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The Beatles · S2 E3
The Name
Johnny and the Moondogs, the Silver Beetles, the Beatals. A band searching for an identity, cycling through names until John's wordplay lands on the Beatles
A flat at 3 Gambier Terrace, Liverpool, 1960. John Lennon and Stuart Sutcliffe are scribbling band names on scraps of paper, crossing out one after another, while a Buddy Holly record spins in the corner.
The opening track of Abbey Road, built on a name and a feeling. Nine years after John and Stuart sat in that flat crossing out names, John writes a song about the very thing that made this band: people coming together. Listen for the swampy bass line and the murky, almost-dark atmosphere.
Come Together (1969)
John originally wrote this for Timothy Leary's California gubernatorial campaign before turning it into something far stranger. Paul's bass line is one of his finest moments. The opening "shoomp" is John's voice run through a Leslie speaker, and the entire track was recorded with the band playing almost in the dark at Abbey Road. Chuck Berry's publisher later sued over the line "Here come old flat-top," which echoed Berry's "You Can't Catch Me."
TAP TO REVEAL: What were the rejected names before "Beatles"?
“I was sitting at home one day, thinking about Buddy Holly's Crickets, and I thought of beetles. Then I changed the spelling and it became Beatles, with an A in it. When you said it, people thought of crawly things. When you read it, it was beat music.”
— John Lennon, interview with Mersey Beat magazine, 1961
Which band directly inspired the name "Beatles"?
The Word (The Beatles)
From Rubber Soul (1965). A song literally about the power of a single word. "Say the word and you'll be free." John and Paul wrote it in an afternoon, fuelled by marijuana and the conviction that one word could change everything.
Why It Worked
Most band names are just labels. This one is a mechanism: say it out loud and you hear an insect, read it on a poster and you see the word "beat." It works in every language, looks good in print, and contains its own musical manifesto in seven letters.
They have a name, three guitarists, and a bass player who can't play bass. What they don't have is a drummer. Next: a kid named Pete Best has a drum kit and, more importantly, a mother with a basement.
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