George, Pattie, Ringo, and Maureen (and me) returning from a trip.

We are now almost halfway through the Beatles catalogue at an alphabetically inspired yet meandering pace, arriving at the letter L. Which may give us a good reason to look backwards and start this chapter at the beginning of the Beatles’ success as recording artists, a perfect L song and eventually a big hit even in America, though it happened a bit slower there than it did in the UK.

“Love Me Do” was the Beatles’ first single, released in the UK on October 5, 1962, and it was the first time we all noticed them and became aware of how original and how musically remarkable they were. The amazing thing is that “Love Me Do” still sounds much more powerful and memorable than anything else that was around at the time. It is a masterpiece of simple production and instinctive, but by no means simple, musicianship. For example, John plays some exceptionally good (and unexpected) harmonica on this track.

“Love Me Do” is a well-structured song—a traditional verse-verse-bridge-verse structure—but it nonetheless toys with pop-composition norms in that the first verse is effectively thirteen bars long and the second is twelve, where one would expect only eight in each case. Paul apparently began writing the song as a teenager, finishing most of it before he and John ever began writing together. But even the simple lyrics do not detract from the immediate musical appeal of the catchy intro and the beautiful blend of John and Paul’s harmony singing—with Paul singing the melody as the high part with John’s harmony underneath—another unusual variant.

Before long, Lennon & McCartney began writing together pretty much full-time—often to satisfy urgent delivery deadlines. They wrote so many amazing songs, including many where they sang together as a duo and some on which (with the addition of George Harrison) they made an equally impressive trio. This trio can be heard to great effect on another early Beatles song, “This Boy,” a great example of their beautiful three-part harmony, in an arrangement that owes quite a lot to John and Paul’s huge admiration for Brian Wilson and the way he arranged harmonies on the Beach Boys’ records.

Exploring the letter L means, of course, exploring the Lennon family in all its complexity. Let’s start with one of my favourite songs that John Lennon ever did, “Whatever Gets You Thru the Night.” I mentioned this song in passing when we discussed the letter H, but here I’d like to linger on it in a bit more detail. Apparently, John got the title from watching the Reverend Ike.

When I first came to America, I was entirely astonished by American television in general. Coming from a country about to acquire only its third channel (when I was a child, we had only one channel, the BBC, with very limited hours and no commercials), I was dumbfounded by the plethora of channels and the frequent and seemingly endless commercials. And when I channel-hopped among the various televangelists on Sunday mornings, I knew for sure that I was in an alien country. They were all so extremely strange! Even so, I rapidly identified the Reverend Ike as my favourite. No less rapacious or nonsensical than the others, he was at least more direct and specific: it was all about money. He was a fine speaker and preached very directly that if you sent him a donation and prayed hard enough, a lot of money would come your way. God wanted him to be rich—God’s will was clearly being done in his case, and it could happen to you, too. It was a very interesting theory, that if you prayed enough, you would become very rich and have luxury cars and jet planes. (If only that were true—I might have to take up prayer at this late stage of my life!) But anyway, watching the Reverend Ike expound upon his bizarre philosophy live on TV apparently inspired John to write this very good song. One night when he heard the preacher say, “Let me tell you guys, it doesn’t matter, it’s whatever gets you through the night.” John loved the phrase and wrote it down, and it became a song. Great groove on the record, right from the top, which is not surprising when you consider that Elton John is on piano and sings harmony, along with Jim Keltner and Klaus Voormann and the usual suspects.

Turning from Lennon senior, let’s look at the two Lennon juniors, both of whom have written some really good songs and have made some excellent records. We can start with Julian Lennon and one of my favourite tracks that he did, “Too Late for Goodbyes.” Kind of a reggae groove, a fine song, and Julian’s biggest hit single, going top ten in both the U.S. and the UK. The very brief harmonica solo is by the amazing jazz player Toots Thielemans—possibly the best chromatic harmonic player who ever lived—a little underused in this instance, I would venture to say.

And then we get to Sean Lennon, Julian’s younger half brother. If one wants to get a sense of his talent as a musician, one cannot do much better than to listen to his excellent song “Home.” It’s from the album Into the Sun, and it also had a very cool video, directed by Spike Jonze, the brilliant filmmaker. It’s worth tracking down and watching.

Now, let’s get back to the Beatles’ own generation, rather than their offspring, and talk about some great Beatles L songs. There are lots of them. I’ll start with a real favourite of mine, “Lovely Rita.” I remember when parking meters were introduced in London. It was 1958, and everyone was totally appalled. I mean, before that time, you could park your car anywhere you could find a space for it—and for as long as you liked. And suddenly this horrendous American invention was being imposed upon us. They started putting in these ghastly machines, including several right outside our house. We’d been parking in Wimpole Street with impunity ever since we had moved in, and suddenly we couldn’t do so anymore. Bloody outrage! we thought, but we couldn’t get rid of them.

Then, of course, came the parking wardens, whose responsibility it was to give tickets, and they were widely hated and derided. I remember the English papers having pictures of the uniform, and “Here’s what it’s going to be like, here’s how much the fines are going to be,” and so on. It was really very grim, which made the song especially cool when it came out. The idea of a parking meter warden being an attractive woman whom one might ask out on a date was radical. And it is part of Paul’s genius that he just finds things to write songs about that no one else would even imagine, like “Back in the U.S.S.R.” or “Eleanor Rigby.” And this was no exception. Parking meters are here to stay, and maybe one of the only benefits that I can possibly imagine is Paul McCartney’s ode to Rita, the lovely meter maid.

Another L song, a Beatles classic that we could not possibly ignore, also from the Sgt. Pepper album, is “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” When Paul first played me an early version of the song, I remember him telling me about a very young Julian Lennon bringing home a drawing of his friend Lucy against a sparkly sky, and when his father asked him what it was, Julian explained that it was Lucy in the sky with diamonds. And, verbatim, it was an inspiring song title. I may be unduly naïve, but I know that at the time the fact that the initials of the song title added up to LSD never even occurred to me, and I truly believe that it did not occur to John or Paul either. Had they taken acid by that time? Yes. Did that fact influence the lyrics and imagery of the song? Probably, though I think Lewis Carroll and Alice had even more to do with it. But I do believe that the perceived connection between the song title initials and the drug was a genuine and total coincidence.

Musically, “Lucy” is a remarkable composition, waltzing us through the dreamy verses in 3/4 time only to have our attention riveted by Ringo playing the world’s simplest drum fill (three giant quarter notes) and being led thereby into the rocking chorus in 4/4 time.

Another Beatles song that is undoubtedly a classic, but also a source of some dispute and even some anger, is “The Long and Winding Road.” As you probably know, the song was originally recorded without an orchestra, but when Phil Spector was brought in to turn the “Get Back” sessions into the album which became Let It Be, he decided to add an orchestra, but without the cooperation and approval of Paul McCartney, who had written the song. This was unwise. And even though there are people who like the orchestral version and people who don’t, it was at one point a source of some ugliness.

Caught in the middle of the controversy was my friend Richard Hewson, who wrote the arrangement, which is very beautiful. Richard did a perfect job, little realizing that Paul might be pissed off because he didn’t know that it was even happening. Richard was a jazz trumpet player and classical composer with whom I played double bass (very badly) in a little jazz group for a while. We rehearsed in the Wimpole Street basement music room from time to time—probably more rehearsals than actual gigs, I would think. Carting the bass around on the tube for a gig which only paid a couple of pounds was barely worth the effort!

When I decided to add some orchestral arrangements to the very first James Taylor album (the one called James Taylor and made for Apple Records), I thought of Richard because I knew he wrote classical music and was a master of the orchestral idiom—and I did not want the arrangements to be standard pop. I could have easily gone to someone like Geoff Love (who did all the excellent Peter & Gordon orchestrations), but I wanted to aim for something more offbeat. And that was how I brought Richard into the Beatles’ world and how he met Paul McCartney. Paul liked what Richard had done for James’s record, so Paul and I invited him to write the arrangement for Mary Hopkin’s “Those Were the Days,” and he did that brilliantly and much more besides. In that sense, Richard became sort of Apple’s favourite arranger at that time, which must be why Phil Spector went to him to write the big string chart for “The Long and Winding Road,” Richard being unaware of the fact that Paul was not on board and was not part of this process at all. Anyway, somehow in all that mess, there ended up being two separate versions: the Phil Spector version with a huge orchestra, which Paul did not like, and then, finally, the “naked” version, the original no-orchestra recording that was Paul’s favourite. To be honest, it is the version I like better as well. While it is true that Richard wrote a beautiful string arrangement (it is orchestrally superb), there is nonetheless something more emotionally riveting about the unadorned clarity of Paul’s vocal without the orchestra.

An interesting story that I had not heard until recently is that Paul McCartney had originally offered “The Long and Winding Road” to Tom Jones before the Beatles recorded it. They were going to record it anyway, but Paul expressed interest in having Tom do a version, and he would have sung it incredibly well. Somehow, it never happened. Tom’s record label already had his next single lined up, and the only way to do “The Long and Winding Road” was to do it quickly before the Beatles’ record came out. Sadly, this never happened. But that is an interesting Tom Jones and Beatles connection.

If you’re looking for another artist’s interpretation of this magnificent song, Ray Charles recorded a fantastic cover of “The Long and Winding Road” with the Count Basie Orchestra, which is my personal favourite of Ray’s covers of Beatles songs. It’s certainly worth checking out.

The next L song on our journey is one that not everyone likes that much, but I am very fond of it: “Little Child.” The Beatles themselves apparently looked down on it as being formulaic and not thoroughly creative. It was written for Ringo but ended up being sung by John and Paul, with John playing a strong harmonica part, as he did on “Love Me Do” and so many other early Beatles tracks. I think Ringo could have sung it very well; it’s his kind of song, but he never got the chance.

Now let’s give George some attention, with a really interesting L song, “Living in the Material World.” It was written when George was very much under the influence of the Hare Krishna people, who were all hanging around Apple at the time in their beautiful saffron yellow robes. It is a song that contrasts the material world in which we live with the spiritual world. George actually said that the message of the song is “We are not these bodies. We are in these material bodies in the physical world.” I have read that the song condensed lengthy passages from the Bhagavad Gita into a dozen or so simple words. Certainly, it’s much easier to listen to the song than try to read the real thing.

Some people believe there is a spiritual world entirely separate from (or coexistent with) the material world in which we find ourselves. From my own scientific point of view, I see no evidence for such a belief—but whatever gets you through the night, as someone very wise once said.

An L song that isn’t a Beatles song, but is a very good one, is “Last Night” by the Traveling Wilburys, George’s spin-off supergroup with Jeff Lynne, Bob Dylan, and the great and much missed Tom Petty and Roy Orbison. They made so many good records, and “Last Night” is certainly one of the best. The Wilburys’ music was put together and beautifully produced by my friend Jeff Lynne—another L!—who, thank goodness, is still very much with us and making great music in the studio and on the road.

I haven’t talked much about Ringo, but he has a notable L song to offer, one that is historical in nature. Ringo was born and brought up in a very tough area of Liverpool called the Dingle, and he and Dave Stewart wrote a song about it called “Liverpool 8,” after the postcode for that area back then. I’m sure by now it’s got a lot more numbers and letters attached to it. The song has a bit of Beatles history in it, as Ringo sings about his time with the band, much as George did in “When We Was Fab.”

And, of course, we can’t leave the letter L without spending some time with two of Paul’s classic Beatles numbers, “Lady Madonna” and “Let It Be.”

“Lady Madonna” is a terrific song and an example of Paul’s excellent piano playing, a brilliant kind of boogie-woogie that he does so well. Paul is one of those people who can pick up any instrument and figure out how to play it in an infuriatingly short amount of time. And he plays piano well. I think some of the earliest piano music he might have heard would have been sort of jazz-ish piano because his father played in a jazz-flavoured band. In England in the 1950s, there was a lot of attention paid to jazz, especially American Dixieland jazz—which we called trad jazz. And indeed, one of those trad jazz bands had a hit record which may well have inspired Paul’s piano playing on “Lady Madonna.” It is “Bad Penny Blues” by Humphrey Lyttelton and his jazz band. If you listen to the intro, you’ll hear the style of piano playing that clearly impressed and influenced Paul and probably inspired him to write that great beginning for “Lady Madonna.” Another huge influence on Paul McCartney the pianist was Fats Domino, a brilliant piano player, and you can hear some of him as well in “Lady Madonna,” which was a huge hit and a terrific record. It showed off Paul’s piano playing in a way that none of the Beatles’ records had done previously.

And if we’re talking about Paul and his piano, that leads us to the final song in this chapter, the magnificent “Let It Be.” It was inspired by a dream Paul had, in which his mother—who had died in 1956, when Paul was fourteen—appeared before him and gave him comforting advice. Of course, as with all great songs, it turns out to mean different things to different people—sometimes with “Mary” being taken to be the Virgin Mary rather than Paul’s mother, for example. But we know from Paul that it was indeed his mother, Mary, who showed up in a dream. Paul certainly was in the middle of “times of trouble” at that point, with arguments raging among the four Beatles, and Brian Epstein no longer around to offer counsel or consolation—and somehow Paul’s genius responded with not only a profoundly comforting dream but also a song which has provided immense comfort as well as musical joy to millions of people the world over. A beautiful record, featuring all four Beatles plus Billy Preston’s inimitable organ.

Indeed, “Let It Be” is one of those cases in which it is hard to improve on the original, but two cover versions are worth seeking out, if you haven’t already heard them. One is by Nick Cave, who did a really thoughtful and intelligent version of “Let It Be.” I love Nick Cave. I love not only his music but also his books. He is an extraordinary writer and a man possessed of significant intellect. His version of “Let It Be” is perhaps less overtly emotional and less sung than Paul’s—it’s almost a recitation in some spots—which I find all the more affecting. It has some of the understated passion of Leonard Cohen at his best.

And then, of course, there’s Aretha Franklin. She can take any song and turn it into something remarkable, but give her a great song, and she creates an emotional experience and a musical intensity that are unequaled. She’s done that more than a few times, and one of those occasions was when she sang “Let It Be” and really nailed it. They do not call her the Queen of Soul for nothing. She died while I was writing this book, and the outpouring of affection and admiration—and profound musical respect—was deeply and spectacularly well deserved.