The Beatles

The fabulous mop-topped Scousers minutes away from their first American lays in New York in 1964.

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The Beatles were a British rock-and-roll band that had a pretty good run during the bulk of the 1960s. The lineup consisted of John Lennon (1940-1980), a highly talented visionary asshole who contradicted himself at every possible turn, which the world decided to tolerate because he was writing some of the most beautiful and original music of all time), Paul McCartney (born James Paul McCartney in 1942, a prettyboy, fantastic and often overlooked bassist, singer, and pretty-much-everything-ist with an obsession with corny love songs and [after his first wife died of cancer] a tendency to get into bad marriages), George Harrison (1943-2001), a late-blooming great songwriter and singer who was probably the most grounded member of the band, despite becoming a bit of a religious nut, and Ringo Starr (born Richard Starkey in 1940, the drummer, a solid and glorified session musician who's often the butt of a lot of peoples' jokes.

Stuff relevant to RationalWiki

"Paul is dead" rumor

See the main article on this topic: Paul is dead

In 1969 a group of idiots students put forth the possibility that Paul McCartney had died in a car accident in 1967 and the Beatles were covering it up, having replaced Paul with a look-alike. They cited hundreds of points of evidence, including alleged forward masking on Strawberry Fields Forever, in a clear-cut non-scientific case of finding evidence to fit a theory.

Despite his death, he went on to form the band Wings, has a very successful solo career, smoked a lot of weed, recorded the theme to Live and Let Die, got married a few times, produced a few animated films, wrote a few children's books, became a vegetarian, and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1997. His son, James Louis McCartney (b. 1977), is also a musician. Sort of.

Tax protest

The Beatles, being incredibly wealthy, were taxed 95% on their income from sales and performances. This inspired George to write the song "Taxman", which became the theme song of the tax protester. Somehow they still managed to scrape by despite only getting to keep 5% of their income. (It's almost like they had far more money than they needed or something…)

"Let It Be"

The single "Let It Be" gained something of a periphery demographic amongst Christian audiences as a gospel song for its apparent reference to the Virgin Mary: "When I find myself in times of trouble/Mother Mary comes to me/Speaking words of wisdom/Let it be." While it is widely interpreted as such (and was covered by Filipino singer Maxine in the 2002 all-star Christian album Mother of All), Paul McCartney typically replied the song's interpretation is all up to the listener; he actually came up with the song after a dream he had of his late mother Mary McCartney, whom according to an interview spoke to Macca in his dreams "It will be all right, just let it be." Perhaps incidentally, a similar passage can be found in Luke 1:38, where in some versions is rendered as "Let it be unto me according to your word."

Drugs

In the song "Get Back", Paul McCartney sings about Jojo leaving his home in Tucson, Arizona, to buy "some California grass".

Fans of the psychedelic age have long suggested that the song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" is about and was inspired by a rather crazy trip on LSD. While the implication is definitely in the title of the song, the inspiration actually came from a child's drawing.

George Harrison's "Savoy Truffle" was written about Harrison's friend Eric Clapton's sweet tooth, but is possibly a metaphor for his cocaine addiction.

The song "Happiness is a Warm Gun" was inspired by a gun advertisement that Lennon saw with the title "Happiness is a Warm Gun", which refers to the heat that is produced after a gun is fired. Some critics claim that the song is about shooting heroin, one of the drugs that Lennon was addicted to.

Ringo singing "I'll get high with a little help from my friends" is pretty self-explanatory.

Helter Skelter

Charles Manson claimed that he heard a message from God which inspired him to build a family of murdering sociopaths while listening to the song "Helter Skelter". It couldn't possibly have been the voices in his head or the drugs he was taking.

Eastern philosophy

Ravi Shankar's influence inspired George Harrison to learn to play the sitar, and the influence is evident in several songs expressing Eastern philosophies, including "Within You Without You". Halfway through their career together, and having discovered that they were more popular than Jesus, the Beatles proceeded to take inspiration from Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and the temporary endorsement boosted his popularity. The song "Sexy Sadie" later served as John's denunciation of Mahesh Yogi after learning he'd sexually harassed women.

Harrison got heavily into Hare Krishna advocacy, as evidenced in "He's So Fine" "My Sweet Lord".

While the Beatles were away learning woo, their manager Brian Epstein died of an accidental drug overdose.

Yoko Ono

Yoko Ono in 2007.

Yoko Ono (married name Yoko Ono Lennon) is a pretentious Japanese dilettante artist, musician, and the widow of the late John Lennon.

Yoko is a well-known political activist, promoting peace while denouncing sexism and racism (although some may find that hypocritical, given her and Lennon's 1971 visit to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine). She was a part of the feminist culture that emerged in the UK and the US in the 1960s, challenging perceptions of women and their roles, and their need to fit into standards of appearance.

Yoko Ono has been accused in the popular press, and by Beatle fans (and Beatle haters) of "breaking up the Beatles." The truth is simple — the Beatles were already growing apart, growing up, and growing in different directions, and so schisms within the band that had existed since before their first hit singles were now gaping chasms. Yoko just happened to meet their "lead singer and rhythm guitarist" around the time the band was imploding.

But, because her chosen styles of art and music were difficult — almost impossible — for those used to suckling at the teat of 4/4 time and the I-IV-V chord progression (to say nothing of the tempered scale!), she became a handy scapegoat for Beatle-lovers to hate and ridicule, and subsequently, for uninformed Beatle-haters to love (in a twisted sort of way).

Other Beatles

When the band first began achieving popular notoriety when performing in Germany, they were a quintet. Stuart Sutcliffe was the band's original bassist despite not being able to play bass, but left the band to pursue a career as a painter. He died unexpectedly in 1962 from a brain aneurysm at age 21.

The Beatles' original drummer was Pete Best (born Randolph Peter Scanland in 1941), but was dismissed from the band by manager Brian Epstein at the insistence of the other members and replaced with Ringo Starr. After working with a number of commercially unsuccessful groups, Best worked as a civil servant for 20 years, and then started the Pete Best Band, with which he still performs.

James George "Jimmie" Nichol (b. 1939) substituted for an ailing Ringo Starr on the band's 1964 tour. After Starr's recovery and return to the band, Nichol worked with a number of other bands, but left the entertainment industry in 1967 to become an entrepreneur. He has chosen to stay out of the spotlight and doesn't discuss his brief time with the Beatles, nor apparently try to profit from it.

A DAESH cell became known as "The Beatles" because its four members had English accents. Unsurprisingly, neither the surviving members of the namesake band nor their fans were pleased with the nickname; it should be noted however that the hostages whom "The Beatles" kidnapped named them as such in a sardonic reference to the band by way of their accents and not necessarily as a mockery of the band itself.

See also

• Frank Zappa