Beatles: Worst Musicians Ever?

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!Do you remember those famous early photos of the Beatles leaping around on the beach in funny-looking striped bathing suits? For decades, those images seemed like the ultimate carefree holiday snapshot—John, Paul, George, and Ringo goofing off in the sand, flashing those famous grins, totally at ease. The reality is a lot less glamorous. Even when the Beatles looked like they were playing, they were working. Those iconic shots were taken in July 1963 by photographer Dezo Hoffmann at Brean Down beach in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset. The band wasn’t on vacation. They were locked in the middle of a brutal, exhausting UK tour schedule, grinding out two shows a night at the town’s Odeon Cinema. The beach shoot was just another promotional obligation jammed into a day already bursting at the seams. Yet, somehow, they managed to project boundless, lightning-in-a-bottle energy for the cameras. This week, the beach scene was recreated for the four-part Beatles biopic being filmed by director Sam Mendes.

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!Name one artist who was the most popular and the most original at the same time, for more than a few years. Most acts end up on one side of that line. Some are commercial giants who give audiences what they expect, and others are avant-garde innovators whose genius is recognized decades later. The Beatles are the glaring exception, and in this video we look at whether that is a provable fact or a romantic myth. We start with the science. A 2017 study of about 27,000 Billboard Hot 100 songs found that the biggest hits are not the most typical songs. They are the ones just one step ahead of the crowd, a principle called optimal differentiation. Psychologist Dean Keith Simonton found the same pattern in more than 5,000 classical themes. The catch is that the sweet spot keeps moving. Last year’s novelty is this year’s cliché, and most careers stall at exactly that point. The Beatles kept moving with it. In about seven years they went from “I Want to Hold Your Hand” to “Tomorrow Never Knows,” Sgt. Pepper and Abbey Road, and millions of listeners followed them. We also look at the evidence against them, including a 2015 analysis of 17,000 songs suggesting the 1964 shift was already underway. Then we compare them with Brian Wilson, Kurt Cobain, Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock, and use economist David Galenson’s research on innovators.

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!February 9, 1964: 73 million Americans tuned in to The Ed Sullivan Show to see the Beatles for the first time. John, Paul, George and Ringo were famously cool under the pressure. Their roadie, Mal Evans, was not. About half an hour before airtime, Mal realized he had never put back the front skin of Ringo’s bass drum, the one with “The Beatles” painted across it. It had been removed during rehearsals so a microphone could go inside. In his own words, Mal “stood rooted to the spot” and “wet myself with fright.” With minutes to spare, he got the famous logo back in place before the cameras rolled. That story comes from Kenneth Womack’s new book, With the Beatles: Mal Evans’ Illustrated Journey, which draws on Mal’s diaries, photographs and long-lost memoirs. In this video we follow Mal through the Beatles’ first American trip. At the Washington Coliseum, the revolving drum platform jammed and Mal had to turn Ringo’s kit by hand. At the second Sullivan broadcast in Miami Beach, the band was stuck in the hotel crowds, Ed Sullivan was asking where they were, and they reached the stage with seconds to spare.

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!Name one artist who was the most popular and the most original at the same time, for more than a few years. Most acts end up on one side of that line. Some are commercial giants who give audiences what they expect, and others are avant-garde innovators whose genius is recognized decades later. The Beatles are the glaring exception, and in this video we look at whether that is a provable fact or a romantic myth.We start with the science. A 2017 study of about 27,000 Billboard Hot 100 songs found that the biggest hits are not the most typical songs. They are the ones just one step ahead of the crowd, a principle called optimal differentiation. Psychologist Dean Keith Simonton found the same pattern in more than 5,000 classical themes. The catch is that the sweet spot keeps moving. Last year’s novelty is this year’s cliché, and most careers stall at exactly that point.The Beatles kept moving with it. In about seven years they went from “I Want to Hold Your Hand” to “Tomorrow Never Knows,” Sgt. Pepper and Abbey Road, and millions of listeners followed them. We also look at the evidence against them, including a 2015 analysis of 17,000 songs suggesting the 1964 shift was already underway. Then we compare them with Brian Wilson, Kurt Cobain, Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock, and use economist David Galenson’s research on innovators.Finally, we break down five reasons the Beatles sustained it: rivalry, the studio, pace, an audience that grew up with them, and the fact that they stopped. Who do you think comes closest to the Beatles? Tell us in the comments.

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!You clip on your digital tuner, every string glows green, you drop the needle on “Strawberry Fields Forever”... and it sounds terrible. If you’ve ever tried to play along with a Beatles record and felt like you’d forgotten how to play guitar, this video is for you. It isn’t your fault. It’s physics, and a lot of history. We follow the Beatles from the sweaty all-night sets of Hamburg and the deafening roar of Shea Stadium into the studios of Abbey Road to find out how they actually tuned their instruments. You’ll hear how they tuned to battered backstage pianos and harmonicas, how Mal Evans kept the show running with a tuning fork and a well-stocked roadie bag, why Ringo threw tea towels over his drums, and whether John Lennon’s famously “flat D string” was clever acoustics or plain impatience. Then we get to the real culprit: varispeed. George Martin regularly sped up and slowed down the tape machines during recording and mixing, which shifted the pitch of the finished records into the cracks between standard notes. That’s why a guitar tuned perfectly to A = 440 can never quite match many classic Beatles tracks, and why the best tool for playing along might be your own ears. So put the tuner away, detune by ear until you lock in with the record, and let us know in the comments which Beatles song has given you the most trouble. If you enjoyed this deep dive, subscribe to Beatles Rewind for more stories from inside the Beatles’ music.

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!In the fall of 1969, millions of people became convinced that Paul McCartney had died in a car crash in November 1966, and that the Beatles had secretly replaced him with a lookalike named William Campbell. Fans stopped simply listening to their records and started interrogating them: studying album covers like crime scenes, spinning vinyl backwards until 2 a.m., and hunting for a confession hidden in the music. We walk through the famous “clues” and why they fall apart. Abbey Road’s “funeral procession” and barefoot Paul. The Volkswagen’s “28IF” number plate (Paul would have been 27). “Turn me on, dead man” in “Revolution 9,” and “I buried Paul,” which John said was “cranberry sauce.” Then we follow how the rumor actually spread: a caller to Russ Gibb’s show on Detroit’s WKNR-FM, and a deadpan satirical article by Fred LaBour in the Michigan Daily that the national press reported as fact. Finally, we look at why so many people wanted to believe it. A generation shaken by assassinations, Vietnam and the Manson murders, a band that seemed to transform overnight, and an audience that found it easier to accept a dead Beatle than a grown-up one. More than fifty years later, it reads like a blueprint for how misinformation goes viral today.

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!Having heard all of the Beatles' songs thousands of times across a lifetime, it’s remarkably easy to take their brilliance for granted—to forget just how alien and electrifying they sounded blasting out of AM transistor radios in the early sixties. While contemporary pop clung to predictable chord progressions and safe crooning, the Fab Four were slipping sophisticated musical sleights of hand into two-minute blasts of pure adrenaline. Whether it was opening a song straight on an unresolved minor chord, hijacking American R&B falsettos into euphoric three-part harmony, or Ringo’s unorthodox, propulsive accents, every track carried an audacious spark. They weren’t just cranking out hit records; they were rewriting the DNA of popular songcraft on stage and on the fly. In their forthcoming track-by-track analysis, "The Beatles’ Touring Era: Inside the Fab Four’s Musical Artistry, Song by Song, 1962-1966," Beatles scholars Kenneth Womack and Scott Freiman explain exactly this. At the end of every individual song entry, past the breakdown of four-track tape bounces, microphone placements, and guitar serial numbers, they isolate what they term the “Banger Moment.”

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!On August 7, 1980, John Lennon stepped into the Manhattan heat looking like a psychedelic cowboy in all-black Western gear, ready to make a record after five years of silence. But behind the sunglasses and wide-brimmed hat, the machinery orchestrating his grand return was running on raw nerves, high secrecy, and pure absurdity. In their new book "Starting Over with John and Yoko: The Photographs," photographer Roger Farrington and Beatles historian Kenneth Womack peel back the curtain on that summer day when Double Fantasy was born. Yoko was pulling the strings of this publicity operation, and by design, she left the New York press sharks dangling. Instead, she hired Charles J. Cohen, an eccentric Boston theatrical publicist, but only after Yoko scrutinized his astrological charts to make sure his numbers lined up with the universe.

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!Stream the movie: https://peterashermovie.com/watch Imagine sitting in your bedroom when Paul McCartney calls you downstairs to an upright piano in the basement—and proceeds to play the first-ever version of “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” That witness was Peter Asher. We dive into "Everywhere Man", the extraordinary documentary that reveals what it was really like inside the inner circle of the 1960s pop revolution. From living with Paul McCartney at 57 Wimpole Street and scoring a global #1 hit with Peter & Gordon, to becoming the first head of A&R for Apple Records and discovering James Taylor, Asher wasn’t just watching rock history happen—he was right in the middle of it. We explore the story behind the film, how his acclaimed stage memoir evolved into a near-perfectly reviewed documentary, and why Asher’s insider perspective cuts through decades of rock myth.

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!Watch this episode on YoutubeIn 2018, the legendary producer Quincy Jones caused a media firestorm when he offered a hot take on the world’s favorite band. “They were the worst musicians in the world,” Jones said, recounting his 1969 session with Ringo, who struggled for three hours to record a simple four-bar drum fill. “Paul was the worst bass player I ever heard.” He didn’t have anything good to say about John or George, either. To a jazz polymath steeped in conservatory theory and big-band chart reading, the raw mechanics of the Beatles might indeed have looked clumsy, even primitive. But in his new book "Across the Universe: The Magic and Mystery of the Beatles’ Creativity", Steve Taylor argues that Jones missed the point. Completely.