The Beatles covered nine girl group: The Beatles recorded “Chains” (by the Cookies), “Boys,” and “Baby It’s You” (both by the Shirelles) for Please Please Me. Two more girl group songs appeared on With the Beatles: “Please Mr. Postman” (the Marvelettes) “and “Devil in Her Heart” (the Donays). Live, the Beatles are known to have performed “Keep Your Hands off My Baby” (Little Eva), “Mama Said” and “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?” (the Shirelles), and “Shimmy Shimmy” (the Orlons).
“a male Shirelles”: As quoted in Stark, Meet the Beatles, 129.
“fan favorite”: Mark Binelli, “Sir Paul Rides Again,” Rolling Stone (October 20, 2005).
“Should it be”: As quoted in Braun, Love Me Do, 85.
“little trick”: As quoted in Walter Everett, The Beatles as Musicians: The Quarry Men Through Rubber Soul (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 108. “We knew that if we wrote a song called ‘Thank You Girl,’ that a lot of the girls who wrote us letters would take it as a genuine thank you,” Paul continued. “So a lot of our songs—‘From Me to You’ is another—were directly addressed to fans.”
An early variation on this formula was “She Loves You,” which Lennon and McCartney wrote together in Newcastle in the summer of 1963. McCartney was the one who cleverly suggested that it be put across in the third person. (Here he was influenced by Bobby Rydell, the teen idol who deployed a similar trope in “Forget Him,” which was a hit on both sides of the Atlantic.) The result was a song that any teenage girl might identify with. Acting as a go-between for a young couple, the narrator advises the boy in the relationship to apologize to the girl whom he has hurt, and whose love he should be grateful for.
“She was just seventeen”: Comedian Jerry Seinfeld ribbed McCartney about the song at a 2010 White House ceremony, where President Barack Obama gave McCartney the Gershwin Prize for his lifetime contribution to popular music. “Sir Paul, you have written some of the most beautiful music ever heard by humans in this world . . . I love you for it,” Seinfeld said. “And yet, some of the lyrics, some of the songs, as they go by, can make one unsure, even concerned, sometimes, about what exactly is happening in song? Songs such as, ‘I Saw Her Standing There,’ and I quote: ‘She was just seventeen / And you know what I mean.’ I’m not sure I do know what you mean, Sir Paul! I think I know what you mean!”
And certainly it’s difficult: The bawdy lyrics in “Please Please Me” speak for themselves, but the real giveaway is the tension in Lennon’s voice when he sings the call-and-response “come on”s with Harrison and McCartney. “Come on, come on, come on” sounds like a sexual exhortation. (You wouldn’t likely exclaim “come on, come on, come on,” to someone from whom you only wanted reciprocal emotional affection.) In his 1994 opus, Revolution in the Head, musicologist Ian MacDonald claimed that EMI’s American outlet, Capitol Records, was at first unwilling to release “Please Please Me” in the US because the song “was widely interpreted as an exhortation to fellatio.” But no one has produced evidence proving that. The first critics to describe “Please Please Me” as an “oral sex song” were probably Robert Christgau and John Picarella, writing jointly in the Village Voice in 1981.
“the Pill”: As quoted in Stark, Meet the Beatles, 121. At Twickenham Studios in 1964, during the filming of A Hard Day’s Night, the Beatles took time to answer questions for a televised broadcast. When an attractive young woman plaintively and jokingly asked, “John, why did ya have to get married?” Lennon was clearly rankled. He rolled his eyes and replied, “Because the same reason anyone gets married. I don’t want to be slushy-like, but you do it, don’t you, when you want to get married. When you got a girl, you got a girl, I always say. Anyhow,” he continued (now peering into the camera and using a nasty tone that at he rarely displayed in public), “what’s it got to do with you?”
“difficult position”: As quoted in Pritchard and Lysaght, An Oral History, 128.
“Take your pick”: Larry Kane, Ticket to Ride: Inside the Beatles’ 1964 Tour That Changed the World (Philadelphia: Running Press, 2003), 77.
Ronnie Bennett was likewise aghast: Ronnie Spector, Be My Baby: How I Survived Mascara, Miniskirts, and Madness, or, My Life as a Fabulous Ronette (New York: HarperPerennial, 1990), 80, 84.
“The only thing they seemed”: As quoted in Glenn A. Baker, Beatles Down Under: The 1964 Australia and New Zealand Tour (Wild and Woolley, 1982), 89.
It is doubtful that most: One night in 1965, the Stones sat together in a hotel room and tallied how many different girls they’d slept with since the band got together. Charlie hadn’t slept with anyone (he was happily married), Keith said 6, Mick counted 30, and Brian said 130. Bill Wyman, an obvious sex addict, and also a loathsome man (who at age forty-eight was carrying on sexually with a fourteen-year-old girl, Mandy Smith), claimed 278 partners.
“We need money first”: As quoted in Norman, John Lennon, 346.
“Count the money”: http://www.beatlemoney.com/john6063.htm.
“Spend it”: Beatles Press Conference, Melbourne, June 14, 1964.
“A lot”: Beatles Press Conference, Kansas City, September 17, 1964.
“Only how to make”: Beatles Press Conference, Montreal, September 9, 1964.
“More money than”: Beatles Interview, Doncaster, December 1, 1963.
“If they’ve got enough rubles”: Beatles Press Conference, September 3, 1964.
“Somebody said to me”: As quoted in David Bennahum, ed., The Beatles After the Break-Up: In Their Own Words (Omnibus Press, 1991), p. 19.
“We’d be idiots to”: “Interview with the Beatles,” Playboy (February 1965).
(It would take more): The mathematician who solved the riddle was Jason Brown, using a calculation known as Fourier. With computer software, he was able to identify distinct frequencies that revealed exactly what notes were played on the chord. (Simultaneously, George strummed a twelve-string guitar, John loudly strummed his six-string, Paul played a note on his bass, George Martin hit the piano.)
“This is going to surprise you”: As quoted in Barry Miles, The British Invasion: The Music, the Times, the Era (New York: Sterling, 2009), 68.
“the Citizen Kane of”: See Bob Neaverson, “A Hard Day’s Night,” in Sean Egan, ed., The Mammoth Book of the Beatles (London: Constable & Robinson, 2009), 373.
“a genius of the”: As quoted in Norman, John Lennon, 360.
“anyone who fears the”: As quoted in Spitz, The Beatles, 496.
“He turned on me”: Melly, Revolt into Style, 77. In one of his last interviews, in Playboy in 1980, Lennon confirmed that that was really his view: “I thought we were the best fucking group in the goddamn world. . . . As far as we were concerned, we were the best, but we thought we were the best before anybody else had even heard of us, back in Hamburg and Liverpool.”
“Cartoonists had a field day”: As quoted in Braun, Love Me Do, 70.
“We couldn’t help it”: As quoted in Davies, The Beatles, 192.
“There’s many polls”: Beatles Press Conference, September 17, 1964. “They won it last year too, that one,” Lennon added with a chuckle. “You know, I mean, that’s their poll.”
Are you worried about: See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkFAf63FjgY.
“Yes!”: Ray Coleman, “Rebels with a Beat,” in Melody Maker (March 14, 1964).
“Tell me, Mr. Coleman”: Chris Welch, “Obituary: Ray Coleman,” The Independent (September 13, 1996).
“They look like boys”: Judith Simons, Daily Express (February 28, 1964).
“looked as if they had been”: As quoted in Wyman, Stone Alone, 233.
“I don’t know if the people”: As quoted in Ed Ward, Geoffrey Stokes, and Ken Tucker, Rock of Ages: The Rolling Stone History of Rock and Roll (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986), 283.
“He’d send money orders”: Marc Spitz, Jagger: Rebel, Rock Star, Rambler, Rogue (New York: Gotham, 2011), 25.
“Beatles fans were not”: Hans Oosterbaan, in Love You Li
ve, Rolling Stones: Fanfare from the Common Fan (Springfield, PA: Fanfare Publishing, 2002) 29.
“The Rolling Stones Gather”: “Rolling Stones Gather No Lunch,” Daily Express (May 11, 1964).
“imitating the Stones’ hairstyle”: “Beatle Your Rolling Stone Hair,” Daily Mirror (May 27, 1964).
“American music critic Anthony DeCurtis”: Fornatale, Fifty Licks, 25.
“had to sneak the records and”: As quoted in Oldham, 2Stoned, 284.
“Nobody was particularly”: Richards, Life, 166.
“indicated their pleasure or displeasure”: As quoted in Mark Paytress, ed., The Rolling Stones: Off the Record (London: Omnibus Press, 2003), 62.
“an utter disgrace”: As quoted in Wyman, Stone Alone, 238.
“effete posturing”: As quoted in Wyman, Stone Alone, 242.
“Get off my forecourt”: A forecourt is an open area or courtyard in front of a building’s entrance. The term is used more often in England than in the United States.
“Whether it is the Rolling Stones”: As quoted in Wyman, Stone Alone, 306.
“The notion that the Stones”: Marc Spitz, Jagger, 75–76.
Sometimes they claimed they: In the June 1964 Rolling Stones Book (the premier issue), Bill Wyman was asked in a Q&A interview why, before he’d met the Stones, he’d left his job as a retail storekeeper?
“Oh—I had to leave,” he said. “Because of my hair. You see, I’d let it grow and grow and people started giving me curious looks. . . . I either had to have a haircut or leave the firm. So I left.”
The story is almost certainly not true. In his memoir, Wyman says that before he met the Stones, he looked like an ordinary civilian. In fact, he says that when he was introduced to Jagger, Jones, and Richards at a Chelsea pub in December 1962, he was taken aback by their appearance. They “had hair down over their ears and looked very scruffy—Bohemian and arty,” he said. “This was quite a shock: in the pop world I came from, smartness was automatic. I was neatly dressed, as for work, with a Tony Curtis hairstyle. My entire demeanor clashed with their unkempt look. People with casual, shabby jackets and trousers were not the sort of people I normally mixed with” [Emphasis added].
“I happen to be particularly”: Keith Altham, “The Rolling Stones: This Is a Stone Age!” NME Summer Special (1966).
“I don’t particularly care either”: “The Hair Stays Long So Hard Luck!” Melody Maker (March 28, 1964).
“So what? They”: As quoted in Massimo Bonanno, ed., The Rolling Stones Chronicle: The First Thirty Years (New York: Henry Holt, 1990), 24.
“My hair is not a gimmick”: “The Hair Stays Long So Hard Luck!” Melody Maker (March 28, 1964).
Suggestions that the Stones: As quoted in Wyman, Stone Alone, 170. “Demob suits” was pejorative slang for conventional, unimaginative attire. The phrase comes from the cheap, mass-produced “demobilization suits” that British servicemen were issued after they returned from World War Two, in order to ease their transition into civilian life.
“I’m fed up with people saying”: Rolling Stones Monthly Book, Issue 1 (June 1964), 2.
“Keith and I will talk”: As quoted in According to the Rolling Stones, 68.
(“like palm trees in a hurricane”): As quoted in Rave magazine (1964).
“We’d walk into some”: As quoted in Davis, Old Gods, 83.
“The way he performed”: Peter Whitehead, the filmmaker who shot the Stones’ first (and rarely seen) documentary film, Charlie Is My Darling, in 1965, said something similar. “Mick was right out there at the front just rubbing up against every single person in the audience, just touching them up, just masturbating them. The boys as well, that was what was extraordinary . . . don’t think it was just the girls. The boys were standing at the front weeping! ‘Miiick!’ ” In 1964, when the Rolling Stones appeared on The Mike Douglas Show, the host asked, “Is there one of you five who seems to be more popular with the young ladies than the others?” and Brian Jones chimed in, “Mick’s more popular with the men.” “He’s putting you on!” Jagger protested.
“I was trapped in a field”: Patti Smith, “Rise of the Sacred Monsters,” Creem (1973).
“crap,” “awful,” “full of rubbish”: As quoted in Sounds (October 29, 1977).
“he’s my cleaner”: As quoted in Nicky Haslam, Redeeming Features: A Memoir (New York: Knopf, 2009), 142.
“He’s great”: As quoted in Spitz, Jagger, 40.
“was crying and shouting at him”: Marianne Faithfull, Faithfull: An Autobiography (New York: Cooper Square Press, 2012), 20.
“famous, plate-throwing”: As quoted in Carey Schofield, Jagger (London: Methuen, 1983), 100.
“Mick would cry a lot”: As quoted in Norman, Mick Jagger (New York: Ecco, 2012), 105.
“growing charisma”: Oldham, Stoned, 47.
“We’d be walking down the street”: As quoted in Norman, Mick Jagger, 105.
“Mick liked to imagine”: Norman, The Stones, 99.
“Mick and I went down”: Mod, insert in Tiger Beat (August 1966). A blogger has cleverly speculated that Shrimpton’s brass bird might have inspired Lennon’s song “And Your Bird Can Sing.” Another tantalizing possibility is that Lennon addressed the song to Jagger, after growing weary of hearing him boast about his new relationship with Marianne Faithfull: “bird” was British slang for an attractive female, and Faithfull could indeed sing.
“Later I introduced Mick to Andy”: As quoted in According to the Stones, 79. Emphasis added.
“We were encouraged”: As quoted in Pritchard and Lysaght, Oral History, 170–71.
“multigenerational psychosis”: As quoted in Norman, Mick Jagger, 107.
Fact is that Beatle People: “Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!” Daily Mirror, November 6, 1963. (No byline.)
“An examination of the heart”: As quoted in Braun, Love Me Do, 65.
“I bet that about ten”: Murray Kaufman, Murray the K Tells It Like It Is, Baby (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966), 97.
4: YANKOPHILIA
“The mop-haired singers”: Murray Schumach, “Teen-Agers (Mostly Female) and Police Greet Beatles,” New York Times (August 14, 1965).
“We spent weeks drawing”: As quoted in Danny Somach, Kathleen Somach, Kevin Gunn, eds., Ticket to Ride (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 63.
“You hear that up there?”: Spitz, The Beatles, 577.
It remains one of the: You can see it in The Beatles at Shea Stadium, a 50-minute television documentary that first aired on the BBC in 1966, and then became increasingly widely available, first as a bootleg, then as part of The Beatles Anthology DVD series, and now on YouTube.
“I don’t envy those Beatles”: Hutchins, “Prisoners on Floor 33 While Two Stones Went Free,” NME (August 20, 1965).
At first, they received him: Oldham had claimed that it was necessary to host the presser on a boat because there wasn’t a single luxury hotel in Manhattan that was willing to host the Stones, but that was just another publicity stunt, designed to make the Stones seem more dangerous than they really were.
“That’s us . . . We have to be better”: “The Rolling Stones,” Hullabaloo (November 1966).
“when we were all”: As quoted in Ono, Memories of John Lennon, 107.
“In the tracks of the Beatles”: As quoted in Paytress, The Rolling Stones: Off the Record, 55.
How do you compare: YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3p2-LkN7EM&feature=watch_response.
Murray the K’s Swinging: As quoted in Pritchard and Lysaght, An Oral History, 157.
“Oh, just play the fuckin’ ”: Oldham, 2Stoned, 12.
The Rolling Stones, it is: Not only is the narrator in “I Just Want to Make Love to You” after sex; he also wants to score with a woman who is otherwise attached. He “knows by the way that [she] treats [her] man” that she’d be a good lay.
Then when Martin introduced: Wyman, 222.
“some dumb circus act”: Richards, Life, 151.
/> “sawdust fiasco”: Oldham, 2Stoned, 9.
“They would shout across”: Richards, Life, 121.
“I get to meet The Man”: As quoted in Sanford, Keith Richards, 66.
“That throws you a curve”: As quoted in Bockris, Keith Richards, 81.
Muddy Waters grew to have: Asked about the story in an interview, Marshall Chess said, “No truth in it at all. But Keith maintains to this day that it actually happened. I’ve laughed in his face many times as he’s insisted he saw Muddy up a ladder with a paint brush in his hand.”
the Beatles made headlines: Years later, Muddy remarked, “The Rolling Stones created a whole wide-open space for the music.” He also appreciated that, unlike some other acts, the Stones gave him the credit he deserved. “They said who did it first and how they came by knowin’ it. I tip my hat to ’em. It took the people from England to hip my people—my white people—that a black man’s music is not a crime to bring in the house.”
“I’ve never seen anything”: As quoted in Wyman, Stone Alone, 232.
“You can buy them”: As quoted in Dalton, The First Twenty Years, 41. Candy floss is known in North America as “cotton candy.”
A girl was quoted asking: Jack Hutton, Daily Mirror (June 6, 1964).
“Oldham could not afford”: Norman, The Stones, 136.
“Essentially British—and thoroughly”: Jones, “The Stones on America,” Rolling Stones Monthly Book, No. 2 (July 1964), 27.
“They had discovered that”: As quoted in Ono, Memories of John Lennon, 11.
It’s a well-known phenomenon: See Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness (New York: Vintage, 2007). “Beatlemania took its toll,” Harrison has said; after a while the Beatles were “no longer on the buzz of fame and success.”
“Everybody saw the effect of”: The Beatles Anthology, 354.
“After the gig, I remember”: The Beatles Anthology, 227.
“That’s it. I’m no longer a Beatle”: As quoted in Miles, The Beatles Diary, 244.
Beatles vs. Stones Page 29