Beatles FAQ

'Verse 1' consists of  the chorus from SPLHCB Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band   opens with the title track that establishes the concept (a reunion concert for the eponymous group). Crowd noise blends the sound of orchestral   musicians tuning-up to create the illusion of a live performance.  The song climaxes with the MC (McCartney) introducing 'the one and only Billy Shears' and the single chorus builds to a crescendo. Concept Arguably, the band reunion concept begins to fade at this point. Later Lennon would dismissively describe the album as 'a bunch of mainly Paul's songs'. This may be harsh but it was apparent during recording that the concept was not really sustained.  The Beatles road manager, Neil Aspinall, pointed  out that the fictional band appeared to disappear after the opening track. He suggested that listener needed to be reminded of the live performance on side two. The result was the penultimate track  " Sgt. Pepper's Lone

  Julia Stanley first met Alfred (aka Alf/Fred/Freddie) Lennon in 1929, when she was fifteen and he was two years older.   They met in Sefton Park, exchanging come banter from the start. Both worked in junior office jobs and superficially had similar temperaments. Julia was vivacious, fun loving, a natural rebel.  Alf was a popular with his peers, ‘a rascal. An  absolute  character’ said one pal. There was also a shared musicality. Julia loved singing and played banjo. Alf sang, specialising in comedy songs and comically mangling the words of standards. Like his brothers - and later his son - Alf played the harmonica - the 'mouth iron' as it was known in Liverpool. Too Common? The rebel meets rascal combination did not go down well with Julia’s family: the tight-knit Stanley clan. They saw Alf as ‘low’ - and they were not referring to his diminutive stature (he was 5.3”)   The Stanleys always believed they were several notches above the Lennons, claiming better breeding, educat

 Outside the Southern Cross Hotel in Melbourne, June 1964. An estimated 300,000 greeted The Beatles in Melbourne in June 1964. The Queen had only attracted half that number the preceding year. Aussie Beatlemania was particularly intense for the Melbourne stop because it marked the return of Ringo.  The drummer had been hospitalised a few days before  the start of the tour. This had caused consternation amongst Beatle fans, but now he was climbing off his sickbed in London to join his buddies down under. It proved a difficult journey.  The flight was horrendous... It’s... a hell of a long way. I remember the plane felt like a disaster area to me. Fans  clearly thought the effort worthwhile. Replacement drummer, Jimmy Nichol was less thrilled. He was sent back to London and obscurity, after a few weeks in the celebrity sun - read more .

Photo by  Daniel Cheung  on  Unsplash ‘I hate it!’ John Lennon. ‘The worst session ever’ Ringo Starr “If any single recording shows why The Beatles broke up, it’s ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’.” Ian MacDonald The Revolution in the Head  “They got annoyed because Maxwell’s Silver Hammer took three days to record. Big deal.” Paul McCartney.   Read More What inspired Maxwell's Silver Hammer? 

Photo by  Fleur  on  Unsplash In March 1967 John and Paul were under pressure to produce the final tracks for Sergeant Pepper. They decided to have what would now be called a brainstorming session at John's house. According to Hunter Davies, this was a bewilderingly casual event in which they spent much of the time flicking through magazines. From time to time they would sing out phrases or pick out bits of tunes at the piano. Ian Macdonald speculates that there was some method at work in that 'both writers 'found inspiration in moments where their conscious minds had fallen into abeyance.' Whatever the strategy, it worked.  By the end of the day McCartney had a new song, 'The Fool on the Hill'. Lennon, meanwhile, plugged away at the chords to a tune with the working title Badfinger Boogie.  This reflection on on a minor injury would eventually became better known as 'With a Little Help From My Friends'

  "I played a lot of harmonica & mouth organ when I was a child. We used to take in students and one of them had a mouth organ and said he’d buy me one if I could learn a tune by the next morning. So I learnt two." John Lennon John Lennon Remembers In 1947 Aunt Mimi began an arrangement with Liverpool University to take in students as lodger. One of these young men was Harold Phillips, who was resuming his studies after serving in the Royal Navy. The seven-year-old John was fascinated by a harmonica that Phillips possessed. Phillips was amused and offered the boy the chance to keep the 'mouth iron' - as it was known locally.  Harold Phillips kept his word - but Aunt Mimi made John wait until Christmas before taking possession of his first musical instrument. ‘I felt the stocking and there was a mouth organ in it. A harmonica.’ That was one of the great moments of my life, when I got my first harmonica’. Interestingly, the harmonica had been played by his father an

In June 1964, The Beatles were preparing for their first world tour. During the pre-tour photoshoot, Ringo Starr was suddenly taken ill and began vomiting violently.  The stricken drummer rushed to University College Hospital where there was good and bad news. The diagnosis was severe tonsillitis - unpleasant but not serious. The bad news was that  recovery would take an estimated ten days. This meant that Ringo would miss the first stage of the tour. Brian Epstein reacted with characteristic resourcefulness. 'We've got a temporary replacement,' he announced. 'Jimmy Nichol'. Jimmy who?  'The ex-Shubdubs drummer. Now with the Blue Flames.' The name still wasn't ringing any bells. But within a day Jimmy Nichol was getting his Beatle haircut and being measured for his Beatle suit. Read more The Beatles Teaching Pack '

The Beatles were paid the same as performers (and in repeat rights etc).

In 1954 twelve-year old Paul McCartney notices a younger boy with a guitar on his bus journey to school.

For what was intended to be their final studio album, The Beatles decided to break with George Martin and the EMI/Abbey Road to approach to making records. They were open to new ideas - and with the characteristic abandon of the era went with one of  the maddest  proposed to them- a making-of-the-album documentary culminating in a live concert from Roman ruins in Tunisia.   “The Beatles were to start playing as the sun came up,” explained director Michael Lindsay-Hogg, “and you’d see crowds flocking towards them through the day.” Within weeks, however, this Spinal Tap style project had to be abandoned. Not only were they not flying out to Tunisia, they were even refusing to go to Twickenham to rehearse.  This left the film without big finish or indeed any finish at all. And the one thing everyone agreed upon was that filming needed to end quickly.  Then someone suggested "Why don't we do the concert right here?" So on the 30th of January 1969 the group - plus

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

"Behind the shelter in the middle of a roundabout' Early Lennon & McCartney songs contained few direct references to their home city. The aim was to produce music that would appeal to a global rather than local appeal. The culmination of this approach was I Want to Hold Your Hand - written  with the express intention of appealing to the US market.  The formula worked - I Want to Hold Your Hand became the biggest selling single of all time. It was however, limiting artistically. By 1965, The Beatles success - and that of the openly introspective Bob Dylan - encouraged Lennon & McCartney to draw on more autobiographical material.  In My Lif e Lennon refers  generally to the 'places I remember'.  Strawberry Fields Forever, names one of these, a local Salvation Army Children's home, and weaves it into a hallucinatory dreamscape. On the surface McCartney takes a more functional approach:  Penny Lane" was kind of nostalgic, but it was really

So here’s another clue for you all/The Walrus was Paul The Beatles  Glass Onion  (The White Album) There were conspiracy theories long before the internet. The Beatles, with their unprecedented fame and influence on popular culture, were particularly prone to them. Perhaps the most notorious began on   the night of January 7, 1967, when  ‘a rumour swept London that Paul McCartney had been killed in a car crash on the M1’. - read the full story here. On 12 October, 1969 a bizarre on-air phone call to Detroit radio station gave new life (!) to the controversy. A caller, identified only as ‘Tom’, had some startling new information. He revealed that The Beatles had been sending secret messages through their recorded songs. ‘Play ‘Revolution 9’ backwards,’ he said mysteriously. ‘And you’ll hear what I mean!’ The DJ duly spun the disk (backwards). After somehow deciphering discordant wailing, he pronounced judgement. ‘Wow! John is saying “dead man!” He’s trying to tell us that

Bowie's first album (1967) In 1964 a young Beatles fan makes his first TV appearance. With astounding chutzpah, the 17-year-old is taking part in a publicity stunt, promoting the (fictitious) Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Long-haired Men. Always a Beatles fan, David Bowie tried to sign for Apple in 1968. In the 1970s he became a friend and musical collaborator with John Lennon.  The roots of this affinity went deep  as Pete Doggett has pointed out: I was struck ... by the influence the Beatles had on Bowie's work in the 70s. Some of that influence is obvious - the McCartney-inspired piano styling of 'Oh! You Pretty Things', for example. As early as 1965, in an obscure song entitled 'That's Where My Heart Is', Bowie sounded as if he was learning how to write songs by listening to With The Beatles.  source Bowie later covered George Harrison's 'Try Some, Buy Some', claiming that he hadn't realised that George had written the s

Nearly sixty years on and there is still no settled answer to this question. We are now so familiar with the name— and its odd spelling — that it is often forgotten how exotic it seemed in the early 1960s.

One of the most enduring legends surrounding The Beatles is that the Fab Four became the Fab Three in November 1966.

When asked about key early influences The Beatles usually cited individual names: Elvis, Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly. All but one followed the tried and tested formula of a star with an essentially nameless backing band. The exception was Buddy Holly. His group, The Crickets, created a template for what became known as the ‘guitar group’. This which would be adopted by The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and countless other British bands. In January 1962, The Beatles failed an audition for Decca Records. Company boss, Dick Rowe, famously told Brian Epstein that ‘guitar groups were on their way out’. In fact they were about to conquer the world. Read More The Beatles Teaching Pack   (£3.99) 

The European leg of the The Beatles 1966 world tour was designed to create a favourable impression on the band and its public. First there were a few dates in Germany, culminating in a triumphant return to Hamburg. Then on to Japan, a market where they had achieved unprec.edented penetration for a western act. Finally The Beatles would visit The Philippines. This was the most Americanised of all Asian states, with a famously friendly population.. A warm welcome was confidently expected. Nothing went according to plan. In Hamburg there was embarrassment on the now cleaned-up  Beatles in front of their old fans. At one concert Lennon told the audience, "Don't listen to our music. We're terrible these days." He would later explain: "We'd outlived the Hamburg stage and wanted to pack that up. We hated going back... We'd had that scene. Brian [Epstein] made us go back to fulfill the contract..." After this uneasy revisiting of their past, The Beat

The Beatles leave Candlestick Park On August 29, 1966 The Beatles played their last (official) live concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.  The Candlestick Park concert was on the surface the triumphant finale of another record-breaking tour. But as Paul McCartney has recently said, it also proved a crisis point: By then we were totally fed up and then they put us in the back of a stainless steel box { the armoured car they used to leave the Candlestick Park gig }...  Now this is like some weird sci-fi thing form 2001 or something. We’re suddenly sliding around in the back of the van...The guys, John [Lennon] and George [Harrison], had been a little {fed up} about touring and, finally, all of us, were like ‘Fuck this!’ So that was the moment. There was no public announcement and no definitive decision to stop all live performance at some point. But The Beatles would never play a scheduled concert again. Back to Abbey Road Liberated from their grueling touring sched

B eatlemania in the UK spread with astonishing rapidity.