1. John Lennonās pre-Beatles skiffle group, The Quarry Men, made a record in the summer of 1958 that features Paul McCartney and George Harrison and cost 17 and sixpence to make.
2. The 16-year-old Lennon sung lead on the four tracks they recorded, which included Buddy Hollyās āThatāll Be the Dayā and the McCartney-Harrison composition āIn Spite of All the Dangerā.
3. It was Stuart Sutcliffe, Johnās art school friend who was drafted in as bass player, who came up with the name āThe Beatalsā.
4. The first proper recording the band made was āCry for a Shadowā, a Lennon-Harrison instrumental number in the style of The Shadows. It was recorded in Hamburg on 22 June 1961 with Pete Best on drums, in the assembly hall of an infantsā school.
5. So keen were they to distinguish themselves from The Shadows that The Beatles didnāt use Fender guitars until 1965.
6. During their lengthy stints of playing to drunk sailors and prostitutes day and night in Hamburg between 1960 and 1962, The Beatles (unknowingly) once ate horse for their Christmas dinner.
7. When they first arrived in Hamburg in 1960, then still teenagers, The Beatles lived in a cinema. Lennon said: āWe would go to bed late and be woken up the next day by the sound of the cinema show. Weād try to get into the ladiesā first, which was the cleanest of the cinemaās lavatories, but fat old German women would push past us.ā
8. Harrison was deported from Germany for being underage.
9. During a 56-night residency in 1960 at Hamburgās Kaiserkeller, the band played four sets every day ā 7.30ā9pm, 9.30ā11pm, 11.30pmā1am, and 1.30ā2am ā seven days a week.
10. At their first Parlophone recording session at Abbey Road, on 6 June 1962, producer George Martin gave a long list of things wrong with the bandās performance, before asking to band to provide any of their own criticisms. āWell, for a start I donāt like your tie,ā was Harrisonās response.
11. Ringo Starr didnāt play drums on āLove Me Doā, the groupās first hit, and instead tapped a tambourine while session player Andy White stood in. Martin thought Starr was rushing into the choruses too quickly. (Starrās version, recorded a week before, was used on early pressings of the single, however.)
12. When the band had finished recording āPlease Please Meā, Martin said via the studioās intercom: āCongratulations, gentlemen, youāve just made your first number one.ā The song did go to the top of the BBC, NME, and Melody Maker charts (this is before there was a standardised chart).
13. Aside from the first two singles and their B-sides, the album of the same name was entirely recorded in three three-hour sessions on 11 February 1963. It took just one hour longer than expected, and they went straight out on tour the next day.
14. Beatles concerts ā and even screenings of their films ā often smelled of urine. As Bob Geldof reminisced to Q magazine: āI remember looking down at the cinema floor and seeing these rivulets of piss in the aisles. The girls were literally pissing themselves with excitement. So what I associate most with The Beatles is the smell of girlsā urine.ā
15. The Beatles were famously turned down by the Decca record label and instead signed for Parlophone. The bandās publisher sent an anonymous tape from their later sessions to Decca to see if the label would be fooled into making the same mistake again (it wasnāt).
16. The poet Allen Ginsberg got up and danced excitedly when āI Want to Hold Your Handā was played in a New York nightclub, confusing his intellectual friends.
17. The same song made Bob Dylan assume that The Beatles must have been on drugs in 1963. He read more into the innocent line āI canāt hideā than was intended, hearing it as āI get highā.
18. In the NME in early 1963, the boys listed their ambitions. Lennon: āTo write a musicalā; McCartney: āTo have my picture in the Dandyā; Harrison: āTo design a guitarā; and Starr: āTo be happy.ā
19. There was talk of a Beatles musical throughout their career. In 1963, Lennon told the NME that his idea was to write a musical āabout Jesus coming back as an ordinary personā.
20. In the very early days of Beatlemania, screaming fans turned up to Harrisonās house in Liverpool and were greeted by the man himself ā but they left when they were told, āNo, Paul McCartney doesnāt live here.ā
21. Having finally broken America, in April 1964 The Beatles had the top five places in the American singles chart with āCanāt Buy Me Loveā, āTwist and Shoutā, āShe Loves Youā, āI Want to Hold Your Handā, and āPlease Please Meā.
22. The Beatles re-recorded āShe Loves Youā and āI Want to Hold Your Handā for the German market as āSie Liebt Dichā and āKomm, Gib Mir Deine Handā in Paris in January 1964.
23. Lennon once claimed that āTicket to Rideā was āone of the first heavy metal recordsā, because of its use of loud amplified guitars and drum sound.
24. Beatles merchandise available at the height of Beatlemania included not just boots, sweaters, hats, and wigs, but also bubblebath, talcum powder, and womenās stockings.
25. Only two songs on Revolver are longer than three minutes: āLove You Toā (3.01) and āIām Only Sleepingā (3.02).
26. McCartney claimed āYesterdayā came to him in a dream as a finished melody, fully formed. He asked friends, āIs this by me or did someone else write it?ā, almost as if heād discovered it. It was originally called āScrambled Eggsā.
27. McCartney played some of The Beatlesā most technically difficult guitar solos on songs including āTaxmanā, āBack in the USSRā and āGood Morning, Good Morningā. Harrison would often be congratulated on them, and would reply, āNo, that was Paul.ā
28. Martin and his team at Abbey Road had made many comedy records in the 1950s, including ones by Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers, and Rolf Harris. This perhaps explains why they were so willing to indulge The Beatlesā love of humour and occasional childrenās songs.
29. His engineers found all manner of things in their sound effects department to add some colour to āYellow Submarineā, including chains, whistles, handbells, hooters, and a tin bath.
30. The Beatles spent longer making āYellow Submarineā than they took to record their entire debut album.
31. āShe Said She Saidā is inspired by the time Lennon took LSD with David Crosby and Roger McGuinn of The Byrds in August 1965, which sounds like one hell of a party. Allegedly, Peter Fonda turned up and spoke of having been through a near-death experience during an operation ā hence Lennonās lyric āI know what itās like to be deadā.
32. Lennon really did say the line about being bigger than Jesus. He told the Evening Standard on 4 March 1966: āChristianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. Weāre more popular than Jesus now.ā
33. āStrawberry Fields Foreverā, which took 55 hours to record, is made up of two entirely different recordings, each with a differing mood and recorded at different speeds. You can hear a slight change at 1:00, where the two are edited together.
34. The piano sound on āPenny Laneā was achieved by layering three piano tracks on top of each other, recorded at different speeds, before each was speeded up or down to match the right key.
35. The trumpeter who played the piccolo trumpet solo at the end of āPenny Laneā., David Mason, claimed itās not speeded up and that he can still play it perfectly.
36. Lennon and Harrison were first given LSD in coffee by their dentist without them knowing. Harrison said: āWeād just sat down and ordered our drinks when suddenly I felt the most incredible feeling come over me. It was something like a very concentrated version of the best feeling Iād ever had in my whole life.ā
37. In 1967 the NME ran a series of interviews about The Beatlesā dreams. McCartney dreamed about being caught in the street in his underwear, while Harrison projected his fear of flying into vivid plane-crash dreams. āIt was all funny though: me legs were burninā but they werenāt like hurtinā!ā
38. When Lennon sang āI read the news today, oh boyā in āA Day in the Lifeā, he was referring to the death of Tara Browne, a millionaire member of the London counterculture movement and friend to The Beatles, who died in a car crash in 1966. The report of his inquest ā including the observation that people āstood and staredā ā was in the Daily Mail on 17 January 1967, as was a story about holes in Blackburn, Lancashire.
39. The famous final chord in āA Day in the Lifeā was played simultaneously by Lennon, McCartney, Starr, Martin, and the bandās road manager, Mal Evans, on three separate pianos.
40. For the opening title track of Sgt Pepperās Lonely Hearts Club Band, McCartney replaced a guitar solo from Harrison that took seven hours to record with his own guitar part, according to Martin in Summer of Love, his account of the making of the album.
41. Lennon saw the poster that inspired āBeing for the Benefit of Mr Kite!ā advertising a circus in Rochdale, Lancashire in 1843, in an antiques shop in Sevenoaks, Kent, while filming the video for āStrawberry Fields Foreverā.
42. It reads: āPablo Fanqueās Circus Royal, Town-Meadows, Rochdale. Grandest night of the season! And positively the LAST NIGHT BUT THREE! Being for the benefit of Mr Kite (late of Wellsā Circus) and MR J HENDERSON, the celebrated Somerset thrower! Wire dancer, vaulter, rider, etc.ā
43. Lennon asked Martin to make āMr Kiteā sound like a fairground. But then he also once asked him to make a song sound like an orange.
44. āLovely Ritaā is allegedly based on a meeting between McCartney and a friendly parking warden called Meta Davies in St Johnās Wood. McCartney says this was a coincidence.
45. Lennon wanted Hitler to be included in the sea of faces on the Sgt. Pepper album cover, but was overruled at the last minute.
46. āSheās Leaving Homeā was inspired by a real story in the Daily Mirror on 27 February 1967 about a 17-year-old girl, Melanie Coe, who ran away from home. As Beatles writer Steve Turner put it, the song accurately guesses at some of the details of her life, completely accidentally.
47. While recording āAll You Need Is Loveā, Harrison played a violin despite having never touched one.
48. The Our World broadcast on 1 June 1967 was the worldās first satellite TV broadcast and was seen by an estimated 350 million people. The Beatles represented the UK, performing āAll You Need Is Loveā to close the show.
49. Lennon appeared in his first film without The Beatles in 1967ās How I Won the War (referenced in āA Day in the Lifeā), alongside Michael Crawford, who later found fame in Some Mothers Do āAve āEm, and Roy Kinnear, who played Veruca Saltās father in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.
50. The front cover for the US-only album Yesterday and Today featured the band dressed as butchers, while holding cleavers, with disturbing dolls and pieces of meat surrounding them. There is a (lengthy) explanation but it appears to have been the photographerās idea, which the band apparently found funny.
51. Among the bizarre things that The Beatlesā company, Apple, did was put out a single by the Black Dyke Mills Band, a well-respected brass band from West Yorkshire. The track was called āThingummybobā and was written for a TV show of the same name. The B-side was their version of āYellow Submarineā.
52. Among the abandoned Apple ideas, according to an NME report at the time, was a film adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkienās The Lord of the Rings, something that wasnāt fully achieved by anyone until Peter Jacksonās epic series 35 years later.
53. The BBC banned āI Am the Walrusā not for its anti-establishment tone, but because it contains the word āknickersā.
54. The animated Yellow Submarine film isnāt voiced by the band, but by actors. McCartney was played by Geoffrey Hughes, who went on to star in The Royle Family, in which he played the slobbish Twiggy, and Keeping Up Appearances, in which he was Onslow.
55. āHey Judeā was originally called āHey Julesā and directed at Lennonās 5-year-old son, Julian.
56. Lennon considered it to be McCartneyās greatest song, and persuaded him to keep the strange line āthe movement you need is on your shoulderā.
57. Rumours that āPaul is deadā started after McCartney was injured in a moped accident in 1966 and grew a moustache to hide the cut on his lip.
58. People thought Lennon was mumbling āI buried Paulā at the end of āStrawberry Fieldsā, but it was actually ācranberry sauceā, for no apparent reason.
59. The āPaul is deadā meme became deeply enough ingrained in popular culture to be referenced on the front cover of a Batman comic in 1970.
60. McCartney played the drums on āBack in the USSRā and āDear Prudenceā from The Beatles, aka the White Album, after Starr stormed out of the band, only to return a week later.
61. āShe Came in Through the Bathroom Windowā, from the medley section of Abbey Road, really is based on a true story: A fan used a ladder in Paulās back garden to climb in the bathroom window, before stealing a picture of his father, some clothes, and some slides of photos taken by Linda Eastman (who would soon become Linda McCartney).
62. Frank Sinatra called Harrisonās āSomethingā, which he often performed live, āthe greatest love song of the last 50 yearsā. And he sang a few.
63. The bandās internal fights were often ridiculous. During the making of Abbey Road, Harrison was incensed when Yoko Ono took one his chocolate digestive biscuits without asking.
64. Lennon said many, many strange things during interviews. During the final days of the band he told the NME: āI regret that Yoko wasnāt my child. I donāt like the idea of her being born in someone elseās womb. Thatās one of my great jealousies. Itās a drag that she was in somebody elseās womb, but I canāt do anything about it.ā
65. From the same interview: āI like to play conceptual chess, rather than have the chess on the board.ā
66. The Beatlesā split was acrimonious and messy but despite their public feuding, Lennon and McCartney did keep in touch. During Lennonās 1973ā74 separation from Ono, the two musicians jammed together in Los Angeles with Stevie Wonder on keyboards. Thereās even a recording of it (itās a complete druggy mess).
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