Beatles Engineers Had to Hide Their Snacks From the Band
The Beatles stocked up on snacks in the studio. According to Beatles audio engineer Geoff Emerick, the band members were very protective of their food. If anyone touched their snacks, they exploded with frustration. This trait didn’t stop them from taking other people’s food, though.
The Beatles thought all snacks but their own were fair game for consumption
According to Emerick, The Beatles didn’t want anyone eating their snacks. They didn’t see a problem with eating other people’s food, though.
“Food was always very proprietary among The Beatles,” Emerick wrote in his book Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles. “Mal [Evans] would get everybody his own thing, and there was no sharing, no eating family style; no one was allowed to try anyone else’s food. That principle applied to us, too — we knew never to help ourselves to any snacks they laid out in the studio. But in their minds, the reverse was not true: anything they found in the control room was fair game as far as The Beatles were concerned.”
As a result, producer George Martin began hiding food around the control room whenever they came upstairs. He even had to shout instructions to employees to ensure the band wouldn’t put their hands on the provisions. At one point, engineer John Kurlander didn’t move to put away his chips as The Beatles approached.
“He was still fairly new to Beatles sessions and so he kept munching away even as The Beatles began walking up the stairs toward us,” Emerick wrote. “But George Martin knew that they’d grab any food in sight, so just as the door was about to open, he yelled, at the top of his lungs, ‘Quick, hide the crisps!’ Kurlander was so surprised, he nearly jumped to the ceiling … but he managed to instinctively pull the bag away just as [John] Lennon started to grab at it.”
George Harrison exploded at Yoko Ono for eating his food
The band proved just how protective over their snacks they were during the Abbey Road sessions. While the band was listening to playbacks, Emerick noticed that George Harrison seemed agitated.
“Curious, I looked over his shoulder,” Emerick wrote. “Yoko [Ono] had gotten out of bed and was slowly padding across the studio floor, finally coming to a stop at Harrison’s Leslie cabinet, which had a pack of McVitie’s Digestive Biscuits on top. Idly, she began opening the packet and delicately removed a single biscuit.”
When Ono put the biscuit in her mouth, Harrison exploded, loudly calling her a “b****.”
“As far as he was concerned, those biscuits were his property, and no one was allowed to go near them,” Emerick wrote. “Lennon began shouting back at him, but there was little he could say to defend his wife (who, oblivious, was happily munching away in the studio), because he shared exactly the same attitude toward food.”
The Beatles couldn’t tell their fans what types of snacks they liked
Early in their careers, The Beatles often spoke about their favorite types of snacks in interviews. They quickly realized that this was a mistake. Eager to please their favorite band, fans would pelt candy at them during concerts. Per The Guardian, Harrison even wrote a letter to a fan to scold them for throwing food.
“Think how we feel standing on stage trying to dodge the stuff, before you throw some more at us,” Harrison wrote. “Couldn’t you eat them yourself, besides it is dangerous. I was hit in the eye once with a boiled sweet, and it’s not funny!”
The band had to beg their fans to stop throwing food at them.
