BEATLES PLAN TO QUIT MUSIC BY 40!" SHOCK REVELATION
Fab Four Open Up About Fame, Fashion and Future Plans in Exclusive Interview
McCartney and Lennon reveal they won't perform past 40, plan to focus on songwriting
Harrison hopes to start his own business when the band "flops"
Starr dreams of owning chain of ladies' hairdressing salons while band sits at number one
In the dimly lit confines of a BBC studio, where The Mersey Sound documentary is being filmed, the Beatles are in remarkably candid form. It's August 1963, and the band sits atop the British charts with 'She Loves You', their fourth single this year alone. The façade of showbiz polish occasionally slips to reveal four young men still coming to terms with their meteoric rise to fame, even as they prepare for their groundbreaking autumn tour with Roy Orbison.
The conversation begins with a fascinating glimpse into their early days, particularly their transformative time in Hamburg. Harrison, speaking with unexpected authority, credits their distinctive performance style to a persistent German club owner's demands for "mach schau" (make a show). The image of Lennon "dancing around like a gorilla" whilst his bandmates knocked their heads together seems a far cry from their current suited-and-booted persona. These Hamburg revelations are particularly timely, as the band prepares to return to the city later this month for a series of shows at the Star-Club, where they first honed their craft.
Their evolution from leather-clad rockers to sharp-suited pop stars wasn't merely a fashion choice, but a calculated decision. McCartney, ever the pragmatist, explains their sartorial shift with disarming honesty: "We didn't want to appear as a gang of idiots." The transformation, guided by manager Brian Epstein, marked their transition from Hamburg hell-raisers to palatably packaged pop stars. This image overhaul, coming just as they signed to EMI's Parlophone label under George Martin, proved crucial to their breakthrough.
The weight of fame sits differently on each Beatle's shoulders. Harrison describes an almost out-of-body experience when encountering their press coverage: "You see your pictures and read articles about George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Paul and John-- but you don't actually think 'Oh, that's me.'" It's a startlingly vulnerable admission from a group that's become the object of near-religious devotion, particularly as they prepare for their first international tours.
The timing of these reflections is significant. Just weeks ago, they played to 50,000 screaming fans at the Queen's Theatre, Blackpool, and their diary for the remainder of 1963 is packed with appearances across Britain. Their recent performances at the Winter Gardens, Margate, had to be cancelled due to crowd control concerns, a situation that's becoming increasingly common as Beatlemania intensifies.
Starr's account of fans besieging his family home in Liverpool offers a glimpse into the darker side of this phenomenon. His mother, "terrified out of her life" by the hormone-fuelled hordes, serves as a poignant reminder of the collateral damage inflicted by fame. Lennon, cutting through the anecdote with characteristic sharpness, observes: "It affects your home more than it does yourself... because you know what to expect but your parents and family don't know what's happening."
This newfound fame has manifested in unexpected ways. The interview takes an amusing turn when discussion shifts to the peculiar phenomenon of Jellybabies. Harrison reveals they receive "about two-ton a night" of the gelatinous projectiles, leading to at least one ocular injury. "I haven't been the same since," he deadpans, though one suspects the trauma is less than life-altering. This seemingly trivial detail speaks volumes about the band's impact on youth culture - a casual comment in an interview can spark a nationwide craze.
The conversation turns to their remarkable chart success, beginning with 'Love Me Do'. Lennon's defensive assertion that their manager wasn't "fiddling the charts" through his record stores' returns speaks to the suspicion that initially surrounded their success, particularly from the London establishment. It's worth noting that these suspicions have been thoroughly dispelled by their subsequent achievements - their current single 'She Loves You' has already sold an unprecedented 750,000 copies in pre-orders alone.
Most revealing are their thoughts on longevity. While many bands of their ilk might bluster about eternal relevance, the Beatles display remarkable self-awareness. Lennon oscillates between bravado and fatalism: "You can be big-headed and say, 'Yeah, we're gonna last ten years.' But as soon as you've said that you think, 'We're lucky if we last three months.'" This candour comes at a time when their success shows no signs of waning - their first album 'Please Please Me' has remained at number one for thirty weeks, a feat unprecedented in British chart history.
McCartney's vision of the future is particularly striking. The thought of "old men playing 'From Me To You'" clearly horrifies him, leading to the revelation that he and Lennon see songwriting as their post-performance career path. This isn't mere speculation - the Lennon-McCartney partnership has already provided hits for other artists, including Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas' recent number one 'Bad to Me'.
Harrison, meanwhile, speaks of having "enough money to go into a business" when they "flop," suggesting a pragmatism that belies his years. This business acumen isn't surprising given the band's current trajectory - they've recently signed lucrative merchandising deals for everything from badges to wigs, though one suspects even Harrison couldn't predict the scale of the Beatles industry to come.
Yet it's Starr who provides the interview's most delightfully unexpected moment, expressing his desire to own a chain of ladies' hairdressing salons. One can almost see him in his imagined "stripes and tails," offering tea to his clientele. It's a charmingly incongruous image that somehow perfectly encapsulates the surreal nature of the Beatles' journey from Liverpool obscurity to global phenomenon.
The timing of this interview proves particularly fascinating when viewed through the lens of what's to come. As they speak, their first international tour looms on the horizon, with Sweden beckoning in October. Their second album is nearly complete, and plans are already in motion for their first feature film. The Ed Sullivan Show has expressed interest in having them perform, though few could predict the seismic impact their eventual American debut would have.
What emerges from this conversation is a portrait of four young men simultaneously riding and being ridden by the tiger of fame. Their responses oscillate between practiced polish and disarming candour, suggesting they haven't quite worked out how to navigate their newfound status. Yet there's an underlying intelligence and self-awareness that sets them apart from their contemporaries.
As Britain's biggest band sits perched on the cusp of global domination, their clear-eyed assessment of fame's fleeting nature seems both prescient and poignant. The music scene they inhabit is rapidly evolving - while they speak, the first whispers of the Dave Clark Five's "Tottenham Sound" are beginning to challenge Liverpool's supremacy, and American groups are watching the British invasion with increasing interest.
Their current schedule reflects their status as Britain's premier entertainers. Between television appearances, radio sessions, and live performances, they're working at a pace that would exhaust lesser mortals. Yet somehow they've found time to record their next single, 'I Want to Hold Your Hand', which those who've heard it suggest might be their biggest yet.
Whether they're around for three months or three decades, one senses these four Liverpudlians won't be caught unawares by whatever comes next - be it business ventures, songwriting careers, or indeed, ladies' hairdressing salons. As they prepare for their appearance on Val Parnell's Sunday Night at the London Palladium next month, an engagement that will surely cement their position as national treasures, the Beatles seem remarkably level-headed about their future prospects.
For now, though, they remain four young men from Liverpool, caught in the eye of a storm they helped create, trying to make sense of their extraordinary journey while simultaneously planning for its eventual end. It's this combination of ambition and pragmatism, of showmanship and sincerity, that suggests their impact might last rather longer than even they imagine.
On August 28th 1963, The Beatles gathered in a Manchester BBC Television dressing room for what would become a pivotal documentary interview. The filming was part of 'The Mersey Sound', an ambitious BBC project aimed at documenting and analysing the explosive Mersey Beat phenomenon - a musical movement the Beatles themselves had sparked across Liverpool and beyond.
The documentary captured both performance and insight. In addition to their thoughtful dressing room interview, the band performed three songs for the cameras: their current chart-topper 'She Loves You', their breakthrough hit 'Love Me Do', and the energetic 'Twist And Shout'.
The timing was significant - the Beatles stood at the threshold of global stardom, yet were still accessible enough to provide candid, unguarded responses. The documentary would first air on October 9th, 1963 (coincidentally John Lennon's 23rd birthday), providing British viewers with one of the most intimate portraits of the band just months before Beatlemania would reach fever pitch.