Is it true that The Beatles loved Evgeny Yevtushenko's poetry?

In Russian -speaking blogs, information is subject to the fact that the participants of the Liverpool four read and loved Yevtushenko’s poems. The poet himself repeatedly spoke about this, who even wrote the poem “Ballad of the Fifth Beatle” (implying himself). We decided to check the reliability of such publications.

June 18, 2025 Facebook user Evgeny Demenok Published An entry with a quote, attribute Paul McCartney: “The Beatles differed in that there were no vulgars. We were like participants in an art mug; This feeling did not leave us after Hamburg. I remember we made fun of the saxophonist from another group. When he knocked on the door, I grabbed the volume of Yevtushenko and began to read out fragments, and everyone around was sitting and listening, as if delving into ... the saxophonist quietly crawled, apologized, also quietly felled his Saxi and got silently. We howled. But such insolence allowed us to feel unlike the rest. ” This publication dispersed widely, it was repostated, including the American historian Ivan Kurill And a journalist Anna Narinskaya.

A fragment from an article about an article is quoted in Facebook. McCartney field in the Russian -speaking "Wikipedia", and she, in turn, refers to book Barry Miles Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now, published in 1997. The publishing annotation indicates that the book is based on hundreds of hours of exclusive interviews that Miles took from McCartney for five years. The scene with Tomik Yevtushenko really is there. Moreover, McCartney told the same story in other interviews with journalists, in particular for the book "Anthology The Beatles"And the magazine FI. 

In one of interview Evgeny Yevtushenko said:

“During the first Bitles Continental Tour, where they went with their mothers, Paul McCartney's girlfriend presented him with a book of my poems, translated into English, bought in Hamburg. It was a collection "Winter Station". And McCartney liked my poems so much that the whole group began to read them before each exit on the stage! It was charged with poems for the necessary courage! And I was at that time in Rome. The excitement in connection with the tour "Beatles" - wild! The Prime Minister of Italy had an invitation to the concert only for one person, his wife rolled out a scandal, and he gave it to me. In the hall, nothing was heard, everyone squealed constantly. Of course, I heard Beatles in the Union and fell in love with these guys. They grew up in poor families. They sang good songs. And they did not part with my book. It turns out that I was the fifth! "

The poet repeated the same story with small variations during his performances Before reading the poem "Batle ballad".

In the early 1960s, Yevgeny Yevtushenko was at the peak of his popularity. He was known both in the USSR and beyond. In 1962, the British Publishing House Penguin Books released The collection of his poems in the series “Modern European Poets” (for example, the collections of Anna Akhmatova, Guillaume Apolliner, Rainer Maria Rilke, etc.) were published in it. The book was successful, as evidenced by several reprints. At the London Theater Royal Cort in honor of its exit took place Creative evening Yevtushenko. 

Therefore, it is not surprising that the collection fell into the hands of the young floor of McCartney. However, the allegations that on the tour The Beatles did not part with Yevtushenko’s book are not accurate. The poet in his speeches, apparently, relied on the story of McCartney in the Russian translation of “Anthology The Beatles”. There (in the context of acquaintance with Bob Dylan and their common love for poetry) it was said:

“Such things have always been interested in us. There was something from us from students. We ridiculed other groups that were not interested in anything like that. Once in Hamburg, a book of poems Yevtushenko fell into my hands. Her girlfriend sent me. We sat in the locker room, where everyone kept saxophones and equipment. We waited for our exit when a saxophonist from another group knocked and asked permission to enter. We said: "Come in! Come in!" We sat in different poses, and I read: "The yellow flower thoughtlessly decorates green steps." And the guy walked past us almost on tiptoe: "Sorry, I did not want to interfere ..." The fact is that the book of poems was part of our equipment for us. That's what we all loved is art. ”

In the original, the final of the story sounded a little different: “The Point Was that We Had a book of poetry; IT WAS PART of OUR Equipment. IT WAS PART and PARCEL of What We All LIKED - ART ”(“ The essence is that we have was book of poems; This was part of our equipment. An integral part of what we all loved is art ”). That is, obviously, by part of the equipment, McCartney did not mean a specific collection of Yevtushenko, but poetry in general (in “Anthology” he calls Dylan Thomas the most important poet for The Beatles). In the story, McCartney could not reproduce a real quote from Yevtushenko from memory and brought other people's or simply fictional lines - no yellow colors on green steps were “tested” in the original verses of Yevtushenko and their English translations. Telling the same story in an interview with the magazine FI, McCartney ironically noted that Yevtushenko’s volume in Hamburg was a pleasant alternative to Der Spiegel magazine.

Thus, Paul McCartney really read at least once (including out loud for his group comrades) a collection of poems by Yevgeny Yevtushenko. He repeatedly cited this episode in his interview. However, he and other participants in The Beatles never mentioned other cases when they read Yevtushenko, and also did not talk about the attitude to the Russian poet and his possible influence on their work. As their main poetic source of inspiration, they called the British poet Dylan Thomas.

Photo on the cover: collage "Checked"

Half truth

What do our verdicts mean?

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