Beat, Beetles, Beatles: Royston Ellis dead at 82
UK poet credited with converting Liverpool group’s name to acknowledge key US literary force has passed
ROYSTON Ellis, the British Beat poet who named the Beatles, died last month the New York Times reported yesterday. He was 82. Widely published, he spent his final decades in Sri Lanka.
His obituary can be accessed here: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/31/arts/royston-ellis-dead.html
In 2020, I interviewed him for an article on his associations with the Fab Four and his advice to Lennon in 1960 that his group should change their name from the Beetles and adopt the spelling which referenced that community of radical US writers including Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs.
The article I wrote on this topic was commissioned by the Beat Museum in San Francisco and I share a link below to the piece by way of tribute to Ellis himself…
https://www.kerouac.com/beetles-to-beatles-simon-warner/
See also: ‘Beat poetry, beat groups’, August 6th, 2022
I knew about the change from silver Beetles to Beatles but I didn't know or forgot about Royston Ellis. I also learned about the kitchen sink group. I was 19 in 1961 and I liked the song A Taste of Honey but I don't recall anything about the movie, but then I consumed movies mostly at drive-ins while consuming a lot of beer so who knows?
Yes, Pete, that's an interesting one re A Taste of Honey as both northern English, kitchen sink, Angry Young Woman drama and film by Salford's Shelagh Delaney and the contemporaneous song which, of course, the Beatles recorded. I need to look into both backgrounds thanks to your remark!