Beatles FAQ

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When he was thirteen, George was admitted to hospital with what turned out to be a minor kidney problem. As with Ringo, a spell on the children’s ward was the catalyst for obtaining his first musical instrument.  To cheer up his sick son, Harry Harrison agreed to buy a classmate’s Dutch Egmond flat-top acoustic guitar. Dutch Egmond Acoustic — George Harrison’s first guitar What George would later describe as a ‘cheapo, a horrible little guitar’ had a selling price of £3 ($4). This was a large sum for a poorly paid bus driver, though it would prove an inspired long-term investment.  In 2003 it was sold for $800,000 at auction. Progression The 'cheapo' Egmond proved very difficult to master. Louise Harrison observed her son's painful struggle with it. George tried to teach himself [the guitar]. But he wasn’t making much headway. ‘I’ll never learn this,’ he used to say. I said, ‘You will, son, you will. Just keep at it.’ Early progress was also hampered by an ill advised exper...

The Beatles had started by playing church halls, coffee halls and even private homes. Their Ed Sullivan appearance in February 1964 opened a huge new market had opened only  confined by size of concert venues available. 

  The name change from the original The Quarry Men to The Beatles went through many stages and spellings. Some ludicrous options were considered or even used on occasion. : Johnny and the Moondogs, the Beatals, the Silver Beetles, the Silver Beats are notorious examples.  None of these monikers was as bad as The Beat Brothers. Yet this was the name that appeared on the first records John, Paul, George (and Pete) recorded for Polydor in 1961.  German Polydor producer (and celebrated musician) Bert Kaempfert wanted to cash in on Tony Sheridan's (modest) fame.  Sheridan, very shrewd in most musical matters, had old-school preconceptions about showbiz names.  He dropped his own real surname (McGinnity) when first appearing on Ready Steady Go. The Beat Brothers, he argued, would have more market appeal than the weird sounding The Beatles. Subsequent record-sales spectacularly refuted this thesis. 

I moved in with my auntie who lived in the suburbs in a nice semi-detached place with a small garden and doctors and lawyers and that ilk living around... not the poor slummy kind of image that was projected in all the Beatles stories. In the class system, it was about half a class higher than Paul, George and Ringo, who lived in government-subsidized housing. We owned our house and had a garden. They didn't have anything like that .  Playboy Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono: Published in January 1981  10 Admiral Grove where Ringo grew up - now owned by National Trust A slightly more accurate summary would point out that Ringo was at least  'half a class' lower than Paul and George and did not live in social housing or what the British call a council house. Dingle was one of the poorest areas of Liverpool and the Starkeys paid ten shillings (£0.50p) a week to a private landlord for 10 Admiral Grove, a terraced house without a bathroom or indoor toilet. It...

 It’s a throwaway, a piece of garbage...from a Kellogg’s cereal commercial. I always had the TV on very low in the background when I was writing and it came over ...{ i n this } song .  During his Weybridge years, John Lennon was a British version of Benjamin Braddock in  The Graduate  (1967). Though extraordinarily privileged in material terms he felt alienated: a rich, successful young man angry at the suburban world he found himself in. This anger was largely expressed through petty acts of passive aggression against those surrounding him.   In the conventional Beatles narrative, John Lennon was the wild man, with an artistic bent and a taste for the avant garde.  Paul, in contrast, was the son-in-law choice: cute, sensible and with the common touch.  In reality, the roles were reversed. McCartney spent his Beatle downtime careering around  Swinging London in his Mini Cooper, the pop world's Toad of Toad Hall. He was a fixture of the hip c...

Photo by Saubhagya gandharv on Unsplash George Harrison’s first serious attempt at an ‘Indian’ composition had the unpromising working title of “Granny Smith”. George revealed his 'difficulty with words' in an interview with Maureen Cleave for the London Evening Standard in February 1966. He wishes he could write fine songs as Lennon and McCartney do, but he has difficulty with the words. “Pattie keeps asking me to write more beautiful words,” he said. He played his newest composition… ’Love me while you can: before I’m a dead old man…’ George was aware that these words were not beautiful. Evening Standard readers may have had the impression that “Love You To” was a love song celebrating George’s recent marriage to new Pattie (Boyd). The couple had, after all, just returned from honeymoon in the (then) impossibly glamorous Barbados. Perhaps more pertinent, however, was another Maureen Cleave’s observation from the same interview. Indian music and culture, she noted, “has give...

In the film Help  The Beatles living together in the ultimate bachelor pad. Four doors lead into a miraculous shared space, with all mod cons. No boring housework to worry about.  Unsurprisingly, this fun palace bore little resemblance to The Beatles own living arrangements, past or present. Before they were famous, the band had shared countless dingy rooms and transit vans. They had never, however, formally lived at the same address.  Paul McCartney, conscious of his local reputation, was still officially living in his childhood home when he returned from USA in February 1964. Like his bandmates, the  22 year-old millionaire  had always relied on 'home' for  bed & board, plus laundry and poste restante. Even after he left Liverpool, he moved in with another family: that of his then girlfriend, Jane Asher London Brian Epstein finally moved The Beatles base of operations to  London in the summer of 1963. He arranged for them to stay at the Hotel Pr...

The melody for YESTERDAY came to Paul McCartney in a dream but in other respects it was the most complex Beatles project until that point.  McCartney worked on  the  song for 18 months. He was still writing the song during the filming of Help!. This irritated director, Richard Lester so much that he banned him from playing the then Scrambled Eggs on the set.. George Harrison was similarly unimpressed, remarking ‘Who does he think he is? Beethoven?’  The Arrangement When George Martin suggested adding strings, McCartney was uneasy (‘No vibrato, George. I don’t want to sound like Mantovani!’). Realsiing this would be unnatural for a modern string player, Martin followed McCartney's instructions when writing the part but then asked him to help supervise the arrangement, knowing that this would demonstrate the issue. ‘As a result of which,{McCartney} added the cello phrase in bar 4 of the middle eight (1.25–27) and the first violin’s held high  A in the final verse....

Releasing a double album was considered commercially foolhardy in 1968. LPs, as they were then called, were much more expensive than they are today. A double album seemed to price out the teenagers, still considered The Beatles main market. There were other seemingly quixotic features. Officially called The Beatles it was immediately dubbed The White Album because of its distinctive Richard Hamilton designed cover. This went down a storm with art students but marketing executives were less impressed. They reasonably concluded that there were not enough art students to create the sales need for a gold record. 'What has happened to the Yeah-Yeahs? Nor did  The White Album     attempt to reach out to those not yet bitten by the Beatle bug. There were no singles to entice the casual record buyer. All the material was new to most listeners. Even trend-setting disc jockeys were wrong-footed by the sheer scale of the musical experimentation.  And the number of tracks - an ...

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash   This ghastly miscalculation ... represents by far {McCartney's} worst lapse of taste under the auspices of The Beatles.    Ian MacDonald The Revolution in the Head Maxwell’s Silver Hammer belongs to a very niche musical tradition: the cheerful murder sing-along. There is also speculation that the lyric was influenced by the murder of Joe Orton, who spent an evening with McCartney some months before his death.  Read More

Photo by  Serena Repice Lentini  on  Unsplash I'd like to be under the sea In an octopus's garden in the shade Abbey Road was not a happy working environment during the recording sessions for The White Album. Ringo, the least involved in the squabbling and backbiting, suffered the most from the emotional fall out: I couldn't take it any more. There was no magic and the relationships were terrible. I'd come to a bad spot in life. It could have been paranoia, but I just didn't feel good – I felt like an outsider. Ringo, Anthology Things came to a head during  a recording session for  Back in the USSR on the 22nd of August, 1968. The precise trigger point is unknown but at some point Ringo snapped. After telling John and Paul he was leaving the group, he walked out of the studio. At first, Ringo's departure seemed to confirm the underlying reason for it. The others assumed that their drummer's 'resignation' was not seriously intended. The...

Brian Epstein famously became aware of The Beatles when a young customer asked for a song recorded in Germay,"My Bonnie", by  Tony Sheridan and The Beatles.   This disc would prove to be unique on two counts.  It was the first non-bootlegged recording.  It was also the only time they conceded  top billing to another artist.  In their subsequent recording career over a hundred people performed on official Beatles releases.  These included major contributions to specific recordings - like Andy White's on the "Love Me Do" (single) to various wives, girlfriends and pals providing background harmonies. Even biographer Hunter Davies gets a walk-on vocal, deep in the chorus of  All You Need Is Love " [42] The house rule was that only band members were credited. This even applied to star names - Eric Clapton on The White Album , for example. Only two exceptions were made in the entire 1962 -1970 discography.  Billy Preston  Billy Pres...

The Beatles first met Billy Preston before they were famous. In 1962 Brian Epstein had organised a special 'All-Star' tour, where The Beatles opened for some of their American idols. Preston played keyboards for Little Richard and the band got to know him .  An invitation After occasionally crossing paths during the Beatlemania years, The Beatles and Billy Preston lost contact. Then in 1969, George Harrison escaped an acrimonious recording session by attending a Ray Charles concert. He was surprised to see Preston playing keyboards and went backstage to meet him.  Harrison invited Preston to come   to meet the other band members at Abbey Road. It proved an inspired move - The Beatles no longer liked each other but they were all fond of Billy Preston. His presence was not only musically beneficial but also  discouraged inter-Beatle squabbling in the studio.    John even suggested that he be invited to join the group, but Paul pointed out that thi...

There is a long list of possible candidates, with Brian Epstein a very strong contender. Pete Best also has a claim, as a he was a full band member until August 1962. Musically, however, there is a clear winner and that is the man who offered them their first recording contract and guided them to new frontiers in pop music. When The Beatles entered Abbey Road as very raw musicians without any formal training. They were good live performers but had no experience of working in a studio. None could read music and only Paul had a natural facility for explaining musical ideas in a form that technically trained musicians could follow.  Their early compositions had potential but they needed Martin's experience to make them commercial. PLEASE PLEASE ME for example, was initially a Roy Orbison derivative dirge until Martin inspired Lennon to liven it up . The result was The Beatles first number one single. What did George Martin contribute musically? For five years the partnersh...

Which song did The Beatles sing on the first worldwide satellite broadcast? How many records have the Beatles sold? 

The Beatles first recording contract Despite their local success in Liverpool and Hamburg - and Brian Epstein's best efforts -  The Beatles struggled to get their first recording deal.

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.

Lovely Rita meter maid Nothing can come between us

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.