February

Ringo Marries Maureen Cox

On 11 February a tonsil-less Ringo married Maureen Cox, the Liverpool girlfriend he’d been ‘going steady’ with since the Cavern Club days, at London’s Caxton Hall Registry Office. The ceremony was attended by Mr and Mrs Lennon and George Harrison who quipped, ‘Two down and two to go’. Paul McCartney was on holiday in Tunisia. The newlyweds drove to Hove for their honeymoon but were almost immediately discovered by fans and returned to London.

Work Begins on Help!

After the phenomenal success of A Hard Day’s Night, the budget for the second Beatles movie was doubled to £500,000 and Richard Lester retained as director. Producer Walter Shenson promised a ‘mad, zany comedy thriller’ but they started with another threadbare plot that amounted to little more than Ringo being kidnapped by a weird cult. And the locations were mainly determined by accountants who were looking for ways to offset the massive tax bill the band were facing, hence Barbados and Switzerland. John Lennon: ‘It was a drag because we didn’t know what was happening. In fact Richard Lester was a bit ahead of his time … but we were all on pot by then and the best stuff was on the cutting room floor, with us breaking up and falling all over the floor.’ For some time the film was going to be called Eight Arms To Hold You but that was never a title that was going to inspire a great Lennon and McCartney song.

March

The Beatles’ First Acid Trip

John Lennon: ‘A dentist in London laid it [acid] on George, me and the wives, without telling us, at a dinner party at his house … He said “I advise you not to leave” and we all thought he was trying to keep us for an orgy in the house and we didn’t want to know’. Cynthia Lennon: ‘We got away somehow in George’s Mini but he came after us in a taxi. It was like having the devil follow us in a taxi … Everybody seemed to be going mad … Pattie [Boyd, George Harrison’s girlfriend] wanted to get out and smash all the windows along Regent Street. Then we turned round and started heading for George’s place in Esher. God knows how we got there’. John Lennon: ‘God, it was just terrifying but it was fantastic. George’s house seemed to be like a big submarine and I was driving it.…’

April

‘Ticket To Ride’

Lennon and McCartney’s most ambitious song to date, ‘Ticket To Ride’ kept The Beatles well ahead of the growing pack behind them, The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Kinks and The Small Faces, as the ‘Swinging London’ scene gathered momentum. The song’s subtle rhythm was anchored by Ringo’s skilful drumming and the charm and gusto of the harmonies helped to disguise Lennon’s misogynist lyrics. The B-side, ‘Yes It Is’, was a harmony-drenched remake of an earlier B-side, ‘This...

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