FROM THE QUARRYMEN TO THE BEATLES
It was beat and beetles, and when you said it, people thought of crawly things, and when you read it, it was beat music.
– John Lennon
The last hurrah for The Quarrymen was their first recording, a shellac demo disc made in 1958 with John singing lead on both sides. The A-side was a cover of Buddy Holly’s ‘That’ll Be The Day’, the B-side a McCartney-Harrison composition called ‘In Spite Of All The Danger’. After this recording, due to too many squabbles, the line-up of the band dwindled to core members John, Paul and George.
The band name was dropped, and when another chance to audition for Carroll Levis came up, the three performed as Johnny and the Moondogs. Only George and Paul brought their guitars on this occasion, and John sang in between them both, hamming it up with a hand on each of their shoulders. Despite this, they passed the audition, but unfortunately missed their spot in the final round in Manchester’s Hippodrome Theatre. It was late in the evening and they didn’t want to miss the last train back to Liverpool.
They briefly called themselves Japage 3 (from John and Paul and George) to play at a Harrison family wedding and another gig in Runcorn, and once performed as The Rainbows while wearing different coloured shirts. And on a visit to Paul’s cousins, John and Paul played in their Fox and Hounds pub in Caversham as The Nerk Twins.
(L-R) John, George, Paul & Pete Best in their first professional photo shoot. Getty Images
There has always been uncertainty as to when the band finally became The Beatles. John famously mythologised the name as coming from a man on a ‘flaming pie’ he saw in a vision, and the Marlon Brando biker film The Wild One has often (erroneously) been cited as the influence due to Lee Marvin’s character Chino’s remark about the ‘beetles’. The name most likely came from John and Stuart Sutcliffe – both Buddy Holly and The Crickets fans – bandying about possibilities while exploring puns and thinking about the double meaning behind ‘The Crickets’. It is claimed that Stuart came up with The Beatals, and John changed it to The Beatles. (Paul recalls both telling him of the name they’d dreamt up the next day.)
The name change came just as the band had another audition, this time for impresario Larry Parnes, famous for his stable of rock ’n’ roll solo acts, including Tommy Steele, Billy Fury and Marty Wilde. They were told that a band should have a long name and so Long John and The Silver Beatles was suggested. This was shortened to The Silver Beatles for the audition to go on tour supporting one of Parnes’ star acts, Billy Fury. They didn’t pass that audition, but The Silver Beatles were employed to back another of Parnes’ singers, Johnny Gentle, on a two-week tour of Scotland.
Back from the tour, they had gigs with variations on the name, trying out The Silver Beats and The Silver Beetles, finally settling on The Beatles in August 1960.