![\"John](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/John-Lennon-George-Harrison-Split-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n
Sun 15 February 2026 21:00, UK <\/p>\n
Both John Lennon<\/a> and George Harrison belonged to a musical generation that shared a near-universal teen soundtrack, centred on rock \u2018n\u2019 roll\u2019s seismic lightning bolt from across the Atlantic.<\/p>\n There was wiggle room, sure. Eric Clapton was more tethered to the old blues tradition, while Graham Bond was fundamentally shaped by jazz\u2019s fluid rhythms, but the moment Elvis Presley first swivelled his hips and Chuck Berry plugged in his cherry red Gibson, America\u2019s new rock export offered a generation of UK post-war kids growing up in the 1950s\u2019 austerity grey a gripping window of colour far removed from the stifiling suburbs a different universe from drive ins, blue jeans, and Coca-Cola.<\/p>\n The Beatles were no different. While Paul McCartney boasted a more eclectic musical shaping, harbouring a lifelong love of music hall cheer and Rodgers and Hammerstein song standards, the teen Beatles were fed on a staple diet of rock \u2018n\u2019 roll sprinkled with some R&B when first picking up their instruments, even as far back as Lennon\u2019s predecessor group The Quarrymen inexorably moving away from skiffle to the big RnR the moment McCartney and Harrison began curiously orbting the local Liverpool act.<\/p>\n Not every big US hit was so easy to listen to, however. Amid the States\u2019 vast and unwieldy musical landscape, plenty of big numbers across later soul and R&B pop would only be discovered til years later, when under the managerial wing of music biz entrepreneur Brian Epstein.<\/p>\n Just as The Beatles had formed, but long before they were Fab and with Pete Best on drums, the four would congregate at Epstein\u2019s North End Music Stores in the city centre, to hear the latest rare American imports. Among the plethora of new records to eagerly rifle through, one curious number that would pique all their interest was a debut big hit from an up-and-coming soul label out of Detroit.<\/p>\n