Wednesday, May 12, 2010

15 Little-Known Facts about The Beatles

1. Paul McCartney died in childbirth. He continued existing on Pure Awesomeness alone.

2. Bob Dylan introduced The Beatles to pot. The Beatles introduced Bob Dylan to quality song-writing.

3. Before they were "The Beatles", they were called "The Quarry Men", until they hired Liberace to play keys, and became "The Queery Men". Then they brought on Vicki and Debbi Peterson as backup vocalists and became "The Silver Bangles", and then quickly made Justin Bieber their front-man and became "The Wretched Sound of Things that Suck".

4. If you play "Revolution 9" backwards, at half-speed, paying special attention to the left channel, it's still a unbelievably crappy bucket-load of aural sludge.

5. To this day, Ringo still sleeps in his pink "Sgt. Pepper" uniform.

6. John's middle name was "Winston", after Winston Churchill. He later changed his middle name to "Winston Lights", after his favorite brand of cigarettes.

7. The song "Yellow Submarine" was written as a children's sing-along song. The film "Yellow Submarine" was made for children who regularly ingest their own body-weight in LSD.

8. There is a grammatical mistake in the title of George Harrison's "Love You To" that only exists because of a typographical error. The song was originally about George's favorite philosopher, St. Thomas Aquinas, and was entitled, "Love You Tom."

9. John had a cold during the recording of Please Please Me, and George Martin remembers him bringing a tin of Zubes throat lozenges and a carton of cigarettes to the session. This was before people knew that throat lozenges cause cancer.

10. The Beatles' fourth album was titled Beatles For Sale because the original title, Beatles For Rent, made them sound like cheap whores (although Paul had little objection to this).

11. The lyrics of "Tomorrow Never Knows" were inspired by The Tibetan Book of the Dead. The lyrics of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" were inspired by a drawing done by Julian Lennon. The lyrics of "I Am the Walrus" were inspired by 194,519 fluid ounces of absinthe.

12. After The Beatles had left the studio for the day, George Martin would often re-record Paul McCartney's vocals himself. His talent as an impressionist has never been surpassed.

13. John Lennon was born on October 9, 1940, exactly 32 years to the day after the birth of French director Jacques Tati. So. There is that.

14. The Beatles did actually meet a man named Maxwell Edison, but strangely, he was terrified of hammers.

15. When he said The Beatles were "bigger than Jesus," John was actually referring to his next-door neighbor, Jesus Diaz Guzman, who was quite short.

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