John grew up near a place called Strawberry Fields in Liverpool.
“Strawberry Fields Forever” is not the only Beatles song named for a real place—the first Lennon family home in Liverpool stood near Penny Lane—but it might be the only one to have a place named after it: Strawberry Fields is now a memorial section of New York’s Central Park.
“Michelle” was inspired by Paul’s favorite technique for picking up girls at parties.
McCartney once shared in an interview that he and Harrison, self-described “working-class boys,” often felt at odds at the boho-chic parties they went to as teens with Lennon (who was older and attending art college). To hold his own, McCartney developed a habit of dressing in black, sitting in a corner with his guitar, and singing in made-up French to see if he could draw over any of the Juliette Greco-type women. It never worked, but one day Lennon suggested that McCartney make “that French thing” into a song. Il faut souffrir pour être belle, man.
The first lyrics to “Yesterday” were “scrambled eggs.”
Genius often comes out of nowhere, and the melody for the famous melancholy string setting that is Vladimir Putin’s favorite Beatles song apparently just popped into Paul McCartney’s head when he woke up one morning. Until he could find words for it, the McCartney walked around the house humming “scrambled eggs…baby, I love scrambled eggs” so that he wouldn’t forget the tune.
There is a heated debate over whether the “the” should be capitalized.
Wikipedia talk pages were ablaze late last year over a small but persistent question: are they The Beatles or the Beatles? Lower-case faction members point to handwritten letters by Lennon which feature a small t in the band’s title, while proponents of the capital T cite grammatical rules over trademarks and the logo atop the Beatles’ official website. Squabbling on the online encyclopedia started in 2004, and recently resulted in several editors being banned from commenting. Lower-case advocate Gabriel Fadden complained of being “cyberstalked” in the Wall Street Journal’s coverage of the rumpus.
"The Beatles" wasn't the first choice in band name
Before finalizing the famous name “The Beatles” this group had many other names. Some of which are The Quarrymen, Japage-3, Johnny and the Moondogs, The Silver Beats, The Silver Beats, The Silver Beetles, The Beat Brothers and The Silver Beatles. John, George and Paul were together in the band during all these names. At the time Ringo joined the band, it was already established by the name of ‘The Beatles’.
"Lucy in the Sky", the fantastical wonderful, not the drug
When 4-year-old Julian Lennon showed his father a drawing of a girl named Lucy who sat next to him in school, the songwriter was inspired by his childish scrawl of a girl who his son said was “in the sky with diamonds.” Lucy Vodden later moved to London, and remained there until she died from complications related to lupus in 2009 at the age of 46. Julian Lennon rekindled their friendship in the last years of Vodden’s life and frequently sent her flowers. Often times, people thought that this song was based on the drug LSD from the capitalization of the song title.