{"id":572516,"date":"2026-04-08T21:03:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T21:03:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/572516\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T21:03:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T21:03:10","slug":"they-were-all-guitars-paul-shaffer-recalls-why-the-beatles-didnt-click-at-first","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/572516\/","title":{"rendered":"“They were all guitars”: Paul Shaffer recalls why The Beatles didn\u2019t click \u2014 at first"},"content":{"rendered":"

Legendary musician, band leader, actor and comedian Paul Shaffer<\/a> joined host Kenneth Womack to talk about whether he would have passed on The Beatles<\/a> as a \u201cguitar group\u201d and much more on our eighth season premiere of \u201cEverything Fab Four<\/a>,\u201d a podcast co-produced by me and Womack (a music scholar who also writes about pop music for Salon) and distributed by Salon.<\/p>\n

Shaffer, the longtime musical director and sidekick of David Letterman<\/a>, said that although he watched The Beatles on \u201cThe Ed Sullivan Show<\/a>\u201d (and shows Womack his excellent impression of Sullivan\u2019s famous introduction of the band) in February of 1964, he \u201cdidn\u2019t quite understand them yet.\u201d Growing up in Canada, Shaffer had been enamored with the musical style of American acts such as the Four Seasons and Jackie Wilson, and when The Beatles came on the scene, he says, \u201cthey were all guitars. On \u2018I Want to Hold Your Hand,\u2019 John Lennon<\/a>\u2019s rhythm guitar work kills me now \u2013 I just wasn\u2019t hip enough to understand these things at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Follow and listen to \u201cEverything Fab Four\u201d on\u00a0Spotify<\/a>,\u00a0Apple Podcasts<\/a>,\u00a0RadioPublic<\/a>,\u00a0Pocket Casts<\/a>\u00a0or wherever you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n

It was later, \u201cwhen their music got more sophisticated, like with \u2018Rubber Soul<\/a>,\u2019 that\u2019s when I started to get it,\u201d Shaffer said. \u201cThey heard stuff in American rock \u2018n\u2019 roll that the Americans were taking for granted.\u201d And then, \u201cEverybody tried to do The Beatles in their own way. Even people older than them said that\u2019s why they picked up a guitar. If you didn\u2019t have The Beatles, you didn\u2019t have anything. They were always inventing ways to do things for the first time.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Shaffer, whose other credits include being a featured performer on \u201cSaturday Night Live<\/a>\u201d and musical director for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame\u2019s annual induction ceremony, was also on that cutting edge, working with a wide array of artists such as Diana Ross, Bill Murray and Robert Plant. And that also includes serving as Paul McCartney<\/a>\u2018s musical director for 2001\u2019s \u201cThe Concert for New York City\u201d \u2013 and even producing for John Lennon\u2019s widow, Yoko Ono<\/a>. \u201cI was always attracted to both the avant-garde stuff and the square stuff,\u201d he explained. \u201cIt\u2019s like what Ray Charles said: Every type of music has its beauty.\u201d<\/p>\n

Listen to the entire conversation with Paul Shaffer on \u201cEverything Fab Four\u201d and subscribe via Spotify, Apple, Google or wherever you\u2019re listening. \u201cEverything Fab Four\u201d is distributed by Salon. Host Kenneth Womack is the author of a two-volume biography on Beatles producer George Martin and the bestselling books \u201cSolid State: The Story of Abbey Road and the End of the Beatles\u201d<\/a> and \u201cJohn Lennon, 1980: The Last Days in the Life.\u201d<\/a> His latest book is the authorized biography of Beatles road manager Mal Evans, \u201cLiving the Beatles Legend,\u201d<\/a> out now.<\/p>\n

Read more<\/p>\n

about Everything Fab Four<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Legendary musician, band leader, actor and comedian Paul Shaffer joined host Kenneth Womack to talk about whether he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":572517,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,216],"class_list":["post-572516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=572516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/572517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=572516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=572516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=572516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}