Beatles FAQ

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

There is no published photo of the Queen with The Beatles, only with her mother and sister (seen here) T he shortest Beatles song   is only 23 seconds long and was unlisted on its original vinyl release. 

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)

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)