Beatles FAQ

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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)

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...   One reason why Lennon had a particular interest in the news that day was because he had 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 known the young Guinness heir socially.  On December 18 1966  Browne died in a car crash. He had driven his sports car through a red light at high speed (over 100 mph) in South Kensington.  This had then crashed into a lorry, killing the driver instantly.  Read full story (

  John Lennon put his voracious newspaper reading to productive use in 1967. In January a story about the death of his friend Tara Browne appears in A Day in the Life. Six months later a throwaway story about the divorce settlement of 'an exceptionally mean man' provided another song fragment. Mark Lewisohn has done extensive research into the back=story of former civil servant Mr John Mustard. This certainly not the case with Lennon who seems to have been a little embarrassed about the the source. In on of his last interviews he describes Mean Mr Mustard as 'garbage'. Earlier  he had referred to it as 'just a piece of crap I wrote in India.' This dismissiveness is perhaps partially the result of his frustration of being unable to finish the song. It would be two years before it was completed and found a home in the medley on Abbey Road. To do this Lennon built in a link with Polythene Pam by changing the name of John Mustard's siser . An alternative theory

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 minutes - free)

'a combination of Roy Orbison and Bing Crosby' with improvements via George Martin

Before they broke-up, The Beatles sold far more singles that LPs. The album, as it became known, was a luxury item - well beyond the financial  reach of the core teenage market. Singles generally outsold albums until the early seventies. The Beatles released a total of 63 singles worldwide By 2014, the official figure for US single sales was an astonishing 1.6 billion .  Additional worldwide singles sales:  600 million .  Studio Albums The Beatles officially released 13 albums studio , plus three anthologies They had a total of 21 Number 1 albums in the US.  Total US album sales are estimated at around 177 million Album sales outside of the US are in excess of 600 million .  The Beatles  (The White Album) is the biggest selling studio album. It has sold over 24 million copies. Later acts, like Fleetwood Mac, Elton John and Michael Jackson, all  benefited from the increasing availability of affordable stereo systems. Older fans were now buying Beatles albums in large num

Was Please Please Me The Beatles first UK Number One? At the end of the lengthy recording session for the single version of Please Please Me  George Martin turned to The Beatles and said, 'Gentlemen, you have your first Number One!' George was rarely wrong about anything but in this case the jury is still out. 

  Usually referred to as a Shiirelles' song but written by Bacharach, Dixon & (Mack) David Though the names Bacharach and The Beatles were often referred to in tandem, they never worked together directly. The Beatles did record 'Baby It's You', a staple from their early live act and the older songwriter's influence is apparent in McCartney's ballads.  This most apparent in the song that Paul wrote for Cilla Black, "Step Inside Love'.  Cilla was by this point closely associated with Bacharach and (Hal) David - famously enticing the great songwriter to Abbey Road in order to supervise the epic recording session for 'Alfie'. Read full story (free 3 minute read on Medium)