My first two records were influenced by the Beatles and the Beach Boys.
Anyone who knows the history of the Pete Best Band or the Combo, we were on the verge of breaking in in America. In the mid-'60s, I had great songwriters; we wrote some great stuff.
The Beatles. I didn't like the first couple of songs, but when I heard "She Loves You', it was like something went off in my head.
The Beatles just changed everything right across the board. They just had that right combination of clean-cut good looks - a cute band - but under that they had a real rock n' roll thing going on.
The Beatles, the Small Faces and the Kinks were great bands, but that was in the '60s.
But times changed, and I changed, and I didn't feel that way anymore. The Beatles were happening. I think that was probably the main thing. The Beatles just changed the whole world of music.
When the Beatles came to America and took me off the map, I thought I would return the favor, and I moved the family to England!
I was still 15 when I met John Lennon at a village fete in Woolton, in Liverpool.
There are a lot of famous comedians from Liverpool, then obviously the Beatles, and the football club. That's what people in Liverpool are passionate about.
I think when I was a kid, and I was in England and it was all about The Stones, The Who, The Kinks and The Beatles and that's what my dad was into.
I don't think anybody comes close to The Beatles, including Oasis.
You can't beat The Beatles, you join 'em.
I was a Beach Boys guy, but I was won over. In '64, as the radio stations were creating this duel between The Beatles and The Beach Boys, I slowly but surely got won over by the Mop Tops.
The Beatles were from Liverpool. It's a hard town. The Stones weren't the hard men. They just dressed up. The Beatles were the hard men.
After The Beatles came on the scene everyone started putting on a Liverpudlian accent.
Ready, Steady, Go!' was the show of the '60s in London, where the Beatles, the Stones and the DC5, and every other major act started.
Both the Beatles and The Rolling Stones broke on the music scene the summer I was in England. I can vividly remember hearing 'She Loves You' in August 1963.
Grime reminds me, if there is an echo, of sort of near enough like Liverpool in the very early Sixties. It's a lot of kids obsessed with music - obsessed with it.
I loved the Beatles when they turned up, and the Stones when they turned up, and never really stopped liking them.
It wasn't until 1963 that you would really want to listen to any kind of English music.
We were at our best when we were playing in the dance halls of Liverpool and Hamburg. The world never saw that.
There was so much great music around in the '60s, stuff like The Small Faces, but I also love The Jam.
England was always very special. It was so important because the reason Benny and I started writing was the Beatles. During the Sixties, England was everything. To be number one in England was more important than being number one in America because England set the tone.
The whole British music scene of the mid-sixties had a pretty profound effect on me.
From 1958 to 1964, that's real rock n' roll. Then the Beatles hit and everyone sounded like them.
