Beatles FAQ

John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote a large number of songs in their teens - up to 200 according to some estimates. Many disappeared without trace - a Wimpole Street spring clean by Jane Asher put paid to a pile written on scrap paper.  Others, like Lennon's 'Hello Little Girl' were fixture of their live act but then given to other artists to cover. These were generally off-cuts not deemed quite up to scratch, though arguably some like  'World Without Love' and 'Love of the Loved' deserved a seat at the top table. Quirky numbers like "When I'm 64" would eventually make it when The Beatles were in a position to dictate terms to the record company, rather than vice versa. In 1963 only the most commercial compositions would do. George Martin reluctantly accepted Love Me Do and a revamped Please Please Me - but no other Lennon and McCartney original presented impressed him. And with The Beatles having just made number one he wanted a knock-out fol

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

John Lennon teases clue seekers and his bandmate  Written days after the death of Brian Epstein, the lyrics of 'I am the Walrus' have confused everyone, including their author - read full story here In his 1971  Rolling Stone  interview, Lennon tries to explain the McCartney reference in Glass Onion:  Here's another clue for you all. The Walrus was Paul.  Is Lennon teasing his bandmate? Or having a pop at the rapidly growing army of conspiracy theorists? Interestingly, Glass Onion was a genuine collaboration between John and Paul. The theme (an attack on the 'pseuds' over-interpreting Beatles' lyrics) sounds typical of Lennon but in fact came from McCartney. Their relationship was fraying but here they come together in a howl of complaint about how Beatles' lyrics were avidly scoured for hidden messages.   Ian Macdonald disapproves. He suggests that the 'sour A minor melody' and snarling tone of the song express the intent of they lyric" - a 

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

Happy bunnies? The Beatles last photoshoot 22 August, 1969 By unknown,  Fair use ,  Legally, The Beatles were an entity until the group was formally dissolved on 29 December 1974.  Until that point John, Paul, George and Ringo were still technically Beatles. That said, from the summer of 1968 three of the four clearly had one eye on the exit.  The unravelling The death of Brian Epstein in August 1967 intensified internal band tension -  see here . Within a year, The Beatles story became an Agatha Christie plot, with all four on manoeuvres. Ringo briefly walked out in 1968, George did an even shorter flounce in January, 1969. John announced to all and sundry he wanted out after his Plastic Ono Band gig in Toronto in 1969. John later claimed to have been persuaded to delay his departure by Paul, who was still desperate to keep the band together. But by this point, even Mr Beatle was lawyering up for the coming divorce. In fact, it was McCartney who would be thought of as the man who ende

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

The Everton area of Liverpool, 1960 All four Beatles had what Mark Lewisohn calls ‘unvarnished working-class roots in an industrial city that had seen better days.' They grew up in different areas of Liverpool, though Paul and George attended the same secondary school and John and George (briefly) went to the same primary school.sd Paul and George Paul and George spent their formative years living in council houses (social housing). The neighbourhoods they lived in were solidly proletarian but not particularly associated with high crime rates or other social issues. Neither considered themselves to be poor by the standards of their peers. John Lennon On paper, John Lennon's early childhood was a textbook example of the social deprivation often experienced by single parent families in the mid Twentieth century. Fred and Julia, his biological parents were legally married, but never lived together. They effectively separated soon after his birth. John initially lived with is mothe

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  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)