How was the magical name The Beatles born?
The Beatles
What a simple and easy-to-remember name.
But actually, this,Their coined wordIt is.
This time, I’ll talk about how this name came to be.
Choosing a band name is tough.
If you’ve ever been in a band, you’ll know how truly agonizing it can be to decide on a band name.
Various opinions are voiced by the members, but in the end we have to consolidate them into one.
If your band name comes across as lame, people might even question your playing ability.
Because the Beatles became a worldwide band, there are probably hardly any people—even those with no interest in music at all—who don’t at least know the word “Beatles.”
They might be the first whose band name alone became known even to people around the world who aren’t interested in music.
They weren’t the Beatles from the start!
The band name “The Beatles” didn’t exist from the beginning; it went through several changes.
The very beginning was an amateur band called the Quarrymen, formed in 1957 by the leader, John Lennon, when he was 16.
The band was formed by his classmates from the high school he attended.
At that time, we all discussed what to do about the band name.
The high school John attended was called Quarry Bank High School, and its school song includes the lyrics “Quarrymen.”
A “quarryman” is a stonemason who cuts and processes stone.
Their classmates tried to use this as the band name, but John objected, saying that quoting the school anthem was lame.
However, it was decided by a majority vote.
For him, what mattered most was forming a band in the first place, and things like the band’s name didn’t really matter.
There’s also a theory that the name “Blackjacks” existed before this, but it seems that was just a name John jokingly came up with together with his close friend Pete Shotton, and it wasn’t actually a band name.
Paul McCartney and George Harrison later joined the Quarrymen, but they were the only two who stayed with John as professionals until the end; the other members were repeatedly replaced or left.
The music they were playing at the time was a genre called skiffle, which was popular then, featuring a style of making sounds with everyday household items—such as a washboard—and singing.
With this, even people who couldn’t play an instrument were able to perform music casually.
Transition of the band's name
After that, the band’s name kept changing—to Johnny & the Moondogs, Long John & the Silver Beetles, the Silver Beetles, and so on.
As you can tell from the early name, at that time it still felt like John’s one-man band.
Finally, in August 1960, Pete Best joined as the drummer, and the band settled on the name the Beatles.
Were you made to change the band name?
During the early struggling period before the Beatles made their major debut,I previously talked about going to Hamburg, Germany to work away from home.。
In 1961, a popular singer named Tony Sheridan offered the Beatles—who happened to be in Hamburg at the time—to back him as a band for a rock arrangement and recording of the Scottish folk song “My Bonnie.”
They gladly agreed, but Polydor Records was reluctant to credit the name “The Beatles.”
Because the name 'Beatles' sounded similar to a word that meant something sexual.
And so, we were made to change the name to the Beat Brothers.
This song was such a hit that it reached No. 5 on the German singles chart.
Then, a young fan from the Beatles’ hometown of Liverpool heard a rumor that the Beatles had apparently released a record in Germany, and he came to the NEMS record shop in Liverpool to buy it.
However, the store manager didn’t know the name ‘The Beatles’ or anything about that record at all.
Since their name wasn’t credited on the record, it’s only natural that you didn’t know.
That store manager was none other than Brian Epstein, the famed manager who later led the Beatles to worldwide success.
The Birth of the Name “The Beatles”
So, how did the name “the Beatles” come about?
Actually,"The Beatles" is a coined word.And,A name thought up by John and former member Stuart Sutcliffe.It is.
John deeply admired Buddy Holly, the leader of the American band Buddy Holly & The Crickets, who was active in the late 1950s.
He wrote and composed the songs himself, and moreover performed them by playing guitar and singing with his own band.
The simple four-piece lineup of two guitars, bass, and drums was precisely the style that could be called the prototype of the Beatles.
Their name, Crickets, means the insect called a cricket.
And there’s also the meaning of the name of a traditional British sport.
In other words, it was combining two meanings.
John really liked the idea of giving the band name two meanings, and he was also drawn to using the name of an insect.
So I thought about various options to see if there was an insect name that also had a double meaning.
Then, member Sutcliffe got a hint from the fact that Lee Marvin, who appeared in the Marlon Brando film “The Wild One,” referred to the girls who rode motorcycles as “beetles.”
In English, the word “beetle” refers to coleopterans such as rhinoceros beetles.
However, it seems the name doesn’t sound very pleasant in English-speaking countries, and some people even advised choosing a different one.
So John changed the letter e in the spelling to a, making it Beatles.
Of course, I intended it to carry the meaning of a musical beat.
Paul also agreed with this idea.
At last, it was here that the name The Beatles was born.
John liked this name, finding it rather stylish.
When people first hear the name “Beatles,” it may sound a bit unpleasant, but when they see the spelling, they realize it’s a play on “beat,” and that makes them go, “Ah, I see.”
made it clear to the world how important a band name is
I can’t say for sure, butThe first big artists to use a coined word for their band name were probably The Beatles.I think so.
After that, groups influenced by them began to appear one after another, adopting coined words as their band names.
For example, Led Zeppelin is a play on the phrase “going like a lead zeppelin,” an idiom meaning to flop.
And this name isthe important meaning that the band name was made easier to rememberhad.
This is because, until then, most bands had one lead vocalist with the rest serving as a backing band.
Therefore, inevitably, the band name ended up being a long one like Buddy Holly & the Crickets.
However, this way, it's hard to get people to remember the band name.
A single, simple name like “the Beatles” was very easy to remember.
And, as another important meaning, as they were later called the FAB4 (meaning the 'Fabulous Four'),The Beatles don't have a single main member; all of them make up the band as a team.They made it clear to the people of the world that this was indeed the case.