Beatles FAQ

  Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash Until the late 1960s singles by The Beatles singles far outsold their LPs . This was the standard pattern of record sales at that time. LPs were considered a luxury item and generally beyond the reach of most teenagers.  That said, The Beatles did have an unusual multi-generational appeal. And the kids who bought their singles would later come back to buy not just the studio albums but various compilations. From  Statista Studio Albums The Beatles officially released  13  studio  albums between 1962 and their break up. Over time  the biggest selling has been  Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band  (1967). This has sold an estimated 32 million In the 1990s they released three anthology albums. Compilations The best selling was  Number 1s,  a compilation of singles. This was only released in 2000, thirty years after the band last recorded together.  Two double albums summarising their career:  The Beatles/1962-1966  and  The Beatles/1967-1970  sold very

  None of it was written down by us. It’s basically notation. That’s the bit I can’t do. Paul McCartney (2018 ) The Beatles did not read or write music . Musical scores were of little functional use to them, but Paul McCartney did put one to practical use. In 1968 he was visiting the house he had bought for father on the Wirral. His step-sister had left some sheet music on the piano. Paul was, of course, unable to decode ‘the dots on the page’ but the title of the piece intrigued him. Cradle Song? It suggested a lullaby, so Paul began creating a new melody, which he memorised. This was the foundation for Golden Slumbers in the medley on Abbey Road. Why did The Beatles never learn to read or write music?

  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. 

He blew his mind out in a car  He didn't notice that the lights had changed A crowd of people stood and stared. They'd seen his face before Nobody was really sure. If he was from the House of Lords  A Day in the Life (Lennon & McCartney) While John Lennon was composing his section(s) of A Day in The Life, he had a copy of   The Daily Mail of 17th January 1967 open at the piano. This directly inspired the opening line .  I read the news today, oh boy. About a lucky man...   Lennon had a particular interest in the news that day through a personal connection to one of the stories. This concerned the coroner’s report on the death of  an Irish socialite, Tara Browne.  The Beatles had all known the young Guinness heir socially. He was a friend of Paul's brother, Mick and very close to Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones. The barbed reference to his wealth and privilege ('luck man') hints at an ambivalent attitude on the writer's part. On December 18 1966  Browne die

The Walrus and the Carpenter  -  illustrator  John Tenniel Sexual suggestion is present in several early Beatles songs ( Please, Please Me, Norwegian Wood, I Wanna be Your Man, From Me to You). They liked to insert rude jokes (the tit, tit,tit  backing vocal on Girl being a blatant example) while leaving room for  plausible deniability. Two lines in  I Am the Walrus,  the first new song written after the death of Brian Epstein   stepped across the unacknowledged line. Crabalocker fishwife,  pornographic priestess Boy, you’ve been a naughty girl, you let your  knickers  down No knickers It was the precise form of words rather than the lewd overtones that caused problems. The Beatles might have got away with  pornographic priestess  as word play but   knickers  was strictly  verboten .  The  BBC had Victorian standards of prudery  when it came to that item of clothing. The 'ban' consisted of playing the alternate A-side, Hello Goodbye, which was shorter and more radio friendly. F

On 29 September, I967, John Lennon worked with George Martin and the Abbey Road sound engineers on a potential new Beatles single.

  “I’m a quarter Irish or half Irish or something,”  John Lennon On arrival at Dublin Airport in 1963 John Lennon declared to reporters. “We’re all Irish!”. Lennon was half-joking, and referring primarily to the reputation Liverpool as an historic centre of Irish immigration. No Beatle was eligible for an Irish passport or even selection for Jack Charlton's famously flexible Republic of Ireland soccer team. That said, President Biden regularly describes himself as 'Irish', sometimes even omitting to add 'American'. If we apply what might be termed Biden Rules (ancestors going back a generation or five)  then at leastthree of the Fab Four can climb aboard.  Read more   4 minutes on Medium - free

  Country soul pioneer “If the Beatles wanted a sound, it was R&B. That’s what we used to listen to and what we wanted to be like. Black, that was basically it. Arthur Alexander.”  Paul McCartney, quoted in  Lewisohn,   Mark (2013).  The Beatles: All These Years Arthur Alexander was a relatively obscure singer songwriter from Alabama and an exact contemporary of The Beatles. They covered his song Anna (Go to Him) and his most successful single, You Better Move On was also an early hit for the Rolling Stones.  Yet despite being the only songwriter to be covered on studio recordings by The Beatles, The Stones and Bob Dylan, Alexander failed to follow-up early success. By the end of the 1960s he had effectively left the music industry and was driving a bus Full story (5 minute free read)

The George Martin who the Beatles first met in 1962 presented as Professor Higgins to their Eliza Doolittle. With his smart suit, upper class (southern) accent and courtly manners he appeared to be what Brian Epstein described as “a stern but fair-minded schoolmaster”.  Martin's initial hesitation was due to their personal presentation as much as their musical shortcomings he wasn’t sure about .... shaggy hair, Liverpool accents .... their beat-up gear .... {their}studio professionalism ... source According to Womack, this may have been rooted in his own ‘hidden’ background. For while The Beatles cheerfully conceded what Mark Lewisohn describes as 'their unvarnished working class roots', Martin carefully concealed his.  According to Kenneth Womack's biography,  Maximum Volume  (2017), the suave, sharply dressed producer came from  ' a family that had no electricity or running water and had one gas jet.' George Martin - the early years (3 minute free read) T

Despite their local success in Liverpool and Hamburg — and Brian Epstein’s best efforts — The Beatles struggled to get their first recording deal. Columbia, HMV, Pye, Philips, and Oriole all turned them down. Dick Rowe at Decca signed Brian Poole and the Tremeloes in preference, famously added insult to injury ‘Guitar groups are on the way out, Mr Epstein’. After the failure of the Decca audition, Brian Epstein was running out of options. Early in 1962 he managed to get a meeting with George Martin, the manager of Parlaphone Records, an eclectic label owned by EMI. Martin was more charmed by the Beatles manager than their music. “I wasn’t too impressed with the tape Brian Epstein had played me,” Martin  told Desert Island Discs in 1996 . “There was something there but I couldn’t find out whether it was worthwhile or not.” Read full story here   5 minute free read