Magical Mystery Four

As we mark 65 years of The Beatles, Bob Chilcott, composer, former King's Singer and Fab Four fanatic, explores the band's many musical influences

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The Beatles came together in Liverpool in 1960 and in just ten years, until 1970 when they disbanded, they had changed the face of Western popular culture in ways that still strongly resonate to this day. Their songs have never lost their relevance, speaking to young and old from the heart in sounds and words with which we all connect.

I was born in 1955, and it was not until 1963 that I really became aware of the group. This was first through their song 'Love Me Do' and the impact on us all was immediate. My sister and I fought over who would have the pictures from The Beatles magazines or their picture on the cover of the TV Times. Our parents were irritated by these four witty, sometimes irreverent, energetic and brilliant young people with inappropriately long hair, who really felt to us that they were changing the world. I can remember playing my father 'Nowhere Man' from Rubber Soul and also 'Barbara Ann' from another great group of the time, The Beach Boys, in an attempt to show him that they could sing in harmony, like a choir. My father made me switch the record player off.

From 1964, I was a chorister in the Choir of King's College, Cambridge and our musical experience there was not only dominated by the music of William Byrd, Herbert Howells, Charles Stanford and Ralph Vaughan Williams, but also by the next Beatles hit to arrive. In 1966, we sang three concerts in Sweden, and in the home in Stockholm where I and another friend stayed for the duration of the trip, the son of the family had the new Beatles album, Revolver. We listened to it endlessly, transfixed by the string orchestra in ‘Eleanor Rigby’ and the asymmetric melody of ‘Good Day Sunshine’. We loved it. A year later