10 Fun Facts about The Beatles

Aaron McDade|February 24, 2019

10 Fun Facts About The Beatles

  1. After the 1967 (UK) and 1969 (US) release of their song “Penny Lane,” the street sign on the real Penny Lane was stolen repeatedly, forcing city officials to instead paint the street name on buildings until 2007, when signs were reinstalled.

  2. The term “Beatlemania” is believed to have been coined by Sandy Gardiner in the Ottawa Journal in 1963, when he called it “a new disease, and that “doctors are powerless to stop it.”

  3. In 2015, Billboard ranked The Beatles as the #1 Hot 100 artist of all time. The group had 20 No. 1 singles on the Hot 100 chart, most all time, with six in 1964 and five in 1965.

  4. Dick Rowe from Decca Records rejected The Beatles after hearing a 15-song audition demo in 1962, reportedly telling their manager Brian Epstein that “guitar groups are on their way out.”

  5. The Beatles debut album “Please Please Me” topped the U.K. album charts for 30 consecutive weeks in 1963, only to be replaced by their second album “With the Beatles.”

  6. John Lennon disliked the sound of his voice on songs, often asking producer George Martin to “do something” to his voice with an effect so it didn’t sound as much like him.

  7. For the week of April 4, 1964, The Beatles held 12 spots on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and five of the top 10, a record broken by Drake’s 2018 album Scorpion, which held 25 spots and seven of the top 10.

  8. The French portions of the song “Michelle” were inspired by Paul McCartney’s strategy of acting like he knew how to speak French at parties to pick up girls.

  9. The melody for “Yesterday,” the most covered song in music history (covered by Elvis, Boyz II Men, Frank Sinatra, Gladys Knight and James Brown, among others), came to McCartney in a dream and he knew it so well when he woke up that he thought he had written it before, or he had stolen it from someone else.

  10. The Beatles and Eminem are the only artists to have eight consecutive albums reach No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart.

Aaron McDade is an assigning editor. Contact him at [email protected]

Sources: 1: Wikipedia/book: A Hard Day’s Write: The Stories Behind Every Beatles Song by Steve Turner

2. Beatles.ncf.ca, The Ottawa Beatles Site

3. Genius.com, Telegraph

4. Beatlesfacts.org

5. Beatlesebooks.com