Think you're all caught up on facts about the Beatles? Think again! From a classic song inspired by a breakfast dish to an impromptu acid trip with a "wicked dentist," this is everything you didn't know about the legendary rock group.
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00:00Think you're all caught up on facts about the Beatles? Think again. From a classic song
00:04inspired by a breakfast dish to an impromptu acid trip with a wicked dentist, this is everything
00:09you didn't know about the legendary rock group.
00:12Which version of the Beatles do you like better? The clean-cut, suit-clad pop idols of the
00:16early to mid-60s? Or is your preference the colorful, bearded hippies who revolutionized
00:21all forms of rock? Here's a third option. The early Beatles were basically punks. Before
00:26Brian Epstein discovered them, the Beatles played in dingy nightclubs, clad in leather
00:30jackets and jeans, and were prone to smoking and swearing on stage. The band would even
00:34eat chicken between songs. For a while, it seemed like the group was destined to play
00:38tiny clubs forever. Then Epstein came along. He felt the group had potential but needed
00:42to be cleaned up.
00:43We didn't want to appear as a gang of idiots, and Brian suggested that we just sort of wore
00:49ordinary suits.
00:50Epstein had them ditch the leather and denim for freshly tailored suits, style their hairdos
00:54into something more fashionable, and even had them string their guitars correctly. Back
00:58then, the Beatles had excess guitar wire dangling from the tuning knobs, which looked messy
01:03and unprofessional. Epstein got them to stop doing that.
01:06The band wasn't thrilled with Epstein's ideas initially, but soon realized how helpful they
01:10could be. According to The Beatles Anthology, John Lennon said this about the band's decision
01:14to implement Epstein's changes. It was a choice of making it or still eating chicken on stage.
01:20It's well known that the Beatles smoked marijuana regularly. By the time they were into the
01:24more experimental phase of their recording career, one could practically catch a contact
01:28high from their music. They didn't start out that way, however. In fact, their initiation
01:32can be traced back to one night and one man.
01:34The night in question was August 28, 1964. According to Peter Brown and Stephen Gaines'
01:39The Love You Make, an insider's story of the Beatles, that's when Bob Dylan showed up in
01:43the Fab Four's hotel room and introduced them to the drug. The Beatles' manager Brian Epstein
01:48reluctantly admitted that none of them had ever really smoked weed before, which left
01:51Dylan a bit puzzled.
01:53According to Brown and Gaines' book, Dylan asked the band,
01:55"...but what about your song, the one about getting high?"
01:58He was referring, of course, to I Want to Hold Your Hand. This prompted John Lennon
02:02to tell Dylan that the lyric he had in mind was not actually,
02:04"'I get high,' but rather, "'I can't hide.'"
02:07From there, Dylan suggested that some grass was in order. On Dylan's insistence, the band
02:11smoked marijuana for the very first time, and by the end of the night, everyone was
02:15in stitches. Paul McCartney even insisted that the band's road manager, Mal Evans, follow
02:19him around with a pad and pencil to write down everything he said. Unfortunately, Evans'
02:23notes have since been lost, so we'll never know what deep thoughts McCartney might have
02:27had.
02:28Nearly every Beatles song not written by George Harrison or Ringo Starr gets credited to Lennon-McCartney.
02:33That's due to an early agreement between the two musicians and Brian Epstein, the band's
02:37manager. Epstein and Lennon proposed that any song Lennon or McCartney wrote would be
02:40credited to Lennon-McCartney.
02:42I always say to people that, out of, I think it's about 300 songs that John and I wrote
02:47together, we never had a dry session."
02:51According to McCartney, in a 2015 Esquire interview, he was initially fine with that,
02:55but suggested the credit be reversed if he were the primary writer. Epstein and Lennon
02:59supposedly agreed, but it never happened. Ultimately, any song they wrote, including
03:03songs with one writer, got the same Lennon-McCartney credit.
03:07Sometimes, McCartney seems fine with the arrangement. As he told Esquire,
03:10It's a good logo, like Rodgers and Hammerstein. Hammerstein and Rodgers doesn't work.
03:15Other times he's irked by being the second guy in the name, particularly on songs like
03:18Yesterday, which McCartney wrote entirely by himself. Furthermore, in the digital era,
03:23McCartney's name often gets cut from public view. He explained to Esquire,
03:26What starts to happen is a song by John Lennon and, you know how on your iPad there's never
03:30enough room? So it's kind of important who comes first.
03:34McCartney also told Esquire he tried to get his alternating credits idea going after the
03:37band broke up. Yoko allegedly said yes, but then backtracked for unexplained reasons.
03:42Decades later, we're not likely to see McCartney-Lennon on anything official anytime soon.
03:47During a 1964 tour of the United States, the Beatles showed up to play the Gator Bowl in
03:52Jacksonville, Florida, and were greeted with an unwelcome circumstance. The show that night
03:56was supposed to be segregated, meaning Black concertgoers on one side of the arena and
04:00white attendees on the other. Needless to say, having a segregated audience simply did
04:04not fly with the band.
04:06According to the BBC, John Lennon proclaimed,
04:07We never played to segregated audiences and we aren't going to start now. I'd sooner lose
04:12our appearance money.
04:13We don't like it if there's any segregation or anything because it just seems mad to me.
04:18As it turned out, the Beatles did play that night, but only after the audience was allowed
04:21to freely mingle. The experience apparently prompted them to rework their live performance
04:26contracts to specifically state that they would not play for segregated crowds.
04:30In a 2018 interview with GQ, McCartney described how years later, the civil rights movement
04:34in America inspired him to write one of the band's most iconic songs. He told the outlet,
04:39Blackbird,
04:40I was sitting around with my acoustic guitar and I'd heard about the civil rights troubles
04:43that were happening in the 60s, in Alabama, Mississippi, Little Rock in particular. It's
04:48hopefully a good message.
04:50One of the most beloved Beatles songs of all time, Yesterday is a simple yet poignant lament
04:54for lost love and memories of a better time. But it started life with perhaps the goofiest
04:59lyrics the band ever penned. According to Paul McCartney, the song's melody first appeared
05:03to him in a dream. He woke up, hit the right chords on a nearby piano, and had the building
05:07blocks for an all-time classic. But to ensure he didn't forget the song when he was fully
05:11awake, McCartney wrote some placeholder lyrics, calling the song Scrambled Eggs.
05:16McCartney wrote the following Dylan-esque couplet,
05:18Scrambled eggs, oh my baby, how I love your legs.
05:22McCartney didn't write any egg-related words after that because he caught the giggles and
05:25couldn't continue. That said, Scrambled Eggs soon became Yesterday, and the rest is music
05:30history.
05:31Decades later, McCartney finally got around to finishing his first draft poem. In 2013,
05:35he appeared on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, and the two sang a duet of the completed version
05:40of Scrambled Eggs.
05:42The Beatles are closely associated with LSD, but it wasn't a fellow rock star who introduced
05:46the drug to the band. In fact, the first time the band did LSD, it was because of a dentist.
05:51As a band recounted in The Beatles Anthology, in 1965, John Lennon, George Harrison, and
05:56both of their girlfriends were having dinner with a friend that Harrison called a wicked
05:59dentist. Without their knowledge or consent, the dentist slipped LSD into their coffee.
06:04Harrison felt the dentist had sexual adventures in mind and wanted them all in the right good
06:08mood for an orgy. But they had places to go and skipped out. Later, they started feeling
06:12the drug's effects. As Harrison recalled in The Beatles Anthology,
06:15It was something like a very concentrated version of the best feeling I'd ever had in
06:19my whole life. It was fantastic. I felt in love, not with anything or anybody in particular,
06:24but with everything. Everything was perfect, in a perfect light.
06:27Later, on the drive home, Lennon recalled freaking out over a red light he thought was
06:31a fire, while Harrison remembered concentrating on driving only 18 miles per hour. Once home,
06:36Lennon decided that Harrison's home was a submarine and he was piloting it. No word
06:40on whether the submarine was yellow, but probably.
06:44The ever-popular Get Back is mostly a fun song about hippies and the counterculture.
06:48But during the writing phase, the song was about something very different. It was a scathing
06:52satire of xenophobia. Informally dubbed No Pakistanis by fans, the original lyrics for
06:57Get Back featured lines like this,
06:59Who is that black man? Don't dig No Pakistanis, taking all the people's jobs.
07:04According to Salon, the song was meant to satirize anti-immigration sentiments. Taken
07:08at face value, it does seem like a sincere anti-immigrant song, so it's probably best
07:12that the group never completed or released this version.
07:15In a 1986 interview with Rolling Stone, McCartney made it clear that the song was a satire.
07:20He told the outlet,
07:21If there was any group that was not racist, it was the Beatles. I mean, all our favorite
07:25people were always black.
07:27During the Beatles' later years, John Lennon was extremely fond of opaque lyrics that were
07:31open to all manner of interpretation. Other than I Am the Walrus, there is probably no
07:35better example of this than Happiness is a Warm Gun, from 1968's The Beatles, also known
07:41as the White Album.
07:42Apparently, many fans have assumed the song to be about drugs, particularly heroin. However,
07:47Lennon said that the tune's inspiration was much more straightforward. It came from a
07:50magazine for gun enthusiasts.
07:52According to A Hard Day's Write, the story is behind every Beatles song. Producer George
07:56Martin had brought the magazine to the studio during the recording of the White Album. On
08:00the cover of the magazine was the phrase,
08:02"'Happiness is a warm gun in your hand.'"
08:04According to the book, Lennon remarked,
08:05I thought, what a fantastic thing to say. A warm gun means you just shot something.
08:11In 1968, the Beatles took an odd and highly publicized vacation to Rishikesh, India, to
08:16study transcendental meditation under Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
08:19I was really impressed with the Maharishi and was impressed because he was laughing
08:22all the time.
08:23The band members stayed for varying lengths of time. Ringo Starr left after a week and
08:27a half, Paul McCartney took off not long after, and John Lennon and George Harrison stuck
08:31it out for about two months. But while staying in India, all the Beatles were struck by inspiration,
08:36penning tunes that would appear on the White Album and Abbey Road.
08:39Some of the songs written during their India trip included Revolution, Rocky Raccoon, Blackbird,
08:44Back in the USSR, and Dear Prudence, which was inspired by Mia Farrow's sister, who was
08:49also present at the retreat. Even Ringo got into the act, writing the country-flavored
08:53Don't Pass Me By. The song was Ringo's first solo composition to make its way onto a Beatles
08:57album.
08:59It's not hyperbole to say that the Beatles are among the most influential musicians of
09:03the 20th century. Their songwriting, lyricism, and musicianship has been the subject of endless
09:07critical analysis, and has been emulated by countless artists. So it's kind of surprising
09:12that none of them could read or write music.
09:15This was disclosed by John Lennon in his 1980 interview with Playboy, when he was asked
09:19to give his opinion about Ringo Starr's musicianship. Lennon praised the musical contributions of
09:24Starr, calling him a damn good drummer, before adding that none of the band members were
09:27technical geniuses on their instruments. Lennon told the outlet,
09:30"...none of us are technical musicians. None of us could read music. None of us can write
09:34it. But as pure musicians, as inspired humans to make the noise, Paul and Ringo are as good
09:39as anybody."
09:40The Beatles famously stopped touring at the height of their popularity in 1966, thus allowing
09:45them to focus solely on writing and recording. There was, however, still a demand for them
09:49to appear on television to promote those recordings, something no one in the band wanted to do.
09:54Speaking with The New York Times in 2015, Ringo Starr described a solution to this problem.
09:59He told the newspaper,
10:00"...we did come to the solid thought, well, we can't be everywhere, so we made these little
10:04movies and sent them out."
10:05These little movies were then known as promotional films, but today they would be recognized
10:09as music videos, an art form that the Beatles helped pioneer. Many of their early clips,
10:14such as the shorts for Help! and I Feel Fine, were exceedingly simple. Later, though, the
10:19Beatles' promo films would come to match the artistry of their music. In particular, the
10:22clips for Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever were wildly innovative for their time.
10:27After a frenetic editing period of just under two weeks, both clips were shown on the iconic
10:31British program Top of the Pops on February 15, 1967. Hence, the Beatles showcased the
10:36music video form well over a decade before MTV launched it into the popular consciousness.
10:41The Fab Four may generally be considered a self-contained unit, but this was not necessarily
10:49the case. Sure, they occasionally employed studio musicians, but there were a couple
10:53of individuals who made such huge contributions to the band that they might have been considered
10:57an actual member. First and foremost was producer George Martin. As a Beatles producer, Martin's
11:02contributions went beyond indulging the band's more unconventional ideas through wild studio
11:06experimentation. Martin actually played piano and organ on a number of recordings, arranged
11:11the orchestral elements of tunes such as Yesterday, and arranged vocal harmonies on songs like
11:16Here, There, and Everywhere.
11:17Any discussion about a so-called bit-Beatle, though, wouldn't be complete without mentioning
11:21American singer-songwriter and keyboardist Billy Preston, who played an integral role
11:25in the recording of the Beatles' final released album, Let It Be. Preston had been an acquaintance
11:29of the band since their Hamburg days and was invited to sit in during the album's recording
11:33by George Harrison.
11:34According to the CBC, Preston was described by his former manager Joyce Moore as the glue
11:38and glitter that held the band together during this period. For his contribution, Billy Preston
11:42became the only outside musician to ever receive credit on the liner notes of a Beatles album.
11:47You're in my group.
11:49When Eleanor Rigby appeared on the Beatles' 1966 album Revolver, the heartbreaking tune
11:54marked the band's starkest departure yet from their usual repertoire of poppy love songs.
11:58The tale of a lonely old woman who dies alone and is buried along with her name is probably
12:03among the saddest pieces of popular music ever written. It is also a very curious outlier
12:08among the band's discography, in that not a single Beatle actually played an instrument
12:12on it. For the track, producer George Martin enlisted two quartets of string musicians
12:17and took the lead in arranging the parts they would play. And it's no accident that the
12:20foreboding, eerie instrumentation is slightly reminiscent of the great composer Bernard
12:24Herman, either.
12:25Martin has said that he was influenced by Herman's score for the 1966 film adaptation
12:29of Ray Bradbury's science fiction novel Fahrenheit 451. George Harrison and John Lennon sang
12:34backup on the tune, thus complementing Paul McCartney's mournful lead vocal. Meanwhile,
12:39Ringo Starr sat the recording out completely. Perhaps to make up for this, Eleanor Rigby
12:43was released as a double A-side single, backed by a song with a star lead vocal, Yellow Submarine.
12:48The group would make a few more songs in the coming years that saw them only contribute
12:52vocals, including Good Night, She's Leaving Home, and The Inner Light.
12:56Eleanor Rigby and the other songs weren't the only tunes missing any instrumental contribution
13:00from a member of the Beatles. John Lennon was known to sit out songs on a fairly regular
13:04basis, and Paul McCartney played drums on a few tunes in Ringo Starr's absence, including
13:08Back in the USSR and The Ballad of John and Yoko. But in the band's entire catalog, there
13:13was only one solitary tune that McCartney refused to play on, She Said, She Said, from
13:18the Revolver album.
13:19According to the Paul McCartney biography, many years from now, the song has its origins
13:23in a 1965 house party. Also present at the party was actor Peter Fonda, who was attempting
13:28to comfort an LSD-tripping George Harrison. When Harrison remarked that he felt like he
13:32was dying, Fonda told him not to worry, saying,
13:34"...I know what it's like to be dead."
13:36The remark annoyed John Lennon, but it evidently stuck with him, as he eventually used it as
13:40a key lyric in She Said, She Said.
13:43The relationship between Paul McCartney and John Lennon was famously contentious. But
13:47as it turns out, the two did have a brief reunion of sorts after the Beatles broke up.
13:51I haven't worked with Paul because we had a more difficult time, but now we're pretty
13:57close."
13:58This happened during Lennon's infamous Lost Weekend, during which he just sort of hung
14:01out in New York City and L.A. with his assistant May Pang for about a year and a half. He spent
14:05much of this time drinking, doing drugs, carousing with Harry Nilsson, and occasionally recording
14:10some music.
14:11One night in 1974, Lennon happened to run into his old bandmate at a studio in Burbank.
14:16Nilsson was also there that night, as well as a guy named Stevie Wonder. The resulting
14:20session should have been unbelievably epic. However, they ended up being the exact opposite
14:24of that, perhaps as a result of all the cocaine that was flying around the studio.
14:28The chaotic, messy, and downright boring bootleg recording has come to be known as a toot and
14:33a snore in 74, a reference to the coke being used and the boredom in the studio.