty John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and George Harrison of The Beatles attend a press party at the home of manager Brian Epstein on May 19, 1967, in London, United Kingdom.

For all its highs, the band also experienced incredible lows. Manager Brian Epstein died of an accidental drug overdose in 1967 and tensions subsequently boiled over the group’s direction. Starr temporarily left the band in August 1968 and Harrison famously stormed out during Get Back recording sessions. The Fab Four reunited for their famous London rooftop concert on Jan. 30, 1969, before calling it quits for good in 1970.

While McCartney was largely blamed for the group’s demise, he later denied initiating the breakup.

“I am not the person who instigated the split,” he told This Cultural Life in 2021. “John walked into a room one day and said ‘I am leaving the Beatles.’ ” In 2020, Howard Stern asked McCartney why they didn’t continue without Lennon. “We’d been through too much and we were just fed up,” he recalled.

Lennon and McCartney became estranged when McCartney filed a lawsuit to dissolve The Beatles’ business affairs and sued his bandmates over legal rights to their work in 1970.

“If I hadn’t done that, it would have all belonged to Allan Klein,” McCartney later told British GQ of their manager, who replaced Epstein in 1969.

All four Beatles released solo albums in 1970 and Lennon and McCartney made peace nearly 10 years later — shortly before Lennon was killed outside his apartment by Mark David Chapman on Dec. 8, 1980.

Starr and Harrison reunited with Yoko Ono and Lennon’s sons, Julian and Sean, in 1988 when The Beatles were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. All three living members also collaborated on The Beatles Anthology, which consisted of a TV documentary, a three-volume set of double albums and a book. In 2001, Harrison died of cancer.

Here is everything to know about the members of The Beatles and their legacies.

John Lennon

Mark and Colleen Hayward/Redferns ; New York Times Co./Larry C. Morris/Getty Left: John Lennon performs on the BBC TV show ‘Top Of The Pops’ in London on June 16, 1966. Right: John Lennon performs onstage in Madison Square Garden on Nov. 28, 1974.

John Lennon was born on Oct. 9, 1940, to Julia and Alfred Lennon, a seaman who left home when the musician was very young. He was raised in Liverpool by his aunt Mimi.

When he was 16, Lennon formed The Quarrymen, which would eventually morph into The Beatles. While he wrote many of the band’s hits with McCartney, Lennon also wrote several songs on his own, including “Help!,” “It Won’t Be Long,” “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Across the Universe.”

Lennon married fellow Liverpool College of Art student Cynthia Powell on Aug. 23, 1962, and on April 8, 1963, the couple welcomed a son, Julian.

Lennon left Powell for Ono in 1968. In a 2022 appearance on Elton John’s radio show Rocket Hour, Julian shared that the divorce spurred McCartney to write “Hey Jude,” originally titled “Hey Jules,” to comfort him.

Mondadori/Getty John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.

On March 20, 1969, Lennon married Ono. They hit a rough patch in 1973, and Lennon had a relationship with the couple’s assistant, May Pang, but he reconciled with Ono in early 1975. They welcomed a son, Sean, on Oct. 9 of that year.

Between 1968 and 1980, Lennon released 10 albums, including five with Ono. He even recorded “How Do You Sleep?” a song with angry lyrics aimed at McCartney, in 1971, but the men later made peace.

“I was very glad of how we got along in those last few years,” McCartney wrote in his book The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present.

Lennon was murdered by an obsessed fan outside of his Manhattan apartment on Dec. 8, 1980. The tragedy deeply affected McCartney. “I couldn’t really talk about it,” he told SiriusXM’s The Beatles Channel in 2022. “I couldn’t put it into words.”

The Recording Academy posthumously recognized the songwriter with a lifetime achievement award in 1991; three years later, McCartney inducted him into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist.

Paul McCartney, 81

David Redfern/Redferns ; Kevin Winter/Getty Left: Paul McCartney on stage during rehearsals for ‘Thank Your Lucky Stars’ Summer Spin in London on July 11, 1964. Right: Paul McCartney performs during Desert Trip on Oct. 15, 2016 in Indio, California

Sir James Paul McCartney was born in Liverpool on June 18, 1942. His father, James McCartney, was also musically inclined, according to Encyclopedia Britannica, and played in a band called Jim Mac’s Jazz Band.

McCartney was introduced to Lennon through a mutual friend. “I’d never met anyone who said he’d written a song,” McCartney wrote in his book Lyrics. “The logical extension was, ‘Well, maybe we could write one together.’ ”

Though McCartney initially played guitar, he switched to the bass after Sutcliffe departed the band in 1961. He also split main vocal duties with Lennon and played the piano, drums and guitar. McCartney and Lennon became known for their songwriting partnership, but McCartney took the lead for at least 70 Beatles songs, including “All My Loving,” “Yesterday,” “Blackbird” and “Let It Be.”

Following the band’s split, McCartney found himself at a crossroads. “It was a hard act — some might say, an impossible act — to follow,” he wrote on his website in 2023. Soon after the band’s split, though, he recorded two chart-topping solo albums: McCartney and Ram. He also formed the group Wings with his first wife, Linda McCartney (née Eastman), whom he married in 1969.

Wings was a commercial success; its 1973 single “Band on the Run” hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 but the band split up in 1981. The Beatles, meanwhile, became embroiled in legal drama in 1970 when McCartney sued his three bandmates in order to end his contract with Apple Records. After manager Klein left the record company, The Beatles negotiated between themselves, and the group legally dissolved on Dec. 29, 1974.

Universal Archive/Universal Images Group/Getty The Beatles.

McCartney continued to record and tour solo, and in 1994, he rejoined forces with Harrison and Starr for the group’s Anthology project.

His wife Linda died of breast cancer in 1998. “I think I cried for about a year,” McCartney told the BBC in 2019. The couple shared four children: Heather, Mary, Stella and James. McCartney also shares daughter Beatrice with his second wife, Heather Mills, to whom he was married from 2002 to 2008. In 2011, he married Nancy Shevell.

McCartney is a two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee and the recipient of 18 Grammy Awards. He was honored with a lifetime achievement award as a solo musician in 1990 and as a member of The Beatles in 2014. That same year, he and Starr hit the Grammys stage together in a rare performance of the surviving Beatles.

The performer collaborated with Rihanna and Kanye West on the chart-topping hit “FourFiveSeconds” in 2015. Three years later, he earned his first No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart in more than 36 years with Egypt Station. He released his 18th solo album, McCartney III, in 2020.

He hit the road for the “Got Back” tour starting in April 2022. A year after the tour started, McCartney appeared on The Rolling Stones’ album Hackney Diamonds.

George Harrison

Fox Photos/Getty ; Tom Wargacki/WireImage Left: George Harrison performing during a live concert. Right: George Harrison attends the ‘Water Rats’ Ball held at the Grosvenor House Hotel on Dec. 7, 1992 in London.

George Harrison, born on Feb. 25, 1943, was introduced to music by his father, Harold Hargreaves Harrison. “He used to go away to sea, and he brought back this big windup gramophone and Jimmie Rodgers records,” the musician told Billboard in 1992.

Harrison bought his first guitar at age 13. “It was such a bad guitar, all the frets buzzed, and you couldn’t get certain notes out of it,” he told the publication.

Soon after, the rocker met McCartney at school in Liverpool, and McCartney introduced him to The Quarrymen in 1958. His bandmates wrote the majority of the material for the group, but Harrison penned a number of its biggest hits, including ”Here Comes the Sun.” Harrison also wrote, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” and “Something.”

On March 6, 1964, he met model Pattie Boyd on the set of A Hard Day’s Night. The couple married less than two years later.

In January 1969, Harrison left The Beatles out of frustration with McCartney and Lennon. “We’d do 14 of their tunes. And then they’d condescend to listen to one of mine,” he explained in a 1989 interview.

Though The Beatles worked things out soon after, the band fell apart within the year after Lennon quit.

After The Beatles’ demise, Harrison released his third solo album, All Things Must Pass, in November 1970. Its hit single, “My Sweet Lord,” made him the first Beatle to have a No. 1 single as a solo artist. He later re-recorded the track in 2000, just months before his death, with his son Dhani on acoustic guitar.

Universal Archive/Universal Images Group/Getty The Beatles.

Harrison earned his first solo Grammy in 1973 for the live album Concert for Bangladesh, which he organized with Ravi Shankar.

Boyd left Harrison for Eric Clapton in 1974 but remained close to the guitarist throughout his life. That same year, he met his second wife, Olivia Harrison, whom he married in 1978. They had one child, Dhani.

Harrison’s 1987 cover of James Ray’s “Got My Mind Set on You” hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and in 1988, he co-founded the Traveling Wilburys with Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison and Tom Petty. The group released two albums.

In 1994, Harrison teamed up with McCartney and Starr to create The Beatles Anthology. McCartney saw Harrison for the last time in November 2001. “I sat with him for a few hours when he was in treatment about 10 days from his death,” McCartney told Uncut in 2008. “We held hands.”

On Nov. 29, 2001, Harrison died of lung cancer at the age of 58. He was posthumously recognized for his solo career by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004, and he won a Grammy lifetime achievement award as a member of The Beatles in 2014 and as a solo artist in 2015.

His 2002 memorial, Concert for George, which featured performances by McCartney, Starr, Clapton and members of the Traveling Wilburys, was re-released in theaters for its 20th anniversary on Nov. 29, 2022.

Richard “Ringo Starr” Starkey, 83

CBS/Getty ; Denise Truscello/WireImage Left: Ringo Starr performs with The Beatles during their first appearance on ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’ on Feb. 9, 1964. Right: Ringo Starr performs with Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band on Oct. 20, 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Born Richard Starkey on July 7, 1940, Ringo Starr knew early on that he wanted to be a musician. By the time he was 13 Starr had decided on drums, according to his website.

At 17, he joined the Eddie Clayton Skiffle Band, and two years later, he moved on to Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. Starr enjoyed moderate success with the group, telling Modern Drummer in 1981 that it “used to be top of the bill.”

But he was receptive when manager Epstein gave him a call in 1962 to replace drummer Best in The Beatles. “I’d rather starve with a better band, and I felt the Beatles were a better band,” Starr said.

In 1965, the drummer married Maureen Cox, with whom he had three children: Zak, Jason and Lee. The pair divorced in 1975.

Starr remained with The Beatles until August 1968, when he took a brief hiatus. “I left because … I felt I wasn’t playing great, and I also felt that the other three were really happy and I was an outsider,” he said in Anthology. During that time, he wrote one of his Beatles songwriting credits, “Octopus’s Garden.”

After The Beatles split in 1970, Starr released his first solo album, Sentimental Journey. He became the first member of the group with seven consecutive top 10 singles, including “It Don’t Come Easy” and “Photograph.”

Starr faced a barrage of health issues in 1979 — he underwent intestinal surgery that reportedly nearly killed him. The incident was followed by a house fire in November 1979 and a near-fatal car crash in May 1980.

ullstein bild via Getty George Harrison, Paul McCartney, John, Lennon, Ringo Starr

Starr became involved in film with roles in Blindman (1971), Son of Dracula (1973) and Caveman (1981). It was on the set of Caveman where he met his second wife, Barbara Bach. They got married on April 27, 1981.

The couple dealt with addiction and entered rehab together in 1988. “I didn’t tour in the ’80s,” he once told PEOPLE. “I got involved in a lot of substances and they became more important than anything else.”

The next year, he formed a new project, Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band, which continues to tour.

In 2019, Starr released his 20th studio album, What’s My Name. As of 2022, he and McCartney were one Tony Award away from an EGOT, with Starr having won an Oscar with The Beatles in 1971 for the score of Let It Be, an Emmy in 2022 for the documentary The Beatles: Get Back and nine Grammys.

In February 2023, McCartney reunited with Starr at a birthday party for McCartney’s daughter Stella; Starr shared a video on X (formerly Twitter) of the former bandmates dancing together.

Pete Best, 82

Mark and Colleen Hayward/Redferns ; Bill Tompkins/Getty Left: Pete Best at Cavern Club. Right: Pete Best at the Little Steven International Garage Festival at Randall’s Island on Aug. 14, 2004

Pete Best was born Randolph Peter Scanland in India on Nov. 24, 1941 — his family moved to England when he was 4.

He met The Beatles through his mother, Mona Best, who booked The Quarrymen to open the Casbah Coffee Club, a music venue she ran out of their home. The group circulated through a number of drummers prior to Starr, but Best stuck around longer than most and played with them for two years.

The musician made his Beatles debut in Hamburg, Germany. Executive George Martin wanted to sign the band to Parlophone Records, but he wasn’t a fan of Best’s drumming so he was replaced by Starr in 1962.

“When I got back home and I told my mother what happened, behind the sanctuary of the front door, I cried like a baby,” Best told The Irish Times in 2020.

He played in several bands after his dismissal, including Lee Curtis and the All-Stars; Best and some bandmates later broke off and became Pete Best & the All-Stars (later the Pete Best Four and the Pete Best Combo).

Hulton Archive/Getty The Beatles perform in a club in Liverpool, England, in 1962.

In 1963, Best married his wife Kathy, whom he met at a Beatles gig. They welcomed two daughters. Five years after he tied the knot, Best changed careers to focus on his family — according to the Australian Financial Review, he worked at a bakery and later at an employment exchange. Best later returned to music, forming the Pete Best Band with his brother Roag in 1988.

The Beatles 1995 album Anthology 1 included seven of Best’s tracks. “It showed the important role I played,” he told The Irish Times.

In 2002, Best and his brother published The Beatles: The True Beginnings, a book chronicling the Casbah Coffee Club and its kickstarting of The Beatles. In 2018, Best made his acting debut in the play Lennon’s Banjo, in which he acted as himself.

“I’m very proud of what I’ve achieved as a person, of the examples I’ve set to people to get on with your life, to pick yourself up,” he told The Irish Times in 2020. “I’m proud of that.”

Stuart Sutcliffe

Collect/Mirrorpix/Mirrorpix/Getty Stuart Sutcliffe

Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on June 23, 1940, Stuart Sutcliffe was accepted into the Liverpool College of Art when he was 16 years old. He first became friends with Lennon there, according to The New Yorker.

When Sutcliffe sold a painting at a prestigious art exhibition for £90 in 1959, Lennon talked him into putting the proceeds toward a Höfner 333 bass. Sutcliffe became passionate about music and he joined The Quarrymen in 1960.

Sutcliffe, who was also living with Lennon, joined the group for its overseas debut in Hamburg, where the group played more than 100 shows. There, he met and fell in love with artist Astrid Kirchherr so he stayed in the country when his bandmates returned to England. He returned to the United Kingdom in January 1961 but made plans to come back to Kirchherr.

K & K Ulf Kruger OHG/Redferns Klaus Voormann, Astrid Kirchherr, and Stuart Sutcliffe at a party at the LiLaLe in Hamburg, Germany, circa 1961.

Sutcliffe left The Beatles in July 1961 to focus on his art, and he moved to Hamburg to attend art school and be closer to Kirchherr. In Germany, he began to have a host of health problems, including what he reportedly called “a shadow” on his lungs, gastritis and an appendix that required surgery. The New Yorker reported that Sutcliffe also experienced convulsions that left him unable to attend classes.

The musician died of a brain hemorrhage on April 10, 1962, at age 21. “John went into hysterics,” Kirchherr recalled of breaking the news to Lennon. “We couldn’t make out … whether he was laughing or crying.”

Sutcliffe’s image was included on the album cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band as well as Lennon’s Rock ’n’ Roll in 1975.

The late performer is largely remembered for his art. According to his website, the Guggenheim Museum in New York City displayed two of his pieces from May 2019 to January 2020.

Read the original article on People.