To kids who like to learn cool stuff.

  CONTENTS

  So May I Introduce to You . . .

  Chapter 1: Stuff Your Teacher Wants You to Know About the Beatles

  Chapter 2: So Much Younger Than Today

  Chapter 3: Beatlemania

  Chapter 4: Let’s Talk About John Lennon

  Chapter 5: Let’s Talk About Paul McCartney

  Chapter 6: Let’s Talk About George Harrison

  Chapter 7: Let’s Talk About Ringo Starr

  Chapter 8: The Songs

  Chapter 9: The Albums

  Chapter 10: The Impact of the Beatles

  Chapter 11: And in the End . . .

  Chapter 12: Oh Yeah? (Stuff About the Beatles That Didn’t Fit Anywhere Else)

  To Find Out More . . .

  Acknowledgments

  Lots of songs and albums are mentioned in this

  book. Listen to them on records, online, on

  YouTube, or wherever you get your music.

  So May I Introduce to You . . .

  Some kids probably don’t even know who the Beatles were. Let me explain. Paul McCartney was a chubby kid. His friend George Harrison had big ears. Their friend John Lennon could barely see, but he wouldn’t wear glasses because other kids would think he was a nerd. And Ringo Starr was a sickly, sad-looking kid with a big nose.

  These four boys grew up in Liverpool, England, and—with a little help from their friends—became the most famous musical group in history. And here’s the amazing thing—none of them could read music.

  So what? Irving Berlin couldn’t read music.

  Who’s Irving Berlin?

  Are you kidding? He was the most famous songwriter ever! He wrote “White Christmas,” “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” “God Bless America”—

  Okay, okay! We’re not going to tell the whole history of the Beatles here. We’re going to tell you the cool, little-known facts we dug up. Because that’s what we do.

  Right. For instance, do you know the Beatles song “Ticket to Ride”?

  Sure.

  Well, Ryde is a town in England. John and Paul went there, and that’s what gave them the idea for “Ticket to Ride.”

  I didn’t know that!

  Neither did I before we started researching this book.

  Hey, what’s your favorite Beatles song, Paige?

  “Good Morning Good Morning”

  Same to you. So what’s your favorite Beatles song?

  “Do You Want to Know a Secret?”

  No, I want you to tell me the name of your favorite Beatles song.

  “I Will”

  Okay, go ahead.

  “Tell Me Why”

  Because I’m curious!

  “Don’t Bother Me”

  Well, that’s rude! Forget I brought it up. Let’s just get started with the book.

  CHAPTER 1

  Stuff Your Teacher Wants You to Know About the Beatles . . .

  Most teachers don’t really want you to know anything about the Beatles! They want you to know about Abraham Lincoln and educational stuff like that. But here’s the basic info . . .

  July 7, 1940 Ringo Starr is born.

  October 9, 1940 John Lennon is born.

  June 18, 1942 Paul McCartney is born.

  February 25, 1943 George Harrison is born.

  July 6, 1957 John and Paul meet.

  1960 John, Paul, and George become the Beatles.

  1961 They perform at the Cavern Club in Liverpool.

  1962 Brian Epstein becomes their manager. Ringo joins the group. Their first record, “Love Me Do,” is released.

  1963 The first Beatles album comes out. They have their first number one song, “Please Please Me.” Beatlemania sweeps England.

  1964 They appear on The Ed Sullivan Show in New York. Beatlemania sweeps America. The movie A Hard Day’s Night comes out.

  1965 Rubber Soul album. Help! movie.

  1966 Revolver album. Their last concert, in San Francisco.

  1967 Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. Magical Mystery Tour album and movie.

  1968 The White Album. Yellow Submarine movie.

  1969 Abbey Road album

  1970 Let It Be album. The Beatles break up.

  Still awake? Okay, let’s get to the good stuff . . .

  CHAPTER 2

  So Much Younger Than Today

  The Beatles broke up over fifty years ago. So why are we still talking about them and listening to their music? There have been thousands of rock groups. What was different about these guys?

  Lots! When the Beatles started, hardly any singers wrote their own songs or played their own instruments. And back then, groups had a lead singer. The other members of the band were in the background. But the Beatles didn’t have a lead singer. They had four lead singers.

  They also had four personalities. Paul was “the cute one.” John was “the clever one.” George was “the quiet one.” Ringo was “the sad one.” So everybody could to relate to one of the Beatles.

  But more than anything else, their music was great! It sounds as good today as it did when they made it. And no two Beatles songs sound alike. That’s why we remember the Beatles today. They’re like Beethoven and Mozart.

  Who?

  Very funny.

  Let’s start at the beginning. It all began on July 6, 1957. John Lennon was sixteen. He and his group the Quarry Men were playing at a church fair. It was one of their first shows.

  Paul McCartney was fifteen. He rode his bike to the church and a friend introduced him to John, who didn’t even know how to tune his guitar. Paul showed him, and he played a few songs. John was impressed, and invited Paul to join the Quarry Men.

  Paul went to the Liverpool Institute High School for Boys. He rode the school bus with his friend George Harrison, who was just fourteen.

  Not much older than us!

  Right, and George also played guitar. In fact, he was better than the other two. He auditioned for John on the upper deck of a bus. At first John didn’t want this “little kid” in his band. But when he saw how well George played, he changed his mind and asked him to join the Quarry Men too. Soon they evolved into the Beatles.

  And Ringo . . .

  We’ll get to him later.

  Why “Beatles”?

  John called his group the Quarry Men because he went to Quarry Bank High School. After he graduated in 1957, the group wanted a new name.

  In the 1950s, the word beat was in the air. There were “beatniks” and “beat poets.” In the 1953 movie The Wild One there’s a motorcycle gang called “the Beetles.”

  But that’s not where they got the name. John, Paul, and George were big fans of Buddy Holly. His backup group was called the Crickets. It made John think of “Beatles.”

  Johnny & the Moondogs

  Japage 3 (combination of John, Paul, George)

  The Nerk Twins (John and Paul)

  The Beat Brothers

  The Silver Beats

  The Silver Beatles

  Long John and the Silver Beatles

  Big Beat Boppin’ Beatles

  It’s Gotta Be Rock and Roll Music . . .

  When the Beatles were teenagers, rock and roll had just been born. Besides Buddy Holly, they loved “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley & His Comets. When Elvis Presley came out with “Heartbreak Hotel” in 1956, John said, “Me whole life changed from then on, I was just completely shaken by it.” George heard the song while riding his bike. He said, “What a sound, what a record! It changed the course of my life.”

  That same year Paul bought his first record, “Be-Bop-A-Lula” by Gene Vincent. And when Little Richard released “Long Tall Sally” that year, John said, “It was so great I couldn’t speak.”

  So I guess they spent years taking lessons to become great musicians, right?

  Wrong. John had just one guitar lesson. He said, “It was so much like school that I gave up.” Paul tried taking piano lessons three times. “It seemed boring, like homework,” he said.

  So how did they get so good?

  They taught themselves! And they worked really hard. One time, Paul and George heard about a guy in Liverpool who knew how to play a B7 chord on guitar. So you know what they did?

  They called him on the phone?

  No. They got a map, planned the route, took a bus to the guy’s house, and knocked on his door!

  Too bad there was no internet in those days.

  So they spent years in Liverpool playing at schools, dances, and clubs. They hardly earned any money. And it was a hard life.

  Some nights on the road they had to sleep in a freezing van. Paul once said that the only way to stay warm was to lie on top of each other in a “Beatles sandwich.” When the guy on top got so cold that hypothermia was setting in, it would be his turn to get on the bottom.

  One time, they got a ride on a truck. Paul had to sit on the battery. He was wearing jeans with zippers on the back pockets. Suddenly he jumped up and screamed. The zipper had connected with the positive and negative ends of the battery.

  Finally, they were hired to play regularly at a Liverpool jazz club called the Cavern Club. It was a tiny place that had been an air raid shelter during World War II. It stank of cigarettes, hot dogs, and sweat.

  On hot days, the walls would be dripping. And on cold days, the pounding music made calcium fall from the bricks. The Beatles called it “Liverpool dandruff.”

  The Caver
n was dangerous. It was below street level, with only one door in and out. No fire exit. If there had been an emergency, it would have been a disaster.

  Then, in 1960, the Beatles were invited to play in Hamburg, West Germany. But there was just one problem.

  They didn’t have money to get there?

  No, they didn’t have a drummer.

  How could there be a rock group without a drummer?

  Well, they had a few drummers, but they didn’t have a regular drummer. So they found a local guy who had his own drum set, which hardly anybody had. His name was Pete Best.

  So it was John, Paul, George, and Pete?

  Actually, it was John, Paul, George, Pete, and Stu.

  Stu? Who’s Stu?

  He was the bass player. Well, he wasn’t very good, but he was John’s friend. Anyway, they drove eight hundred miles to Hamburg. It was a rough town, and they played on a street filled with seedy bars.

  Often the Beatles had to play eight hours a night. So they had to learn lots of songs.

  They all lost their voices. It was called getting “Hamburg Throat.”

  And it was crazy! They would eat onstage, and throw food at each other. Sometimes John would get onstage dressed like a cleaning lady. Or he would perform in his underwear with a toilet seat around his neck. Anything to put on a show.

  But here’s the thing—the Beatles were getting good. They made five trips to Hamburg altogether, and spent more than a thousand hours onstage there. That’s like playing three hours a night for a year. In 1961, they did three hundred and forty shows!

  And when they got back to Liverpool, they were the best rock group in town.

  Mop Tops

  We’ve got to mention their haircuts. Before the Beatles, boys usually had short hair. Cool guys put grease in their hair and swept it up like Elvis Presley.

  Didn’t Julius Caesar have sort of a Beatles haircut?

  Well, yeah. But that was a long time ago. While the Beatles were in Hamburg, they made friends with three German fans—Klaus, Jurgen, and Astrid. Astrid fell in love with Stu, the bass player. He let her cut his hair just like hers—straight, down, forward, with no grease. Soon after that, John, Paul, and George asked Jurgen to cut their hair the same way. And it became the “Beatles haircut.”

  After they got famous, men all over the world started wearing their hair longer. It all started with the Beatles.

  Brian

  The Beatles were getting good and they had cool haircuts, but they weren’t famous. When they came home from Germany toward the end of 1961, they almost split up. They weren’t making much progress . . . or money.

  And they were all around twenty. That’s when there’s a lot of pressure on young people to stop fooling around, get a job, and start a career.

  That could have been the end of the Beatles right there. But that’s when they got a lucky break. It was October 28, 1961. A teenager named Raymond Jones walked into a record store in Liverpool and asked for a record called “My Bonnie.” The Beatles had recorded it while they were in Hamburg. They were just the backup group for a singer named Tony Sheridan.

  The manager of the record store was Brian Epstein. He was twenty-seven, and his family owned the store. Brian took pride in stocking every new record. The next day, when two girls came in and asked for “My Bonnie,” Brian ordered a few copies.

  Brian was a natural salesman. When he was sixteen, he worked at his father’s furniture store. On his second day of work, a lady came in to buy a mirror, and he sold her a dining room table!

  Brian didn’t know it, but just two hundred steps from his store the Beatles were playing at the Cavern Club. A few days later, he went to check them out.

  Brian had never managed anyone before. But he asked the Beatles if he could be their manager. They said yes, and he got to work.

  The first thing he did was give them a makeover. The Beatles mostly wore jeans and leather jackets. Brian knew they wouldn’t get on TV or impress a record company dressed like that. So he put them in matching suits and ties.

  Brian also had them stop smoking, eating, and clowning around onstage. And he had them end every show with a deep bow to the audience.

  One thing Brian didn’t change was their name. Lots of people said “the Beatles” was a terrible name. But they stuck with it.

  Brian was a businessman, and he ran the Beatles like a company. The boys were employees, and every Friday each of them would get a paycheck. In the beginning it was twenty-five pounds, which is about seventy dollars.

  That may not sound like much money. But George’s father, who was a bus driver, only earned ten pounds a week.

  The next thing Brian did was try to get the Beatles a record contract. “My Bonnie” wasn’t a big seller. They needed to get signed by a major record company.

  Decca was one of the biggest ones in England. On January 1, 1962, Brian got an audition with them. The Beatles played fifteen songs. After hearing them, Decca decided that guitar groups were “on the way out.”

  Ha! That had to be one of the dumbest moves in history!

  Other record companies turned down the Beatles too. Things were not looking good. At one gig, they played four hours in front of eighteen people. When it was time to get paid the twenty pounds they were promised, the promoter said he could only pay them twelve.

  Ouch! But then they got another break.

  Big George

  The Beatles had already been turned down by EMI, another big record company. But Brian got a meeting with a producer there named George Martin. He hadn’t heard of the Beatles, but he listened to their Decca tape and agreed to have them come in for an audition.

  It was June 1962. They drove two hundred miles to London. They were nervous. George Martin was an important producer.

  The Beatles called him “Mr. Martin” out of respect. Behind his back, they called him “Big George” to avoid confusing him with George Harrison.

  At that first session, the Beatles played two songs John and Paul had written, “Love Me Do” and “P.S. I Love You.”

  When they were done, George Martin said, “if there’s anything you don’t like, tell me, and we’ll try to do something about it.” There was silence for a moment, and then George Harrison said, “Well, for a start, I don’t like your tie.” That broke the ice!

  George Martin offered the Beatles a contract to record four more songs. They would only get a penny for every record sold, but they were thrilled. They had a record contract! They were on their way!

  There was just one thing George Martin didn’t like about the Beatles.

  Wait! WHAT? You’re gonna end the chapter like that? That’s so mean!

  Hey, it’s called a cliff-hanger, Turner. Deal with it.

  CHAPTER 3

  Beatlemania

  Okay, so what was the one thing George Martin didn’t like about the Beatles?

  The drummer. He didn’t think Pete Best was good enough.