50 Interesting Facts about Beatles

Jimi Hendrix covered "Sgt. Pepper" in front of The Beatles only 2 days after it was released.

27. When the Beatles wrote the song "With a Little Help from My Friends", the first line ended with 'What would you think if I sang out of tune? Would You Throw Ripe Tomatoes at Me?', but Ringo Starr changed it so that fans would not throw tomatoes at him should he perform it live.

28. The Beatles song "Come Together" was written for Timothy Leary's campaign for governor of California. His campaign ended after he was arrested for marijuana possession.

29. The Beatles asked Stanley Kubrick to direct Lord of the Rings film starring George Harrison as Gandalf, Paul McCartney as Frodo, Ringo Starr as Sam, and John Lennon as Gollum but J.R.R. Tolkien wouldn't let them do it.

30. In 1968, the Beatles formed Apple Corps Ltd (informally known as Apple). In 1981, a lawsuit was settled with Apple Computer with the payment of $80,000 to Apple Corps. As a condition of the settlement, Apple Computer agreed to stay out of the music business.

When the Beatles recorded "Hey Jude", Ringo was on the toilet and came back just in time to play the drums on the song.

32. There is a small town in Australia which has a decommissioned submarine on display in a park, and to celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Beatles' visit to the country, community members knitted yellow wool squares to cover the entire submarine.

33. The Beatles officially broke up at Walt Disney World.

34. Paul McCartney intended "Let It Be" as an Aretha Franklin song. She took so long to release it that The Beatles recorded it themselves.

35. On August 29, 1966, The Beatles played what would become their last official concert as a band at Candlestick Park, San Francisco. The Park's capacity was 42,500, but only 25,000 tickets were sold, leaving large sections of unsold seats.

In 2007, listeners of BBC Radio 2 ranked Queen as the 'top British band' of all time, better than The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and The Rolling Stones.

37. The number plates (LMW 281F) on the white Volkswagen Beetle known for being on the cover of the Beatles’ Abbey Road, was stolen repeatedly from the car after the album was released.

38. "Something" by the Beatles and "Layla" by Eric Clapton are both about the same woman.

39. Due to the popularity of the Beatles song, "Penny Lane" street signs in Liverpool were so often stolen, local authorities got tired of replacing them and began painting the street's name onto the sides of buildings.

40. A reporter asked the Beatles about the intentions of the songs "Day Tripper" and "Norwegian Wood" after Time reported that they were about a prostitute and a lesbian. Paul responded with "We were just trying to write songs about prostitutes and lesbians, that's all."

The Beatles were considering to name their 1969 album Everest and even flying to the Himalayas to shoot the cover photo. Instead, they named it Abbey Road and shot the cover photo in front of the studio.

42. The Canadian rock band Rush stands third after the Beatles and Rolling Stones for the most consecutive gold or platinum studio albums by a rock band.

43. During the week of 4 April 1964, the Beatles held the top five positions on the Billboard Hot 100 singles simultaneously. This feat hasn't been accomplished by any other artist to date, the closest being 50-Cent, who placed three titles simultaneously.

44. John Lennon wrote the Beatles song 'Dear Prudence' for Prudence Farrow (Mia's sister) while studying Transcendental Meditation in India. The group became worried about her because she spent the majority of her time alone in her room practicing meditation, so John wrote her a song to persuade her to socialize more.

45. The Beatles did not know how to read music and George Harrison once said that he thought if he learned music theory it would ruin his ability to write songs.

When The Beatles were at a British Embassy reception in Washington D.C., someone cut off a lock of Ringo's hair as a souvenir. Ringo told an interviewer, "These diplomats just don't know how to behave."

47. In The Beatles song "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," neither George Harrison nor John Lennon plays the lead guitar part, Eric Clapton does.

48. "Across the Universe", by The Beatles, is the first song aliens will hear (it was beamed into deep space by NASA).

49. Johnny Ramone went to see The Beatles at the Shea Stadium with a bag of rocks to throw at them.

50. The Beatles concerts were said to smell heavily of urine due to overexcited girls.