Most English schools taught French as the main foreign language, but some pupils had learned German. Fortunately, Paul McCartney, who had attended Liverpool Institute, was one of them, and this helped the Beatles to engage with the fans. Dicky Tarrach from the German band, the Rattles, recalls, “The Beatles were the first guys I had seen who talked to the audience. All the other bands said, “Thank you, the next song is…” The Beatles made jokes onstage, they were very intelligent, and they had German girlfriends and so they were learning the language, and they spoke a mixture of German and English to the audience. John Lennon had a toilet seat round his head once. They were laughing a lot and that inspired us to tell little stories and to talk to the audience.” Later, John brought a photograph of himself with that toilet seat back to Liverpool and gave it to Bill Harry for inclusion in Mersey Beat. A horrified Brian Epstein rushed to Harry’s office to reclaim it before publication. McCartney developed boundless self-confidence in those years, as illustrated by this anecdote from Bobby Thomson of the Dominoes. “Paul spoke fluent German and I saw him teaching the Germans to speak English. He said, ‘Here's a good word – banana.’ The whole crowd went ‘Banana.’ You can imagine what that sounded like. Then he said ‘Apple’ and they went ‘Apple.’ He said, ‘Here’s a very hard one—Orange.’ They all yelled ‘Orange,’ except for this one voice at the back which went ‘Banana.’”
The Beatles in Hamburg, Spencer Leigh (2011)
