Paul McCartney Said All the ‘Catchphrases’ the Press Used to Make up About The Beatles Were ‘Quite Annoying’

Paul McCartney said all the “catchphrases” the press used to make up about The Beatles were “quite annoying.” First, the media gave the Fab Four tags that didn’t accurately describe their personalities. Then, they coined a term for their “distinct” sound.

Paul said the ‘catchphrases’ that the press made up about The Beatles were annoying

In The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, Paul wrote that with the press, “you need them and they need you.” However, some of the more annoying things the press said about The Beatles unfortunately stuck.

For instance, the press called what The Beatles did “Mersey Beat,” which took its name from a local entertainment paper. Paul wrote that when The Beatles heard the “catchphrase,” they thought, “Well, bloody hell. That’s so corny.”

Paul added, “We never thought of ourselves as Mersey, we thought of ourselves as Liverpool, and its an important difference if you come from there. But ‘Mersey Beat’ and ‘Mop Tops’-all these catchphrases stuck and were quite annoying.

“You’d do something you wouldn’t even think about, but then it would be a huge story.”

George Harrison on the ‘tags’ the press gave The Beatles

In 1965, George Harrison spoke to Larry Kane about the “tags” the press gave him and The Beatles when they first came to the U.S. George thought they were silly.

George said, “It’s just that, you know, first of all, when we first came over here they didn’t know us all that well. People, like, hang tags on you. Ringo was the cuddly one or something. Paul was the lovely one and I was the quiet one, and John was the shouting one. I’ve been the same all along. I talk when I feel like it. I shut up when I don’t feel like talking.”

The press got George’s personality wrong the most. He was not the “quiet Beatle” in any sense. “He never shut up,” Tom Petty told Rolling Stone. “George had a lot to say. Boy, did he have a lot to say. That’s hysterical to me, you know, that he was known as the quiet one.

“I assume he got that name because the other ones were so much louder. I mean, they were very loud people.”

Paul hated when the press called him the ‘cute Beatle’

During an interview on The Howard Stern Show, Paul revealed that he hated the press calling him the “cute Beatle.”

“That’s what happens — just, ‘He’s the cute one.’ I’d go, ‘No, I’m not! Don’t call me that. I hate that! But once it’s said, it kind of sticks,” Paul explained.

Paul never really thought he was “cute,” anyway. “I guess some people think so,” he said. “They had to just say, ‘He’s the cute one; he’s the quiet one [George Harrison]; he’s the witty one [John Lennon]; and he’s the drummer [Ringo Starr]. I just can’t help being cute, Howard.”

The Beatles became such a massive success in a short time. The press had to describe them somehow. If inaccuratly labeling certain things in The Beatles’ world sold papers, that’s what they did. Unfortunately, The Beatles had to deal with it no matter what the press said.