The Beatles Wit

The Beatles' Wit. The Beatles are one of the most successful rock/pop bands in history. The band's songs are highly acclaimed; they had several top selling singles and albums and they have received 15 Ivor Novello Awards but also of unusual importance to The Beatles’ career as a rock/pop band was their humour. Speaking in The Beatles Anthology, George Harrison said, “I think that was an important part of The Beatles - people associated humour with us…you needed something else to carry you. The Beatles actually were very funny, and even when our humour was transposed to New York or somewhere else, it was still great.”
A Tradition of Humour
All four Beatles were born in Liverpool, then part of Lancashire. Although Lancashire has a tradition of producing comedians; Stan Laurel and Eric Morecambe are two such, Liverpool has the attitude in spades - as George Harrison put it, "Everyone in Liverpool thinks they're a comedian. Just drive through the Mersey Tunnel and the guy on the toll booth will be a comedian. We've had it bred into us". Ted Ray, Arthur Askey, Ken Dodd and Jimmy Tarbuck (who was in the same class at school as John Lennon) are all nationally famous comedians and all originated in Liverpool. Hunter Davies, makes the point that Liverpool is near to Wales and just across the water to Ireland and there are a lot of Welsh and Irish people in Liverpool. The Irish are said to be witty and the Welsh are said to be good singers. Lennon, McCartney and Harrison all have Irish ancestry.
The band were well aware of using their humour; Harrison pointed out that "in our case the humour was made even stronger by the fact that there were four of us bouncing off one another. If one dried up, somebody else was already there with another fab quip."
The Beatles charm was, to some extent, developed through playing in some of the rougher venues in Liverpool and, particularly, in the Reeperbahn in Hamburg. George Martin explained: "Their experiences in the seamy nether world of Hamburg night-life had helped them to learn how to work and hold an audience. They had massive stage presence. If the average beer-sodden crowd on the Reeperbahn didn't like what you were doing on stage, it was liable to stand up as one and throw a few chairs at your head. The four boys in front of me had learned to be engaging, the hard way."
Obtaining a Recording Contract
The Beatles wit played a large part in obtaining a recording contract. In June 1962, The Beatles had been turned down by most of the UK recording labels so when they were auditioned by George Martin, it was something of a last chance. Martin considered their audition “rough, and not very ready”. , but also thought, “There was something else about them, quite apart from their music, that was immediately obvious on meeting them: they had the magic ingredient charisma… No one could have resisted their warmth, their wit and their quick-fire repartee.” A well known example of this from their audition was recalled by EMI engineer Norman Smith, when George Martin “gave them a long lecture about their equipment and what would have to be done about it if they were to become recording artists...George said, ‘Look, I’ve laid into you for quite a time, you haven’t responded. Is there anything you don’t like?’ I remember they all looked at each other for a long while, shuffling their feet, then George Harrison took a long look at Martin and said ‘Yeah, I don’t like your tie!’ That cracked the ice for us and for the next 15-20 minutes they were pure entertainment…I had tears running down my face.”
Until the success of the Beatles, George Martin was associated with novelty records. Some bands might not have taken a producer with such a background seriously, but, for The Beatles, this made them respect Martin even more. In a review Lennon wrote of The Goon Show scripts, John Lennon recalled his love of the Goons and that Martin "had never recorded rock-n-roll, had previously recorded with Milligan and Sellers, which made him all the more acceptable - our studio sessions were full of the cries of Neddie Seagoon."
Early Television Appearances
As George Martin had foreseen, The Beatles' humour and charisma played a large part in the success of their early television appearances. The Beatles' first nationwide television appearance was as bottom of the bill on Thank Your Lucky Stars in January 1963. Philip Norman described their appearance as quite unlike any other band of the time - grinning at the audience and each other when the fashion was to be unsmiling and moody.
1963 was the year when, in the words of Mark Lewisohn, "it all went beserk". The Beatles went from bottom billing in January 1963 to topping the bill at Val Parnell’s Sunday Night at the London Palladium by the October. In the early 1960s, Sunday Night at the London Palladium was one of the UK’s biggest variety show. The Beatles were seen by an audience of 15 million viewers. Mark Lewisohn describes the performance: “When Paul tried to introduce the …number, John sent him up. Then John, Paul and George all spoke the next announcement together, stopping together and re-starting together, until George carried it off alone.”
A month after their London Palladium performance, The Beatles appeared on the Royal Variety Show. It was during this performance that John Lennon made his famous witticism; “Would those of you in the cheaper seats clap your hands? And the rest of you, if you'll just rattle your jewellery”.
At the end of 1963 The Beatles recorded an appearance for Morecambe & Wise's ATV Show Two of a Kind. Morecambe & Wise were Britain's top double act; they were described as "the most illustrious, and the best-loved, double-act that Britain has ever produced". Fortunately, the appearance of Britain's favourite band with Britain's favourite double act lived up to expectations; as Mark Lewisohn put it "The Beatles appeared on television with a number of comedians, the end result was never better than this." As well as performing two songs, The Beatles appeared in apparently ad-lib (although actually scripted) repartee with Wise and, later on, Morecambe. However probably the funniest part of the sketch was improvised by Morecambe when Lennon said the line, "My dad used to tell me about you." and indicated that he'd been a small child at the time. Morecambe replied with "You've only got a little dad then?". During interviews Paul McCartney has said that working with Morecambe and Wise was the best television experience of The Beatles career.
Printed Media
The newspapers paid a part in the rise of The Beatles, largely by using them as a "light" story. Philip Norman has pointed out that there were circumstantial reasons for The Beatles being such a huge story, particularly in 1963; the UK was suffering one of the coldest winters in the 20th century, the Profumo scandal, which led to the downfall of the government, was breaking in March 1963 and, in August 1963, the Great Train Robbery took place. Against this background, newspapers were keen (Norman says "desperate") for lighter stories to print alongside the major, serious stories and The Beatles were ideal. The Beatles witty interviews were ideal and according to Hunter Davies, it was in 1963 that there was a big attraction to a newspaper reporter to “have a word, any word, with The Beatles. Every reporter knew that each interview would be different and funny.”
A Hard Day's Night
When The Beatles were approached to make a film, music and humour affected the choice of director. The producer, Walter Shenson recalled in a documentary associated with the DVD that Richard Lester had been chosen because he played jazz piano, which he though would appeal to the band and that Lester had made a film (The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film) with Spike Milligan. Paul McCartney recalled that the film with Spike Milligan was what made them choose Lester - "We'd loved it, so we all said, 'He's in. That's our man.'"
The style of A Hard Day's Night was Cinéma-vérité semi-documentary, as Ringo Starr explained, "most of (the dialogue) was scripted". Although George Harrison points out that one scene (the press conference) was partly improvised; "we made up a lot of answers and Dick Lester said, 'Keep that one, use that one.' He was very good like that."
Arriving in the USA
The Beatles felt very insecure about playing in America; Lennon recalled, "We didn't think we stood a chance. We didn't imagine it at all. went to America and died. He was fourteenth on the bill with Frankie Avalon." However, The Beatles' press conferences at Kennedy Airport in July 1964 betrayed little of this apprehension:

FEMALE FAN: "Would you please sing something?"
BEATLES: "NO!"
(laughter)
RINGO: "Sorry."
M.C: "Next question."
Q: "There's some doubt that you CAN sing."
JOHN: "No, we need money first."
(laughter)
Q: "How much money do you expect to take out of this country?"
JOHN: "About half a crown."
RINGO: "Ten dollars."
Q: "Does all that hair help you sing?"
PAUL: "What?"
Q: "Does all that hair help you sing?"
JOHN: "Definitely. Yeah."
Q: "You feel like Sampson? If you lost your hair, you'd lose what you have? 'It'?"
JOHN: "Don't know. I don't know."
Q: "How many of you are bald, that you have to wear those wigs?"
RINGO: "All of us."
The quick witted answers started the process of winning over American journalists who initially approached The Beatles as a negative story. As Ringo recalled, The Beatles' wit "saved our arses on many occasions...the guys from the press had come to bury us...They said, 'We came here to kill you, but you just started shouting back at us - we couldn't believe it.'"

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