Dale’s Daily Data: Beatles Last Public Performance

Their early members included Tommy Moore, Pete Best and Stu Sutcliffe.  Sutcliffe didn’t see much future in the group and left to become a painter and died a year later of a brain hemorrhage.  A lot of record companies didn’t see a whole lot of promise in them either because they received rejection after rejection, but they never quit and they eventually ended up in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  Originally known as Johnny and the Moondogs, the Silver Beatles and eventually the Beatles, everything started to happen when Ringo Starr replaced Pete Best on the drums in 1962 – they recorded “Love Me Do”.  It became a Top 20 hit in the United Kingdom.  Two years later they made the first of 3 consecutive appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show and Beatlemania and the British invasion was born.     

When you consider groups like the Rolling Stones have been together for nearly 50 years, the Beatles lasted only 15.  Their last public performance was an impromptu concert on the roof of their Apple recording studio in January, 1969.  London police responded to complaints about noise and broke it up.   John Lennon closed the performance announcing, "I'd like to say thank you very much on behalf of the group and myself and I hope we passed the audition."   A year later, Paul McCartney made the formal announcement that the group had officially broken up.