The work of the Beatles - one of the greatest bands in the history of modern music - and the personal lives of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and George Harrison over the years since the band's triumphant march around the world have been thoroughly explored. A gigantic array of materials about the Beatles can be safely called Beatleology, the science of the Beatles, by analogy with Beatlemania.
And yet, in the biography of the group and its members, one can still find not too replicated interesting, funny, and sometimes tragic facts.
1. From February 1961 to August 1963, the Beatles played 262 times on stage at a Liverpool club. The dynamics of the then fees of the four is impressive - from 5 pounds for the first concert to 300 for the last.
2. In 1962, Decca Records refused to sign a contract with the band, informing the musicians that guitar bands were already out of fashion.
3. The first Beatles album "Please Please Me" was recorded in 10 hours of studio time. Now, with powerful electronics and computers, it takes months to record an album. The Beatles themselves in 1966 only recorded the song “Strawberry Fields Forever” for exactly 30 days.
4. Now it is very difficult to imagine, but stage monitors did not exist in the era of Beatlemania. Performing in a large hall or at a stadium, the Beatles simply did not hear themselves in the screeching and singing of a crowd of thousands. According to the apt expression of one of the musicians, the organizers could well take wax figures on tours instead of living people.
5. For the 1964 Olympics, the Nippon Budokan sports complex was built in Tokyo, which became a Mecca for Japanese fans of sumo and martial arts. In 1966, one Beatles concert was enough to make the Budokan from the martial arts center Japan's premier concert venue.
The Beatles concert at the Nippon Budokan
6. The final chord of the song “A Day in the Life” Lennon, McCartney and 8 other musicians performed 10 hands on one piano. The chord sounded for 42 seconds.
7. Ringo Starr played almost all of the drum parts in the Beatles' songs. But there are also exceptions. Paul McCartney played drums on “Back in the U.S.S.R”, “The Ballad Of John And Yoko” and “Dear Prudence”.
8. The song “All You Need is Love”, first performed as the final composition of the world's first world television satellite show “Our World”, features bars from the song “Marseillaise”, some time in 1917, the former unofficial anthem of Russia.
9. Asteroids with numbers 4147 - 4150 are named by the full names of the members of the Liverpool four. And Lennon also has a personal lunar crater.
10. It's nothing more than an accident, but by the time the Beatles disbanded, they had recorded 13 albums. However, in what is considered the most complete collection of the group's albums, there are 15 of them - the "Magical Mystery Tour" and "Past Masters" - a collection of unreleased songs have been added to the authentic ones.
11. In fact, the Beatles can be considered the inventors of the video clip. During the band's most prolific period in 1965, the musicians felt sorry for the time spent on traditional weekly television shows. On the other hand, participating in these shows was a necessary part of promoting singles and albums. The Beatles began to record performances in their own studio and send the resulting clips to the offices of TV companies. Not free, of course.
12. According to Steven Spielberg's own admission, one of his manuals for editing films of everyday life is the Beatles picture “Magic Mystery Tour”. Having watched a very weak film, it is difficult to understand what its editing could teach the future master of cinema.
Young Steven Spielberg
13. In 1989, a high-profile trial between the former Beatles and EMI ended. The musicians accused the label of selling Beatles songs intended for non-commercial distribution for charity purposes. EMI's disregard for charity has earned McCartney, Starr, Harrison, and Yoko Ono $ 100 million each. Three years earlier, the unpaid royalties for the musical "Beatlemania" brought the band members only 10 million in all.
14. According to a fairly popular legend, Paul McCartney crashed in a car accident in 1967, and former police officer Bill Campbell took his place in the group. Supporters of the version have found a lot of confirmation of its truth in the design of the album covers and the lyrics of the Beatles' songs.
15. Ringo Starr was the first to step onto the land of the countries that were part of the USSR during the heyday of the Beatles. The drummer with his All-Starr Band gave concerts in both capitals of Russia in 1998.
16. At the suggestion of homegrown rock stars, Western music critics write in earnest about the Beatles' contribution to the destruction of the communist system. In their opinion, the “Great Four” influenced Makarevich, Grebenshchikov, Gradsky and other rock musicians so much that the USSR was simply doomed. However, back in the 1970s, journalists put Lennon on a par with Mao Zedong and John F. Kennedy.
17. The rivalry between the Beatles and the Rolling Stones existed and still exists exclusively in the heads of the band's managers and their fans. There were friendly relations between the musicians. In 1963, John and Paul attended a Rolling Concert. After the performance, Keith Richards and Mick Jagger complained to them that the time was right to release a single, and they were missing a song. McCartney had a melody for the song that Starr was supposed to play with the Beatles. After a little tweaking, right on the sidelines of the Rolling Stones' concert, they got the missing song. It was called “I Wanna Be Your Man”.
18. John Lennon's mother was special, far from Christian virtues. From the age of four, John lived and was raised in his aunt's house. The sisters did not break off the relationship, and John often met with his mother. After one of the meetings, a drunk driver knocked down Julia Lennon to death, which was a very hard blow for 18-year-old Lennon.
At Clapton's wedding
19. Eric Clapton secretly met for a long time with the wife of George Harrison Patti Boyd. This love triangle may well have revived the Beatles in 1979. Harrison was so grateful to Clapton, who saved him from the tedious divorce from Patty and “beating plates, squabbles and division of property,” that he decided to gather all four at Eric and Patty's wedding. Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney came and played a few songs, but Lennon ignored the invitation. John's death was one year away.
20. The misfortune in the person of Yoko Ono let John's wife Cynthia into the Lennon house. She took pity on the fragile Japanese woman who watched John at the door for hours and invited her to warm up. John brought the Japanese woman to the Beatles studio himself. Soon, Lennon's marriage and the Beatles ceased to exist.
