The Guinness Book of World Records

Here are the Beatles` entries, taken from their website:

http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/index.asp

Most No.1 Singles On US Chart
The Beatles have enjoyed the most number one hits on the US singles chart. The group notched up 20 number one hits between 1964 and 1970.

Most US Chart No. 1 Albums By A Group
The most No. 1 albums in the US chart by a group is 19, by The Beatles. Their chart-topping tally is more than double the number of those held by Elvis Presley and The Rolling Stones, with nine. Their latest chart-topping album was aptly entitled 1 and was released in 2001.

Most Consecutive No.1 Singles In The UK Chart
The record for the most consecutive No. 1s in the UK charts is held by The Beatles, who had 11 hits in a row between 1963 and 1966 (from "From Me to You" through to "Yellow Submarine").

From wholesome mop-top family favorites to psychedelic new-wave rock 'n' rollers, The Beatles may have had plenty of image changes but their commercial success has remained constant. The band was originally known as The Quarry Men, later they changed their line-up and their name to become The Silver Beatles, then they eventually were known as The Beatles.

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How did the Beatles manage to stay at the top of the music industry for so long? One of the reasons behind their enduring appeal was their willingness to experiment with new styles and trends. The group started life as a conventional four-piece group writing and performing traditional beat-driven love songs. But the release of the song Yesterday in 1965 indicated the band could combine critical as well as commercial acclaim. The song featured an orchestral arrangement and a slow lyric. This innovation and musical experimentation reached its height with albums such as Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and the White Album.

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After Paul's song, "Penny Lane" became a Beatles hit, the street signs for the actual Penny Lane in Liverpool disappeared with such regularity (as they did on the real Abbey Road in London), that the city reverted to simply painting "Penny Lane" on the buildings, rather than have actual street signs.

Most Christmas No.1 Singles In UK Chart
The Beatles have had four No.1 UK Christmas singles: "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" (1963), "I Feel Fine" (1964), "Day Tripper/We Can Work It Out" (1965), and "Hello Goodbye" (1967).

Most Consecutive Christmas No.1 Singles - UK
Both The Beatles and The Spice Girls have had three consecutive Christmas No. 1 singles. The “Fab Four” had their festive hit run from 1963 to 1965, while The Spice Girls topped the Christmas chart from 1996 to 1998.

Most Platinum RIAA Certificates For A Group
The group with the most platinum certificates is The Beatles, with 33. The band also holds the record for the most multiplatinum albums, with 13.

Biggest All-Times Sales For A Band
The Beatles have amassed the greatest sales for any group. All-time sales have been estimated by EMI at over one billion discs and tapes to date. In 2001, they had been certified for album sales of 163.5 million in the US alone. The band has numerous other world records, including that for most recorded song - Lennon and McCartney's "Yesterday" had 1,600 versions recorded between 1965 and January 1, 1986. Also, their album titled 1, released on November 13, 2000, sold 13.5 million copies around the world in its first month, making it the fastest-selling album.

Most Pseudonyms Used By A Pop Star
John Lennon, who first found fame with The Beatles, recorded and produced music under 15 pseudonyms, including The Honorary John St. John Johnson (guitar on "Whatever Gets You Through the Night"), The Rev. Fred Ghurkin (acoustic guitar on "Bless You"), Dr. Winston OGhurkin (guitar on "Going Down on Love") and Dwarf McDougal (guitar on "Nobody Loves You When You're Down Out".

Most Albums On US Chart Simultaneously
The record for the most albums on the US Top 200 at the same time is seven, held jointly by The Beatles, The Monkees and U2. In 1979, U2's lead singer Bono said "I want to replace the bands in the charts now, because I think we're better." The band has done pretty well on that front – over 20 years later they're still producing hits after releasing 15 albums. The Beatles are still played all over the world. They have the most number one hits on the US singles chart to their name, with 20. The Monkees, well they might not have the same appeal, but many old rockers still love them.

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Who decides what's on the charts? The Billboard chart uses a computerized system called SoundScan for tracking what albums people buy at medium and large sized retail outlets across the USA. SoundScan is the equivalent of the Nielsen ratings for TV shows. Before this system was introduced in 1991, the charts were based on reports from radio programmers and store managers. This system was not as effective as it is said some in the music industry were bribed to favor particular bands.

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John Lennon of The Beatles produced his chart-topping tunes on what was to become a very pricey piano. The instrument was auctioned at London's Hard Rock Cafe in October 2000 and sold for $2.1 million to singer George Michael. This is the highest price ever paid for a piano. The piano, seen in the video for Lennon's single "Imagine" was labeled as one of the most prestigious items of pop memorabilia ever to go on the market.

Hello Wolf, [img]graemlins/wave1.gif[/img] *

Never trust Guinness when it comes to the UK singles charts: if you look in the back of 'The Complete Beatles Chronicle', you'll see that every UK single from 'Please Please Me' to 'The Ballad of John and Yoko' got to number one...

Only if one uses the Melody Maker Charts, though. That´s the only one that had all Beatles 45s from PPM to Ballad at #1.

There were other British charts in the 60s, have a look how the Beatles did in each chart:

Love Me Do

Disc #24
Melody Maker #21
NME #27
Record Mirror #17
Record Retailer #17

Please Please Me

BBC #1
Disc #1
MM #1
NME #1
RM #1
RR #2

From Me To You

BBC #1
Disc #1
MM #1
NME #1
RR #1

She Loves You

BBC #1
Disc #1
MM #1
NME #1
RR #1

I Want To Hold Your Hand

BBC #1
Disc #1
MM #1
NME #1
RR #1

Can`t Buy Me Love

BBC #1
Disc #1
MM #1
NME #1
RR #1

A Hard Day`s Night

BBC #1
Disc #1
MM #1
NME #1
RR #1

I Feel Fine

BBC #1
Disc #1
MM #1
NME #1
RR #1

Ticket To Ride

BBC #1
Disc #1
MM #1
NME #1
RR #1

Help!

BBC #1
Disc #1
MM #1
NME #1
RR #1

We Can Work It Out/Day Tripper

BBC #1
Disc #1
MM #1
NME #1
RR #1

Paperback Writer

BBC #1
Disc #1
MM #1
NME #1
RR #1

Eleanor Rigby/Yellow Submarine

BBC #1
Disc #1
MM #1
NME #1
RR #1

Strawberry Fields Forever/Penny Lane

BBC #2
Disc #2
MM #1
NME #2
RR #2

All You Need Is Love

BBC #1
Disc #1
MM #1
NME #1
RR #1

Hello Goodbye

BBC #1
MM #1
NME #1
RR #1

Lady Madonna

BBC #1
MM #2
NME #1
RR #1

Hey Jude

BBC #1
MM #1
NME #1
RR #1

Get Back

MM #1
NME #1
RR #1

The Ballad Of John & Yoko

MM #1
NME #1
RR #1

Get Back

MM #4
NME #5
RR #4

Let It Be

MM #3
NME #3
RR #2

Thanks for posting that! They were (and still are) the greatest!

[img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img] *thanks for posting those interesting reads Wolf

Very informative, Wolf. Thanks for posting these facts.

Originally Posted By Wolf:

Please Please Me

BBC #1
Disc #1
MM #1
NME #1
RM #1
RR #2

Lady Madonna

BBC #1
MM #2
NME #1
RR #1

<font size="2" face="Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif">I don´t get it: if Lady Madonna is considered a no.1 single in the UK, and therefore is in the "1" CD, why Please Please Me isn´t, since both have only a no. 2 in the charts?

Hellow Taxman,

It's all down to the goons who compile 'The Guinness Book of British Hit Singles'. The first regular UK chart was the NME one which started in 1952 and so the Guinness book uses it for those early years. However, all of a sudden, this chart is deemed to be not good enough and so the book starts to use the Record Retailer chart which was widely considered to be the least-important of the era. The end result is that the book gives you less than half of the story (there's always been at least two charts in operation in Britain) and so lots of legitimate number-one singles are written out of history at a stroke, not least 'Please Please Me'...

yesterday is also retired to there hall of fame as a most covered song last i read over 3500 times.our lads will be going on for generations via the beautiful music they have made .

Originally Posted By Paolo Meccano:
Hellow Taxman,

It's all down to the goons who compile 'The Guinness Book of British Hit Singles'. The first regular UK chart was the NME one which started in 1952 and so the Guinness book uses it for those early years. However, all of a sudden, this chart is deemed to be not good enough and so the book starts to use the Record Retailer chart which was widely considered to be the least-important of the era. The end result is that the book gives you less than half of the story (there's always been at least two charts in operation in Britain) and so lots of legitimate number-one singles are written out of history at a stroke, not least 'Please Please Me'...

<font size="2" face="Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif">Spot on!

Just in case anybody cares...

The History of the British Charts

Britain`s official pop charts are 50 years old this month. But how did they come into being? Alan Smith and Keith Badman investigate for Record Collector.

While on the surface, the British pop charts have been the epitome of all that is safe and acceptable in mainstream music, the listings themselves have never failed to court controversy. Right on cue, in the run-up to the Golden Jubilee celebrations of the first-ever singles chart, Chris Cowey, producer of Top Of The Popslaunched a venomous tirade against the state of the official Top 40, describing it as "dysfunctional." "Most of the Top 10 singles are new entries", he claimed, "and they`re there because of clever marketing practices employed by record companies, not because they`re popular." A case of the feeding hand being bitten, perhaps?

Whatever the case, there is no doubt that the pop charts still hold a particular fascination for many who have grown up with them over the last 50 years. Although many record buyers out of their teens these days probably scratch their collective heads, wondering how a particular record has made it to the still-coveted No. 1 spot - "you had to sell a million in my day" - the charts continue to hold a perennial, almost morbid, grip on millions of us who want to know what`s up and what`s down, what`s in and what`s not.

The old chestnut about the need for a more reflective basis for pegging artists` true popularity has haunted the industry for decades, and a Top Of The Popsbased on album rather than singles sales would redress the balance. In the meantime, the singles charts remain as much a source of communal shared interest as the football results or the kiss-and-tell tales of TV stars and politicians. In short, the charts are a national institution.

But it wasn`t always like that. While Guinness` renowned pop chart books, Hit Singlesand Hit Albums, list "official" charts for the 1960s onwards, it wasn`t until February 1969 that the BBC and the UK record industry commissioned a genuinely "official" chart from the British Market Research Bureau (BMRB). Prior to that, there were numerous listings competing for attention, all of which drew inspiration from the home of the chart concept, the United States.

The first US music charts were actually for song-sheet sales, reflecting a healthy market for piano music over and above that for new-fangled shellac recordings, and were first broadcast on the Your Lucky Strike Hit Paraderadio show on 20th April 1935. Among the 15 top tunes bought by the public at that time were "The Fleet`s In Port Again", "Shoe Shine Boy", and the No. 1, "It`s A Sin To Tell A Lie".

By the outbreak of the Second World War, with sales of records on the increase, the long-established Billboardentertainment magazine decided to provide a tally of the sales and radioplay of 78 rpm shellac discs. This was published for the first time on 20th July 1940, alongside a chart for less popular "albums" based solely on their sales performance. (In those days, an album meant a set of double-sided 78s housed in cardboard sleeves within a gatefold album.)

Other American publications such as Cashbox, Record Worldand Varietysoon followed Billboard`slead, presenting their own weekly listings, and soon after the end of the War, the idea crossed the pond to Blighty.

In 1946, the first, occasional "Top Tunes" song sheet chart for the UK appeared in Melody Maker,the predominantly jazz music paper founded in 1927. The chart became a weekly fixture in 1951, by which time, despite postwar austerity, the sales of 78s were overtaking those for song-sheets in Britain. In November 1952, New Musical Expressgot one over its Melody Makerrival, with the UK`s first weekly singles record chart, showing Al Martino at peal position with "Here In My Heart". The chart was compiled by the NME`s advertising manager, Percy Dickins, who phoned between 15 and 30 London record stores - from a pool of 53 in total - for their best-selling singles (though he did not gather their total sales figures). The NME`s "Hit Parade" of a dozen tip singles was later aired by Radio Luxemburg, and its success spawned numerous competitors, the first of which, from January 1955, was a Top 10 in Record And Show Mirror(later Record Mirror).This was based on postal returns from 15 to 20 retailers (rising to 40 by 1962) and during the 50s it was being quoted by many newspapers.

In April 1956, Melody Makerjoined the fray with its own Top 10, which featured the likes of Johnny Dankworth, Frank Sinatra, Lonnie Donegan, Dean Martin and Bill Haley, not to mention the No. 1 spot held by the Dream Weavers (with "It`s Almost Tomorrow"). The paper also supplied details of the stores across Great Britain and Northern Ireland that it used to compile its figures. (This pan-UK coverage set a precedent that future chart compilers Gallup would eventually follow in 1984, when it incorporated sales figures for Ulster into its chart for the first time.)

In February 1958, Gerald Marks, the editor of another pop weekly, Disc,supplemented his magazine`s new singles Top 20 (compiled from 25 record store returns) with a novel system of awarding gold and silver presentation discs to artists who sold a million or a quarter of a million records, respectively.

Last on the scene was the new trade magazine Record Retailer(the forerunner to Music Week),which used about 20 outlets for its Top 50 from March 1960 onwards. Faced with this panoply of listings, the BBC`s Pick Of The Pops radio show - first aired on 4th October 1955 - decided to calculate an average of the music press` singles charts for its own purposes, and BBC TV`s Top Of The Pops did likewise for its op 20 from 1964.

A chart for the less popular albums format, however, didn`t appear in the music press until LP sales began to take off in the late 50s. The innovator was Record Mirror,with a Top 5 from the beginning of 1958. It was followed by Melody Maker,whose Top 10 albums chart first appeared in November 1958 and, from March 1960, a Top 20 in Record Retailer(whose figures were also used by the Record Mirror from March 1962). The NME`s Top 10 appeared in June 1962 and Disceventually caught up in 1965.

It was the huge growth of the singles market, though, with annual sales of over 50 million even before Beatlemania that transformed the nature of the charts. In the space of a few years, it evolved from a fun snapshot of record buyers` tastes into a talisman of the record industry. And in this development lies the thorny question of which contemporary chart actually offers the truest guide to artist form at that time - an issue which has never finally been resolved.

Who to believe?

Widely-respected, authoritative publications such as Guinness` chart singles and albums series and Tony Jasper`s Top 20 guides give the impression that the charts that they use are the key ones of the pre-1970 era. This "fact", however, has been questioned by recent research.

While Guinness` compilers plumped for the NME chart prior to 24th March 1962, Jasper drew on the Record Mirror, then both used Record Retailerfigures until 15th February 1969. The central question that needs to be addressed is, whether Record Retaileror any other source can be considered the most reliable source for chart information.

Although the RR chart provides the longest-lived Top 50 of the era, the crux for any listing of this kind has to be the size of its sample.

Record Retailer

Guinness` chart expert, Dave McAleer, believed that the RR chart was compiled from hundreds of record shop returns, thereby providing the best guide to actual sales from 1960 onwards. But Paul Clifford, the manager of the Chart Information Network, has uncovered documentary evidence that the first RR chart of March 1960 was compiled by telephoning just 30 record stores, a figure which has been corroborated by Stephen Old of the Media Entertainment Research organisation.

The RR`s sample grew by March 1962 to 40 stores, 60 a year later, and 80 by 1969. As will be seen, this figure falls far short of its main competitors, Melody Makerand NME, and even Discsampled 70-100 retailers between 1963 and August 1967, and 200 by 1969. Indeed, the BBC`s 25 Years Of Top Of The Popsbook notes that only one member of the RR`s staff called up retailers, a broader sampling process being beyond the limited means of a trade paper such as the Record Retailer. Further undermining its credibility, RR`s chart was compiled Monday-to-Monday rather than on Fridays like its competitors, resulting in some wild swings, notably in May 1960, July 1967 and August 1968, with three joint chart toppers, while the No. 1 at the turn of 1968/69 alternated back and forth between the Scaffold`s "Lily The Pink" and Marmalade`s "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" – both Beatles-related novelties.

The RR chart was also the only one neverto list any Beatles single going straight in at No. 1, nor to place either their "Please Please Me" or the Rolling Stones` "19th Nervous Breakdown" at the top spot. Finally, the RR`s points system for allocating chart positions was based on the placings that singles achieved in RR`s designation shops, rather than the actual total sales figures, and this resulted in tied singles and even some joint No. 1s.

Guinness` Dave McAleer points out that the only continuing Top 50 of the 1960s was the one in the Retailer.But this does little to further the argument that it was the most authoritative. Indeed, competing Top 50 listings in Disc(which ran from April 1966 to April 1967) and Melody Maker(September 1962 to April 1967) were reduced to Top 30s because "have-a-go" band managers tried to influence the lower ends of the charts by hyping their acts. This fact was highlighted by the editor of the Melody Maker,Jack Hutton, in April 1967, and confirmed by Michael Cables` subsequent investigation in The Pop Industry Inside Out.This was not a recent phenomenon - from Radio Luxemburg in the 1950s to the birth of pirate radio in 1964, unscrupulous programme planners were not averse to helping a platter`s progress, provided a small expenditure or favour had been exchanged.

Also undermining the Record Retailer`scredentials as thechart of the times is the fact that the magazine couldn`t be bought over the counter and had to be pre-ordered. Its chart was regarded by the BBC as so peripheral that it wasn`t even included in calculations of the Top Of The PopsTV chart until 1966. Only record companies and larger record chains had ready access to it, and labels like EMI only began to utilise its figures in 1962 after the Record Mirroradopted them. Even then, Record Mirrorwas one of the lower-selling music papers, being on par with Disc,below Melody Maker,and a country mile behind the 250,000-plus-circulation of NME.

NME versus Melody Maker

By 1964, NME had established a supremacy among music magazines that it still enjoys today, with its readership matching those of the other four pop weeklies - Melody Maker, Disc, Record Mirrorand Pop - combined. Sections of the British music industry, particularly labels like Decca, Pye and EMI focused on the NME`s Friday listings as thechart of choice. Recent archival research shows that most regional papers also used the NME listings, though Melody Makerwas favoured in cities such as Wolverhampton, Sheffield, Glasgow, Birmingham, Newcastle, Bristol and by London`s Evening News and Standard.

Melody Makerwas quoted most often in popular national daily and weekly newspapers such as the Daily Mirror, Daily Mail, Daily Herald(later The Sun)Daily Telegraph, News Of The World, Sunday Mirror, The People, Sunday Peopleand the now defunct Daily Sketch.It was also namechecked regularly in the US and other overseas music publications.

As for contemporary British TV news coverage of pop, both the Melody Makerand the NME charts were quoted, though "serious" stories invariably adopted the former (while Record Retailerwas apparently nevermentioned). Consequently, if any chart can lay claim to being the "official" one for the 1960s, it was Melody Makeror NME.

Between 1960 and June 1963, NME`s chart sweep expanded from 70 to 150 stores, and a team of independent sales samplers spent one day a week collecting data. Later in the decade, Fiona Foulgar led an in-house staff who phoned sales lists, a process that continued into the 70s with assistance from Fred Dellar, and in the 80s from Karen Walter. By this stage, teams of five or six staff would each have 20-30 shops to contact.

But it was the Melody Maker,with all the resources of the IPC publishing empire behind it, that led the way from 1960 onwards. Its sample of 30 stores grew to 110 by 1963, and then to 150 and, finally, 220 stores in August 1967. At this point, it combined its resources with Melody Maker Disc,giving a grand total of 250-270 dealers nationwide, before cutting back to 200 in February 1969.

By 1968, the BBC sought to eliminate the confusion of having up to three simultaneous No. 1s by commissioning a new, accurate, independently-compiled survey that would be recognised by the industry and the new owners of the Record Mirror,America`s chart pioneers, Billboard,agreed to co-finance Peter Menser and the British Market Research Bureau to devise a new system. It entailed 250-300 of Britain`s 6000 record shops and chains entering point-of-sale data into diaries that would then be posted to BMRB for transfer to a computer, which would work out the biggest Top 50 chart to date.

In 1969, this process cost over 52,000 pounds in total, but the new chart, publicised by the BBC on both Radio 1 and TV`s Top Of The Pops,as well as in Record Mirror, Record Retailerand, later, Sounds,came to set the standard requirements by its instigators.

There were still teething troubled such as a postal strike early in 1971 that meant the cancellation of the albums chart and only a skeleton singles chart. And even in ideal conditions, 10%-40% of diary returns were invalidated due to late or non-delivery, while most newspapers still carried the NME or Melody Makerlistings. Despite such problems, the BBC-sponsored chart became the official benchmark. So if the Record Retailerchart can be discounted as its true predecessor, what was?

On the evidence available, it`s clear that the charts in both Melody Makerand the NME were less volatile than their rivals and based on larger samples. But the NME listings had two additional flaws. Its chart featured whatever title was requested at the point of purchase by the buyer, whether an A or B-side. This meant that some B-sides charted, while double-As such as Elvis Presley`s "Rock-A-Hula Baby"/"Can`t Help Falling In Love" of 1962 failed to make No. 1, unlike all the other charts. Additionally, there was the rather bizarre situation in which if an LP sold enough copies, it too would appeared in the singles chart. Consequently, the Frank Sinatra LP "Come Dance With Me" charted in 1959, Elvis Presley followed suit in 1960, and Beatles albums appeared seven times since 1963, along with two by the Rolling Stones.

Clearly, the most accurate chart in terms of its coverage and coherence has to be Melody Maker,upon whose figures – perhaps henceforth to be regarded as the "official" ones - Elvis Presley notched up 21 No. 1s across its charts, while the Beatles had 20. In addition, the Who scored an unrecognised No. 1 with "I`m A Boy" in October 1966. Of course, the debate will go on, but roll on the next round...