The Beatles and Billboard — What else did you not know?

By Tim Williams

I was told that this month (last week, in fact) on April 4, 1964, the Beatles occupied the top five positions on the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart. I did not know that.  Here are 10 things you might not have known about those four lovable mop-tops from Liverpool.

1. Paul McCartney is not British,  he was actually born in Green Bay, Wisconsin and still considers himself the world’s biggest Packers fan and cheesehead.
2. The album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band  was originally edible. It’s true! The first 10,000 copies of the landmark album were made of a meat by-product that could be played on a turntable and then consumed by the listener. Sadly, people began thinking all Beatles albums were digestible and the legal team at EMI/Capitol had to stop production of the new “digestible disc.”
3. The Beatles’ last album Let It Be was recorded with their favorite comic Buddy Hackett singing lead on all 12 tracks, but the funnyman’s vocal tracks were later removed due to a dirty joke involving a penguin and a nun he tells during the title song.
4. Many products (lunch boxes, wigs, games, etc.) were manufactured during the height of Beatlemania, but the most hard to find is The Beatles Electric Corn and Callus Remover. This medical device recently fetched over $1,500 at Sotheby’s.
5. In 1968 while recording The White Album, John Lennon refused to do any more vocals until he watched the last episode of his current obsession, the TV show, “Green Acres.” In interviews Lennon would often site Chuck Berry and Arnold the pig as his two biggest influences.
6. Ringo Starr is known for the collection of rings on his fingers, but the drummer also has over twenty body piercings.
7.  Lennon and McCartney re-teamed in 1978 to write the theme song for the NBC TV series “The Facts of Life.” Fearing rumors of a Beatles reunion, John and Paul gave writing credit of the song to close friend Alan Thicke.
8. George Harrison was a licensed plumber and in his free time enjoyed unclogging the drains of friends and family.
9. Elvis and the Beatles only met one time (at Graceland), but Elvis would mistakenly tell friends he had met “those longhairs from back there in England…Herman’s Hermits.”
10. Most people know that the song “Yesterday” was originally called “Scrambled Eggs,” but Paul McCartney recently revealed to Rolling Stone magazine  that “Hey Jude” was going to be titled “Rooty Tooty Fresh ‘N Fruity Breakfast.”  McCartney admits that he was being influenced by his morning meals at the time.  “I loved Pop-Tarts, Eggo Waffles and Egg McMuffins…any one of them could have made a great tune.”

The above is meant purely for entertainment and satirical purposes only and is not to be taken seriously by the reader…except the one about “Green Acres” – that could be true.