50 Years ago today. The Beatles -

It's not so easy when innocents have just been murdered in the capital. And your post was not framed like a rhetorical question.

Don't mess with the Beatles

https://open.spotify.com/search/results/beatles%20sgt%20peppers

There's a great fil-um of an American hippy kid who has made his way to Lennon's house, and he's trying to get Lennon to tell him about the profundities in the lyrics. Lennon's not having any though, and tries to explain to him that song-writing is a spontaneous act, with no profound significance. The kid is obviously crestfallen, so John invites him in for a bowl of soup. Maybe I can find it.

This is the best I could come up with . . .

I once read that Lennon said he was often irritated by people searching for meaning in his lyrics and wrote I am the Walrus specifically to confuse them.

I like that. You know, there was a big flap over here with people attempting to decipher the "true meaning" of that song.

Paul once said that they often had the tune first in their heads and often just used any old words while it was in progress, and for one, I can't remember which one, they just used the words on the label of a ketchup bottle (they were brainstorming around a breakfast table). Sometimes these temporary lyrics made it to the final recording session. I have often thought that the lyrics of pop songs can be a kind of auditory Rorschach where much or all of the 'meaning' is found in the listener's brain. See the phenomenon of the 'mondegreen' as well. Get Back seems a fruitful source of these:

Jojo was a man who thought he was a woman/But he was another man.
Jojo was a man who thought he was a woman/But he was an ugly man

Real lyrics:
Jo Jo was a man who thought he was a loner/But he knew it couldn't last

One of my favourites is this miss - take on And I Love Her - the misheard lyrics: She gives me everything, and tender veal; the real lyrics: She gives me everything, and tenderly. The contributor says: "It never crossed my mind that I might be wrong about these lyrics. I sang them, unexamined, for ca. 20 years before it dawned on me that my version was patently absurd. But hey, maybe tender veal is a British thing...who can say?"

This one is kind of revealing about the listener: "You've paid the tax, he's the queer of the shore" for "Newspaper taxis appear on the shore."

http://www.amiright.com/misheard/stories/beatles.shtml

A good friend of mine, a Parisienne, said that when she was an adolescent, before she learned English, she would sing along to the Kinks "You really got me" by singing: roule le gamin.

I have read that the lyrics to "Paperback Writer" were written on a dare when John's aunt (or maybe Paul's) said that they couldn't write anything but love songs. Harrison's "Taxman," of course, was a protest against the supertax.

I like that.Let the kid drive! (the car).

On the subject of mishearing, there is a story, possibly apocryphal, from the early days of the telephone in London. The copper wires were strung between poles, and used to vibrate and buzz when the wind blew. Some people thought that if you listened carefully you might be able to make out what was being said by the users. The London Electric Telephone Company got a letter from a respectable lady who said that she hadn't objected to the poles being put up outside her house, nor, especially, to the fact that she could make out what people were saying, but that recently she had been horrified by the lewd, filthy and objectionable nature of some of the conversations.

I have a convoluted history with the Beatles.
In 1964 I was a surfer dude and thought girls were cootie carriers.
All The Beach Boys lps came to my house courtesy of the Capitol record club.

I bought Beatles 65 and loved I'll Follow The Sun but Them's Mystic Eyes really got me learning guitar.
Sgt Peppers came out my freshman year in high school and I wasn't too keen on When I'm 64 and Lovely Rita etc.
Besides I was playing bass in a garage band. Rolling Stones and Yardbirds covers. The highly stylized Beatles studio songs were impossible to reproduce.

Now, fifty years later I can appreciate the historic significance of their body of work and listening to Revolver on my IPad reminds me that the song remembers when.

In the 80s or 90s there were talking dolls that had a voice chip and a little loudspeaker. A batch were wrongly delivered to California stores that had the Spanish chip and when you picked it up, or twisted its head, or whatever, it said ¡Te quiero Mama!. The state was gripped with a panic as all the little Gringa girls thought that dolly was saying "Kill our mommy!"

In depth article on White Album.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-46152217

I didn't recall that the White Album was made that soon after Sgt Pepper.

Legendary musicians

What if you found yourself in an alternate universe in which the Beatles had never existed?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uqvgPm8U4c

Looks like fun.

Last night I watched the documentary, 8 Days a Week about the years they were performing live. It was very enjoyable with a lot of footage from the early years with them all mucking about and having fun with each other. There was one scene where John was being interviewed and George and Ringo were flicking fag ash on top of his head without him noticing, Paul was passing his cigarette up to George to flick the ash as well. There was a lovely sense of camaraderie as well.

It looks like the main reason they stopped touring was the fallout from the “Bigger than Jesus,” interview. The magazine article was three months old and had gone down in the UK pretty much unnoticed. It was only when it was picked up in America that it all kicked off.

The main point that struck me though was when they were talking about Revolver, which has always been my favourite Beatles album btw, Paul spoke about John loading the tape back on without realising he’d put in on backwards. The result was the track “Tomorrow Never Knows.” John said they played it to George Martin and Brian Epstein who looked a bit confused, but knew well enough to stay out of the creative process.

This is when the music industry pundits all started going wild. They said that “Tomorrow Never Knows,” was unlike anything else that had come before it. There is a drone on it which is a feature of Indian music but has not been part of Western music since the Middle Ages as well as all the technical jiggery pokery. In short they said this was the one track that changed pop music that certain sounds that flourished in the 60s and beyond.

I think they have a point, I can’t imagine any of Pink Floyd’s stuff sounding like it did had it not been for that.

Sorry, I can’t post links.