The eagle picks my eye
The worm he licks my bones
I feel so suicidal
Just like Dylan’s Mr. Jones
Lonely wanna die
If I ain’t dead already
Ooh girl you know the reason why.
Black cloud crossed my mind
Blue mist round my soul
Feel so suicidal
Even hate my rock and roll
Wanna die yeah wanna die
If I ain’t dead already
Ooh girl you know the reason why.
Mother Nature’s Son
So is this what we all wanted instead? Paul had supposedly been inspired by a lecture from the Maharishi on the unity between man and nature, but he actually composed this in Liverpool, after a visit to his dad. The first line begins ‘born a poor young country boy’. Don’t most people get born young? He presumably needed the right number of words to fill out the line and didn’t give much thought to their meaning. The boy is singing amongst the daisies and mountain streams, and it’s all very nice, pretty and sweet and melodic–but it does seem as if Paul himself had second thoughts, unable to manage more than six lines. Instead of thinking up any more verses he contented himself with doooo doooing and hummm humming. Very nicely, mind you.
Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey
Another shouty one from John with the longest title in the Beatles canon, but with more melody and some nice lines. In his mind, he and Yoko–whom I take to be his monkey, though others have suggested it refers to heroin–were on their own, the world against them, only they knew what was true and good and joyous. He had by now confessed about Yoko to Cynthia, and was leaving her; in the meantime he was having arguments with Paul and the others, who did not care for Yoko coming to the studio and taking part in musical discussions. Then there was trouble with their company, Apple, leading them to close their Baker Street boutique in August. So, the anguish went on, and John felt everyone had something to hide, except him.
Sexy Sadie
Appeared at the time to be a song about a girl who teased and turned everyone on, then made a fool of them all. Then we discovered that it was not about a girl but the Maharishi. In the original recordings, John sang his name; but when he realized he could end up in court, it was changed to a girl’s name. Bootlegs which were somehow spirited out of the recording sessions revealed John shouting obscenities about Maharishi. That evidence, plus gossip and rumour, eventually led to most fans learning about the true background to the song.
It was begun by John while still in India, but thinking of coming home, after he had become disillusioned. There were stories circulating in the camp about the Maharishi making approaches to a girl (never proved), and that he was really after their fame and money. This was supposedly what made John suddenly decide to leave.
No manuscript has so far turned up, but a piece of wood was auctioned in 2007, said to have been carved by John on his return to Kenwood, on which the lyrics are written–with the name Maharishi all the way through and no mention of Sexy Sadie. It is of course, as you already know, the only Beatles song in which the word sex or sexy appears.
Helter Skelter
Paul then decided to do his shouty bit, showing he could keep up with John and also with the fashion at the time for loud heavy music, as exemplified by Pete Townshend and The Who. While up at his Scottish cottage, he read a review in a music newspaper about The Who’s latest record being the loudest, rawest and dirtiest they had done. This inspired Paul to have a go at something that would freak everyone out and prove that he wasn’t just a ballad writer. Even the late Ian MacDonald, normally the most cerebral and technical and wordy of music critics, called it a ‘drunken mess’.
The subject matter is clear enough to most Brits–because we all know that a helter skelter is a fairground ride, a fast, furious, scary spiral ride, where you ride on a mat at breakneck speed from the top of a winding slide all the way down the bottom, so the analogy of taking a ride on a girl who is coming down fast, whom he might break, is readily understood sexual innuendo. The term ‘helter skelter’, meaning a headlong, disorderly haste or scramble, had actually been in popular use long before the fairground ride came along.
All this was lost on American Charles Manson, alas. He took it be a literal incitement to kill. The crazy, wild, dirty, incredibly loud music encouraged his dangerous fantasies. He managed to see hidden meanings in almost all of the songs on the album, finding references to the black races in ‘Rocky Raccoon’–‘coon’ being a derogatory term for a black person–and in ‘Blackbird’. But it was ‘Helter Skelter’ that became the soundtrack to his killing spree. When he was arrested, Manson talked specifically about the record and how it was about confusion which you can’t see, coming down fast, so you have to kill or be killed.
The lyrics, and the music, sound highly sexual, and pretty frantic at that, but when interviewed by Barry Miles in 1996, Paul said the helter skelter was merely a symbol of descent from top to bottom ‘like the rise and fall of the Roman Empire’. You what?
On the record, which took fifty-two takes to get right, you can hear Lennon at the end saying ‘How’s that?’ and Ringo replying ‘I got blisters on me fingers.’
The part manuscript is in Mal Evans’s careful handwriting, but the instructions for the recording of the song are written by Paul.
‘Helter Skelter’, from The White Album, lyrics in Mal’s hand, instructions by Paul.
When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide
Where I stop and I turn and I go for a ride
Till I get to the bottom and I see you again.
Do you don’t you want me to love you
I’m coming down fast but I’m miles above you
Tell me, tell me, tell me, come on tell me the answer
You may be a lover but you ain’t no dancer.
Helter skelter, helter skelter
Helter skelter.
When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide
Where I stop and I turn and I give you a thrill
Till I get to the bottom and I see you again.
Will you, won’t you want me to make you
I’m coming down fast but don’t let me break you
Tell me, tell me, tell me the answer
You may be a lover but you ain’t no dancer.
Well do you, don’t you want me to love you
I’m coming down fast but don’t let me break you
Tell me, tell me, tell me the answer
You may be a lover but you ain’t no dancer.
Look out
Helter skelter, helter skelter
Helter skelter.
Look out helter skelter
She’s coming down fast.
Yes she is.
Yes she is
(I got blisters on me fingers)
Long Long Long
George’s soppy love song–at least, that is how it appears, with stuff like oh how I love you, and want you, and need you, so happy I found you, etc. You come away convinced it must be about his wife Pattie or some girlfriend. But in I Me Mine George says it was not about a girl, but God. Hmm.
The sound is interesting, with George almost whispering the words, and with a distant drumbeat, but the words are clumsy: ‘How can I ever misplace you’ makes God, or the girl, sound like a parcel.
The manuscript, in George’s hand, was written on a sheet torn out of a diary for the week of 11 August 1968. Not often we can date the composition of a song. It was then recorded 7–9 October.
At the bottom, George has listed some of his other songs–‘Savoy Truffle’ and ‘Piggies’, plus ‘Not Guilty’ which was not recorded by the Beatles but by George himself in 1979.
It’s been a long long long time,
How could I ever have lost you
When I loved you.
It’s been a long long long time
Now I’m so happy I found you
How I love you
So many tears I was searching,
So many tears I was wasting, oh.
Oh—
Now I can see you, be you
How can I ever misplace you
How I want you
Oh I love you
You know that I need you.
Ooh I love you.
‘Long Long Long,’ from The White Album, in George’s hand, on the very day he wrote it?
Revolution 1
The same lyrics as on the B side of ‘Hey Jude’, except for that one vital addition–‘in’ added to ‘out’, sounding like a quick afterthought, and easy to miss. The tempo is much slower and relaxed and amused, and at the end he adds a bit of a chorus where they go shooo bee doo.
Honey Pie
Oh, didn’t Paul write some fun songs, brilliant pastiches which sound better, more polished, more realistic, more genuine than the songs being parodied. In this case a 1920s ragtime song about a North of England girl who makes it big in Hollywood–a little present to his father, who played these sort of old music-hall songs in his jazz band days. It begins as they all did–with a very slow, almost spoken introduction–before we are into the action of the music, with everyone wanting to get up and dance or sing, or both, like in ye good old days. Oh, we were happy them.
On the first side of the album, there is another song called ‘Wild Honey Pie’, but it is a mere scrap, under a minute long, with no real lyrics apart from the repetition of the words ‘Honey pie’. Another piece of self-reflection.
The ‘Honey Pie’ manuscript shows some minor changes in the intro. The contract for the song has also somehow emerged–which is interesting as it shows that in 1968 the publisher, Northern Songs (Dick James Company), was still taking 50 per cent of the fees.
How the performing rights fees were divided for ‘Honey Pie’, 1968–half to Northern Songs, half to John and Paul.