The Beatles interviewed by the BBC’s Dibbs Mather at the Saville Theatre, London, 30 July 1965.
MATHER: 'If you had not got so rich and famous, what do you think you might be doing now?'
JOHN: We'd probably be bumming 'round, just working in clubs and things.
RINGO: We'd still be playing, only in - yeah.
MATHER: And Paul would've been teaching.
PAUL: I might've been teaching but I would've hated it, I think. I think all of us might've been... if we hadn’t stuck with the group, we might've just ended up... like George being an electrician, and Ringo being a fitter and John being a bum. And us just doing things we didn't enjoy.
GEORGE: I think we would've probably been playing modern jazz now in some crummy club.
JOHN: [Pause] Do you?
GEORGE: Yeah.
JOHN: Do we like modern jazz?
GEORGE: 'Cause we would've been so fed up playing the same things that we would've progressed, but now we don't progress 'cause we play the same things every time we play somewhere.
HAPPY TALES — Quicksilver's brilliant John Cipollina reminisces wonderfully about the Bay Area, Dino Valenti, the Charlatans... and, naturally, the mighty QMS... in the company of San Francisco Nights co-authors Gene Sculatti and Davin Seay (1984).
Brian Epstein speaks about his first business meeting with The Beatles within an interview with Bill Grundy for BBC radio programme Frankly Speaking (recorded 7 March 1964 - broadcast 23 March 1964)
BRIAN: Actually, the first meeting that we had, the first business meeting we had, we held at my store. It got off to a very late start, it was quite amusing, really.
Three of the boys arrived at the appointed time at 4 o'clock - I was very busy ordering records for Christmas, and... Paul didn’t show at all, for at least three quarters of an hour, and I was a bit put-out about this, I thought, ‘This is our first meeting, they want to do something about management’, and so on, and I asked one of the boys to get on the phone to him and he came back and he said, "Well, he’s just got up, he’s in the bath."
So I sort of, you know, shouted about a bit, and I thought, 'This is very disgraceful indeed, and how can he be so late for an important thing', and George just simply replied, which is very typical of them, "Well, he may be late, but he’s very clean."
The Beatles' interview with Gordon Kaye, backstage at the ABC Cinema, Huddersfield, 29 November 1963
KAYE: What do you think of [fans] coming in and then screaming?
GEORGE: Well, they've paid the money so they can scream, can't they? I mean, if they haven't paid and they were screaming, it'd be a liberty, wouldn't it!
PAUL: Aye, aye.
RINGO: Would that, Georgie.
KAYE: What is your, sort of, favourite types of music? Beethoven, for instance?
GEORGE: No, I like trad jazz, you know, Kenny Ball and all that.
PAUL: [to George] You don't! You told me you didn't!
GEORGE: I do. I've changed. Washington Square, I got it.
[CUT]
PAUL: How'd it go? Great, thanks. Yeah it was fine. I think it was one of the best receptions we've had, terrific.
KAYE: Now then, let's know a little bit about your personal life. What do you like to do in your spare time when you get it?
PAUL: When I get spare time? Go to the pictures or watch telly, or erm... r-read, uh, read... comics, you know.
[Laughter]
KAYE: What sort of films do you like?
PAUL: What sort of films...
JOHN: [From across the room] The man and [Inaudible]
PAUL: Yeah, the man and the green basket [???]
PAUL: No, just ordinary films like 'The Trial,' 'The Servants.'
PAUL: Just ordinary, you know... like Walt Disney. You know, 'The Trial' by Walt Disney. It's great.
KAYE: What sort of music do you like personally?
PAUL: Just, I like everybody else. Stravinsky, Beethoven, all of that.
PAUL: No, American groups actually, I listen to.
KAYE: Female groups?
PAUL: But mainly American records, generally.
KAYE: Now then George, what do you like to do on your spare time?
GEORGE: Umm... Well I uhh... umm... [to the others] What do I do?
PAUL: What does he do? I'll tell you what George does. He goes to the pictures.
GEORGE: I go to the pictures, yeah.
PAUL: Reads Tolstoy.
GEORGE: I read Telstar.
PAUL: Tolstoy.
GEORGE: And umm...
RINGO: Beethoven's poems.
GEORGE: And play records and play the banjo!
PAUL: Beethoven's poems.
KAYE: What are your ambitions in, George?
GEORGE: Umm, to join the Navy, actually.
GEORGE: I want to join the Navy and be a lieutenant commander on HMS Queen Victoria.
[CUT]
KAYE: You've never been on [the television show] Juke Box Jury before?
John Lennon, speaking about the theory behind Arthur Janov's 'primal therapy'. Lennon underwent primal therapy with Janov in 1970.
Lennon was interviewed by radio DJ and friend of the Beatles, Kenny Everett, at his home on 27 March 1971, where the pair spoke about the album Plastic Ono Band and life following the Beatles' breakup.
JOHN: There's lots of things that you- your mind blocks off memories from childhood, because when you're a child you can only take so much pain or whatever it is, so, when something happens you tend to block it off and not feel it and… it almost in a way literally blocks off part of your body.
EVERETT: But that's the bit it doesn't want to know about.
JOHN: Yeah but it's like not wanting to know about going to the toilet or having a bath, but if you don't do it for a long time it accumulates and emotions are the same, you accumulate them over the years and they come out in other forms.
EVERETT: What, like violence or something?
JOHN: Well, violence or... you know, baldness, or short-sightedness, something like that. That's part of his theory. It's pretty revolutionary, I think, the idea that it's… from the experience I had there it seemed pretty valid as a good basis for that theory.
JOHN: And so what you do is go back, or find a way of going back to those emotions you've locked off and you remember things you didn't remember, and experience that emotion because it's still there. It's like taking a diarrhoea pill or something... and it all comes out, baby!
John Lennon interviewed by Larry Kane on home life and his son Julian.
LENNON: Well it's just a home, you know, just peaceful and quiet.
KANE: You take out the garbage?
LENNON: None of that stuff, I don't like garbage. No, I don't do anything, I just go home and relax, and eat.
KANE: Your son Julian is how old now?
LENNON: Two and a half when I left, he might be five when I get home.
KANE: They age quickly these days. When my daughter was born I was suddenly struck with the realisation that I am responsible to a great extent for a human life, and moulding it. Did that hit you that way?
LENNON: I keep looking at him crawling about and throwing me cigarettes on the floor, thinking where did he come from, you know, you do tend to think of it when you seem them...
KANE: How about your obligations to your child? Financial is no problem, but the other things, the things that money can't buy?
LENNON: Well I just want him to grow up happy, that's the main thing.
KANE: What can you give him?
LENNON: Just love, that's the main thing, he's just got to be happy and know he's wanted. I'm not having any of that boarding school or any sending him away, he's gonna be with us all the time.
Mills (known as 'Gypsy Dave') in a 1981 interview with Keith Altham, on saying goodbye to Paul McCartney when leaving Rishikesh early with Ringo and Maureen in 1968.
In the interview Mills speaks about how he had travelled to Rishikesh along with Donovan, however was heavily cynical of the Maharishi and his following, and soon decided to leave. Maureen, when hearing Mills is leaving, decided to leave with him, and after some slight hesitation Ringo also chooses to leave alongside his wife.
MILLS: And Ringo got his bags all put in the taxi, I'm sitting in the front seat of the taxi and everyone's getting in the back. We're just about to pull off and I turn round to wave and I look at Paul, and Paul is sitting there, and he's just about to wave goodbye, and as he lifts his hand he looked at this white shirt he was wearing, white Indian shirt.
ALTHAM: Dhoti [kurta], or whatever it is.
MILLS: Yeah, and he looked from the white shirt and I saw his eyes run down from his white shirt to his white trousers, and I saw him look up at John, who was sitting there dressed exactly the same in those baggy white trousers and baggy jumpers, and he looked at Don[ovan] who was dressed exactly the same, and everyone in that circle, and then he looked back at himself and he looked at us going away from all this, raised his hand in this little boy wave of the fingers and said [CHILD'S VOICE] "Bye bye! Come and see us again!"
MILLS: And it was just so classic man, I looked at Paul and Paul looked at me and I just went 'Yes, man, that's it.'
ALTHAM: That's exactly where it is. You're all in kindergarten.
MILLS: There he was. In kindergarten and also a nuthouse. You know there it was, there was the simplicity of it all. And the simpleness and the simple-mindedness of it all. And Paul had got it just like that. He'd seen it in that flash and pulled it all together.
