Welcome to Nothing is Real, a podcast about the Beatles.

Everybody thinks they know the Beatles, but how much do we really know?

My name is Jason Carty.

My name is Stephen Corkroft.

And we are live on tape from Dublin.

John Lennon first met Paul McCartney in 1957 and the Beatles actively released music between 1962 to 1970.

So when you look at Beatle history, which year has had the greatest impact on the group?

And today we're going to look at 1980.

We think that is the year that had the greatest impact on how we understand the Beatles today.

It has everything to do with 1980.

And, you know, I think broadly speaking, you know, to be a Beatles fan in 1979 versus being a Beatles fan in 1981,

they are two totally different situations.

Absolutely.

I think everything fundamentally changed in 1980 in terms of just where the Beatles

wear culturally and how the public reacted to them, related to them.

Yeah. And, you know, we're going to have a little recap first of the where we stand, the State of Affairs in

1979 and then we'll kind of walk through 1980 and look at what everybody was doing at that

time. So to recap at the end of the 70s, you know, let's start with Ringo because in the late

70s it wasn't really a good time for Ringo. You know, his musical career, he was initially the most successful Beatle, wasn't he in the charts, but he was now at a low point.

Yeah, he'd be straight out of the traps.

Post-split, he was outselling Lennon.

He was outselling McCartney in terms of singles.

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