38 Facts About The Beatles

1.

The Beatles were an English rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.

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2.

The Beatles suggested changing the band's name to Beatals, as a tribute to Buddy Holly and the Crickets.

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3.

The Beatles eventually negotiated a one-month early release in exchange for one last recording session in Hamburg.

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4.

Martin's first recording session with the Beatles took place at EMI Recording Studios in London on 6 June 1962.

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5.

The Beatles immediately complained to Epstein about Best's drumming and suggested they use a session drummer in his place.

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6.

On 11 February 1963, the Beatles recorded ten songs during a single studio session for their debut LP, Please Please Me.

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7.

Success brought increased media exposure, to which the Beatles responded with an irreverent and comical attitude that defied the expectations of pop musicians at the time, inspiring even more interest.

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8.

In late October, the Beatles began a five-day tour of Sweden, their first time abroad since the final Hamburg engagement of December 1962.

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9.

The Beatles, comprising most of the songs of Parlophone's Please Please Me, but a management shake-up led to the album not being released.

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10.

On 7 February 1964, the Beatles departed from Heathrow with an estimated 4, 000 fans waving and screaming as the aircraft took off.

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11.

The next morning, the Beatles awoke to a largely negative critical consensus in the US, but a day later at their first US concert, Beatlemania erupted at the Washington Coliseum.

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12.

Back in New York the following day, the Beatles met with another strong reception during two shows at Carnegie Hall.

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13.

The Beatles became the first Beatle to discuss LSD publicly, declaring in a magazine interview that "it opened my eyes" and "made me a better, more honest, more tolerant member of society".

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14.

At a show in Atlanta, the Beatles gave one of the first live performances ever to make use of a foldback system of on-stage monitor speakers.

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15.

September 1965 saw the launch of an American Saturday-morning cartoon series, The Beatles, that echoed A Hard Day's Night slapstick antics over its two-year original run.

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16.

In June 1966, the Capitol LP Yesterday and Today caused an uproar with its cover, which portrayed the grinning The Beatles dressed in butcher's overalls, accompanied by raw meat and mutilated plastic baby dolls.

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17.

The Vatican issued a protest, and bans on The Beatles' records were imposed by Spanish and Dutch stations and South Africa's national broadcasting service.

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18.

The Beatles recalled the band's insistence "that everything on Sgt.

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19.

Overwhelming consensus is that the Beatles had created a popular masterpiece: a rich, sustained, and overflowing work of collaborative genius whose bold ambition and startling originality dramatically enlarged the possibilities and raised the expectations of what the experience of listening to popular music on record could be.

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20.

The Beatles's death left the group disoriented and fearful about the future.

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21.

In February 1968, the Beatles travelled to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's ashram in Rishikesh, India, to take part in a three-month meditation "Guide Course".

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22.

The Beatles demanded they cease work at Twickenham Film Studios, where the sessions had begun, and relocate to the newly finished Apple Studio.

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23.

The Beatles's bandmates agreed, and it was decided to salvage the footage shot for the TV production for use in a feature film.

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24.

Music and enduring fame of the Beatles were commercially exploited in various other ways, again often outside their creative control.

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25.

In 1988, the Beatles were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, their first year of eligibility.

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26.

In December 2015, the Beatles released their catalogue for streaming on various streaming music services including Spotify and Apple Music.

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27.

The Beatles broke their own record for the album with the longest gap between topping the charts as Abbey Road hit the top spot 50 years after its original release.

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28.

In November 2021, The Beatles: Get Back, a documentary directed by Peter Jackson using footage captured for the Let It Be film, was released on Disney+ as a three-part miniseries.

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29.

The Beatles continued to absorb influences long after their initial success, often finding new musical and lyrical avenues by listening to their contemporaries, including Bob Dylan, the Who, Frank Zappa, the Lovin' Spoonful, the Byrds and the Beach Boys, whose 1966 album Pet Sounds amazed and inspired McCartney.

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30.

The Beatles applied his classical musical training in various ways, and functioned as "an informal music teacher" to the progressing songwriters, according to Gould.

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31.

The Beatles are regarded as British cultural icons, with young adults from abroad naming the band among a group of people whom they most associated with UK culture.

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32.

On radio, their arrival marked the beginning of a new era; in 1968 the programme director of New York's WABC radio station forbade his DJs from playing any "pre-The Beatles" music, marking the defining line of what would be considered oldies on American radio.

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33.

The Beatles were like aliens dropped into the United States of 1964.

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34.

The Beatles won the 1971 Academy Award for Best Original Song Score for the film Let It Be.

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35.

The recipients of seven Grammy Awards and fifteen Ivor Novello Awards, the Beatles have six Diamond albums, as well as 20 Multi-Platinum albums, 16 Platinum albums and six Gold albums in the US.

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36.

In 2007, the Beatles became the first band to feature on a series of UK postage stamps issued by the Royal Mail.

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37.

The Beatles have a core catalogue consisting of 13 studio albums and one compilation.

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38.

McCartney acquired their publishing rights from Ardmore in 1978, and they are the only two The Beatles songs owned by McCartney's company MPL Communications.

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