Beatles FAQ

The collage on the cover of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band  shows a gathering of over 70 famous figures, cultural icons, and waxworks.  How were the people chosen? The organising principle is that The Beatles have chosen who will feature. Their choices are engagingly random. English comic Tommy Handley shares the stage with Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, for example. Very much alive, Fred Astaire is next to the long-dead nineteenth-century author, Edgar Allan Poe. Film star Sophia Loren is in the image - but you can't see her. She and fellow Italian   Marcello Mastroianni  are hidden behind the waxworks of The Beatles. Who missed out? Changes were made right up to the last moment. Some very unlikely options were considered.  A cardboard cut-out of Hitler was produced but (wisely) removed from the photoshoot at the last minute.  Brian Epstein rejected John Lennon's suggestion of Jesus. He did not wish to reignite  the controversy of the p...

Three female songwriters have co-credits on songs covered by The Beatles

Lennon and McCartney frequently named women in song titles - some real, some disguised, several invented.

The Beatles first played the Cavern on February 9, 1961: a lunchtime session for which they were paid £5. Despite lengthy absences in Hamburg, they would do over 290 more gigs there over the next two years. On Good Friday, 12 April, 1963, they gave their penultimate performance there, returning in triumph as national chart toppers. This was widely assumed to be their farewell to the tiny venue. But an obscure contractual obligation to a local promoter brought them back to do one more date down those cellar steps. Final Cavern Gig Their last performance was on Saturday, August 3rd, 1963. It would prove a chaotic swansong.  The crowds outside were going mad. By the time John Lennon had got through the cordon of girls, his mohair jacket had lost a sleeve. I grabbed it to stop a girl getting away with a souvenir. John stitched it back on. Read full story    Why did The Beatles Stop Performing Live ?

On the 22nd August 1969, The Beatles completed their final official engagement.  

​ Ringo never aspired to be a principal songwriter for The Beatles but he does have two  sole writing credits.

Freddie Lennon in the mid 1960s

The room above the Bambi Kino cinema George Harrison was seventeen when he first arrived in Hamburg in August 1960. Though the legal age limit for performers was eighteen, club  owner Bruno Koschmider was initially unconcerned.  It was when The Beatles jumped ship to work at the bigger Top Ten that Koschmider found his conscience stirred. He then informed the police of his shocking discovery. Those devious Englishmen had an underage performer in their ranks . pen & ink sketch of Hamburg club owner Bruno Koschmider (1926-2000) The police duly deported Harrison on November 21. The guitarist spent his last night teaching John Lennon his parts before reluctantly packing a " crappy suitcase and things in boxes, paper bags with my clothes in, and a guitar." Homeward bound The logistics of getting home proved challenging, as George related in Anthology: Astrid and Stuart dropped me at Hamburg station. It was a long journey on my own on the train to the Hook of Holland. From ...

Throughout his life, George celebrated his birthday on February 25th. But in the early 1990s, there were claims of a newly discovered 'hospital document'.