Category Archives: the Beatles

by jfwknifton | November 29, 2023 · 6:17 am

An impossible Beatles Quiz (3….the Answers)

And the answers to Quiz No 3. I have amazed myself by how often I have picked my own favourite songs to quiz you about.

1 You say yes, I say no, you say stop and I say go go go but what do you say?

Well, here are the lyrics and the answer is clearly “goodbye” :

“You say yes, I say no

You say stop and I say go go go, oh no

You say goodbye and I say hello

Hello hello
I don’t know why you say goodbye, I say hello
Hello hello
I don’t know why you say goodbye, I say hello“

And the song, of course, is “Hello, Goodbye”

The two biggest clues are the words “Hello, goodbye”, because the answer is “Hello Goodbye”

2A & 2B A two part question as this song has already been featured in Quiz No 2. Allegedly, Diane Ashley came in through the bathroom window, protected by a silver spoon, but (A) how many clubs a day did she work in, and (B) what could she do and what could she not do?

Firstly, 2(A) :

She said she’d always been a dancer
She worked at fifteen clubs a day
And though she thought I knew the answer
Well, I knew what I could not say

And then, the Hamlet question 2(B)………..

And so I quit the police department
And got myself a steady job
And though she tried her best to help me
She could steal, but she could not rob

And so, like so many people, fortunately for the rest of us, she could steal, but she could not rob.

3 Jo jo was a man who thought he was a loner? But where did he live initially and where did he move to ?

Jo Jo was a man who thought he was a loner
But he knew it couldn’t last
Jo Jo left his home in Tucson, Arizona
For some California grass

Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Get back Jo Jo
Go home

Not too difficult. He lived in Tucson, Arizona and then he moved to a patch of nice green grass in California.

The group played this song, and others, in their last ever rooftop concert:

4 What’s it like in an Octopus’s Garden?

Well, there are quite a few details:

in the shade      We would be warm below the storm      Our little hideaway beneath the waves          near a cave

we can’t be found        We would shout and swim about       What joy for every girl and boy

they’re happy and they’re safe

so happy you and me           No one there to tell us what to do

A lovely song from Ringo Starr.

5 In the song “Across the Universe” what are the thoughts meandering like?

In a magnificent poem:

“Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup
They slither while they pass, they slip away across the universe
Pools of sorrow waves of joy are drifting through my opened mind
Possessing and caressing me”

This is a song that was recorded in early 1968 and first released on a World Wildlife Fund album the following year.

6 Day after day, alone on his hill, what is the man with the foolish grin doing?

He’s a very busy man:

The man with the foolish grin is keeping perfectly still he never gives an answer Sees the sun going down

the eyes in his head See the world spinning ’round The man of a thousand voices talking perfectly loud

he never shows his feelings He never listens to them He knows that they’re the fools

7 Monday’s child, what has he learned to do?

Huge clue from the picture and “Lady Madonna”

“Friday night arrives without a suitcase
Sunday morning creeping like a nun
Monday’s child has learned to tie his bootlace
See how they run”

8 What is all you need?

If you’re a Beatles fan, you shouldn’t need a song to know this. You should know it already.

All you need is love
All you need is love
All you need is love, love
Love is all you need

Love, love, love
Love, love, love
Love, love, love

9 Who always cooked breakfast for the Queen?

Back to my favourite Beatles song:

“The king of Marigold was in the kitchen
Cooking breakfast for the queen
The queen was in the parlour
Playing piano for the children of the king”

Full English, of course:

10 Who was screaming from the gallery?

Easy, peasy, although I couldn’t persuade both Rose and Valerie to appear together. Anyway here’s Rose:

And here’s Valerie in one of her quieter moments:

And here’s the full, sordid, story

P.C. Thirty-One said “We caught a dirty one”
Maxwell stands alone
Painting testimonial pictures ohh oh oh oh
Rose and Valerie screaming from the gallery
Say he must go free (Maxwell must go free)
The judge does not agree and he tells them so oh oh oh
But as the words are leaving his lips
A noise comes from behind

Bang, bang, Maxwell’s silver hammer
Came down upon his head
Do do do do do
Bang, Bang, Maxwell’s silver hammer
Made sure that he was dead

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Tagged as Across the Universe, All you need is love, Arizona, Diane Ashley, fifteen clubs a day, Goodbye, Hello, Jo jo, Lady Madonna, like endless rain into a paper cup, Maxwell Edison, Maxwell's silver hammer, Octopus's Garden, P.C. Thirty-One, protected by a silver spoon, Ringo Starr, Rose, Rose and Valerie, screaming from the gallery, Sergeant Pepper, some California grass, The king of Marigold, Tucson, Valerie, World Wildlife Fund, You say goodbye and I say hello

by jfwknifton | November 23, 2023 · 6:17 am

An impossible Beatles Quiz (3….the Questions)

Hello there again, sad children of the sixties! I’d like to cheer you up with the third of a my series of four Beatles quizzes. The questions all refer to albums, including “Sergeant Pepper” and afterwards. If you want to look up the answers and do it that way, then good for you, but you might enjoy the questions more if you tried to do them yourself without any help from the Internet. I have tried to make the questions doable, but clearly, one or two are meant to be difficult. Incidentally, the questions do not necessarily relate particularly closely to the illustrations, although sometimes the illustrations are a very large clue.

1 You say yes, I say no, you say stop and I say go go go but what do you say?

2 A two part question as this song has already been featured in Quiz No 2. Allegedly, Diane Ashley came in through the bathroom window, protected by a silver spoon, but (A) how many clubs a day did she work in, and (B) what could she do and what could she not do?

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3 Jo jo was a man who thought he was a loner? But where did he live initially and where did he move to ?

4 What would it be like in an Octopus’s Garden??

5 In the song “Across the Universe”, words are flowing out like endless rain into a what?

6 Day after day, alone on his hill, what is the man with the foolish grin doing?

7 Monday’s child, what has he learned to do?

8 What is all you need?

9 Who always cooked breakfast for the Queen?

10 Who was screaming from the gallery?

Answers soon!

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Tagged as Across the Universe, Diane Ashley, Jo jo, Octopus's Garden, protected by a silver spoon, screaming from the gallery, Sergeant Pepper

by jfwknifton | June 17, 2023 · 6:17 am

An impossible Beatles Quiz (1….the Answers)

Hi there! Here are the answers to the first Beatles quiz. To be fair, I think that most of you have worked out what they are, but in the interests of completeness, here they are.

1 Who stands in front of me in my hour of darkness?

When I find myself in times of trouble
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom
Let it be

And in my hour of darkness
She is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom
Let it be

2 Who will never walk down Lime Street any more?

Oh dirty Maggie Mae they have taken her away
And she’ll never walk down Lime Street any more
Oh, the judge he guilty found her, for robbing a homeward bounder,
That dirty no good robbing Maggie Mae

3 She came in through the bathroom window, but what was her protection?

Well, in the song of that name, “She came in through the bathroom window”………..

She came in through the bathroom window

Protected by a silver spoon

But now she sucks her thumb and wanders

By the banks of her own lagoon

Didn’t anybody tell her?

Didn’t anybody see?

Sunday’s on the phone to Monday

Tuesday’s on the phone to me

Some fans supposedly took a ladder from Paul McCartney’s garden, climbed into his house in London, and stole a precious picture. The internet names the bathroom criminal as Diane Ashley.

4 Who thought she was a cleaner? But what was she really?

The answer/s is/are from “Get Back”. …….

Sweet Loretta Fart. She thought she was a cleaner
Sweet Rosetta Martin
But she was a frying pan.

Alternatively………

Sweet Loretta Martin thought she was a woman
But she was another man

Either answer is fine. Both answers and you have won a holiday in Liverpool.

This picture shows all the usual accoutrements of a kitchen except the frying pan. I told you the quiz would be difficult.

5 In “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill”, who did the the all American bullet-headed Saxon mother’s son take with him when he went out tiger hunting with his elephant and gun?

What did you kill, Bungalow Bill?

He went out tiger hunting with his elephant and gun
In case of accidents he always took his mum
He’s the all American bullet-headed Saxon mother’s son

6 With whom does Paul McCartney spend his days in conversation?

Martha my dear though I spend my days in conversation
Please
Remember me Martha my love
Don’t forget me Martha my dear

Hold your head up you silly girl look what you’ve done
When you find yourself in the thick of it
Help yourself to a bit of what is all around you
Silly girl

Take a good look around you
Take a good look you’re bound to see
That you and me were meant to be for each other
Silly girl

The photograph was a clue to an even greater truth. Yes, the song is about a girl, but it was inspired by “Martha” (1966-1982), Paul McCartney’s pet Old English sheepdog.

7 What is happiness?

Not, as Ken Dodd sang, “the only gift that I possess”, but a warm gun……..

Happiness is a warm gun (Happiness bang, bang, shoot, shoot)
Happiness is a warm gun, mama (Happiness bang, bang, shoot, shoot)
When I hold you in my arms (Oo-oo oh yeah)
And I feel my finger on your trigger (Oo-oo oh yeah)
I know nobody can do me no harm (Oo-oo oh yeah)

“Happiness is a warm gun” was the slogan of the National Rifle Association. John Lennon saw an article in a gun magazine in Texas with this phrase.

The picture-clue shows a Mother Superior because the chorus…………

Mother Superior jump the gun
Mother Superior jump the gun
Mother Superior jump the gun
Mother Superior jump the gun
Mother Superior jump the gun
Mother Superior jump the gun

….is a very dominant part of the song.

“Mother Superior” was one of the names that John Lennon used with Yoko Ono and “jump the gun” was possibly a sexual metaphor. Anyway, here’s a warm gun. And he looks about as happy as you can get :

8 Now, a question about the girl of his fancy. What was her surname, what did she call herself and what did everyone know her as?

It all comes,of ourse, fom the song entitled “Rocky Raccoon”………

His rival, it seems, had broken his dreams
By stealing the girl of his fancy
Her name was Magill, and she called herself Lil
But everyone knew her as Nancy

Now she and her man, who called himself Dan
Were in the next room at the hoedown
Rocky burst in, and grinning a grin
He said, “Danny boy, this is a showdown”

But Daniel was hot, he drew first and shot
And Rocky collapsed in the corner, ah

D’da d’da d’da da da da
D’da d’da d’da da da da
D’da d’da d’da da d’da d’da d’da d’da
Do do do do do do

The clue to the song title was in the picture:

9 How many holes in Blackburn, Lancashire?

Well, according to the song, “A Day in the Life”……….

“I read the ews today, oh boy
Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire
And though the holes were rather small
They had to count them all
Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall

I’d love to turn you on”

This particular song was contained a series of images that had all been on John Lennon’s mind. He said:

“I was reading the paper one day and noticed two stories. One was about the Guinness heir who killed himself in a car. That was the main headline story. He died in London in a car crash. On the next page was a story about four thousand potholes in the streets of Blackburn, Lancashire, that needed to be filled.”

10 Who made a fool of everyone ? Why did we give her everything we owned?

Two answers. The first one, from the White Album song of the same name:

“Sexy Sadie what have you done
You made a fool of everyone“

And here’s the answer to “Why did we give her everything we owned?” :

“We gave her everything we owned just to sit at her table
Just a smile would lighten everything
Sexy Sadie she’s the latest and the greatest of them all”

There’s a fairly complex explanation of who Sexy Sadie was at this website

The Beatles had been in India with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Lennon’s friend Alexis Mardas, aka “Magic Alex” arrived. He had been Lennon’s guru and he started a rumour to discredit the Maharishi. He alleged that the latter had made sexual advances to one of the women who was there. Hence Lennon came up with the line which was originally “‘Maharishi, what have you done? You made a fool of everyone.”

Any score at all in this pesky quiz is an excellent achievement.

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Tagged as a warm gun, all American bullet-headed Saxon mother's son, Blackburn Lancashire, Bungalow Bill, dirty Maggie Mae, John Lennon, Lil, Lime Street, Maggie Mae, Magill, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Martha, Mother Mary, Mother Superior, Nancy, Old English sheepdog, Paul McCartney, Sergeant Pepper, Sexy Sadie, Sweet Loretta Fart, Sweet Rosetta Martin, Yoko Ono

by jfwknifton | June 5, 2023 · 6:17 am

An impossible Beatles Quiz (1….the Questions)

Hello there, sad children of the sixties!

I’d like to cheer you up with another quiz in my series of Beatles quizzes. The answers will be published in another blog post in a few days’ time.

The questions all refer to albums, including “Sergeant Pepper” and those coming after that. If you want to look up the answers on Google and do it that way, then good for you, but you might enjoy the questions more if you tried to do them yourself without any help from the Internet. I have tried to make the questions doable, but clearly, one or two are meant to be difficult. Incidentally, the questions do not necessarily relate 100% to the illustrations, although the illustrations are meant to be a very large clue to the correct answers. On the other hand, the answer to Question 1 is not “A bald man with a tattooed head”

1 Who stands in front of me in my hour of darkness?

2 Who will never walk down Lime Street any more?

3 She came in through the bathroom window, but what was her protection?

4 She thought she was a cleaner, but what was she really? And what was her polite name?

5 Who did the “all American bullet-headed Saxon mother’s son” take with him when he went out tiger hunting with his elephant and gun?

6 With whom does he spend his days in conversation?

7 What is happiness ?

8 Now, a question about the girl of his fancy. What was her surname, what did she call herself and what did everyone know her as?

9 How many holes in Blackburn Lancashire?

10 Who made a fool of everyone ? And why did we give her everything we owned?

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Tagged as all American bullet-headed Saxon mother's son, Lime Street, Sergeant Pepper

by jfwknifton | July 2, 2022 · 6:17 am

An impossible Beatles Quiz (2….the Answers)

I know that a lot of you have already offered me your answers to this quiz and I have checked them and told you your scores. Anyway, for the benefit of Mr Kite and anybody else who doesn’t yet know whether their answers were right or wrong, here are the answers to my second even more difficult Beatles quiz. Hopefully, you didn’t do the quiz by writing “Dunno” ten times. Or:

“Dunno”, “Dunno”, “Dunno”, “Dunno”, “Dunno”,

“Dunno”, “Dunno”, “Dunno”, “Dunno”, “Dunno”.

As in the first quiz, all of the questions and answers involved Sergeant Pepper and the other LPs after this.

1 Who had a silver hammer?

One of the comparatively few Beatles songs about a serial killer:

“….Maxwell Edison majoring in medicine
Calls her on the phone
Can I take you out to the pictures, Joan?
But as she’s getting ready to go
A knock comes on the door

Bang, bang, Maxwell’s silver hammer
Came down upon her head
Bang, bang, Maxwell’s silver hammer
Made sure that she was dead.”

Your clue was about coffee. What brand of coffee is it in the picture ?

Maxwell House, of course. No marks for anybody who thought it was either “Nescafé’s Silver Hammer” or “House’s Silver Hammer”.

2 Who always arrived late for tea?

This is a humdinger of a question, though I say so myself. In the song “Cry baby, cry” on the White Album, the song suddenly includes various verses from the Beatles version of “Sing a Song of Sixpence”, which is one of the many traditional English nursery rhymes:

“Cry baby cry
Make your mother sigh
She’s old enough to know better
So cry baby cry

The Duchess of Kirkcaldy always smiling
And arriving late for tea
The Duke was having problems
With a message at the local bird and bee”.

Kirkcaldy is a town in Scotland, and the home of Raith Rovers Football Club.

The photograph provides an easy answer. Look at the name of the pub:

3 Which fairground attraction gives its name to a Beatles song?

Well, as everybody knows except Charles Manson, it’s a helter skelter, as we English call it:

When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide
Where I stop and I turn and I go for a ride
Till I get to the bottom and I see you again

Charles Manson didn’t know what a “helter skelter” was, and interpreted it differently. Paul McCartney explained:

“Charles Manson interpreted that ‘Helter Skelter’ was something to do with the four horsemen of the Apocalypse….. It’s from the Bible, Revelation . Manson interpreted the whole thing – that the Beatles were the four horsemen, ‘Helter Skelter’ was the song – and he arrived at having to go out and kill everyone.”

4 What was the name of the lovely meter maid?

In the song her name is Rita:

“Took her out and tried to win her
Had a laugh and over dinner
Told her I would really like to see her again
Got the bill and Rita paid it
Took her home I nearly made it
Sitting on the sofa with a sister or two
Oh, lovely Rita meter maid
Where would I be without you?
Give us a wink and make me think of you
Lovely Rita meter maid, Rita meter maid“

5 What was anybody doing in “Penny Lane?

There are so many that you could make it up and probably get it right! Here’s a list:

“a barber showing photographs             all the people stop and say hello

(a banker with a motorcar) the little children laugh at him behind his back

I sit                      a fireman with an hourglass he likes to keep his fire engine clean

the pretty nurse is selling poppies from a tray                               she feels as if she’s in a play

the barber shaves another customer      we see the banker sitting waiting for a trim        the fireman rushes in”

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6 She was a working girl, north of England way. But what happened to her?

Well, success on a fabulous scale:

“She was a working girl

North of England way

Now she’s hit the big time

In the U.S.A.“

7 What had the crabalocker fishwife pornographic priestess done to be such a naughty girl ?

She had been so bad, in actual fact, that the song was banned immediately from the BBC.

“Yellow matter custard
Dripping from a dead dog’s eye
Crabalocker fishwife pornographic priestess
Boy you been a naughty girl
You let your knickers down I am the eggman
They are the eggmen
I am the walrus
Goo goo g’ joob”

And here again are the said knickers:

Apparently the BBC did not allow any reference on air to sex, body parts south of the navel, underwear in the same location and so on. For the BBC censor, the mere use of the word “knickers” was enough to condemn the song into the fires of hell. Implied drug use saw off a further two Beatles songs, another was banned for mentioning suicide, and the final one was banned twenty years after it was released for political reasons.

8 Who has a barrow in the market place and what did Molly do?

Well, in “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” :

“Desmond has a barrow in the market place”

and Molly gets up to quite a lot. Any one of :

“Molly is the singer in a band                         Molly says “I like your face” as she takes him by the hand

she begins to sing                       Molly stays at home and does her pretty face

in the evening she still sings with the band

happy ever after in the market place                  Molly lets the children lend a hand*

The picture, by the way, refers to the fact that a group, called “Marmalade”, released this song as their own single.

9 Which two other colours are mentioned in “Yellow Submarine” as well as yellow?

Take your pick:

White, red, brown, blue and possibly purple. That’s about it for me.

And the origin of the song? Well, Paul explained:

“in that moment before you’re falling asleep – that little twilight moment when a silly idea comes into your head – and thinking of ‘Yellow Submarine’. ‘We all live in a yellow submarine…”

One Spanish soccer team is nicknamed “The Yellow Submarine”. An explanation here…..

10 “Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly.” Who is it?”

Well the song begins with the answer:

“Picture yourself in a boat on a river
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies
Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly
A girl with kaleidoscope eyes”

The song is, of course, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”. Its origin is:

Either

John Lennon’s son, Julian, comes h0me with a picture and tells his Dad, “It’s about “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”.

Lysergic acid diethylamide

It’s taken from Alice in Wonderland when Alice is in the boat. Lewis Carroll was a hard core user of Lysergic acid diethylamide, of course.

“It’s the image of this female who would come and save me – this secret love that was going to come one day. So it turned out to be Yoko, though, and I hadn’t met Yoko then. But she was my imaginary girl that we all have.” (John Lennon)

Supposedly, we even know the identity of “Lucy”.

“She was Lucy O’Donnell, and she was a fellow pupil at Heath House, a nursery school, with Julian Lennon. She only found out she was in a Beatles song when she was 13, in 1976.”

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Tagged as a barrow in the market place, a dead dog's eye, a working girl, Alice in Wonderland, Charles Manson, crabalocker fishwife pornographic priestess, Desmond, Duchess of Kircaldy, eggman, Goo goo g' joob", Heath House, helter skelter, I am the walrus, Julian, knickers, lovely meter maid, lovely Rita meter maid, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, Lucy O’Donnell, Lysergic acid diethylamide, Marmalade, Maxwell Edison, Molly, Ob-La-Da, Ob-La-Di, Paul McCartney, Penny Lane, Raith Rovers Football Club, Rita, Sergeant Pepper, silver hammer, Sing a Song of Sixpence, t he Apocalypse, the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, Walrus, White Album, Yellow matter custard, Yellow Submarine, Yoko Ono

by jfwknifton | June 22, 2022 · 6:17 am

Another impossible Beatles Quiz (2….the Questions)

Hello there again, sad children of the sixties! I’d like to cheer you up with the second of a series of four Beatles quizzes. The questions all refer to albums, including “Sergeant Pepper” and afterwards. If you want to look up the answers and do it that way, then good for you, but you might enjoy the questions more if you tried to do them yourself without any help from the Internet. I have tried to make the questions doable, but clearly, one or two are meant to be difficult. Incidentally, the questions do not necessarily relate to the illustrations, although sometimes the illustrations are a very large clue.

1 Who had a silver hammer?

2 And the most difficult question of the lot, who always arrived late for tea? Mind you, the answer is staring you in the face!

3 Which fairground attraction gives its name to a Beatles song?