I remember reading there is either a rehearsal or an outtake of Paul singing lead on "I Want You (She's Heavy).
An acetate (78rpm) with two Decca tracks was auctioned few years ago: 'Hello Little Girl' b/w 'Till There Was You'
John possibly meant the songs individually, not another session. By 'demo' I think he meant that the recording of these songs were low quality performances. The George Martin bit is kinda interesting, but maybe he confused it with another band? He also produced some other groups like Gerry & The Pacemakers at that time... Just my guess, I think John considered the band might re-record these songs at EMI later but more properly. (Actually 'Hello Little Girl' was given away to The Fourmost, so eventually the Beatles' recording from Decca was later meant to be a demo reference to the other band.)
He is turning up the “volume” only. Those drip edged Twins only had volumes, master volumes were added to the Fender amps in ‘72.
Why don’t the Deluxe bonus discs for Pepper and White album not have the running order of tracks as recorded instead of mirroring the released order? The way it is: Boring!
Re the Decca audition - remember not only were The Beatles rather nervous and probably hung over plus had Pete Best on drums thus not quite the group as we all know them... but the far more local Tremeloes were actually a decent band - they had done a radio spot and that first line up of Rick Westwood (k/a Ricky West) on lead guitar, Mick Clarke bass guitar, Alan Blakeley (guitar also could play keyboards) drummer/vocalist Dave Munden and Brian Poole lead vocals scored a number of UK hits including a 1963 chart topper 'Do You Love Me', 'Twist and Shout', ' I Can Dance', 'I Want Candy' and a UK no.2 with 'Someone Someone' in 1964 plus a few chart albums on Decca Appearing on BBC TV's children's show 'Blue Peter' in 1964 they played live - featuring Alan Blakeley on electric organ - while many top chart groups including The Searchers, Freddie and The Dreamers, Dave Dee and co mimed to their records on the show which was normally the case (even The Beatles also mimed on 'Ready Steady Go !' - watch John miss his lines on 'It Won't Be Long' and just laugh - and on some other TV shows) In 1966 after splitting with Poole, Mick Clarke left and Len 'Chip' Hawkes on bass/lead vocals took over - Westwood had the very high falsetto voice and with the two strong guitarists/bass/drums line up and three lead vocalists plus mega tight four part vocal harmonies CBS UK branch signed them and they scored further big UK hits with Cat Stevens 'Here Comes My Baby' The Four Seasons 'Silence is Golden' (UK no.1 in 1967) 'Even The Bad Times Are Good' and more hits up to 1970 - Blakeley-Hawkes were decent songwriters too penning 'Call Me Number One' (UK no.2 in 1969) and 'Hello Buddy' their country flavoured last UK hit they recorded some fine albums too such as 'Master' and later 'Shiner' on DJM records in 1974 and had a few further hits in Europe so Mike Smith - who WANTED to sign both Beatles and Tremeloes but apparently was told he could only take the one band opted for the more local band in those days of pre-motorway Britain when Liverpool was hours away from London by many smaller roads ! The Tremeloes probably were more confident on the day of their Decca audition fresh from doing radio work too so Mike Smith who continued to produce The Tremeloes at CBS got a strong regular UK chart band from 1963 to 1970 and his judgement can't really be criticised AT THE TIME as no one knew at that point just how Lennon-McCartney would suddenly develop as songwriters and The Beatles take off after Ringo joined them here is a live version of 'Silence is Golden' from the mid sixties
I know John was because he helped perpetuate the myth that it was in response to their albums being chopped up by their label.
Funny but their press releases listed John, Paul and George as being six feet tall (never met John or a George but Paul looked like he about 5 10 at the tallest to me but more likely 5 9. Maybe they were all 6 ft with their Beatle boots on )Was Ringo the only one truthful about his height?
And Billy J Kramer rejected "One and one is two", and judging by the band that eventually did it, I'd guess a few other acts rejected it too.
The demo has a charm that the official (Strangers) recording completely fails to capture. Something to do with the way McCartney uses E major/ E sixth chords to play what would normally be a standard twelve-bar blues riff.
Gerry And The Pacemakers recorded Hello Little Girl first but it wasn't released until 1991 Her manager rejected it before she ever got a chance to hear it.
Lennon didn't intentionally perpetuate that myth. Rather, the myth was likely created due to the poor reading comprehension on the part of someone who misunderstood Lennon's comments below: "We took the pictures in London at one of those photo sessions. By then we were really beginning to hate it - a photo session was a big ordeal, and you had to try and look normal and you didn't feel it. The photographer was a bit of a surrealist and he brought along all these babies and pieces of meat and doctors' coats, so we really got into it, and that's how we felt - 'Yeah!' I don't like being locked in to one game all the time, and there we were supposed to be sort of angels. I wanted to show that we were aware of life, and I really was pushing for that album cover. I would say I was a lot of the force behind it going out and trying to keep it out. I especially pushed for it to be an album cover, just to break the image. And it got out in America: they printed it and about 60,000 got out, and then there was some kind of fuss, as usual, and they were all sent back in or withdrawn, and they stuck that awful-go-lucky foursome. We tried to do something different. We would design a cover or have control of more of our own covers in England, but America always had more albums so they always needed another picture, another cover. We used to say, 'Why can't we put fourteen [tracks] out in America?' Because we would sequence the albums - how we thought they should sound - and we put a lot of work into the sequencing too. They wouldn't let us put fourteen out; they said there was some rule or something. And so we almost didn't care what happened to the albums in America until we started coming over more, and noticing [for instance that] on the eight tracks they'd have out-takes and mumbling on the beginning - which is interesting now, but it used to drive us crackers. We'd make an album and they'd keep two from two from every album." Lennon talks about two separate things here: the Y&T album cover and his unhappiness over the Capitol compilation albums in the US. Someone who doesn't read carefully might mistakenly think the two things are connected, but they clearly are not. I'm not sure where the myth arose (maybe Shaffner's book?) but someone misunderstanding these comments is probably what created the myth.
They are demos though. They're "demonstration recordings", which were recorded initially for Decca and what Brian was using to pitch to other labels. Although we tend to think of demos as something else, really the whole Decca session is one big early Beatles studio demo.
The Searchers said Paul offered them 'Things We Said Today' which they turned down...then later regretted doing it !
In the book about Handmade Films, Very Naughty Boys, someone -- I think Ray Cooper -- said George was trying to quit smoking in the mid-80s, but Shanghai Surprise was so stressful that he started again. Then he tried it again in the early 90s when he did the Live In Japan tour. I'm not sure if he stuck to it that time. I can't recall any pictures of him in the 90s where he's holding a cigarette. He said this in Goldmine magazine in 1992: "Off and on, over all the years, I kept trying to stop smoking -- but I found it very difficult. So I used the tour as a motive, some goal in life, and that’s what I did. I thought, 'I’ll tour, because if I don’t I’ll just be at home smoking my brains out for the rest of my life -- and dying.' So I just jacked it all in, and I did it really successfully because normally you smoke more when you get into the situation like a rehearsal or on a tour. You ask any smoker: that’s the occasion when you’ll light up more. And I just tried to do it back-to-front, and I just didn’t smoke another cigarette. It really did me good. I got very strong in my voice now. That’s been since last June now, and I just feel so happy to have got free of that horrible curse! It’s one of the most disgusting things man has ever invented. I got myself kinda fit - I mean, not too fit, but more fit than I would’ve been if I’d just been hanging out not doing anything."