During her 70-year reign, it would be easier to ask which celebrities Queen Elizabeth didn’t meet. She rubbed shoulders with everyone from Elton John to Lady Gaga at events like the Royal Variety Performance, movie premieres and charity galas. She also presented plenty of honors during royal investitures, and in 1965, she awarded the members of The Beatles with their MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire). According to Craig Brown’s biography Q: A Voyage Around The Queen, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and George Harrison—who were in their early twenties at the time—had quite the crush on Queen Elizabeth before their trip to Buckingham Palace.
The late Queen was just 27 during her 1953 coronation, and Brown wrote that the four Beatles “had entertained lustful thoughts about the young Princess Elizabeth” when they were teenagers. In 2017, Paul McCartney reflected on their feelings about the monarch during an interview with 60 Minutes Australia, sharing, “They were very formative teenage years, and The Queen was, sort of, 24 or something, so, to us, she was a babe.”
“We were like, ‘Phowar!'” he continued, adding “there was a certain lustfulness in us teenagers” when it came to Elizabeth. “Just look at the heat on her!” he said, repeating a phrase “we used to say in Liverpool.”
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The Beatles proudly displayed their MBEs from Queen Elizabeth in 1965.
(Image credit: Getty Images)
A young Queen Elizabeth is seen in 1954.
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Q: A Voyage Around The Queen
When it came to their MBE ceremony, Brown wrote that either the foursome’s “teenage infatuations clouded their brains” or else it “might have been the marijuana that John Lennon later claimed they had smoked in the palace loo before the ceremony.” No matter what happened, the author noted that the band’s “conversation with The Queen proved awkward.”
When Queen Elizabeth asked them, “Have you been working hard recently?” Lennon didn’t know what to say, and replied, “No, we’ve been having a holiday” when they had actually been spending time in the studio. “Have you been together long?” the late Queen asked McCartney. Apparently, he quoted a song called “My Old Dutch” and said, “Yes, we’ve been together now for forty years…” with the rest of the band singing the next line. But Queen Elizabeth didn’t get the joke.
After asking Ringo if he started the group, and Starr replying he “joined last,” she ended their brief interaction by telling them it had been “a pleasure” to present them with their MBEs.
Perhaps that’s why they later wrote the song “Her Majesty” a few years later. Brown wrote that in 2002, McCartney performed at the late Queen’s 2002 Golden Jubilee, and when he was asked about meeting her later, he quoted the song, in part, remarking, “I don’t know how to break this to you, but she doesn’t have a lot to say.”
