Have you ever heard the Beatles playing anything else but the Beatles?
Me neither….!
So here you go, there’s the Beatles playing the Harry Lime Theme, also known as the Third Man Theme.
The Beatles – Third Man Theme
You’re welcome!
Some backstory
In the smoky clubs of Liverpool and Hamburg, The Beatles would sometimes surprise their audiences with an unexpected tune: The Third Man Theme. Originally written and performed on the zither by Anton Karas for the 1949 film The Third Man, the melody had long since become a worldwide earworm.
For John, Paul, George, and Pete (and later Ringo), it wasn’t about showing deep artistic influence — it was about fun.
Dropping such a well-known film theme into their sets made the crowds laugh, lean in, and remember that this young band could play just about anything.
Between rock ’n’ roll covers and blues standards, slipping in a playful instrumental was a way to break the tension and keep energy high.
The Beatles never recorded it officially, and it didn’t shape their later work in any serious way.
But their choice to perform The Third Man Theme says something important about who they were even then:
restless, curious, and unafraid to bend the rules of what a “rock band” was supposed to sound like.
