The bizarre accident that led to The Beatles growing moustaches
We can all picture it, the glorious moustaches proudly stradling the top lips of The Beatles on the cover for their iconic album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
As it happens, the band were so enamoured with their hairy lips that they even included cardboard cut-outs of their newly spouted muff-dusters with copies the LP so their fans could join in on the act and pretend to be one of the fuzzy-lipped Fab Four.
Paul McCartney has always claimed that in his mind’s eye, his central character, Sgt Pepper himself, had a droopy moustache, so he set about fulfilling his furry vision. That said, the reason the rest of the band actually added their own legendary facial hair to the mix was because of one late-night blunder.
But it’s a blunder that became a defining piece of cultural history. The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper era may be one of the most iconic images of modern music, capturing the pure inventiveness of the decade. The figures of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr dressed in their brightly coloured band uniforms and all sporting a healthy dose of Victorian facial hair is one picture that will be forever emblazoned upon the annals of history.
In essence, it says: here stands a bunch of goons proudly changing the course of history (with a bit of thanks for the figures playfully assembled behind them).
The concept for the LP’s cover was lifted directly from the brain of Paul McCartney as he said in a 1990 interview: “If records had a director within a band, I sort of directed Pepper.” Later, when picking his favourite Beatles record in 1991, he said, “It wasn’t entirely my idea. But to get us away from being ‘The Beatles’ I had this idea that we should pretend we’re this other group.” Every detail from their outfits to their hair was considered.
It was a concept that would see one of the band’s finest ever works come to fruition. But while McCartney may prefer you to believe otherwise, he decided to grow a moustache out of necessity rather than choice after a road accident in 1965 left him with a big scar.
Macca was sharing a moped with his friend and Guinness heir, Tara Browne (the future subject of the song ‘A Day in the Life’ following his tragic death), when they soon found themselves in a bit of bother.
“We were riding along on the mopeds,” McCartney said. “He [Browne] was behind me, and it was an incredible full moon… I suddenly had a freeze-frame image of myself at the angle to the ground when it’s too late to pull back up again: I was still looking at the moon.” Ever the dreamer, even hurtling along on a motor vehicle. And
The wistful and erstwhile injured McCartney added, “Then I looked at the ground, and it seemed to take a few minutes to think, ‘Ah, too bad- I’m going to smack that pavement with my face!’ Bang!”
While McCartney didn’t seem particularly bothered about his injuries in the videos for ‘Paperback Writer’ and ‘Rain’. The singer later became embarrassed about the scar on his lip, worsened by a botched stitch-up, and decided to grow a moustache to cover it when the big moment of shooting the Sgt Pepper cover arose.
In the studio, his tash soon became a hit with the other members of the band and the group all began growing out their now-iconic moustaches – as if there was any doubt about how closely they collaborated. As with anything The Beatles did at the time, as soon as the members were spotted with new taches, the rest of swinging London soon jumped on board, and as McCartney said, it became a “revolutionary” idea.
It may not have overthrown any governments, but it has become part of their iconography, no doubt being replicated in fancy dress right now by a stag-do or folks in a cricket stadium. As taches continue to flitter in and out of fashion, we can’t be sure when the next facial hair fad will arise (outside of their perpetual popularity in Australia, of course). But what we can be certain of is that without them The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper just wouldn’t look right.
It wouldn’t feel right either. Without getting too deep about the top lip slithers, when you stack the cover against their earliest releases, it becomes how clear just how far towards the avant-garde they had drifted even visually.
As the late philosopher Mark Fisher explained, “The Beatles basically trained people to expect things to get more and more experimental the more popular they got.” Some of that was due to their own increasingly liberated life experiences being reflected in their work. So, while a daft moped accident might seem trifling, it was part of the wider picture that these long-haired lovers from Liverpool were a long way from home now.
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