On This Day: Beatles receive gongs at Buckingham Palace

October 26: The Beatles were awarded MBEs by the Queen at a ceremony at Buckingham Palace that caused London to grind to a halt as thousands of fans tried to catch a glimpse.

A British Pathé newsreel filmed Paul McCartney, then aged 23, John Lennon, 25, George Harrison, 22, and Ringo Starr, 25, collecting their gongs in 1965.

The pop sensations, who went on to become the biggest-selling artists of all time, were greeted by throngs of screaming girls.

The fans had to be held back by dozens of police officers as the floppy-haired working class foursome from Liverpool left the palace in a Rolls Royce.

It came weeks after their song Yesterday became a surprise hit despite the band refusing to release the track as a single in Britain.

[ On This Day: Beatles release hit song 'Yesterday' ]

The number, which has since been covered a record 2,200 times and is repeatedly voted the best pop song of all time, topped U.S. charts for four weeks.

The EP, written solely by McCartney and dismissed by the other Beatles as being too different, sold a million copies in the States within five weeks.

British fans had to wait until 1976 – six years after the band split up - to buy Yesterday as a UK single.
Although it was included on the album Help!, which was released in both the U.S. and Britain in August 1965.

The band, which formed in 1960 and became the best-selling artists of all time, didn’t become global sensations until 1964 with the release of I Want to Hold Your Hand.

It sold a million singles and launched the British Invasion of UK bands to America and Beatlemania everywhere else.

Some experts have credited the Fab Four’s success to the record 10,000 hours they spent performing during their first four years.

This included stints in Hamburg when they would play for eight hours a night for seven days a week.
After 1964, the Beatles routinely performed to sell-out stadium crowds of screaming girls, who often drowned out their singing.

The effect made the band decide to stop touring and they performed their last commerical concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco on August 29, 1966.

From then on they concentrated on making music and it was during this era that they produced their most critically aclaimed albums.

In 1967, they released Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, which is widely considered to be the best collection of songs of all time.

In 1969 they gave an impromtu performance on the rooftop of Apple Studios in London’s Savile Row.

They produced four more albums – Magical Mystery Tour, The Beatles, Yellow Submarine, Abbey Road and Let It Be – before they broke up in April 1970.

Lennon had been unhappiest in the Beatles and – encouraged by his Japanese wife Yoko Ono - wanted to go on and produce edgier, more political music.

He moved to New York City in 1971, which led to U.S. President Richard Nixon trying to deport the rebellious singer over his anti-Vietnam War activism.

His first solo album – John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band – of 1970 embodied his personality and views.

It included the tracks Working Class Hero and God, in which, as well as deriding religion as “a concept by which we measure our pain”, he proclaimed “I don’t believe in Beatles.”

McCartney, Harrison and Starr also went on to have solo careers – and they never performed together again.

Lennon was shot dead on the street in New York in December 1980, wile Harrison died of lung cancer in November 2001.

McCartney and Starr remain musically active.

[ On This Day: Beatles' first Cavern Club slot ]

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