100 Fab Beatles Facts

In honour of John, Paul, George and Ringo, here’s 100 little-known facts and bits of trivia about the ’60s icons, from the Pope’s reaction to their “bigger than Jesus” boast to raucous tales of condoms lit on fire. Ready? Here we go…

1
The Beatles

The last time McCartney and Lennon ever jammed together was at a bit of a boozy studio session, playing with Stevie Wonder and Harry Nilsson. A bootleg, ‘A Toot And A Snore’, appeared in 1974.

2
Ringo Starr – Our World TV programme

The iconic drop-T Beatles logo was sketched by a music shop owner, Ivor Arbiter, when Ringo bought a new drumkit from his London shop in 1963.

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Music

The band bought Greek island Leslo, surrounded by four smaller islands (one for each Beatle), for £95,000 in summer 1967. They sold it a few months later, bored with the idea.

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4
Music – The Beatles – London Airport

Lennon and McCartney wrote The Rolling Stones’ first hit, ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’, after the Stones whined they needed a hit single. Lennon said afterwards: “We weren’t going to give them anything great, right?”

5
The Beatles

Worried that no-one would understand their Liverpudlian accents in 1964 film ‘A Hard Day’s Night’, US music execs considered dubbing them over with American actors. McCartney harrumphed: “We can understand a fucking cowboy talking Texan!”

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Lennon and McCartney once started work on a play called ‘Pilchard’, about a bloke who thought he was God, but never finished it.

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Music – The Beatles –

When Bob Dylan first heard ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’, he decided The Beatles must be groovy drug-inspired folk and mistook the line ‘I can’t hide’ for ‘I get high’.

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8
Now, The Flying Beatles

John Lennon didn’t like his own voice and wanted to sound like Elvis. He begged producer George Martin: “Do something with my voice! You know, put something on it. Smother it with tomato ketchup or something. Make it different!”.

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Paul McCartney, drummer Pete Best and George Harrison were all deported from Germany during their first Hamburg club residency in late 1960: a 17-year-old Harrison for being underage; McCartney and Best for setting a condom on fire in their room.

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Lennon once wrote a Dylan parody called ‘Stuck Inside Of Lexicon With The Roget’s Thesaurus Blues’.

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Film – Beatles Film ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ – Twickenham Studios

In an early interview George Harrison let slip that he liked jelly babies. Consequently, he was pelted with them at gigs for years afterwards. This could be painful, especially in America, where jelly babies weren’t available – so fans threw harder jelly beans instead.

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12
Paul McCartney – Our World programme

According to gossiping tabloids, Brian Wilson was so knocked out when McCartney played him ‘A Day In The Life’, the Beach Boy decided to “retire and live in a sauna bath”.

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Music

Last year The Pope forgave Lennon for his infamous 1966 statement “we’re bigger than Jesus”. The Vatican decided it was merely a “boast by a young working-class Englishman faced with unexpected success”.

14
Music – Variety Club Luncheon – Savoy Hotel – 1963

For a while ‘Abbey Road”s working title was ‘Everest’ (after engineer Geoff Emerick’s fave brand of fags), but when it was suggested the disgruntled band go to the Himalayas to shoot the cover they decided they couldn’t be arsed and named it after the street the studio was on.

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Music – Beatles Press Conference

The term ‘Beatlemania’ was invented by Canadian hack Sandy Gardiner, first appearing in the Ottawa Journal, November 1963, to describe “a new disease” sweeping the globe.

16
Music – The Beatles Awarded MBEs – Buckingham Palace

John claimed he had named the band after a vision in a dream, saying a man appeared “on a flaming pie,” saying, “You will be Beatles with an ‘a’.”

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Music

Paul, a Catholic, was inspired to write ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ by the Vatican ritual where a cardinal bangs the late pope on the forehead five times with a silver hammer to make sure that he is dead.

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Film – Beatles Film ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ – Twickenham Studios

One of the worst Yoko-related arguments ensued after Ono stole Harrison’s chocolate digestive while the band were recording in the Abbey Road studios. George yelled that she was a “bitch”.

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The line “I am the eggman” was allegedly inspired by The Animals’ Eric Burdon’s predilection for cracking eggs on his lovers’ naked bods.

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Music – Beatles

Ringo Starr orginally wanted to be a hairdresser.

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Fleetway Studios

‘Paperback’ has become Cockney rhyming slang for ‘raita’ (rhymes with ‘writer’), the cooling savoury yoghurt often served in Indian restaurants.

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The Beatles – London Airport

Pre-pop stardom Paul had a go at being an electrician: “I was hopeless. They gave me a job winding coils and called me Mantovani because of my long hair.”

23
Music – Beatles at the EMI Studios

The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band appear in the stripper sequence in Magical Mystery Tour and play a song entitled ‘Death Cab For Cutie’. Guess who nicked it for a band name?

24
Music – Variety Club Luncheon – Savoy Hotel

The song ‘Sexy Sadie’ was originally entitled ‘Maharishi’ – ­ it was written by Lennon while staying at the guru’s Indian ashram, and is about their growing disillusionment with him.

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The Beatles

Strawberry Fields was a real place – it was ­ a children’s home run by the Salvation Army in Liverpool. It’s since been demolished.

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In early 1963 the band claimed to have already written over 100 songs. Paul said: “We have such a fairly easy job thinking up tunes these days. If we think up a tune very quickly we know we’ve got a hit.”

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Little Richard became a big fan when he heard The Beatles in early
1963, but was amazed to find out they were white boys. He said:
“Honestly, if I hadn¹t seen them with my own eyes I’d have thought they
were a coloured group from back home.”

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The Beatles auditioned for Decca in January 1962, but A&R executive Dick Rowe declined to sign them, declaring, “Guitar groups are on the way out”. D’oh!

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The Beatles first entered the NME Charts (as they were then known) on October 26, 1962 with ‘Love Me Do’. It entered at Number 27, wedged between Billy Fury at 26 and Buddy Holly at 28.

30
The Beatles – Christmas Show

The so-called “magic circle” were the only folk allowed in the recording studio: the Fab Four, George Martin and road managers Neill Aspinall and Mal Evans. Then John met Yoko Ono and dragged a bed in.

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Music – Beatles Press Conference

The statue of Eleanor Rigby sitting on a bench in Liverpool’s Stanley Street was made by ’60s singer Tommy Steele.

32
Music – Beatles Rehearsal for Royal Variety Command Performance

John wrote ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ while on the set of ‘How I Won The War’, in which he had a cameo role.

33
Film – Beatles Film ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ – Twickenham Studios

A 16-year-old Harrison failed to convince his family to emigrate to Canada, Australia or Malta.

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Music – Beatles Rehearsal for Royal Variety Command Performance

Early on, John and Paul agreed to a joint Lennon/McCartney credit on all Beatles compositions written by either of them or together. Yoko got the hump after the band split when Paul attempted to change the order to McCartney/Lennon on songs he’d written.

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The Beatles – Christmas Show

John Lennon returned his 1965 MBE to the Queen in 1969 “as a protest against Britain’s involvement in the Nigeria-Biafra thing, against our support of America in Vietnam and against ‘Cold Turkey’ slipping down the charts”. He signed it “love, John”.

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Film – Beatles Film ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ – Twickenham Studios

John’s song ‘Julia’, dedicated to his late mother, Julia, and wife Yoko, was the only Beatles song he recorded without the others’ help.

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Beatles – MBEs

After George got drunk and threw up on the floor in Hamburg, no one would clean it up. As it grew more crusty and disgusting it became known as a “fiendish thingy”. Thus George’s famous ‘fiendish thingy’ saying.

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New Beatle

Conspiracy theorists cited the ‘Abbey Road’ cover as proof that McCartney died and replaced by a lookalike. It apparently shows a preacher (Lennon), undertaker (Starr), corpse (bare-footed Paul), gravedigger (Harrison); and the car reg indicates the age Paul would have been if alive (28IF).

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Music – Royal Variety Command Performance – Rehearsals – Prince of Wales Theatre

Legend has it that the Beatles’ ill-advised, abortive album sleeve for ‘Yesterday And Today’­ – which depicted the band in butcher’s overalls, holding raw meat and slain dolls – was a dig at Capitol’s ‘butchering’ of their records.

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Music – The Beatles Return To UK From Australia – London Airport

The last time all four Beatles recorded together in the same studio was for ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’ for the ‘Abbey Road’ album on 20 August, 1969.

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Back Again

Paul’s first acid trip was on the evening of 21 March, 1967. He apparently did it to keep John company, after Lennon had ‘accidentally’ ingested a tab of acid.

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Music – The Beatles

After his first acid trip, John raved: “It was truly a religious experience. I had never realised what people were talking about when they said God is within you.”

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The Beatles – Paris trip

The most played track at The Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’ press launch was Procul Harum’s ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’. Lennon was obsessed by it, and played the song non-stop on his white Rolls Royce’s record player all the way to the party.

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Film – Beatles Film ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ – Twickenham Studios

In France they changed the title of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ to ‘Quatre Garçons Dans Le Vent’ (‘Four Boys in the Wind’).

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The Beatles filming ‘Help’

John claimed ‘Ticket To Ride’ “was one of the earliest heavy metal records made”.

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Music – The Beatles – Around the Beatles Television Show

It has been argued that The Beatles were responsible for MTV ­ – they were the first group to create promotional film clips to sell their music.

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Beatles Documentary

John Lennon loved cats. He had 10 while living in Weybridge with first wife Cynthia. His mum once had a cat called Elvis, because she was a big Presley fan.

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The Beatles – A New Role

At one point, Ringo seriously considered emigrating to Texas to become a country musician.

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Music – The Beatles – Around the Beatles Television Show

Before writing ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’, George Harrison randomly picked a book on a shelf, opened it and read the first word he saw. The word was ‘gently’.

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The Beatles – Tour of Europe

All The Beatles were scared of flying, especially George.

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Entertainment – The Yellow Submarine Press Preview – Bowater House

A burst appendix and a bout of pleurisy kept Ringo in hospital for three years as a child.

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The Beatles – Tour of the United States

Reacting to Lennon’s death in 1980, McCartney offered the lame response: “It’s a drag, isn’t it?” (he later said he was in shock).

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The Beatles – The Gaumont

Among the people on the cover of ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ are Stuart Sutcliffe, Laurel and Hardy, Marilyn Monroe, Karl Marx, boxer Sonny Liston, Bob Dylan, Lenny Bruce and Shirley Temple.

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RINGO STARR

When the Beatles requested Shirley Temple’s permission to use her image on the cover of ‘Pepper’, she was the only celebrity who insisted on hearing the album before granting permission.

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Music – The Beatles – Around the Beatles Television Show

Mae West at first refused to let the band use her image on the ‘Pepper’ sleeve, but gave in when the fellas each sent her a personal note explaining how much it would mean to them.

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Fans rooftop welcome for The Beatles

1967’s ‘She’s Leaving Home’ angered the American far right, who decided it was a cryptic advertisement for abortion.

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Beatle in the field

Ringo, George and John left school with no qualifications (although John wangled his way into art school), while a relatively swotty Paul scooped five O levels and one A level.

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The Beatles make a film and the fans besiege theatre

Stuart Sutcliffe rechristened what was left of The Quarrymen (Lennon,
McCartney, Harrison), ‘The Beatles’ when he joined the band as bassist
in 1960. They officially became The Beatles in August that year.

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Music – The Beatles – Around the Beatles Television Show

‘Please Please Me’ had the distinction of having credited John and Paul’s compositions as McCartney-Lennon instead of Lennon­McCartney.

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Beatles to Stockholm

Although there is an Eleanor Rigby buried in Woolton Cemetery (where McCartney met Lennon playing in The Quarrymen), the Rigby bit was inspired by the name of an ladies undies shop and the Eleanor after Eleanor Bron, the actress in ‘Help!’.

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Music – The Beatles – Around the Beatles Television Show

The band played their last ever live performance on a grey lunchtime, 30 January, 1969, in a 42-minute set atop the Apple HQ, Savile Row, central London. Ringo dourly observed: “London’s garment district finally got to see The Beatles’ last concert.”

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MBE for John Lennon

The Beatles final gig was stopped when police arrived. Envisaging a headlining end to the band, Ringo was happy to see them. “I wanted the cops to drag me off kicking the cymbals and everything.” But actually PC number 503 simply nipped round the back and pulled the plug.

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LENNON ONO BED-IN AMSTERDAM

Though she bought him his first guitar, John’s Aunt Mimi discouraged him from a  career in music, saying: “The guitar’s all right as a hobby, but it won’t earn you any money.” Years later, John gave her a silver plaque with that quote engraved upon it.

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The Beatles

‘She’s Leaving Home’ was actually inspired by a story in the Daily Mail headlined ‘A-Level Girl Dumps Car And Vanishes’. Londoner Melanie Cole, 17, was found living with her boyfriend the next week.

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John Lennon

‘Good Morning Good Morning’ was written by Lennon after being annoyed by a Kellogs’ Cornflakes telly ad. It’s believed to be a bilious riposte to McCartney’s ‘Good Day Sunshine’.

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Fleetway Studios

Murdered playwright Joe Orton’s fave Beatles song was ‘A Day In The Life’. It was played at his funeral in Golders Green Crematorium, north London, on 18 August, 1967.

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The Beatles

At Lennon’s specific request, the animal noises that feature at the end of ‘Good Morning Good Morning’ are in pecking order ­ eg, the order in which the beasties would eat the previous one.

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Music – The Beatles at the EMI Studios

‘A Hard Day’s Night’ was so called after Ringo wittily moaned that was a ‘hard day’s night’ after a knackering day’s filming on 19 March, 1964.

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The Beatles – A New Role

There’s been much speculation who the drug-supplying doc is in ‘Doctor Robert’. Lennon claimed in 1980 it was him, saying:  “I was the one who carried all the pills on tour in the early days.”

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The Beatles – MBE

It was actually Dylan who first ‘turned the Beatles on’; giving them their first marijuana cigarette on 28 August, 1964 in the Delmonico Hotel, NY.

71
Music – The Beatles – Record Star Show

Donovan came up with the last line of ‘Yellow Submarine’; offering ‘Sky of blue, sea of green’ after McCartney popped round to his pad and played him an unfinished demo.

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Music – The Beatles – American Tour

Looking back in 1980, Lennon decided ‘Help!’ was an actual cry for help from the depths of what he referred to as his ‘fat Elvis’ period (dysfunctional marriage, lonely in his suburban mansion).

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BATTLE OF THE BANDS GLANCE

It was Stuart Sutcliffe’s girlfriend Astrid Kirchherr’s idea for the boys to trade their DA (duck’s arse) quiffs for the longer moptop style.

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Music – The Beatles – Heathrow Airport

The Beatles played the now-legendary Liverpool Cavern Club 292 times; it was during a lunchtime session on Saturday 28 October, 1961 that they were first seen by their future manager Brian Epstein.

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Entertainment – The Yellow Submarine Press Preview – Bowater House

Brian Epstein quickly swapped the boys’ leather jacketed biker boy look for pink mohair suits, made by his tailor Beno Dorn in Birkenhead. He apparently persuaded them this was a good thing by taking them to see a be-suited Shadows show.

76
John Lennon and Yoko Ono

Eric Clapton was the man George was waiting for at a garden one morning when he started writing ‘Here Comes The Sun’.

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Music – YMCA Competition – The Beatles – Astoria – London

Paul confessed to Uncut in 2004 that ‘Got To Get You Into My Life’ was “about pot – although everyone missed it at the time”, and ‘Day Tripper’ was “about acid”.

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The Beatles – Press Conference

The Beatles got the inspiration for their first UK Number One single, ‘From Me To You’, from the NME letters page, which was then called From You To Us. They wrote the song on a coach during a tour supporting Helen Shapiro.

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Theatre – Royal Variety Performance – Prince of Wales theatre

Fearful that audiences in America’s Deep South would be segregated for their 1964 US tour, the band declared in an advance press statement: “We will not appear unless Negroes are allowed to sit anywhere.”

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“Semolina pilchard” in ‘I Am The Walrus’ is a reference to Scotland Yard drug squad detective Norman “Nobby” Pilcher, who orchestrated the raid on Lennon’s London flat in October 1968.

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Ringo wrote the 1969 song ‘Octopus’s Garden’ after taking a boat trip on holiday in Sardinia. The boat’s captain told him about how octopuses collect shiny objects from the seabed to build gardens. He declined to eat the octopus lunch offered.

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Jealous about the cacophony The Who managed to generate on vinyl, The Beatles recorded ‘Helter Skelter’, their attempt to make a really, really big racket.

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Legend has it George Martin signed The Beatles for Parlophone apparently without hearing them, because he was so impressed by their humour.

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Presumably Lennon was being ironic when he said of manager Brian Epstein’s death on 27 August, 1967, “Isn’t it exciting?”.

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John Lennon was inspired to write ‘I Am The Walrus’ after a cursory reading of Lewis Carroll’s poem ‘The Walrus And The Carpenter’. He was dismayed to learn – upon closer inspection – that the walrus was in fact the villain of the poem, not the hero.

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‘Fixing A Hole’, from 1967, was written by McCartney after extensive DIY on his Scottish farmhouse. Not about drugs, as some have alleged.

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The popular “Paul is dead” rumours first appeared after he had a moped accident on 9 November, 1966. It was luridly reported, with some claiming he’d been decapitated. Actually he’d merely cut his lip (he then grew a moustache to cover the scar).

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Both Lennon and McCartney claimed it was a coincidence that ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’ spelt L-S-D. They claimed it was actually inspired by a picture young Julian Lennon had drawn at school of a little girl.

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The cartoon version of McCartney on 1968’s ‘Yellow Submarine’ is voiced by actor Geoffrey Hughes ­ Eddie Yeats from ‘Corrie’/Twiggy off ‘The Royle Family’.

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Britain Beatles Royalties

McCartney announced the end of the Beatles on 10 April, 1970. This infuriated Lennon, who tried to take the credit for ending it, sniping, “I started the band. I disbanded it.”

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