Rock ‘n’ Roll Fun Facts: Something About the Famous Beatles You Might Not Have Known

When they achieved their first successes, they started looking for a new name.

Many know that the Beatles started their career under the name The Quarrymen.

Of course, they were still completely anonymous back then.

When they achieved their first successes, they started looking for a new name. Thus, Lennon proposed the name “John and the Moon Dogs”, but the suggestion “Silver Beetles” eventually prevailed. Then, in August 1960, they dropped the “silver” and became “The Beatles”. Interestingly, the word “beatle” did not yet exist in the English language prior to that. However, when pronounced, it is the same as the word beetle, and it is related to the word beat-nik or beatnik.

The term “beatnik”, first used in Herb Caen’s column in the “San Francisco Chronicle” on April 2, 1958, was actually preceded by Jack Kerouac’s use of the phrase “beat generation” in 1948.

An interesting fact is that the first photographer of Josip Broz Tito and The Beatles was the same man – Dezo Hoffman. Dezo was actually born in Prague at the beginning of the last century and was the personal photographer of Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, Marlene Dietrich, Marilyn Monroe as well as the whole then-London scene. He is the man who has done more photographs of the famous Liverpool foursome than anyone else.

On December 8, 1980, John Lennon was killed in New York. Few people today know that on that night Belgrade was hit with the largest energy collapse in the city’s history. Ironically, on that night Belgrade was lit with countless candles, as if in tribute to the departed musician’s soul.

As we kept pace with the world (June 1967), the fact that the famous presenter Nikola Nešković presented Radio Belgrade listeners with the complete album “Sgt. Pepper’s” on the same day as it appeared in London stores.

Lennon dedicated the composition “Dear Prudence” to the sister of the actress Mia Farou.

With regard to this composition, two things are also interesting: John played the guitar in the way that Donovan showed him, and the breakup with their guru Mahariši Maheš Jogijem, to whom they went at the suggestion of George Harrison, occurred when Lennon realized that Jogi was not only interested in transcendental meditation, but also in the sexual, specifically with the sisters Farou who were with them at the time. For this second, i.e. sexual, Mahariši was, according to Lennon’s words, interested even much, much more.

The possibly strangest story about The Beatles is the one about the alleged death of Paul McCartney, which goes approximately like this: On November 19, 1966, returning from a recording session around 5am, Paul McCartney died in a car accident. However, production companies were ready for anything and quickly found a double in place of Paul, a Scot named William Campbell who was almost identical to the famous Beatle.

However, the public was somewhat suspicious, so for better concealment, the Beatles started to grow beards, mustaches and hair to better cover up the whole thing. At first, this news didn’t receive much attention, but over the years, there were more and more people who were convinced that McCartney had been dead for a long time and the whole thing to such an extent that a whole movement arose, if we can call it that, and over the years it gained many supporters who would try to find any evidence that would support such a story.

Therefore, intentionally or unintentionally, all subsequent Beatles albums were marked with special signs that fueled all this, and they became real villains and used all this for an ironic, more or less openly mocking and even perverse game with their audience.

First image of the past:

On the legendary cover of the album “Sgt Pepper”, above Paul’s head there is a hand waving, which symbolizes departure, while on one of the interior photographs, McCartney is wearing a badge with the abbreviation O.P.D. (Officially Pronounced Dead), and if you look at the background of the album, you will see that he is the only one turned away.

Despite this, the legendary album cover of “Abbey Road” intrigued many people, with only Paul barefoot and even more interestingly, holding a cigarette in his right hand, when everyone knew he was left-handed.

This was more than enough to prompt many to “dig” into their photos, TV shows, album covers, songs, etc.

Everyone wanted to contribute, or better yet, to be the one to provide irrefutable evidence of the “secret plot”.

Of course, many of the “proofs” had shaky explanations, but to be fair, some of them were worth considering.

Reportedly, if you play the composition “Revolution 9” backwards, you can hear the phrase “turn me on dead man”, with the sound of car tires screeching.

At the end of the song “Strawberry Fields” you can hear words that translate to “nothing is true, I buried Paul”.

At the end of “I’m So Tired” – “Paul is dead, he’s missing”, and even the composition “Yesterday” is more than “suspicious” due to the line – “I don’t know half of what I used to be”…

In response to all of this, Paul (or maybe his doppelganger) replied:

“Dead? Me? Why has no one told me this before?”