10 Beatles Urban Legends: True Or False?
ANSWERS
1. TRUE. Original drummer Pete Best was kicked out of the band in 1962 so the Beatles could hire Ringo. A little bitter about it, Best capitalized on The Beatles' success by releasing Best of the Beatles just in time for Christmas 1965. A lot of duped fans in the thrall of Beatlemania were supremely pissed, but there was nothing anybody could legally do. The album was exactly what it claimed to be.... Best, formerly of The Beatles. ![]()
2. FALSE. Trust us, no Beatles tracks are left unaccounted for. EMI preserved everything the group did except their earliest session jams. Sometimes bootleg hunters are fooled when working titles get swapped with released titles, and other times songs by other artists are just accidentally or deliberately mislabeled as Beatles tunes. These four particular tracks that keep popping up were deliberate inventions of humorist and Beatles fan Martin Lewis to spruce up a bootleg list he was compiling for Disc magazine.
3. FALSE, BUT... Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" is like the "Total Eclipse of the Heart" of classical music: Everyone knows it. One day, as Lennon was working on "Because," Yoko Ono was playing "Moonlight Sonata" nearby. Lennon asked her to play it backwards, and then copied the basic chord structure for "Because." However, almost no song in Western music can just be transposed backwards and sound anything like real music. At best, "Because" is inspired by "Moonlight Sonata" reversed.
4. TRUE. The lead guitar on "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" was actually played by Harrison's then-buddy, Eric Clapton. This was before Clapton started banging Harrison's wife. ![]()
5. FALSE. The man we know as Paul McCartney is the same lad who started out with the Beatles. The legend got started after McCartney was in a minor car wreck, and just sort of built from there. Rock stars being declared dead is nothing new. Jim Morrison and Peter Steele were declared dead dozens of times each before actually dying.
The legend's most laughable part is the idea that clues exist in the lyrics and artwork of post-switch albums. Why exactly would you leave clues to a truth you wanted kept secret?
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