1. John Lennon
“My role in society, or any artist’s or poet’s role is to try and express what we all feel. Not as a preacher, but as a reflection of us all.”
Reporter: “Does show business run in your family?”
John Lennon: “Well, me dad always used to say that me mum was a great performer.”
Question: “Would you like to walk down the street without being recognised?”
John Lennon: “We used to do this with no money in our pockets, there`s no point in it.”
“Part of me suspects that I’m a loser, and the other part of me thinks I’m God Almighty.”
“We don’t know (the tour schedule). It’s not up to us where we go. We just climb into the vans.”
“It ( In My Life ) was the first song that I wrote that was really, consciously about my life…. up until then, it had been all glib and throwaway.”
“I really had a chip on my shoulder, … and it still comes out every now and then.”
“I never listen to the radio. If it’s bad, I make fun of it, and if it’s good, I get jealous that I didn’t think of it.”
“I go to restaurants and the groups always play “Yesterday.” I even signed a guy’s violin in Spain after he played us “Yesterday.” He couldn’t understand that I didn’t write the song. But I guess he couldn’t have gone from table to table playing “I Am The Walrus.”"
“The only reason I am a star is because of my repression. Nothing else would have driven me through all that if I was ‘normal’.”
“I was different, I was always different. Why didn’t anybody notice me?”
“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.”
“I really thought that love would save us all.”
“Before Elvis there was nothing.”
“One has to completely humiliate oneself to be what the Beatles were . . . . It happened bit by bit, until . . . you’re doing exactly what you don’t want to do with people you can’t stand — the people you hated when you were ten.”
“I always was a rebel…but on the other hand, I wanted to be loved and accepted…and not just be a loudmouth, lunatic, poet, musician. But I cannot be what I am not.”
“There’s high, and then there’s high, and to get really high–I mean so high that you can walk on the water, that high–that’s where I’m goin’”
“Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King are great examples of fantastic nonviolents who died violently. I can never work that out. We’re pacifists, but I’m not sure what it means when you’re such a pacifist that you get shot. I can never understand that.”
“I am going into an unknown future, but I’m still all here, and still while there’s life, there’s hope.”
2. Paul McCartney
“The basic thing in my mind was that for all our success The Beatles were always a great little band. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“We didn’t all get into music for a job! We got into music to avoid a job, in truth – and get lots of girls.”
“I’m really glad that most of our songs were about love, peace and understanding.”
“You know, I’m not one of these people that just because I’ve done all that I now become Superman. You can’t touch me. You know, you can touch me. I’m very, unfortunately, very reachable,”
“I am alive and well and unconcerned about the rumors of my death. But if I were dead, I would be the last to know.”
(1969)
“I can’t deal with the press; I hate all those Beatles questions.”
“It was Elvis who really got me hooked on beat music. When I heard “Heartbreak Hotel” I thought, this is it.”
“I knew the words to 25 rock songs, so I got in the group. Long Tall Sally and Tutti-Frutti, that got me in. That was my audition.”
“I think people who create and write, it actually does flow-just flows from into their head, into their hand, and they write it down. It’s simple.”
“When two great saints meet, it’s a humbling experience.”
“Us, communists? Why, we can’t be communists. We’re the world’s number one capitalists. Imagine us communists!”
“I used to think anyone doing anything weird was weird. Now I know that it is the people that call others weird that are weird.”
“I think the French girls are fabulous.”
“I don’t take me seriously. If we get some giggles, I don’t mind.”
“You can judge a man’s true character by the way he treats his fellow animals.”
3. Ringo Starr
“I met The Beatles while we were playing in Germany. We’d seen them in Liverpool, but they were a nothing little band then, just putting it together. In fact, they weren’t really a band at all.”
“So we went in and we did the album in twelve hours… because we did everything we’d been doing on the road for the last year or so, you know.”
About recording the Beatles’ first album
Question: “Do you date much?”
Ringo Starr: “What are you doing tonight?”
Question: “Were you worried about the oversized roughnecks who tried to infiltrate the airport crowd on your arrival?”
Ringo Starr: “That was us!”
Question: “Sorry to interupt you while you are eating, but what do you think you will be doing in five years time, when all this is over?”
Ringo Starr: “Still eating.”
“So this is America. They must be out of their minds.”
Ringo, in 1964, arriving in America for the first time
“I like Beethoven, especially the poems.”
Ringo, joking with reporters
Question: “Do you like topless bathing suits?”
Ringo Starr: “We’ve been wearing them for years.”
“America: It’s like Britain, only with buttons.”
“I’d like to end up sort of…unforgettable.”
4. George Harrison
”I wanted to be successful, not famous.”
“The first time I heard “Love Me Do” on the radio, I went shivery all over – I couldn’t believe it!”
“The Beatles saved the world from boredom.”
“The world used us as an excuse to go mad.”
“They gave their money and they gave their screams, but the Beatles kind of gave their nervous systems.”
George Harrison in 1995 on Beatlemania.
Reporter, during an early press conference: “What do you call that haircut?”
George Harrison: “Arthur”
“Rap music is just computerised crap. I listen to Top of the Pops and after three songs I feel like killing someone.”
“In the end, this world will go under because of the stupidity of people.”
“While everybody else was going mad, we were actually the sanest people in the whole thing.”
“I’ll play what you want or I won’t play at all.”
George Harrison, to Paul McCartney during the recording of the Let It Be album
“The world is a very serious and, at times, very sad place – but at other times it is all such a joke.”
Question: “What do you think of the criticism that you’re not very good?”
George Harrison: “We’re not.”
Question: “Hi, you’re not married?”
George Harrison: “No, I’m George.”
“We’re trying to impress ourselves in a way. That’s why we keep trying to do things better… we never get satisfied.”
“While everybody else was going mad, we were actually the sanest people in the whole thing.”
“I think people who truly can live a life in music are telling the world, ‘You can have my love, you can have my smiles. Forget the bad parts, you don’t need them. Just take the music, the goodness, because it’s the very best, and it’s the part I give most willingly’”
“Anyway, there is one thing I have learned and that is not to dress uncomfortably, in styles which hurt: winklepicker shoes that cripple your feet and tight pants that squash your balls. Indian clothes are better.”
“All the world is birthday cake, so take a piece, but not too much.”
From Harrison’s song “It’s All Too Much”
“We were the Spice Boys.”
“It’s being here now that’s important. There’s no past and there’s no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there is ever, is the now. We can gain experience from the past, but we can’t relive it; and we can hope for the future, but we don’t know if there is one.”
“As far as I’m concerned, there won’t be a Beatles reunion as long as John Lennon remains dead.”
“The Beatles will exist without us.”
“The Beatles will go on and on.”
