Paul McCartney Said The Beatles ‘Failed Miserably’ in Many Early Performances

The Beatles were so successful as a band that it’s difficult to imagine them struggling during early performances, but Paul McCartney said they did. Before they were officially The Beatles, McCartney, John Lennon, and George Harrison played a number of shows as a trio. In some of these performances, they competed against other acts, and McCartney said they lost almost every time.

Paul McCartney said The Beatles did not have much luck in early performances

Lennon played in a band called The Quarry Men and eventually recruited McCartney and Harrison. Many of the original band members left, leaving just the three of them who, at the time, all played guitar.

“We would show up for gigs just with three guitars, and the person booking us would ask, ‘Where’s the drums, then?'” McCartney said in The Beatles Anthology. “To cover this eventuality we would say, ‘The rhythm’s in the guitars,’ stand there, smile a lot, bluff it out. There was not a lot you could say to that, and we’d make them very rhythmic to prove our point.”

Despite their confidence, these early shows did not go over well. They were often talent shows, and McCartney said the audience never seemed fond of them.

“We failed miserably in the contest — we always got beaten,” he said. “We never won a talent show in our lives. We were always playing little late-night ones at pubs and working-men’s clubs. We were inevitably beaten by the woman on the spoons, because it was eleven at night and everyone was well tanked up, they didn’t want to hear the music we were playing.”

The Beatles improved when they added more instruments

There’s little doubt that the band showed some level of promise. Still, it’s not all that surprising that three teenagers playing guitar with no other instrumental backing didn’t win over the audience. They began to find more success when they added other instruments to the band. 

Stuart Sutcliffe joined shortly after this and, while he didn’t know much about music, stepped in as bassist. They worked with a rotating lineup of drummers before hiring Pete Best. While McCartney said they made their guitar playing “very rhythmic,” both these instruments would have helped build and maintain the rhythm. They also would have added depth to their sound. 

While both Sutcliffe and Best were only briefly members of The Beatles, they helped the band grow. With their involvement in the band, they were able to travel to Hamburg to play a residency. While it’s impossible to say for certain, it seems unlikely that they would have done this as a trio of guitarists.

When did Paul McCartney start playing the bass for The Beatles?

McCartney started as a guitarist with The Beatles but shifted to the bassist when Sutcliffe left the band. He hadn’t initially wanted the job but realized that somebody had to step into the role.

“None of us wanted to be the bass player,” McCartney told Bass Player (via Ultimate Classic Rock). “It wasn’t the No. 1 job; we wanted to be up front. In our minds, it was the fat guy in the group who nearly always played the bass, and he stood at the back. None of us wanted that. We wanted to be up front singing, looking good, to pull the birds.”

Eventually, though, the instrument grew on him.

“I started to realize the power the bass player had within the band. Not vengeful power — it was just that you could actually control it,” he said. “I then started to identify with other bass players and talk bass with the guys in the bands. When we met Elvis, he was trying to learn bass, so I was like, ‘You’re trying to learn bass, are you son? Sit down, let me show you a few things.’ So I was very proud of being the bass player.”