پادشاه و ملکه

The King and the Queen

In August, the Beatles were back in the United States. Fifty-six thousand fans saw them at a concert in New York. At the time, it was the biggest concert crowd ever. The concert was exciting, but Ringo’s memories of it weren’t good. At times John was joking too much on stage, in Ringo’s opinion.

Also, not many people at the concert really heard the band. Like most Beatles concerts, the sound of the crowd was louder than the music. The Beatles couldn’t hear much of the music either. So, of course, it was difficult to play well.

‘I always wanted to play with good players,’ remembers Ringo. But now the band was playing badly on stage, and nobody was listening.

On the same tour, the Beatles met one of their favourite singers - Elvis Presley. ‘It was one of the great meetings of my life,’ Paul has said.

The boys and the ‘King’ had a good time. But years later the band discovered that Elvis was worried about the Beatles’ success in his country. He asked the American government to send them home.

Back in Britain, the government gave all the Beatles the MBE. This award was often given to successful businesspeople or to people who fought bravely for their country. Many Britons were angry. How could the government give this award to a pop group? But the usual crowd of screaming fans were outside Buckingham Palace when the Queen gave them the award in October 1965. The Beatles were nervous - George later remembered that they rested and had a cigarette in the toilets in Buckingham Palace!

Rubber Soul

The next album, Rubber Soul, came out in December 1965. It was another big step for the band. They were exploring different kinds of music and different subjects. ‘In My Life’ was a beautiful song about places and people in the past. Even the album’s love songs weren’t the simple love songs of the band’s early days.

One of the most interesting songs on the album was John’s ‘Norwegian Wood’. Many people wanted to know what the song meant. It was about a girl, but he didn’t want his wife Cynthia to know this. George played the Indian musical instrument the sitar on ‘Norwegian Wood’. He first noticed the instrument in an Indian restaurant in the film Help!. This was the start of George’s long interest in Indian music and ideas.

STORY BEHIND THE SONG

Around the time of Rubber Soul, the single ‘Day Tripper’ / ‘We Can Work It Out’ reached number one. Paul wrote most of ‘We Can Work It Out’ and John wrote the middle part. This song showed the differences between the two men clearly. The main part was more hopeful, as Paul sang, ‘Try to see it my way . . .’ John’s part of tine song was less hopeful: ‘Life is very short and there’s no time . . .’ The band’s success continued with Paul’s ‘Paperback Writer’ in 1966. It was their first single that wasn’t about love. The music was becoming less and less simple, too. But now the Beatles faced a new problem - how could they play the songs in concert?

‘Beatles go home!’

In June 1966, the Beatles were in Hamburg again to begin a new tour. Then they flew to Tokyo and the tour began to go wrong. There were many Beatles fans in Japan. But some people there thought the group was a bad example to young people. The band had to stay in their hotel. They only came out to play in concert.

Things became worse in the Philippines. In George’s words, it was ‘bad news’ from the beginning. The real problem came after the concert in Manila, lmelda Marcos, the wife of the country’s leader, invited the band to a party. The band’s answer was a polite no. (Some of them can’t even remember the invitation.) The next day, something was clearly wrong. Nobody at the hotel brought breakfast for the band. Then they turned on the television and suddenly they understood: they saw lmelda Marcos in tears! The camera showed crying children and the empty dinner table. In George’s words, ‘We watched ourselves not arriving.’ The people of the Philippines were very angry. As the band drove to the airport, crowds shouted, ‘Beatles go home!’ The band was pushed around at the airport and their road manager was knocked over. Before they could leave, Brian Epstein was called off the aeroplane. He had to give back all the money from the band’s concert there. Years later, Paul knew more about Marcos’s government. Then he was happy about missing the garden party. Ringo has said about the country, ‘I’ve never been back … ‘ The Sound of the Future

The 1966 tour wasn’t a happy one, but in the studio that year the band were going into exciting new areas. George Martin had to find newer and newer sounds to record the band’s ideas. The album Revolver was his favourite. The album was important for all the Beatles in different ways: George was growing as a song writer. At first, it was difficult for the guitarist. His very early songs weren’t strong, and he was in a band with two of the most famous songwriters in the world. In Revolver’s ‘Love You To’, he showed his continuing interest in Indian music. His best song on the album was probably ‘Taxman’.

The band liked Ringo to sing a song on every album. Paul decided to give the drummer a song that wasn’t very serious. He thought of ‘Yellow Submarine’ one night in bed.

■ Paul continued to write about new subjects and to explore new kinds of music, ‘Eleanor Rigby’ was a sad song about the lives of lonely people in a big city. Again, strings were used, and McCartney recorded the song without the other Beatles. ‘We were just drinking tea, ‘said George.

■ John was exploring, too. With the songs ‘She Said She Said’ and ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, he went into strange new musical areas. ‘Tomorrow Never Knows ‘was like a promise of the wild music at the end of the 1960s. Listen to this song and compare it to any song from the Beatles’ first two or three albums. A lot changed in those few years!