From left: George, John, Paul and ???
Because the Beatles didn’t have enough original material to fill an album during those early days (and also because the record label executives at Parlophone probably thought it was a good idea) many cover songs were included on the first couple of albums. Capitol in the US was even worse. They took the original Parlophone releases and cut them up even more by taking the 14 song British LPs and turning them into 12 song Capitol releases.
Quarrymen On Stage before George. From left: drummer, Paul, tea chest bass player, John and another guitarist
It was the first time I heard some of these tunes so, naturally, I thought the Beatles version was better by far than the original as in the case of “You’ve Really Got A Hold On Me” or “Mr. Postman”. But when the project of creating a Beatles tribute was discussed, the band thought we should focus only on original songs written by John and Paul with an occasional George Harrison contribution thrown in.
We purposely chose songs, not only that we liked, but also ones that challenged us as a four piece band. In some cases Ken had to play the parts of a harmonica as well as other instruments.
The trivia article I wrote yesterday left out that Jon also had a huge amount of Beatles trivia in his head. I also absorbed much information from reading books and articles on the Fab Four. So there was very little we didn’t know about the band from the days of the Quarrymen to the eventual breakup of the Beatles. After that, I sort of lost interest in the solo careers. None of the music that came after that seemed to match what they did together as a group.
Mick Orton
Categories: History
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