I loved several of the songs on this album upon first hearing, and still love most of them. I've read elsewhere that the bloody throat thing was just a publicist's tale.
I've always heard that "Boys" was a sly dig at manager Brian Epstein's sexual orientation, but apparently Ringo was singing it with a previous band before he joined the Beatles and he brought it with him when he became the Beatles' drummer.
Decent explication on a YT posting: The Beatles didn't concern themselves about possible homosexual undertones that go with singing a song about boys, although they altered the gender pronouns employed on the Shirelles' version (i.e. "My girl says when I kiss her lips..."). In an October 2005 Rolling Stone interview, Paul McCartney stated: "Any one of us could hold the audience. Ringo would do 'Boys', which was a fan favourite with the crowd. And it was great — though if you think about it, here's us doing a song and it was really a girls' song. 'I talk about boys now!' Or it was a gay song. But we never even listened. It's just a great song. I think that's one of the things about youth — you just don't give a shit. I love the innocence of those days." (The lyrics talk specifically about boys kissing girls, not each other.)
4 comments:
"I Saw Her Standing There" is arguably the greatest album opener ever.
Btw, that EMI balcony was used again 13 years later:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/64/52/7d/64527d1764dd0e0605c70e824352218a.jpg
I loved several of the songs on this album upon first hearing, and still love most of them. I've read elsewhere that the bloody throat thing was just a publicist's tale.
I've always heard that "Boys" was a sly dig at manager Brian Epstein's sexual orientation, but apparently Ringo was singing it with a previous band before he joined the Beatles and he brought it with him when he became the Beatles' drummer.
Decent explication on a YT posting:
The Beatles didn't concern themselves about possible homosexual undertones that go with singing a song about boys, although they altered the gender pronouns employed on the Shirelles' version (i.e. "My girl says when I kiss her lips..."). In an October 2005 Rolling Stone interview, Paul McCartney stated: "Any one of us could hold the audience. Ringo would do 'Boys', which was a fan favourite with the crowd. And it was great — though if you think about it, here's us doing a song and it was really a girls' song. 'I talk about boys now!' Or it was a gay song. But we never even listened. It's just a great song. I think that's one of the things about youth — you just don't give a shit. I love the innocence of those days." (The lyrics talk specifically about boys kissing girls, not each other.)
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