Nah, nobody made any connection between their name and that of the Beatles. Kids of that time in the UK only had a vague idea of who the Beatles were. I know, I was one of them (the kids, that is, not the Beatles).
Didn’t the Simpsons have Bee Jewelers? I’ll leave their implied slogan as an exercise for the reader.
Just the other day I realized the series name Highway To Heaven was probably a parody of the song Highway To Hell. :smack:
And Victor French was AC/DC’s original lead singer! 
No, wait, that was Bon Scott. Never mind.
But they started off as The Silver Beetles, though.
No, they started as the “Beatals,” then briefly became “The Silver Beetles,” (with “Silver Beats” and “Silver Beatles” thrown in the middle there somewhere.)and finally settled on “Beatles.”
Ah, here’s a run-down:
March 1960 - Stu Sutcliffe comes up with “Beatals,” riffing on Buddy Holly and the Crickets
c. May 5 1960 - They become The Silver Beetles
May 14 1960 - (for one day only) billed as The Silver Beats
early July 1960 - change spelling to Silver Beatles
c. Aug 16 1960 - settle on The Beatles
That’s what all jewelry commercials are about.
Just FYI, there’s no need to capitalize the thes in these sentences, even if it’s part of the proper name. It’s perfectly correct to refer to the Beatles, the Crickets, the English Beat, etc.
I can forgive the OP for not getting the pun before.
Long ago, “Beatles” essentially became its own definition. Whetever the boys intended it to mean in the first place, what it means now is… them.
Elvis and the Beatles were two things my mom just couldn’t understand I had no interest in. I was born in '64 and was vaguely aware of hippies and Beatles and Beach Boys but by the time I was old enough to care about music those acts were ancient history. Anything over ten years old was ancient history to me. The 60’s. WWI. Medieval Europe. Jesus. Dinosaurs. All ancient history to me.
Here’s what I was looking for: It means its own thing now. (Not so much for Fountains of Wayne…)
There is a story that the Beau Brummels, one of the first American bands to successfully incorporate the British Invasion sound, deliberately chose their name so that people going through the Beatles section in record stores would come upon their albums immediately following. Disappointingly, one of the members has said that this is a myth.
If I ever formed a group I would be tempted to call it the Beatless just for the hell of it.
When** Liam Gallagher** finally left Oasis/his brother Noel, he formed a band call Beady Eye specifically to get sorted next to The Beatles…
So…what is it? I know he’s a robot and bender means, I think, gay in British English? Is that part of it? What is the other part?
A “bender” is a drinking binge.
Yes, as in “to go on a bender”. It’s rather old fashioned, though, and I can’t remember the last time I heard it seriously used in that sense. Don’t know if it was deliberate on the part of the Futurama creators. One reference says he’s named after a character in The Breakfast Club.
A robot named Bender who is habitually intoxicated? Of course it was deliberate.
But alcohol fuels robots. All robots drink all the time we just only see Bender doing it. There was an episode where he quite drinking and he basically turned into what a human would if they became an alcoholic.
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That was introduced after the character’s first appearance.
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So what? It doesn’t change the joke.
It must have been either that, or a cricket who wore black framed glasses.