Klaus Voormann with some of his artwork.

As we continue our roving voyage through the alphabet, we come to the letter K.

I am going to start this chapter by talking not about a song but about a person. Somebody who was very important to the Beatles, a great friend of the band, and a very talented man in so many respects: Klaus Voormann. I like and admire Klaus very much; I remember meeting him back in the day, and we have run into each other on several occasions since. Quite recently I had the pleasure of interviewing Klaus onstage at a Fest for Beatles Fans and was impressed all over again by his understated but intense intelligence and his acute artistic sensibility.

He is a brilliant musician, and he played on a lot of solo Beatle tracks. But his exceptional musical talent has perhaps been overshadowed to some extent by his now legendary achievements as a graphic artist. I am speaking, of course, of the creation of some famously hairy album art—the cover of one of the most famous Beatles albums, and one that many people consider the best Beatles album ever, Revolver.

Klaus was a very old friend of the Beatles. He knew them back in Germany. He has been described as a Beatles confidant, inventor of the moptop haircut, and member of the group’s inner circle of friends, back when they were playing Hamburg bars and strip clubs—long before I met them. He actually wrote a pretty amazing graphic novel, telling the story of his relationship with the Fab Four in pictures, called Birth of an Icon, Revolver 50.

In his book, Klaus recounts that when the Beatles were recording Revolver, John Lennon asked him whether he had any ideas for the next album cover and invited him to EMI Studios to hear the album in progress. It was about two-thirds done, and the playback ended with the radical (and almost frightening, at the time) “Tomorrow Never Knows.”

Revolver has been described as psychedelic, which some of the music certainly was. “Tomorrow Never Knows” is undoubtedly a track influenced by psychedelic drugs one way or another. But Klaus himself felt that his graphic work was not. He said, “In choosing to work in black and white, I wanted not only to shock and surprise, but I wanted also for the work to stand out in a muddle of colour. But a psychedelic influence on the Revolver cover? Well, what is psychedelic? Look at Bruegel, or Hieronymus Bosch. Those guys were far out! I don’t know if they ate mushrooms, or whatever. But I know that whatever is inside of you doesn’t have to come out through drugs.”

I find that very interesting. And let’s face it, it is exceedingly rare for an album to be equally acclaimed for the genius of its cover art as for the genius of the music on the album itself. And that’s what happened in this case.

Klaus worked in pen and black ink, dotted with cut-out portions of photographs of the band members and forming a “waterfall” of imagery. It apparently took him about three weeks of intermittent work to create the cover. Much of that time was spent with scissors, scalpel, and glue, selecting and arranging fragments of photographs within line drawings of the band members. The result was well worth the work involved. Everyone talked about the cover, and it won a Grammy for album cover of the year. Brian Epstein had been worried about whether the public would be accepting of what, in some instances, seemed to be a very new and interesting and involved kind of music. But when he saw Klaus’s cover, he felt that it totally integrated the music into the real world and in a way helped it to “cross over.”

Klaus Voormann was not only an extraordinary graphic artist who did that legendary cover—for a fee of fifty pounds, by the way, which was EMI’s highest possible rate at the time for an album cover design—he was also a skilled and tasteful musician and still is. A wonderful bass player, he was one of John Lennon’s favourite accompanists as well as being someone everyone liked to have around. He was very well liked in every respect and remains so. And his bass playing is extraordinary. He played on tracks for at least three of the Beatles at one time or another in their solo careers.

Perhaps the most notable was John Lennon’s immortal “Imagine,” on which Klaus played bass and the great Alan White played drums—one of John’s most famous tracks, and a brilliant song it is. Sometimes, when it comes to bass parts, less really can be more—for certain songs restraint is the name of the game. Some bass players might have wanted to add more melodic lines to “Imagine” (even Paul, genius that he is, might have done so) or to have followed some movements of John’s left hand on the piano. But Klaus stuck to the most basic possible part—big fat root notes (in this case mostly C’s and F’s) and a simple descending line, elegantly leaving all the drama to John’s vocal and the lyrics.

Klaus played for Ringo many times; one song that sticks in my mind is “It Don’t Come Easy,” where he took an entirely different approach from the simplicity of “Imagine” and threw in some cool moving lines and syncopation, especially under George Harrison’s solo. And Klaus also played on George’s huge hit record “My Sweet Lord,” though one of the really interesting and effective things about that production is that the bass and drums do not even start playing until about two minutes into the arrangement—leaving the rhythm entirely to the impressive bank of pounding acoustic rhythm guitars.

Klaus also played for one of the artists we signed to Apple Records, a great R&B singer called Jackie Lomax, who was produced by none other than George Harrison. I went to a couple of the sessions for Jackie’s album at EMI Studio Two. On these particular dates, it was Eric Clapton and George Harrison playing guitars, Ringo playing drums, and Klaus playing bass—it sounded truly great, a perfect rock and roll rhythm section. I don’t know whether Eric and Ringo had ever played together before because I remember Eric telling me at the end of one of the sessions how impressed he was by Ringo’s playing. I think we all sometimes take the excellence of Ringo’s drumming for granted—he repeatedly proves that it is possible to be one of the best and most important drummers in the world without being a flashy, soloing virtuoso. The fine album that emerged from these sessions was called Is This What You Want? and included the single “Sour Milk Sea,” on which Paul (rather than Klaus) played bass, making it a rare case of three Beatles playing together on a non-Beatles record.

In the Beatles’ catalogue, there are not many K songs at all. One of these, a classic McCartney vocal of undeniable excellence and soulfulness, was a song they did not write. It was written in 1952 by the brilliant duo of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller—a really cool blues-based song first recorded by Little Willie Littlefield and called “Kansas City.” It became a No. 1 record when it was recorded by Wilbert Harrison seven years later, and it gradually became one of Leiber and Stoller’s most recorded tunes, with more than three hundred versions, including a great one by the Beatles with a killer vocal by Paul McCartney. Leiber and Stoller were among the Beatles’ favourite songwriters, and the band had probably heard the Wilbert Harrison hit—but they also would have heard Little Richard’s version live when they toured with him. To my ear, the Beatles’ version tops both of those previous recordings—it has a much more urgent feel to it. In this instance, Ringo’s unique feel for a rock and roll shuffle is aided by the eighth-note triplets that George Martin added on the piano—a part neither of the other versions included. And the twin electric guitars of John and George are perfectly locked together, providing solid support to Paul’s intense vocal.

A Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.

Of course, we now should call him Sir Paul because he was made (by Her Majesty the Queen) a K himself, a knight of the realm. No one actually says, “Arise, Sir Paul,” at the ceremony, unfortunately. I think that only happened back in the days of King Arthur. But it is still a fantastic event. I got to watch it up close when I was myself given a CBE (Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) at Buckingham Palace—a considerably lesser honour, of course, but one of which I am immensely proud, I confess. The ceremony also included the awarding of several knighthoods and damehoods (the female equivalent). When being created a knight, you do actually get to kneel down on a little raised red velvet cushion (kind of like in church but with a tall handle to make it easier to kneel down and get up again), and the Queen (or a member of her immediate family) does take a sword and tap you on the shoulder, and you are then Sir Somebody, in this case, Sir Paul—whose status was upgraded even further in 2018 when Her Majesty made him a Companion of Honour, an extremely illustrious order of which there can only be sixty-five members at any time. An exceptional and rare honour—which comes with some lovely new bling as well.

This discussion of Sir Paul being a knight keeps our attention on the letter K and allows us to talk about another recent knight in our narrative, Sir Richard Starkey. I think I speak for all of us in congratulating him enthusiastically on this fine achievement. I have seen pictures of Ringo receiving his knighthood in an extremely elegant morning suit, which is the official attire you wear for your audience with Her Majesty the Queen. He was wearing a gorgeous version, made to measure by the great designer John Varvatos. It looked really cool. (See, you even get a little bit of fashion news from Peter Asher.) So in light of his new honour, let us allow Sir Richard to declare loudly and for all to hear without fear of contradiction, “I’m the Greatest.” In that song, written by John Lennon, his mama tells him he’s the greatest, his friends tell him he’s the greatest, his woman tells him he’s the greatest, and finally now, by bestowing a knighthood upon him, the Queen, Her Majesty herself, has told Ringo he is officially “the greatest.” And, yes, certainly anyone who gives Ringo a knighthood qualifies as a pretty nice girl in my book, so well done, Your Majesty, and thank you very much.

There are a few interesting Beatles-related K songs. One of them is a Yoko song. I confess I sometimes find some of Yoko’s music a bit too weird for me. But some of it is really cool. And “Kiss Kiss Kiss,” from the Double Fantasy album, is charming. I like it a lot and it’s a good record.

Sticking with the letter K, we find a slightly obscure Paul track, but one well worth listening to, “Kreen-Akrore,” which he recorded on February 12, 1970, at Morgan Studios in London. A percussion-led instrumental piece (or at least with no lead vocal), it features electric guitars, choral-sounding background vocals, and more to create an evocative sonic landscape inspired by the Kreen-Akrore tribespeople of the Amazon rain forest. The song reminds us that, on top of everything else, Paul is an excellent drummer and percussionist.

There is also a really good K song on Paul’s album Pipes of Peace that people do not seem to know well but which I enjoy, “Keep Under Cover.” Paul talks about the joys of staying in bed, among other things. (Perhaps an echo of John’s wonderful “I’m Only Sleeping” from Revolver.) The song has a fine string arrangement by George Martin, who produced the album.

There is actually another “Keep” song that the Beatles played, which deserves to be better known. This is all to do with a K songwriter whom the Beatles truly admired, and of whom I have long been a besotted fan: the great Carole King. She is certainly one of the best K songwriters of all time—and one of the best songwriters in popular music regardless of alphabet! Carole’s story is an extraordinary one. With her husband, Gerry Goffin, she wrote “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” when she was only eighteen, which became a No. 1 record for the Shirelles, and she never looked back, writing hit after hit for a series of acts and becoming very much admired by the Beatles and all the rest of us. When I moved to Los Angeles, I made a point of getting to know Carole, and she did James Taylor and me the honour (at my invitation) of playing all the piano on the album Sweet Baby James. This proved to be the beginning of a long and productive musical relationship for the three of us. James sang (and I produced) her song “You’ve Got a Friend” just as she finished her record-breaking album Tapestry, and I managed Carole for a while.

Here I am talking about a K song that Carole wrote which is not that well known. It was the follow-up to the huge No. 1 hit “The Loco-Motion,” written by Goffin and King and recorded by Little Eva, who was originally Carole and Gerry’s babysitter, strange as that may sound. Carole and Gerry followed it up with a song called “Keep Your Hands off My Baby.” Now oddly, even though I know for a fact that the Beatles were giant Carole King fans as well, they did not record many of her songs. I think the only one of which they made a full studio recording is “Chains,” and that one everybody knows. But they did sing this other song, “Keep Your Hands off My Baby,” in their live set. And we know that because there’s a BBC recording of them doing it. It’s certainly worth seeking out.

Our only remaining K song from the Beatles is “Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand,” which we already talked about under G for Germany.

You know what? I still think it sounds better in English anyway.