McCartney two-part harmonies owe more than
a little to Don and Phil Everly whose wealth
of country-flavoured hits started with ‘Bye Bye
Love’ and perhaps peaked with the thunderously
produced classic ‘Cathy’s Clown’ in 1960. Little
Richard was rock’s outrageous dandy equipped
with a truly sensational voice featuring a soaring
falsetto that in time Paul McCartney came to
copy uncannily well. Carole King and Gerry
Goffin offered a perfect model of the sort of song
writing team that could combine sophistication
with unfailing catchiness, and early on Lennon
and McCartney admitted that their writing goal
was to become the next Goffin and King. Sitting
at his drums, Richard Starkey (transformed into
Ringo Starr in 1959 during his stint with Rory
Storm & The Hurricanes), was forever in search of
undemanding material for his token vocal and was
sometimes awarded a Carl Perkins song, although
he would also tackle a Buck Owens country hit
in ‘Act Naturally’. While it might have seemed
that The Beatles were an overnight sensation
when Beatlemania erupted, until Ringo came on
board, their apprenticeship was long and hard, and
included five separate stints in Hamburg, often
playing for eight hours a night, 275 performances
at the Cavern and scores of dance hall shows that
from 1960 gradually extended outwards from their
Liverpool base. This required a broad repertoire
and, more than anything, explains how they
succeeded in the extraordinary way they did.
a little to Don and Phil Everly whose wealth
of country-flavoured hits started with ‘Bye Bye
Love’ and perhaps peaked with the thunderously
produced classic ‘Cathy’s Clown’ in 1960. Little
Richard was rock’s outrageous dandy equipped
with a truly sensational voice featuring a soaring
falsetto that in time Paul McCartney came to
copy uncannily well. Carole King and Gerry
Goffin offered a perfect model of the sort of song
writing team that could combine sophistication
with unfailing catchiness, and early on Lennon
and McCartney admitted that their writing goal
was to become the next Goffin and King. Sitting
at his drums, Richard Starkey (transformed into
Ringo Starr in 1959 during his stint with Rory
Storm & The Hurricanes), was forever in search of
undemanding material for his token vocal and was
sometimes awarded a Carl Perkins song, although
he would also tackle a Buck Owens country hit
in ‘Act Naturally’. While it might have seemed
that The Beatles were an overnight sensation
when Beatlemania erupted, until Ringo came on
board, their apprenticeship was long and hard, and
included five separate stints in Hamburg, often
playing for eight hours a night, 275 performances
at the Cavern and scores of dance hall shows that
from 1960 gradually extended outwards from their
Liverpool base. This required a broad repertoire
and, more than anything, explains how they
succeeded in the extraordinary way they did.
By the time they recorded Rubber Soul in 1965
(just two years after their first album) they were
no longer recycling old American rock ’n’ roll or
casting around for likely cover versions to pad
out an album or a performance. Of course they
were still absorbing influences – The Byrds,
Bob Dylan, Ravi Shankar among them – but
these were contemporary acts and The Beatles
were now also doing more than their own
(just two years after their first album) they were
no longer recycling old American rock ’n’ roll or
casting around for likely cover versions to pad
out an album or a performance. Of course they
were still absorbing influences – The Byrds,
Bob Dylan, Ravi Shankar among them – but
these were contemporary acts and The Beatles
were now also doing more than their own
The record that started it all: ElvisPresley’s first single, a solar
explosion emanating from Sam Phillips’
modest studio at 706 Union Avenue,
Memphis, Tennessee on July 19th, 1954.
share of influencing, sartorially as well as musically.
They wrote all 12 tracks on both the movie album
A Hard Day’s Night (1964) and Rubber Soul, the
latter being a studio album of great diversity
and musical imagination. The old charge that
British bands could only copy Americans was
now redundant, and when The Byrds arrived in
the UK in 1965 they looked like five Beatles. The
Beatles themselves were a creative powerhouse,
comfortable in their international success as a
British band and even confident enough to throw
in the occasional evocative song references to their
strictly local childhood memories of Liverpool.
The apprentices were now the masters.
They wrote all 12 tracks on both the movie album
A Hard Day’s Night (1964) and Rubber Soul, the
latter being a studio album of great diversity
and musical imagination. The old charge that
British bands could only copy Americans was
now redundant, and when The Byrds arrived in
the UK in 1965 they looked like five Beatles. The
Beatles themselves were a creative powerhouse,
comfortable in their international success as a
British band and even confident enough to throw
in the occasional evocative song references to their
strictly local childhood memories of Liverpool.
The apprentices were now the masters.
In this book we concentrate on some of the
earliest identifiable Beatles inspirations. Some are
predictable and some are surprising but all have
their own stories and many would become all the
more famous because of their belated association
with a group of lads from Liverpool. These are
some of the songs The Beatles liked, played live
and sometimes recorded while they were gearing
up to become the most famous band in the world.
earliest identifiable Beatles inspirations. Some are
predictable and some are surprising but all have
their own stories and many would become all the
more famous because of their belated association
with a group of lads from Liverpool. These are
some of the songs The Beatles liked, played live
and sometimes recorded while they were gearing
up to become the most famous band in the world.