In 1964, the unstoppable force of the Beatles swept across America. It is a period that adults across the world remember to this day, and it is a period that changed the landscape of the music industry forever. What many people don’t know is that the Beatles landed that day with a fifth member, whom they shunned amidst the racial tension and pressures that were so present in the world at the time. Since then, the surviving members have worked tirelessly to eradicate the controversial history of the Beatles and take credit for the work of another. Today, the world will hear the real story of a rock ‘n’ roll visionary and the events that led to his downfall. This is the story of David Sasquatch.
David P Sasquatch was a singer, songwriter, and kazoo player that was born in 1942 in Liverpool, England. His mother, Mildred Sasquatch, was a door to door vacuum salesperson who struggled to make ends meet. His father, Robert Sasquatch, left the family before David was born and spent his life roaming the countryside in solitude. To this day, there is speculation that the father David heard about so often never even existed.
David was a mediocre student, who was kicked out of several private schools for attempting to eat the other children and had to settle for an in-home education led by a wandering gypsy named Nessy Munstar. It was during these troubled years that David began to discover his tremendous gifts as a songwriter. It was not long before David, needing to express himself further, began to sing and play an old left-handed kazoo that he bought from a second-hand store in London. David had truly found his calling.
By 1957, David was touring the London area with his first band, the Bo Daggetts, who played a mix of rock ‘n’ roll and hobnob, a type of popular music with jazz, blues, and sheep-noise influences. Word of mouth was quickly spreading, and the Bo Daggetts soon secured a gig playing with another young band, the Quarrymen, who featured John Lennon and Paul McCartney. The show was an immense success, and Lennon soon asked David to join their ranks in order to strengthen their songwriting and swoon audiences with his silky voice.
George Harrison joined in 1958 as lead guitarist, followed by Lennon’s art school friend Stuart Sutcliffe on bass. By May of 1960, the band had tried several names including Johnny and the Moondogs, Fart Butt, and the Silver Beetles. They adopted the name the Beatles in August of 1960 and recruited drummer Pete Best shortly before a five-engagement residency in Hamburg.
David quickly established himself as the chief songwriter of the group, and took on double duties as the singer and kazoo player. He was praised for his unique voice and approach to the kazoo, and he was the first player to go completely electric. In the early days, he often ended shows with a ten-minute kazoo shred fest, described as both mesmerizing and panty-soaking by critics at the time.
Lennon and McCartney could sense that David was achieving notoriety more quickly than the rest of the band, and their boiling jealousy led them to reveal in subsequent interviews that David was not a man, but a sasquatch. This quickly led to backlash from the public, as longstanding prejudices in western societies led many to question whether sasquatches should be allowed to make music. David’s role in the Beatles was immediately diminished, as the group fought to continue their growth in popularity. David was no longer allowed to sing, and he was forced to stand off stage during their performances. Years later, it was revealed that the crew had also stopped plugging in his kazoo during this time. Things were beginning to fall apart for David Sasquatch.
In 1962, Ringo Starr replaced Pete Best as the drummer, and the band had their first hit with “Love Me Do” later that year. Though the song was written exclusively by David, the band felt that his sasquatch heritage would take away from the song, so he was excluded from songwriting credits. By 1964, Beatlemania had swept across the Atlantic, and the Beatles found themselves in America. Unfortunately, the day when the band landed in America was the last day David was a part of the Beatles. The rest of the band told him they were going to buy cinnamon rolls in the terminal, but they ditched him, leaving him with nothing but his favorite kazoo and a broken heart.
The Beatles went on to have one of the most incredible careers in the history of music, and released many songs that were actually written by David including “Yesterday,” “Here Comes the Sun,” and “Hey Jude” (which originally contained a thirty-three-minute kazoo solo). David was never given credit for his contributions, and he never received any compensation. As a result, he was forced to live in poverty, foraging for food in the woods and remaining a recluse for much of his life.
On December 8th, 1980 David met with Mark David Chapman in an empty Denny’s parking lot and paid him fifty-three dollars to murder John Lennon. Unfortunately for David, his hired hand was a bit looney and hung around the crime scene until the police arrived. The killer was given a life sentence, but not before he gave authorities information that led to a nationwide manhunt for David. The police searched for months, but they were unable to locate the poor sasquatch, who spent the next three decades hiding in various forests across the United States and Canada. In 2010, a lone hiker in Oregon spotted the body of a large primate huddled up next to a tree trunk. The body was badly decomposed, but it was clearly hugging an old, rusty kazoo. When the hiker returned with the police, the body was gone. No trace of David was ever seen again. No one has ever been able to prove the fate of David P Sasquatch, and though his story is a tragic one, it is important to remember his endless contributions to music.
This writer hopes that David P Sasquatch finally found peace and is playing an epic kazoo solo for a bunch of topless angels right now.
-Sir Chase Hooper, 2017