I feel enormously privileged to be part of the generation that witnessed the magic of the Beatles first hand, and I think 'A Hard Day's Night' connected with my four-year-old self because it was the whole package: an album and a movie.

You have to be a bastard to make it, and that's a fact. And the Beatles are the biggest bastards on earth.

I was looking for a name like the Crickets that meant two things, and from crickets I got to beetles. And I changed [to] B E A because ... B E E T L E S didn't mean two things, so I changed ... the E to an A. And it meant two things then. ... When you said it, people thought of crawly things; and when you read it, it was beat music.

There's only one person in the United States we ever wanted to meet ... not that he wanted us. And we met him last night. We can't tell you how we felt. We just idolised him so much. ... You can't imagine what a thrill that was last night. Nothing really affected me until I heard Elvis. If there hadn't been an Elvis, there wouldn't have been the Beatles.

The Beatles music died then, as musicians. That's why we never improved as musicians; we killed ourselves then to make it. And that was the end of it.

It just seemed natural for us, if we made an album together, for both of us to be naked.