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It was 60 years this week when the Fab Four released their first album, Please Please Me, kickstarting Beatlemania.
The Liverpudlian Mop Top legends would become a chart phenomenon – selling more than 600million albums.
Now James Moore reveals some top pop trivia about each of the band’s classic studio albums recorded between 1963 and 1970, and Buzz.ie has given each album our rating out of ten
1. REVOLVER (1966), 10 out of 10
Revolver – named after how an LP revolves - was nearly called Abracadabra and its cover, drawn by pal Klaus Voorman, almost featured Paul sitting on a toilet.
Heralding the band’s psychedelic phase, She Said She Said had links to the drug LSD, while Got To Get You Into My Life was an ode to cannabis...
Source: buzz.ie
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The Beatles had already won over music fans when they released their debut album, Please Please Me. The title song was the first of several Fab Four hits that didn’t surprisingly didn’t hit No. 1. When the album hit shelves in England on March 22, 1963, it started an incredible run of success. Let’s look at the five best Please Please Me songs, tunes that helped launch The Beatles’ legendary career.
Once Please Please Me made it on the charts in England, it locked down the top spot for an incredible 30 weeks, per the Official Charts Company. The debut album lasted for 70 weeks on the charts. Sgt. Pepper and Abbey Road are the only Beatles albums with longer tenures.
Perhaps most impressively, Please Please Me was the first of eight straight Beatles studio albums to reach No. 1. Magical Mystery Tour broke the streak in 1968. For a debut to leave such an impact underscores The Beatles’ mastery of their craft and music fans’ desire for a new sound in the early 1960s.
Source: Jason Rossi/cheatsheet.com
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The Beatles had already won over music fans when they released their debut album, Please Please Me. The title song was the first of several Fab Four hits that didn’t surprisingly didn’t hit No. 1. When the album hit shelves in England on March 22, 1963, it started an incredible run of success. Let’s look at the five best Please Please Me songs, tunes that helped launch The Beatles’ legendary career.
Once Please Please Me made it on the charts in England, it locked down the top spot for an incredible 30 weeks, per the Official Charts Company. The debut album lasted for 70 weeks on the charts. Sgt. Pepper and Abbey Road are the only Beatles albums with longer tenures.
Perhaps most impressively, Please Please Me was the first of eight straight Beatles studio albums to reach No. 1. Magical Mystery Tour broke the streak in 1968. For a debut to leave such an impact underscores The Beatles’ mastery of their craft and music fans’ desire for a new sound in the early 1960s.
Source: Jason Rossi/cheatsheet.com
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It's no surprise that Wings' synthy hit single "With a Little Luck" has a yacht-rock vibe or that Paul McCartney's group feels suddenly airy and wide open.
After all, Wings was recording on a boat – and guitarist Jimmy McCulloch was exiting the lineup. Drummer Joe English would soon follow him out, leaving Wings to complete 1978's London Town with the same core trio that fashioned their signature Band on the Run album.
This time, however, Wings had a far different, more stripped-down musical approach. "It just comes in phases," McCartney said in a 1978 promo interview with Capitol Records. "At one moment, you're listening to some records that are really produced and you think, 'Yeah, I want to do that kind of thing.' At another moment, you're listening to something that's very simple and you think, 'I really like very simple music.'"
Source: ultimateclassicrock.com
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Ringo Starr took over The Beatles’ drum seat in 1962, but that wasn’t the only elite group he joined in his career. The English royal family knighted Ringo on March 20, 2018, after he had earned several artistic honors in his career. The drummer who complained about being ignored while making Rubber Soul couldn’t be overlooked when Prince William bestowed the title Sir Richard Starkey on him. Still, the royal family was a little slow to honor Ringo for his life’s work.
The Beatles received MBE honors from Queen Elizabeth II during the height of Beatlemania in 1965. John Lennon later returned his, and George Harrison rejected the royal family’s offer to be knighted.
Paul McCartney was one of few musicians to be knighted by the queen, in 1997. More than 20 years later, Prince William made Ringo a knight in a ceremony at Buckingham Palace on March 20, 2018.
Like his bandmate, the royal family honored Ringo for his contributions to music and the arts. Receiving the honor delighted the drummer. George and John didn’t care about knighthood, but Ringo was ecstatic.
Source: Jason Rossi/cheatsheet.com
Ringo Starr rarely hesitates to call it like he sees it, even if he’s the target. Yusuf / Cat Stevens cut his drumming from an album, and his reaction to the slight was pure class. So when Ringo complimented Brian Wilson’s work ethic, it was massive praise from The Beatles drummer to the Beach Boys frontman.
Ringo’s excessive drinking was such a problem in the mid-1980s that he played a concert with the Beach Boys and has no memory of it. Thankfully for him and music fans, he committed to a healthier lifestyle and continued making music. The drummer also inspired another legendary musician to get sober.
He was in a much better place in the early 1990s. In 1992, Ringo released his first solo album since 1981, Time Takes Time, with the help of several collaborators. Brian Wilson was one of them.
The Beach Boys’ star played on the song “Weight of the World” from that album, and he teamed up with Ringo again in 1998 on the Vertical Man album. In his book Postcards From the Boys, the drummer said watching Wilson work was an incredible experience:
Source: Jason Rossi/cheatsheet.com
On Dec. 8, 1980, John Lennon was assassinated outside his apartment building in New York City. The news shocked the world, and many musicians paid tribute to the former Beatle shortly after his death. For the remaining Beatles members, Ringo Starr, George Harrison, and Paul McCartney, it took some time for them to process John Lennon’s death fully. However, they each mourned their former bandmate and friend in the way they knew best: music.
George Harrison released “All Those Years Ago” as a single in 1981 for his album Somewhere in England. Initially, he wrote the song for Ringo Starr. However, Starr didn’t like the lyrics and felt the track was out of his range. Harrison took the song back and decided to change the lyrics after Lennon’s death.
The song is one of the few times the three remaining Beatles played a song together. Starr played the drums, while Paul McCartney and his wife, Linda, provided backing vocals. The song was a hit, peaking at No. 2 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. In a 1987 interview with Entertainment Tonight, Harrison recalled changing the lyrics after Lennon’s death and how singing it was tough.
Source: Ross Tanenbaum/cheatsheet.com
Paul McCartney said he couldn’t quite suppress his “weakness for naughtiness” when he wrote the ending of The Beatles‘ “Lovely Rita.” There was always an erotic aspect behind Paul’s lyrics.
In his book The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, Paul wrote that nobody liked parking attendants or meter maids, as they were known in the 1960s. So, Paul thought it would be amusing to write a song about someone in love with one.
Paul based The Beatles’ “Lovely Rita” on a particular meter maid he saw in Portland Place. He recalls her looking slightly military-looking. It’s terrible, but Paul thinks those meter maids were never good-looking. “You never heard anybody say, ‘God, that’s one stunning parking attendant,'” he wrote.
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
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Paul McCartney said he often does a “disappearing trick” when writing songs. He likes to pretend to be other artists when he doesn’t want to write a Paul McCartney song. Suddenly, there’s no pressure.
In his book The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, Paul wrote that he often does a “bit of a disappearing trick” when writing a song. For example, he imagines it having been recorded by another artist. In the case of The Beatles’ “The Long and Winding Road,” Paul thought of Ray Charles.
Sometimes, Paul doesn’t feel like writing songs as Paul McCartney. He doesn’t want it to be a Paul McCartney song. So he imagines he’s another person writing a tune. “This is a strategy for keeping things fresh,” Paul wrote.
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
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There are many things to watch if you love The Beatles, but what if you miss Beatlemania? The phenomenon started in 1963 when the band’s success started to mount in the U.K. and Europe. Then, “I Want to Hold Your Hand” became The Beatles’ first No. 1 single in the U.S., and their popularity worldwide skyrocketed.
Suddenly, they couldn’t go anywhere without having crowds of girls storm after them trying to pull locks of hair from their heads. Here’s what to watch if you miss the days when massive crowds showed their often rambunctious love and support for the band—even if that meant trying to climb the walls of Buckingham Palace.
The Beatles Anthology is always a great place to start for all Beatles-related things, including Beatlemania. The eight-part documentary was made by The Beatles and told by The Beatles. They created the massive project, including three double disc CDs and a book, because they wanted to tell their story in their own words.
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
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George Harrison’s contributions to The Beatles were limited to his guitar playing, but when he could shine, he created many of the band’s most unique sounds and experimental tracks. One of Harrison’s most famous Beatles songs was based on a “30 or 40 minutes” piece by Ravi Shankar and had to be condensed dramatically.
During the 1960s, Harrison developed a passion for Indian classical music. He learned how to play the sitar and first incorporated it in a Beatles song on “Norwegian Wood” from 1965’s Rubber Soul.
In a 1992 interview with Billboard, Harrison said he was first exposed to the sitar while filming a scene for the movie Help!. There were Indian musicians in the background of a scene, and the singer-songwriter was captivated by the sound. Later, he heard the name Ravi Shankar and wanted to learn more about the famous sitarist.
Source: Ross Tanenbaum/cheatsheet.com
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The Beatles were excellent at deciding when a single should be released as an A-side vs. a B-side. Sometimes it was hard to tell if a song was an A-side before it was played. John Lennon wrote one song for The Beatles that he felt was “lousy,” but the band’s version of it was good enough to make it an A-side single. “I Feel Fine” was written by John Lennon and released in 1964 by The Beatles. The track was considered revolutionary as it’s one of the earliest rock songs to include amplifier feedback in the recording. While The Beatles were innovators in discovering new recording techniques, this happened accidentally. In Barry Miles’ Many Years From Now, Paul McCartney admitted that the feedback happened after Lennon leaned his guitar against an amp.
Source: Ross Tanenbaum/cheatsheet.com
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Paul McCartney is considered one of the greatest musicians of all time due to his immense contribution to the music industry and his influence on popular culture. He came to world prominence as a member of The Beatles throughout the band’s active career from 1960 to 1970. Along with John Lennon, he co-wrote many of the band’s most celebrated songs for the band, such as Hey Jude, Yesterday, and Let It Be.
After The Beatles disbanded, Paul McCartney continued his successful music career as a solo artist. He released his first solo album, McCartney, in 1970, which featured him playing all the instruments himself. The album was a commercial success and included the hit single Maybe I’m Amazed. Throughout his solo career, McCartney continued to explore a wide range of genres, from rock and pop to classical and electronic music. He has released over twenty solo albums, including the critically acclaimed Flaming Pie and Chaos and Creation in the Backyard.
Source: Irfan Senturk/metalcastle.net
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By 1966, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr had grown tired of touring. The Beatles had dealt with several brushes with disaster, and noise from the crowd made it practically impossible to hear the music they were playing. Starr said that going on tour was wrecking the band’s ability to play music. Considering the music they put out after they stopped touring, he was right.
After several years of touring, it became too much for The Beatles. They had faced natural disasters, political unrest, and unruly fans. It was a relief for them when they decided to stop touring in 1966.
“There was a certain amount of relief after that Candlestick Park concert,” Harrison told Rolling Stone in 1987. “Before one of the last numbers, we actually set up this camera — I think it had a fisheye, a very wide-angle lens. We set it up on the amplifier, and Ringo came off the drums, and we stood with our backs to the audience and posed for a photograph, because we knew that was the last show.”
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
There are many things to watch if you love singer-songwriter and musician George Harrison. Here’s a list of things to put in your queue—everything from the former Beatle’s favorite films to documentaries about his life. If you’re a George Harrison fan, bets are you’re also a Beatles fan. So, if you haven’t seen all of The Beatles’ films, put those at the top of your queue. There’s A Hard Day’s Night, Help!, Magical Mystery Tour, Yellow Submarine, and Let It Be. In A Hard Day’s Night, George has his “grotty” scene, which he didn’t want to do. Later, in Let It Be, we see his very-real tense fights with Paul McCartney. The Beatles Anthology was a massive project the remaining Beatles undertook in the mid-1990s. It comprises an eight-part television documentary, a three-volume set of double albums, and a book. Although it was The Beatles’ first chance at telling their story, George initially wanted no part in it. He claimed the documentary makers were trying to sensationalize some rougher bits of the band’s history. If they discussed rumors or certain stories, fans would believe them. Regardless, George partook in the project and performed wit details
It’s symbolic that The Beatles‘ final No. 1 single is “The Long and Winding Road.” The Fab Four had certainly traveled down a long and winding road to get to where they were when they recorded the tune.
Paul McCartney based ‘The Long and Winding Road’ on the road leading to town from his Scottish farm
In his book, The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, Paul McCartney wrote that from the bedroom window of his farmhouse in Kintyre, Scotland, he could see a road that twisted away into the distance toward the main road. It was the road to town, Campbeltown.
Paul bought High Park Farm in 1966. It was a very remote retreat, and it was almost in ruin when he bought it. That is until his first wife, Linda, fixed it up and turned it into a private haven for them and their growing family in the late 1960s.
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com
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The Beatles remain a popular band decades after they broke up. A few musicians hated the band, but millions of people loved them. They sent several singles and albums to the top of the Billboard charts throughout the 1960s, but three Beatles records peaked at No. 2 in the United States because other Beatles albums kept them from getting to No. 1.
The Fab Four released a steady stream of albums from 1963 to 1970. They existed for a short time but achieved incredible success as 14 of their studio albums raced to the top of the Billboard 200 albums chart. Still, the first Beatles album to debut at No. 1 was the first anthology compilation released in 1995.
Let’s look more closely at The Beatles albums that peaked at No. 2 because other Beatles albums held the top spot.
Note: We included studio albums only, not greatest hits packages, compilations, or reissues.
Source: Jason Rossi/cheatsheet.com
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Whether you were a fan or not, it is difficult to deny the impact the Beatles made on the last 60 years of music, and there would be no Fab Four without the group's founder, John Lennon. His name has been lifted among the lauded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time; his music has sold millions of copies well before streams ever existed. His legend loomed so large that there were portions of his life when John couldn't walk the street without being swarmed by a mob of screaming fans.
In less than 40 years of life, he claimed to be "more popular than Jesus" and added the term "bed-in" into the cultural zeitgeist—all before being murdered under the archway of his apartment building in New York City; his wife, Yoko Ono, by his side.
On the surface, his life story appeared to be a meteoric rise to the top of stardom worthy of envy or emulation. Underneath it all, however, John was a far more complex character than the sleek suits and mop-topped hairstyles of the early '60s portrayed. Many know who John Lennon is, but who was John Lennon, really?
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Ringo Starr saw his confidence grow as during his time in The Beatles. He started as a nervous newcomer but then grew into his role in the band. Ringo fully embraced boasting about his skill during the Abbey Road sessions, but he never wanted to sit at the mixing console working on Beatles albums for the most Ringo of reasons.
Being the last to join The Beatles and the only one who didn’t write songs had its perks for Ringo. Being the fourth Beatle was a positive since he faced less pressure than John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison.
That extended to making the records. As the primary songwriters, John, Paul, and George spent plenty of time at the mixing desk ensuring their songs on The Beatles’ albums sounded as close to what they heard in their heads as possible, especially when they became a studio band. That job wasn’t for Ringo, as he explained in his book Postcards From the Boys.
Source: Jason Rossi/cheatsheet.com
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There are some who simply assume that George Harrison’s love for Indian music dates from around the time he and the other Beatles went to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s lecture in London, on August 24, 1967. In fact, George’s interest was piqued in April 1965 when The Beatles were filming Help! in April 1965.
“We were waiting to shoot the scene in the restaurant when the guy gets thrown in the soup, and there were a few Indian musicians playing in the background,” Harrison recalled. “I remember picking up the sitar and trying to hold it and thinking, ‘This is a funny sound.’ It was an incidental thing, but somewhere down the line, I began to hear Ravi Shankar's name. The third time I heard it, I thought, ‘This is an odd coincidence.’ And then I talked with David Crosby of The Byrds, and he mentioned the name. I went and bought a Ravi record; I put it on and it hit a certain spot in me that I can't explain, but it seemed very familiar to me. The only way I could describe it was: my intellect didn't know what was going on and yet this other part of me identified with it. It just called on me… A few months elapsed and then I met this guy from the Asian Music C details
Over the years, Beatles fans have enjoyed a wealth of programming that they can watch about the band. Documentaries have been made about each member of the band, and series like Peter Jackson’s The Beatles: Get Back follow the band through archival footage. Here are several films and series that fans of the Beatles should watch.
When The Beatles: Get Back aired on Disney+, fans had a chance to watch the band write, record, and perform classic songs. For the three-part documentary series, Jackson sifted through hours of footage originally captured for the 1970 documentary Let It Be.
While Let It Be provided audiences with a look into the band’s inevitable breakup, Get Back showed footage of the band enjoying their time together in spite of mounting tensions. Jackson said that he did not want to make the series if it was strictly about The Beatles’ break up.
Source: Emma McKee/Emma McKee
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After leaving The Beatles, Paul McCartney had more freedom to do whatever he wanted musically. His solo career and time with Wings are filled with oddball songs that showed McCartney’s willingness to think outside the box and experiment with new sounds. One song from Wings was an intriguing choice for the singer-songwriter, and he labeled it as a “joke,” even though he enjoyed the track. Venus and Mars is the fourth studio album released by Paul McCartney and Wings. The album had massive expectations, following up on the critically acclaimed and commercially successful Band on the Run. While it didn’t receive the same acclaim, it still reached No. 1 on the charts and featured the No. 1 single “Listen to What the Man Said”.The album ends with an odd duo. The second to last track is “Treat Her Gently/Lonely Old People,” which is a track from the perspective of two lonely old people who are sitting at home alone as the day goes by. The last track is “Crossroads,” a cover of the theme song of British soap opera. The soap opera lasted from 1964 to 1988 and was a popular series amongst older viewers. The theme was composed by Tony Hatch and was widely recognizable to British details
The behind-the-scenes pictures were taken during the band's famous 1965 US tour by musician Alan Holmes, a member of Beatles' support act Sounds Inc.
They capture the Fab Four on stage, at press conferences as well as during the filming of the famous Ed Sullivan Show.
The collection will go under the hammer later this month and is expected to fetch £5,000.
Pictures of screaming fans at the 1965 Shea Stadium concert also feature in the collection
The lot of 38 original prints, 12 rolls of film and colour transparencies, all taken in 1964 and 1965, will be sold with full copyright.
Pictures from the 1965 Shea Stadium concert also feature in the lot, where the noise of some 55,000 fans was said to be so deafening neither the band nor the crowd could hear a note of what was being played on stage.
Mr Holmes never published the images in his lifetime and the collection was passed to a friend following his death.
Source: BBC News/bbc.com
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A reporter brought up The Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun” to John Lennon. John connected the song to George Harrison’s feelings regarding the weather.
“Here Comes the Sun” inspired covers by Booker T. & the M.G.’s, Nina Simone, Cat Stevens, and others.
John Lennon connected The Beatles‘ “Here Comes the Sun” to his own life. In addition, he contrasted it with George Harrison’s living situation. Notably, the song never hit the top 40 in the United States or the United Kingdom.During a 1980 interview with Rolling Stone, John discussed going to see an astrologer. “I remembered that astrologer in London telling me, ‘One day you’ll live abroad,'” he said. “Not because of taxes.
Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com
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Paul McCartney said his single favorite aspect of The Beatles‘ “Lady Madonna” is the dark recurring phrase, “See how they run.” The line is more complex than anyone can imagine and comes from a subconscious place inside Paul. The singer-songwriter has always known how to juxtapose light and dark, good and bad, in his songs with minimal effort.
Paul McCartney in the recording studio in 1968.
In The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, Paul wrote that his mother’s death is something he never got over. He was only fourteen when Mary McCartney died of breast cancer. So, he knows that a song that depicts a “very present, nurturing mother” has got to be influenced by a similar sense of loss, just as “Lady Madonna” does.
“The question about how Lady Madonna manages ‘to feed the rest’ is particularly poignant to me, since you don’t have to be a psychoanalyst to figure out that I myself was one of ‘the rest,'” Paul wrote. He believes he must have felt left out, needing a mother’s love, at the time.
Source: Hannah Wigandt/cheatsheet.com