I think I initially started inventing characters in my songs because I didn’t want to write directly about myself. Also, as a kid, I loved all the character names in Beatles songs, like Eleanor Rigby and Lovely Rita and Mean Mr. Mustard and Maxwell and Rocky Raccoon.
It’s funny, because in 1970 I met the Beatles quite by a chance at a party. It was the Beethoven bicentenary, and I was then also playing the Beethoven Sonatas. And that’s all they wanted to hear about – I wanted to talk about them, and all they wanted to talk about was Beethoven.
I go back to things that are nostalgic for me – Michael Jackson, the Beatles, Britney Spears, Stevie Wonder.
It’s funny because if you ever ask anyone in England to try and do a Beatles accent, no one knows what they really sound like. If you ask anyone in America, they would try and give it a go. English people just know their songs.
Growing up, I liked all the stuff that everyone else was listening to, like Motown, but the biggest group of all was The Beatles.
The Beatles will go on and on.
I grew up with The Beatles, Bob Marley and Talking Heads. I like the melody-with-rhythm aspect of music – there’s so much to discover still.
When I got into the Beatles, I must have only been about six or seven but old enough to take notice. We used to have an old radiogram which, for readers of a certain age, was like a big cabinet thing with a record player inside it.
I remember when I was younger I used to sing that Beatles song, ‘When I’m 64’, and think that’s light years away for me – I was 18 when it came out. Now here I am.
We will try to make the name BTS sound as cool as The Beatles.
I cannot bear assaults of any kind, and it seems to me that the Beatles essentially were out to affront and to assault.
For ‘Black Beatles’ to be so true to us and our sound – we weren’t chasing a sound – it solidifies that the world is ready for us and what we have to come.
I translated Beatles songs for my English class.
My favorite album would have to be something from The Beatles.
The Roses should have made it as the biggest band since The Beatles, but we didn’t.
My sister discovered the Beatles when she was about 11 and I’m four years younger. So we had nothing but Beatles paraphernalia. Every night I fell asleep to a different Beatles album.
Well, the stuff that I liked growing up was AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, but I also liked the Beatles and guys like Cat Stevens and Elton John.
If I could be in any band, I think it would have to be The Beatles. That would have been a lot of fun.
The first time I heard The Beatles, I cried. It was ‘Let it Be’.
I had girlfriends who really irritated me by their devotion to the Beatles. I didn’t begrudge them their interest, and there were songs like ‘Hey Jude’ that I could appreciate. But they didn’t seem to be essential to the kind of nourishment that I craved.
I knew Paul when he was in the Beatles. We did the second Beatles British tour with the Moody Blues. And we became friends. I went to a couple of the sessions for the ‘Sgt. Pepper’ album, we went to parties together, we went to see Jimi Hendrix together.
You can put the Beatles and the Rolling Stones in the same category, but the types of music, the colors each band evokes, are completely different. It’s the same with Mozart and Beethoven – they express two very different aspects of music.
I learned to play piano in a rock n’ roll context or band context from country records – you know, Floyd Cramer – and from the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Stax. And none of those are keyboard records.
My first two records were influenced by the Beatles and the Beach Boys.
When I was a tiny tot, we only had one record player in the house, so there was either Genesis on it or the Jungle Book or The Beatles as well, and various other things.
I’ve never written to a band since the Beatles. Since the Dave Clark Five!
There’s never going to be a new Beatles because we don’t consume things in that way anymore.
I heard Q-Tip on the Jungle Brothers’ song ‘The Promo.’ It was very exciting. It was very new. The music and the culture around hip-hop was evolving. I think there’s an emotional quality to their music and there’s a vulnerability to the music. For me, A Tribe Called Quest was my Beatles.
Our influences are who we are. It’s rare that anything is an absolutely pure vision; even Daniel Johnston sounds like the Beatles. And that’s the problem with the bands I’m always asked about, the ones derivative of the early Seattle sound. They don’t dilute their influences enough.
The similarity between my music and The Beatles’ music is it has within it a very positive quality. It’s woven with humor.
I’m a huge Beatles fan, but I’ve only really gotten into them as an adult.
I remember when I discovered The Beatles with music and The Beatles peaked before I was born and when I discovered them I felt really special.
I saw the Beatles play the Cavern in Liverpool when I was 16. They had attitude: Onstage, they were like a four-headed monster.
I don’t know about friends, but what time I spent with The Beatles they were very courteous to me.
I think of the Avengers as The Beatles, and the Guardians are the Rolling Stones. That is really how I feel about the groups.
I had a really good time in New Orleans, although I had some very tragic times in Baton Rouge. Some guys beat me up and threw my horn away. ‘Cause I had a beard, then, and long hair like the Beatles.
Over the years, I’ve come to realize that writing ‘I Ain’t Living Long Like This’ was an exercise in combined musical influence, mostly that of Hank Williams, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Beatles, and Bob Dylan – artists no one has ever heard of.
I actually felt sorry for Liverpool bands like Bunnymen and Wah!, having this immense pressure of following the Beatles. I suppose I responded to that challenge by being nothing like them. I carved my own thing.
I grew up in the day when the Beatles sold 1 million singles in a week. And all you’ve got to do now is sell about 10,000 singles and you’re in the charts.
The Beatles set the rules. And the rules were: now just because we have long hair doesn’t mean that we’re rebellious.
Even the Beatles found it hard to escape their image; they were trapped by it.
Jimi Hendrix, the Who, the Dead, Zeppelin, the Beatles – I paint to this music all of the time.
My house was full of music. My main memories are of the record player at home: it was all Beatles and Rolling Stones, and we danced around the living room; that started me off on instruments, and I’ve done nothing else ever since.
When I was a kid, and Elvis Presley broke through to a middle class, white audience, it was a sociological phenomenon that lasted through the Beatles and even a bit through Fleetwood Mac.
I love that Euro-pop dance music, but with girl power. I also listen to Janis Joplin and Bob Dylan. I have a Beatles song tattooed on my foot. I’m all over the place.
I wouldn’t know how I would have coped with The Beatles’ sort of fame.
Downloadable music is the biggest musical phenomenon since the Beatles, and the music industry is slow to come to grips with that.
From 1962 to 1965, the guitar became this icon of youth culture, thanks mostly to the Beatles.
I grew up listening to all kinds of music. When I came up, you would hear people like Marvin Gaye talking about Sarah Vaughan. You would go to a show and see Ella Fitzgerald performing the music of the Beatles.
The Beatles, even Radiohead, all of my favorite stuff I’d play on the piano. But it was all very secret – for me, for fun. I wasn’t going to record myself playing those songs, and it never occurred to me to write a song of my own.
Paul forced the Beatles to work a lot harder than they would have otherwise, and he did the same thing with Wings.
I was inspired by the classic rock radio of the Seventies. They separated Chuck Berry and the Beatles from the Led Zeppelins and Bostons and Peter Framptons of the time. In many ways, classic rock became bigger than mainstream rock.
I thought my Beatles LPs sounded pretty good on a record player, but that was before I had heard a CD.
I was really inspired while I was pregnant and I wrote a whole album for my baby. I wanted to write a kids album that didn’t annoy parents. I used The Beatles ‘Rocky Raccoon’ as sort of a starting place for my writing.
I get my inspiration for my songs and the lyrics from experiences in my life, but I’m also very inspired by the Beatles and Cyndi Lauper, as I really like their music.
When you think about great teams, The Beatles and the Pythons immediately spring to mind. The Pythons were as much a part of their time as The Beatles.
It’s easier to be the art school band than to be the Beatles.
Before hip-hop existed, we were listening to soul songs from the ’70s. I grew up with Motown, Elton John, and the Beatles. To me, that’s good music.
The Beatles weren’t like any other band. Everybody in the band sang, which is why you knew everybody in the band.
I’m just old enough to be able to say I got those very first Beatles records right as they were hitting America. My father brought them home. It was definitely the earliest musical influence on my life, and still one of the greatest.
I think the Beatles is one band that, if I’m working on a song arrangement or if I have some idea for a song, and there’s a little bit of a Beatles quality to it, I never avoid that. I always will steer into it.
