The World Is Celebrating the Beatles Day Today

by Lolly Page

The Beatles songs are being played every fifteen seconds all around the world. Come on, haven’t you really ever hummed Michelle to yourself or danced to Yesterday? To mark the holiday, we’ve prepared a compilation of rare and exciting facts about the iconic band.

According to the decision made by UNESCO in 2001, on January 16, the world celebrates a holiday in honor of the most iconic and popular musical ensemble around the globe. This date was not chosen by chance – on January 16, 1957, the Cavern Club was opened in London. This is where four musicians began their musical journey. Initially, the band was formed just for fun, as no one knew musical notation.

Their music quickly conquered Liverpool pubs, but record companies were in no hurry to collaborate with the musical group. Only in 1962, the Beatles signed their first contract, recorded their first songs, and conquered a music hit parade for the first time. Thus began the Beatles era that made history and accumulated hundreds of stories and exciting facts.

  • Groupies used to wet themselves at concerts because they were too excited. John Lynn, the son of the man who owned a large music venue where the Liverpool four used to perform, told The Washington Post about the damning smell of urine in the concert hall. What is more, you couldn’t even hear the music because of fans that were screaming. Streams of urine were running across the floor – the girls literally used to wet themselves with delight.

  • In 1967, the guys had a wild idea to buy an island near Athens and live there with their friends and relatives. It would be a real utopia on an island of Greece. Paul McCartney recalled later on that he was relieved they hadn’t bought an island. After all, somebody would eventually need to wash the dishes, and it wouldn’t be a utopia anymore.

  • The Beatles quarreled with the pope back in 1966. This was exactly the year when Lennon stated: “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that; I'm right and I'll be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first — rock 'n' roll or Christianity.” After that, indignant religious people began to burn the records of the band massively. Of course, Lennon apologized for that, but the Vatican forgave the Beatles only in 2010.

  • The Beatles and the Rolling Stones have never been rivals. The musicians have always had friendly relations. McCartney has even given the band the song called I Wanna Be Your Man.

  • The Beatles were big fans of Tolkien’s work. So big that they even wanted to star in the Lord of the Rings movie, and Stanley Kubrick was supposed to be the director. However, Kubrick did not find this idea interesting enough to implement it, so a few decades later, Peter Jackson made this cinematic masterpiece.

  • Some people think that the Beatles contributed to the destruction of the communist system. According to music critics, the magnificent four greatly influenced Makarevich, Grebenshchikov, and other famous rock musicians, and this made USSR practically doomed as people were becoming more freedom-loving. Also, back in the 1970s, journalists put Lennon at the same level as Mao Zedong and John F. Kennedy.

  • Julia is the first and only Beatles song performed only by Lennon. You can only hear his voice and a guitar in it. The song is dedicated to his dearly departed mother, Julia Lennon, and Yoko Ono. In Japanese, her name means “ocean child,” this is how Lennon mentions Yoko in the song. John wrote the song while taking the transcendental meditation course, where he was taught to play the strings the way he plays them in the song.

  • If you carefully listen to the text of the legendary song called Hey Jude, you can hear Paul swearing after he makes a mistake while recording the song. Paul wrote the song for Lennon’s son Julian. At that time, Julian was divorcing his first wife, and McCartney considered it his duty to support the guy, and came up with this song on the way to visit his friends. The Beatles never performed this song live, but after the break-up of the band, Paul included it in his program, and the song became a real signature bit.