Before The Beatles became the biggest band in the world and the most successful rock band of all time, they were just like every other group of friends with musical dreams. Paul McCartney, John Lennon, and George Harrison all met through a series of introductions taking place on buses and at garden parties. And by the time 1958 came along, they were all members of the same band, The Quarrymen.

3 Classic Rock Songs With Unnecessary Guitar Solos

As The Quarrymen, Lennon, Harrison, and McCartney did the typical—performed at churches, clubs, schools, as well as other informal non-traditional venues. They played a mix of skiffle, rock and roll, and rockabilly music, and they covered American artists such as Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, and Larry Williams.

However, at some point in 1958, they recorded their first-ever original song. An original song written by George Harrison and Paul McCartney about friendship and love in the face of everything that can go wrong. For a couple of teenagers, it is quite the introspective and sentimentally deep songs, but then again, and despite their normalness, these were The Beatles.
The Beatles’ Quick Trip to a One-Room Recording Studio

Regarding the day they recorded their first ever original song, McCartney stated The Lyrics: 1956 To The Present, “We found an advert for a little studio, Percy Phillips in Kensington – Liverpool’s Kensington, not quite as posh as London’s Kensington. It was about half an hour away by bus. It cost you five pounds to make a demo record on shellac; that’s the old-fashioned way of doing it.”

“Each of us had managed to scrape a pound together, which wasn’t too hard once we set our minds to it. If it had been five each, that might have been a bit more challenging…So we showed up at Percy Phillips’s recording studio, which was basically a small room with one mic. We were young kids with our own equipment, and you’d have to wait your turn, like at a doctor’s office,” continued McCartney.

Source: americansongwriter.com/Peter Burditt

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Creating timeless artistic masterpieces is no easy feat. However, what makes a masterpiece a masterpiece in part is the work and the labor that goes into it. The work and the labor that drives the artist in question to the brink of madness. As history tells us, Glory is often gifted to those who grind through the process, and it was gifted to John Lennon after he toiled with “Across The Universe”.

John Lennon is one of the greatest songwriters of all time. He might not be your personal favorite, but you can’t deny him that. While Lennon certainly had an innate compassion and connection with the human condition and a knack for words, he didn’t garner this unofficial title of pure ability. According to this story, and others, Lennon acquired this title in the same way many others have acquired greatness—Through hard work.  John Lennon’s “Across The Universe” Started Far Before ‘Let It Be’

The writing process started far before the release of The Beatles’ final album, Let It Be. Specifically, Lennon started writing the single while he was still with his first wife, Cynthia Lennon. In the book, All We Are Saying, John Lennon was quoted as stating, “I was lying next to my first wife in bed, you know, and I was irritated, and I was thinking…She must have been going on and on about something and she’d gone to sleep and I kept earing these words over and over, flowing like an endless stream.”

Source: Peter Burditt/americansongwriter.com

The band is widely seen as one of the biggest influences on modern popular and rock music, and culture.

Fans named the greatest classic rock band in a 2025 Ranker poll. They revolutionized music, influenced culture, and sold over 600 million records worldwide. Their music continues to inspire, with hits often covered and sampled by diverse artists.

The Beatles revolutionized popular music and influenced 1960s counterculture, selling over 600 million records worldwide, but now the original boy band can add one more accolade to their long list of superlatives. According to a recent poll, The Beatles are also the greatest classic rock band of all time, besting the likes of Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones, and Queen.

According to an October 2025 Ranker poll, fans think The Beatles are the greatest classic rock band of all time. Ranker, which ranks all things pop culture, starts out with a list curated by experts. Once the list is published, fans get to work, voting the list’s picks up or down. The Beatles top the site’s list of greatest classic rock bands of all time with over 20,000 votes.
Impact and Legacy

The Beatles began as the band The Quarrymen, then The Silver Beatles, in the late 1950s, with the original lineup including Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Pete Best. They officially became The Beatles in 1960, and in 1962 Ringo Starr replaced Best on drums. The foursome released their first single, “Love Me Do,” in 1962, quickly becoming one of the most impactful and important musical acts—and cultural movements—of the era.

Albums like Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Abbey Road, and Revolver are considered some of the greatest albums in music history, but The Beatles’ impact spans far past their musical contributions.

Not only did The Beatles revolutionize popular music, innovating the genre with their studio techniques, harmonies, and songwriting, but they were also central to the “British Invasion” of the 1960s, globally influencing youth culture through music, fashion, and identity.

Source: Meredith Gordon/parade.com

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When a famous musician passes away, the whole world mourns. While we, as listeners, certainly feel the loss, it’s nothing compared to how their bandmates feel. Bands, if they are lucky, spend decades together in a larger-than-life circumstance. It builds a relationship that is unlike anything else in life. Moreover, they express their grief in a way no one else does: through song. Below, find four touching tribute songs written by artists for their late bandmates.

“All Those Years Ago” – George Harrison and John Lennon

Like much of the world, George Harrison felt very reflective after the murder of John Lennon. At least, that’s what his songwriting suggests. Despite their issues towards the end of the Beatles‘ tenure, Harrison looked back fondly on his late bandmate, penning the song “All Those Years Ago” as a tribute to him.

Living with good and bad / I always looked up to you / Now we’re left cold and sad / By someone, the devil’s best friend / Someone who offended all, the lyrics read. Though this song was initially written for Ringo Starr, Harrison managed to rework it into the perfect eulogy for Lennon.

Kurt Cobain’s death is one of the most infamous moments in rock history. It has been the subject of much discussion, taboo, and even conspiracy. Dave Grohl put all of that aside while writing “Friend of a Friend,” honoring Cobain’s memory in a way only he could.

Source: Alex Hopper/americansongwriter.com

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Bob Dylan and the Beatles had a memorable 1964 hotel meeting.  Dylan’s misunderstanding of a Beatles' song lyrics prompted a 'surreal' evening.  John Lennon and Paul McCartney later shared fond memories of the experience.

It goes without saying that Bob Dylan is one of the most influential musicians in history, as anyone with a passing familiarity of rock history knows. But the folk-rock icon’s impact on his peers goes beyond chord structure and lyrical composition, as one particularly entertaining anecdote from the annals of rock history involving the Beatles proves.

In August of 1964, the Beatles were staying at the Delmonico Hotel near Manhattan’s Central Park, according to the Beatles Bible, digging into a room service dinner, when Dylan showed up for a visit.

After being introduced to the band by a mutual friend, the writer Al Aronowitz, Dylan was offered some champagne…but apparently, he preferred “cheap wine” instead. Since there wasn’t any budget booze on hand, Dylan suggested they “smoke grass” instead. When the Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein, admitted that the band didn’t have much experience with marijuana, Dylan was shocked…all because he apparently misheard the lyrics to one of their biggest hits.

As Peter Brown wrote in The Love You Make: An Insider’s Story of the Beatles, Dylan “looked disbelievingly from face to face” following Epstein’s admission.

“’But what about your song?’ he asked. ‘The one about getting high?'”

Brown continued: “The Beatles were stupefied. ‘Which song?’ John managed to ask. Dylan said, ‘You know…’ and then he sang, ‘and when I touch you I get high, I get high…'”

Of course, those aren’t really the words to “I Want to Hold Your Hand” (the actual lyric is “I can’t hide, I can’t hide, I can’t hide”), but plenty of other listeners have made the same mistake. And the Beatles apparently weren’t completely new to weed at the time, as George Harrison explained in Anthology, but their first experience with the substance was underwhelming.

“We first got marijuana from an older drummer with another group in Liverpool. We didn’t actually try it until after we’d been to Hamburg,” Harrison explained. “I remember we smoked it in the band room in a gig in Southport and we all learnt to do the Twist that night, which was popular at the time. We were all seeing if we could do it. Everybody was saying, ‘This stuff isn’t doing anything.’ It was like that old joke where a party is going on and two hippies are up floating on the ceiling, and one is saying to the other, ‘This stuff doesn’t work, man.’”

Source: Jacqueline Burt Cote/parade.com

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The Beatles’ debut album was an attempt to capture the band’s live appeal, according to John Lennon.

Please Please Me would be released in March 1963 and was a chance for the band to showcase their skills as a touring unit. Lennon would share the thought process behind recording Please Please Me as a way to “capture The Beatles live” in interviews given shortly after the album was released. Lennon suggested Please Please Me is the closest the Fab Four could get to capturing the essence of their live performance, though even that was missing the atmosphere of the Hamburg and Liverpool audiences. Producer George Martin had initially suggested the band record a live album as their debut release at The Cavern Club in Liverpool, though these plans would fall through. Instead, the band recorded studio album Please Please Me as an opportunity to highlight their live appeal.

Lennon said: “That record tried to capture us live, and was the nearest thing to what we might have sounded like to the audiences in Hamburg and Liverpool. You don’t get that live atmosphere of the crowd stomping on the beat with you, but it’s the nearest you can get to knowing what we sounded like before we became the ‘clever’ Beatles.”

Lennon would confirm Martin’s influence in the studio would help them find a better route through the title track too. He said: “Our recording manager (George Martin) thought our arrangement was fussy, so we tried to make it simpler. We were getting tired though, and just couldn’t seem to get it right. In the following weeks we went over it again and again.

“We changed the tempo a little, we altered the words slightly, and we went over the idea of featuring the harmonica just as we’d done on Love Me Do. By the time the session came around we were so happy with the result, we couldn’t get it recorded fast enough.”

Later on, Lennon would share the Orbison and Crosby influence which guided the song. Speaking in 1980, Lennon says Only the Lonely by Orbison had been a big factor in his writing process for Please Please Me.

Source: Ewan Gleadow/cultfollowing.co.uk

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