"A man appeared on a flaming pie and said unto them...'From this day on, you are Beatles with an "A"' " —"Being A Short Diversion On The Dubious Origins Of Beatles, Translated From the John Lennon, Mersey Beat, July 6, 1961"
"'And, in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make"
Four lads from Liverpool — John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr — who released some albums in The Sixties, and are credited by many for changing the face of rock music, while for others they were at least major pioneers of the new style of pop rock, and a major force of The British Invasion. For many people, they are also the face of The Sixties. Which is not bad work, really.Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is considered by many critics to be the greatest album in history and is credited with really changing the way people listened to pop music; it also has one of the most parodied and homaged album covers in the history of music. The simpler image on the cover of Abbey Road of the band walking in near-lockstep across the street is a close competitor for most homaged cover, as is the half-shadowed band portrait that was used on the British album With the Beatles and its American equivalent/MacekreMeet the Beatles.The Beatles were the first band in history to make music video equivalents to their own songs, which every musician does now. They played themselves in three fictional films: the pseudo-documentaryA Hard Day's Night (1964), the James Bond parody Help! (1965), and the critically-panned surrealist television film Magical Mystery Tour (1967); they were also the subject of the documentary film Let It Be (1970). Their Celebrity Toon equivalents starred in two very different Band Toons, each with a distinct set of character designs for the Fab Four. Their wacky 1965Animated Series was the first made-for-TV cartoon based on a real band (or any real people), and therefore both the Ur Example and Trope Maker. Meanwhile, the 1968 feature Yellow Submarine brought kid-friendly psychedelic imagery to the masses.The band broke up in 1970 under circumstances painful to think about. Everyone went on to solo careers. The dissolution was finalized in 1974, but Apple Corps (the Beatles' management company) was left intact. For perhaps fifteen years, few people saw any purpose for that...But then a second wave of Beatlemania gradually hit — too late for John Lennon, who sadly had been getting the Dead Artists Are Better effect since 1980 when he was murdered by a crazed fan, but everyone else got to see it. The events leading to this, in order: the initial release of the British Beatles catalog on CD in 1987; Paul McCartney finally embracing his Beatles heritage fully in 1989, in the process settling the last couple of lawsuits and freeing Apple Corps to act; and most noticeably, The Beatles Anthology in 1995, with Beatles singles "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love" (which Covered Up Lennon versions). Since then, Beatles-related stuff has come out just often enough to keep second-generation fans on their toes and the fandom active and aggressive.George Harrison died of cancer in 2001. Sir Paul McCartney (he was knighted in 1997 and handled it in a way that ensured no one would let him live it down) and Ringo Starr are still out there touring, doing a bunch of miscellaneous projects, and occasionally making records — and they both still write GOOD music. Even Pete Best (the band's original drummer before going big) released an album and began touring circa 2008.The legacy lives on. An installment of Rock Band was made featuring Beatles songs and only Beatles songs. Not quite coincidentally, the entire catalog has been remastered and was rereleased on CD the same day. After years of legal disputes having to do with the "Apple" label, iTunes has added Beatles music in 2010!In 1966 John Lennon gave an ill-thought-out comment that The Beatles were "more popular than Jesus now." He promptly apologized for it, but it had already been taken out of context by the press. John wasn't saying that the Beatles were more important than Jesus; but if you were the kind of "thick-headed disciple" who would burn Beatles albums over this, then the context — his thoughts on the state of Christianity — would not be much comfort. Still, in 2008, the Vatican admitted that he had a point.Their complete discography (as available in the 9/9/09 remastered box sets) is:
Yellow Submarine (1969) Although only four of the songs ("Only a Northern Song", "Hey Bulldog", "All Together Now", "It's All Too Much") are not preexisting material from previous albums, the existence of this new material, as well as the flip-side original instrumental orchestral soundtrack by producer and "fifth Beatle" George Martin, makes the soundtrack officially a Beatles album instead of a compilation.
Past Masters (1988) and its counterpart Mono Masters (2009) (included with the stereo and mono box sets, respectively; compilations including nearly everything not on the albums. The stereo version is available separately from its box set; the mono version is not)
Additional compilations:
A Collection of Beatles Oldies (Their first greatest hits collection, released in the UK only in 1966)
Hey Jude (With Capitol no longer permitted to tamper with the Beatles' album releases, their only means of generating additional LPs was to gather together singles tracks or other "leftovers", creating an entity much like the later Past Masters, and approximating a "greatest hits" collection.) Released in 1970 in the US but not the UK; out of print. Many singles appeared in album form — and in stereo — here for the first time.
The Beatles 1962-1966 (The Red Album) — a double album, and one half of a Greatest Hits collection attempt. Released in 1973; reissued on CD in 1993, with a remastered version released in October 2010. The cover is taken from the photoshoot from the Please Please Me album.
The Beatles 1967-1970 (The Blue Album) — another double album, and the other half of that Greatest Hits attempt. Released and reissued when the Red Album was.The photo used for the album cover was salvaged from photo sessions for what would have been the cover to the Get Back album.
Rock 'n Roll Music (Double LP and cassette only; out of print)
The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl (Live album; LP and cassette only; out of print)
Love Songs (Double LP and cassette only; out of print)
Rarities (LP and cassette only; out of print. The song choices were different in the UK (released 1979) and US (1980) versions, since some songs (and song mixes) had been released in one country but not the other.)
The Beatles' Ballads (LP and cassette only; EMI's stab at Capitol's game, with a theme similar to Love Songs; out of print)
The Star Club Tapes (The live album that just won't go away)
The Beatles 20 Greatest Hits (LP and cassette only — it was a distilled Greatest Hits collection, conceived by Capitol to incorporate the Beatles 20 US #1's on one LP; out of print)
Reel Music (LP and cassette only; out of print)
Live at the BBC (1994) (The first new compilation after Apple got its act together)
The Beatles Anthology, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 (1995-1996) (Each volume is a two-CD set containing previously unreleased material from the archives, much of it having appeared on the Ultra Rare Trax bootleg CD series in the late 1980s. An earlier collection, Sessions, would have brought some of the recordings to the public in 1984, but the surviving Beatles vetoed the album at the last minute.)
Yellow Submarine Songtrack (1999). All but one of the songs of the film ("A Day in the Life"), remastered and remixed in stereo, including "Only a Northern Song" for the first time.
1 (2000) (Greatest Hits album that compiled virtually every #1 single from the UK and US from '62 to '70)
Let It Be... Naked (2004) (remix of Let it Be closer to the original, abortive Get Back album, and shorn of Phil Spector's production changes)
LOVE (2007) (To go with the Cirque du Soleil production of that name. A mashup album, put together by Beatles producer George Martin, that pretty much flows like one long medley)
Numerous tribute, soundtracks, and cover albums:
Across The Universe, a Mamma-Mia style musical using parsed lyrics to cobble together a loose plot
I Am Sam, a Sean Penn movie whose mentally disabled protagonist loves the Beatles
The Beatles provide examples of the following tropes:
Aborted Arc: Apart from the Intro, the introduction of Ringo in the persona of "Billy Shears" at the beginning of "With A Little Help From My Friends", and the Reprise, the Sergeant Pepper album largely ignores the "concept" of the Sergeant and his band.
With the Beatles being as popular and as influential as they were, there are literally more of these than can be counted. There's an episode of The Powerpuff Girls, for example, that's basically a protracted parody of every bit of Beatles trivia that the writer could remember. And Abbey Road Crossing can usually be considered a subtrope of this.
Deface the Music by Utopia is a particularly good Affectionate Parody which, like The Rutles, goes through a large portion of the Beatles' career.
Album Filler: McCartney admitted that "Hold Me Tight" off With the Beatles was this.
Beatles for Sale is considered to contain a lot of filler due to the fact there are six covers the band had been playing since their Quarrymen days (as well as "I'll Follow the Sun", which was one of the first songs Paul McCartney ever wrote).
The Beatles also covered the Larry Williams song "Bad Boy" solely to fill out the US-only album Beatles VI. The song would not see British release until 1966.
From Rubber Soul, "Wait" was a song that remained from the Help! sessions.
Sometimes John composed songs just because he didn't have enough in the record (such as "Run for Your Life" in Rubber Soul, "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite" in Sgt. Pepper's).
And of course, there's "The White Album". George Martin even asked them to trim it down to one album since he felt there was too much filler, but the band didn't listen, being eager to fulfill their album commitment to the EMI record label as quickly as possible.
The inclusion of "Across the Universe" and "One After 909" on Let It Be couldn't be anything but filler. The former was recorded in early 1968, long before Let It Be was released, and the latter was one of the first songs Lennon and McCartney had ever written; they recorded a version of it in 1963, which was never included on an album because they were never satisfied with it. They recorded a new version of it for Let It Be.
"Dig It" from the same album was certainly that. When the album was remixed as Let It Be... Naked in 2002, it was even dropped from the track list.
And Starring: Billy Preston's work on keyboards with the band during the Get Back sessions earned him a special credit; the "Get Back"/"Don't Let Me Down" single was attributed to "The Beatles with Billy Preston". This was the only time the band shared billing with another artist.
Apple Corps Owns This Trope: Apple Corps and Apple (Computer) Inc. had an argument dating back to the 1980s over the use of the name "Apple" as a trademark. The original agreement—that Apple Corps could never sell computers, and Apple Inc. could never sell music—seemed pretty sensible until the introduction of iTunes. This is part of why it took until November 16, 2010 for The Beatles' output to be available through that service.
Antiquated Linguistics: "Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite!", its lyrics being drawn from a Victorian circus poster.
Artifact Title: The name The Beatles is a pun on the genre Beat, which is what the band started off playing, but they changed their sound so much over the years that it wasn't really accurate by the time of Revolver. Many of the casual music crowd don't listen to any other 60s artists apart from The Beatles, so they are unaware of the context of the band's name. Luckily, it can also refer to the Beat of a song rather than just the genre.
Artist Disillusionment: One of the key motivating factors behind the band's decision to stop touring was that they couldn't even hear themselves play over all the screaming fans, which both affected how well they were playing and resulted in low morale — it made it clear that most of the fans weren't bothering to listen. So perfunctory was their stage act at the end that by the time of their last paid concert (in 1966 in San Francisco), not one song from their then-new album Revolver was on their performance list.
Recordings of their late live performances indicate just how sick they were of touring, with many of their songs being played at near-double speed, in order to get the concert over and done with as quickly as possible.
George Harrison in particular was vocal about how, for him at least, the appeal of being a Beatle had worn off around 1966-1967, because of the above and because he was getting tired of Lennon and McCartney constantly treating him as the younger sibling of the group with regards to his own efforts at writing.
The boys have admitted that the majority of their movie Help!! was filmed in "a haze of marijuana," and that this was part of the reason that they didn't bother to take much creative control of the movie.
Ascended Fangirls: Two of the "Apple scruffs"—mostly female fans that lurked outside Apple studios constantly while the Beatles were recording—were brought inside to sing backup on "Across the Universe". Their off-key bleating was one reason why "Across the Universe" was given away to a charity album, and when the song was remixed for Let It Be the girls were mixed out.
Badass Boast: "When I was a Beatle, I thought we were the best fucking group in the goddamn world."—John Lennon, 1980
The Beat Generation: The name of the band was partially inspired by the Beats and Lennon in particular named Jack Kerouac as an influence. Allen Ginsberg later on became friends with the band, with Paul McCartney actually playing guitar on one of Ginsberg's albums.
Bifauxnen: "Well you should see Polythene Pam/She's so good-looking but she looks like a man..."
Bigger Than Jesus/Blasphemous Boast: The Trope Namer came from a John Lennon interview in which he did NOT say "we're bigger than Jesus" but rather "we're more popular than Jesus now". Given the intensity of Beatlemania, that was a defensible statement. It still garnered a great amount of ill will from the kinds of people who weren't inclined to like The Beatles in the first place—mostly religious fundamentalist types from the southern States. The protests that dogged The Beatles over their American tour played no small part in convincing them to give up touring for good.
Biopic: Backbeat (1994) depicts the group's Hamburg days, and in particular the relationship between John Lennon, Stu Sutcliffe, and the latter's girlfriend/muse Astrid Kirchherr.
Nowhere Boy focuses on Lennon and his complicated family history, but also dramatizes his meeting with McCartney and the formulation of the band.
Biting-the-Hand Humor: Paul wrote "You Never Give Me Your Money" to voice complaints about the financial practices of Apple Records and Allen Klein.
Black Comedy: The original, infamous "butcher" cover of the album Yesterday and Today. Also, at a stop in Australia, there's a brief clip of them mockingly shouting "Deutschland uber alles!" at the adoring crowd, just to prove they could say or do just about anything and the fans would keep screaming.
Book Ends: The original Get Back album was supposed to have a 1969 photo of the Beatles in the exact same pose that they used for their breakout 1963 Please Please Me album. This idea was abandoned when the Get Back album was reworked into Let It Be, but the photo was eventually used for the cover of the 1967-1970 compilation album.
Sgt. Pepper's opens with the title track, and the penultimate track is a reprise (if "A Day in the Life" is an encore of the band's concert or just a random song is up to you).
Possibly unintentional, but Ain't She Sweet appears twice on the Anthology albums- on the first disc of Anthology 1 and the last disc of Anthology 3.
To a lesser extent, the 2005 Live 8 concerts opened and closed with Paul teaming up with another artist to perform a Beatles song, though not the same one ("Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" with U2 for the opening, and "Hey Jude" with every performer for the finale).
Brilliant, but Lazy: Journalist Maureen Cleave wrote of John, "He can sleep almost indefinitely, is probably the laziest person in England."
John even wrote a song about it called "I'm Only Sleeping."
He also wrote "I'm So Tired" — though that was about more than laziness and his despair.
British Brevity: Averted, with around 200 commercially-released songs in an initial run of eight years.
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band contained a few seconds of audio in the usually-empty runout groove of the record. On players that didn't have automatic pickup arm return (fairly common for cheaper players in the 1960s), this would loop forever, or until you got sick of it and turned it off.
The lyrics of the last four minutes of "Hey Jude" consist entirely of "Na, na na, na na na na, na na na na, Hey Jude" being repeated. Nineteen times.
"Blue Jay Way" ends with variations of a certain phrase being repeated 18 times. The phrase? "Don't be long."
"I Want You (She's So Heavy)" ends with several minutes of the same guitar riff repeated over and over and over and over until it comes to a dead stop mid-way thr
B-Side: The Beatles' B-sides often weren't the typical throwaway song. Among the notable Beatles tracks released as B-sides were "This Boy", "She's A Woman", "Yes It Is", "Rain", "The Inner Light", "Revolution" (!!), "Don't Let Me Down" (!!!), and "Old Brown Shoe".
Sometimes they had two songs that were so strong they wouldn't even say one was the A and the other the B: "We Can Work It Out"/"Day Tripper", and, even more powerfully, "Strawberry Fields Forever"/"Penny Lane". This practice was invented by the Beatles, and is now usually referred to as a "Double-A Side".
Call-and-Response Song: "It Won't Be Long", "With a Little Help From My Friends", "Getting Better", "Baby You're a Rich Man" and many others.
Call Back: In the middle of "Carry That Weight" they break into a new verse of an earlier '"Abbey Road'' track, "You Never Give Me Your Money", then they switch back to "Carry That Weight".
The lyrics of "Glass Onion" consist almost entirely of references to the band's previous songs, including "I Am the Walrus", "She Loves You", "The Fool on the Hill", "Fixing a Hole", and "Strawberry Fields Forever". In the latter case the song even includes a little snatch of flute as a musical echo of the original's introduction.
"She Loves You" and "Yesterday" are also quoted at the end of "All You Need Is Love"
Calling the Old Man Out: Not as frequently as might be expected, but "She's Leaving Home" leans in this direction.
The American version of Magical Mystery Tour, which added the band's 1967 singles to Side 2 in order to make it a full album, solving the problem the Beatles had with the soundtrack in the first place (there were not enough songs in the movie for an album, and there was almost no incidental music to pad it with). The American version is now the canonical version, so much that the version in the 9/9/09 re-release also has the American box art. (Even the artwork on the actual disc is modeled after a record label from EMI's American Capitol Records brand, instead of its British Parlophone imprint as with the band's other pre-Apple albums.)
The stereo versions of their early work could also be considered this. They were mostly produced without the Beatles' involvement. The mono versions of all albums before The Beatles could be considered the "canon" versions.
Captain Obvious: "Come Together" informed us that "One and one and one is three" and "He got feet down below his knee".
Careful With That Axe: The creepy screaming on "Revolution 9", Ringo's quite unsettling "I'VE GOT BLISTERS ON MY FINGERS" at the end of "Helter Skelter", and John Lennon's full-throated scream (after a blistering opening guitar riff) on the single version of "Revolution".
Cash Cow Franchise: During the sixties and since 1989. A re-release by the Beatles is as newsworthy as a new release by U2.
Crack is Cheaper: Lowest "introduction" package is at least $250 for the 2009 remasters box set (stereo* Every album in stereo, whether it was originally mixed in stereo or not (They Changed It, Now It Sucks, as some would say) or mono* Every album originally in mono, a form which many consider purest to the group's intent. However, you don't get any albums that were originally in stereo—many aficionados will argue that you really need both) and DVDs of A Hard Day's Night, Help! and Yellow Submarine. And you can damage your wallet even further (Books! The Anthology documentary! Magical Mystery Tour and other DVDs! The Beatles Rock Band!).
For the technically-minded Beatles fans and music recording geeks, there is the handy, epic tome ''Recording The Beatles" by Brian Kehew and Kevin Ryan, a thoroughly exhaustive 540-page book chronicling the techniques, recording equipment, and studio-owned musical instruments used by the Beatles during the making of their music. The hardcover deluxe-edition book, available via Curvebender publishing, will set you back a good $100.00.
Christmas Episode/Missing Episode: The Beatles sent flexidiscs with holiday greetings and Sketch Comedy to their fan club between 1963 and 1969, which were compiled onto an LP (also a fan club exclusive) in 1971. All these releases are long out of print. They've never been legally available to the general public, except for the first one, which is unlockable content in The Beatles: Rock Band.
An edited version of the 1967 message ("Christmas Time Is Here Again", the closest they ever came to doing an actual Christmas song) was, however, officially released as a B-side of the "Free as a Bird" single in 1995.
Paul McCartney apparently has the recording and keeps making noises about releasing it. George Harrison supposedly vetoed it when he was still alive, but a decade later and it's still nowhere to be found. With as many leaked studio sessions and bootleg albums as there are out there, it'a arguably one of the last truly rare Beatles recordings left.
Christmas Rushed: Rubber Soul was rushed into production before Christmas 1965. Beatles For Sale was also rushed (hence the name and the presence of a few covers after the all-original Hard Day's Night).
Cloudcuckoolander: John Lennon is suspected to have been one of these.
It's hard not to conclude that Ringo was one as well—or if he wasn't then, he is now.
"Here it is right here. A check made out to you, The Beatles, for $3,000. All you have to do is sing three Beatles songs. She loves you, yeah yeah yeah. That's $1,000 right there. You know the words, it'll be easy."
According to John Lennon in a 1980 interview, Paul was visiting John in New York City (during one of their very few friendly meetings post-breakup) and they were actually watching SNL. Apparently, they strongly considered going down to the studio but decided not to.
George did show up in a subsequent episode in 1976, wherein he demanded the money. "$750 is pretty chintzy."
The joke got replayed when Paul McCartney did SNL in 1993 — apparently, he was hoping his touring band would also get paid. Good thing Alec Baldwin was there... (Or was it Jack Donaghy?)
Concept Album: Sgt. Pepper's is widely considered to be one of popular music's first concept albums, although there's little about it that intrinsically makes it such. Lennon admitted that after the first two songs they abandoned the "concept", picking it up only for the reprise of the title track.
Concept Video: The Beatles were among the first to make music videos. The video for "Strawberry Fields Forever" is a Concept Video.
The scene in A Hard Day's Night set to "Can't Buy Me Love" was among the first to pace quick cuts with the rhythm of the song. This technique has since become a staple of music videos and quite common in film and television.
Continuity Nod: A few shout outs to older songs exist. Notably "Glass Onion", which seems to be built entirely on this. Others include:
"I am The Walrus" - "See how they fly, like Lucy in the Sky"
"Come Together" - "He got walrus gumboot.."
"All You Need is Love" — they begin singing "She Loves You" as the song fades out. "Yesterday" can also be heard at the end of "All You Need is Love"
"Savoy Truffle" - "We all know 'Ob-La-Di-Bla-Da'..."
The promotional music video for "Hello Goodbye" was one these, jumping between the band on stage wearing their early, mop-tops-and-suits look and their colorful Sgt. Pepper uniforms.
When the band was running through "Mean Mr. Mustard" during the Get Back sessions, Mean Mr. Mustard's sister ("she never stops, she's a go-getter") was named Shirley. When they reconvened to record Abbey Road and John Lennon revived the song, he changed Shirley's name to Pam to go along with another new song of his, "Polythene Pam".
Continuity Porn: "Glass Onion". Good to know the true identity of The Walrus and what has become of the fool on the hill and Lady Madonna... but it's also a good thing this is an album track and not a single.
Somewhat justified. At the time of the recording of "Sgt. Pepper's," where most critics says Paul began to show this kind of behavior, he had hit a creative streak and was anxious to do some recording. Meanwhile, John's use of drugs peaked, which made him more than a bit lazy.
In later years, much of his behaviour of this nature can be seen as someone attempting — wisely or otherwise — to keep a slowly disintegrating band from falling apart by trying to get them to do something, anything, to keep it together. Many have noted that, more than the other Beatles, Paul's sense of self was for a long time bound up in being a Beatle, and he arguably had a lot more to lose, emotionally, than the others if they broke up.
The Cover Changes The Gender: Their cover of "Boys", although, oddly, they did not change the title. Also their cover of "Please Mr. Postman".
And "Devil In Her Heart", and "To Know Her Is To Love Her". They covered a lot of songs by American girl groups in the early days.
Cover Version: On their first, second, and fourth albums there are almost as many covers as there are Lennon/McCartney tunes. Afterwards they got away from this and stuck almost entirely to recording original material.
Cover songs were common practice in the pop industry for the time, and it was largely the Beatles who turned the tide towards original performances. Their third album (A Hard Day's Night) may not have been the first album of entirely original compositions, but it was one of the most important.
Cut-and-Paste Translation: Before Sgt. Pepper, Capitol Records of America released different Beatles albums from its parent company EMI/Parlophone, the original British publisher. Specifically, they removed songs from some albums to tack onto other albums; since the American albums typically held eleven songs and the British ones held fourteen, and the American albums would include tracks from singles not included in the British LPs, there were two or three albums made from whole cloth. One of these, the 1966 release Yesterday... And Today, was a compilation with "new" songs that had been issued the previous year in England, as well as rough mixes of three songs from the then-forthcoming Revolver.
Tropes Are Not Bad: The American cut of Rubber Soul inspired Brian Wilson to make Pet Sounds, which, in turn, inspired Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The American album Meet The Beatles! is also well-received (partly because it added the "I Want to Hold Your Hand" single to the core of the British With the Beatles album and removed all but one of the earlier title's cover versions to create a nearly entirely Beatle-written album), and even made it at the Number 59 spot on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums list.
All officially released versions of Let It Be are this compared to what the project was supposed to be. Phil Spector took the raw tapes and tried to hide flaws (real and imagined) under heavy orchestration. Let It Be... Naked doesn't use heavy orchestration, but does use something like ProTools. (For some reason, Paul McCartney tends to think it's okay to remove something from a recording if it was never meant to be there, even if it was there because of limitations in the tech at the time of recording. Normally, that would be fine for anyone who isn't a major audiophile; but John Lennon wanted the album to be raw and forbade George Martin from doing "producer tricks" on it!) Lennon later strongly defend Spector's remix of the album against McCartney's stringent protests, declaring the original Get Back album unlistenable.
Past Masters 1 and 2 (now with the remasters, just one album), albums made entirely of singles which do not appear on any of their albums (including songs like "I Want to Hold Your Hand", "Rain" and "Hey Jude"), also count. Unlike many examples of this trope, they're extremely important.
The second side of the Magical Mystery Tour LP is an earlier example of this, as was the Hey Jude compilation. Part of the problem was that American releases, in addition to be shorter than their British counterparts, tended to be centered around a popular single. Capitol generally refused to release an album that didn't include at least one hit single. EMI/Parlophone took the exact opposite approach, and few Beatles singles were included on their albums (at least not without substantial differences in mixing or arrangement, as was the case with "Revolution" and "Revolution 1"). Both the Past Masters disc and the US version of Magical Mystery Tour were released on CD in order that these tracks would be available on the medium in some form.
Darker and Edgier: Gradually, as they earned more freedom to write songs not just for the money, became more jaded at the superficiality of fame and lust, and started using drugs. The definitive turning point was the single "Yesterday", which both dramatically went against their current image, and managed to be a great success. Their light and fluffy teen-pop image entirely dissipated after Rubber Soul came out.
Dead Artists Are Better: John Lennon. While his musical accomplishments certainly can't be denied, he was a self-admitted Jerkass throughout his life. After his death, he was practically canonized from certain quarters. George also benefited from this following his passing.
Deadpan Snarker: In Real Life, all four of them were - their early press conferences consisted of approximately five smart-ass answers for every one serious answer to reporters' questions.
They were from Liverpool, after all. It's in the water supply.
Dreadful Musician: The two Beatles that didn't make the cut, The Pete Best himself (the only condition George Martin gave to hire the band was to replace him) and Stu Sutcliffe (who only bought a bass to join the band at John's insistance, and usually was facing backwards on stage to hide his lack of skill).
Everything Sounds Sexier in French: "Michelle" has a line in French, and a line in English, that mean the same ("these are words that go together well") and are sung to the same tune.
Evolving Music: "Revolution 1" was initially recorded as a single, despite being a loping, ten-minute blues number that morphed into a chaotic sound collage. The Beatles decided to put this version aside, and instead recorded "Revolution" for the single - a faster, harder-rocking version of the same song. "Revolution 1" eventually appeared on 'The White Album'' with its first four minutes standing alone, and portions of the bizarre ending incorporated into the separate "Revolution 9."
John Lennon's "Child of Nature" was originally conceived and demoed by the band following their trip to India in 1968, but never released. Three years later both was rerecorded with entirely new lyrics and released as "Jealous Guy" on Lennon's Imagine album. Likewise, George Harrison's "Not Guilty" was originally recorded for the The Beatles ("The White Album") in 1968, but never released until Harrison revived it, gave it a much bluesier take, and released it on his self-titled solo album in 1979
A number of Beatles songs had their genesis in their early days but did not get album releases until much later into their career. "I'll Follow the Sun" and "Michelle" (released on Beatles for Sale and Rubber Soul in 1964 and 1965, respectively) date back to at least 1960, where it shows up on home recordings made by Paul McCartney. "The One After 909" even went through a number of studio takes in 1963 before being scrapped. It was returned to for the Let It Be album in 1970.
Expy: By Design The Monkees, the "Pre-Fab" four created to basically make a tv show out of the movie "Help!!". Notably, John Lennon is on record as saying he enjoyed the series and said that the writing and performances reminded him of the Marx Brothers.
Fading into the Next Song: "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" → "With a Little Help from My Friends". Then the "Sgt. Pepper" reprise → "A Day in the Life". "Back In the U.S.S.R." → "Dear Prudence" on The White Album.
Also, the B Side Medley on Abbey Road, aside from "She Came In Through The Bathroom Window" → "Golden Slumbers". SCITTBW fades out completely before GS starts up.
Fake-Out Fade-Out: "Hello Goodbye", "Helter Skelter", "Strawberry Fields Forever", "Free As a Bird".
Faux Symbolism: Deliberately invoked with "I Am The Walrus," written after John received a letter from a student who attended Lennon's old primary school about an English master there who was forcing his students to analyse the band's Word Salad Lyrics. Upon finishing the song, complete with his classic "first-thing-you-see" lyrics, Lennon turned to his friend and said "let the fuckers work that one out!".
The completely random and nonsense line "semolina pilchard" is a reference to semolina pudding and pilchard sardine cans, according to John's childhood friend, Pete Shotton circa 1983.
The Fifth Beatle: Billy Preston was called this after he joined The Beatles for Let It Be. Producer George Martin, roadie Mal Evans, personal assistant Neil Aspinall, manager Brian Epstein and former bassist Stuart Sutcliffe have also been called "Fifth Beatle"'s.
Flanderization: All of the Beatles were annoyed at the simplistic roles and stereotypes they were reduced to in the media as the 'Fab Four' (John the 'funny' one, Paul the 'cute' one, George the 'quiet' one, Ringo the 'lucky' one, etc).
In modern times, the Lennon/McCartney writing partnership tends to be oversimplified as 'Lennon wrote all the angsty, complex, rebellious and therefore 'good' songs, whereas McCartney wrote all the Silly Love Songs and fluffy album filler.' This not only tends to unfairly deny McCartney the credit in several cases, but collapses entirely when you remember that Lennon wrote "Mean Mr. Mustard" and "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" (although he did say that the latter was In The Style Of Paul) and McCartney wrote "Eleanor Rigby", a song about the human struggle with loneliness with a Downer Ending, and "Helter Skelter", one of the hardest rock songs the band ever recorded and one frequently classified as "proto-metal". Lennon did tend more towards Creator Breakdown in later years, though...
Foil: Lennon and McCartney tended to write a lot of songs on the same subject or with very similar musical techniques which showed the personality of both songwriters as well as the similarities and differences between them. Their singles tended to provide the best example of this - compare "Paperback Writer" and "Rain", or "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane", or "Hey Jude" and "Revolution", or...
"Paperback Writer" and "Rain" is probably the best example of this - both are in the key of G, both are full of special effects, neither uses that many chords, and neither is a love song. However, where "Paperback Writer" is a gritty, fast-paced, journalistic sorta-first person letter, "Rain" is a mystical, slow-paced sorta-third-person rant. It's even better if you compare both songs with "Taxman", Harrison's first song on the album that follows, which is again very similar and very different to both.
"We Can Work It Out" is the best example of this, with Paul writing the optimistic, yet arrogant refrain - "Try to see it my way...We can work it out" - while John wrote the pessimistic "Life is very short, and there's no time..." middle eight (with the time signature change as George's sole contribution to the song).
"I Will" and "Julia", which are even paired together on the White Album, are also good for this - both songs are about a far-away love, someone whom the singer can not (and it's implied may never) be with. "I Will" is optimistic and hopeful, and written for 'you' - Paul is certain that you are out there, that you are the one for him, he is the one for you, and you will be together. "Julia" is melancholic and wilting, and written about 'her' - John knows that he'll never see her again, and is still nursing his broken heart.
Four Element Ensemble: Mirroring the four universal aspects which make up the Human Spirit(Body, Mind, Heart and Soul).
Caustic intellectual "witty one" John being Air(the Mind)
Smiling charmer "cute one" Paul being Water(the Heart, and always with a silly love song or two at hand)
Philosophical introvert "quiet one" George chanting his mantras is Fire(the Soul)
And lucky everyman "just happy to be here" Ringo is Earth(the Body that connects everything together).
Four Philosophy Ensemble: John is the cynic, Paul is the Optimist, George is the Realist, and Ringo is the Apathetic.
Four Temperament Ensemble: Combo Ensemble if there ever was one — Paul is sanguine/choleric, John was choleric/melancholic, George was melancholic/phlegmatic, and Ringo is phlegmatic/sanguine.
Garfunkel: Ringo in public perception, though the band reported he was the one who kept them together.
Furthermore, utterly inverted in reality. The other three had tried and failed previously to lure him away from his job with Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, with whom he was already wildly popular in the local music scene. It wasn't until the Beatles had secured a record deal that they had something to offer him that he didn't already have. The record deal, incidentally, specified that the Beatles could not keep the erratic Pete Best as drummer. The Beatles literally needed Ringo more than he needed them.
Generation Xerox: When John's oldest son Julian tried to make it big as a pop star, many people felt that he was trying too hard to imitate the style of his father.
Hell, everything about Julian Lennon. Both he and his father were born to parents too young and immature to raise a child; both were pretty much abandoned by their parents (though Julian did still live with his mother); and then, by the time they had mended their respective relationships, both times the parent gets killed by someone else. And Julian looks like his mother, Cynthia, and sounds a lot like his father.
His younger half-brother Sean did better, at least from an artistic POV. Sean's 1998 indie rock effort Into the Sun was different enough from not only Julian's more pop efforts, but also the works of a certain other band who played the same genre as him who were endlessly indebted to his father, that it wound up being very well received. Sean reportedly shopped around the world for a record label that cared about his music and not his family name, and found it in Beastie Boys' label Grand Royal.
Sean unfortunately has decided to imitate his parents in his own pretty creepy way. (Link NSFW).
There's also Dhani Harrison, who is half of the alternative rock duo, thenewno2. And by the way, his voice sounds nearly identical to that of his father. And he somehow looks just like George.
He looks so much like George that during the big tribute concert that Eric Clapton arranged a year after George's death, Paul quipped that with Dhani onstage alongside himself, Ringo, Eric Clapton, Tom Petty, and a lot of George's other longtime friends, "It looks like George stayed young and all the rest of us got old."
Zak Starkey - Ringo's son - plays drums for both Oasis and The Who.
His style is a lot different, though; he owes a lot to Keith Moon, though without playing exactly like him. Might have helped that Keith was his godfather...
Genre Roulette: The albums post Rubber Soul go everywhere: folk, psychedelic, Indian, avant-garde...
Getting Crap Past the Radar: Sometimes the Beatles didn't care about the radar ("Why Don't We Do It In The Road") and other times the fan base reads in dirty meanings that the band apparently never intended (the supposed sexual innuendo in "Please Please Me"). But on occasion the group did take notice of the radar and surreptitiously slipped things past it.
"Penny Lane" contains sexual slang ('fish and finger pie' = fingering) a lot of people missed, and "Drive My Car" is veritable wall-to-wall Double Entendre.
Right after the line "Remember to let her under your skin" at about 2:56 of "Hey Jude," John shouts what appears to be "OH!" What he really says is "Got the wrongCHORD!" This is immediately followed by a clearly audible "Fucking hell." To repeat: you can clearly hear John Lennon say "Fucking hell" during the only version of The Beatles' most popular single. Hearing the F-word uncensored in a single in 2010 is rare. The Beatles pulled this off in 1968.
At numerous times during "She Loves You," the boys are actually singing, "She'd love to." Listen closely to the middle of the choruses: "She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah./She'd love to, yeah, yeah, yeah." This in-joke is revisited at the end of "All You Need is Love," where the lyric is clearly "She loves you, yeah yeah yeah!/She'd love to, yeah yeah yeah!"
Many songs are said to be about drugs: "Got To Get You Into My Life", "Happiness is a Warm Gun" ("I need a fix..."). McCartney has claimed that, after "I Want To Hold Your Hand," anything that looked like a drug reference probably was. The exception is, ironically enough, "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", which is a very long, but (except for the double entendre in "grows so incredibly high") totally non-drug-related, story.
"Dr. Robert" was about a real life acquaintance who was a doctor in both senses of the word at once.
At the end of "Norwegian Wood", "So, I lit a fire/Isn't it good, Norwegian wood", is a reference to the singer burning the girl's house down.
The word, "Tit" sung as a refrain of "Girl".
"All Together Now." Quite possibly the only children's song that talks about sex... but not explicitly.
One, two, three, four Can I have a little more? Five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, I love you. A, B, C, D Can I bring my friend to tea? E, F, G, H, I, J, I love you. .... Black, white, green, red Can I take my friend to bed? Pink, brown, yellow, orange and blue, I love you.
Penis jokes in "With a Little Help From My Friends".
Grand Finale: The Long Medley on Side Two of Abbey Road, ending with, well, "The End". Abbey Road as a whole was intended to be this for the band, though the release of Let It Be (which was begun first) ended up being pushed back long enough to cause an accidental subversion of the trope.
Gratuitous Panning: Early stereo mixes of albums separated entire tracks to one side. All Beatles albums were mixed in mono and different people handled the stereo mixes. It wasn't until Abbey Road that they actually did an album in stereo (Her Majesty starts entirely on the right, and moves until it's entirely on the left by the end of the song.)
Capitol Records' "Duophonic" process, which artificially turned a lot of songs recorded in mono into pseudo-stereo. The Beach Boys and Frank Sinatra also underwent this particular form of Executive Meddling. Capitol Records would take a mono recording, delay the right channel by a millisecond, play it through their famed echo chamber, and — presto! — fake stereo. Reportedly, Brian Wilson's father Murry preferred Duophonic, so much so that 8 of their albums were only available in mono or Duophonic.
Greatest Hits Album: Several of them. Most notable are The Red and Blue Albums, Past Masters and 1 (all of which seen remastered issues since 2009).
Grief Song: "Let It Be" and "Julia" about Paul and John's mothers, respectively. "Baby's in Black" is about someone else's grief. "Yesterday" would be the most famous of quite a few "lost love" songs.
The weird cacophonous noise loop that comes after "A Day In The Life" on Sgt. Pepper, if you count that as a song.
"Her Majesty" on the end of the Abbey Road album. Possibly the Trope Maker, being the first known song to be left at the end of an album after a period of silence, and without being listed as a track. (Later printings of Abbey Road include "Her Majesty" on the track list.)
"Can You Take Me Back", the song fragment on Side 4 of The White Album (included at the end of "Cry Baby Cry" on modern CD tracks), which to this day doesn't even have an official title.
Hot And Cold: Although male, John had a personality similar to this.
I Am Not Left-Handed: Leftie Ringo Starr played a right-handed drum kit, resulting in his signature style
Of course, even in their "mass-marketed pop band" days the Beatles wrote original material and played their own instruments, which doesn't really fit this trope.
Insult Backfire: All four were skilled at giving smart assed answers to criticism, but Paul may have achieved the crowning moment at a 1965 press conference:
Reporter: In a recent article, Time magazine put down pop music. And they referred to "Day Tripper" as being about a prostitute, and "Norwegian Wood" as being about a lesbian. I just wanted to know what your intent was when you wrote it, and what your feeling is about the Time magazine criticism of the music that is being written today. Paul: Well, we were just trying to write songs about prostitutes and lesbians, that's all.
Intercourse with You: "Please Please Me," "A Hard Day's Night," "Drive My Car", "Why Don't We Do It In The Road?", and others.
"Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite" is supposedly John doing an In The Style Of Paul.
"Please Please Me", their first real hit, was a deliberate and blatant homage to Roy Orbison, who they toured with soon thereafter; the original was a much slower, Orbison-style ballad and was sped up to its current tempo by producer George Martin. Now, without doing anything else to it as it is now, just try listening to this track from now on without ever being able to imagine Roy's characteristic warbling tremolo voice...I dare you!
"If I Fell" from 'A Hard Day's Night' also...that "chord strumming" intro and song structure/style is classic Roy, vis a vis 'In Dreams', etc.
PS: if you ever wondered how or why Roy and George ended up together in the Traveling Wilburys, there's your answer!
"You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" is basically John doing Bob Dylan(with John himself saying he'd never have used the "clown" line/rhyme otherwise).
"Here, There and Everywhere" and "Because" being in the style of The Beach Boys (no, seriously — listen to those harmonies).
"Back in the U.S.S.R." is not only in the style of Chuck Berry, but also a striking parody to The Beach Boys(who themselves took flak for an earlier In The Style Of of Mr. Berry).
This one always gets played straight or inverted, however, with almost no one seeming to get the joke; it still gets played regularly on any and all Rock radio stations around the world with no tongue-in-cheek whatsoever, and even today Paul himself still plays it straight as part of his standard live-stage set...and he *wrote* the damn song!
Although Paul playing the song in his set doesn't mean he's forgotten its intent.
Some of their early hits, like "She Loves You" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand", display an unmistakable Buddy Holly influence.
"I Don't Want to Spoil the Party" has, to some, always sounded like a forgotten Everly Brothers hit.
"Honey Pie" is a direct homage to the Tin Pan Alley/British music hall style.
"When I'm Sixty-Four" as well, even more famously.
"Lady Madonna" in the style of Fats Domino, and even covered by Fats himself.
"I'm Down" in the stlye of Little Richard's "Long Tall Sally", which they also covered.
It Makes Sense in Context: John Lennon's "Bigger than Jesus" comment, which was part of a much larger article, and came about because he was reading about religion at the time. It got misrepresented in an American Teen Magazine, resulting in the infamous controversy.
Jerkass: John. He mellowed in the '70s, but he was a dick in the '60s.
He did have his share of jerkass moments in the 70s (or so I've heard).
He was described as an ADD monster.
Reports of what a complete tool he could be are especially glaring in light of the modern picture of him as being St. John of Peace.
Despite being an infamous control freak after "Sgt. Pepper", he did his best to hold the crumbling band together after manager Brian Epstein passed away.
John's neglected son Julian has admitted that he was much closer with Paul than his father.
Jukebox Musical: Three of note, not counting Yellow Submarine.
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978) — All-Star Cast fantasy that tries to wrap a storyline around Beatles songs and characters in them, as a vehicle for popular acts of the time: Peter Frampton, the Bee Gees, Alice Cooper, etc. While Aerosmith's take on "Come Together" and Earth Wind & Fire's cover of "Got to Get You Into My Life" are well-regarded, this movie also gave us George Burns singing "Fixing a Hole" and Steve Martin performing "Maxwell's Silver Hammer". The silly story and frequent poor match-ups of songs to situations render it all So Bad, It's Goodat best, and it was a major flop.
LOVE (2006) — This is the only one of the three that actually involved the Beatles, and it's not a standard example of the trope, but a Cirque du Soleil show. This live theater super-production (in a specially-built showroom at the Mirage Hotel, Las Vegas) sets the company's trademark acrobatics and dancing to remixed versions of the group's original recordings, creating a metaphorical telling of their career and impact. The development of this show became the subject of the documentary All Together Now.
Across The Universe (2007) — Director Julie Taymor brings us a movie that uses cover versions of Beatles songs to recount the love lives, political exploits, and other adventures and misadventures of 1960s youths. Very much a Love It or Hate It experience.
Having said that, if you are a big fan of The Beatles in general and don't mind a few lyrical changes, you're bound to at least enjoy the songs.
There's also "All this and World War II", which is a WWII documentary with covers of Beatles songs. It largely has a reputation for making no sense.
A Broadway show called Beatlemania! was around in the 1980s. A home video release of it, however, was plagued with problems. Glenn Burtnik (who played Paul McCartney in the show) does many Beatles-themed tribute concerts nowadays.
Lampshaded Double Entendre: "I Saw Her Standing There". "Well she was just 17/You know what I mean/And the way she looked/was way beyond compare..."
"Strawberry Fields Forever" is the canonical example. It fades out with a gorgeous swarmandel before fading back in with a dissonant mellotron, vicious drumming, trumpets that sound like ambulance sirens, and (most disturbingly) John Lennon's slowed-down voice saying "CRANBERRY SAUCE".
Even worse if you're a little kid and you think it's "I buried Paul." Ever since then, that song's end is the sound of death to her.
"Helter Skelter" is a different sort of Last Note Nightmare, as it finishes with Ringo throwing his drumsticks across the room and screaming "I GOT BLISTERS ON MY FINGERS!!" The version that wound up on the 'The White Album'' was the 18th take of the day. That explains the blisters.
The disonnant swirling effects at the end of "Blue Jay Way".
The manic laughing sound effect at the end of "Within You Without You", meant to bring relief to the heaviness of the lyrics. It didn't work.
Live Album: Let It Be was supposed to be this, with the band rehearsing and recording their new songs live. The sniping and tension within the band (as well as the creative funk John Lennon was mired in at this time) led to several songs being dubbed or altered in the studio, most infamously Paul's "The Long and Winding Road". However, despite all the band's problems seven tracks were still laid down live: "I've Got a Feeling", "One After 909" and "I Dig a Pony" from the Apple rooftop performance, and "Get Back", "Two of Us", "Dig It" and "Maggie Mae" from studio performances. ("Don't Let Me Down", left off the album after being released as the B-side of the "Get Back" single, was also recorded live.)
Please Please Me. The Beatles recorded "Love Me Do" and "P.S. I Love You" for their first single on Sept. 11, 1962, with no overdubbing. They did the same for their second single, "Please Please Me"/"Ask Me Why", on Nov. 26, 1962. After "Please Please Me" shot to the top of the UK charts, EMI wanted an album in a hurry. The Beatles and George Martin convened in the studio on February 11, 1963 and over a little less than ten hours recorded ten more songs, which were added to the A and B sides of the first two singles, with relatively few overdubs, and put out as an album.
The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl. Out of print for many years.
Lyrical Cold Open: They liked this trope, doing it in "All My Loving," "No Reply," "I'm A Loser," "Wait," "Eleanor Rigby", "Girl", "Happiness is a Warm Gun", "Help!", "The Long and Winding Road", "Maxwell's Silver Hammer", "Nowhere Man", and "Yellow Submarine".
Also "Getting Better," in which the singer mentions he used to abuse his woman.
Never mind that the addition of the lyric "It can't get no worse!" gives the whole song a more desperate/sarcastic tone.
That line was actually a joke of John's from while they were recording. Everyone thought it was pretty funny, so they kept it in the final song.
"Piggies" sounds like it could be a nursery rhyme, but the lyrics are George's sense of humor at its most pitch-black.
The hard-rocking "Helter Skelter" (of Manson Family fame) is about a slide. Like in a fairground.
They had one right out of the gate on Please Please Me with "Misery," a Breakup Song that sounds just like the Silly Love Songs that make up most of the album.
Catchy, up-tempo, begs-you-to-sing-along "Run For Your Life", in which John Lennon promises to hunt down and kill his girlfriend if she ever cheats on him.
Malaproper: Ringo Starr, who inadvertently spawned the titles "A Hard Day's Night", "Eight Days A Week", and "Tomorrow Never Knows".
Match Cut: From a squaking rooster at the end of "Good Morning, Good Morning" to the opening guitar lick of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)".
Medley: The famous Long Medley at the end of Abbey Road. Most of Side Two of the album is taken up by a lot of short songs and song fragments blended together with great effect.
Mondegreen: Anybody who doesn't realize Paul is singing in French in the song "Michelle" might come up with "Sunday monkey no play piano song", among other things.
Mind Screw: "Revolution 9". While "Revolution 1" is a nice, slow, relativly tame rock song, "Revolution 9" is eight minutes of pure, untapped, minimalist cacophony. A Last Note Nightmare, that really is a nightmare, regardless if it's a whole song...
The single, "Revolution", is a much faster and heavier (and louder) version of "Revolution 1". As Giles Martin said on the sleeve-notes for Love, "even today it defines 'distortion'."
" I Am The Walrus". I Am He As You Are He as you are me and we are all together, now.
Minimalistic Cover Art: The Beatles is all white, save for the name of the album embossed onto it, and a unique serial number stamped on it (going for a bit of irony in something so plain also being unique from every other copy of it). Ever since, fans have called it "The White Album".
Misogyny Song: Amazingly, they have two notable ones:
"You Can't Do That" (from the A Hard Day's Night soundtrack) is from the POV of a jealous, possessive boyfriend who does not like his woman talking to any other men at all...
If I catch you talking to that boy again,
I'm gonna let you down,
And leave you flat
Because I told you before, OH,
You can't do that.
...though, it's pretty tame in comparison to "Run for Your Life" (from Rubber Soul). At its heart, the message of this song is that if you decide to end a relationship with the singer, he will brutally murder you if you don't escape him first.
In fact, John Lennon (who wrote both of those songs) was a noted womanizer in his earlier years. He later tried to atone for these attitudes and the songs he wrote with these attitudes during his solo career, with songs like "Woman" and "Jealous Guy".
Lennon also claimed that both "You Can't Do That" and "When I Get Home" (both on A Hard Days Night) were his attempts to emulate American R&B star Wilson Pickett. "Run For Your Life" seemed to be a throwaway song written to fill out side 2 of Rubber Soul, wih an opening line stolen from "Baby Let's Play House" (a blues song popularized by Elvis Presley) and the rest of the song branching out from there. It and Help's "It's Only Love" were considered "Old Shames" by Lennon, partially over the lyrics, which embarrassed him.
"Norwegian Wood" implies (and McCartney has confirmed that this was the intention) that if a woman invites you into her home and doesn't sleep with you, burning down the place is a reasonable response.
Momma's Boy: The titular character of "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill" is "the all-American bullet-headed Saxon mother's son." And behind that tough exterior, he really does rely on his mom's defense when people start to question him - hence why he always brings her along on hunting trips "in case of accidents."
Money Song: Subverted with "Can't Buy Me Love", played straight with their cover of "Money (That's What I Want)"
Monster Fangirl: Rose and Valerie in "Maxwell's Silver Hammer".
Mood Whiplash: In its original context, "Revolution 9" is supposed to sound like the revolution inspired by "Revolution 1". Since the song was cut in half on The White Album, "Revolution 9" comes out of fucking nowhere. After all of that, the overly saccharine final song, "Good Night", appears.
Mundane Made Awesome: Triumphant strings rising as John passionately sings "SEMOLINA PILCHARD CLIMBING UP THE EIFFEL TOWER" in "I Am The Walrus").
"Helter Skelter." One of the first metal songs ever was about a slide.
Paul's passionate yelling in "Golden Slumbers," to some.
Murder Ballad: "Rocky Raccoon" and "Maxwell's Silver Hammer."
Mythology Gag: The fact that the remastered albums and their Rock Band game were released on 9/9/09.Punchline "Number Nine... Number Nine... Number Nine..."
No Ending: Both sides of the Abbey Road album. "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" ends abruptly in the middle of a riff, after three minutes of repeating the same sequence of chords. John Lennon told engineer Geoff Emerick to "cut it right there", and Emerick did. "Her Majesty" was originally slated between "Mean Mr. Mustard" and "Polythene Pam", but the band decided to delete it. Tape engineer John Kurlander clipped it out of the master, cutting out the last crashing guitar chord of "Mean Mr. Mustard" along with "Her Majesty", but missing the last note of "Her Majesty", which was left at the beginning of "Polythene Pam". Since EMI's policy was to never throw away a Beatles recording, Kurlander then he spliced "Her Majesty" onto the end of the master tape after 14 seconds of silence, creating a Hidden Track that ends one note too soon. The band liked the effect and left it that way. (The cut was a test-run of the crossfading and editing sequence, on rough mixes, not the final edit (if you notice, in the album version the final chord of "Mean Mr. Mustard" is also missing but because the new sequence makes it redundant; the final chord of "Her Majesty" is totally absent though). The "Her Majesty" part, however, is the original clip tacked on to the final master just the same it was in the rough edit.)
Non Appearing Title: "A Day in the Life", "Tomorrow Never Knows", "The Ballad of John and Yoko", "The Inner Light", "Revolution 9".
Nonindicative Name: The "Remastered In Stereo" box set released in 2009 is not quite what the name says; "Only A Northern Song" from the Yellow Submarine album is still in mono (though a stereo version appeared in 1999 in the film's "songtrack" album), as are the few mono tracks on Past Masters. Original master tapes for four early songs have long since been erased, making a true stereo release impossible; and the 1970 song "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)" has yet to be mixed for stereo despite its master tape being extant, though a different edit of the song did appear in stereo in the Anthology series.
Nothing But Hits: Arguably the only artists whose entire back catalogue is familiar to the general public, although, due to copyright issues, they rarely appear on compilation albums alongside other artists.
The Obi-Wan: Manager Brian Epstein, who died shortly after "Sgt. Pepper". Major subversion, as his death is considered the beginning of the end for the group.
Obsession Song: "For No One" and "Julia". "I Will" kicks it up a notch - the singer is obsessed with the hypothetical someone he could fall in love with.
Also of note: "I Want You (She's So Heavy)", which was about Yoko. John famously explained why it was lyrically simplistic thus: "When you're drowning, you don't say, 'I would be incredibly pleased if someone would have the foresight to notice me drowning and come and help me.' You just scream."
Ode To Intoxication: Did you think "Got to Get You Into My Life" was a love song? It is. A love song about how much Paul McCartney loved to smoke marijuana.
One Woman Song: "Michelle", "Eleanor Rigby", "Julia", "Lovely Rita", "Lady Madonna", "Polythene Pam", "Martha My Dear" (although, fun fact, it was written about Paul's dog), "Dear Prudence", "Sexy Sadie".
Page Three Stunna: Seemingly alluded to in "Polythene Pam"—""She's the kind of a girl that makes The News Of The World, yes, you could say she was attractively built."
Parody/Affectionate Parody: The song "Back in the USSR" is both a parody of Chuck Berry's "Back in the USA" and a decent imitation of the Beach Boys' distinctive "Surfing Sound".
It's also suggested that it's a oblique (if not entirely affectionate) reference to Prime Minister Harold Wilson's "I'm Backing Britain" productivity campaign.
Performance Video: The Beatles were among the first to make music videos, and some of them are basically the band pretending to perform, such as the video for "Ticket to Ride."
Please Retain Old Street Name: Penny Lane in Liverpool is named not after the coin but after an 18th-century slave trader of that name. Were it not for the Beatles' song, it would have been renamed years ago.
The Poppy: "Behind the shelter in the middle of a roundabout/A pretty nurse is selling poppies from a tray..."
Protest Song: Subverted with "Revolution", a protest about protestors (and specifically the Cultural Revolution with John's "Chairman Mao" reference".)
Or maybe not. All versions of the song take a swipe at Mao, but Lennon's vocals in "Revolution 1" have a more ambivalent take on protest in general, with his introductory "don't you know that you can count me out" being immediately followed by a parenthetical "in".
Played straight with "Taxman", a song protesting, uh, high taxes.
Punny Name: Apple Corps. Especially since it's always spelled "Corps" (and thus pronounced "core"). John loved wordplay.
During the recording of "I'm Down" Paul self-criticised one of his takes as "plastic soul" (you can hear it in Anthology 2). So Rubber Soul is actually a double pun.
Supposedly, Paul once overheard some black musicians using the term "plastic soul" to describe Mick Jagger's singing. So the title might have also been a playful, in-joke Take That to the Stones.
Before settling on Revolver, the group went through several other working titles for the album. One (probably facetious) suggestion from Ringo was After Geography, a play on the Stones' Aftermath from earlier that year.
Also, the name "Beatles" itself, though hardly anyone notices anymore, because everyone grows up knowing "The Beatles".
Putting the Band Back Together: Fourteen years after John's death, the other three reunited for The Beatles Anthology. During this time, Paul, George, and Ringo worked on fleshing out two of John's demos, "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love".
Perhaps on a much smaller scale, but they also finally released a couple of songs recorded with Pete Best, although he didn't collaborate with the release.
The Quiet One: George's image, although several of his friends have noted this wasn't true in real life. He just didn't give as many interviews as the other Beatles.
Race Fetish: "Back in the USSR" has a few moments of this, parodying "California Girls".
Real Life Writes the Plot: The film Let It Be was originally conceived as a documentary of the Beatles' "rebirth" as a live performing band. Instead, by capturing the tension and infighting among the band members (including a famous spat between McCartney and Harrison), it became a chronicle of the band's break-up.
Lampshaded by the choice of name. When originally conceived as a chronicle of the band's rebirth, the project was entitled "Get Back". By the time the pieces had been picked up and enough footage cobbled together to release as an album and film, it had metamorphosed into "Let It Be", effectively serving as the band's epitaph.
A more benign example is the movie Help! The band members have admitted they basically wanted to go skiing and hang out on the beach, so that's what got written into the script.
Real Life Writes the Song: "Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite!", "A Day in the Life", "She's Leaving Home", "Blue Jay Way", "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window", many others. Lennon in particular did this constantly.
Rearrange the Song: The two different versions of "Revolution" released in 1968—the original low-key version, actually released second as "Revolution 1" on The White Album, and the hard-rocking version released as the B-side to "Hey Jude".
"The Reason You Suck" Song: "Sexy Sadie" to the Maharishi, "The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill" to a Great White Hunter they met in Rishikesh who loved to shoot tigers in the wild.
Retraux: "Honey Pie" was already a song done In The Style OfCole Porter, but the effect is strengthened by having one line—"Now she's hit the big time"—sound like a scratchy old record being played on a tinny old record player.
Revisiting the Roots: Let It Be. It bears pointing out that the Let It Be project was originally called Get Back because this was precisely the idea (and that of course is also the reason the song was called "Get Back"). This was an attempt to return to the sort of spontaneous, energetic rock and roll they'd played at the beginning of their career - as opposed to the sophisticated and intricately produced music they'd moved on to. The recording sessions were a disaster, and they largely abandoned the "back to basics" approach for their last recorded album, Abbey Road.
Rhyming With Itself: "Met" with "met" in "I've Just Seen a Face" and "better" with "better" in the first verse of "Hey Jude".
Ripped from the Headlines: "Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite!" was pretty much John just reading out a Victorian circus poster to a tune, and "A Day in the Life" was based on the headlines from a single day's newspaper.
"She's Leaving Home" was also based on a newspaper article, about a girl running away.
The Rival: John and Paul were at least a little competitive when it came to songwriting. This would make George an Unknown Rival to both of them.
"Although I laugh and I act like a clown/Beneath this mask I am wearing a frown..."
Sampling: "I Am the Walrus" is one of the early examples, if not the earliest. It includes clips from a BBC Radio production of King Lear.
"Revolution 9" is a better example, and a lot more infamous.
Also, the first few seconds of "Strawberry Fields Forever" are made up of flute samples.
Which was played on the first sample a Mellotron. It was an analog sampler with different instruments sampled to tape. So when one pushed a key, the tape was played. This made the whole thing huge and as the tapes were being played all the time, it had the tendency to go out of tune after a while.
Scare Chord: At the beginning of "A Hard Day's Night" and "Her Majesty", and at the end of "A Day in the Life".
The end of "Strawberry Fields Forever". The song fades out, and after a few seconds comes in a dissonant flute riff, some Scare Chord horns, and someone repeating "Cranberry Sauce" several times into another fade.
There's also a negative one at the end of "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" (where a sudden silence in the middle of a riff has this effect).
Scatting: "La la la la la la" chanting on the otherwise wordless "Flying" (off Magical Mystery Tour). More famously, "Hey Jude" with it's four minute coda of "Na na na na na na na, na na na na, hey Jude".
Self-Backing Vocalist: Usually averted - the person who'd written the song took lead vocals (with some exceptions, especially involving the songs they gave to Ringo) and the other two (Ringo usually opted out) joined on harmonies. Exceptions were mostly Paul: "I Will", "Wild Honey Pie"... John also had a duet with himself (interpolating lines) on "Julia".
Self-Deprecation: During many, many press conferences at the height of Beatlemania, all four members of the band frequently joked that they expected to flop at any moment. George Harrison also referred to himself and Ringo Starr as "economy-class Beatles," and in the 1980s freely described himself as "a middle-aged ex-pop star."
Series Fauxnale: Throughout their career, the press perpetuated rumours that the band was on the verge of splitting, particularly around the Revolver/Pepper period.
Serious Business: It eventually got to the point that they had to stop touring after 1966, because their fans would reach such levels of hysteria that not even the band itself could hear their music.
Perhaps the ultimate case of Serious Business is the fact that John was murdered by one crazed fan, and George and his wife nearly stabbed to death by another.
Speaking of whom, this trope is what he was really, genuinely talking about when he uttered the famous words destined to be taken out of context: "more popular than Jesus". Anyone who has heard more than that one sentence fragment of the interview will tell you that he was talking about what Serious Business the Beatles were becoming for the fans, to the point of absurdity, and how he was not comfortable with being taken so seriously.
The very name of the band was a Shout Out to Buddy Holly and the Crickets.
The reference in "In My Life" to "lovers and friends/I still can recall/some are dead and some are living" is a Shout Out to Lennon's close friend and former bandmate, Stuart Sutcliffe, who died in 1962.
"Julia"—guess what the Japanese for "ocean child" is?
The cover to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts' Club Band is one of the most famous Shout Outs in history, filled with images of figures the Beatles regarded as significant. Wikipediahas a list of all the notable personages pictured on the cover.
"Martha My Dear" is a Shout Out to Paul McCartney's dog.
"The eagle picks my eye/The worm he licks my bone/Feel so suicidal/Just like Dylan'sMr. Jones"
Siamese Twin Songs: "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and "With a Little Help From My Friends".
"Polythene Pam" and "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window" were recorded together as a single performance. You can hear John Lennon saying "Oh look out!" right before the change.
Silly Love Songs: Literally every last original song on their first five albums counts. Not that there weren't plenty later on; "Paperback Writer" was the result of Paul's aunt telling him to please find a new subject.
Paul McCartney composed the trope namer, "Silly Love Songs", during his career with Wings after The Beatles, as an answer to the critics. That says a lot about the reputation he had acquired during The Beatles.
Single Stanza Song: "Wild Honey Pie" and "Why Don't We Do It In The Road" off of The White Album; "Her Majesty" at the end of Abbey Road. Also, "Can You Take Me Back", the Hidden Track between "Cry Baby Cry" and "Revolution 9".
Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: At the beginning of their career they were far down the idealistic side, and if "Here Comes the Sun" is any indication, they missed it at the end. The rest of their career is open to interpretation on this point. But then that shouldn't be surprising.
Smarter Than You Look: George felt that Ringo's second song, "Octopus' Garden", was this. He described it as accidentally deep and spiritual.
Song Of Song Titles: "Glass Onion" on The White Album name-checks "Strawberry Fields Forever", "I Am The Walrus", "Fixing a Hole", "Lady Madonna" and "The Fool On The Hill".
Song Style Shift: Several abrupt ones in Paul's "You Never Give Me Your Money" and John's "Happiness Is a Warm Gun".
The Southpaw: Paul's left-handedness allowed the Beatles to perform a little bit of stagecraft in which Paul would face John, or George, and sing into the same mike with their guitars pointing the same way.
Ringo was a lefty playing a right-handed drum kit, which gave him a unique sound.
Spoken Word In Music: "I Am The Walrus" famously includes snippets from a BBC radio production of "King Lear". John Lennon drones out "cran-berry sauce" at the end of "Strawberry Fields Forever". "Revolution 9" is made up almost entirely of various spoken word samples. "Yellow Submarine" features the captain issuing orders like "Full speed ahead". Ringo whispers "good night" at the end of "Good Night". And the novelty song "You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)" includes John Lennon as a faux MC introducing Paul McCartney's nightclub crooner.
C'mon, Ringo...there was nothing wrong with "Richard Starkey".
In his defence, it was a popular convention at the time for pop musicians to come up with a catchy stage-name rather than use their own.
In fact, Ringo only came up with a stage name because his entire band, The Hurricanes, was doing it(what...you thought their lead singer was *born* with a name like "Rory Storm"?)
The rest of the Beatles toyed around with stage names during their early years, especially in Hamburg.
John Lennon went by "Long John"(a la Long John Silver, as in "The Silver Beatles"...there, now you know where *that* came from)
Paul was "Paul Ramone", for a dash of the French exotic and with early shades of 'Michelle' and his "non" response to the press conference interviewer in the Hard Day's Night film(and giving birth to Joey and the rest of The Ramones in the process).
Inverted somewhat by George, who became instead "Carl Harrison" after one of his guitar heroes, Carl Perkins(of 'Blue Suede Shoes' fame)
original drummer Pete Best had a god-given birth stage name(and still does)
and original bassist Stu Sutcliffe became "Stuart de Stael" after a German impressionistic painter/sculptor or someone...yah, they themselves admit they weren't the best at choosing spectacular stage names.
Step Up to the Microphone: Usually once per album for Ringo and twice for George. John and Paul's failure to allow George to grow out of this role, even after George had become their equal as a songwriter, was a key factor in the breakup of the band.
Stop and Go: "I'm only sleeping...[Pause]...keeping an eye on the world going by my window..."
Studio Chatter: Quite a bit, mostly from John, on Let It Be. More on The White Album, including the end of "Piggies", the beginning of "Revolution 1", and most famously Ringo's "I'VE GOT BLISTERS ON MY FINGERS!!!" at the end of "Helter Skelter".
While never legitimately released, there's a widely-bootlegged (and absolutely hilarious) 20-minute outtake from a session for the Rubber Soul track "Think For Yourself". You can hear it (in two parts) here and here.
Stylistic Suck: The intentionally awkward guitar solo in "All You Need Is Love".
The slightly off sounding "I think I know, I mean, ah yes, but it's all wrong" in "Strawberry Fields Forever".
And, of course, "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)".
George Harrison's "Only a Northern Song" is intentionally dissonant, as it is a protest song against being contractually obligated to write songs for which he received few royalties (see below).
Subliminal Seduction: From Revolver onwards, the band got into the habit of including backwards messages on many of their tracks. Unfortunately this — along with a whole of unconnected, obscure and sometimes outright random "evidence" — somehow managed to persuade a fair chunk of their audience that Paul McCartney was dead. The vast quantities of drugs consumed by many of them probably had something to do with it.
Some versions of Sgt. Pepper had the inner groove of side 2 as a perpetual final track - first a higher-than-treble sound only dogs (and some young listeners) could hear, and then backwards music.
Unfortunately, modern record players have auto-return, so you don't hear it. On compact disc, the "inner groove" plays for about 20 seconds before fading out.
Take That: George Harrison's "Only a Northern Song" is a swipe at Lennon and McCartney's publishing company, Northern Songs Ltd. Harrison wrote it to express his dissatisfaction over being screwed over on royalties from his own compositions. (The following year George would found his own publishing company, Harrisongs Ltd.)
"It doesn't really matter what chords I play/What words I say/What time of day it is/Cause it's only a Northern song".
George certainly loved this trope, as his opening song on Revolver, "Taxman", is a giant take that against Harold Wilson's supertax.
"Don't ask me what I want it for/Ah ah, Mr. Wilson/If you don't want to pay some more/Ah ah, Mr. Heath."
Actually, John wrote the part with Harold Wilson and Edward Heath. George went to John for help on "Taxman" durind a period of time when Paul had a grudge against George for a publicly unknown reason.
"Doesn't have a point of view/Knows not where he's going to/Isn't he a bit like you and me?"
Three Chords and the Truth: Much of their early stuff in particular was based around simple three-chord melodies; they started experimenting with various other formats later.
Some of their later work — on The White Album, for example — reverted to this format. They rarely did "folksy" acoustic songs in their early days, and so some of these later songs probably represent this trope more accurately.
They would actually learn from word of mouth who knew this chord, or who knew that chord, and would drive around in their van to wherever they needed to get to, drive back home and then they'd know how to play chord x.
The "Get Back" project was an effort to, uh, get back to this. It met with mixed success due to the dissension in the band.
Title Only Chorus: "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", "I Want to Hold Your Hand", "Girl", "Don't Let Me Down"
Translated Cover Version: "Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand" ("I Want To Hold Your Hand") and "Sie Liebt Dich" ("She Loves You"), both in German.
Troll: John wrote "I am the Walrus", thrown together from abandoned song ideas and Lewis Carroll scenes, specifically to mess with people who would pore over his lyrics for hidden meanings.
They were the Trope Maker for, basically, the entire music industry as it stands today. The idea that real bands play their own instruments, the idea that real bands write their own music, the idea that real bands should get mega-popular and make gajillions of dollars: all these originated with the Fab Four. (They also made the music industry the financial juggernaut it is today, since all the money that was going to the session musicians and songwriters and stuff ended up in the record companies' pockets instead.)
It is worth noting that the Beach Boys, in the early years when they were stictly a surf band, were also writing their own songs and playing their own instruments, and their first singles were recorded and released before those of the Beatles ("Surfin' Safari" gave the Beach Boys their first US Top 40 hit in June 1962, "Love Me Do" gave the Beatles their first UK Top 40 hit four months later). However, by the time of Pet Sounds, Brian Wilson was using session musicians extensively, not only for the orchestral instrumentation, but the basic rock instruments as well. The Beatles were, with few exceptions, responsible for their own basic instrumental backing for the entirety of their career. Furthermore, as recording artists, the two bands are nearly exact contemporaries, just on different sides of the pond. Given that, it's probably fair to say that the Beatles, with their overwhelming popularity, were the ones who changed the industry more.
The Paul Is Dead theories, all based on supposedly hidden messages on the Beatles album covers and song lyrics.
The 1970s saw a lot of urban legends concerning the possible (secret) reunion of the band. The most famous example was the initially anonymous Canadian progressive rock band Klaatu, whose vaguely "Beatlesque" sound fueled speculation that they were a front for a reunited Fab Four.
Uncommon Time: The bridge of "Here Comes The Sun" rotates between 11/8, 4/4, and 7/8. "Happiness is a Warm Gun" (from The White Album) has alternating measures of 9/4 and 10/4 in one section. While the chorus of The Beatles' "All You Need is Love" is in Common Time, the verses are all in 7/8.
"Good Morning, Good Morning" is a subversion. Because John's singing on the verse is so syncopated it sounds like a strange time signature, but if you listen to the drumming, it's in straight 4/4.
Unplugged Version: George Harrison recorded a well-known acoustic version of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps." It finally got released on The Beatles Anthology.
Word Salad Lyrics: After their introduction to drugs, a lot of songs, most notably "I Am The Walrus".
World of Chaos: Some of their songs, including "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", "I Am the Walrus", "Glass Onion", and the Yellow Submarine animated movie, take place in such settings.
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