Beatles Secret: Flattened Penny Picks

Get the new Beatles Rewind eBook FREE at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GZD1QM92 Visit my Beatles Store at Amazon: https://amzn.to/3LlPVOI As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. See my archive of Beatles stories and videos: https://beatlesrewind.substack.com/archive There’s a persistent legend about Paul McCartney that feels too charming to be fake. The story goes that Sir Paul—a man who could afford a gold-plated factory—used to make his guitar picks by lining up pennies on train tracks and letting a locomotive do the flattening. Whether it was a one-time experiment or a career-long habit is up for debate, but the image of the world’s most famous bassist scavenging for flattened copper is irresistible. It’s also, in a strange way, the perfect introduction to how the Beatles approached the humble guitar pick. These small, almost disposable pieces of plastic—or apparently, occasionally, smashed currency—were the first point of contact between the players and the music. And the choices they made, from cheap celluloid in Liverpool coffeehouses to the specific picks that helped define some of the most recorded bass lines in history, turn out to be more interesting than anyone who’s never lost a pick under their couch cushion might expect.