Beatles FAQ

The Beatles leave Candlestick Park On August 29, 1966 The Beatles played their last (official) live concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.  The Candlestick Park concert was on the surface the triumphant finale of another record-breaking tour. But as Paul McCartney has recently said, it also proved a crisis point: By then we were totally fed up and then they put us in the back of a stainless steel box { the armoured car they used to leave the Candlestick Park gig }...  Now this is like some weird sci-fi thing form 2001 or something. We’re suddenly sliding around in the back of the van...The guys, John [Lennon] and George [Harrison], had been a little {fed up} about touring and, finally, all of us, were like ‘Fuck this!’ So that was the moment. There was no public announcement and no definitive decision to stop all live performance at some point. But The Beatles would never play a scheduled concert again. Back to Abbey Road Liberated from their grueling tour...

B eatlemania in the UK spread with astonishing rapidity.

In August 1963 The Beatles returned to the Cavern to play what proved to be their last gig there. It proved a chaotic event with frequent power-cuts causing frequent interruptions.  During one of the forced intervals, Paul McCartney calmed the crowd by playing  impromptu acoustic version of an old favourite.

There are 87 people and props on the cover of Sergeant Pepper

Lovely Rita meter maid Nothing can come between us

John Lennon never showed much affection for The Beatles most celebrated album. Was this because the  Sergeant Pepper concept was Paul's?  Not according to what John says in this interview, recorded in 1971, at the height of his feud with his former song-writing partner: 

'We were cowards when we sacked him'  John Lennon

George Martin wanted The Beatles first single to be  How Do You Do It, a Tin Pan Alley song which he felt had commercial potential.

Wimpole Street  “I woke up with a lovely tune in my head.  I thought, ‘That’s great, I wonder what that is?’  There was an upright piano next to me, to the right of the bed by the window.    I got out of bed, sat at the piano, found G, found F sharp minor 7th – and that leads you through then to B to E minor, and finally back to E.  It all leads forward logically.  I liked the melody a lot but because I’d dreamed it I couldn’t believe I’d written it. 

Graphic designer Viktor Hertz has created a remarkable tribute to The Beatles. Each pictogram represents a song.  How many Beatles songs can you identify?