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Once upon a time four lads were born in Liverpool, England, but don't worry, they quickly left.
These four lads were John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Gandalf the Grey. This
is their story.
In 1967 the Beatles completely forgot how to play guitar and had to relearn while substituting
other instruments for their album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which is considered
a landmark album because trumpets are neat. It also proved that cutting up images of famous
people and gluing them all together was really really fun, which probably inspired kidnappers
to adopt a similar tactic when sending ransom demands to rich families. Fun all around!
By that point, the Beatles had completely abandoned touring, primarily due to a trip
to the dictator-ruled Philippines that someone thought was a good *** idea, though a
similar plan worked out quite well for Kanye West several decades later. They stayed in
their studios, and Paul in his underground sex dungeon, avoiding the sun and growing
giant beards and probably not showering often.
They began to focus on their music, and it showed on that album and the subsequent one,
"Magical Mystery Tour," the only moment in the Beatles' discography where the U.S. got
the better end of the deal. It's also the only time I've ever said the word "discography"
out loud. In the UK, the album had a bunch of dumb songs from the stupidest piece of
*** the Beatles ever made, the movie coincidentally called "Magical Mystery Tour," which should
be shown in schools as an Anti-Drug PSA. *** that movie up its ***. In the U.S., someone
decided the album should also feature all of the band's singles from that year, which
are really great songs like "Strawberry Fields Forever," "I am the Walrus," and "Paul's derivative
attempt to write 'Strawberry Fields Forever'". Whoever came up with that idea deserves all
the money and free garbage throws at Ringo.
In between those two lucrative pieces of rat *** was the Summer of Love, aka the Summer
of ***, and its anthem, "All You Need is Love (Not Condoms)," by the same band we've
been talking about for like 20 minutes now. The Beatles recorded it live via satellite,
which proved the existence of satellites and scared the *** out of a lot of people. Over
1 billion people, and probably some fish and dogs, too, watched the broadcast, because
there wasn't a game on. The song succeeded in its goal of world peace, so we have the
Beatles to thank for living in a world without war.
In 1968 they released The Beatles, which is not called "The White Album" no matter what
your Dad says. This album had 30 songs, so naturally a few really sucked, but they obviously
had a lot more free time to devote to a studio process they were criminally neglecting in
favor of dumb songs about surfing or whatever. Seriously Beach Boys, what the ***?
By this point the band began to fragment, with individual band members going off to
do their own things, and not really getting along with each other very much. This resulted
in the beginning of a lot of terrible solo careers and/or the downfall of western civilization,
depending on who you listen to. ***, even Ringo wrote a song. Who signed off on that?
Part of the reason they started drifting apart was the death of manager Brian Epstein in
1967. Epstein, who couldn't possibly have done as many drugs as Keith Richards, died
after overdosing on sleeping pills, though it should be noted that the pills worked.
Lennon felt so bad that he took back all the nasty things he said about Epstein, except
for the really funny ones. Epstein died less than a month before homosexuality was decriminalized
in England by the *** You Brian Epstein Act of 1967.
George Harrison started becoming a decent writer by this point, penning classic rock
songs like "While My Guitar Gently Weeps." He famously could not play the guitar solo
on this song, having woken up to find his hands were replaced with lobster claws. So
he called on his down-on-his-luck friend Eric Clapton to play it, and be on a Beatles record.
Clapton returned the favor by stealing Harrison's wife. Harrison was all right with this, because
Harrison was, in fact, a giant ***.
Harrison was inspired to become a pushover by the teachings of the Maharishi, an actual
con artist who earlier that year invited The Beatles, and like 50 of the semi-famous people
who always followed The Beatles around, to India in order to do Indian things, like eat
Naan and look at cows. They wrote a lot of the White Album material here--dammit, I mean
The Beatles, ***--and listened to the Maharishi spout his nonsense about spiritualism and
sleaziness. Three of the four band members realized it was crap and left, but Harrison
took it seriously after reading Eat, Pray, Love and having his life changed forever.
The Maharishi was a ***.
Other notable songs from The Beatles--The Beatles--include "Dear Prudence," about Mia
Farrow's attempt to lock her sister in a closet and abandon her in India; "Birthday," which
is actually about Hitler if you really listen to it; "Blackbird," which is about a bird
and nothing else; "Helter Skelter," which is about a race war; and "Revolution 9," a
"sound collage" made primarily by Lennon and Ono that was inspired by soccer riots and
inspired murders.
Indeed, you can't talk about this album--and we still are--without talking about Charles
Manson, who reacted to these songs by murdering Roman Polanski's wife and other people, which
makes perfect sense when you think about it. This was seriously the high point of 1968,
which followed 1967's "Summer of Love" with "The Year of *** Destruction of Everything
Everywhere." Look it up.