Beatles FAQ

  None of The Beatles had a background in classical music. 

Always intensely competitive, The Beatles monitored the output of their rivals closely. None came close to matching their commercial success. Why Dylan loomed large For The Beatles record sales this was not the only criteria that mattered. Above all, they wanted to impress their peers: especially those young people in Liverpool and London who were also avid readers of the music press, buyers of imported records and habitues of the coolest clubs.   Of their direct competitors, Bob Dylan loomed largest. Lennon later conceded that their British rivals never felt like too much of a threat. They liked The  Stones, The Who and the Kinks and would sometimes borrow their innovations - the guitar sound on You Really Got Me for, for example. But they never doubted that they would lose their top spot in the NME poll. Dylan was different. For a start, he was American and this automatically gave his status an uplift. They believed him to be authentic In some respects he represented mu...

The first meeting of The Beatles and Bob Dylan was in a room at the Delmonico Hotel in New York on Friday 28 August 1964.

John Lennon was very short-sighted but in his teens refused to wear spectacles in public.

 John Lennon was later embarrassed about the source of one of his contributions to the Abbey Road medley. It was based on a newspaper story he read early in 1967.

 

On 29 September, I967, John Lennon worked with George Martin and the Abbey Road sound engineers on a potential new Beatles single.

In December 1960 The Beatles returned to Liverpool from Hamburg, where they had built a reputation as a live act.  This earned them a prestigious new date for 27 December 1960 as the headliners at the Litherland Town Hall Ballroom. This was arranged by the influential local DJ, Bob Wooler — months later the victim of an infamous assault by John Lennon. Wooler announced them on stage in typically hyperbolic fashion: Direct from Hamburg — the sensational BEATLES The performers on stage were dressed in black leathers and drainpipe trousers. They had American guitars and amps and seemed from another more exotic world. Some in the crowd were amazed that these strange Germans spoke to the audience in fluent Scouse speakers, . To a roar from the packed hall, Paul launched into Little Richard's Long Tall Sally. 

British album releases generally did not include singles

George in the room above the Bambi Kino cinema George Harrison was seventeen when he first arrived in Hamburg in August 1960. Though legal the age limit for performers was eighteen  club owner Bruno Koschmider was initially unconcerned.  It was when The Beatles jumped ship to work at the bigger Top Ten that Koschmider found his conscience stirred. He then informed the police of his shocking discovery. Those devious Englishmen had an underage performer in their ranks . pen & ink sketch of Hamburg club owner Bruno Koschmider (1926-2000) The police duly deported Harrison on November 21. The guitarist spent his last night teaching John Lennon his parts before reluctantly packing a " crappy suitcase and things in boxes, paper bags with my clothes in, and a guitar." Homeward bound The logistics of getting home proved challenging, as George related in Anthology: Astrid and Stuart dropped me at Hamburg station. It was a long journey on my own on the train to the Hook of Holla...