50 essential Beatles facts
Fifty years ago today, four Scousers with big hair and guitars made America their own.
The Beatles' appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show marked the beginning of John, Paul, George and Ringo's elevation to the top table of 20th century cultural icons, and was the spark that ignited a musical revolution that's still rolling on.
With nothing more that a few short minutes of music, they changed everything. All across the US, girls went weak at the knees, boys started growing their hair and the 60s started to swing in earnest.
So, in celebration of the moment that Liverpool's greatest export reached the shores of the USA, we present 50 essential nuggets of Beatles trivia...
50 Essential Beatles Facts
The Beatles' appearance on Ed Sullivan was seen by over 70 million Americans.
According to Sullivan's personal legend, he looked into booking The Beatles after flying into Heathrow Airport in 1963 to find thousands of Beatlemaniacs waiting for the band to return from a tour of Sweden. Upon asking who the fans were waiting for, Sullivan heard about The Beatles phenomenon for the first time.
50 essential Beatles facts
Please Please Me, the song that prompted George Martin to utter the legendary statement: “Congratulations, gentlemen. You’ve just made your first number one,” was a watershed moment for The Beatles.
Not only did it prompt Epstein and music publisher Dick James to form Northern Songs, the Beatles own publishing company, but thanks to hugely positive reviews and lots of radio support, they were called in from their tour with Helen Shapiro to record their debut album.
50 essential Beatles facts
Paul McCartney’s journey to permanent bass player – essentially taking over from original bassist Stuart Suttcliffe once he’d left the band in Hamburg – is well known.
But less often reported is Chas Newby’s role in Beatle history. A friend of original Beatles drummer Pete Best, he played four gigs as The Beatles’ bass player in 1960, and John Lennon even asked him to return with them to Hamburg for their second trip. Newby chose to return to university, and later became a maths teacher.
50 essential Beatles facts
The Beatles’ second album, With The Beatles, was released on November 22 1963 – the same day JFK was shot. On the day, The Beatles played two shows at The Globe in Stockton On Tees, supported by The Vernon Girls, The Kestrals, Peter Jay And The Jaywalkers, The Brook Brothers and The Rhythm And Blues Quartet.
50 essential Beatles facts
I Wanna Be Your Man, which was sung by Ringo on With The Beatles, was also gifted to The Rolling Stones after Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham invited Lennon and McCartney to offer the group some songs. Lennon’s guitar sound on The Beatle’s version came courtesy of the vibrato setting on his Vox AC30.
50 essential Beatles facts
John Lennon’s Rickenbacker 325 (seen here backstage at Sheffield City Hall in November ’63) originally had a Kauffman Vibrola tailpiece and natural finish. That wouldn’t do for John thought, who fitted it with a Bigsby, changed the control knobs and had it refinished in jet black by Jim Burns (of Burns guitars) in 1963.
50 essential Beatles facts
George was the first of The Beatles to discover Bob Dylan, picking up the Freewheeling LP in Paris in January ’64. When the band met the folk superstar in the Hotel Delmonico on 28 August 1964, Dylan famously introduced them to marijuana, resulting in Paul McCartney becoming convinced he’d figured out the meaning of life: “there are seven levels.”
50 essential Beatles facts
They couldn’t have spotted them amongst the thousands of screaming teenagers, but when The Beatles played Shea Stadium in Augut 1965, there were two future Beatle-wives in the crowd: Linda Eastmen, who married Paul McCartney in 1969, and Barbara Bach, who tied the knot with Ringo in 1981.
50 essential Beatles facts
Yanni “Magic Alex” Alexis Mardas, a TV repairman who found himself in the same psychedelic circles as The Beatles in the late ‘60s, was eventually employed by Apple to establish an electronics division. Among his proposed inventions were an x-ray camera, force fields and an artificial sun. He managed to build precisely none of these things.
50 essential Beatles facts
Among the interesting additions to I Want You (She’s So Heavy) are the use of heavy tape hiss towards the end, and John’s use of a Moog synth that George has bought back from California in late ’68. The Band’s Robbie Robertson called it “noisy shit” in a Rolling Stone interview in 1969.
50 essential Beatles facts
The Ballad Of John And Yoko, released as a single in 1969, was recorded entirely by Lennon and McCartney with no input from the other Beatles. Lennon contributed lead and acoustic guitar and vocals, while McCartney played bass, drums, pianos and maracas, as well as supplying backing vocals. Ringo was away filming The Magic Christian with Peter Sellers at the time, while George was on holiday.
50 essential Beatles facts
George’s Something (which Frank Sinatra claimed was “the greatest love song of the last 50 years,”) is the second most covered Beatles song after Yesterday. Harrison claimed it was inspired by Ray Charles (as opposed to his wife, Patti Boyd) and it originally included the line “attracts me like a cauliflower,” suggested by John when George couldn’t find the right lyric.
50 essential Beatles facts
Paul McCartney originally wanted Abbey Road to be called Everest, after the brand of cigarettes that studio engineer Geoff Emerick smoked. Macca even put the idea of flying to Mount Everest for a photo shoot to the rest of The Beatles, who in the end decided that stepping outside the studio and crossing the road was about all they could muster.