Beatles FAQ

Warning! Not exactly to scale This is a surprisingly controversial question. The Beatles fan club and other 'official' sources stated  that Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison as the same height: 5'11" (180cm), with Ringo Starr 5'8" (172cm) Early publicity photos emphasise a certain height uniformity. This harmonised with the identical suits and ‘Beatle’ hair styles. It was as if you could walk over their heads without breaking step. Late 60s photos tended to emphasise individual difference rather than collective branding. They revealed that Paul was/is fractionally taller than John, who in turn had the slightest of edges over George. Ringo was/is closer to  5'6"  (168cm) Great Hoax? A belief that the real (small) Paul was replaced by a taller 'fake Paul' or Faul is a key component of the (bonkers)  'Paul is Dead' conspiracy theory .   'Evidence' of an alleged height disparity  McCartney brazenly maintains that he is still ver...

The 'Paul is Dead' rumour began in early 1967. The Abbey Road cover photo provided new 'clues.' 

  The most famous photo in the history of pop music was what artists call a 'happy accident'. 

Beatles final meeting? The last time we can be certain that all four Beatles met together was for the final recording sessions for  Abbey Road. This   took place between on Wednesday 20 August, when various tracks were finished, including 'Here Comes the Sun' and, fittingly 'The End'.  Two days later they completed their final final official engagement together - a photoshoot which was held at the new Lennon-Ono residence Tittenhurst Park in Ascot - see here .   At the end, they wandered away in different directions.  The Meeting With recording duties completed, they were pretty much done. Only a final round of business meetings forced them them to meet again.  The key one was on September 20. This was when Alan Klein, now representing John, Paul and Ringo presented the new contract he had negotiated with Capitol Records.  George was absent. Despite the smiling publicity shot, the atmosphere was tense. At one point John announced that he was leavi...

The 'Paul is Dead' conspiracy was fuelled by supposed clues hidden in the recordings I told you about strawberry fields ... You know the place where nothing is real...Well here's another clue for you all ... The walrus was Paul.

Photo by  Daniel Cheung  on  Unsplash ‘I hate it!’ John Lennon. ‘The worst session ever’ Ringo Starr “If any single recording shows why The Beatles broke up, it’s ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’.” Ian MacDonald The Revolution in the Head  “They got annoyed because Maxwell’s Silver Hammer took three days to record. Big deal.” Paul McCartney.   Read More What inspired Maxwell's Silver Hammer? 

For what was intended to be their final studio album, The Beatles decided to break with George Martin and the EMI/Abbey Road to approach to making records. They were open to new ideas - and with the characteristic abandon of the era went with one of  the maddest  proposed to them- a making-of-the-album documentary culminating in a live concert from Roman ruins in Tunisia.   “The Beatles were to start playing as the sun came up,” explained director Michael Lindsay-Hogg, “and you’d see crowds flocking towards them through the day.” Within weeks, however, this Spinal Tap style project had to be abandoned. Not only were they not flying out to Tunisia, they were even refusing to go to Twickenham to rehearse.  This left the film without big finish or indeed any finish at all. And the one thing everyone agreed upon was that filming needed to end quickly.  Then someone suggested "Why don't we do the concert right here?" So on the 30th of January 1969 th...

So here’s another clue for you all/The Walrus was Paul The Beatles  Glass Onion  (The White Album) There were conspiracy theories long before the internet. The Beatles, with their unprecedented fame and influence on popular culture, were particularly prone to them. Perhaps the most notorious began on   the night of January 7, 1967, when  ‘a rumour swept London that Paul McCartney had been killed in a car crash on the M1’. - read the full story here. On 12 October, 1969 a bizarre on-air phone call to Detroit radio station gave new life (!) to the controversy. A caller, identified only as ‘Tom’, had some startling new information. He revealed that The Beatles had been sending secret messages through their recorded songs. ‘Play ‘Revolution 9’ backwards,’ he said mysteriously. ‘And you’ll hear what I mean!’ The DJ duly spun the disk (backwards). After somehow deciphering discordant wailing, he pronounced judgement. ‘Wow! John is saying “dead man!” He’...

One of the most enduring legends surrounding The Beatles is that the Fab Four became the Fab Three in November 1966.

On October 22 1969 Paul McCartney tried to end a month of fevered press speculation started by  a story published in a tiny Des Moines student magazine on September 17 .

Saturday. "Friday Night arrives without a suitcase/Sunday morning creeping like a nun." Perhaps its part of that eight-day-week the Beatles introduced. Lady Madonna was McCartney's 'come-back' single after critics savaged Magical Mystery Tour. Musically, it's an impressive response, the boogiewoogie piano and handclaps combining to create an infectious driving sound.  Lyrically, it is less successful. The title was inspired by a magazine photograph of an African mother and child captioned Mountain Madonna. This image immediately runs into trouble with a very British reference to paying the rent. Then it turns bizarrely accusatory ('Did you think that money was heaven sent?') before losing all coherence in what Ian MacDonald calls 'acid tinged unreality'.  Macdonald particularly disapproves of the 'pointless allusion to I Am the Walrus' suggesting that this 'wanton self-mythologising ... in the context of the developing 'Pa...