The Beatles Wiki

A Good Source For The Beatles Universe And Anything Else Related

Welcome To The Beatles Wiki! A wiki founded in 2006 by Vidur about the world's greatest musical act, adopted by Nobody Cares and ListentoMusic in 2010, by Glamra in 2013, KirbyTheBulborb in 2021, and again by BootlegsATrolley in 2024. Ever since 2006, this wiki has given the finest wiki information about The Beatles. And you can help! (Not sure how you can help? Check out this wiki's to-do list.)

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Beatles News

A Lesson From John Lennon - Debbie Gendler - 2024/10/26 09:02

The ecstasy and agony of an original Beatles fan....

Mitzi McCall, 93, Dies; Comedian Confronted Beatlemania and Lost - Richard Sandomir - 2024/08/26 19:16

She and her husband had the bad luck to make their “Ed Sullivan Show” debut the same night as the Beatles. They bombed. But their careers would recover....

Judge John Hodgman on the Most Iconic Beatles Album Cover - John Hodgman - 2024/08/08 09:03

A couple compete to see who can be more wrong....

La guitarra que John Lennon usó en ‘Help!’ se subasta por 2,9 millones de dólares - John Yoon - 2024/05/30 18:56

Tras aparecer en varios álbumes de The Beatles, el instrumento permaneció olvidado durante más de 50 años, hasta que apareció en el desván de una casa en la campiña británica....

John Lennon’s Guitar From ‘Help!’ Is Sold for $2.9 Million at Auction - John Yoon - 2024/05/30 14:14

After appearing in multiple albums by the Beatles, the instrument was forgotten for more than 50 years before it turned up in the attic of a British countryside home....

Featured Song

I'll Cry Instead/I'm Happy Just To Dance With You single cover

'I'm Happy Just to Dance with You' is mainly a John Lennon composition (credited to Lennon/McCartney) recorded by The Beatles for the film soundtrack to A Hard Day's Night, and first released on 1 March 1964.

Featured Album

Anthology 1 is a compilation album by The Beatles, released on Apple Records in November 1995. It is the

first of a three-volume collection, all of which tie-in with the televised special The Beatles Anthology, and contains 'Free as a Bird,' billed as the first new Beatles song in 25 years. It topped the Billboard 200 album chart, and was certified 4x Platinum by the RIAA. Read More...

Featured Article

"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" is a song written primarily by John Lennon (credited to Lennon/McCartney) in 1967, and recorded by The Beatles for their album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

The song has a complex arrangement typical of later Lennon/McCartney compositions; much of the song is in triple metre (3/4 time), except the chorus, where it switches to 4/4 time. The song also shifts between musical keys, using the key of A for the verse, B-flat for the pre-chorus or bridge section, and G for the chorus. It consists of a very simple melody (reminiscent of a nursery song), sung by Lennon over an increasingly complicated underlying arrangement which features a sitar, played by George Harrison, and a Lowrie organ, whose sound was altered by producer George Martin, played by Paul McCartney.

The lyrics of the song — which is commonly believed to be about an acid trip — feature image-laden verses which present an overtly psychedelic travelogue, describing a boat trip through a fantastic land of "rocking horse people", "newspaper taxis" and "marshmallow pies", alternating with chorus sections which simply repeat the song's title. The Beatles, however, have steadily maintained that the initials of the title forming the word "LSD" (Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds) is mere coincidence, as the title is taken from a drawing by a young Julian Lennon. Forty years later the phrase "plasticine porters" inspired the name of the French female band the Plastiscines. According to the Beatles, one day in 1966 Lennon's son, Julian, came home from nursery school with a drawing he said was of his classmate, a girl named Lucy. Showing the artwork to his father, young Julian described the picture as "Lucy — in the sky with diamonds." His son's artwork appears to have inspired Lennon to draw heavily on his own childhood affection for Lewis Carroll's Wool and Water chapter from Through the Looking-Glass. At least one lyric was influenced by both Carroll and skits on a popular British comedy programme (the Goon Show) making references to "plasticine ties", which showed up in the song as "Plasticine porters with looking glass ties". Carroll's work has also been cited as having influenced Lennon's two books, In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works.

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Did You Know...

...that Say Say Say, the duet by Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson, is credited for the introduction of dialogue and storyline into music videos?
...that the first song the Beatles recorded was In Spite of All the Danger?
...that John Lennon started and ended The Beatles?
...that Brian Epstein was gay?
...that Paul McCartney and George Harrison were best friends since they met on the school bus in 1954?
...that the full interviews of John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and George Harrison are viewable on the Dick Cavett Show page?
...that with the addition of the Hey Jude Disambiguation page, the Beatles Wiki became officially 'evil' (666 pages)?
...that both Cynthia Lennon and Yoko Ono were older than John?
...that John Lennon and Cynthia Lennon had birthdays on consecutive days of the month? (9 October and 10 September, respectively.)
- ...that the above means that their birthdays are 9/10 and 10/9, although which is which depends on which date format you use?

The Beatles

No band has influenced pop culture the way The Beatles have. They were one of the best things to happen in the twentieth century, let alone the Sixties. They were youth personified. They were unmatched innovators who were bigger than both Jesus and rock & roll itself: During the week of 4 April 1964, the Beatles held the first five slots on the Billboard Singles chart; they went on to sell more than a billion records; and 2000's 1 , a compilation of the Beatles Number One hits, hit Number One in 35 countries and went on to become the best-selling album of the 2000s.

Every record was a shock when it came out. Compared to rabid R&B evangelists like the Rolling Stones, the Beatles arrived sounding like nothing else. They had already absorbed Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers and Chuck Berry, but they were also writing their own songs. They made writing your own material expected, rather than exceptional. As musicians, the Beatles proved that rock & roll could embrace a limitless variety of harmonies, structures, and sounds; virtually every rock experiment has some precedent on Beatles records. As a unit the Beatles were a synergistic combination: Paul McCartney's melodic bass lines, Ringo Starr's slaphappy no-rolls drumming, George Harrison's rockabilly-style guitar leads, John Lennon's assertive rhythm guitar — and their four fervent voices. As personalities, they defined and incarnated Sixties style: smart, idealistic, playful, irreverent, eclectic. Their music, from the not-so-simple love songs they started with to their later perfectionistic studio extravaganzas, set new standards for both commercial and artistic success in pop.

Read More of Rolling Stone's Beatles Biography...