Miami 1964
An online Beatles fan club for and about Beatle fans
Thursday, January 8, 2026
Pop Think In: George Harrison (1966)
Melody Maker
January 22, 1966
Christmas: Fun and twinkling lights, nothing religious for me, really.
Chris Farlow: Great voice and nice lad.
Birth control: Nothing, I don't think about it.
Clean up TV campaign: Rubbish, stupid. The more true-to-life TV, the better.
Jagger: Mick, the singer with the Stones.
Oldham: Andrew. I think lot of Andrew as an A & R man. I agree with his ideas about recording pop music.
Pop art: I haven't seen enough to form an opinion.
Millionaires: Anyone who can be a millionaire in this country, with the government taking most of it is a real winner. We're not millionaires.
Obscene lyrics: Haven't heard any yet. It's more a case of obscene minds listening to them.
Hamburg: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ewan MacColl: I only heard of him for the first time when he moaned about Dylan.
Folk: Good Folk is great, but there's too much bad folk, which people say is great.
Public Schools: They are a case of trying to buy brains for thick kids.
Murray the K: He's smart because he's always first one around with anything.
Debs: I don't get them at all. Debs are something that have passed. Some people wish they hadn't.
Eppy: An amazing businessman and a pal
Communism: It's terrible. I only know a little bit about it, but what I know of it is off
Elvis: Well done.
Middle-aged autograph hunters: Depends on their attitude. They're not bad on their own.
Carnaby Street: I haven't been there. It's a nice street, I believe.
Cliff: Looking rather undernourished.
Father: Which art in heaven
James Bond: Overdone.
God. The Naz.
Private Eye: Not as funny as they think it is, but quite nice.
PJ Probey: A bit foolish, but great to have around.
Boxing: a violent sport,
The Who: Great ideas
Zoot money: Big voice and big smile
Punch ups: To be avoided
A talent for loving: A good book, a Western but different from others
Policeman: a bit simple and not understanding
Germany: good fun and laughs.
Scrubbers: need scrubbing
Hipsters: Great. I like hipsters as trousers, not as people.
How a Beatle Looks at Life (1965)
By Ray Coleman
Disc Weekly
October 2, 1965
As Britain prepares for yet another bout of Beatlemania, when the group takes off on a new concert tour, one nagging question is rearing from a new wave of knockers. "How much longer can they keep it up?" The same question was asked three years ago when the Beatles shattered record after record, while their own top hits paraded around the world. They asked that when the Beatles conquered America, and now, with each Beatles an MBE and part of the pop establishment, people are throwing up a well-worn blast. "It's all over now. They're on the way down. There's nothing left for them to achieve."
Age comes into it, too. John and Ringo are both 25, Paul is 23, and George is 22. It was this explosive topic that Lennon tackled this week between a guitar practice at his house in Weybridge, Surrey. The hard man of the Beatles was in searing form as he tackled the hottest subject of all: the Beatles and old age.
"I only think about age when somebody reminds me," John began. "I don't like thinking about it much. I ought to start by saying that we felt old when we started, that is, when Brian Epstein found us. We thought we'd had it, and we left it too late to make it.
"But I reckon this: years don't affect your mind, really. They can give your face wrinkles, but it's your attitude and outlook that counts.
"According to the rules of the pop world, we're too old, but we don't look any older than the Stones, do we? And we don't act any older either. We only look older than, say, The Who, and I've seen them, look about 30 some nights!
"The most important thing about all this is that I've met people of 30 who aren't 30 in mentality. The law says they've lived 30 years. But although age can give you experience, some people aren't capable of using the experience. I'm 26 next year, the rules say I'm a fully grown man, settled down, and all that. But I'm not. I've still got a young outlook, I hope. Age can give you a lot if you want to use what it offers. That's what I want to do with my age and experience, use it .
"30 years doesn't necessarily mean intelligence. You know, I met some right old nits of 40!"
As the Beatles grew older, were they still out to get new fans? Have they started aiming for an older audience? "You can never satisfy them all," John answered. There was a time when we seemed to be doing everything at once, getting older people interested in what we were doing, as well as younger people.
"But to try to satisfy everybody is hopeless. This tour we're doing, for example, we can't cover the whole country with it unless we do a very long tour. So, because I don't feel like dropping dead from overwork just yet, not even if I am 25, there's bound to be people writing in from Umbo on Sea saying, 'Why aren't the Beatles coming here?' It's the whole attitude to fans that we've got to think about. I think we've got it all sorted out in our own minds, but it's hard to try to make people understand.
"The 'Help' single sold much better than the two before it, 'I Feel Fine' and 'Ticket to Ride', but there were still a lot of fans who didn't like 'Help'. They said, 'Ah, the Beatles are dropping us. This isn't as good as A Hard Day's Night'. So you can't win.
Trying to please everybody is impossible. If you did that, you'd end up in the middle with nobody liking you. You've just got to make the decision about what you think is your best and do it."
John was in a reflective mood now. He discarded his guitar, turned off the amplifier, and took up a deep thinking position, gazing out of the window of the rehearsal room in his multi room mansion.
"People think of us as machines. They pay 6s 8d for a record, and we have to do what they say, like a Jack-in-the-Box. I don't like that side of it much. Some people have got it all wrong. We produce something, say, a record, and if they like it, they get it.
"The onus isn't on us to produce something great every time; the onus is on the public to decide whether they like it or not. It's annoying when people turn around and say, 'but we made you, you ungrateful swines'. I know they did in a way, but there's a limit to what we're bound to live up to, as if it's a duty.
"When I had my black windows put in my Rolls-Royce, somebody said 'Lennon's turning his back and running away from the people who made him--- hide.' Rubbish!
"If I go to a shop down the road and buy a bunch of roses, I don't expect the bloke to be so grateful that he spends his life bowing and scraping. I like the roses, so I buy them, and that's that.
"I don't want to sound as if we don't like being liked. We appreciate it, but we can't spend our lives being dictated to. Think about Kellogg's cornflakes. If you buy cornflakes, do you expect Mr. Kellogg to spend his life being told how to do everything and how to behave? No. And if you buy a loaf of bread and it's lousy, you just don't buy it again.
"It's not all that much different with us. We make a record, and if you like it, you buy it. If you don't, you don't buy it. It's up to the public to decide."
John went on to talk about the controversial Help! film and admitted it was a mistake. "We went wrong with the picture somehow. I think we went just slightly the wrong way with it. Help!, as a film was like "Eight Days a Week" as a record for us. A lot of people like the film, and a lot of people like that record, but neither was what we really wanted. We knew they weren't really us. We weren't ashamed of the film, but close friends know that the picture and "Eight Days" as a record weren't our best. They were both a bit manufactured.
"The film won't harm us, but we weren't in full control. We're not sure what comes next in the way of a film. It isn't definite that the next thing will be Talent For Loving, nothing is certain about us. We just want to make sure we do better than Help!
John drank more tea and pondered. He talked for another hour about how he worries when he sees moms and dads and Beatles audiences, about Beatles fan mail and its size, about the state of the pop music scene. These and other important Beatles subjects will be covered in part two of the John Lennon interview next week.
Wednesday, January 7, 2026
Beatle Beseiged! (1966)
No Writer Listed
Disc and Music Echo
April 23, 1966
Being a Beatle does not present many new problems, not at least for John, Paul, George, and Ringo. By now, they have learned to weather storms, take on critics, and encounter any attacks with raptor-like wit. But John Lennon has found that being a Beatle does have its drawbacks.
One of the biggest is that fans invade the grounds of his Weybridge house, making Saturday and Sunday in peaceful Surrey look like a pilgrimage to the promised land of pop. "I'm fed up with it. Some weekends it gets so bad we go away somewhere to get away from the people who come to gawk," said, John,. "You'd think it was a holiday camp or something. They come with babies, sandwiches, flasks of tea, the lot. What do they think it is here, a national park?
"These people aren't fans. They can't be. I reckon there's something wrong with people who come just to look. If they were young people who come to look where a Beatle lives. I suppose it would be understandable, but it's adults!
"They seem to think I'm on stage every minute. I went out and told them to get away once, because they started camping and having picnics on the ground.
"We all know we've got to expect to have the public chasing us a lot, but this is where I live, and I reckon it's unbelievable to have the house treated as some kind of park. This happens most weekends. Sometimes it's worse than others, but it shouldn't really happen at all.
"People have got cheek. I just can't understand what gets into their minds.
"There's another reason why I find it a big drag. I'd like to think people were doing something better with their spare time than coming gawking around here."
Pop Think-In: John Lennon (1966)
Pop Think-In: John Lennon
Melody Maker
January 15, 1966
John Lennon knows all about the Melody Makers' "Pop Think-In" when he was approached to sit in for the hot seat. "Yeah, it'll be a laugh," he said, sitting himself down in his chair and waiting for the first question. "But I hope I don't get rotten questions, like I get rotten records in Blind Date."
Vietnam: PF Sloan, I don't like what's happening there.
Money, nice, great
Playboy: The magazine or the man? The magazine? It's nice.
Little Annie Fanny (Playboy cartoon): I don't read the cartoon. I hardly read the book. I have seen it, though. Imagine what the bloke who draws it thinks about.
Guitars: Guitars are great ---part of life
Airplanes: I don't like them. At first, they were a nice adventure. I like flying less the more we do it. We can get to most places well enough by road. We've flown so much; something could happen the more we do
Eppy: He's great. You know, when people talk about him, they say he's harsh and hard, and I expect he can be a bit of a bastard at times. He's a businessman, so he has to be. He's never a businessman with us, though we only talk business about twice a year. He sometimes has a go at us, then we have a go back, and it's forgotten.
Milk: It's great. It goes on cornflakes, on your porridge, or your tea. It does everything. I always drink a pint before I go out on the booze, or I drink it when I come back. It keeps you going, too. Two Aspros and a glass of milk can keep you going for days.
Tours: Great if they're great tours. There was only one I didn't enjoy, and I can't remember which one that was now.
Negroes: I always think of music when I hear someone say 'Negro.' I suppose I should think about anti apartheid and all that. I don't agree with apartheid, but Negroes means music to me.
Babies: I'm not keen on any except my own. I'm typical of most men in that respect, I suppose. I think he does marvelous things, which no other baby ever does. For instance, if he pounds on the piano, I think, 'Look at that, it's marvelous!' When any kid would do the same in time if there was a piano in the house
Liverpool: It's still home, even though my aunt has moved away, and I have to stay with Paul if I go there. If I'm in London, home is Weybridge, but if I say I'm going home, I mean Liverpool. It'd be the same if I was from Paris and moved to Marcielles, Paris would always be home.
Punch-ups: They aren't there anymore with me; it all happened when I was 18 and 19.
Pubs: I've never gone much on pubs. There have been very few pubs I've had much to do with, and they were in Liverpool, like the Grapes near the Cavern, which was the one we used to use.
Sketching: I don't sketch. I occasionally draw things, but I don't sketch.
Whiskey: I go on it and off it. At the moment, I'm off it. I've been drinking solidly for three years.
Journalists: On the whole, they are all right; there's a horrible, nasty element in a few, just as in any job. Usually, though, the bastards are famous for being bastards. It's the ones that seem nice and prove to be bastards later that I can't stand. They're all part of the machine, after all; if there were no journalists, there'd be no us.
Snow: I liked it in Austria and Switzerland. I liked Austria when I was there.
Christmas cards: I never think about them. If I do, it's usually too late.
Rolls, Royces: Great, but even they are not perfect.
Short hair: Okay, if you're a short head. Some people suit their hair long, and some suit short hair.
America: Some of it's great, and some of it is awful-- good and bad
TV pop shows: They could be better or worse, I'd sooner have a bad pop show on TV than none at all.
Rhodesia: I don't know what they're up to. I don't like that Smith bloke. I don't really know enough about it.
Boots: They keep me warm. I don't always wear them, though.
Goya: Some of it's all right, doesn't he paint ballet pictures? No. Oh, oh, well, **** it then.
Combs: I only like the kind my aunt gets me from Woolworths in Liverpool.
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