For more than 60 years, The Beatles have been a benchmark for virtually every group aspiring to produce hit records. Their musical skill, inventiveness and remarkable talent for crafting one hit after another established an unprecedented standard for pop music brilliance.
The Inspiration Behind the Name
Yet even the most innovative artists draw inspiration from others, and in a fresh interview with BBC Radio 2's Vernon Kay, Sir Paul McCartney – the mind behind some of the group's most iconic tracks including Yesterday and Let It Be – has disclosed who initially motivated him to take up the guitar, and the surprising story behind The Beatles' name.
Paul, who had mastered music-hall classics on his father's upright piano, reveals that recordings like Gene Vincent's Be-Bop-A-Lula transformed his perception of what music could be. "Rock and roll had just arrived and we'd had years of quite 'square' music. You didn't realise it was square till Rock and roll arrived," he shared.
Early Influences
Yet Gene Vincent's rebellious, leather-clad persona wasn't Paul's sole influence as a youngster. He was equally captivated by the cleaner, pop-focused melodies of the Everly Brothers and Buddy Holly's band, The Crickets. And it wasn't simply The Crickets' music that influenced Paul and John Lennon while forming the Beatles, their band name proved hugely significant as well.
Paul explained how the band's name, along with their straightforward guitar, bass and drums line-up, provided a blueprint for the Beatles. "We thought, 'That is brilliant. Crickets is like a grasshopper, but the game cricket. So they've done this double meaning.' So we really had a lot of time for them, they're brilliant," he revealed.
The Surprising Revelation
Decades later, following Buddy's tragic death in 1959, Paul met with the remaining members of The Crickets and revealed how their clever wordplay had influenced the Beatles' name. To Paul's considerable astonishment, the Texan musicians informed him the name wasn't meant as a pun, and they'd never heard of a game called cricket.
Remarkably, one of the alternative insect-inspired names that The Crickets had contemplated when forming back in 1957, was The Beatles.
Reflections on John Lennon
During their extensive conversation, Paul told Vernon of his appreciation for an eclectic array of music, from Elvis to Prince, but he gave particular praise to his former writing-partner, John Lennon. Paul and John had notoriously fallen out as the 1970s dawned, ending the band that had epitomised the Swinging Sixties and exchanging barbs through songs such as How Do You Sleep? and Too Many People.
However, by the close of the seventies, the duo had reconciled and John's murder in 1980 affected Paul deeply. A visibly shell-shocked Paul's immediate response to the shooting was to describe it as "a drag," though he later reflected warmly on their rekindled friendship. He added: "I'm so glad because it would have been the worst thing in the world to have this great relationship that then soured and he gets killed, so there was some solace in the fact that we got back together. We were good friends."
When speaking about John's iconic anthem Imagine, Paul commented: "I just think that song of John's is magical and a lot of other people do... I just think it's a beautiful vision of how the world could be."
