Interesting stories from the life of The Beatles and the band members
Содержание
The Beatles are an iconic rock band from Liverpool, whose legends continue to be told to this day! Sometimes the stories surrounding this great foursome go over the top... Alien encounters, McCartney's switch, satanic curses... It's all just out of your head! Especially if we consider the fact that we are not talking about Black Sabbath or Deep Purple... However, all these stories have a right to exist. Let's remember the most interesting and rare (i.e. the ones that few people know about) of them...
John Lennon may have fallen victim to the Rosemary's Baby curse.
"Rosemary's Baby" is a 1968 American psychological thriller by Roman Polanski, who catapulted to fame with his horror film classics... The Manson Family murders were committed in a house rented by the scandalous director. And Sharon Tate, one of the victims and Polanski's wife, was nine months pregnant when she was killed... It feels as if her husband's recent film has cast a curse that has ruined the lives of many people not even connected to the film....
John Lennon was friends with both Polanski and Mia Farrow, the star of the film. And he and Yoko Ono lived for many years at the Dakota Hotel, where Rosemary's Baby was filmed (although it was called Bramford in the film). The gothic building, built in the 1880s, was perfect for the brooding, oppressive and sinister mood of a film about Satanists. And the fictional evil of the film seems to have been reflected back to it in reality. The Dakota Hotel is also where John Lennon was left by Mark Chapman in 1980. Chapman certainly wasn't "inspired" by the film (the perpetrator was driven by the novel "Over the Rye"), but perhaps it was the evil of the film's curse that prompted him to kill Lennon at this particular location....
"The White Album" inspired Charles Manson's misdemeanours
The friendship between John Lennon and Roman Polanski was not the only connection between the Beatles and Charles Manson, the American criminal whose gang, who committed a series of brutal murders, killed the film director's pregnant wife, the actress Sharon Tate. It's hard to believe, but the Beatles' music, specifically their White Album, was an intricate part of Manson's unusual theology: he saw the Liverpudlians as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. So... The Beatles inspired good things as well as atrocities.....
"Sergeant Pepper" was inspired by Aleister Crowley.
For decades, there have been rumours that "Sgt Pepper" was inspired by Aleister Crowley - the so-called "most evil man in the world". The Beatles featured Crowley's face among the famous people they admired on the album cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (the black magician is in the top left corner in the back row, next to Mae West). The album itself was released 20 years after Crowley's passing... Thus, the Beatles open the album by saying, "It was 20 years ago, Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play..." In effect, the Beatles are declaring their allegiance to Crowley's occult and spiritual teachings.
John Lennon himself largely acknowledged this in one of his last interviews:
"The whole idea of The Beatles was to do what you want to do, right? To take responsibility, do what you want to do, and try not to hurt other people, right? Do what you want as long as it doesn't hurt anybody..."
"Do what you will-that is the whole Law," Crowley taught.
"Evil dentist" tricked The Beatles into tasting acid
"The Beatles had less luck with their dentist... They had a real maniac, if this story is to be believed! John Riley was apparently the kind of guy who would put acid in his guests' coffee after dinner - without telling them. George Harrison once called him "The Evil Dentist", and it's not hard to see why.
Rumour has it that Paul McCartney has been replaced by a lookalike
Many fans speculate that John Lennon said for a reason: "I buried Paul" at the end of Strawberry Fields Forever. However, Lennon claimed that the lyrics were actually "cranberry sauce". For decades there have been persistent rumours that Paul McCartney died in a car crash in 1966 and was replaced by a lookalike named William Campbell, an orphan who had recently won a McCartney lookalike contest in Edinburgh. And allegedly the Beatles began planting subtle hints of the truth in their music and album artwork to gradually bring the news to true fans. So, for example, speaking of the Abbey Road album: John Lennon leads the band in all white, like a priest, while Paul is completely barefoot and... in a suit. Ringo is dressed in a black, mourning suit, and George Harrison looks more like an undertaker.
In doing so, Paul holds a cigarette in his right hand, even though he is left-handed... And the song "Revolution 9" from the White Album supposedly has a disguised message that says, "Start me up, dead man".
The Beatles may have attended illegal parties.
Jimmy Savile, former host of the long-running show Top of the Pops, was also one of Britain's most prolific paedophiles. According to a National Health Service investigation, Savile harmed at least 500 children... Back in the early '60s, he frequented a brothel with an unnamed "pop group" who were also suspected of abusing young girls... Police reports do not mention the pop group, but some have suggested the Beatles were to blame. In the Beatles' defence, the evidence against them is circumstantial at best, and they themselves were little more than teenagers at the time. For his part, Paul McCartney says that he and the other Beatles always considered Savile "a bit suspicious" because of his odd behaviour. But McCartney also adds:
"It was a much more open scene... Free love, and the pill had just arrived... So it was a completely different scene. The other aspect, of course, is that we were the age of the girls, everyone was young. So, if you're now talking about a 17, 18-year-old boy with a 15-year-old girl, we all knew it was illegal. We knew that, and we said, "NO." But the closer we got in age, the less it seemed to matter..."
McCartney insists they have been as careful as possible to avoid inappropriate contact with underage girls, but dubious rumours still exist.
John Lennon was haunted by the number nine
The number nine fascinated and frightened John Lennon. It kept appearing in his life during significant events, and he in turn used it to write numerous songs. According to numerology, "Nines can come across as self-centred, arrogant, self-pitying, sentimental, disgruntled, fickle, cold or mentally unstable." And seriously, the number of random nines in John Lennon's life is truly staggering, and it's enough to make even someone who is adept at mathematical analysis take another look at numerology.
John Lennon was abusive to those around him
John Lennon loved to talk publicly about peace and love, but behind closed doors he was said to have physically and emotionally harmed his family... In later years, Lennon admitted as much to himself, claiming that this was the reason he was so drawn to the concepts of peace and universal brotherhood. These were things he aspired to, not, he claimed, the epitome of.
Here are some of the things John Lennon did because of his temper (It is quite possible that this is false. All facts have been given by various sources):
He physically harmed and emotionally manipulated his first wife Cynthia and their son Julian.
He caused serious physical harm to his son Sean: damaging the boy's hearing.
John Lennon had two encounters with aliens.
On two different occasions, John Lennon claimed to have encountered aliens. The first occurred on 23 August 1974. John woke up one night completely sober, feeling the need to go to the window of his flat. There he saw a flying saucer hovering "no more than 100 feet" from him. Pictures were taken, but there was nothing on them... It seems that the aliens were not satisfied with this flight, because a short time later they came to see John in person.
Lennon claimed that he was visited by sinister aliens one night in New York City. John was awakened during the night by a "blazing light" at his bedroom door, and when he went to open it, he found four small aliens waiting for him. He tried to chase them away, but they blocked him with their minds and stunned him.
The next thing John remembered was waking up next to Yoko with a strange egg-shaped object in his hands... Apparently some sort of gift from the aliens. He carried this strange object in his pockets for several months, after which he gave the egg to his friend Geller. By the way: it was Uri Geller who told the media this story, which he may well have made up.
The Beatles wrote some very dark songs
Don't let the catchy pop chords fool you. In the lyrics of many of The Beatles songs, they have gone to some really dark places... Mostly these places involve murder and aggression towards women, with even one hint of bestiality. These themes seem to have mostly come from John Lennon, who was not the peace-loving hippie he was portrayed to be. Consider, for example, the lines from "Getting Better":
"I used to be violent with my woman.
I beat her up and kept her away from the things she loved
Man I've been mean, but I'm changing my scene.
And I'm doing the best I can..."
But it gets even worse when you think of "Maxwell's Silver Hammer": the whole song is a tribute to a killer who pummels people's skulls with his hammer. And, unlike "Getting Better", there's no hint of remorse here:
"Bang Bang, Maxwell's silver hammer.
Hit her right on the head
Bang Bang, Maxwell's silver hammer.
Made sure she was dead..."
The lyrics of "Dig a Pony" and "Run for your life" are equally dark. And that's it!