Think you're all caught up on facts about the Beatles? Think again! From a classic
song inspired by a breakfast dish to an impromptu acid trip with a "wicked
dentist," this is everything you didn't know about the legendary rock group.
Which version of The Beatles do you like better? The clean-cut, suit-clad pop idols
of the early to mid-'60s? Or is your preference the colorful, bearded hippies who revolutionized
all forms of rock? Here's a third option: The early Beatles were basically punks.
Before Brian Epstein discovered them, the Beatles played in dingy nightclubs, clad in leather
jackets and jeans, and were prone to smoking and swearing on stage. The band would even eat chicken
between songs. For a while, it seemed like the group was destined to play tiny clubs forever.
Then, Epstein came along. He felt the group had potential, but needed to be cleaned up.
"We didn't want to appear as a gang of idiots and Brian suggested that we just sort of wore suits."
Epstein had them ditch the leather and denim for freshly tailored suits, styled their hairdos into
something more fashionable, and even had them string their guitars correctly. Back then,
the Beatles had excess guitar wire dangling from the tuning knobs,
which looked messy and unprofessional. Epstein got them to stop doing that.
The band wasn't thrilled with Epstein's ideas initially,
but soon realized how helpful they could be. According to "The Beatles Anthology,"
John Lennon said this about the band's decision to implement Epstein's changes:
"It was a choice of making it or still eating chicken on stage."
It's well known that the Beatles smoked marijuana regularly. By the time they
were into the more experimental phase of their recording career,
one could practically catch a contact high from their music. They didn't start out that way,
however. In fact, their initiation can be traced back to one night and one man.
The night in question was August 28, 1964. According to Peter Brown and Steven Gaines'
"The Love You Make: An Insider's Story of The Beatles," that's when Bob Dylan showed up to
the Fab Four's hotel room and introduced them to the drug. The Beatles' manager,
Brian Epstein, reluctantly admitted that none of them had ever really smoked weed before,
which left Dylan a bit puzzled. According to Brown and Gaines' book, Dylan asked the band:
"But what about your song, the one about getting high?"
He was referring, of course, to "I Wanna Hold Your Hand." This prompted John Lennon
to tell Dylan that the lyric he had in mind was not actually "I get high," but rather,
"I can't hide." From there, Dylan suggested that some grass was in order. On Dylan's insistence,
the band smoked marijuana for the very first time, and by the end of the night,
everyone was in stitches. Paul McCartney even insisted that the band's road manager,
Mal Evans, follow him around with a pad and pencil to write down everything he said. Unfortunately,
Evans' notes have since been lost, so we'll never know what deep thoughts McCartney might have had.
Nearly every Beatles song not written by George Harrison or Ringo Starr gets
credited to "Lennon/McCartney." That's due to an early agreement between the two
musicians and Brian Epstein, the band's manager. Epstein and Lennon proposed
that any song Lennon or McCartney wrote would be credited to "Lennon/McCartney."
"I would say to people that, out of, I think it's about 300 songs
that John and I wrote together and we never had a dry session."
According to McCartney in a 2015 Esquire interview, he was initially fine with that,
but suggested the credit be reversed if he were the primary writer. Epstein and
Lennon supposedly agreed, but it never happened. Ultimately,
any song they wrote — including songs with one writer — got the same "Lennon/McCartney" credit.
Sometimes, McCartney seems fine with the arrangement. As he told Esquire:
"It's a good logo, like Rodgers and Hammerstein. Hammerstein and Rodgers doesn't work."
Other times, he's irked by being the second guy in the name, particularly on songs like
"Yesterday," which McCartney wrote entirely by himself. Furthermore, in the digital era,
McCartney's name often gets cut from public view. He explained to Esquire:
"What starts to happen is, 'A song by John Lennon and-'. You know how
on your iPad there's never enough room? So it's kind of important who comes first."
McCartney also told Esquire he tried to get his alternating-credits idea going after the
band broke up. Yoko allegedly said yes but then backtracked for unexplained reasons. Decades
later, we're not likely to see McCartney/Lennon on anything official anytime soon.
During a 1964 tour of the United States, the Beatles showed up to play at the Gator Bowl
in Jacksonville, Florida, and were greeted with an unwelcome circumstance. The show that
night was supposed to be segregated, meaning Black concertgoers on one side of the arena,
and white attendees on the other. Needless to say, having a segregated audience simply
did not fly with the band. According to the BBC, John Lennon proclaimed:
"We never play to segregated audiences and
we aren't going to start now. I'd sooner lose our appearance money."
"We don't like it if there's any segregation or anything because it just seems mad to me."
As it turned out, the Beatles did play that night, but only after the audience was allowed to freely
mingle. The experience apparently prompted them to rework their live performance contracts to
specifically state that they would not play for segregated crowds. In a 2018 interview with GQ,
McCartney described how years later, the civil rights movement in America
inspired him to write one of the band's most iconic songs. He told the outlet:
"Blackbird, I was sitting around with my acoustic guitar,
and I'd heard about the civil rights troubles that were happening in the '60s, in Alabama,
Mississippi, Little Rock in particular. [...] It's hopefully a good message."
One of the most beloved Beatles
songs of all time, "Yesterday," is a simple yet poignant lament for lost love and memories of a
better time. But it started life with perhaps the goofiest lyrics the band ever penned.
According to Paul McCartney, the song's melody first appeared to him in a dream. He woke up,
hit the right chords on a nearby piano, and had the building blocks for an all-time classic. But
to ensure he didn't forget the song when has fully awake, McCartney wrote some placeholder lyrics.
Calling the song "Scrambled Eggs," McCartney wrote the following Dylan-esque couplet:
"Scrambled eggs / Oh my baby, how I love your legs."
McCartney didn't write any egg-related words after
that because he caught the giggles and couldn't continue. That said,
"Scrambled Eggs" soon became "Yesterday," and the rest is music history. But decades later,
McCartney finally got around to finishing his first-draft poem. In 2013, he appeared on "Late
Night With Jimmy Fallon," and the two sang a duet of the completed version of "Scrambled Eggs."
The Beatles are closely associated with LSD, but it wasn't a fellow rock star who introduced
the drug to the band. In fact, the first time the band did LSD it was because of a dentist.
As the band recounted in "The Beatles Anthology," in 1965 John Lennon,
George Harrison, and both of their girlfriends were having dinner with a friend that Harrison
called a "wicked dentist." Without their knowledge or consent, the dentist slipped
LSD into their coffee. Harrison felt the dentist had sexual adventures in mind and
wanted them all in the right mood for an orgy. But they had places to go and skipped out.
Later, they started feeling the drug's effects. As Harrison recalled in "The Beatles Anthology":
"It was something like a very concentrated version of the best feeling I'd ever had in my
whole life. It was fantastic. I felt in love, not with anything or anybody in particular,
but with everything. Everything was perfect, in a perfect light."
Later, on the drive home, Lennon recalled freaking out over a red light he thought was a fire,
while Harrison remembered "concentrating" on driving only 18 miles per hour. Once home,
Lennon decided that Harrison's home was a submarine, and he was
piloting it. No word on whether the submarine was yellow, but probably.
The ever-popular "Get Back" is mostly a fun song about hippies and the counterculture.
But during the writing phase, the song was about something very different.
It was a scathing satire of xenophobia. Informally dubbed "No Pakistanis" by fans,
the original lyrics for "Get Back" featured lines like this:
"Who is that Black man? Don't dig no Pakistanis taking all the people's jobs."
According to Salon, the song was meant to satirize anti-immigration sentiments. Taken at face value,
it does seem like a sincere anti-immigrant song, so it's probably best that the group
never completed or released this version. In a 1986 interview with Rolling Stone,
McCartney made it clear that the song was a satire. He told the outlet:
"If there was any group that was not racist,
it was the Beatles. I mean, all our favorite people were always Black."
During the Beatles' later years, John Lennon was extremely fond of opaque lyrics that were
open to all manner of interpretation. Other than "I Am the Walrus," there is probably
no better example of this than "Happiness Is a Warm Gun," from 1968's "The Beatles," also
known as "The White Album." Apparently, many fans have assumed the song to be about drugs,
particularly heroin. However, Lennon said that the tune's inspiration was
much more straightforward: It came from a magazine for gun enthusiasts.
According to "A Hard Day's Write: The Stories Behind Every Beatles Song,"
producer George Martin had brought the magazine to the studio during
the recording of "The White Album." On the cover of the magazine was the phrase,
"Happiness Is a Warm Gun in Your Hand." According to the book, Lennon remarked,
"I thought, what a fantastic thing to say! A warm gun means you've just shot something."
In 1968, the Beatles took an odd and highly publicized vacation to
Rishikesh, India to study transcendental meditation under Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
"I was really impressed with the Maharishi
and I was impressed because he was laughing all the time."
The band members stayed for varying lengths of time. Ringo Starr left after a week and a half,
Paul McCartney took off not long after,
and John Lennon and George Harrison stuck it out for about two months.
But while staying in India, all the Beatles were struck by inspiration,
penning tunes that would appear on "The White Album" and "Abbey Road." Some of the songs
written during their India trip included: "Revolution," "Rocky Raccoon," "Blackbird,"
"Back in the U.S.S.R.," and "Dear Prudence," which was inspired by Mia Farrow's sister, who
was also present at the retreat. Even Ringo got into the act, writing the country-flavored "Don't
Pass Me By." The song was Ringo's first solo composition to make its way onto a Beatles album.
It's not hyperbole to say that the Beatles are among the most influential musicians
of the 20th century. Their songwriting, lyricism, and musicianship has been the
subject of endless critical analysis, and has been emulated by countless artists.
So it's kind of surprising that none of them could read or write music.
This was disclosed by John Lennon in his 1980 interview with Playboy,
when he was asked to give his opinion about Ringo Starr's musicianship. Lennon praised
the musical contributions of Starr, calling him a "damn good drummer," before adding that none
of the band members were technical geniuses on their instruments. Lennon told the outlet:
"None of us are technical musicians. None of us could read music. None of us can write it. But
as pure musicians, as inspired humans to make the noise, [Paul and Ringo] are as good as anybody."
The Beatles famously stopped
touring at the height of their popularity in 1966, thus allowing them to focus solely on writing
and recording. There was, however, still a demand for them to appear on television to promote those
recordings — something no one in the band wanted to do. Speaking with The New York Times in 2015,
Ringo Starr described the solution to this problem. He told the newspaper:
"We did come to the solid thought, well, we can't be everywhere,
so we made these little movies and sent them out."
These "little movies" were then known as promotional films, but today, they would be
recognized as music videos — an art form that the Beatles helped pioneer. Many of their early clips,
such as the shorts for "Help!" and "I Feel Fine," were exceedingly simple. Later, though,
the Beatles' promo films would come to match the artistry of their music. In particular,
the clips for "Penny Lane" and "Strawberry Fields Forever" were wildly innovative for
their time. After a frenetic editing period of just under two weeks, both clips were shown on
the iconic British program "Top of the Pops" on February 15, 1967. Hence, the Beatles showcased
the music video form well over a decade before MTV launched it into the popular consciousness.
"I want my MTV."
The Fab Four may generally be considered a self-contained unit,
but this was not necessarily the case. Sure, they occasionally employed studio musicians
but there were a couple of individuals who made such huge contributions to the band
that they might have been considered an actual member. First and foremost was producer George
Martin. As the Beatles' producer, Martin's contributions went beyond indulging the
band's more unconventional ideas through wild studio experimentation. Martin actually played
piano and organ on a number of recordings, arranged the orchestral elements of tunes such
as "Yesterday," and arranged vocal harmonies on songs like "Here, There, and Everywhere."
Any discussion about a so-called "fifth Beatle," though, wouldn't be
complete without mentioning American singer, songwriter, and keyboardist Billy Preston,
who played an integral role in the recording of the Beatles' final released album, "Let It Be."
Preston had been an acquaintance of the band since their Hamburg days, and was invited to
sit in during the album's recording by George Harrison. According to the CBC,
Preston was described by his former manager Joyce Moore as the "glue and glitter" that
held the band together during this period. For his contribution, Billy Preston became
the only outside musician to ever receive credit on the liner notes of a Beatles album.
"You're in the group."
When "Eleanor Rigby" appeared on the Beatles' 1966 album "Revolver," the heartbreaking tune
marked the band's starkest departure yet from their usual repertoire of poppy love songs. The
tale of a lonely old woman who dies alone and is "buried along with her name," is probably
among the saddest pieces of popular music ever written. It is also a very curious outlier among
the band's discography, in that not a single Beatle actually played an instrument on it.
For the track, producer George Martin enlisted two quartets of string musicians, and took the
lead in arranging the parts they would play. And it's no accident that the foreboding,
eerie instrumentation is slightly reminiscent of the great composer Bernard Herrmann,
either. Martin has said that he was influenced by Herrmann's score for
the 1966 film adaptation of Ray Bradbury's science-fiction novel, "Fahrenheit 451."
George Harrison and John Lennon sang backup on the tune, thus complementing Paul McCartney's
mournful lead vocal. Meanwhile, Ringo Starr sat the recording out completely. Perhaps to make up
for this, "Eleanor Rigby" was released as a double A-side single backed by a song with a Starr lead
vocal — "Yellow Submarine." The group would make a few more songs in the coming years that saw them
only contribute vocals, including "Good Night," "She's Leaving Home," and "The Inner Light."
"Eleanor Rigby" and the other songs weren't the only tunes missing any instrumental contribution
from a member of the Beatles. John Lennon was known to sit out songs on a fairly regular basis,
and Paul McCartney played drums on a few tunes in Ringo Starr's absence, including "Back in the
U.S.S.R." and "The Ballad of John and Yoko." But in the band's entire catalog, there was only one
solitary tune that McCartney refused to play on: "She Said, She Said," from the "Revolver" album.
According to the Paul McCartney biography "Many Years From Now," the song has its origins in a
1965 house party. Also present at the party was actor Peter Fonda,
who was attempting to comfort an LSD-tripping George Harrison. When
Harrison remarked that he felt like he was dying, Fonda told him not to worry, saying,
"I know what it's like to be dead."
The remark annoyed John Lennon, but it evidently stuck with him,
as he eventually used it as a key lyric in "She Said, She Said."
The relationship between Paul McCartney and John Lennon was famously contentious,
but as it turns out, the two did have a brief reunion of sorts after the Beatles broke up.
"I haven't worked with Paul because we had a more difficult time but now we're pretty close."
This happened during Lennon's infamous "Lost Weekend," during which he just sort of hung out in
New York City and LA with his assistant, May Pang, for about a year and a half. He spent much of this
time drinking, doing drugs, carousing with Harry Nilsson, and occasionally recording some music.
One night in 1974, Lennon happened to run into his old bandmate at a studio in Burbank. Nilsson
was also there that night, as well as a guy named Stevie Wonder. The resulting sessions
should have been unbelievably epic. However, they ended up being the exact opposite of
that — perhaps as a result of all the cocaine that was flying around the studio. The chaotic,
messy, and downright boring bootleg recording has come to be known as "A
Toot and a Snore in '74" — a reference to the coke being used and the boredom in the studio.