The singer Paul McCartney said was beyond belief: “Just amazing”
Nobody could have predicted a band like The Beatles. So far beyond the realm of 1960s imagination that Liverpudlian outfit changed the musical landscape forevermore, but as Paul McCartney can attest, they didn’t emerge entirely from the ether.
Like every rock and roll band since the dawn of the genre, The Beatles were a product of their various musical influences. McCartney, for instance, might never have written a song were it not for the rock and roll role model of Buddy Holly and ‘That’ll Be The Day’. Meanwhile, much of the Fab Four’s early sets were made up of cover versions of 1950s rock and roll and R&B tracks, by the likes of Chuck Berry, Barrett Strong and, perhaps most importantly, Little Richard.
If Buddy Holly represented the relatable, accessible side of American rock music back in the 1950s, Little Richard was on the opposite end of the spectrum. With energy bursting at his bedazzled seams and a look that meant he might as well have arrived on the scene in a rocket ship from the outer cosmos, Richard was essential in accelerating the revolution of rock and roll during the early days of the scene.
Again, Little Richard was a performer indebted to the inspiration of the blues, R&B, and gospel performers who came before him, but for a young Paul McCartney, he represented the emergence of an entirely new age.
“To me, the first wild, high voice that I’d ever heard was Little Richard, you know,” he once shared, in a 2013 chat with Ronnie Wood. “It’s all from gospel. It was just amazing. We were kids, and it was such an influence.”
Fittingly, The Beatles regularly covered Little Richard during their live performances, with ‘Long Tall Sally’ being a particular favourite. That cover, in fact, stretches right back to Macca’s school days, as he recalled, “I remember the last day of term at school, you were allowed to bring your guitar in. Like in one of the movies, I stood on the desk and did ‘Long Tall Sally’.”
From that point on, it was clear that McCartney was destined to pursue the path of rock and roll, introduced to him by the adrenaline explosion of that 1956 single. Without Little Richard, it isn’t overly egregious to claim that there would have been no Beatles; Elvis might have earned the title of ‘The King of Rock’, but it was much more fitting when attached to Richard.
Not only did Little Richard provide some early inspiration for McCartney during his childhood, but he also had a very real impact on The Beatles as performers. During the very early days of the group, when they were playing residencies in the dingy underground clubs of Hamburg, the first generation of American rockers had just started to visit Europe, and they invariably ended up performing at the same venues.
At The Star Club in Hamburg, for instance, Little Richard crossed paths with The Beatles on a few occasions, with the rock legend instilling some early performance advance in the young band that they undoubtedly carried through their meteoric rise to stardom. Like McCartney and the gang, Little Richard was not formed from thin air, owing to his own pool of influence. Yet, also like The Beatles, he managed to change the musical world beyond all recognition.
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