Rolling Stone Lists Top 100 Beatles Songs

And the number 1 best Beatles song is. . .

"A Day in the Life."

I.don't.think.so.

Pretentious, bombastic, and musically pretty uninteresting. "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite" and "Fixing a Hole," also on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, are both better than "A Day in the Life," IMHO.

Beatle Bums

Ringo and John, with their trousers on.

For the Beatles collector who has everything, now something new: John's toilet bowl will be up for auction in Liverpool:

A porcelain toilet used by John Lennon between 1969 and 1972 is among the 303 lots going up for auction Saturday at the 33rd annual Beatle Week Festival in Liverpool.

"The toilet might be worth something, and it might not, but it is certainly one of the more unusual items we've sold," auction organizer Steven Bailey told the Daily Telegraph.

The toilet was in a bathroom at Tittenhurst Park, the English mansion into which Lennon and Yoko Ono moved after John's divorce from his first wife Cynthia. When John and Yoko relocated to New York in 1972, the house was sold to Ringo, who probably used the toilet as well. That means that this toilet might have support one half of the Beatle bums!

What a Nice Guy

Paul McCartney surprised former president Bill Clinton on his 64th birthday with a phone call and a serenade:

Sir Paul McCartney sang When I'm Sixty-Four down the phone to ex-US President Bill Clinton on his birthday this week.

The surprise serenade delighted the Democrat - who was only joking when he told advisers last month that a call from the Beatles legend would be the greatest present of all on reaching the age on Thursday. But his team took him seriously. As did Macca, 67, when they got in touch.

I hope Macca is still around to call me on my 64th birthday. . .

Group to Re-create Beatles' First Hamburg Gig

To mark the 50th anniversary of the Beatles' debut in Hamburg, Bambi Kino--Mark Rozzo, Ira Elliot, Doug Gillard, and Erik Paparazzi--will perform the songs the Beatles played half a century ago in four shows at the Indra Club on the Reeperbahn, beginning on August 17, 2010.

Go here for some samples.

Bambi Kino is probably a little better, musically, than the Beatles were in August 1960. Still, I wish I could be there.

Chapman Up for Parole Again

John Lennon graciously autographs an album for his murderer, December 8, 1980

Mark Chapman, confessed murderer of John Lennon, is up for parole (again):

The last time Chapman was up for parole, in 2008, the New York State Division of Parole issued a release saying his request was denied "due to concern for the public safety and welfare." He also was denied parole in 2000, 2002, 2004 and 2006.

Chapman, 55, is serving a sentence of 20 years to life in prison for the shooting death of Lennon outside Lennon's New York City apartment on December 8, 1980.

He has served 29 years of his sentence at the maximum-security Attica Correctional Facility, where he is held in a building with other prisoners who are not considered to pose a threat to him, according to officials with the state Department of Correctional Services.

He has his own prison cell but spends most of his day outside the cell working on housekeeping and in the library, the officials said.

For the past 20 years he has been allowed conjugal visits with his wife, Gloria. The visits are part of a state program called "family reunion" that allows inmates to spend up to 44 hours at a time with family members in a special setting.

Meanwhile, Julian, Sean, and Yoko Lennon have spent 0 hours with John since late in the evening of December 8, 1980. Presumably, if Chapman is paroled, he will be able to spend the next 30 or so years with his wife, a privilege denied to the Lennon family by Chapman's actions on that night nearly three decades ago.

Beatles as Visual Artifact

A student acquaintance of mine has designed a cover for a Beatles coffee-table book:



These images have become iconic. They evoke a time, a place, and a set of distinctive experiences. And--like everything else about the Beatles--they're tasteful, aesthetically pleasing, and compelling.

Close Call for Roberta Flack

Hard at work on a new album of Beatles covers, sultry-voiced Roberta Flack nearly lost a year's work:

One rainy day last month, Roberta Flack, the smooth voice of 1970s soul ballads, stepped out of her recording studio in Chelsea, hailed a yellow taxi and threw a suitcase of CDs into the back seat. Arriving at the Dakota, her longtime home, Ms. Flack got out and hurried past the wrought-iron entrance gate, seeking cover from the downpour.

Then: “Panic! Panic! Panic!” Ms. Flack recalled on the telephone the other day. “I left the suitcase in the cab!”

In an instant, Ms. Flack had joined the ranks of world-class musicians (most famously the cellist Yo-Yo Ma) forced to grapple with a quintessential nightmare of New York transit. More than a year’s worth of work, including much of a new compilation of Beatles covers — tentative title: “Let It Be Roberta” — had disappeared to points unknown.

“It was priceless,” Ms. Flack, 73, said a few weeks after the episode. (The trauma still sounded fresh.) “I’ve been working on this album for a while. I had packed all of the stuff that had been finished, stuff that had not been finished, things I was thinking of approaching, things I was not thinking of approaching ever.”

I can't believe she's 73! But I guess that makes sense, since she had her first hit in 1973:

Her duets with Donny Hathaway (who committed suicide in 1979) were magical. Here are Roberta and Donny singing "The Closer I Get to You" in 1978:

This song always gives me the chills. I'm sure John Lennon loved Roberta Flack's music; he and the other Beatles were huge fans of the 1950s and 1960s soul classics with which Roberta grew up. And she lives at the Dakota!

Catholic Church Blesses Beatles UPDATED

Father Guido Sarducci, former gossip columnist for L'Osservatore Romano

L'Osservatore Romano, the official newspaper of the Vatican, announced this week that all is forgiven for the Beatles:

“Their beautiful melodies changed music and continue to give pleasure …what would pop music have been like without the Beatles?”

Lots of snarky comments have met this news, see here, here, and here. If the Vatican's new stance is all about damage control, though, remember that not everyone has forgiven the Beatles: they're still banned in Iran.

UPDATE: See this Catholic News Service story, claiming that the Vatican never cursed the Beatles, even in the throes of the "bigger than Jesus" scandal. The author of this story rightly observes that that comment was widely taken out of context, and, as John explained in 1966, the statement was an observation, not a boast.

Lady Gaga Inspired by the Beatles

Lady Gaga, looking like the offspring of John Lennon and Dusty Springfield

After trying to watch the video of "Bad Romance," I'm not sure I see the connection. But apparently the Beatles inspire everyone, even Lady Gaga:

Lady Gaga was inspired by the Beatles' hometown Liverpool during her U.K. tour - insisting she wrote the "greatest music" of her career while staying in the English city.

The Poker Face hitmaker took her Monster Ball trek to the U.K. in February, and played just one night in the northern city where the Fab Four kickstarted their groundbreaking music careers.
But the singer insists it was during her short stay in Liverpool that she wrote her best material to date.
She tells fans on her official website, "I've already written the first single for the new album and I promise you that this album is the greatest of my career.
"It is the anthem for our generation. I wrote it for you, because of you, when I was in Liverpool I wrote the greatest music I've ever written."

In a way, I guess, the Beatles inaugurated the synthesis of performance art and pop music when they donned their Sgt. Pepper's garb and invented new identities for themselves. Glam Rock soon followed, which in turn spawned the high-concept videos of Madonna, Lady Gaga's most important precursor. Lady Gaga's songs, though (at least what I've heard) aren't particularly musical--industrial syntho beat and vocals so processed they don't sound like they come from a human being. I'd like to hear her explain exactly how the Beatles and Liverpool influenced her. Maybe on the new album, her "greatest ever," she'll actually make music!

New Beatles Monument in Kazakhstan

In my book, The Long and Winding Road from Blake to the Beatles, I say that the Beatles were the first truly universal cultural touchstone, the avatars of celebrity in the modern world. Here's proof, a statue of the Fab Four in Kazakhstan:




I think there must be Beatles monuments on every continent (except Antarctica).

Butcher Cover Photo For Sale

An original proof of the banned "butcher cover" photo is up for sale, along with John Lennon's handwritten estimate of its value:

The most expensive piece of Beatles memorabilia ever put up for sale has appeared at an exhibit in the UK.

The highlight of "The $11m Dollar Picture Show" is a printer's proof of the famous Beatles banned "butcher cover" from John Lennon's personal collection.

The controversial photo features all four Beatles in butcher's jackets, surrounded by offal and plastic baby dolls.

It includes a handwritten note by Lennon, which reads: "Here's the famous banned butcher cover. You can sell it for $11m dollars."The article reports that 6 of the 10 most expensive items sold at auction are Beatles memorabilia:

#5, John Lennon's talisman necklace
The necklace was worn by Lennon on the cover of his 1968 album with Yoko One, Two Virgins. It was sold to a private collector in 2008 for $528,000.

#4, Gibson SG guitar played by George Harrison and John Lennon

The classic Gibson guitar was played by Harrison on the Beatles' Revolver album, and by Lennon on the White Album. It sold to an anonymous bidder at Christie's for $567,500.

#3, A hand painted Beatles Sgt. Pepper's drum skin

The drum is the centrepiece on the front cover of the band's Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album. It sold in 2008 for a staggering $1.1m.

#2, John Lennon's Steinway piano

Pop singer George Michael placed the winning bid for the piano on which Lennon wrote his song Imagine, in 2000, for $2.1m.

#1, John Lennon's hand painted Rolls Royce Phantom V

The car was sold by Sotheby's to Canadian businessman Jim Pattison in 1985 for $2.23m.

Apparently, the Rolls is now in British Columbia. No word on the whereabouts of the Gibson SG:

Bollywood Beatles

We all know how India influenced the Beatles (especially George). But who knew that the Beatles influenced India?



This is from a 1965 film titled Janwar. The guy in the white suit is Shammi Kapoor, a famous Hindi singer and actor of the 1950s and 60s. Check out his official website.

Happy Birthday, George!

Had he not succumbed to cancer in 2001, today would have been George Harrison's 67th birthday. Here's George on his 21st, just after returning from the triumphal series of appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show:



George's only child, Dhani, is 31, and looks hauntingly like his father:

Abbey Road Studios for Sale

The Beatles' original record company, EMI, has put its Abbey Road Studios up for sale:

The record label of Norah Jones and Coldplay has spoken to potential buyers during the past few months and talks have not led to a solid offer, said the person, who didn’t want to be identified because the talks are private. The studios are worth tens of millions of pounds and are not an essential asset for EMI, the person said.

EMI, owned by Guy Hands’s Terra Firma Capital Partners Ltd., this month posted a 1.5 billion-pound ($2.35 billion) annual loss and said its liabilities exceeded assets by 408 million pounds as of March 31, 2009. Terra Firma may inject as much as 120 million pounds into EMI to prevent the London-based music company from breaching debt levels, two people familiar with the matter have said.

The Beatles recorded 90 percent of their songs at the studios, which are the world’s oldest, according to the Abbey Road Web site.

I've been to London almost every summer since 2000, and always make a pilgrimage to the famous zebra crossing, site of one of the most iconic and frequently parodied photos in world history:





Every time I've been to Abbey Road--night or day, rain or shine--there have been at least a dozen other Beatlemaniacs there, some trying to replicate the famous image (putting their lives and limbs at risk: it's a busy street).

Abbey Road Studios has set up a webcam on the other side of the zebra crossing. The photo was taken from a spot just to the right of the granite column in the upper left of the webcam image.

Just for fun. . .

And here they are. . .THE LEGO BEATLES!

My Fifteen Minutes of Fame (well, really, 2 1/2 minutes)

My employer made this video--shown on the local ABC affiliate--about me and my book, The Long and Winding Road from Blake to the Beatles:

February 9 in Context

A must-have for Beatlemaniacs is The Complete Historic Ed Sullivan Shows featuring the Beatles and other Artists. Everyone's seen the Beatles break into "All My Loving" after Sullivan's intro is drowned out by screams. But to appreciate how genuinely revolutionary the Beatles were, you need to see them in the show business context of their time. This DVD includes everything--even commercials for Lipton tea and Excedrin--but most important, it illustrates what show business was like in 1964, and how different the Beatles were. Here, for example, from the first show on February 9, is comedian and impressionist Frank Gorshin:



With his cheesy tuxedo and slicked-back hair, Gorshin's right out of the Borscht Belt (though he was only seven years older than Ringo and John).

Here's Georgia Brown and the cast of Oliver!--including the future Monkee Davy Jones--singing "I'll Do Anything":



Brown was also only seven years older than the oldest Beatles, but a world away in show business terms: she belonged to the tuxedoed, sequined, flowing headdress tradition of the music hall gently parodied by the Beatles at the beginning of this clip from A Hard Day's Night:



Forty-six years ago today, something genuinely new and breathtakingly modern emerged. The modern world exploded with the suddenness of a genie escaping from a bottle, never to be put back.

The Beatles Come to America

When did the Beatles first appear on television in the United States? Most would say February 9, 1964, on the Ed Sullivan Show. But that's wrong! That was their first live performance, but not their first appearance. Their first musical performance on American television came on the Jack Paar Show--in a filmed clip, during which this late-night talk show host mocked them and their British fans--on January 3, 1964:



What a difference three years make! Here are the Beatles performing "Hello Goodbye" in a filmed performance, shown on the Ed Sullivan Show in early 1967:

It was 43 years ago today. . .

. . .that the Beatles shot their groundbreaking promotional film for "Strawberry Fields Forever":



My favorite Beatles commentator, Allan W. Pollak, beautifully captures the poetic breakthrough represented by this song:

Among the several new musical directions explored by The Beatles from mid-career onward, none was more astonishing at the time, nor is still so compelling today, as their emerging preoccupation with the existential joy, wonder, and sorrowful angst of self-discovery, childhood memory, and post-adolescent adjustment to the realities of the human condition.

More than anyone before them, the Beatles poeticized popular music, making it today's unchallenged venue for the development and expression of a poetic sensibility. That poeticization began as soon as John and Paul decided to record only their original compositions; but it was "Strawberry Fields Forever" that really announced their arrival as poets.

The Science of the Beatles

Which chord begins "A Hard Day's Night?" Now, with the help of Fourier analysis, we know:

Four years ago, inspired by reading news coverage about the song’s 40th anniversary, Jason Brown of Dalhousie’s Department of Mathematics decided to try and see if he could apply a mathematical calculation known as Fourier transform to solve the Beatles’ riddle. The process allowed him to decompose the sound into its original frequencies using computer software and parse out which notes were on the record.

It worked, to a point: the frequencies he found didn’t match the known instrumentation on the song. “George played a 12-string Rickenbacker, Lennon had his six string, Paul had his bass…none of them quite fit what I found,” he explains. “Then the solution hit me: it wasn’t just those instruments. There was a piano in there as well, and that accounted for the problematic frequencies.”

So what's the chord? Gsus4/D.

Get Ready for Beatles Day in the State of Washington

I wonder if any other states have an official Beatles Day:

The anniversary of the Beatles legendary rooftop concert will be celebrated this Friday January 29, 2010, with former U.S. manager of Apple Records, Ken Mansfield, and Beatles cover band Crème Tangerine at Pike Place Market in Seattle at Pike Place Market.

In 2009, Crème Tangerine gave a blockbuster performance as thousands of fans filled the streets of Pike Place Market during their lunch hour. Seattle fans were the only city in the world to experience an actual rooftop tribute in honor of the 40th anniversary, which was January 30, 1969.

This year’s performance will be at the same place, on the rooftop balcony of the Copacabana Café in the Pike Place Market in Seattle at noon. They will perform the songs from that famous concert, such as “Get Back”, and John Lennon’s “Don’t Let Me Down”, and “One After 909.”

Here's my favorite snippet from the original concert, John forgetting the words to "Don't Let Me Down" (at 2:20):



Very tasty electric piano by Billy Preston throughout.

Beatles Data Analysis

I can't help myself--I find the Beatles "infographics" put together by New York graphic designer Michael Deal utterly fascinating:


Name another pop culture phenomenon that inspires this level of scholarly attention!

Ringo at 70 - It's the New 50

He looks great--Ringo will be 70 on his next birthday, which he will celebrate onstage:

Ringo Starr, who will celebrate his 70th birthday on July 7, will perform that night at Radio City Music Hall with the latest edition of his All-Starr Band, featuring Edgar Winter, Gary Wright, Rick Derringer, Richard Page of Mr. Mister and Wally Palmer of the Romantics.

Ringo is an outstanding musician, and seems to be an all-around great guy as well. He's a testimony to clean living, and the health benefits of happiness. Ringo's happiness was hard-won, though: after decades of alcoholism, he entered detox in 1988 and has been sober ever since. Here's a Ringo treat from 1990, "I Call Your Name" in tribute to the 10th anniversary of John Lennon's death:

Zemeckis Casts His "Beatles" in Remake of Yellow Submarine

Robert Zemeckis is in negotiations with four actors to portray the Beatles' cartoon stand-ins in the director's remake of Yellow Submarine:

It's "all together now" for the cast of Robert Zemeckis' upcoming Beatles feature.

Cary Elwes, Dean Lennox Kelly, Peter Serafinowicz and Adam Campbell are in negotiations to portray the members of the band in "Yellow Submarine," which the director is remaking for Disney.

So let me see if I have this right: the actual Beatles didn't appear in Yellow Submarine (except in a very brief filmed message at the end), but were drawn and then verbally imitated by voiceover actors. For the remake, actors will imitate the body movements of the originally animated characters (which were themselves representations of the actual Beatles). Do we really need this? Fourth-order re-creations of actuality?

I predict that the fad of motion-capture 3-D filmmaking will spawn yet another trend: 4-D Represented Actuality--that is, live actors on a stage.

Hail to thee, Alan W. Pollack!

More than 20 years ago, the distinguished American musicologist Alan W. Pollack began analyzing in-depth every single Beatles song (both originals and covers). It took him ten years to finish the project, which is posted here.

Many Beatles scholars have examined the Beatles' music, but none have done as exhaustive a job as Pollack. A few years ago, I spent several months reading Pollack's Notes. As a guitar player and bassist, I particularly appreciate Pollack's outlining of chord structures; but he's also aware of the non-musical, dramatic dimensions of some Beatles' performances, as in the conclusion to his discussion of "You're Going to Lose that Girl":

In the "Help!" film the Beatles appear as though performing this song live in the studio. The scene, for all its absurd, staged surreality — (Paul alternately playing bass guitar and sitting a grand piano, and Ringo alternately behind the drum kit or sitting on the floor with the bongos) — it provides a delightful fantasy of what the real recording sessions might have been like. The tobacco companies must have also like this scene. Ringo is shown drumming with a cigarette precariously clenched in his teeth. And we get a long close-up of Paul and George facing each other, hunched on opposite sides of a single microphone in order tightly execute the backing vocals. The scene is filmed with back lighting such that you can see the rhythmic thrust of their sung syllables punctuate like skywriting the generally smokey haze that builds up as the scene progresses. It's the kind of thing that looks cool enough to persuade a person of a certain mindset to want to start smoking as soon as possible, even if the thought has never before occurred to that person. So much for not particularly subliminal persuasion.

And here's the scene:



I agree--the Beatles even make smoking look cool.

Happy Birthday Elvis, Wherever You Are

Today would have been Elvis Presley's 75th birthday. If Elvis hadn't died on August 16, 1977 (or on any other date after that), he might look something like this today:



Elvis was a huge influence on the Beatles: their album of BBC transcriptions includes covers of four Elvis songs, and his jumped-up rockabilly style found its way into numerous Lennon-McCartney originals, including "I'll Cry Instead," "Can't Buy Me Love," "Run for Your Life," and "I Don't Want to Spoil the Party." Elvis's manager Colonel Tom Parker sent the Beatles a congratulatory telegram before their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964, and the Beatles met Elvis in Los Angeles in during their American tour in the summer of 1965. Influence went in the other direction as well: in the early 1970s, Elvis frequently included "Yesterday," "Something," and "Get Back" in his live setlists.

I was walking across the parking lot of the Sea View Inn in Haleiwa, Hawaii on the afternoon of August 16, 1977, when a total stranger walked up to me and said, "Did you hear that Elvis died?" One of those moments when the headlong rush of time briefly slowed. . .I can still feel the heat radiating from the asphalt, and hear the tradewinds rustling through the palm trees.

The Beatles Go Global. . .Again

Thanks to Beatlemaniac Christine, I just heard about this:



Obviously, this song was chosen for this project on the basis of its simplicity, familiarity, and because it was Britain's contribution to the first worldwide television broadcast, Our World, on June 25, 1967:



Thank goodness for YouTube! This is the song as originally broadcast, not the more familiar colorized version created for The Beatles Anthology in 1995.

One detail I've never seen any comment on: why were John and Paul chewing gum while they sang?

"It's 'Ticket to Ride!'" "No, it's 'Ticket to Rye!'"

This story doesn't say which song prompted the argument, but a couple of Pennsylvania men got into a shoving match over a Beatles song:

Police say Paul Anderson, 34, pushed and shoved Shawne Manners, 28, because the two couldn't agree on the lyrics to a Beatles song while playing "Rock Band."

I wonder if the song was "Ticket to Ride," which John originally titled "Ticket to Rye"--a phrase he seems to sing on at least some of the verses of the that tune.

What's most interesting about this incident are the ages of the two men: both were born well after the Beatles broke up, and Mr. Manners was born after John Lennon's death. I've always contended that one of the Beatles' most amazing and unprecedented accomplishments is their ability to appeal to fans across the generational divide. Yet again, this funny little story of two Beatle fanatics whose fascination with the group can't be attributed to nostalgia supports that contention.

Yoko Autobiography in the Works

The London tabloid Daily Express is reporting that Yoko Ono plans to write an autobiography:

IN WHAT will be one of the most hotly anticipated pop autobiographies ever, John Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono, the woman blamed by some fans for breaking up The Beatles, is finally set to write her memoirs.

Yoko has a lot to answer for: for example, ruining--with her hideous caterwauling (at 1:19 and 2:35)--John's much-anticipated opportunity to play "Memphis, Tennessee" with his boyhood idol Chuck Berry on the Mike Douglas Show in 1972:



As bad as this is, the break-up of the Beatles was not Yoko's doing. She may have helped John transition from being a Beatle to a solo artist; but the Beatles were bound to break up as soon as the titanic personalities at the core of the group--Lennon and McCartney--discovered each other. The creative energies that were unleashed by their partnership could not forever be contained in the group. Like William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge--another pair of hugely influential English poetic collaborative competitors--Lennon and McCartney were able to sustain their partnership for only about ten years. After that, all the arguments, recriminations, and simmering resentments that destroyed their friendship and broke up the band were just symptoms of Paul's and John's irresistible drive for complete self-sufficiency. Ironically, their partnership gave each so much confidence in his own greatness that--after a while--each saw the other as an obstacle, rather than a means, of artistic self-fulfillment. The Beatles were destined to break up. For all her irritating pretensions and lame performance-art absurdities, Yoko was--in the final analysis--a bystander in the dissolution of the Beatles.

How the Beatles Knocked Down the Iron Curtain

I told this story in the Epilogue of my book, The Long and Winding Road from Blake to the Beatles, so it's nice to see the Beatles' role in ending communist rule in Russia getting broader play in a new documentary that recently aired in Canada:



The filmmaker, Leslie Woodhead, shot the famous Cavern Club footage of the Beatles performing "Some Other Guy" in 1962:

The Beatles Live On

Yet another testimony to the endurance and ubiquity of the Beatles: travelers trapped under a security lockdown in Newark Airport yesterday engaged in an impromptu "Hey Jude" singalong:



Reminds me of the "flash mob" singalong staged in London's Trafalgar Square last spring by T-Mobile:

"First State" Butcher Cover For Sale

In 1966, London photographer Robert Whitaker guided the Beatles through a photo shoot titled "A Somnambulant Adventure," in which he posed the Fab Four in butcher's smocks, draping them with cuts of meat and dismembered baby dolls.

Capitol Records used one of the pictures from the shoot (which had been previously used in Britain for the sleeve of the Beatles' "Paperback Writer" single) as the cover art for the LP Yesterday and Today, pressing some 750,000 copies and distributing them to retailers across the United States.

The image--which Paul McCartney called "a comment on the [Vietnam] war"--aroused such controversy that Capitol recalled all unsold copies of Yesterday and Today, initially intending to destroy the covers. The company decided, however, to paste another cover over the offending image, and shipped the altered albums back to stores. Copies with the original cover art became, therefore, immediately collectible, prompting many to carefully remove (usually by steaming the cover) the pasted-on replacement image, revealing the original image underneath. Collectors identified these "butcher covers" as second state; first state, by contrast, are covers which never had the replacement photo, and are extremely rare.

Offered for sale on eBay: a rare, unopened, first state butcher cover, with the initial bid set at $9,200.

Beatle Families

Here's a magnificent music video of George Harrison's masterpiece, "Something," which he wrote for his wife Pattie Boyd. For the first and only time, this film prominently features the Beatles' wives and lovers (as well as Martha, Paul's sheepdog, immortalized in the song "Martha My Dear"):



Pattie Boyd Harrison, whom George met while filming A Hard Day's Night in 1964, is herself a rock icon: in addition to inspiring this song, she inspired Eric Clapton's "Layla" and "Wonderful Tonight." (And her sister Jennifer inspired Donovan's "Jennifer Juniper.")

All of the Beatles (so far) were twice married: John appears in this film with his second wife Yoko Ono, but the other three were still in their first marriages when this video was shot. George and Patti divorced in 1974; Ringo and Maureen split in 1975. Both married again: George to Olivia Arias in 1978, Ringo to Barbara Bach in 1981. Paul McCartney appears in the "Something" video with his first wife, Linda Eastman, who died in 1998. In 2002, Paul married Heather Mills; the couple divorced in 2008.

Beatles and Shakespeare

In my book The Long and Winding Road from Blake to the Beatles, I argue that the Beatles phenomenon can be traced back to the great English Romantic poets William Blake, Robert Burns, William Wordsworth, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This clip shows that perhaps I didn't go back far enough: here are the Beatles performing the Pyramus and Thisbe play-within-a-play from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream: