The Beatles' Marathon 'Please Please Me' Session, Hour by Hour.

In line with my daily FaceBook series, LET IT BE ONLY A NORTHERN SONG, found on many Beatles & 60’s FB Group Pages, the program currently features fun fact articles for the tracks from the Beatles debut PLEASE PLEASE ME LP. So, I thought it only fitting this week’s blog may well suit another opinionated angle. Enjoy!

The Beatles recorded the bulk of their debut album, 'Please Please Me,' in a single daylong studio session. Read an hour-by-hour account.

By Jordan Runtagh

The last notes of "Please Please Me" still hung in the stale air of EMI's Studio Two on November 26th, 1962, when George Martin's disembodied voice crackled over the talkback from the control room above. "Gentlemen," he addressed his young mop-topped charges, "I think you've made your first Number One." The veteran producer had a finely tuned ear for hits, but it would be several months before the Beatles rode their second single to the top of the charts. Released on January 11th, the song received an unexpected boost from Mother Nature the following week. The winter of 1963 was one of the most brutal in England's history, and the record-breaking cold forced many to spend their Saturday nights at home in front of the television, just in time to catch the band making one of its earliest national broadcast appearances on ITV's pop-music program Thank Your Lucky Stars. As the band lip-synched to its latest record, viewers were transfixed by the instantly hummable melody, cascading harmonies, relentless beat and – for early-Sixties Britain – ridiculously long hair. Almost overnight, the single launched skyward.

With a smash on his hands, Martin knew that the next logical step was getting a full-length LP into shops as rapidly as possible. He initially considered a live recording at the band's Liverpool home base. "I had been up to the Cavern, and I'd seen what they could do – I knew their repertoire, knew what they were able to perform," he recalled for the Beatles' 1995 Anthology documentary. Cheap and practically instantaneous to produce, the format had much to recommend itself. He'd achieved great success two years earlier capturing the wildly popular Beyond the Fringe satire revue (featuring a young Dudley Moore and Peter Cook) with a tape recorder directly under the stage of London's Fortune Theater. But the subterranean Cavern, with its concrete walls acting as a natural echo chamber, was ill-suited for such a venture. Instead, Martin would re-create the electricity of the Beatles' live shows inside the recording studio: "I said, 'Let's record every song you've got. Come down, and we'll whistle through them in a day.'"

Recording a full album in such a short span didn't seem like an unreasonable request in 1963. Songs were recorded live on a two-track BTR machine, leaving few opportunities for overdubs or elaborate edits. Besides, "Please Please Me" and its B side, "Ask Me Why," were already in the can, as well as the Beatles' first single, "Love Me Do," backed by "P.S. I Love You." That left ten more songs to fill out the customary 14 tracks of a British LP. "It was a straightforward performance of their stage repertoire – a broadcast, more or less," Martin said, not unlike their regular sessions on the BBC radio. Their manager, Brian Epstein, got them excused from their touring commitments the day before so that they would arrive fresh at EMI Studios at 10:00 on the morning of February 11th, 1963.

That was the idea, at least. Instead, they showed up late, with John Lennon nursing a bad cold. "[His] voice was pretty shot," session engineer Norman Smith recalled in Mark Lewisohn's The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions. Tins of Zube's throat lozenges lay strewn across the lid of the baby grand piano in a corner. Nearby, the bandmates huddled on stools while they worked out the day's set list with Martin. "We were permanently on edge," said George Harrison in the Anthology. "We ran through all the songs before we recorded anything. We'd play a bit, and George Martin would say, ‘Well, what else have you got?'" Paul McCartney wanted to record the old Marlene Dietrich ballad "Falling in Love Again," but the number was vetoed by Martin, who deemed it "corny." The same went for "Besame Mucho," made famous by the Coasters, which had been a perennial Beatles favorite since 1960. Instead, Martin insisted on "A Taste of Honey," a relatively new addition to the set, which he believed would sound better on record.

They settled on four originals, rounded out by a selection of six covers that they could tear through in short order. "We knew the songs because that was the act we did all over the country," Ringo Starr said in the Anthology. "That was why we could easily go into the studio and record them. The mic situation wasn't complicated either: one in front of each amp, two overheads for the drums, one for the singer and one for the bass drum." Young tape operator Richard Langham was one of the battalions of technicians who helped set up the equipment. While mic'ing up their amps, the very same they used on the road, he found the speaker cabinets stuffed with bits of paper. "They were notes from the girls from the dance floor who threw them up on the stage," Langham said. "They said, 'Please play this, please play that, this is my phone number.' I guess they just read them and then threw them in the back of the amplifier."

Soon they were ready, armed with their weapons of choice: McCartney with his distinctive violin-shaped 1961 500/1 Hofner bass, Starr his Premier kit, Harrison his cherished 1957 Gretsch Duo-Jet and 1962 J-160E Gibson "Jumbo" acoustic-electric, Lennon with his matching Jumbo and 1958 Rickenbacker 325. "[It] was, 'Let's get this up and let's get on the road,' because by this time it was half past 10 [or] 11," Langham said in a 2013 BBC documentary. EMI in the early Sixties was more an institutional research facility than a creative space, and as such operated under rigid recording schedules. Sessions ran "strictly to time," beginning in the morning between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. (with a 90-minute break for lunch), then an afternoon slot from 2:30 to 6 p.m. (with a 90-minute break for dinner), and finally an evening period from 7:30 until the studio closed at 10. With the clock already running, the Beatles got to work. "They just put their heads down and played," Epstein later said to a friend.

 Years of grueling late-night jam sessions and punishing tour itineraries prepared them well for this music marathon. Now they relied on muscle memory, transforming the fluorescent-lit Studio 2 into another seedy club or tweedy dance hall. As Lennon recalled a decade later with no small degree of pride, the band's debut album "was the nearest thing to what we might have sounded like to the audiences in Hamburg and Liverpool. Still, you don't get that live atmosphere of the crowd stomping on the beat with you, but it's the nearest you can get to knowing what we sounded like before we became the 'clever' Beatles." As Martin once noted, the "live" nature of the recording was born more out of necessity – and the band's naiveté – rather than from a conscious minimalist choice. "The Beatles didn't really have much say in recording operations," he said later. "It was only after the first year that they started getting really interested in studio techniques. But they always wanted to get the thing right, so it wasn't a one-take operation. They would listen to it, and then do two or three takes until they got it."

The sessions wrapped just after 10:45 p.m., and the following night the Beatles were back out on the road. The venture had cost the record label just £400 (about $11,000 in 2018). "There wasn't a lot of money at Parlophone," Martin admitted. "I was working to an annual budget of £55,000." It took the band just under 10 hours of studio time to record the bulk of the first album, released on March 22nd, 1963, as Please Please Me. As Harrison wryly observed decades later, "The second one took even longer."

What follows is an hour-by-hour record of what happened during this extraordinary day in the life of the Fab Four.

10:45–11:30 a.m.: "There's a Place"

The Beatles clearly had high hopes for this relatively new composition, giving it pride of place as the first song tackled that day. It had been written several months earlier in the living room of the McCartney family home, where a copy of the West Side Story soundtrack played a direct role in the song's creation. "There's a Place" borrowed its title from the opening line of "Somewhere," and expanded on the theatrical standout's youthful yearning for a peaceful space away from the prying eyes of adults. "In our case, the place was in the mind, rather than round the back of the stairs for a kiss and a cuddle," McCartney recalled in his authorized biography, Many Years From Now. "This was the difference with what we were writing. We were getting a bit more cerebral." Given that it was the first song intentionally recorded for the Beatles' debut, its maturity was a portent of good things to come.

Conceived, in Lennon's words, as "a sort of Motown black thing," the song showed strong promise as a potential highlight, or possibly even a single. The initial take was a complete run-through, nearly identical to the final version except for the absence of Lennon's harmonica on the intro. Instead, Harrison takes up the phrase on guitar, but the octave figure proves tricky to master, and he fumbles it on most of the first few versions. He can be heard practicing between takes, loosening up his fingers by playing the similar introduction to "Please Please Me." The vocals also prove to be a sticking point, with Lennon's voice already showing the effects of his sore throat even this early in the day. Just before the fifth take, he can be heard giving McCartney some advice on the elongated "There-e-e-e-ere" a cappella line: "It works better if you do it on the beat somehow – you know, think the beat in your head." McCartney, meanwhile, halted the song after just a few bars. "It was bad, that beginning," he proclaimed bluntly. They nearly had it by Take 9, but McCartney's voice began to waver on the high harmonies. Clearly frustrated, the bassist was heard to sarcastically mutter "Take 15 ..." before the actual take, number 10.

This attempt provided the basis for the version heard on the record. Lennon's harmonica would be added later in the day, but with noon fast approaching, the group decided to move on to another promising original.

11:30 ­a.m.–1:00 p.m.: "I Saw Her Standing There"

Even before recording engineer Norman Smith announced the song as "Seventeen" – as it was known during its time as an early Cavern-era staple – a disapproving Martin can be heard grumbling from the control room: "I think it ought to have a different title." It would be known forevermore as "I Saw Her Standing There," a masterful blend of formative band favorites, melded into something completely fresh.

Lyrically the song pays homage to the Coasters' "Young Blood" ("I saw her standing on the corner ..."), Chuck Berry's "Little Queenie" ("She's too cute to be a minute over 17") and even the golden oldie "When the Saints Go Marching In" ("I want to be in that number/When the saints go marching in" having the same meter as "How could I dance with another/Since I saw her standing there"), which the Beatles often performed as a rocked-up piss-take. In later years, McCartney revealed that he "nicked" the bass line from another Berry tune, 1961's "I'm Talking About You," which was part of the setlist around the same period. "I played exactly the same notes as he did and it fitted our number perfectly," he said in Many Years From Now.

The Beatles essentially captured the final version on the first take, playing and singing live, and preserving on record the first of their famous falsetto "oooohs," which would become an early trademark when coupled with a mop-topped head shake. Martin, however, pushed for another go around just to be safe. Take 2 would prove less successful, as McCartney and Lennon have difficulty remembering the order of "how could I dance," "she wouldn't dance," and "I'll never dance" in the chorus. Though the take had plenty of vigor, McCartney ended it with a despondent descending bass slide, and a dispirited Lennon muttered, "Dreadful." Martin tried to salvage the situation by having the band record edit pieces for the botched lines (Take 3), and more run-throughs of Harrison's solo on Takes 4 and 5. The tension began to show as Take 6 broke down midway through. "Too fast," copped McCartney. "No, you had a wrong word, didn't you?" a voice from the control room pointed out. "Yeah, but, I mean, it's too fast anyway," McCartney countered.

McCartney himself stopped Take 7 with a frantic cry of "Too fast!" before apologetically showing his perfectionist streak. "And again, I'm sorry, you know, but . . .," he said while demonstrating the song's appropriate tempo. The drummer had been going strong all morning, but it was Starr's turn for a mistake on Take 8. A missed high-hat hit caused the song to sputter to a stop, with McCartney moaning, "What happened?!" With his patience growing thin, he threw extra oomph into the count-in for Take 9, spitting out a raucous "one-two-three-FAW."

The effect was so invigorating that Martin later edited it onto the front of Take 1, creating one of rock's greatest intros since Elvis Presley crooned, "Well, it's one for the money, two for the show . . .," on his debut seven years earlier.

1:00–2:30 p.m.: Lunchtime

Typically, after morning sessions at the studio concluded, the next 90 minutes were reserved for artists and staff to take their lunch. But, distraught by their slow progress, the Beatles had other plans. "We told them we were having a break, but they said they would like to stay on and rehearse," Langham said in The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions. "So while George [Martin], Norman and I went round the corner to the Heroes of Alma for a pie and pint, they stayed, drinking milk. When we came back, they'd been playing right through. We couldn't believe it. We had never seen a group work right through their lunch break before."

2:30–3:15 p.m.: "A Taste of Honey"

Eager to make headway, the bandmates decided to focus on a more familiar number from the stage set. For their first cover of the day, they went with "A Taste of Honey," a pop standard that had been given an R&B remake by Lenny Welch the year before. Both Epstein and Martin saw the value of including a sophisticated adult-contemporary ballad alongside rock stompers to showcase the band's versatility. So did McCartney, who was vocal about his love for pre-war melodies. "I thought those were good tunes," he reflected. "The fact that we weren't ashamed of those leanings meant that the band could be a bit more varied."

Five takes of the song were recorded, two of them incomplete breakdowns, with the band playing and singing live. The fifth was temporarily labeled as the final.

3:15–3:45 p.m.: "Do You Want to Know a Secret"

"'Do You Want to Know a Secret' was 'my song' on the album," Harrison complained in the Anthology. "I didn't like my vocal on it. I didn't know how to sing. Nobody told me how to." Lennon wrote the bulk of the song, drawing on a childhood memory of his late mother. "She was a comedienne and a singer," he remembered in Playboy shortly before his death in 1980. "Not professional, but she used to get up in pubs and things like that. She had a good voice. . . . She used to do this little tune when I was just one or two years old. . . . The tune was from the Disney movie – 'Want to know a secret? Promise not to tell. You are standing by a wishing well. . . .'" (The song, called "I'm Wishing," was featured in Walt Disney's debut feature film, 1937's Snow White.) Lennon included a slow, minor-key introduction on his composition, perhaps as a nod to its vintage inspiration – or maybe he took his cue from tunesmiths like Carole King and Gerry Goffin, who had recently employed a similar technique on several of their hits.

Discounting two false starts, the Beatles performed four complete takes of the song, with Take 6 marked as the best. At Martin's insistence, the Beatles took two attempts at overdubbing Lennon and McCartney's "doo-dah-doo" backing harmonies on the verses, and Starr's stick taps during the bridge. Take 8 was the finished version.

3:45–4:15 p.m.: "A Taste of Honey" vocal overdubs

The overdubs on "Do You Want to Know a Secret" apparently triggered something with Martin and the boys because the next hour and a quarter was spent polishing off songs that were already in the can. McCartney's bandmates had a break while he was tasked with "double-tracking" his vocals at two points in "A Taste of Honey," resulting in a richer, fuller sound during the dramatic "I will return" verses. The Beatles would utilize this recording technique again and again throughout their career.

4:15–4:30 p.m.: "There's a Place" harmonica overdubs

Fearing that Harrison's guitar lacked impact, Martin suggested that Lennon perform the introductory riff of "There's a Place" on harmonica. The trick had been used to great effect on the band's first two singles, "Love Me Do" and "Please Please Me," and Lennon duly obliged. He required three passes over the previously recorded Take 10, effectively burying Harrison's guitar work on the final version, Take 13.

4:45–5:00 p.m.: "I Saw Her Standing There" hand-clap overdubs

In an effort to echo the excitement of a crowd stomping and banging along in unison, Martin requested that the Beatles add hand claps to what would become the album's opener. The band gathered around a microphone while tape ops cued up Take 1, the strongest version from earlier in the day, but the first attempt at a clapping overdub was marred by volume problems. This sends the boys into joyful hysterics, faux applause and other goofy humor (McCartney can be heard urging the others to "keep Britain tidy," a non sequitur joke that would crop up in A Hard Day's Night). They got the job done the next time around, completing the song with Take 12.

5:00–6:00 p.m.: "Misery."

Seeking to cement their reputation as songwriters for hire, Lennon and McCartney penned "Misery" with the aim of presenting it to the headliner of their package tour, a young singer named Helen Shapiro. Unfortunately, her manager, British record impresario Norrie Paramor, felt the rather dour subject matter was ill-suited for a teenage chanteuse. "She turned it down," recalled McCartney. "It may not have been that successful for her because it's a rather downbeat song. It was quite pessimistic." Eventually, the track went to another of their tourmates, Kenny Lynch, making him the first artist to cover a Lennon-McCartney number on record.

The Beatles' version came first, requiring 11 takes in all to complete. The first was in many ways the best, with a few extra drum flourishes from Starr (which were eventually dropped) and some extra spirited "ooohs" and "la-la-las" on the outro. Unfortunately, Harrison's guitar run was slightly out of time on the bridge, requiring another go. Take 2 was nearly as good, but Martin stopped the song after noticing that Harrison's guitar was coming through distorted. "Clean it up a bit, and a little less volume, George," he instructed. A handful of false starts followed, with Lennon having trouble keeping the words and the chords straight. "I won't see her no more," McCartney guided. Take 6 was perhaps the most interesting of all, with bold drum fills and some guitar embroidery from Harrison that didn't make the final cut. But it was a little too busy for Martin, who requested a more streamlined approach on Take 7.

The descending guitar line was proving too difficult to perfect, so the producer asked Harrison to lay out (he would overdub the phrase himself on piano nine days later, on February 20th, without the involvement of the band). Take 8 crashed to a stop soon after the count-in with McCartney merrily pointing the finger at Lennon: "Stop it, he said the wrong words!" Take 9 would be the final attempt that day before the clock read 6:00 and it was time for dinner. Martin would splice together the beginning of Take 7 and the end of Take 9 to create the version on record. (The edit can be heard on the first word of the third verse when Lennon sang what sounds like "shend.")

6:00–7:30 p.m.: Dinner break.

Having wrapped the afternoon session, the presumably famished Beatles likely took a quick meal in the decidedly unglamorous EMI canteen. If they were anxious, they had good reason. The bandmates were two-thirds through their allotted recording time, and they had produced only half of the required songs. They would need to bang out a further five tunes in two and a half hours in order to complete the album on time. Luckily the remaining songs, mostly covers, were mainstays in their repertoire. They could play these numbers backward, forward and sometimes – as could be the case during their long Hamburg club nights – in their sleep. With their eyes on the prize (as well as the clock), they trooped back into Studio 2 determined to let it rip.

7:30–8:15 p.m.: "Hold Me Tight."

Unfortunately, the beginning of their evening session proved to be a colossal waste of time, as the Beatles ran through 13 takes of an original tune that would not make the album at all. "Hold Me Tight" was an uptempo rocker written mostly by McCartney several years earlier. It had been integrated into their stage show, but they never counted it among their best work. Even its composer dismissed it in retrospect as "a failed attempt at a single which then became an acceptable album filler." Lennon was equally blunt in his assessment of the number toward the end of his life. "That was Paul's," he said in 1980. "It was a pretty poor song, and I was never really interested in it."

Perhaps it's for this reason that "Hold Me Tight" never got off the ground during the Please Please Me session. Tapes of the song from that day have since been destroyed, but the session notes paint a maddening portrait of false starts, breakdowns and edit pieces to patch up errors. Although the band eventually got a serviceable version (Take 9 spliced with an edit piece, Take 13), the song was abandoned for the day. A rerecorded incarnation would surface on the band's next album, With the Beatles, later that year.

8:15 p.m.–8:45 p.m.: "Anna (Go to Him)"

The frustrating experience of "Hold Me Tight" was now behind them, leaving them free to plow through their beloved covers. "A Taste of Honey" aside, which was more of a request from Martin and Epstein, these were the songs that truly inspired them. It's telling that all the non-original songs on Please Please Me had been performed (or at least popularized) by black soul artists, bearing out McCartney's assertion that the Beatles saw themselves as "a little R&B combo."

The first Lennon-led cover of the night, "Anna (Go to Him)," paid tribute to one of his great heroes, Alabama country-soul pioneer Arthur Alexander. The arrangement had been honed through constant performance, so recording was a relatively simple matter of getting a good live take. Floyd Cramer's introductory piano figure was played on guitar by Harrison, who was also an enormous fan of Alexander. "I remember having several records by him, and John sang three or four of his songs," he said in the Anthology. "Arthur Alexander used a peculiar drum pattern, which we tried to copy, but we couldn't quite do it, so in the end, we invented something quite bizarre but equally original." By Take 3, the song was complete.

8:45–9:00 p.m.: "Boys."

The prevailing industry ethos of the time dictated that every pop group had to have a frontman, but Martin, to the foursome's everlasting gratitude, refused to make it First Name and the Beatles. In doing so, he cemented the idea of the band as a unified collective, and not merely hired backing. The group took this democratic notion even further by giving each member his own lead vocal spot on the album. For Starr's turn, they chose "Boys," a Shirelles B side he'd been performing since his pre-Beatles days in Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. According to McCartney, the number "was a fan favorite with the crowd. And it was great – though if you think about it, here's us doing a song and it was really a girls' song. 'I talk about boys now!' Or it was a gay song. But we never even listened. It's just a great song."

As he did onstage, Starr sang and played at the same time, which any drummer can attest isn't the easiest thing to do. But instinct took hold, and he got it on the first try, making it the only song of the day to be wrapped in a single take. "We didn't rehearse for our first album," the drummer recalled. "In my head, it was done ‘live.' We did the songs through first, so they could get some sort of sound on each one. Then we had to just run, run, run them down."

9:00– 9:30 p.m.: "Chains."

Originally recorded by the Cookies, an R&B girl group out of New York City, "Chains" showcased the Beatles' formidable ability to unearth deep-cut American pop gems, then a rarity in their British homeland. "With our manager, Brian Epstein, having a record shop, NEMS, we did have the opportunity to look around a bit more than the casual buyer," McCartney explained in the liner notes to On Air – Live at the BBC Volume 2. Harrison was particularly taken with "Chains," purchasing the record in December 1962 and claiming the lead vocal as his own. The band recorded two complete versions of the song, with the first deemed the best.

A look at the label on the Cookies' single, which the Beatles no doubt inspected closely, would have revealed that "Chains" was written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King, the husband-and-wife duo who were a huge inspiration to the Beatles' own songwriting partnership. Lennon famously expressed his desire to be "the Goffin-King of England" with McCartney – as long as his name came first. When the initial pressing of Please Please Me credited the originals to "McCartney-Lennon," the rhythm guitarist quickly pulled some strings. The move rankled his collaborator and became something of a sore spot in years to come. "I wanted it to be McCartney-Lennon, but John had the stronger personality, and I think he fixed things with Brian before I got there," McCartney related in Many Years From Now. "That was John's way. He was one and a half years older than me, and at that age, it meant a little more worldliness. I remember going to a meeting and being told, 'We think you should credit the songs to Lennon-McCartney.' I said, 'No, it can't be Lennon first, how about McCartney-Lennon?' They all said, 'Lennon-McCartney sounds better, it has a better ring. . . .' I had to say, 'All right, sod it.'"

9:30–10:00 p.m.: "Baby It's You"

The next number the band attempted was penned by Burt Bacharach and Mack David – elder brother of the composer's better-known lyricist, Hal. The second Shirelles song the Beatles' recorded that day, "Baby It's You" also featured contributions from Luther Dixon (credited as Barney Williams), the co-writer of "Boys." Three takes were recorded, one of which was a false start, with the final one labeled as the best. The track would be completed nine days later, on February 20th, when Martin tracked himself playing celeste over Harrison's guitar solo.

Lennon's voice, which had been deteriorating all day, was beginning to show major cracks, notably on the "Don't want nobody, nobody" section. Fortunately, he had only one song left to do, but it would take everything he had.

10:15–10:30 p.m.: "Twist and Shout."

It was now 10:00, the time when the studio officially closed for the night. For all of their superhuman stamina that day, the Beatles (discounting the aborted "Hold Me Tight") were still one song short. The following morning, they were due to make the long trek to the north of England for a booking in Oldham, Lancashire. They had to get it now. Martin, as he often would for the Beatles, decided to bend the rules slightly and sneak in one more session after hours. But what would they play?

"At about 10 p.m., we all retired to the studio canteen for coffee and biscuits, where we and George Martin began an earnest discussion about a suitable number for the last track," McCartney remembered. Also present was journalist Alan Smith, who was reporting on the sessions for NME. "We all crowded in there, and I think it was George who said, 'What are we gonna do for the last number?'" Smith said in a BBC documentary. "I said, 'I think I heard you do "La Bamba" on the radio a few weeks ago.' McCartney looked a bit blank, and then he said, 'You mean "Twist and Shout"!' I said, 'Yeah, "Twist and Shout."'" The idea was instantly accepted.

On visits to the Cavern, Martin had witnessed firsthand the song's power to bring down the house. "John absolutely screamed it," he recalled. "God alone knows what he did to his larynx each time he performed it because he made a sound rather like tearing flesh. That had to be right on the first take because I knew perfectly well that if we had to do it a second time, it would never be as good." Yet as they tuned up one final time that night in Studio 2, there was a very real question of whether he could manage it at all. "By this time all their throats were tired and sore," Norman Smith told Mark Lewisohn. "It was 12 hours since we had started working. John's, in particular, was almost completely gone, so we really had to get it right first time. John sucked a couple more Zubes, had a bit of a gargle with milk and away we went." Stripping off his shirt, he stepped up to the microphone.

The 22-year-old threw back his head and emitted a wail that, half a century later, still evokes winces of pain along with the involuntary head bob. "I couldn't sing the damn thing – I was just screaming," he admitted to Rolling Stone in 1970. "The last song nearly killed me," he said later. "My voice wasn't the same for a long time after. Every time I swallowed, it was like sandpaper. I was always bitterly ashamed of it because I could sing it better than that. But now it doesn't bother me. You can hear that I'm just a frantic guy doing his best." The utter passion and total commitment made up for the wavering pitch and occasional cracks, which add flawed beauty to the song. In solidarity, the other Beatles played with an intensity that was all the more impressive given the grueling day behind them. Starr attacked the drums with a primal fury, while McCartney and Harrison bolstered their flagging singer with airtight harmonies and encouraging war whoops. "He knew his voice had been going all day, and he could only give it one or two goes, and it would just rip it – which it did," said McCartney. "You can hear it on the record. But it was a pretty cool performance." The final seconds of the song, which eventually closed the Beatles' debut, capture a joyous "Hey!" – McCartney's spontaneous salute to his mate.

A second take was briefly attempted, but there wasn't much point. Lennon gave it all the first time around. "It was good enough for the record, and it needed that linen-ripping sound," said Martin. The Beatles' "Twist and Shout" was released with no edits, no overdubs, and no second chances.

10:30–10:45 p.m.: Playback

"At the end of the recording, George Martin looked down from the control room and said in amazement, 'I don't know how you do it. We've been here recording all day and the longer you go on, the better you get!'" McCartney recalled. With 14 songs in the can, there was nothing left to do but step back and admire their work. At half past 10, the Beatles climbed the stairs from the studio floor to the control room for the chance to listen to their debut album for the first time. "Waiting to hear that LP played back was one of our most worrying experiences," Lennon said in 1963. "We're perfectionists: If it had come out any old way, we'd have wanted to do it all over again. As it happens, we were very happy with the result."

McCartney concurred. "This album was one of the main ambitions in our lives," he said. "We felt that it would be a showcase for the group, and it was tremendously important for us that it sounded bang on the button. As it happened, we were pleased. If not, sore throats or not, we'd have done it all over again. That was the mood we were in. It was break or bust for us."

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WE DON’T GET FOOLED AGAIN, NO NO!

Paul McCartney Admits Beatles Planned Death Hoax

by Bruce Spizer.

While on a recent quick vacation in New Orleans, Paul McCartney let his guard down and admitted what some Beatles fans have suspected for years. He confirmed that the “Paul is dead” clues found in several Beatles album covers and songs were deliberately planted by the group as part of an elaborate scheme dating back to the summer of 1966.

According to McCartney, the plan was formulated by manager Brian Epstein. “Brian dropped by the studio to hear the playback of our latest single, ‘Paperback Writer.’ He didn’t like it one bit. ‘Not a love song,’ he said. He was concerned that the press and our fans wouldn’t get it. He told us, ‘People want love songs. They won’t spend money for a song about a novel writer. You boys are gonna blow it with this one.’ But by this time, we were running the show, not Brian. We insisted that ‘Paperback Writer’ would be our next single and told him that the song represented the new direction our songwriting was going in.”

When contacted in London, former Beatles press agent Tony Barrow confirmed Brian’s concerns. “Brian was into traditional love songs. He had told Paul to come up with another ‘Yesterday’ or ‘Michelle’ for the next single. Imagine his shock when he heard ‘Paperback Writer’ and ‘Rain.’ Not only were they not love songs, but they were so loud! We didn’t know it at the time, but the Beatles had recorded the first heavy metal single. Not exactly ‘Till There Was You’ or ‘A Taste Of Honey.’ I was worried, too. I wondered, ‘Had the boys gone too far this time?'”

Brian became even more concerned when he imagined an album full of unconventional songs. While a fan might take a chance on a single, an album purchase was a big thing in those days. Due to its higher price, youngsters, particularly those in the U.K., were very careful about buying albums. That is why the Beatles often issued an EP from an album containing four of its best tracks. So Brian came up with a plan to help sell albums in the event he was right about the dangerous new direction the group was heading in. Paul explained, “When I told him our future albums would be dominated by songs about interesting people and places, his heart sank. He didn’t think people would buy such albums and came up with this great idea to push sales in the event he was right and we were wrong. The idea was that we would plant clues in our songs and album covers that one of us had died in a car wreck. If after a few albums, our records weren’t selling well, we’d leak out word about the clues and let our fans and the press take over. People would buy the albums to see and hear the clues. We thought, ‘Wow, that’s an incredible idea!’ We realized it would be great fun to have all those clues sitting there undiscovered until people started going nuts looking for them all.”

Tony Barrow also thought the plan was brilliant. “Nothing re-energizes a singer’s career like his death. Do you really think Buddy Holly would have been so famous had he not died in that plane crash? Same for Richie Valens and certainly that one-hit wonder Big Bopper with his ‘Chantilly Lace’ song. And how about Otis Redding? He never had a number one hit till after he died in a plane crash. The fact that Brian came up with a car crash shows his genius. Airplane crashes were the norm.”

Having sold the group on the idea, the Beatles had to decide which one of them was to “die.” Brian wanted the victim to be Ringo because he was the most popular Beatle in the all-important U.S. market, but the drummer wanted nothing to do with it. Tony Barrow recalls, “Ringo flat out refused to be the one. He said, ‘Being painted red in a movie is one thing, but pretending to be dead’s another. I’m superstitious. Those clues might make it happen.’ Brian was disappointed because he knew Ringo was the most sympathetic Beatle. You know Ringo got more mail from America than the other members of the group combined.” [Author’s Note: Ringo was unavailable for comment.]

After Ringo turned down the “opportunity” to die, the honor of being a dead Beatle was up for grabs. According to Paul, “George said right away he didn’t feel comfortable faking his death. But it sure got him thinking. A few days later he showed up at a session with a new song called ‘The Art Of Dying.’ We didn’t think it was that good a song, so we never recorded it. George later improved the lyrics and included it on his first album.”

Paul’s recollections are backed by the original lyrics to the song, which appear in George’s “I Me Mine” book. The 1966 version of the song referred to Brian Epstein, who was the mastermind behind the death clues. It contained the line “Then nothing Mr. Epstein can do will keep me here with you.”

With Ringo and George not willing to “die” for the good of the group, it came down to John and Paul, with both thinking it would be fab to be “dead.” Paul recalls, “John wanted to be the dead Beatle, but this time I didn’t cave in to John like I did on the songwriter credits. I thought it should be me because I was the second most popular Beatle. Brian agreed it should be me because he was worried that once the clues became known, people might think it was a John practical joke if John was supposedly dead. But me…Brian thought, ‘No one would suspect Paul for rigging his own death. They think John’s the clever one.’ So I got to die.”

A few days after the “Paperback Writer” listening session, the group was at Brian’s office when photographer Bob Whitaker dropped by with the pictures from the butcher session. Brian asked Whitaker to shoot a picture of Paul in steamer trunk to symbolize his lying dead in a coffin. Paul picks up the story. “Bob thought it was too direct, so he suggested we stand the truck upwards and have me sit in it with the other standing around. That way, it would only look like I was lying in a coffin if the cover was turned sideways. Bob had Ringo place his hand on the trunk lid like he was closing the coffin. Brilliant! Brian told us to throw some clues into our songs. Right away John came up with ‘I’m Only Sleeping,’ as if ‘Paul isn’t dead, he’s only sleeping.’ Pretty subtle. Most people missed that clue, and that was one of the first!”

The “coffin trunk” photo was sent to Capitol to serve as the cover for the American album “Yesterday And Today.” But when Brian saw the cover mock-up, he began having second thoughts about using the photo so early in the game. He was concerned that people might suspect Paul was dead a lot sooner than the group wanted to clues to be discovered. So Brian sent Capitol the butcher photo, knowing that it might ultimately be rejected, but at least it would deflect attention away from the provocative coffin trunk cover. The plan worked to perfection with the Butcher cover causing so much controversy that when it was “replaced” by the trunk cover, no one noticed it showed Paul lying in a coffin!

One of the casualties of the plan was Robert Freeman’s unused cover for “Revolver.” Paul explains that, “For ‘Revolver,’ Robert Freeman came up with a great cover image, but there was no death clue in it. I asked Klaus [Voormann] to do a pen and ink with a photo collage so we could throw in some clues. I had him place an image of my face in my ear. That represented a ‘beetle’ crawling out of the ear of my buried corpse. You know, insects get into coffins and mix with the dead bodies, crawling through eye sockets, ear openings and the like. Very creepy and very subtle. And the other clue came from Klaus drawing my face in a side profile looking to the left. The others were drawn looking forward. When you turn the cover on its side, I’m looking upward, just like I’d appear on a morgue slab or if I were buried underground. We really were into having clues appear when you turned our covers sideways. I’m surprised nobody caught those ‘Revolver’ clues.”

According to Tony Barrow, there was one other clue planted on “Revolver.” “John had this really weird song that had no title, so he called it ‘Mark I.’ Later he came up with ‘The Void,’ to symbolize the void left in the group by Paul’s death. Ringo thought that was too subtle, so he came up with the perfect phrase for describing the direction the group would go in if Paul really were dead. And that was ‘Tomorrow Never Knows.’ Ringo was great at stuff like that.”

By the time the Beatles recorded “Sgt. Pepper,” the plan really took off. Tony Barrow recalls, “Brian thought ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ was way out there. You can imagine his fear of an entire album of songs like that. He was terrified that Sgt. Pepper would be viewed as pretentious nonsense! He told the boys to throw in a bunch of clues on that one!”

The first song recorded for “Sgt. Pepper” was “Strawberry Fields Forever,” though it ended up being used as a single. At the end of the song, John was supposed to repeat “I buried Paul” several times, but that was too obvious, so instead he said “Cranberry sauce” and then slurred his words so that “I buried Paul” sounded like “I’m very bored.” The plan worked as it took over two years before anyone realized what he was really saying.

Later songs also had clues. Paul admitted that “She’s Leaving Home” contained the time the car wreck supposedly occurred-“Wednesday morning at five o’clock as the day begins.” The line “Meeting a man from the motor trade” tied in the motor vehicle. And, of course, “A Day In The Life” was about a car crash. According to Paul, “The drug references were just a smoke-screen to deflect attention away from the car crash, you know. ‘He blew his mind out in a car’ could mean his head was crushed or he was doing drugs. Take your pick.”

The cover was full of clues: the crashing car; Paul’s bass made of flowers; Paul having his back to the camera on the back cover; the hand over Paul’s head; and the infamous “O.P.D.” patch on Paul’s uniform, which was McCartney’s favorite Pepper clue. “We had to work hard on that one. Someone told John that in America the letters OPD stood for ‘Officially Pronounced Dead.’ I remembered I had this patch with the letters “OPP,” which I got in Canada. I think it stands for Ontario Police Precinct or something like that. So I got the idea to put the patch on my uniform’s sleeve and shoot the picture so that the lower part of the second ‘P’ would not be visible, thus making it look like ‘OPD.’ I was quite pleased with the way it came out.”

Although the sales of “Revolver” and “Pepper” made Brian realize that the clues probably weren’t needed to sell records, the group kept creating more and more clues. According to Paul, “It was so neat coming up with clues that we kept doing them even though we never thought they’d be needed to sell albums. It was great mischievous fun! When Brian died, we really went wild with it! For ‘Magical Mystery Tour,’ I wanted to wear a black flower on my jacket. The florist thought Alistair Taylor was nuts when he insisted they send us a black carnation. We became worried people would catch on when they saw the ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ booklet because the clues were so obvious. The 4 or 5 musicians, the “I was” sign. But no one caught on.”

Paul stated that placing the clues in the songs was even more fun than the visual images. “Ringo had this old song, ‘Don’t Pass Me By,’ which we had refused to record for years. But I realized it could be used for a clue. I gave him the line ‘You were in a car crash and you lost your hair’ And we did great stuff with backwards tape loops and mumbling. John going ‘Paul is a dead man, miss him, miss him.'”

Some of the clues were easy and obvious. John’s “Glass Onion” even told the fans what was going on with its line “And here’s another clue for you all, the Walrus was Paul.” But some were quite intricate.

According to Paul, the toughest one was “Revolution 9.” “We had to come up with a phrase to go ‘Number 9’ when you played it backwards. Our plan was to have it go ‘Number 9’ on the record, but when you played it backwards it would sound like ‘Paul is dead.’ When we recorded ‘Paul is dead’ and played it backwards, it didn’t go ‘Number 9.’ It sounded more like ‘Pythagorian Theorem.’ The phrase ‘Macca is dead’ sounded like ‘Thermo nuclear’ when we played it backwards. We experimented for hours until Alan Parsons came up with ‘Turn me on dead man.’ When we reversed the tape, it sounded like he was saying ‘Number 9, number 9.’ So that’s how we did it.”

Abbey Road engineer Alan Parsons remembers the session well. “We spent hours recording different phrases until I lucked into ‘Turn me on dead man.’ When I played the tape backwards and heard ‘Number 9,’ well, it was one of the greatest moments of my life! We were all sworn to secrecy about the clues, but now that Paul’s let the cat out the bag, I can talk about it. I later recorded my own song about looking for clues, ‘Eye In The Sky.'”

The last batch of clues were planted on the album cover to “Abbey Road,” which was designed by Paul. McCartney came up with the idea to stage his own funeral. George, in the role of the grave digger, dressed in work clothes. Ringo, the funeral director, wore a black suit. John, the angel, wore white. Paul was barefoot, as it is the custom in several cultures to bury people without their shoes. In a subtle touch, the left-handed McCartney held a cigarette in his right hand. This was to imply that the Paul who had been with the group since mid-1966 was a right-handed imposter.

Paul recalls the other major “Abbey Road” clue with fondness. “I’ve always liked puns, so I wanted to have a Volkswagon Beetle represent me. Alistair Taylor arranged for a friend of his to park his VW Beetle on the street by the studio. Alistair and I placed a special license tag we had made the night before on the car. It said ’28 IF,’ meaning that I would have been 28 if I had lived. Unfortunately, I out-thought myself on that one. I was only 27 at the time, but I told Alistair to paint it as 28 because I didn’t think “Abbey Road” would come out until I was 28. That’s because I was sure that the “Get Back” album would come out first. By the time we decided to put out “Abbey Road” first, I had forgotten about that clue, so we didn’t have the picture altered to have the tag read ’27 IF.'”

When John told the others he was quitting the group, Paul began thinking it was time to expose the clues. “I was always nervous before a record came out, you know. Would people like it? And, in this case, what if word leaked out that John had quit? We were all worried that the album would bomb, and when word spread that John was out, we’d be forgotten. No one would buy our latest LP or our old records. The clincher was a pair of bad reviews published in ‘The New York Times’ and ‘Rolling Stone.’ I thought, oh sh*t, no one likes the long medley on side two. So I had Mal [Evans] go to Detroit and tell some college kids about the clues. One of the guys phoned in some of the clues to a radio station there. That was all it took.”

Once people started looking for clues, they were easy to spot. The American press was fascinated with the story. Brian’s plan worked to perfection. Not only did sales for “Abbey Road” take off, but people began buying “Sgt. Pepper,” “Magical Mystery Tour” and “The White Album” to see and hear the clues. Paul hid away at his farm in Scotland to further fuel the hoax. When a reporter from “Life” magazine finally caught up with him, Paul dead-panned, “If I were dead, I’d be the last to know.”

The Beatles and their inner circle kept the clue caper a secret for over thirty years. Not only do we now know that the Beatles deliberately planted the clues, but we also know that it was part of a brilliant marketing plan formulated by manager Brian Epstein back in 1966. As for why Paul finally revealed the secrets behind the scheme, we may never know if it was an accidental slip up on his part or a plan to reignite sales of the Beatles catalog.

Bruce Spizer is a well-known Beatles author and historian who has not only written a series of critically acclaimed books on the group’s American records, but also has been predictable to tell a tall tale or two for April Fool’s Day. This article originally appeared in the April 1, 2004 issue of Goldmine Magazine.

Please feel free to leave any comments or corrections and share these articles plus the blog's website with your friends, especially Beatles’ fans. You and they might also enjoy knowing more about my Love Songs CD and my novel, BEATLEMANIAC. Just click on the “My Shop” tab near the top of this page for full details.

JOHN LENNON DIDN’T REALLY SAY EVERYTHING HE SAID.

Reporter Maureen Cleave, a good friend of John Lennon's, wrote a personality article about him in the March 4th, 1966 edition of the London Evening Standard. Cleave's piece was intended to present a portrait of the behind-the-scenes Lennon, and was entitled 'How Does A Beatle Live? John Lennon Lives Like This.' The article contained a number of Lennon musings, remarks and random thoughts from a recent conversation she had with him at his home in Weybridge, including John's personal view of the current state of religion: "Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that; I'm right, and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now. I don't know which will go first, rock 'n' roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me."

A separate article with different content, including portions of the Jesus quote out of context from the original article, was published in the American teen fanzine 'Datebook' just before the Beatles' 1966 American tour.

Word-of-mouth rumors in America about John Lennon's Jesus quote spread quickly among anti-Beatle factions, even further out of context, as the ridiculous egocentric headline: 'John says Beatles are bigger than Jesus.' The outrage and reaction mostly seemed to be coming from the 'bible belt' in America.

John would later remark during a press conference in Chicago on August 12th during the Beatles' 1966 North American tour, "We could've just sort of hidden in England and said, 'We're not going, we're not going!' You know, that occurred to me when I heard it all. I couldn't remember saying it. I couldn't remember the article. I was panicking, saying, 'I'm not going at all,' you know. But if they sort of straighten it out, it will be worth it, and good."

Lennon continued, "When it came out in England it was a bit of a blab-mouthed saying anyway... A few people wrote into the papers, and a few wrote back saying, 'So what, he said that. Who is he anyway,' or they said, 'So, he can have his own opinion.' And then it just vanished. It was very small. But... you know, when it gets over here, and then it's put into a kid's magazine, and just parts of it or whatever was put in, it just loses its meaning or its context immediately... and everybody starts making their own versions of it." John would be asked many times during the 1966 tour to clarify what he had intended to say. Lennon explained in Chicago: "My views are only from what I've read or observed of Christianity and what it was, and what it has been, or what it could be. It just seems to me to be shrinking. I'm not knocking it or saying it's bad. I'm just saying it seems to be shrinking and losing contact."

In some cities, reporters would ask Lennon to explain the Jesus comment repeatedly -- even multiple times within a single press conference -- baiting him to become upset or to say something even further inflammatory. Knowing their game, John kept his cool.

The public outcry against Lennon had been coming from a rather small minority of the population, but once the national media fanned the flames as much as they were able, reports of negative public reaction made it appear more widespread than it really was. For the minority of Americans who moved from religious outrage to action, the fallout did involve Beatle record burnings arranged by Christian radio stations, Ku Klux Klan protests, and anonymous death threats. It also gave the older generation a sense of vindication that the Beatles were somehow bad role models for the youth of America.

With some hindsight perspective, John clarified the remark perhaps best during his December 1966 Look magazine interview: "I said we were more popular than Jesus, which is a fact. I believe Jesus was right, Buddha was right, and all of those people like that are right. They're all saying the same thing, and I believe it. I believe what Jesus actually said -- the basic things he laid down about love and goodness -- and not what people say he said."

John's then-wife Cynthia would state years later in her 1978 book, A Twist Of Lennon: "His views were totally misconstrued. John was very bewildered and frightened by the reaction that his words created in the States. Beatle albums were burnt in a mass orgy of self-righteous indignation. Letters arrived at the house full of threats, hate, and venom."

The original London Evening Standard article is presented below in its entirety, featuring the quote in its original context.

HOW DOES A BEATLE LIVE? JOHN LENNON LIVES LIKE THIS - by Maureen Cleave.

Article Copyright © 1966 London Evening Standard

On a hill in Surrey... a young man famous, loaded and waiting for something

It was this time three years ago that The Beatles first grew famous. Ever since then, observers have anxiously tried to gauge whether their fame was on the wax or on the wane; they foretold the fall of the old Beatles, they searched diligently for the new Beatles (which was as pointless as looking for the new Big Ben).

At last, they have given up; The Beatles' fame is beyond question. It has nothing to do with whether they are rude or polite, married or unmarried, 25 or 45; whether they appear on Top of the Pops or do not appear on Top of the Pops. They are well above any position even a Rolling Stone might jostle for. They are famous in the way the Queen is famous. When John Lennon's Rolls-Royce, with its black wheels and its black windows, goes past, people say: 'It's the Queen,' or 'It's The Beatles.' With her they share the security of a stable life at the top. They all tick over in the public esteem-she in Buckingham Palace, they in the Weybridge-Esher area. Only Paul remains in London.

The Weybridge community consists of the three married Beatles; they live there among the wooded hills and the stockbrokers. They have not worked since Christmas, and their existence is secluded and curiously timeless. "What day is it?" John Lennon asks with interest when you ring up with news from outside. The fans are still at the gates, but The Beatles see only each other. They are better friends than ever before.

Ringo and his wife, Maureen, may drop in on John and Cyn; John may drop in on Ringo; George and Pattie may drop in on John and Cyn, and they might all go round to Ringo's, by car of course. Outdoors is for holidays.

They watch films; they play rowdy games of Buccaneer; they watch television till it goes off, often playing records at the same time. They while away the small hours of the morning making mad tapes. Bedtimes and mealtimes have no meaning as such. "We've never had time before to do anything but just be Beatles," John Lennon said.

He is much the same as he was before. He still peers down his nose, arrogant as an eagle, although contact lenses have righted the short sight that originally caused the expression. He looks more like Henry VIII than ever now that his face has filled out-he is just as imperious, just as unpredictable, indolent, disorganized, childish, vague, charming and quick-witted. He is still easy-going, still tough as hell. "You never asked after Fred Lennon," he said, disappointed. (Fred is his father; he emerged after they got famous.) "He was here a few weeks ago. It was only the second time in my life I'd seen him -- I showed him the door." He went on cheerfully: "I wasn't having him in the house."

His enthusiasm is undiminished, and he insists on its being shared. George has put him on to this Indian music. "You're not listening, are you?" he shouts after 20 minutes of the record. "It's amazing this -- so cool. Don't the Indians appear cool to you? Are you listening? This music is thousands of years old; it makes me laugh, the British going over there and telling them what to do. Quite amazing." And he switched on the television set.

Experience has sown few seeds of doubt in him: not that his mind is closed, but it's closed round whatever he believes at the time. "Christianity will go," he said. "It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that; I'm right, and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first -- rock 'n' roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me." He is reading extensively about religion.

He shops in lightning swoops on Asprey's these days and there is some fine wine in his cellar, but he is still quite unselfconscious. He is far too lazy to keep up appearances, even if he had worked out what the appearances should be-which he has not.

He is now 25. He lives in a large, heavily paneled, heavily carpeted, mock Tudor house set on a hill with his wife Cynthia and his son Julian. There is a cat called after his aunt Mimi, and a purple dining room. Julian is three; he may be sent to the Lycde in London. "Seems the only place for him in his position," said his father, surveying him dispassionately. "I feel sorry for him, though. I couldn't stand ugly people even when I was five. Lots of the ugly ones are foreign, aren't they?"

We did a speedy tour of the house, Julian panting along behind, clutching a large porcelain Siamese cat. John swept past the objects in which he had lost interest: "That's Sidney" (a suit of armour); "That's a hobby I had for a week" (a room full of model racing cars); "Cyn won't let me get rid of that" (a fruit machine). In the sitting room are eight little green boxes with winking red lights; he bought them as Christmas presents but never got round to giving them away. They wink for a year; one imagines him sitting there till next Christmas, surrounded by the little winking boxes.

He paused over objects he still fancies; a huge altar crucifix of a Roman Catholic nature with IHS on it; a pair of crutches, a present from George; an enormous Bible he bought in Chester; his gorilla suit.

"I thought I might need a gorilla suit," he said; he seemed sad about it. "I've only worn it twice. I thought I might pop it on in the summer and drive round in the Ferrari. We were all going to get them and drive round in them, but I was the only one who did. I've been thinking about it, and if I didn't wear the head it would make an amazing fur coat-with legs, you see. I would like a fur coat, but I've never run into any."

One feels that his possessions -- to which he adds daily-have got the upper hand; all the tape recorders, the five television sets, the cars, the telephones of which he knows not a single number. The moment he approaches a switch it fuses; six of the winking boxes, guaranteed to last till next Christmas, have gone funny already. His cars-the Rolls, the Mini-Cooper (black wheels, black windows), the Ferrari (being painted black) -- puzzle him. Then there's the swimming pool, the trees sloping away beneath it. "Nothing like what I ordered," he said resignedly. He wanted the bottom to be a mirror. "It's an amazing household," he said. "None of my gadgets really work except the gorilla suit -- that's the only suit that fits me."

He is very keen on books, will always ask what is good to read. He buys quantities of books, and these are kept tidily in a special room. He has Swift, Tennyson, Huxley, Orwell, costly leather-bound editions of Tolstoy, Oscar Wilde. Then there's Little Women, all the William books from his childhood; and some unexpected volumes such as Forty-One Years In India, by Field Marshal Lord Roberts, and Curiosities of Natural History, by Francis T. Buckland. This last-with its chapter headings 'Ear-less Cats', 'Wooden-Legged People,' 'The Immortal Harvey's Mother' is right up his street.

He approaches reading with a lively interest untempered by too much formal education. "I've read millions of books," he said, "that's why I seem to know things." He is obsessed by Celts. "I have decided I am a Celt," he said. "I am on Boadicea's side -- all those bloody blue-eyed blondes chopping people up. I have an awful feeling wishing I was there -- not there with scabs and sores but there through reading about it. The books don't give you more than a paragraph about how they lived; I have to imagine that."

He can sleep almost indefinitely, is probably the laziest person in England. "Physically lazy," he said. "I don't mind writing or reading or watching or speaking, but sex is the only physical thing I can be bothered with anymore." Occasionally he is driven to London in the Rolls by an ex-Welsh guardsman called Anthony; Anthony has a mustache that intrigues him.

The day I visited him he had been invited to lunch in London, about which he was rather excited. "Do you know how long lunch lasts?" he asked. "I've never been to lunch before. I went to a Lyons the other day and had egg and chips and a cup of tea. The waiters kept looking and saying: 'No, it isn't him, it can't be him.'"

He settled himself into the car and demonstrated the television, the folding bed, the refrigerator, the writing desk, the telephone. He has spent many fruitless hours on that telephone. "I only once got through to a person," he said, "and they were out."

Anthony had spent the weekend in Wales. John asked if they'd kept a welcome for him in the hillside and Anthony said they had. They discussed the possibility of an extension for the telephone. We had to call at the doctor's because John had a bit of sea urchin in his toe. "Don't want to be like Dorothy Dandridge," he said, "dying of a splinter 50 years later." He added reassuringly that he had washed the foot in question.

We bowled along in a costly fashion through the countryside. "Famous and loaded" is how he describes himself now. "They keep telling me I'm all right for money but then I think I may have spent it all by the time I'm 40 so I keep going. That's why I started selling my cars; then I changed my mind and got them all back and a new one too.

"I want the money just to be rich. The only other way of getting it is to be born rich. If you have money, that's power without having to be powerful. I often think that it's all a big conspiracy, that the winners are the Government and people like us who've got the money. That joke about keeping the workers ignorant is still true; that's what they said about the Tories and the landowners and that; then Labour were meant to educate the workers, but they don't seem to be doing that anymore."

He has a morbid horror of stupid people: "Famous and loaded as I am, I still have to meet soft people. It often comes into my mind that I'm not really rich. There are really rich people, but I don't know where they are."

He finds being famous quite easy, confirming one's suspicion that The Beatles had been leading up to this all their lives. "Everybody thinks they would have been famous if only they'd had the Latin and that. So when it happens, it comes naturally. You remember your old grannie saying soft things like: 'You'll make it with that voice.'" Not, he added, that he had any old grannies.

He got to the doctor 2 3/4 hours early and to lunch on time but in the wrong place. He bought a giant compendium of games from Asprey's but having opened it he could not, of course, shut it again. He wondered what else he should buy. He went to Brian Epstein's office. "Any presents?" he asked eagerly; he observed that there was nothing like getting things free. He tried on the attractive Miss Hanson's spectacles.

The rumor came through that a Beatle had been sighted walking down Oxford Street! He brightened. "One of the others must be out," he said, as though speaking of an escaped bear. "We only let them out one at a time," said the attractive Miss Hanson firmly.

He said that to live and have a laugh were the things to do, but was that enough for the restless spirit?

"Weybridge," he said, "won't do at all. I'm just stopping at it, like a bus stop. Bankers and stockbrokers live there; they can add figures, and Weybridge is what they live in, and they think it's the end, they really do. I think of it every day -- me in my Hansel and Gretel house. I'll take my time; I'll get my real house when I know what I want."

"You see, there's something else I'm going to do, something I must do -- only I don't know what it is. That's why I go round painting and taping and drawing and writing and that, because it may be one of them. All I know is, this isn't it for me."

Anthony got him and the compendium into the car and drove him home with the television flickering in the soothing darkness while the Londoners outside rushed home from work.

Please feel free to leave any comments or corrections and share these articles plus the blog's website with your friends, especially Beatles’ fans. You and they might also enjoy knowing more about my Love Songs CD and my novel, BEATLEMANIAC. Just click on the “My Shop” tab near the top of this page for full details.

THE BEATLES SATISFY THEIR OBLIGATION TO UNITED ARTISTS. BUT FAB FOUR FANS WORLD WIDE ARE LEFT UNSATISFIED.

Close to forty-eight years ago (May 13th, 1970), the Beatles' final movie, Let It Be, received its premiere in American theaters. The film, shot in January 1969, had original intentions to air as a TV special called Get Back, featuring the group rehearsing for their first live show in over two years. The early rehearsals captured the group, along with soon-to-be Lennon’s wife Yoko Ono, clearly bored. Just McCartney alone showed any real enthusiasm for the new material. The first part of the film reveals the strain of the early morning sessions held in a cavernous soundstage at London's Twickenham film studios.

Producer George Martin recalled in The Beatles Anthology that the Let It Be project held great promise in the beginning: "They were going through a very, very revolutionary period at that time. And they were trying to think of something new. They did actually come up with a very good idea, which I thought was well worth working on; The wanted to write an album completely and rehearse it and then perform it in front of a large audience -- and for that to be a live album of new material. And we started rehearsing down at Twickenham film studios, and I went along with them."

George Harrison, who was the least invested member of the band in regards to returning to the stage, recalled the band's initial plan: "I think the original idea was to rehearse some new songs, and then we were going to pick a location and record the album of the songs in a concert. I suppose kinda like they do these days on Unplugged, except, you know, it wasn't to be unplugged. It was to do a live album."

Among the songs featured in the film are "Let It Be," "Get Back," "Don't Let Me Down," "Maxwell's Silver Hammer," "For You Blue," "Octopus' Garden," "I Me Mine," "Across The Universe," and "The Long And Winding Road," and covers of "Besame Mucho," "Shake, Rattle And Roll," and "Kansas City," among many others.

In 1970 John Lennon recalled the nearly month-long film shoot saying: "It was just a dreadful, dreadful feeling being filmed all the time. I just wanted them to go away. And we'd be there at eight in the morning, and you couldn't make music at eight in the morning, or 10, or whatever it was . . . in a strange place with people filming you and colored lights."

The tension between the group comes to light, especially during the sequence where Harrison and McCartney argue over Harrison's playing on the song "Two Of Us."

McCartney explained that unconsciously, the Beatles were actually telling the world that they were breaking up: "In fact what happened was when we got in there we showed how the breakup of a group works because we didn't realize that we were actually breaking up, you know, as it was happening."

The movie eases up considerably during the second half, when the filming moved to the group's new Apple basement studios, with the addition of keyboardist Billy Preston. A major climax of the film is the final sequence, when the Beatles play an impromptu set on the Apple headquarters rooftop, featuring "Get Back," "Dig A Pony," "I've Got A Feeling," "Don't Let Me Down," and "One After 909." Filmed on January 30th, 1969, captured the hasty, poorly planned and perhaps dishonorable farewell tribute as the band's final public performance.

Reviews for the film released a month after the group's breakup, were mixed, citing the sluggish and depressing nature of the film, as well as director Michael Lindsay-Hogg's sloppy editorial choices. But across the board, both critics and fans agreed on the power of the group's rooftop set helps the viewers appreciation toward the picture.

Author Ritchie Unterberger chronicled the prolonged Get Back/Let It Be sessions in his book, titled The Unreleased Beatles: "They had bitten off more than they could chew. You know, even before they assembled in January, the idea was, 'Let's get back to playing as a live band' -- pretty good idea. But then it was, 'Let's make it an album and a film, and we're going to make the album a film of us doing a concert of songs we've never recorded before.' It's kind of like trying to do too much at once. And then you're recording it -- the comparison I made in the book is kind of Nixon's 'The Watergate Tapes,' you have no idea that this stuff is going to come back to haunt you forever."]

Beatlefan magazine's executive editor Al Sussman saw the film within days of its premiere and was left speechless by the group's live swan song: "It was really depressing. But, what made it worthwhile was the rooftop. Because when I left that theater, I was this far off the ground. Despite the fact that we knew everything that happened afterward. Yeah, that saves the film."

Ken Mansfield, the former U.S. manager of Apple Records, was among the handful of insiders present at the rooftop concert that day. He recalled prior to the lunchtime gig walking in on the four Beatles who were using one of the Apple offices as a makeshift dressing room: "It was like walking in on a band, a nervous bunch of guys getting ready to do an audition. I don't know if it's because they hadn't played together, or whether they were trying to put the set together, but it was one of those kind of tense things where they were nervous. When we locked the doors upstairs, and the minute they started playing -- and all the. . . everything that was going down, all the stuff. It's like it all went away and I really believe in my mind that they forgot everything and they were what they were. They were the Beatles."

Let It Be earned the Beatles their only Academy Award when they won the 1970 Oscar for Best Original Song Score. Now, sit back and see for yourself what you’ve been reading about – the actual film waits for you here, just a click away: https://archive.org/details/Let_It_Be_1970_film

Please feel free to leave any comments or corrections and share these articles plus the blog's website with your friends, especially Beatles’ fans. You and they might also enjoy knowing more about my Love Songs CD and my novel, BEATLEMANIAC. Just click on the “My Shop” tab near the top of this page for full details.

BEATLES FIRST EVER VISIT TO THEIR IDEAL SHANGRI-LA, DETROIT, HOME OF MOTOWN.

Following their performance at the International Amphitheatre in Chicago, the Beatles and their entourage were flown to Detroit Michigan on September 6th 1964, as the 14th stop of their 1964 North American Tour.

The Motor City was the place of origin for the music the Beatles had professed to love in almost every interview and press conference -- The Detroit Sound, and the recording artists of the Tamla-Motown label.

The Beatles would perform two shows at Olympia Stadium. The press conference was held backstage at the Olympia between the two performances.

From here, the Beatles would fly from Detroit to Toronto as their 1964 North American Tour pressed onward.

DEREK TAYLOR: (to the press) "If anyone would like to raise their hand."

Q: "How do you like Detroit so far?"

JOHN: "Great."

PAUL: "What we've seen of it."

(laughter)

JOHN: "We see very little. The show, we enjoyed."

Q: "Is it a disappointment not to see it?"

JOHN: "No. We come here to play, not to see, you know."

PAUL: "We saw a bit of it though."

Q: "Does that noise out there go away with a little bit of cotton packed way deep in your ear so that the noise..."

JOHN & PAUL: "No."

JOHN: "We're used to it."

GEORGE: "We're immune to it."

Q: "It doesn't upset your musical balance?"

PAUL: "It sounds nice."

Q: "Which artist or musical group do you think has most influenced your music?"

JOHN: (jokingly) "Nicki Cuff."

PAUL: "Nicki Cuff, I'd say. No, uhh... American colored groups, mainly. And early Elvis Presley."

GEORGE: "In fact, The Detroit Sound."

JOHN: "In fact, yes."

GEORGE: "In fact, yeah. Tamla-Motown artists are our favorites. The Miracles."

JOHN: "We like Marvin Gaye."

GEORGE: "The Impressions, Marvin Gaye."

PAUL & GEORGE: "Mary Wells."

GEORGE: "The Exciters."

JOHN: "To name but eighty."

RINGO: "Chuck Jackson."

Q: "How many records have the Beatles sold?"

RINGO: "No idea."

JOHN & GEORGE: "We don't know."

JOHN: "It's a lot, somebody said."

Q: "What part of the film (A Hard Day's Night) did you enjoy making the most?"

JOHN & RINGO: "The bit in the field."

GEORGE: "And the bit in the bathroom. We had a laugh, didn't we. A laugh. We had a laugh, anyway."

Q: "Do the jellybeans bother the Beatles onstage?"

BEATLES: YES!"

JOHN: "It's awful."

PAUL: "It's worse when it's not really jellybeans. When it's... Once there was about 'that long' silver pin that they use for sticking on kilts in Scotland."

(giggles)

PAUL: "And it came flying through about two-hundred-mile-an-hour. Just missed me."

RINGO: "Very dodgy."

Q: "Is that an affirmation? Are they throwing it for you or against you?"

PAUL: "I think so."

JOHN: "And when they don't have the sweets they throw whatever they've got on them, which hurts."

Q: "Do you ever throw anything back?"

RINGO & JOHN: "No."

JOHN: "I think we did once."

Q: "Have you written the new screenplay yet?"

JOHN: "No. I'm not writing it. I'm having hard enough time trying to get to sleep."

Q: "With the exception of being onstage, after the performances are over do you socialize with each other or do you go your own separate ways?"

GEORGE: "Well, we can't go our own..."

Q: "Or is it like in the movie?"

JOHN: "It's like in the movie."

RINGO: "Yeah."

GEORGE: "We all go the same way, don't we."

PAUL: "Especially on tour, you know."

(laughter)

PAUL: "It wasn't a joke."

GEORGE: (to the others) "Well, they're drunk."

PAUL: "Of course it was a joke. Good joke, man."

Q: "With the jellybeans, do you think some of the kids should be ejected by the police when they do throw..."

BEATLES: "NO!"

PAUL: "That's stupid, you know."

GEORGE: "They should just confiscate the jellybeans at the gate."

JOHN: "Or just eat them."

PAUL: "Just ask 'em not to throw 'em. Throw streamers instead. We'll have a party."

JOHN: "Or balloons, or something light."

Q: "What reaction do you guys get individually when you see these kids crying in this hysteria?"

JOHN: "I don't know. If you're onstage, you're really thinking about what you're playing, you know."

GEORGE: "And it depends how bright the lights are."

JOHN: "Sometimes you couldn't see ANYTHING."

GEORGE: "Yeah."

PAUL: "The overall reaction's just one of being flattered. It's just nice to think that..."

GEORGE: "Or flattened."

PAUL: "You know, I don't think they're crying because they're unhappy. I hope not, anyway."

Q: "Do you guys think of yourselves as singers and romantic idols at the same time?"

(Beatles laugh)

JOHN: "We're just singers, you know. Or shouters, whatever you like to call it."

Q: "What do you think about all the psychologists that are giving..."

GEORGE: "Oh... rubbish."

Q: "...all these heavy, heavy definitions of what it all means?"

GEORGE: "A load of rubbish."

JOHN: "They've got nothing else to do, them fellas."

(laughter)

Q: "What are some of your talents? For instance, we know singing, we know music, we know writer, we know photography. What else do you do?"

JOHN: "I used to paint..."

GEORGE: "Acrobatics. All sorts of things."

JOHN: "...lousy."

Q: "Oh, I didn't hear what you said..."

JOHN: (comical voice) "Well, you missed it! Heh-heh heh-heh!" (snorts)

(laughter)

PAUL: (jokingly) "Oh, he's nasty today."

GEORGE: (laughs)

Q: "If you had a son, maybe some of you do..."

JOHN: "I have, I have."

PAUL: "He's got one."

JOHN: "I've got one like that."

Q: "...would you like him to grow up to be a Beatle?"

JOHN: "No. What's the point? It'll be all outdated when he grows up."

Q: "How long do you think it'll last?"

JOHN: "I haven't a clue."

PAUL: "It probably won't last THAT long though, will it?"

JOHN: "No."

GEORGE: "I mean, he's 38 now!"

(Beatles laugh)

Q: "Why did 'World Without Love' go to Peter and Gordon?"

JOHN: "Because when Paul and I were fiddlin' 'round it and they heard it, they sang it good. So we gave it to them."

Q: "They do a great job."

JOHN: "They're good, aren't they. The new one's out, too"

PAUL: "Yeah, the new one."

JOHN: "Get THAT."

PAUL: "At your local record stores. 'I Don't Want To See You Again.'"

DEREK TAYLOR: "'I Don't Want To See You Again,' Peter and Gordon."

PAUL: (jokingly) "That's not a plug, though."

Q: "Which one's idea was it to let the hair grow long?"

PAUL: "It wasn't..."

JOHN: "We always... We met each other with long hair, didn't we."

GEORGE: "Yes."

PAUL: "Well, it wasn't really THIS long, but it was longer than average. It wasn't just an idea that we suddenly got saying, you know, 'Haha, that'll be a gimmick.' In fact, we didn't even know it was a gimmick until somebody told us it was, you know. Somebody kept asking, you know... People from the press said 'What's with the hair?' 'It's like everybody else's, isn't it?' We were a bit stupid in those days."

Q: "Who are the fierce competitors of the Beatles?"

JOHN: "Elvis."

PAUL: "Sophie Tucker."

(laughter)

Q: "Does he still sell that many records?"

JOHN: "Yeah, and he does well, him. You know, he's not messing about."

Q: "Next to the Beatles, who is your favorite British group?"

GEORGE: "Animals."

JOHN & RINGO: "The Stones."

PAUL: " And The searchers."

Q: "The Animals opened at the Paramount in New York and it was half-empty."

JOHN: "Well, you see, nobody knows 'em yet. They'll know 'em. They're good."

PAUL: "Good group."

Q: "When the show is over for the day, and you guys head back to your apartment and houses, do you listen to record albums?"

JOHN: "Sometimes. Not very often."

Q: "What kind do you listen to?"

JOHN: "Rock and Roll."

PAUL: "Or the ones we were talking about before, especially the ones made here in Detroit."

Q: "But not (Count) Basie or (George) Shearing?"

BEATLES: "No."

GEORGE: "I've got a Shearing album, but you've got to be in a good mood to listen to him."

PAUL: "We're not very keen jazz fans. We like a bit of all kinds of music."

Q: "How about George Gershwin? Jerome Kearn? Cole Porter?"

JOHN: "They're okay, you know, but I don't go potty over them."

(laughter)

PAUL: "They're great, you know, but we like other things."

Q: "Have you had a chance to meet Elvis Presley, and if so, what was his reaction to you?"

JOHN: "We haven't met him. We'd like to, you know."

Q: "How about Mancini?"

JOHN: "Henry Mancini?"

PAUL: "He's great!"

GEORGE: "In fact, we met him in a nightclub in London, actually, though I think he never noticed."

DEREK TAYLOR: "Can we keep the noise down a bit? Can we have the noise down just a little bit at the back?"

Q: "I'd like to direct a question to Ringo. Is it true that you have stated you'd like to be a disc jockey if you were not in the Beatles?"

RINGO: "Umm, no. Someone said 'What were you gonna do when it's all finished,' and I said 'I don't know but it'd be good fun being a DJ.' And since then I've become a DJ, only by word of mouth, you know. SO any minute now you'll read, 'Ringo leaves to become a DJ' but it's not true."

Q: "Ringo, are you engaged?"

RINGO: "No, I'm not engaged. You only have to take somebody out and the marriage is off already, you don't stand a chance."

JOHN: (to Ringo) "You don't stand a chance, do ya."

Q: "How about you, John, when it's all over... do you have any plans?"

JOHN: "No, you know. No plans, no. Why plan?"

PAUL: "Well, you know, the only thing that really sounds like a plan is that John and I will probably carry on songwriting. But other than that, nobody's made any plans."

Q: "Fellas, I know Europe soccer is the big sport. Do you have any favorite sport here in America, such as Baseball or American football?"

JOHN & RINGO: "We don't like ANY sport."

PAUL: "Very unsporting, really. Smoking is a sport."

Q: "What do you think of the Dave Clark Five and the Rolling Stones?"

RINGO: "Well, the Rolling Stones are good."

JOHN: "We just remarked on that. We like the Stones, you know. Dave Clark's alright, but we prefer the Stones."

Q: "John, are you working on a new book yet?"

JOHN: "Yeah."

Q: "You are? Any idea when it will be out?"

JOHN: "Oh no, you know. (giggling) Just, when I finish it."

Q: "How do you compare American radio and British radio?"

GEORGE: "You can't compare it, really, because in England there's the BBC and then two commercial stations which are outside of Britain... outside of the zone. In America, in each city, they have about thirty. So you can't compare it."

RINGO: "It's much better over here."

JOHN: "It's more fun over here, though, the radio."

PAUL: "It's more exciting, the radio here."

DEREK TAYLOR: “Thank You, everyone, good day.”

Please feel free to leave any comments or corrections and share these articles plus the blog's website with your friends, especially Beatles’ fans. You and they might also enjoy knowing more about my Love Songs CD and my novel, BEATLEMANIAC. Just click on the “My Shop” tab near the top of this page for full details.