Beatles, The

John: "When I was a Beatle, I thought we were the best group in the world, and believing that was what made us what we were."

John: "When I look back on it, it's vaguely astounding, the fact that I was in it. We always called it 'the eye of the hurricane.' It was calmer right in the middle than on the peripheries."

Ringo: "There were a lot of high points; one time when we played a gig in Glasgow - there was this communication going on, with the band and with the audience. That would have been 1963 or '64. There were some dates we did, some gigs when it was magical, and there were some gigs in the studio - some playing and some non-playing. All the albums have great moments. There was so much good music. I was always (and still am to this day) really interested and excited about being in a band, and what a band does."

John: "In spite of all things, The Beatles really could play music together, if they're not uptight. And if I get a thing going, Ringo knows where to go, just like that, and he does well. We've played together so long that it fits. The thing that I sometimes miss is being able to just blink or make a certain noise and to know they'll all know where we are going on an ad lib thing."

Paul: "I'm really glad that most of the songs dealt with love, peace, understanding. There's hardly any one of them that says, 'Go on, kids, tell them all to sod off. Leave your parents.' It's all very 'All You Need is Love' or John's 'Give Peace a Chance.' There was a good spirit behind it all, which I'm very proud of."

George: "The Beatles somehow reached more people, more nationalities, more parts that other bands couldn't reach. I think we gave hope to Beatle fans. We gave them a positive feeling that there was a sunny day ahead and that there was a good time to be had and that you are your own person and that the government doesn't own you. There were those kind of messages in a lot of our songs."

Paul: "I think we gave some sort of freedom to the world. I meet a lot of people now who say The Beatles freed them up. If you think about it, the world was slightly more of an upper-class place till The Beatles came along. Regional actors had to have also a very good Shakespearean voice, and then it started to be enough just to have your own accent, your own truth. I think we set free a lot of people who were blinkered, who were perhaps starting to live life along their parents' authoritarian lines."

Brian Epstein

Ringo: "We loved Brian. He was a generous man. We owe so much to him. We have come a long way with Brian along the same road."

George: "He dedicated so much of his life to The Beatles. We liked and loved him. He was one of us. There is no such thing as death. It is a comfort to us all to know that he is OK."

John: "Brian had hellish tempers and fits and 'lock-outs,' when he'd vanish for days. He would just flip out. We weren't too aware of it. It was later one we started finding out about those things. He'd come to a crisis now and then, and the whole business would stop because he'd been on sleeping pills for days on end, and wouldn't be awake for days. Or beaten up by some docker on the Old Kent Road. Suddenly the whole business would stop because Brian would be missing."

Paul: "Brian would be really happy to hear how much we loved him."

John: "Brian has died only in body, and his spirit will always be working with us. His power and force were everything, and his power and his force will linger on. When we were on the right track he knew it, and when we were on the wrong track he told us so - and he was usually right. But anyway, he isn't really dead."

George: "Brian was not on the same kind of journey that we were on. He was, up to a point, but he had his own set of karma that he had to work out, and it was as if we were the vehicle by which he could do what he wanted."

Paul: "It's a misconception that Brian and I put The Beatles in suits - we all showed up happily at the tailor's. And the haircut was me and John together in Paris."

Paul: "As for Brian's homosexuality, we were very innocent and I think Brian could see that, so he never hit on me at all: there was never any question of it. We would go to clubs and pubs that were open late, and looking back on it, they must have been gay clubs because there were friends of Brian's there that I knew later to be gay friends of his. But he wasn't overtly gay; he was rather macho, and his friends were just nice guys. I don't think any of us knew about the gay world."

Ringo: "You could trust Brian. He was a lot of fun, and he really knew his records, like the guy in the movie Diner. We used to have a game with Brian where we'd say to him, 'OK, "C'mon Everybody," what's the B-side?' And he'd tell us. So we'd say, 'What number did it reach?' and he'd know. It was thrilling."

Brian Epstein: "One did everything. One worked very hard. One shouted from the rooftops about the group when there was no enthusiasm for groups. People thought you were mad, but you went on shouting."

First Visit to America

Brian Epstein: "We knew that America would make us or break us as world stars. In fact, she made us."

Ringo: "It was so exciting. On the plane, flying to the airport, I felt as though there was a big octopus with tentacles that were grabbing the plane and dragging us down into New York. America was the best. I loved it. The radio was hip and bopping; the TV was on; we were going to clubs. And they loved Ringo over there. That's why it was so great for me, because when we got to America it wasn't 'John, Paul, George, and Ringo'; half the time it was 'Ringo, Paul, George, and John,' or whatever. Suddenly it was equal."

George: "I'd been to America before, being the experienced Beatle that I was. I went to New York and St. Louis in 1963 to look around and to the countryside in Illinois, where my sister was living at the time. I went to record stores. I bought Booker T and the MGs' first album, Green Onions, and I bought some Bobby Bland, all kind of things."

Paul: "There were millions of kids at the airport, which nobody had expected. We heard about it in mid-air. There were journalists on the plane, and the pilot had rang ahead and said, 'Tell the boys there's a big crowd waiting for them.' We thought, 'Wow! God, we have really made it.'"

John: "We didn't think we stood a chance. When we came over the first time, we were only coming to buy LPs. I know our manager had plans for Ed Sullivan shows, but we thought at least we could hear the sounds when we came over. It was just out of the dark. That's the truth; it was so out of the dark, we were knocked out."

George: "We were aware that Ed Sullivan was the big one because we got a telegram from Elvis and the Colonel. And I've heard that while the show was on, there were no reported crimes, or very few. When The Beatles were on Ed Sullivan, even the criminals had a rest for ten minutes."

Ringo: "I sparred with Cassius Clay, as he was called then - I taught him everything he knew. That was a thrill, of course, and I was putting my money on Liston, so I really knew what was happening!"

George: "I didn't think beyond the moment during that US trip. I wasn't really aware of any change-over in our fame. I don't think I looked to the future much. I thought, 'We'll enjoy what's happening and go out there and do our thing.'"

Hamburg

John: "I grew up in Hamburg, not Liverpool."

Paul: "I was still at school at the time of the Hamburg offer, hanging on, trying to take exams. I didn't want to leave because I didn't want to put my life in a pigeonhole quite yet. I thought I might become a teacher - it was about all I could qualify for with a decent salary - but I was scared to solidify my life in a block of cement."

Paul: "We lived backstage in the Bambi Kino, next to the toilets, and you could always smell them. The room had been an old storeroom, and there were just concrete walls and nothing else. No heat, no wallpaper, not a lick of paint, and two sets of bunk beds, like little camp beds, with not very many covers. We were frozen."

George: "I never used to shower. There was a washbasin in the lavatory at the Bambi Kino, but there was a limit as to how much of yourself you could wash in it. We could clean our teeth or have a shave, but not much else. I remember once going up to the public baths, but that was quite a long way from the Bambi Kino. Later on, maybe the third time we visited Hamburg, we'd go to Astrid Kirchherr's to wash. I don't think we bathed or showered at all when we were first there, probably not even the second time."

George: "We were at the Indra for about a month, and then the club shut down and we moved into the Kaiserkeller, where Derry and the Seniors were. It was right at the time they were leaving. They'd finished their two months and Rory Storm and the Hurricanes were coming out. The Kaiserkeller was great - at least it had a dance floor. And all the tables and chairs were located inside pieces of ship. The tables were barrels and there were ropes and nautical things around."

Hard Day's Night, A (Film)

Ringo: "A Hard Day's Night was like a day in the life, or, really, two days and two nights of our life. We'd go to the recording studio, then go to the TV studio; all the things that happened to us were put in."

Paul: "We got on a train at Marylebone Station one day and the train took off - and suddenly we were in a film! And in the film there were little schoolgirls in gym-slips, who were actually models, and we were quite fascinated with them - George even married one: Pattie Boyd."

John: "The train bit embarrasses us now. I'm sure it's less noticeable to people watching in the cinema, but we know that we're dead conscious in every move we make, we watch each other. Paul's embarrassed when I'm watching him speak and he knows I am. You can see the nervous bits normally in pictures: like the end - you make that on one day, and on the next day you do the beginning. But we did it almost in sequence. The first [scene] we did was the train, which we were all dead nervous in. Practically the whole of the train bit we were going to pieces."

Ringo: "Most of it was scripted. What we did lose was the ends of scenes, because they'd put the four of us in a room and we'd all go off in different directions. We'd make things up because of our being comfortable with each other. And the problem with Wilfrid Brambell, a fabulous actor, was that once the scene had finished he just stopped. It looked stupid with the rest of us going, 'Blah de blah, yeah, and another thing...' while, as a professional, he was having nothing to do with it."

George: "There were some things that we made up as we went along (although I must say they don't look very spontaneous) - for example, the press conference scene. We made up a lot of answers and Dick Lester said, 'Keep that one, use that one.' He was very good like that."

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

George: "Maharishi happened to be having a seminar in Bangor and had said, 'Come tomorrow and I'll show you how to meditate.' So, the next day, we jumped a train and went. Mick Jagger was also there. He was always lurking around in the background, trying to find out what was happening. Mick never wanted to miss out on what the Fabs were doing."

Ringo: "At that time Maureen was in the hospital having Jason, and I was visiting. I came home and put on the answerphone, and there was a message from John: 'Oh, man, we've seen this guy, and we're all going to Wales. You've got to come.' The next message was from George, saying, 'Wow, man, we've seen him. Maharishi's great! We're all going to Wales on Saturday, and you've got to come.'"

John: "Cyn and I were thinking of going to Libya, until this came up. Libya or Bangor? Well, there was no choice, was there?"

Paul: "The seminar was in a school; you sit around and he tells you how to mediate, then you go up to your room and try it. You're sitting there and you've got a mantra, but you keep thinking. 'Bloody hell, that train was a bit much, wasn't it? - oh, sorry - mantra - du du du du du du - bloody hell - I wonder what our next record's going to be? - oh, stop, stop, stop...' You spend all your first few days just trying to stop your mind dealing with your social calendar. But it was good, and I eventually got the hang of it."

Press Conferences

John: "We were funny at press conferences, because it was all a joke. They'd ask joke questions, so you'd give joke answers, but we weren't really funny at all. It was just fifth-form humor, the sort you laugh at at school. The press were putrid. If there were any good questions about our music, we took them seriously. We were nervous, though I don't think people thought so."

George: "We were always saying we should speak out about Vietnam, and I think we did at times. I remember talking to the press all the way 'round the American tours - we used to have them on the plane with us. I would be rabbiting on about everything. But, generally, in the early days there was that concept that pop stars shouldn't rattle their audience; you can't be married; don't let them see your girlfriend - and don't mention the war! Maybe we were naive. Maybe there was a lot of stuff that people weren't ready for..."

George: "We had no reason to be guarded or defensive with the press because we were just having fun and it wasn't any big deal. So, consequently, when The Beatles did a press conference that was part of our charm. We were straightforward, down-to-earth and pretty honest."

Shea Stadium

Ringo: "If you look at the film footage you can see how we reacted to the place. It was very big and very strange. I feel that on that show John cracked up. He went mad, not mentally ill, but he just got crazy. He was playing the piano with his elbows and it was really strange."

Paul: "John was having a good time at Shea. He was into his comedy, which was great. That was one of the great things about John. If there was ever one of those tense shows, which this undoubtedly was, his comedy routines would always come out. He'd start the faces, and the shoulders would start going, and it was very encouraging: 'OK, that's good - at least we're not taking it seriously.' He kept us jolly."

John: "Because I did the organ on 'I'm Down,' I decided to play it on stage for the first time. I really didn't know what to do, because I felt naked without a guitar, so I was doing all Jerry Lee - I was jumping about and I only played about two bars of it."

George: "We went by helicopter, but they wouldn't allow us to drop right into the arena, so we had to land on the roof of the World's Fair. From there we went into the stadium in a Wells Fargo armored truck. When we got into the helicopter at Wall Street, instead of going right to the show the fella start zooming 'round the stadium, saying, 'Look at that. Isn't it great?' And we were hanging on by the skin of our teeth, thinking, 'Let's get out of here!'"

Paul: "Linda was there [at Shea Stadium] - but as she was a real music fan she was quite pissed off with everyone screaming. I think she enjoyed the experience but she genuinely wanted to hear the show. That wasn't the deal, though. Not then."

Ringo: "What I remember most about the concert was that we were so far away from the audience. They were all across the field, all wired in. When I tour now, I like the audience right in my face. I like to have some reaction, something going on together between me and them. It was just very distant at Shea. Sure, we were big-time, and it was the first time we'd played to thousands of people, and we were the first band to do it, but it was totally against what we had started out to achieve, which was to entertain, right there, up close. And screaming had just become the thing to do. We didn't say, 'OK, don't forget, at this concert - everybody scream!' Everybody just screamed."