1969
SINGLE
RELEASED
Great Britain: May 30, 1969 / No. 1 for 3 weeks beginning on June 11, 1969
United States: June 4, 1969 / No. 8 on June 14, 1969
Lennon-McCartney / 2:58
1969
SONGWRITER
John
MUSICIANS
John: vocal, guitar, percussion
Paul: drums, backing vocal, bass, piano, maracas
RECORDED
Abbey Road: April 14, 1969 (Studio Three)
NUMBER OF TAKES: 11
MIXING
Abbey Road: April 14, 1969 (Studio Three)
TECHNICAL TEAM
Producer: George Martin
Sound Engineer: Geoff Emerick
Assistant Engineer: John Kurlander
In 1969, John called this song a “Johnny B. Paperback Writer.” In 1980, he talked about the song as a journalistic chronicle, a folk song, “Well, guess who wrote that? I wrote that in Paris on our honeymoon. It’s a piece of journalism. It’s a folk song. That’s why I called it ‘The Ballad of …’” 1 It is about events surrounding John’s marriage to Yoko. “We wanted to get married on a cross-channel ferry. That was the romantic part: when we went to Southampton and then we couldn’t get on because she wasn’t English and she couldn’t get the day visa to go across.”2
On March 16, four days after Paul and Linda’s wedding, John and Yoko took off for Paris with the intention of getting married. However, after some complications, they were unable to. “They were in Paris and we were calling Peter Brown, and said, ‘We want to get married. Where can we go?’”3 Peter Brown, former right-hand man of Brian Epstein, manager of Apple Corp., and a close friend of the Lennon clan, found the solution to their problem by proposing that they get married in Gibraltar. On March 20, 1969, John married Yoko Ono in the British Consulate in Gibraltar. Peter Brown was one of the witnesses, and he was immortalized in the verse, Peter Brown called to say, “You can make it okay. You can get married in Gibraltar, near Spain.”
The newlyweds stayed a little more than an hour in Gibraltar, just enough time for the ceremony, before returning to Paris, where, a few days later, they dined with Salvador Dalí. On March 25 they flew to Amsterdam, where they held a seven-day bed-in for peace at the Hilton Hotel, room 902. They returned to London on April 1.
As soon as the song was written, John brought it to Paul’s house. Paul, discovering the lyrics and references to Christ, panicked. He said, “Jesus Christ, you’re kidding, aren’t you? Someone really is going to get upset about it,”4 remembering the hostile reactions in the United States in 1966 to John’s famous statement, “We’re more popular than Jesus.” John insisted. Despite his reservations, Paul helped John finish the final verse, and they went straight to Abbey Road to record it. Paul: “John was in an impatient mood so I was happy to help. It’s quite a good song; it has always surprised me how with just the two of us on it, it ended up sounding like the Beatles.”5
FOR BEATLES FANATICS
At 2:50, Peter Brown arrived at the studio and we can hear John welcoming him with “Hey! Peter!” Judge for yourself.
John wanted the song out as soon as possible. The working title was “The Ballad of John and Yoko (They’re Gonna Crucify Me).” At the beginning of April, Peter Brown told Geoff Emerick that John had composed a new song and asked Emerick to help John record the song. Without waiting for the other Beatles to return, Emerick reserved Studio Three on April 14 for the recording session of “The Ballad of John and Yoko.” George and Ringo were away, George recording chants with Radha Krishna monks and Ringo filming a new Peter Sellers movie, The Magic Christian, directed by Joseph McGrath.
George said, “‘The Ballad of John and Yoko’ was none of my business. If it had been the “The Ballad of John and George and Yoko,” then I would have been on it.”5 Similarly, Ringo was not offended to have been replaced by Paul, “We had no problems with that. There’s good drums on ‘The Ballad of John and Yoko.’”6 In John’s opinion, even though George and Ringo were absent, the record was still a Beatles record and not something separate: “It’s the Beatles’ next single, simple as that.”7
The recording session took place in an atmosphere of camaraderie and good feeling between John and Paul, as in the good old days before the extreme tensions and chaotic sessions of Get Back. They perfected a basic track in eleven takes with Paul on drums, as with “Back in the U.S.S.R.” and “Dear Prudence,” and John simultaneously on acoustic guitar and lead vocal. On the second track there is some German mixed with English. John explained to Mal Evans, “a string is kaput, damn!” Then, just before take 4, John says to the drumming Paul, “Go a bit faster, Ringo!” and Paul replies to the guitar-wielding John, “OK, George!”
Take 10 was the best basic track. John overdubbed two lead guitars and accented the beat by strumming his acoustic guitar. Paul provided bass, a piano part, backing vocals, and maracas, and John added percussion by playing on the back of his acoustic guitar. The recording session was completed in less than six hours. The song was mixed for stereo very quickly and, because of the new eight-track technology used during the recording, became the Beatles’ first stereo single in Great Britain and consequently their first release not to be mixed in mono. George Martin confessed that he enjoyed working with John and Yoko. They were in their positive period. With this song, Martin said that John truly divorced himself from the Beatles; “It was a kind of thin end of the wedge, as far as they were concerned. John had already mentally left the group anyway, and I think that was just the beginning of it all.”8
George Harrison / 3:16
1969
MUSICIANS
George: vocal, electric guitar, Hammond organ, bass (?)
John: electric guitar, backing vocal, Hammond organ
Paul: bass (?), backing vocal, piano
Ringo: drums
RECORDED
Abbey Road: February 25, 1969 (Studio unknown) / April 16 and 18, 1969 (Studio Three)
NUMBER OF TAKES: 4
MIXING
Abbey Road: April 16 and 18, 1969 (Studio Three)
TECHNICAL TEAM
Producers: George Martin, Chris Thomas
Sound Engineers: Ken Scott, Phil McDonald, Jeff Jarratt
Assistant Engineers: Ken Scott, Richard Lush, John Kurlander
In his book I Me Mine, published in 1980, George said that his inspiration for “Old Brown Shoe” came from a chord sequence on the piano, “which I don’t really play, and then began writing ideas for the words from various opposites … Again, it’s the duality of things—yes no, up down, left right, right wrong …”1 George’s song followed the model of McCartney’s “Hello Goodbye.” The title “Old Brown Shoe” does not have much to do with the lyrics, except that George found the allusion interesting.
Between February 7 and 15, George was hospitalized for a problem with his wisdom teeth. Ten days later, February 25 to be exact, was his twenty-sixth birthday. To celebrate he went to the studio to record solo demos of three of his latest compositions—“Old Brown Shoe,” “Something,” and “All Things Must Pass.” Each had a different fate. Assisted by Ken Scott in the control room, he recorded the basic rhythm track for each song—guitar and piano. Then he recorded the vocals. Those demos were sufficiently developed for the other Beatles to learn their parts later on. On April 16, more than a month and a half after George made these demos, the Beatles worked on “Old Brown Shoe.” In two hours, a new demo was made, but it was immediately deleted and four new takes recorded. Each Beatle mastered his part perfectly. George was on lead vocal and had a shared guitar part with John, Paul was at the Challen “jangle box” (a kind of honky-tonk piano), and Ringo was on drums. The fourth take was the best. Paul added a bass line, doubled in certain parts by George’s guitar, giving it a dynamic and powerful sound. Then came the backing vocals sung by Paul and John. George then retaped his lead vocal. This last take was recorded and the stereo and mono mixes made. However, two days later on April 18, George was apparently dissatisfied with the results, so Lennon’s guitar part was deleted in favor of a Hammond organ part played by George as well as a guitar solo played through a Leslie speaker. George overdubbed his vocal. George delivered another one of his subtle and creative solos.
FOR BEATLES FANATICS
“Old Brown Shoe” is the only title published by Sing Song Music, a company George created in June 1969 to publish his own songs. It was managed by Apple. Later, George renamed it Harrisongs.
“Old Brown Shoe” was finally finished. The song was mixed in stereo following the recording session. There is some debate over whether Harrison played bass. According to the recording sheets and the sound of the bass, Paul may have doubled George’s guitar. In an interview for Creem magazine published in December 1987, George affirmed that he played bass for the piece saying “that was me going nuts.” He added: “I’m doing exactly what I do on the guitar.”2 If this is the case, he certainly played the six-string Fender bass.
To obtain a distinctive sound and to give a natural echo to his voice, George turned toward one of the corners of Studio Three and sang into the wall.3