Looking at the thread A good cuppa (tea), possible in the states? it occurred to me that had the OP not included (tea) in the title, I would have autimatically assumed the thread was about coffee.
Similarly, in the Beatles’ song A Day In The Life, when Paul sings “Found my way downstairs and drank a cup,” in my head he’s always drinking a cup of coffee. Believe it or not, looking at that thread led me to consider, for the first time ever, that being British, maybe Paul found his way downstairs and drank a cup of tea, not coffee.
When you hear the song, what’s in your head? Or have you ever even thought about it at all?
The Beatles were notorious tea drinkers. As are most Brits, I’d presume.
One biography I’d read on the group mentioned that they never did a lot of drugs while working in the studio, instead relying on a never ending stream of cups of tea to keep going.
Cigarettes. Every biography of The Beatles has them with cigarettes in their mouths at every moment, including while they were playing. (Before Brian cleaned them up.)
And tea in their cups. I don’t remember a single reference to their drinking coffee, although that must have happened at some point.
I always assumed it was coffee, but since they were British tea does make more sense. That or that other thing the British are into- what’s it called? Misery?
I don’t assume it’s tea just because they are Brits. Another Brit wrote a song with these lyrics:
“Wake up you sleepyhead. Put on some clothes shake out your bed. Put another log on the fire for me. I made some breakfast and coffee.”
David Bowie, Oh, You Pretty Things
George Martin always said he never saw any drugs in the studio. Oh, semi-regularly the boys would come back from lunch acting a bit silly, and George would figure (probably correctly) they’d smoked a little weed, but when they went to work, they were all-business.
I’m not a tea drinker at all and I’ve never given this line a moment’s thought before now but I do assume it’d be tea. The only other thing I know the Beatles drank was Scotch and Coke and that’d be ‘drank a glass’, surely.
Definitely tea. British people do drink coffee, but not so much back in the sixties, and it’s the only drink where you wouldn’t to add ‘of [whatever].’
The Beatles were known for drinking tea whilst working in the studio, as mentioned upthread. With the rise of coffee culture like Starbucks spreading, these days “Want a cuppa?” could mean tea or coffee, but traditionally in English households a “cuppa” was tea. If you wanted coffee, or were offering coffee, you would specify it.