The Beatles are recognized as the most significant and influential band in the history of popular music. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr made up the lineup that started the “Beatlemania” craze in 1963 and made them famous throughout the world in the 60s. They were quite the phenomenon till their breakup in 1970.
Despite the fact that they are a renowned band whose name is well known all around the globe, many people still don’t why they are called The Beatles. We will look into the origin.
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What Was The Beatles Originally Called?
John Lennon founded the Quarrymen in 1957. They played folk music in and around Liverpool and the neighboring areas. The band successfully navigated a couple of significant lineup changes early in their existence.
Prior to becoming “The Quarrymen,” they were known as “The Blackjacks.” After the fateful and well-known encounter with John Lennon on July 6, 1957, at St. Peter’s Church, Paul McCartney joined the group. After McCartney eventually introduced George Harrison to the group, The Quarrymen underwent yet another name change. That is the story of how they ended up with the name ‘Beatles’.
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The Birth Of ‘The Beatles’
When Stu Sutcliffe, John Lennon’s best friend from art school, joined the band as the bassist, the two allegedly discussed possible band names and came up with “The Beetles”. They were huge fans of Buddy Holly and The Crickets and wanted to emulate their heroes by naming themselves after an insect.
In a lighthearted piece he wrote that was published in the Mersey Beat in 1961, John Lennon claimed to have whimsically characterized the idea as a dramatic and absurd dream sequence. “It came in a vision – a man appeared on a flaming pie and said unto them, ‘from this day forward you are the Beatles with an ‘A’! Thank you mister man, they said, thanking him,” he said.
The majority of reports say that Lennon’s love of wordplay was the reason for their decision to finally use the ‘a’. In a 1964 interview, Lennon later clarified this. “It was beat and beetles and when you said it, people thought of crawly things, and when you read it, it was beat music.”
Years after Lennon’s passing, George Harrison asserted that the term originated in a different way in the Beatles’ Anthology DVD. Harrison insisted that the 1953 Marlon Brando movie The Wild One is where the term “The Beatles” originated. In the movie, Brando played a figure named Johnny who belonged to the group known as “The Beetles.”
The band also briefly went by the names “Long John and the Silver Beetles” and “Johnny and the Beetles.”
What Other Names Did They Go By?
Although, in hindsight, it would undoubtedly appear that way, the Fab Four’s transformation into “The Beatles” wasn’t an overnight process. They went under a number of names in the early 1960s. Including “The Beetles,” “The Silver Beetles,” “The Beatals,” “The Silver Beets,” and even the identical”The Silver Beatles.”
There is no way to tell how they came up with “The Beatles” given all the plausible theories. And the Fab Four were renowned for their absurd responses to interview questions; they never took any interviewers seriously.
Once they were asked in an interview what ‘The Beatles’ means. In response, they said, “Beatles just means us!” Adding, “you know those small crawly things? We’re the big crawly things!”
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