The Beatles were an English rock band that formed in Liverpool, in 1960. With John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr -- also known as the "Fab Four" -- they became widely regarded as the greatest and most influential act of the rock era.

In the early 1960s, their enormous popularity first emerged as "Beatlemania," but as their songwriting grew in sophistication they came to be perceived as an embodiment of the ideals shared by the era's sociocultural revolutions.