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RINGO 1963(on his musical beginnings)
Q: "Ringo, it's been suggested that boys coming from the particular area that you've come from, if you'd hadn't found an interest in music, might have found it much more difficult to get out and make a go of life. Would you comment on this?"
RINGO: "I think it's true, you know. I mean, when I was sixteen I used to walk along the road with the rest of the lads, and we'd have all our trade coats on. You know, we'd had a few knocks with other rival gangs, sort of thing. But then I got the drums, and the bloke nextdoor played a guitar. I got a job and we started playing together. And another bloke from work made a bass out of an old tea chest... you know them days. This was about '58, mind you. And we played together, and then we started playing on dances and things, you know, and we took an interest in it. Then we stopped going, you know, out to sort of hanging around corners every night."
PAUL 1963(on The Beatles' career before their recent fame)
Q: "You were very much younger when this enormous success started, and you're riding the summit of it now. Do you see it as interfering with the flow of your life?"
PAUL: "I don't really know what you mean by 'very much younger.' It was only a year ago."
Q: "But you've been working since '58, haven't you?"
PAUL: "Well, yeah... not working, you know. I mean, strictly speaking we've been out of work since '58 and we've been doing this as a hobby. 'Cuz we've only been doing it as semi-pros. I left school and went right into it. And we were only sort of picking up a few quid a week, you know. It really wasn't work. I think the main thing is now that, as we've got ourselves a bit of security... we don't really have to worry, at the moment anyway, what we're gonna do after it. So we don't."
JOHN 1963
(regarding the beginnings of The Beatles)
JOHN: "We started and finished several groups until we got one together that had the beginnings of a new sound. By then George had joined us. We began to do well as semi-pros. Then one day our big break came with an offer to appear at The Star Club in Hamburg. This is a kind of super-Cavern, where just about everyone who is anyone on the Liverpool scene has played at some time or another."
PAUL 1963(regarding their Hamburg tours)
PAUL: "Back home in Liverpool we'd only ever done hour-long shows, so we just did our best numbers over and over again. But in Hamburg we had to play for eight hours, so we really had to find a new way of playing. We played very loud in Hamburg... bang, bang all the time. The Germans loved it. The first time it was pretty rough. One night, we accidentally singed a bit of cord on an old stone wall in the corridor, and the owner of the place had the police on us. He'd told them that we tried to burn his place down, so they said, 'Leave please.' Funny really, because we couldn't have burnt the place if we had gallons of petrol... It was made of stone."
RINGO 1963
(regarding his earliest days with The Beatles)
RINGO: "The Beatles drummer was sick, so they asked me if I would sit in, you know, just for the day... just until he got better. I did that, and then I went off with another group when they got him back. Then he was sick again. So everytime he was sick they used to come and ask me to sit in. I loved it, you know, because they were a much better group than the one I was with."
JOHN AND RINGO 1963(regarding the Beatle haircut)
Q: "Is the haircut an act by accident or design?"
JOHN: "Accident."
Q: "You didn't have time to get your hair cut in the first place?"
JOHN: "No, it just happened, you know. Ringo's was by design because he joined later."
RINGO: "Yeah, I designed it."
(laughter)
GEORGE 1963(on Hamburg)
GEORGE: "We'd been to Hamburg. I think that's where we found our style... we developed our style because of this fella. He used to say, 'You've got to make a show for the people.' And he used to come up every night, shouting 'Mach schau! Mach schau!' So we used to mach schau, and John used to dance around like a gorilla, and we'd all, you know, knock our heads together and things like that. Anyway, we got back to Liverpool and all the groups there were doing 'Shadows' type of stuff. And we came back with leather jackets and jeans and funny hair, maching schau... which went down quite well."
JOHN 1963
(regarding the effect Brian Epstein had on their stage show)
JOHN: "We
wore leather jackets in Hamburg... and we'd always
worn jeans because we didn't have anything else at
the time. Then when we went back to Liverpool, they
all thought we were German because we were billed as: From Hamburg. They all said, 'You speak good
English.' (smiles) And we just
kept on with the leather gear until Brian came along."
PAUL 1963(about the group's name)
Q: "Paul, where did the name Beatles originate?"
PAUL: "John thought of it first of all. Just as a name; just for a group, you know. We just didn't have any name. Well, oh yeah; we did have a name, but we had about ten of 'em a week, you know... and we didn't like this idea so we had to settle on one particular name. And John came up with the name Beatles one night. And he sort of explained how it was spelled with an 'E-A,' and we said, 'Oh yes, it's a joke.'"
JOHN 1963(regarding 'Love Me Do' on the British charts)
JOHN: "It came to the charts in two days. And everybody thought it was a 'fiddle' because our manager's stores send in these... what is it... record returns. And everybody down south thought, 'Aha! He's just fiddling the charts.' But he wasn't."
PAUL 1963(on left-handedness)
PAUL: "The only thing I couldn't cure myself of was being left-handed. I do everything with my left hand, and no matter how I try I can't change the habit. I just seem to do everything back to front. I used to even write backwards. Every time the schoolmasters would look at my handwriting they would throw swinging fits."
JOHN, PAUL, AND GEORGE
1963(on how long The Beatles' recent fame might last)
JOHN: "How long are you going to last? ...well you can't really say, you know. You can be big headed and say, 'Yea we're gonna last ten years,' but as soon as you've said that you think, 'We're lucky if we last three months,' you know."
PAUL: "We've thought about it, and probably the thing that John and I will do will be to write songs... as we have been doing as a sort of sideline now. We'll probably develop that a bit more."
GEORGE: "I hope to have enough money to go into a business of my own by the time we do... ummm... flop. I mean, we don't know. It may be next week, it may be two or three years."
GEORGE 1963(regarding the Liverpool sound)
Q: "George, what is the status of rock & roll in England today? Is that what you call your music?"
GEORGE: "No, not really. We don't like to call it anything. The critics and the people who write about it have to call it something... and they didn't want to say it was rock & roll because rock was supposed to have gone out about five years ago. They decided it wasn't really rhythm and blues, so they called it the Liverpool sound... which is stupid, really. As far as we are concerned it's the same as the rock from five years ago."
Q: "Can you describe the Liverpool sound?"
GEORGE: "It's more like old rock... but everything's just a bit louder. There's more bass and drums, and everybody sort of sings loud and shouts."
PAUL 1963(on what comes after Beatle success)
Q: "None of you are really concerned with going on in this field as a profession?"
PAUL: "Yeah, of course we are. I think all of us really, if it suddenly flopped, then we would do something in this profession. But what we mean... like the conventional answer is, 'I'd like to do ballads and films and straight-acting,' which is so corny. Because half the people who say that can't act or ballad or film. So, umm, we probably wouldn't want to do that unless we thought we could do it. We're having a bash at a film next year, and if we find that any of us can act, say, one out of us may become actors. But we haven't got any great hopes of being actors at the moment."
1963 PHOTO BANK
JOHN 1963(on live performances of 'Twist And Shout')
JOHN: "I always hate singing the song, 'Twist And Shout' when there's a colored artist on the bill with us. It doesn't seem right, you know. I feel sort of embarrassed... It makes me curl up. I always feel he could do the song much better than me."
GEORGE 1963(on what happens if The Beatles' fame ends)
Q: "What happens to you after this is over?"
GEORGE: "Well, umm, I suppose we'll stay doing this sort of stuff for a couple of years. Whether we're... I mean, naturally we wont be able to stay at this level. But, umm, we should have another two years at least, I think."
Q: "What happens to George Harrison then?"
GEORGE: "I don't know. I'll know by the time that comes along. Probably I'll have a little business or something like that."
Q: "You don't want to go on in the profession?"
GEORGE: "Probably, yeah. I'd like to make records, you know, with other artists. I don't mean perform... I mean as a producer."
Q: "The technical side."
GEORGE: "Mmmm. But I don't know. You can't really tell at this stage."
PAUL 1963(on songwriting)
Q: "I understand you boys write your own material."
PAUL: "John and I write them."
Q: "Do you get together regularly to write, or does an idea pop in your mind and you say, let's sit down and do it?"
PAUL: "If an idea does pop in your mind, then you do sit down and say, 'Let's do it,' yea. If there are no ideas and say we've been told we've got a recording date in about two days time, then you got to sit down and sort of slug it out. You normally get just a little idea which doesn't seem bad and you go on and it builds up from there. It varies every time."
RINGO AND JOHN
1963(on adjusting to
fame)
RINGO: "Once when the boys came for me-- they popped in to see me Mum and me Dad, you know-- we had to go out the back 'cuz there were twenty or thirty outside. And they wouldn't believe me mother, you know, knocking and saying 'Can we have their autographs.' So it built up so much. There was about two hundred kids all around the door, peeping through the window and knocking. In the end, me mother was ill, you know-- terrified out of her life-- with just all these kids and boys and girls, you know."
JOHN: "It all sounds complaining, but you know, we're not. We're just putting the point that it affects your home more than it does yourself, you know, because you know what to expect but your parents and family don't know what's happening."
GEORGE 1963(on adjusting to fame)
Q: "George, how different is your life now as a member of the Beatles to what it was, say, even four years ago?"
GEORGE: "Everything's completely changed. We don't have a private life anymore. And we, umm, are public property now. Not that we mind."
Q: "You don't mind being such public property with no private time at all?"
GEORGE: "Well, you get accustomed to it, and after a while you just take it for granted and you just do everything automatically... like signing autographs and (laughs) waving at people."
Q: "What about homelife with your own family? Do you ever get any these days?"
GEORGE: "Yeah. Occasionally, say once every fortnight, we manage to get home. And, umm, if we're not appearing in our hometown then it's usually OK. They don't expect us to be there, and we... It's, you know, quite quiet."
Q: "Does this change the status for the family much?"
GEORGE: "Umm, not really. It makes 'em more popular. (laughs) And people sort of after a while spot 'my' parents, anyway. You know, it's the same with the others. They'll say, 'There's George's dad,' whereas before they wouldn't know him from Adam. But, you know, they're just still the same as before."
JOHN 1963(on 'Goon-type' humor)
Q: "John, it's said that you have the most 'Goon-type' humor of the four Beatles."
JOHN: "Who said that?"
Q: "I think I read it in one of the newspapers."
JOHN: "You know what the newspapers are like."
Q: "What are they like?"
JOHN: "Wrong."
Q: (laughs) "This is going wrong... I want to get a nice 'Personality' bit."
JOHN: "I haven't got a nice personality."
Q: (laughs) "Is this evidence of Goon-type humor?"
JOHN: "No, I don't think I really have Goon-type humor. That's just an expression people use."
Q: "You were interested in poetry in school."
JOHN: "Who said?"
Q: "It's printed in a book compiled by the Beatles and entitled, 'The Beatles.'"
JOHN: (laughs) "I haven't read that book."
GEORGE AND JOHN
1963(following the Royal Command
Performance)
Q: "How did you enjoy the Royal Variety show?"
GEORGE: "It was great! Fabulous! Yea, you
know, the audience was much better than we expected."
JOHN: "...much taller."
GEORGE: "Yea."
PAUL 1963(on events that helped to build their current success)
PAUL: "I think the Palladium television show was a big step... and hot on it's footsteps we had The Royal Variety Performance for the Queen Mother, you know. From there really, the national newspapers have caught ahold of it. Alot of things have happened. Alot of columnists got onto the idea and started calling it, 'Beatlemania,' you know. Different things, like happening to be there at the right time... The long haircuts, which people are calling a gimmick now... A little bit of originality in the songs... A little bit of a different sound. You know, it's been a collection of so many different things."
JOHN 1963(about Beatlemania, and the song 'She Loves You')
Q: "You coined the 'Yeah Yeah Yeah' phrase that is sweeping England right now."
JOHN: "Well, yea. That's sort of the main catch phrase from 'She Loves You.' We'd written the song, and then suddenly realized we needed more... so we added yeah, yeah, yeah, and it caught on. So now they use it if they're trying to be 'with it.'"
Q: "Since you have gained your current popularity, have there been any other groups trying to imitate you?"
JOHN: "Well, I suppose a couple of people have jumped on the bandwagon, but it doesn't really matter because it promotes the whole idea of us. If we're away on tour, there's still a few little Beatles around to remind people of us."
PAUL 1963(on writing the song, 'She Loves You')PAUL: "John and I wrote it together. We were in a van up in Newcastle somewhere, and we'd just gone over to our hotel. I originally got an idea of doing one of those answering songs, where a couple of us sing about 'she loves you' ...and the other one sort of says the 'yes, yes' bit. You know, 'yeah yeah' answering whoever is saying it. But we decided that was a crummy idea anyway. But we had the idea to write a song called 'She Loves You' then. And we just sat up in the hotel bedroom for a few hours and wrote it, you know."
GEORGE 1963(on making the news headlines)
GEORGE: "We do enjoy reading the publicity about us, but from time to time you don't actually realize it's about yourself. You see your pictures and read about George Harrison... but you don't actually think, 'Oh that's me! There I am in the paper!' It's funny. It's just as though it's a different person."
JOHN 1963(on their upcoming 'first American visit')
Q: "So far, all British pop stars have not made a significant impact on the States. How do you think you're going to fare?"
JOHN: "Well... I can't really say, can I? I mean, is it up to me? ...No!! I just hope we go alright, you know."
Q: "Are you going to vary your act at all for the American audience?"
JOHN: "No. I mean, we haven't really got an 'Act' ...so we'll just do what we do. Sing and twitch."
JOHN AND PAUL 1963(a
recorded Christmas message sent to Fan Club
members-- regarding fan mail, concerts, and recording)
JOHN: "This time last
year, we were all dead chuffed because 'Love Me Do' got in the top twenty. And we can't believe that so many
things have happened in between already. I'd like to
say thank you to all the Beatle people who have
written to me during the year. I'd love to reply
personally to everyone, but I just haven't enough
pens."
PAUL: "Lots of people have asked us what we
enjoyed best... concerts, television, or recording.
We like doing stage shows because it's great to hear
an audience enjoying themselves. But the thing we
like best is going into the recording studio to make
new records... which is what we've been doing all day before we started on this special message. What we
like to hear most is one of our songs taking shape in a recording studio, and then listening to the tapes
afterwards to hear how it all worked out."
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