Nat Weiss.

We have reached the midpoint of our alphabetical journey, arriving at the letter N—N for (among other things) nothingness and nowhere, which takes us directly to one of everyone’s favourite Beatles N songs, “Nowhere Man.”

It is a John Lennon song, written in his house in Weybridge when he was feeling depressed and at a loose end. He was inspired to write this beautiful song with extraordinary lyrics which are admittedly pessimistic and which John saw as being ultimately as universal as they are personal—like all great songs. The lyric ends by asking whether the Nowhere Man isn’t “a bit like you and me.” So from me, another nowhere man, to you and to all the other nowhere men and women out there, this is a song for all of us.

Hunter Davies’s 1968 book The Beatles: The Authorized Biography has a fascinating quote from John.

I was just sitting trying to think of a song and I thought of myself sitting there doing nothing and going nowhere. Once I thought of that it was easy. It all came out. No, I remember now, I’d actually stopped trying to think of something. Nothing would come. I was cheesed off and went for a lie down having given up. Then, I thought of myself as nowhere man sitting in his nowhere land.

“Nowhere Man” is a brilliant arrangement and production as well as a terrific song. Great three-part a capella harmony on the intro and straight into a typical driving Beatles groove: John on rhythm acoustic guitar, Ringo playing a pretty straightforward drum part (with his uniquely relaxed hi-hat feel) set off by Paul’s idiosyncratic double-time walking bass part. And George’s rippling super-high-end guitar solo, buttoned up with an unexpected harmonic at the end, is masterful.

Moving from a John Lennon N song to a Paul McCartney N song, we come to one which Paul wrote in my family home: “The Night Before.” I did not hear it as and when he wrote it—I was on the road myself at the time. But according to all the books, he wrote it in our house in Wimpole Street—and I do remember hearing it when I returned home. And the song ended up in the film Help! and on the excellent album of the same name.

The Beatles recorded “The Night Before” in Studio Two at EMI Studios on the afternoon of February 17, 1965, apparently in just two takes, which is remarkable, because it is a very tight and accurate track. Among other things, it includes a guitar solo in octaves, which is played by Paul and George. Playing in octaves that way creates something of the same effect as playing a twelve-string (which is partially strung in octaves itself), but playing it on two guitars in perfect sync makes it even tougher-sounding. And the solo itself is a remarkable composition. The guitars studiously avoid playing on the downbeat of any bar (avoiding the “1,” as it were), which is very unusual, and yet Paul and George sculpt a memorable solo melody which they also use later in the track as an ending.

John is playing a Hohner pianet electric piano, which is a great sound. I don’t know if anyone owns a pianet now (that would be an eBay question, I suppose), but listening to this song makes me want one! They were more percussive than the Fender Rhodes or the Wurlitzer electric pianos and could cut through electric guitars. I suppose the instrument could be seen as an early ancestor of the Hohner clavinet, which achieved more universal fame. (Think of Stevie Wonder’s intro riff on “Superstition”—that’s what a clavinet sounds like.)

Looking at the letter N in a Beatles context, I want to mention a person associated with that letter who figured significantly in their lives, and whom I previously mentioned in the context of Magical Mystery Tour. That person is Nat Weiss, the Beatles’ lawyer in New York. He was Brian Epstein’s best friend in that city and one of my best friends in the world, too. He died a few years ago and is very greatly missed by us all. He advised Brian on numerous legal matters and became a trusted adviser to the Beatles as well. Nat also introduced Brian to the thriving gay scene in New York, which changed his life—he had certainly seen nothing like it in Liverpool or even in London! Nat was a brilliant and remarkable man, and when I moved to America with my brand-new client James Taylor, Nat set up my management company and then represented James in our successful negotiations with Warner Brothers. Finally, I remember that in the year Bonnie Raitt won that historic bunch of Grammys, she singled out Nat for special thanks in her acceptance speech—so the Beatles, James Taylor, and I were not his only fans!

And it was at Nat’s home in New York that Paul McCartney and Linda Eastman really hit it off.

Paul and Linda had first met at a photo session, and then again at a party. But the first time they really sat down together and talked, and probably the first time Paul got Linda’s phone number, was at Nat Weiss’s apartment in New York. Nat also had an amazing closet door (auctioned off a while back, I noticed) which all the Beatles signed to Nat in thick black ink. It became a feature of Nat’s apartment, and one of which he was very proud. It is a bit of a digression, I admit, but if we are speaking of N’s, Nat Weiss was an important man who ought not to be forgotten by anyone interested in Beatles history.

Seeing that I brought up Linda McCartney, let’s move on to a song with Linda on it, a Wings song, also beginning with N, called “No Words,” written by Paul and my dear friend Denny Laine. It features Paul on vocals, guitar, bass, and drums; Linda on vocals and keyboards; and Denny on guitar and some background vocals as well. It is from the remarkable Band on the Run album and features an excellent orchestral arrangement by Tony Visconti and was recorded at George Martin’s AIR Studios in London rather than at EMI Studios. (George and a couple of top former EMI staff producers had opened their own studio at Oxford Circus in Central London, using the name Associated Independent Recording, hence AIR Studios. AIR has since moved to a beautiful old church called Lyndhurst Hall in North London, where it thrives to this day.)

While we’re discussing solo Beatle songs beginning with N, we cannot overlook Ringo. Around the time the Beatles broke up in 1970, Ringo recorded and released an album of standards called Sentimental Journey, and one of those standards was “Night and Day,” written by the immortal Cole Porter, one of my favourite songwriters in the world. And obviously one of Ringo’s as well. Now you probably know that Cole Porter was a very famous and successful songwriter, and a lot of people have covered his songs. “Night and Day” has been recorded by Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, all kinds of amazing singers. And let us not forget that Cole Porter wrote words and music, by himself. Songwriting is very often done by teams, some (like Bacharach & David or Gilbert & Sullivan) in which one partner writes the music and the other the lyrics, and some (like Lennon & McCartney) in which they collaborate on both—but Cole Porter was a solo genius. His songs support imaginative and creatively flexible performances, which is no doubt why so many jazz singers take to them with such enthusiasm, but there is a whole other kind of contrary revelation in the way Ringo sings the song totally straight. The phrasing is probably just the way Cole wrote it, before Ella or Frank applied their jazz skills to it—and with a drummer’s precision, Ringo sings exactly on the beat, and his definitively amiable singing style gives the song a straightforward and almost childlike clarity.

N also stands, among other things, for “no.” Now the Beatles have been accused of writing drug-related songs, even songs that could be construed as pro-drug songs. But Ringo performed at least one song that is unequivocally anti-drug—and in a truly funny and entertaining way. Written by Hoyt Axton and David Jackson, produced by my good friend Richard Perry, it’s called “No No Song,” with two N’s for good measure. It was a big hit, getting to No. 3 in the U.S.

Just say no to drugs. Well, not necessarily and not all the time. But that is the implication of that song. Ringo is firmly suggesting that drugs are not good for you. Ironically, the background vocalists on the record include the brilliant and astonishing Harry Nilsson—a genius who (it must be admitted) did not always say “no” himself.

Sticking with N, and sticking with “no,” brings to mind a classic Beatles song, “No Reply.” The song was not originally supposed to be a Beatles song at all. John wrote it for Tommy Quickly (another management client of Brian Epstein’s), and the Beatles cut a demo from which Tommy learned the song. Tommy did record it, but apparently nobody was very happy with his rendition, and it was not released. But the Beatles’ demo was released on Anthology. What is interesting about this version is that apparently it is not Ringo playing drums, because he was ill with tonsillitis. Many people think the drummer was Jimmie Nicol because the Beatles had been rehearsing with him earlier that day for the Australian tour that Ringo could not do because of his illness. As I said, I’m not necessarily an expert on all these historical details, but my understanding is that Jimmie, who did go to Australia with the Beatles (indeed, as a Beatle), was there rehearsing at EMI. So it seems most likely that he is playing on it. And of course the “real” version was recorded by the Beatles in the fall of 1964 and came out on Beatles for Sale in the UK and Beatles ’65 in the United States. John later said that he had been inspired to write “No Reply” by the record “Silhouettes” by the Rays, an R&B quartet from New York—a song that was later covered by Herman’s Hermits. John was taken with the image of knowing someone was home and thus knowing that their failure to answer the door or the phone was deliberate and deceptive.

Another interesting Lennon-related N song—and another “no” song—is “No Bed for Beatle John,” from Unfinished Music No. 2: Life with the Lions, produced by John and Yoko. And I have to say, I like Yoko’s vocal on the song a lot. Every now and then, Yoko does some kind of crazy singing that I’m not always very keen on, but her disarming vocal on this track is very melodic, very in tune, and really sweet. She sounds young and charming. The song is made up of press clippings (sung by Yoko) from her stay in Queen Charlotte’s Hospital in London, where she was pregnant and unfortunately lost the baby. John was staying there with her the whole time. A bed was needed for an emergency case, so John gave up the bed and slept on the floor because he didn’t want to leave Yoko by herself. The press clippings all tell that story, and they comprise the lyrics to this song.

Now the album title, Life with the Lions, you may think was just some kind of surreal concept that came to John. Not at all. To everyone in England at the time, it would have been a phrase they remembered from the ’50s, when Life with the Lyons was a hugely successful radio sitcom. The Lyons were a family of American actors, a real family, who had moved to London and found various bits of work as actors and somehow were eventually given a weekly radio show of their own. We were all already fascinated by America and by American people and things in general. Meeting real Americans who lived in London was endlessly interesting to British listeners. Ben Lyon and his wife, Bebe Daniels, settled in London during the Second World War. It’s weird that somebody would move to London in the middle of a war and all the bombing, but they did. They got some work from 1940 onwards and eventually were offered this very successful sitcom to which we all listened. For a few years it was on television as well. I don’t remember ever watching it on TV, but I certainly listened to it on the radio.

We’ve been following a lot of paths to the past in the letter N, from Cole Porter to Life with the Lyons, and John provides another one with his song “Nobody Loves You (When You’re Down and Out),” from the Walls and Bridges album. John changed one word of the title of a famous 1920s song, a bluesy composition called “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out.” John’s song, which was completely new in every other respect, was written during his “Lost Weekend” period, when he was in L.A. doing a bit too much of everything. But he did make some good records, and this is one he recorded with Klaus Voormann on bass, Nicky Hopkins on piano, Kenny Ascher on organ, and Jim Keltner on drums. The song also featured Jesse Ed Davis, who was a Native American guitarist of very considerable skill and charm—a really remarkable musician.

Let’s hope none of us has to find out if it’s actually true that nobody loves you when you’re down and out. John apparently wanted Frank Sinatra to sing this song. “I always imagine Sinatra singing that one,” he once said in a radio interview. “He could do a perfect job with it. If you’re listening, Frank, you need a song that isn’t a piece of nothing. Here’s one for you. The horn arrangement. Everything’s made for you.” A good song, though a sad one. And perhaps even sadder that Frank Sinatra never gave it a try.

There’s an interesting N song called “Not Guilty,” written by George Harrison, that might have gotten onto the White Album but ultimately did not. The Beatles recorded 102 different takes (probably a record for them) and fiddled about with the arrangement and so on before giving up on the session. There is one recorded version which survived and was included on The Beatles Anthology. Years later George recorded his own version, which I think is fantastic, for the album George Harrison. I was very impressed when I recently listened to it—I hadn’t heard it for a while—especially by the Fender Rhodes electric piano part, so I looked it up to see who had played it. It was Neil Larsen, a terrific keyboard player who also played on the last few Leonard Cohen tours. I had the pleasure of being out on that tour for a number of dates, and I got to know Neil and to admire his playing very much—though I did not realize that he had played on George’s album.

In fact, the whole band on George’s version is colossally good. The other keyboard player is Steve Winwood, Willie Weeks is on bass, Andy Newmark plays drums, and Ray Cooper is on congas. A killer band and finally a great version of the song by the composer himself.

I’d like to circle back to the Beatles as a foursome, having spent quite a lot of time in this chapter on their solo work, specifically to look at two great Beatles songs that begin with the letter N. The first is “Not a Second Time.” This was the song which inspired the now-famous article in The Times newspaper in Britain. William Mann, the classical music correspondent of that lofty and distinguished journal, published a musical analysis of the Beatles music. That fact alone was remarkable enough; in that era the classical music world had a pretty snooty attitude to popular music in general and rock and roll in particular. Yet here was The Times taking the Beatles very seriously and praising their inventiveness, using this one specific song “Not a Second Time” as an example. Mann pointed out the “Aeolian cadence” it contains, adding that this cadence also occurs in the final movement of Mahler’s “Das Lied von der Erde.” John said later, “To this day I have no idea what Aeolian cadences are. They sound like exotic birds.” If anyone is interested, it is generally considered that the Aeolian cadence occurs at the end of the line “No, no, no, not a second time” when (on the word “time”) the chord is an E minor rather than the G major which the preceding D7 would lead one to expect. The term derives from the fact that the Aeolian mode is rooted in the sixth step of the major scale—in the key of G that would indeed bring us to an E minor.

And we cannot call any discussion of the Beatles and the letter N complete without mentioning “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown),” a brilliant John Lennon song with mysterious lyrics and the first use of a sitar by George Harrison on a record and so much more.

Not long ago I was looking at Many Years from Now, Barry Miles’s excellent book about Paul McCartney, and Paul had some interesting recollections about John’s song.

I came in and he had this first stanza which was brilliant. I once had a girl or should I say she once had me. That was all he had, no title, no nothing. And I said, “Oh yes! Well, ha, we’re there.” And it wrote itself. Once you’ve got the great idea, they do tend to write themselves, providing you know how to write songs. [Easy for him to say because they, of course, “know how to write songs” better than almost anyone I’ve ever met in my whole life.]

I picked it up at the second verse. It’s a story, it’s him trying to pull a bird. It was about an affair. John told Playboy they hadn’t the faintest idea where the title came from, but I do! Peter Asher had his room done out in wood. A lot of people were decorating their places in wood. “Norwegian Wood.” It was pine really, cheap pine, but it’s not as good a title, “Cheap Pine,” baby.

That’s all very well, and I am certainly very proud if I or my room even made a contribution, but I cannot honestly remember ever doing out my room in wood. I have to ask Paul at some point what exactly he remembers. Maybe it was a different room in our house. I do remember something about putting up some pine paneling in a downstairs room where we sometimes had parties. But my bedroom had weird, geometrical ’50s wallpaper and no wood at all that I can recall.

So, it’s a bit mysterious, even to me. But anyway, I suppose the whole song ends with him setting fire to her bedroom with its wooden walls in revenge for her making him sleep in the bath. A bit much, I must say—but that is what it means. Not lighting a fire in the fireplace or lighting a cigarette or any of the other theories. I am sorry to say that it is certainly a song which ends with arson being committed by our hero.

Before we close this chapter, I realize that it wouldn’t be right to omit my own connection to the Beatles in conjunction with the letter N, in the form of a song called “Nobody I Know.”

The story starts soon after Gordon and I recorded “A World Without Love.” Sometimes, for any artist, finding a follow-up song to a big hit can be really difficult. There’s a sense in which one is trying to live up to one’s previous achievement and expectations, and we had just had a record that was No. 1 all over the world, so that was kind of scary. But when one is following up a big hit, one gets sent an awful lot of songs—and numerous songwriters sent us songs they hoped would be our next single. Luckily, one of those songwriters was Paul McCartney, who had written a song called “Nobody I Know,” which he played for me as soon as we returned from our first U.S. visit—and I loved it.

John and Paul took their songwriting duties seriously. They understood the responsibilities of being successful songwriters, which meant knowing how to get the right song to the right artist at the right time. If you wrote a big hit, you wanted the follow-up to also be written by you. You didn’t want someone else cashing in on your brilliant success. So when we came back from America after our first tour, Paul had already written “Nobody I Know” specifically for us. If you look at the Beatles’ early interviews, they were often asked, “What are you going to do when this is all over?” Indeed, this was one question which we could all count on being included in every interview. There existed a universal and confident assumption that a rock and roll career would last two years at most. John and Paul always responded, “Oh, we’ll be songwriters.” They wanted to follow in the mold of Leiber & Stoller, Goffin & King, and the other great songwriting teams whom they admired so deeply.

As for Gordon and me, we were delighted to record “Nobody I Know,” the arrangement extensively featuring the big, beautiful, red sunburst acoustic twelve-string guitar that Gibson had recently made for me. It became a hit, and we sang it on the road, and that was it, thank you very much.