George Harrison: Years later, I found out they [Decca] had signed Brian Poole and the Tremeloes instead. The head of Decca, Dick Rowe, made a canny prediction: 'Guitar groups are on the way out, Mr. Epstein.'
"Brian Epstein said, ‘Look, if you really want to get in these bigger places, you’re going to have to change-stop eating on stage, stop swearing, stop smoking…’
He wasn’t trying to clean our image up: he said our look wasn’t right, we’d never get past the door at a good place. We used to dress how we liked, on and off stage. He’d tell us that jeans were not particularly smart and we could possibly manage to wear proper trousers, but he didn’t want want us suddenly looking square. He let us have our own sense of individuality." - John Lennon (The Beatles Anthology)
"At that age we were very impressed by anyone in a suit or with a car. And Brian was impressed with us; he liked our sense of humor and our music and he liked our look-black leather." - Paul McCartney (The Beatles Anthology)
"On Saturday 28th October 1961, I was asked by a young boy for a record by a group called The Beatles. It had always been our policy in records to look after whatever request was made. I wrote on a pad: ‘My Bonnie. The Beatles. Check Monday.’" - Brian Epstein (The Beatles Anthology)
"He [Jurgen] had his hair Mod-style. We said, ‘Would you do our hair like yours? We’re on holiday-what the hell! We’re buying capes and pantaloons, throwing caution to the wind. He said, ‘No, boys, no. I like you as Rocker; you look great.’ But we begged him enough so he said ‘all right.’ He didn’t do it quite the same as his.
His was actually more coming over to one side. A kind of long-haired Hitler thing, and we’d wanted that, so it was really a bit of an accident. We sat down in his hotel and he just got it-the ‘Beatle’ cut!" - Paul McCartney (The Beatles Anthology)
"Paul bought me a hamburger to celebrate [my twenty-first birthday].
I wasn’t too keen on reaching twenty-one. I remember one relative saying to me, ‘From now on, it’s all downhill,’ and I really got a shock. She told me how my skin would be getting older and that kind of jazz.
Paul and I set off on a hitchhike to Paris. Well, it was going to be a hitchhike but we ended up taking the train all the way-sheer laziness. We’d got fed up. WE did have bookings, but we just broke them and went off." - John Lennon (the Beatles Anthology)
"John and I went on a trip for his twenty-first birthday. John was from a very middle class family, which really impressed me because everyone else was from working-class families. To us John was upper class. His relatives were teachers, dentists, even someone up in Edinburgh in the BBC. It’s ironic, he was always very ‘fuck you!’ and he wrote the song ‘Working Class Hero’-in fact, he wasn’t at all working class. Anyway, one of John’s relatives gave him 100 quid for his birthday. A hundred smackers in your hand! That was a real windfall. None of us could believe it. To this day if you gave me 100 quid I would be impressed. And I was his mate, enough said? ‘Let’s go on holiday.’-‘You mean me too? With the hundred quid? Great! I’m a part of this windfall.’" - Paul McCartney (The Beatles Anthology)
"I was twenty-one/twenty-two before The Beatles ever made it in any way. And even then that voice in me was saying, ‘Look, you’re too old.’ Before we’d even made a record I was thinking, ‘You’re too old,’ that I’d missed the boat, and that you’d got to be seventeen-a lot of stars in America were kids. They were much younger than I was, or Ringo." - John Lennon (The Beatles Anthology)
"I really got lumbered with bass. Nobody actually wanted to play bass, that’s why Stuart was playing it. We all wanted really to be guitarists, and we were three guitar players to start off with." - Paul McCartney (The Beatles Anthology)
