HOME |
RSS | 
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.
New York Press Conference 1964
Reporter: Where you your haircuts come from?
George Harrison: Our scalps.
In their early years as a fledgling rock and roll band in the late 1950s and into the early 1960s, The Beatles each sported typical slicked-back, greased-up Tony Curtis/Elvis Presley type D.A. haircuts. In an early explanation as to the origin of the Beatles haircut, George was quoted as saying that he came out of the swimming baths one day, his hair had fallen down over his forehead, and he just left it that way.
The true derivation of the world famous coiffure is a bit more complex. In August of 1960, the newly-0named “Beatles” consisted of five members: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, bassist Stu Sutcliffe, and a newly-hired drummer named Pete Best. The band was hired to play as series of gigs in August of 1960 in Hamburg, Germany. It was there that they met two people who were to have a profound effect on their future careers as icon and trendsetters: Astrid Kirchherr and Jürgen Vollmer.
Kirchherr was a very original and creative photographer. One night she saw The Beatles play at a local club in Hamburg called the Top Ten Club (she was talked into going by her boyfriend Klaus Voorman and fellow artist and friend Jürgen Vollmer). Astrid, Klaus, and Jürgen struck up an immediate and close friendship with the five young, talented, and slightly homesick young rock and rollers. Also, Astrid and bassist Stu Sutcliffe almost immediately fell in love.
more …
There are 22 different Beatles songs in this medley. Can you catch them all? And even more remarkable, they are all performed by one guy -Grant Woolard, who brought us the National Anthem Mashup last month. -Thanks, Grant!
Comments Off
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.
It was August 27, 1965. The greatest summit meeting in show business history was about to take place.
The Beatles had arrived in America in February of 1964. They had already met many singers, celebrities, and movie stars. Basically, all they had to do was request it, snap their fingers, and almost literally, anyone could be brought in for them to meet. But according to John Lennon, the leader of the band, there was only one person they had to meet. It was the King himself, Elvis Presley.
The meeting has been documented by several witnesses present, but as we all know, human memory can be fallible. But the following is, in general, what occurred that incredible evening. The first question, after the meeting was agreed to, was who would come to whom? It was quickly agreed upon that the Beatles -the “new kids on the block”- would go to Elvis’ house in Bel Air and pay homage to the King.
After smoking a joint in their limo to calm their nerves, the Beatles pulled up to Perugia Way and were greeted at the door. It was Elvis Presley, their supreme idol, in the flesh! Elvis, dressed and acting super-casual, escorted the boys in. He was watching TV without the sound on (something the Beatles liked doing themselves). The Beatles were amazed -a color TV! And even more incredible, according to Paul, he had one of those weird contraptions, a remote control! They had never seen one before (remember, it was 1965).
The Fab Four sat staring, literally gaping, at their hero. After a few minutes, Elvis broke the quiet ice and said, “Hell, if you’re just going to sit around staring at me, I’m going up to bed.” Everyone laughed and the remark calmed the tense atmosphere.
more …
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.
Technically, it is hard to pinpoint the exact moment when the Beatles ended as a group. John Lennon had officially walked out of a meeting at Apple headquarters, with the other three Beatles present, on September 20, 1969. His immortal words, just before he haughtily exited, were, “I want a divorce. Just like the one I got from Cynthia (his first wife).” Other things were said, but suffice it to say, with these words, the die was cast.
Interestingly, Ringo had already quit the band, back in August of 1968, during the recording session for The White Album. In January of 1969, during the filming of The Beatles’ last movie Let It Be, George Harrison too got fed up with the quarreling and the sniping -and Yoko Ono- and he, too, made for the nearest exit. “See you around the clubs, George said as he bolted. Both George and Ringo were eventually talked into returning, although John never did.
Paul was the first to publicly announce an end to the Fab Four, on April 10, 1970, with a formal newspaper interview, declaring, in so many words, the fact that “I’m quitting the Beatles.”
Although the four had split up in the real world, there was still a lot of legal red tape to be cut before the “official” split could actually take place.
Finally, after four long years of court battles, lawsuits, subpoenas, public and private acrimony, and millions of dollars, the official dissolution of the Beatles was about to take place. With just a few kinks left to iron out, the dissolution meeting was set to take place at the Plaza Hotel in New York City -ironically (and sadly) the first place the Beatles stayed in America when they first arrived there in 1964. The meeting was scheduled for December 19, 1974.
Both George and Paul made special arrangements and flew in to be present for the joint signing of the required papers. Ringo was the only Beatle not present for the historic occasion. He had already signed the necessary documents back in England.
At the Plaza, George arrived with his lawyer and his business manager. Paul came accompanied by his own lawyers. And Ringo’s lawyer and business manager were present on his behalf.
Two teams of lawyers for Apple (one for the U.S. and one for the U.K.) gathered around a very large table to get all the signatures on the paperwork dissolving the partnership. Ringo was on the phone, to confirm that he “was alive.” Paul and his wife Linda had a camera set up to document the historic occasion. Finally, after a long wait, George said what everyone was thinking, “Where’s John?”
“Good question,” replied his lawyer.
Incredibly, John had played hookey and ducked the meeting. To add to the growing anger of all present, John lived within walking distance (or at least a short cab ride) of the Plaza, right in New York City.
George’s lawyer put in a call to John. (At the time, John was living with his secretary, a pretty girl named May Pang. He was going through a separation with his wife, Yoko Ono.) John refused to come to the phone. May took the call and told the lawyer that John had decided not to come to the meeting at the Plaza. His official reason: “The stars aren’t right.”
It was one thin
g to put up with John’s fads and passions and idiosyncrasies, but to not attend this important meeting because of the misalignment of his astrological charts was pushing the envelope a bit too far. George was already in a dour mood. He was in the middle of a tout, he was getting lousy reviews, and his voice was strained and nearly shot. First, he blamed his lawyer for John not coming. Soon, all the other lawyers erupted at George’s lawyer. Then furiously, George picked up the phone.
“Take off your G*****n shades and get the f*** over here!” he barked at his former bandmate. (George, although he did have a strong temper, nonetheless always idolized and worshiped John, no matter what Lennon had put him through over the years. George saying such a violent thing to John was completely out of character. It was very clear that the stress of his own unsuccessful tour, plus the weight of the moment, had overtaken the normally level-headed ex-Beatle.)
May asked innocently if George wanted to talk to John.
“No! Just tell him whatever his problem is, I started this tour on my own and I’ll end it on my own!” George barked and slammed the phone down.
John was listening over May’s shoulder.
Paul and his wife Linda came by the visit John the next day, realizing how upset John was over the agreement. Paul reassured John, “We’ll work it all out.”
George’s rage didn’t last long. A message arrived at John’s home: “All is forgiven. George loves you and he wants you to come to his party tonight.” John and May did go to the party at the Hippopotamus Club, where George, John, and Paul all hugged.
John and May left New York the following day to spend Christmas at West Palm Beach, Florida. On December 29, 1974, the voluminous documents were brought down to John in Florida by one of Apple’s lawyers.
“Take out your camera,” John instructed May, wanting her to capture the moment for posterity. Then he called George’s lawyer to go over some final points. When John hung up the phone, he looked out the window wistfully. According to May, she “could almost see him replaying the entire Beatles experience in his mind.”
John finally picked up his pen and, in the unlikely backdrop of Disney World, at the Polynesian Village Hotel, officially ended the greatest rock’n'roll band in history by simply scrawling “John Lennon” at the bottom of a page.
We all recognize the artwork on the cover of The Beatles’ 1967 album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Recognizing it and remembering who was in that image are two different things! Today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss challenges your recall by giving you a celebrity, and you decide whether that person was included on the cover or not. I only got 8 out of 12 right -because I was in a hurry, of course. Link
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.
John, George, Pete Best, Paul, and Stu Sutcliffe in 1960
As we all know, there is a time in every performer’s career where they are “complete unknowns.” Yes, there was a time, really not so long ago, when no one knew or had ever even heard of Frank Sinatra or Woody Allen or Meryl Streep. And so it was with the greatest, most famous, most deified show biz act of the 20th century: The Beatles.
In the summer of 1960, none of the usually-employed Beatles even had a day job. And like us all, the boys wanted to make some money. The then-foursome consisting of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Stuart Sutcliffe played the oddest gig in the Beatles’ long and storied history.
In those days, the Beatles were such a small-time act, they didn’t even have a drummer: Tommy Moore left the group in May after a traffic accident, and Pete Best joined in August. John, Paul, and George would play guitar and Stu Sutcliffe was the band’s pretty mediocre bass player.
Allan Williams
The Beatles, in those days, had a semi-manager named Allan Williams. Williams was one of those “on the fringe” show business figures we’re all so familiar with- the guy who was always trying to hustle up a “deal,” the guy with the “big dreams,” the poor chap who never really got a break.
Anyway, in that summer (July is usually considered the exact time) of 1960, Williams had just opened up a new club called “The New Cabaret Artistes Club.” This was what we now refer to as “a gentleman’s club,” i.e. a high class strip joint. Williams had hired an entertainer for the man, a stripper, to perform that July week. Her name was Janice. She was a stripper from Manchester (in some accounts, her name is given as Shirley).
Allan Williams approached the four “layabouts” and asked if they’d play backing music all week for Janice the stripper. After some initial resistance, the four Beatles had haggled out an equitable financial deal. Supposedly, Sutcliffe was the tough negotiator and got them a fairly decent fee. “Why so much?” Williams had asked them during the negotiations.
Paul had replied, “For the indignity. The bloody indignity of it all!”
A fee of 50p (about two dollars) per night was agreed upon for each musician. That came to 250p for the week per man, i.e. around ten dollars.
Janice the stripper wanted the Beatles to play her usual selected repertoire and handed them the sheet music. That was pointless, as none of the Beatles could read music. It was reputed that during the engagement they played such songs as “Moonglow” and “The Harry Lime Theme” from the movie The Third Man.
Janice was a bit of a tease (being a stripper, of course). After each number, she would bow to the crowd, then she would turn around and bow facing the four teenage boys -stark naked. According to Paul: “She would turn around -completely starkers. We were just lads. We didn’t know where to put ourselves.”
Not that I know anything about strip clubs (ahem!) but it must have been an incredibly surreal sight in that incredibly surreal week, seeing a smoke-filled club filled with lonely, sex-starved men, in front to them on stage a sexy stripper and standing a few feet behind her, four teenagers who were, in a few short years, to become the most famous and influential human beings on the planet.
Stu Sutcliffe
The week’s series of gigs backing Janice went on without a hitch, and the Beatles wrapped up what was -undoubtedly- the strangest gig of their career. The very unusual week was hardly ever mentioned in the countless later interviews given by John, Paul, or George. (As a sad sidebar, Stu Sutcliffe died tragically young in 1962, at the age of 21.)
One wonders whatever became of Janice (or possibly Shirley). Maybe she is still alive. But we can safely assume one thing: Wherever she went, wherever she performed, as long as she lived and breathed, every friend, relative, and acquaintance of Janice heard her stories regaling and boasting about the week she was backed up as a stripper by The Beatles.
Stu, John, Paul, guest drummer Johnny Hutchinson, and George in May 1960
The Beatles Yellow Submarine Ice Cube Tray – $10.95
After much crying, waiting, and hoping summer is finally here. Are you planning your next backyard come together? Why not make it Beatles themed! All you need is love and The Beatles Yellow Submarine Ice Cube Tray from the NeatoShop to throw a fantastic party.
Be sure to check out all the awesome Ice Trays available at the NeatoShop.
Comments Off 
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.
On February 9, 1964, The Beatles made their American television debut on The Ed Sullivan Show. (For those of you unfamiliar, The Ed Sullivan Show was a hugely popular, legendary variety show which ran in America from 1948 to 1973. If you can imagine American Idol or Dancing with the Stars, and multiply it times 20, that was how popular The Ed Sullivan Show was in the 1960s. Pretty much everyone watched the show.
The Beatles had been seen in clips and recorded interviews before this, but this was their actual performance debut on U.S. television. The show was watched by an all-time record (at the time) of 73,000,000 people. The show remains a landmark in television history and is an indelible memory to any of us who watched the historic performance. The show is, quite possibly, the single most important moment in the history of rock and roll. Like September 11, 2001 or the day President Kennedy was assassinated, no one who witnessed this show will ever forget where he or she was at the time.
A Series of Three
Although this appearance is thought of by almost everyone as “The Beatles’ appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show,” the truth is, The Beatles appeared on the show nine times. On February 9, 1964, on the afternoon of the historic appearance, the boys actually taped an appearance as well, to be broadcast two Sundays later. They sang three songs before a frenzied studio audience, and this taped set was broadcast on February 23rd, making it their third Ed Sullivan Show appearance, even though it was taped first. (For these three-Sundays-in-a-row appearances, the Feb Four was paid the not-quite-munificent salary of $10,000, plus expenses.)
The Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein, had made sure in his negotiations that The Beatles would “get top billing” on the show. One can only imagine the bizarre irony of The Beatles being billed below the immortal comedy team of “Brill and McCall” (read on).
more …
Yellow Submarine Mug – $9.95
Does your boring, old, coffee, mug make you feel blue? You need the Yellow Submarine Mug from the NeatoShop (yes, officially licensed from The Beatles). Printed inside the mug: “Love Is All You Need.” This mug is so cheerful you can’t help but smile.
Link | Be sure to check out all the fun Glassware & Drinkware from the NeatoShop!
Comments Off 
I’ve only recently discovered Toy-a-Day, a site that offers a vast number of free papercraft patterns. All you have to do is print the PDF and fold as instructed, and voila! You have your own little paper version of Abraham Lincoln. If Abe isn’t really your thing, don’t worry – there’s a wide variety of offerings, from Angry Birds to the Beatles in their Sgt. Pepper costumes. Have fun, and let us know what you make.
Comments Off 
Redditor suziecreamcheese made this quilt for a baby shower. Each quilt block is a representation of a Beatles album cover. I think she nailed the White Album, don’t you? Link -via Blame It On The Voices
Stacy Conradt made cake pops and decorated them to resemble the Beatles! She worked from just a photograph and made up the steps as she went along. The process is archived in pictures at her blog, i met a possum. Link
Just this evening, I found myself explaining to my kids how relatively short the Beatles career as group was, compared to, say, The Rolling Stones. Seeing this only reinforces how fleeting those years were. Artist Maxim Dalton is selling a limited edition (500) of this giclée print. Link -via The Daily What
HELP!
For the HELP! photo shoot, photographer Robert Freeman warmed up by shooting publicity stills of the band playing around in the Austrian snow. In the process, he realized that their arm motions reminded him of semaphore, a system of emergency naval communications using waving flags. Because the album title was conveniently four characters long, the photographer had each member of the group spell out a letter using the code. However, Freeman found that the arm motions for H-E-L-P were much less aesthetically pleasing than the positions for N-U-J-V, so he decided to use those letters instead.
SGT. PEPPER’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND
The Beatles spared no expense for this 1967 cover, shelling out more than $60,000 to produce, arrange, and shoot dozens of cutouts and images. Among the celebrities included on the album cover were Marilyn Monroe, boxing champ Sonny Liston, and wax models of the Beatles borrowed from Madame Tussaud’s collection. They even commissioned images of Jesus, Hitler, and Gandhi, but decided to leave them out for fear of offending fans.
THE BEATLES
After the circus that was the Sgt. Pepper album cover, the Beatles wanted to simplify things for their next record. The following year, they collaborated with pop artist Richard Hamilton to create what’s now known as The White Album-a completely white surface embossed with the Beatles stamp. To add a layer of irony, Hamilton suggested that each copy be individually numbered, even though it was hardly a limited edition. (At least 600,000 U.K. copies were numbered.) McCartney remembers that Lennon grabbed No. 0000001. Typical.
ABBEY ROAD
The iconic crosswalk scene was shot in just minutes outside the Beatles’ recording studio in 1969. The cover is a darling of conspiracy theorists, who claim that Paul McCartney died prior to the shoot and that he was replaced by a look-alike. Supposedly, the band dropped clues on the cover by dressing up as a funeral procession.: Lennon in white as the preacher, Starr in black as the undertaker, Harrison in jeans as the gravedigger, and McCartney shoeless, with the wrong foot forward, as the corpse.
However, the person who’s truly out of step in the photo isn’t Paul McCartney but Paul Cole, a visiting Floridian who was captured in the background. Cole didn’t find out about the picture until months later, when his wife brought the album home from the store.
__________________________
The above article is reprinted with permission from the Scatterbrained section of the September-October 2010 issue of mental_floss magazine.
Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ entertaining website and blog for more fun stuff!
The Kleptones mashed up the Beatles song “Come Together” with a lot of other songs, and Crumbs Chief pieced together a video for it as part of the Videotones project. How many of these dance scenes do you recall from the original movies? -via mental_floss
This beat up piano doesn’t look like much but it was once played by the Beatles and Pink Floyd among others at the Abbey Road’s Studio 3. It goes on the auction block on August 15 and is expected to fetch £150,000.
“Studio three was the smallest. The Beatles regularly used it, and we know they recorded certain songs there using the piano.“It was also used by other bands, including Pink Floyd, and without its association with the studios it would be worth a very modest sum. It is a bit battered and is covered in stains and cigarette burns. It has been used and abused – but that gives it character.
“It still plays although it would perhaps benefit from a professional tuner having a listen.”
Starbucks launched their campaign against AIDS in Africa by putting together singers from 156 countries in one video performing The Beatles’ song All You Need is Love. Link -via Buzzfeed
Get ready for a strange story of a lost Beatles album found on cassette on the other side of a portal to a parallel universe. James Richards brought the cassette back and is making all the songs available. Link -via YesButNoButYes
Here is a time lapse video of tourists posing at Abbey Road during a 24 hour period. This location was made famous from the Beatle’s album cover of Abbey Road.
– via larryfire
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by larryfire.
Take that, sweet mystery of rock ‘n roll. Math has just solved the Holy Grail of Rock: the mysterious "A Hard Day’s Night" chord.
Dalhousie University math professor Jason Brown applied Fourier transform to solve the Beatles’ riddle: there was a mystery piano!
… the frequencies he found didn’t match the known instrumentation on the song. “George played a 12-string Rickenbacker, Lennon had his six string, Paul had his bass…none of them quite fit what I found,” he explains. “Then the solution hit me: it wasn’t just those instruments. There was a piano in there as well, and that accounted for the problematic frequencies.”
