Beatles FAQ

Real fans chase The Beatles around London's Marylebone Railway Station in the opening of A Hard Day's Night. This is meant to be Lime Street Station in Liverpool - but the script was in fact inspired by the first 'Beatlemania riot' in Dublin on 7 November, 1963 . Read full story on Medium (free - 3 mins)

Photo by  Nick Fewings  on  Unsplash Paul :   What I think… the main thing is this: You have always been boss. Now, I’ve been sort of secondary boss.” John :  Not always. Paul : No, listen. Listen. No, always. From the secretly recorded conversation in The Beatles: Get Back (2021) John Lennon began what became The Beatles - Paul and George joined his band when all three were teenagers. That is what Paul is referring to in the documentary. Whether John remained 'the boss' through to the end is a more open question.  Read more  (free)

'Love Me Do' is Paul's song. He wrote it when he was a teenager. Let me think. I might have helped on the middle eight, but I couldn't swear to it. I do know he had the song around, in Hamburg, even, way, way before we were songwriters"  John Lennon in David Sheff's : All We Are Saying). [8]   For their first single, George Martin wanted The Beatles to record a promising song by Mitch Murray, a young British songwriter.   I was convinced that How Do You Do It was a hit song. Not a great piece of songwriting, not the most marvellous song I had ever heard in my life, but I thought it had that essential ingredient which would appeal to a lot of people.   The boys stubbornly refused, 'We couldn't sing that in Liverpool,' they told him. 'We want to record one of our own songs.' Reluctantly, Martin allowed them to record LOVE ME DO - the song he considered the best of a bad bunch.   Read full story (free) on Medium (3 minutes)

The Beatles collect their MBEs - contrary to myth they were  thrilled to get them Paul McCartney has often expressed his admiration for Queen Elizabeth, who came to power five years before he joined The Quarrymen.  We all kind of liked the Queen. It’s an age thing. We were kids when she was crowned, so to us she was like a glamorous film star. We identified with her. She’s ours. She’s the Queen.   Interview with the Radio Times, September 2019 The Beatles with Princess Margaret. The four Beatles tracks which mention the late Queen Elizabeth II are:  Penny Lane For You Blue Mean Mr Mustard Her Majesty Read more  (free) Free Beatles Teaching Materials

The Beatles recorded four songs in German, though only two were officially released. 

Pete Best was The Beatles drummer from August 1960 until August 1962. He was with them in Hamburg and at their first Abbey Road recording session. He played an important role in establishing The Beatles popularity in Hamburg and Liverpool, but had a slightly distant relationship with the others. By the summer of 1962 the other Beatles were plotting against him. Using the pretext that George Martin had rejected his drumming as sub-standard they approached Ringo Starr, an old friend of the band from Hamburg.  Read the full story behind the sacking of Best (free on Medium 6 mins) The Beatles: free teaching materials

Paul soon abandoned the trumpet

The songwriters in surprisingly small writing How did Lennon & McCartney end up writing I Wanna be your Man for the Rolling Stones? There are at least three different versions of what happened.

The 'Paul is Dead' conspiracy was fuelled by supposed clues hidden in the recordings I told you about strawberry fields ... You know the place where nothing is real...Well here's another clue for you all ... The walrus was Paul.

  Mount Pleasant Registry Office, Liverpool. August 23rd 1962

57 Wimpole Street where Paul lived with the Asher family

The original pressing was a song short

Wedding photo

 

The B842, Kintyre, Scotland

The Beatles first met Dylan during their second visit to the US in August 1964. He came to visit them  in their suite at the Delmonoco Hotel in New York, accompanied by his friend Al Aronowitz.  Eager to please their super-hip guests, The Beatles offered Dylan and champagne and amphetamines. Dylan said that he only drank cheap wine and suggested that they ‘smoke some grass’ Brian and the Beatles looked at each other apprehensively. “We’ve never smoked marijuana before,” Brian finally admitted. Dylan looked disbelievingly from face to face. “But what about your song?” he asked. The one about getting high?” The Beatles were stupefied. “Which song?” John managed to ask. Dylan said, “You know…” and then he sang, “and when I touch you I get high, I get high…” John flushed with embarrassment. “Those aren’t the words,” he admitted. “The words are, ‘I can’t hide, I can’t hide, I can’t hide…'”    From The Love You Make Peter Brown Let's not Twist again In fact,  according to George Harr

By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8063909 The best known interpretation of a Beatles song, performed in sensational fashion at Woodstock in 1969. On Sergeant Pepper With a Little Help From My Friends is a charming sing-along, ideally suited to Ringo's vocal range. Joe Cocker takes it to a different place.  Paying tribute to the late Sheffield singer Paul McCartney said:   I remember him and [producer] Denny Cordell coming round to the studio and Saville Row and playing me what they recorded. It was just mind-blowing. He totally turned the song into a soul anthem, and I was forever grateful to him for doing that."

There have several thousand covers of Beatles songs but a short list of those which work well. Twist my arm and I’d go for George Benson’s interpretation of Golden Slumbers   from his extraordinary The Other Side of Abbey Road (1971) Benson was a young jazz guitar prodigy at a time when the form appeared to have hit the buffers. To purists, his attempt to take on The Beatles was the first in long series of contemptible sellouts. His musical peers saw it differently, with Herbie Hancock, Freddie Hubbard, and Sonny Fortune all contributing to what was essentially a new take on the a tradition pioneered by the Ella Fitzgerald Songbooks. Golden Slumbers is a highlight that draws on the unusual genesis of the original. This was famously inspired by  Paul McCartney coming across his step-sister's sheet music for a piece called Cradle Music left on the piano at his father's house in Liverpool. Intrigued, but unable to read the 'black dots on the page' Paul invented a melody an