Beatles FAQ

Releasing a double album was considered commercially foolhardy in 1968. LPs, as they were then called, were much more expensive than they are today. A double album seemed to price out the teenagers, still considered The Beatles main market. There were other seemingly quixotic features. Officially called The Beatles it was immediately dubbed The White Album because of its distinctive Richard Hamilton designed cover. This went down a storm with art students but marketing executives were less impressed. They reasonably concluded that there were not enough art students to create the sales need for a gold record. 'What has happened to the Yeah-Yeahs? Nor did  The White Album     attempt to reach out to those not yet bitten by the Beatle bug. There were no singles to entice the casual record buyer. All the material was new to most listeners. Even trend-setting disc jockeys were wrong-footed by the sheer scale of the musical experimentation.  And the number of tracks - an unheard of twen

'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

When I taught myself piano I liked to see how far I could go, and this started life almost as a piece you’d learn as a piano lesson. It’s quite hard for me to play, it’s a two-handed thing, like a little set piece .... I wrote it as that, something a bit more complex for me to play’    Paul McCartne y Many Years From Now, Barry Miles Paul dabbled with the piano since early childhood when he listened to his father play in the family living room. As with every other instrument, he did not use sheet music but learned by exploration  and experimentation. While he lodged with the Asher family,  (1964/66) he began devising his own exercises. One of these would end up on The Beatles - better known as the White Album Words The love object of Martha My Dear is in the photo Then while I was blocking out words – you just mouth out sounds and some things come – I found the words ‘Martha my dear’. Many assumed that 'Martha' was Jane Asher. Others suspected it was one of the other glamorous

 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 Annie Spratt on Unsplash   This ghastly miscalculation ... represents by far {McCartney's} worst lapse of taste under the auspices of The Beatles.    Ian MacDonald The Revolution in the Head Maxwell’s Silver Hammer belongs to a very niche musical tradition: the cheerful murder sing-along. There is also speculation that the lyric was influenced by the murder of Joe Orton, who spent an evening with McCartney some months before his death.  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? 

Even at the height of his fame, Paul McCartney enjoyed writing songs for other artists, especially female singers. Often, he did this unbidden, offering Cilla Black Step Inside Love for her first TV show, for example. He was also the most musically adventurous of The Beatles - and eclectic in his taste.  He first heard Those Were the Days in The Blue Angel club in London. The singer was Gene Raskin, a New York-based folk singer with Russian roots. McCartney liked the song and offered to produce a recording by Mary Hopkins, a young Welsh folk singer recently signed by the new Apple label.  Copyright McCartney assumed that  Those Were the Days  had been written by Raskin. In fact, the copyright situation was complex and would become the subject of a legal battle.  The tune is that of the  Russian romance song "Dorogoi dlinnoyu" [ ru ]("Дорогой длинною" Tr: "By the long road").  This may be considered tradtional, though it is sometimes credited to Boris Fom

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'

We were first introduced in about 1974 by Elizabeth Taylor.  We were in LA, and one night she had a party to which both John and I had been invited.   David Bowie, 1999 In 1974 David Bowie went to New York to record his  'white soul' album  Young Americans .  In interviews, he gave the impression that his first meeting with Lennon was a chance encounter. Other accounts suggest that he in fact made several attempts to establish contact. What is clear that Bowie had always been an admirer of The Beatles. He had even tried to change label, from Decca to Apple, in 1968. According to May Pang, who was living with Lennon during his estrangement from Yoko, the two immediately men got on well. Other witnesses have reported that they drew caricatures of each other and drank cognac (hopefully in that order). Encouraged by this meeting,  and keen to get a Beatle on his new album - Bowie phoned Lennon to tell him that  he was recording a version of Across the Universe .  Lennon agreed