14
“Writing the song was my way of exorcizing the ghosts” —
LET IT BE
T he original idea of the Get Back sessions was to watch the Beatles developing an album, filming them as they rehearsed, ending in a live performance. In addition, the Beatles would retreat from their orchestrated, elaborately overdubbed studio recordings and create a recording of the band alone. John somewhat undiplomatically told George Martin, “I don’t want any of your production rubbish on this one. I don’t want any overdubbing of voices. I don’t want any editing. Everything has got to be performed live like it used to be. It’s got to be real, man, it’s got to be honest.” [1] However, as the Get Back sessions progressed, the Beatles gradually began to depart from this ideal.
Ironically, John led the way in bringing in Phil Spector (who had recently produced John’s Plastic Ono Band single, “Instant Karma!”) to “re-produce” the album, and Spector added many overdubs, and even full orchestrations in some places. Here we have John going against type again; while we often associate him with hard rock, he is the Beatle most responsible for the lush strings, harps and choral voices added by Spector on Let It Be . Apparently Paul (and certainly George Martin) had no idea that Spector was “re-producing” the album in this way. (Paul knew Spector was working on the album, but did not realize that he was adding many overdubs with orchestral instruments.) Paul, always extremely concerned about the details of recording and arranging his own songs, was understandably upset to hear that some of his songs had received this Spector treatment. George Martin said,
I knew that John was going in the studios, doing some work on Let It Be , but I understood that as they were making a film of it, they were doing some film tracks. When the record finally came out, I got a hell of a shock. Melody Maker : You didn’t know anything about it? George M.: Nothing. Neither did Paul, and Paul wrote to me to say that he was pretty appalled, if you’ll forgive the pun. All the lush un-Beatle-like orchestrations with harps and choirs in the background. [2]
As a result, John was sensitive about how he and George had brought Spector in, and perhaps overemphasized the low quality of the Glyn Johns compilations and of the Get Back sessions in general. “He [Spector] was given the shittiest load of badly recorded shit that — and with a lousy feeling to it — ever. And he made something out of it,” he said in 1970. “It wasn’t fantastic, but it was — when I heard it, I didn’t puke.” [3]
Paul, on the other hand, had liked the bare Glyn Johns mixes. “We then mixed it once with Glyn Johns, who’d done a very straightforward mix, very plain, but I loved it because it was just the Beatles. It was us. It had a lot of character,” he said. [4] He thought that Allen Klein pulled in Phil Spector, when he didn’t think the Get Back tapes were good enough. Paul, of course, hadn’t signed with Klein. In 1989, Paul said that Spector’s contribution was not a total disaster: “For what he was pulled in to do I thought he did a good job. And you can’t blame him, he was hired in and he thought we all agreed and knew what was happening.” [5]
In any event, the Spector version of Let It Be was released and became part of the Beatles canon. However, in November 2003, the surviving Beatles released a de-Spectorized version of the album, Let It Be . . . Naked . Time will tell if this supplants the 1970 Let It Be , or if the two versions of the album are eventually regarded as equally valid.
John and Yoko’s third experimental album commemorated their marriage on March 20, 1969. John explained,
It was like us sharing our wedding with whoever wanted to share it with us. We didn’t expect a hit record out of it. People make a wedding album, show it to relatives when they come round. Well, our relatives are what you call fans, or people that follow us outside. So, that was our way of letting them join in on the wedding. [6]
It included no real songs, except for an early version of Yoko’s “John John Let’s Hope for Peace” and John doing an acoustic performance of “Goodnight.”
Side one (“John and Yoko”) recorded John and Yoko calling to each other over the sound of heartbeats; it was recorded on April 22 and 27, 1969. John said, “It’s in stereo and our heartbeats are bumping along there, like African drums and we howl over the top. I sing ‘Yoko’ and she sings ‘John’, continuously through one side of it. It’s like an extended, very extreme, . . . It really makes your hair stand on end.” [7]
Side two (“Amsterdam”) was recorded in a hotel in Amsterdam from March 25 to 31, 1969, including moments from John and Yoko’s “bed-in” honeymoon, mixed with random sounds.
As has been mentioned, John and Yoko became addicted to heroin during the White Album sessions. Finally, they realized they needed to stop taking the drug, so subjected themselves to complete withdrawal — “cold turkey.” This song describes that experience; it is directly in John’s confessional mode of songwriting. In 1970, he said that it wasn’t a song, but a diary. [8] “I wrote this about coming off drugs and the pain involved,” he stated in an early interview. [9]
John offered this to the Beatles as a single, but they were not enthusiastic, either put off by the drug lyrics or the minimalist music. John said, in late 1969, “When I wrote it, I went to the other three Beatles and said, ‘Hey, lads, I think I’ve written a new single.’ But they all said, ‘Ummm . . . arrr . . . wellll,’ because it was going to be my project, and so I thought, ‘Bugger you, I’ll put it out myself.’” [10]
So John released it as a solo record, with the Plastic Ono Band, which now included John, Yoko, Eric Clapton, Klaus Voorman from Hamburg days on bass, and Ringo on drums. It’s typical of this time period, which was a bridge between the Beatles and the solo Beatles eras. “Cold Turkey” might have been a Beatles single, but ended up being the second Plastic Ono Band single, though the band included two Beatles. It was the first Lennon song credited to Lennon, not Lennon-McCartney.
The Plastic Ono Band premiered “Cold Turkey” at the Toronto Rock & Roll Revival Festival on September 13, 1969, and so it was included on Live Peace in Toronto, 1969 .
The idea of this song came to Paul late at night, when he was in bed at Cavendish Avenue. He left Linda in bed, went downstairs, “and just whispered it into my tape recorder. I played it very quietly so as not to wake her.” [11]
The next day, July 24, 1969, he came in early to a recording session at Abbey Road and did a demo of the song, playing all the instruments himself. “Because I lived locally, I could get in half an hour before a Beatles session at Abbey Road — knowing it would be empty and all the stuff would be set up — and I’d use Ringo’s equipment to put a drum track down, put some piano down quickly, put some bass down, do the vocal and double track it.” [12] He recorded the demo in about twenty minutes and was satisfied with it. (This has been released on Anthology 3 .)
Paul ended up giving the song to Badfinger, a group that had signed with Apple. [13] Originally known as The Iveys, they hailed from Wales (except for one Liverpudlian), and were talented songwriters in their own right. They went on to a career that was at times very successful, though business and tragic personal problems eventually caused the group to split up.
Paul produced the recording session, on August 2; Badfinger followed the demo closely, [14] and the single became a solid success. This song, with two other Badfinger songs, appeared in the comedy The Magic Christian (released December 1969).
“Come and Get It” was correctly credited to Paul alone.
While this song is credited to members of Badfinger, Tom Evans, Pete Ham, and Mike Gibbins, Paul helped develop it. Evans said:
So we started making up a song similar to “Long Tall Sally” in G. We just did the backing track. When it came time to do the vocal I was just floundering over it. He [Paul] started to sing with me and we both kind of made it up. There’s a great take of me and him singing it together. I said, “You’ve got to use that on the record, please use that on the record.” He said, “No, you go down and do it properly.” [15]
This great song, written back in 1967 during the Sgt. Pepper era, finally sees the light of day. For a full treatment, see the Let It Be album, below.
The Plastic Ono Band lineup that had recorded “Cold Turkey” performed on September 13, 1969 at the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival festival (but now with Alan White playing drums, instead of Ringo), and this live album of the performance was released. [16] It is arguably the first post-Beatles solo album.
Carl Perkins released this rock ’n’ roll standard in 1956, and it was widely covered, including a version by Elvis, also in 1956. The Beatles had performed it as part of a medley during the Get Back sessions, and this can be found on Anthology 3 .
See above, With the Beatles .
See above, Help! .
See above, White Album .
See above, “Cold Turkey” single.
See above, “Give Peace a Chance” single.
SIDE TWO
There is no absolute dividing line between the Beatles era and the solo Beatles era. However, one possible point of demarcation is January 4, 1970, which is the last day when the Beatles (minus John, who was on vacation in Denmark) got together at Abbey Road to re-record and add overdubs to “Let It Be” from the Get Back sessions. (The day before, they had re-recorded George’s “I Me Mine.”)
In this book I will use January 4, 1970 as the end of the Beatles era, for practical purposes, though, as we have seen, the Beatles’ solo careers had already begun. John had released Plastic Ono Band recordings before this, and Paul had started recording McCartney in December 1969. Let It Be had yet to be released, but it had been substantially recorded long before Abbey Road .
In another sense, the Beatles era continued, as songs written and rehearsed during the Beatles heyday continued to appear on the Beatles’ solo albums, and later in important collections such as the three Anthology albums and Let It Be . . . Naked . So I will continue to look at the solo songs that had direct roots in the Beatles era, and new releases of recordings from that time period.
Of course, in another sense, the Beatles era continued in new songs written by the Beatles after the breakup. A careful examination of the Beatle solo albums shows close connections, in quality, subject matter, and aesthetics, between them and the Beatles’ earlier work. I don’t see a sudden disastrous drop-off in content or quality, though there were obvious stylistic changes at times. For me, the dream continued, if we view the dream as the high songwriting skills of the Beatles. Certainly, there have been high and low points, great, good, and bad songs, during the solo Beatles’ career, but we tend to forget that there were great, good and bad songs during the Beatles’ career. John could write “Strawberry Fields,” “I’m Only Sleeping,” as well as“Run for Your Life.” Paul could write “Hey Jude, “Here There Everywhere,” as well as “All Together Now.” George could write “Something” and “Here Comes the Sun” on one album, and “For You Blue” and “I Me Mine” on the next.
From this point on, I will consider songs that were written before January 4, 1970, but were released after that date.
Possibly the first release of “Let It Be.” [17] See below, “Let it Be / You Know My Name Look Up My Number” single, and the Let It Be album.
George wrote this with soul singer Doris Troy, best known for the song, “Just One Look.” She had come to England to live, and George signed her to Apple and helped with her album, Doris Troy . [18] He said,
We did her single, “Ain’t That Cute,” which we wrote in the studio, actually. This is a good exercise because . . . I wouldn’t consider going in there and just making it up on the spot, which is what we did with “Ain’t That Cute.” We didn’t have a song, so we made it up, and I just pinched the chords from (Leon Russell’s) “Delta Lady” and away I went. We wrote that, and it’s very nice, with Pete Frampton playing guitar. [19]
The album, Doris Troy , was recorded during the Beatles era, mid-1969 to end of the year.
“Let It Be,” written during the White Album sessions, [20] was another song that came from a dream. Paul experienced dark, paranoid times in the late sixties, caused by drugs, the breakup of his working relationship with John (in part due to John’s relationship with Yoko), and the looming bitter breakup of the Beatles and the accompanying business and legal problems.
Paul had always been close to his mother, Mary Patricia Mohin McCartney, who had died in 1956, when Paul was fourteen. More than a decade later, as the Beatles were approaching their breakup, as emotionally painful and catastrophic as a divorce, Paul had a dream and “saw my mum, who’d been dead ten years or so.” They talked, and to Paul, he and she seemed “to both be physically together again. It was so wonderful for me.” She might not have said “let it be,” but she was very reassuring. Things would work out. “It was such a sweet dream I woke up thinking, Oh, it was really great to visit with her again. I felt very blessed to have that dream. So that got me writing the song “Let It Be.” I literally started off “Mother Mary,” which was her name.” [21]
Paul wrote the song as therapy: “Writing the song was my way of exorcizing the ghosts.” [22]
Both Paul and John ascribed this song to Paul. [23] In 1980, John said, “That’s Paul. . . . Nothing to do with the Beatles, no, it could’ve been Wings, right? . . . I don’t know what he’s thinking when he writes ‘Let It Be.’” [24] This comment parallels John’s contention that the real Beatle breakup happened before the White album.
Mal Evans has a severely revisionist account of this song’s writing, in which Paul saw him in a dream, and changed the lyrics to “mother Mary.” [25] This must be rejected in favor of Paul’s strong, consistent testimony through the years.
The Beatles started performing “Let It Be” during the Get Back sessions, on January 3, 1969. The master recording was made on January 31. George Harrison added overdub solos on April 30, 1969 (used for the single release) and January 4, 1970 (used for the album release). The single version of the song was produced by George Martin, with Paul’s help, and included orchestrations and overdubs, also added on January 4. [26] This single version can be found on Past Masters 2 .
Later, on March 26, 1970, Phil Spector added more orchestration and used only George’s January 4, 1970 solo. This version appeared on the album.
For the first release of “Let it Be,” see above, Aretha Franklin’s This Girl’s In Love With You album.
During the Sgt. Pepper era, John was at Paul’s house one day, and saw a phone book on the piano. Prominently displayed was the phrase, “You know the name, look up the number.” John took that sentence home and began to write a song around it, changing the words slightly. It was intended to be a rhythm and blues, Four Tops kind of tune, but it never developed into a finished song. [27] In fact, John apparently added no lyrics to the one phrase, instead repeating it over and over.
Paul remembered John coming to the studio with a new song, and Paul asked him, “‘What’s the words?” And John said, “You know my name look up my number.” Paul asked: “What’s the rest of it?” “No, no other words, those are the words. And I wanna do it like a mantra!” [28] Paul described it as “originally . . . a fifteen-minute chant” brought in by John “when he was in space-cadet mode.” [29]
So during the Sgt. Pepper period, the Beatles began to rehearse and record this song. They never turned it into an actual rhythm and blues song. Instead, it became, “a comedy record,” in the Goon Show spirit, and, John explained, “We made a joke of it.” [30]
First, they recorded the backing. “and we did these mad backings,” said John. [31] The first recording, mostly backing, took place on May 17, 1967. Paul called this song “probably my favorite Beatles track” because of all the memories connected with it, such as Mal Evans shoveling gravel (as a “rhythmic device”) and Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones playing sax (which he did not know how to play). [32] Paul remembered it as a song that they kept trying over and over and never quite getting it right, but “we had these endless, crazy fun sessions.”
A master edit of the backing was done on June 9, 1967, but vocals and many special effects were not added till two years later, on April 30, 1969. Engineer Nick Webb remembered Paul and John singing together around one microphone. [33] Paul remembered, “And eventually we pulled it all together and I sang [sings in a jazzy style ] “You know my name . . .” and we just did a skit, Mal and his gravel. . . . And it was just so hilarious to put that record together.”
John considered releasing this as a Plastic Ono Band record, and cut it from six to four minutes, [34] but the song finally appeared as a Beatles song, a B-side, a remarkable contrast to the A-side, “Let it Be.”
John often claimed this. [35] In 1969, he said, “There was another song I wrote around ‘Pepper’ time that’s still in the can, called ‘You Know My Name Look Up The Number.’ . . . But I never finished it, and I must.” [36] However, in 1980, he said, “That was a piece of unfinished music that I turned into a comedy record with Paul.” [37] Based on this statement, and Paul’s substantial contributions, such as the parodic lounge singing, he deserves secondary credit. John definitely was the main writer, though.
This album is part of the “Beatles to solo album” transitional period. Some of the songs were written during the middle Beatles period (in India), and were performed during the Get Back sessions. Two are even of pre-Beatles vintage. Other songs were written (or improvised) in late 1969 or early 1970.
The first songs were recorded at Cavendish, on Paul’s newly-installed four-track recorder, from December 1969 to January 1970. On February 12th, 1970, Paul recorded two songs (“Kreen-Akrore” and “Suicide”) at Morgan Studios, in Willesden Green, London, and added overdubs to his home tapes. Then he recorded three songs at Abbey Road, “Every Night,” and “Maybe I’m Amazed” on February 22, 1970, and “Man We Was Lonely” on February 25. [38]
Three of these songs (such as “Man We Was Lonely,” “Ooh You” and “Kreen-Akrore”) were written/improvised after my January 4, 1970 cutoff date, but I will look at all the cuts on the album, as the exact recording or songwriting dates are not known for all of them.
These songs are all accepted as written by Paul, as they were released on a McCartney solo album.
This was a song from Paul’s and Linda’s early time together, so it was possibly written in 1968. (They met on May 15, 1967, but started a serious relationship about a year later.) It was written in Scotland. [39]
While Paul at first thought he would “finish” this song, it remains as a fragment. [40] As such, this, and other songs on this album, continued the aesthetics of the song fragment as found in the White Album (“Can You Take Me Back,” “Wild Honey Pie”) and Abbey Road .
This was written in Scotland in 1969. [41]
This instrumental was improvised and recorded at home. Paul explained:
Made up as I went along — acoustic guitar first, then drums (maybe drums were first). Anyway — electric guitar and bass were added and the track is all instrumental. . . . This one and Momma Miss America were ad-libbed with more concern for testing the machine than anything else. [42]
Paul had the first two lines of this song for a few years before this album. He played an unfinished version of it during the Get Back sessions, on January 22 and 24, 1969. [43] In June 1969, while on holiday in Benitses, Greece, he developed it further. The finished product reflects his depression at the breakup of the Beatles and his newfound love for Linda.
“Hot as Sun” was a very early song — Paul said he wrote it in 1958, 1959 or “maybe earlier.” [44] It was “one of those songs that you play now and then,” he said. [45] He performed “Hot as Sun” during the Get Back sessions, [46] recorded this version at home, then added the middle at Morgan Studio.
Sulpy and Schweighardt suggest that it had a Polynesian inspiration, and was part of a musical movement that looked to exotic music during the 1950s. [47]
Paul said, of “Glasses,” “Wine glasses played at random and overdubbed on top of each other.”
An eight-second fragment of “Suicide,” not listed on the album credits, follows “Glasses.” Paul explained, “the end [of “Glasses”] is a section of a song called Suicide — not yet completed.”
This song was written when Paul was a teenager, and a version was recorded during the Get Back sessions. [48] The mature Paul, in 1995, had no fondness for the song. “It was murder! Horrible song! But you had to go through all those styles to discover your own. I only had one verse, so I cobbled together another.” [49]
Paul sent the song to Frank Sinatra in 1974, but the singer rejected it.
Apparently he thought it was an almighty piss-take . . . I think he couldn’t grasp it was tongue in check. It was only supposed to be a play on the word ‘suicide,’ not the actual physical suicide. . . . Looking back on it I’m quite relieved he did [reject it], actually, it wasn’t a good song, it was just a teenage thought. [50]
Paul performed it on TV in 1999, but the complete song was not officially released until it appeared as a bonus track on the remastered special edition of McCartney in 2011. [51]
Paul wrote this song, originally entitled “Jubilee,” in India, [52] and played it as one of the Esher demos in May 1968. This performance can be heard on Anthology 3 . He completed it gradually in London during the White Album recordings, [53] and played it during the Get Back sessions. [54] He remembered, “‘Junk’ was intended for Abbey Road , but something happened.” [55]
This was written fairly late, and is definitely of post-January 4 songwriting vintage. Paul said, “The chorus (‘Man We Was Lonely’) was written in bed at home shortly before we finished recording the album. The middle (‘I used to ride...’) was done one lunchtime in a great hurry as we were due to record the song that afternoon. Linda sings harmony on this song which is our first duet together.” [56]
SIDE TWO
Paul said, in 1970, “This, like ‘Man We Was Lonely,’ was given lyrics one day after lunch just before we left for Morgan Studios, where it was finished that afternoon.”
According to Paul, this was “An instrumental recorded completely at home. Made up as I went along — first a sequence of chords, then a melody on top. Piano, drums, acoustic guitar, electric guitar. Originally it was two pieces but they ran into each other by accident and became one.”
Paul wrote this in India, [57] and it was repeatedly rehearsed during the Get Back sessions. [58] Glyn Johns included it in some of the Get Back lineups. A version edited from two Get Back performances appeared on Anthology 3 . Paul explained, “On the new Anthology we do ‘Teddy Boy’ which was considered as a Beatles song but we never got around to it.’ [59]
This was written in 1969, as a tribute to Linda. Paul said, in 1970, “Written in London, at the piano, with the second verse added slightly later, as if you cared.” Later, asked if the song was written for McCartney , Paul replied, “Yeah, that was very much a song of the period.” [60]
This experimental track sounds odd, but the explanation, by Paul, is even odder.
On February 11, 1970, the BBC aired The Tribe That Hides from Man , by Adrian Cowell, a documentary about the Kreen-Akrore Indians, living in the Brazilian rainforest. [61] Paul and Linda watched it, and decided to create an experimental percussion track based on how the Kreen-Akrore Indians hunted. Paul did drumming, then later added piano, guitar, organ, voices, the sounds of running, animal noises, an arrow sound, “then animals stampeding across a guitar case.” The McCartneys even built a fire in the studio, though they ended up not using this sound. But they did include the “sound of the twigs breaking.”
Since none of this was explained in the liner notes to McCartney , virtually all listeners simply listened with incomprehension to the last song on this remarkable album, as I did many years ago.
This was written during one of Paul’s and Linda’s wandering trips through the countryside. They would put Martha in the back seat and drive out of London. “Let’s get lost,” Linda would say, and they would stop looking at signs and drive at random. They’d try to find beautiful, isolated places to stop, then just do nothing.
Well, not entirely nothing. Paul had his guitar with him, and he began writing “Two of Us” on one of these trips. “Hence the line in the song, ‘Two of us going nowhere,’” said Linda. “Paul wrote that on one of those days out.” [62]
Linda took a picture of him — with a day’s growth of stubble, sitting in the driver’s seat with open door, playing his guitar. Paul said “Two of Us” was a favorite song of his because it reminded him of those days, “getting together with Linda, and the wonderfully free attitude we were able to have, I had my guitar with me and I wrote it out on the road, and then maybe finished some of the verses at home later, but that picture is of me writing it.” [63]
The authorship of the song is straightforward enough, it seems. John, in 1971 ascribed it to Paul. [64] But then in the 1980 Playboy interviews, Lennon is reported as saying, about this song, “Mine.” [65] And Ringo remembered John bringing the song to the sessions. “When John brought it in, he called it ‘On Our Way Home.’ And when we’d finished with it in the studio it became ‘Two Of Us.’” [66]
However, Beatle historian Donald Sauter checked the original tapes of the Playboy interview, and concluded that the word “Mine” is actually not present in the interview. Sheff asked about ‘Don’t Let Me Down,’ to which Lennon responded, “That’s me, singing about Yoko….” Then Sheff asked about “Two of Us,” but Lennon, disregarding “Two of Us,” continued talking about “Don’t Let Me Down”: “. . . which Rod Stewart took note for note and turned into (singing) “Maggie don’t go-o-o”, some girl’s name, “Maggie don’t go-o-o” . That’s one the publishers never noticed.” [67] This is consistent with Lennon’s 1971 ascription of “Two of Us” directly to Paul. Sauter also notes that in the Get Back sessions, Paul teaches the song to the other Beatles, and takes the lead in rehearsing it. [68]
This leaves Ringo as the odd man out on this song! He was undoubtedly simply confused, if the interview was transcribed correctly.
Paul brought the song to the session thinking of it as a rock song with electric guitars. This kind of performance is captured in the Let It Be movie. But Glyn Johns suggested acoustic guitars, and this inspired suggestion was eventually adopted. [69]
Lennon brought this as a song fragment at the beginning of the Twickenham sessions, and improvised the lyrics. Beatles historian Peter Doggett writes:
The song’s lyrics were, as Lennon conceded, ‘interchangeable,’ and when serious rehearsals resumed at Apple on 22 January, he admitted that he was inspired less by the meaning of the words than by their sounds: ‘Lots of d’s and b’s.’ When Harrison queried the order of the verses, Lennon admitted, ‘I just make it up as I go along,’ and he continued to do so even as the final version of the song was being taped on the Apple rooftop a week later. [70]
John had no high opinion of the song: “Another piece of garbage,” he said in 1980. [71]
The chorus is from a separate song about Yoko called ‘All I Want Is You.’ [72]
John claimed this. “Yeah, I was just having fun with words. It was literally a nonsense song,” he said in 1972. [73] Paul agreed. Miles/McCartney wrote, “Paul had no input on ‘Dig a Pony,’ which was entirely John’s.” [74]
The writing of this song dates to 1967, when one night John’s wife Cynthia was talking on and on in bed. But after she went to sleep, he kept hearing the words repeating over and over, “flowing out like an endless stream.” He went downstairs and created a “cosmic song” rather than an irritated song. “Such an extraordinary meter and I can never repeat it! It’s not a matter of craftsmanship; it wrote itself. It drove me out of bed,” he said in an interview. [75] He wrote out the lyrics first, then added the music later. [76]
John used a Sanskrit mantra in this song: “Jai guru deva om, “hail to the divine guru,” with the mystic syllable om added.
The Beatles recorded this on February 4 and 8, 1968 (at about the same time as “Hey Bulldog” and “Lady Madonna”), before they flew to India. [77] So this song, which we associate with the last-released Beatle album, Let It Be , was actually recorded before most of the songs on the White Album were even written. There is a composing tape in which John sings part of this, which Winn dates to December 1967 or January 1968. [78]
John disliked the Beatles recording, which he felt was out of tune because the other Beatles weren’t really involved or helpful. This is where he accused the Beatles, especially Paul, of “subconsciously” sabotaging his songs. [79] I read this critique of Paul as a byproduct of his ambiguous role as co-writer, and un-official arranger and producer for the Beatles. When he produced actively, in his typical driven, detail-oriented way, John and George often resented his bossiness and his relentless quest for perfection (which resulted in many takes); when he held back, they resented his not getting involved in their songs.
The version found on the charity anthology album is the February 1968 studio version, with wildlife effects (birds chirping, children playing in a sandbox) added in the remix — this is also on the CD Past Masters, Volume Two . The Beatles played “Across the Universe” in the Get Back sessions, but the version that appears on the supposedly “live” Let It Be album is once again the February 1968 studio version, without the wildlife effects, but with Phil Spector’s orchestral additions! (The version on the Let It Be . . . Naked is also the 1968 studio version, without the Spector additions.) An alternate take, with pronounced Indian sitar and tambura, can be found on Anthology 2 .
Both John and Paul ascribed this to John. “It’s one of the best lyrics I’ve written,” he said in 1970, and the following year, he referred to it as, “One of my best songs.” [80] Paul, in 1995, agreed that “Across The Universe” was “one of John’s great songs.” [81]
For the first release of this song, see No One’s Gonna Change Our World , charity album, above.
George wrote this song quickly during the Get Back rehearsals, and one day came to Twickenham and played it for Ringo. This was filmed, and turned out to be an engaging moment, so was used in the film. However, this was not a proper recording, and the song would be needed for the soundtrack album, so the Beatles (minus John) re-recorded it from the ground up on January 3, 1970. George called it “a very strange song which I wrote the night before it was in the film,” in about five minutes. [82] It was “about the ego problem.” At the time, he said, he “hated everything about my ego — it was a flash of everything false and impermanent which I disliked.” [83]
When John complained that the song was too short, “McCartney mended that problem by leading the group into an improvised, up-tempo middle section.” [84]
All four Beatles are credited with this song, but John claimed it. [85] “I made this up on the spot. Sounds like it? Yes doesn’t it,” he said in an early interview. [86] However, according to Miles/McCartney, “Dig It” “was a studio improvisation led by John,” [87] but all the Beatles contributed lines.
See “Let It Be / You Know My Name Look Up My Number” single, above.
“Maggie Mae” was a well-known Liverpool folk song.
SIDE TWO
As the “Get Back sessions approached, Paul had a song without a middle, “I’ve Got a Feeling.” John came to Cavendish one day with a song called “Everybody Had a Hard Year,” and they decided the two songs would fit well together. So this is a song such as “A Day in the Life” or “Baby I’m a Rich Man,” in which separately composed unfinished songs were combined and created a seemingly cohesive whole. In fact, both songs expressed general optimism (except for the first line of John’s song, oddly enough). [88] Paul taught the song to George and Ringo on January 2, the first day of the Get Back sessions.
Paul and John agreed that Paul wrote the main song (which he sings), and John wrote the counter-melody, which he sings. “Paul,” said John in 1980. “And there’s part of me on it.” [89] In 1971, he put it on a list of songs he and Paul had collaborated on. [90] Miles/McCartney, in 1995, agreed: “Just as Paul had an inclusion in the middle of “A Day in the Life,” so John had one in the middle of Paul’s “I’ve Got a Feeling.” [91] Paul gave it as an example of how his collaboration with John had continued even into the late Beatles time period, though the song was probably written during or just after the White Album’s release. John had written his part by December 1968, when it shows up on a demo. The songs were joined together by January 2, 1969. [92]
During the Get Back sessions, the Beatles played this, one of the really early Beatle songs, out of good-humored nostalgia. John says he started writing the song when he was seventeen or eighteen, which would have been 1957 or 1958. After this start, he worked on it with Paul at the McCartney home at Forthlin Road. Paul stated, “It’s a great favourite of mine because it has great memories for me of John and I trying to write a bluesy freight-train song. There were a lot of those songs at the time, like ‘Midnight Special,’ ‘Freight Train,’ ‘Rock Island Line,’ so this was the ‘One After 909.’” [93]
The song can be found on a summer 1960 Beatle rehearsal tape, and again on a 1962 Cavern Club recording. [94] They also played it in Hamburg. [95] A great early version was recorded in the studio on March 5, 1963 — this never made it onto a Beatle record, but can be found on Anthology 1 . The song was not performed or released till it was sung as an “oldie” during the Get Back sessions. Apparently, in the early Beatle period Paul and John were dissatisfied with this song; either they regarded it as unfinished, or felt the lyrics were lacking. [96]
John claimed it starting in 1970, saying “it’s one I wrote when [I was] seventeen or eighteen in Liverpool separately from Paul.” [97] And in 1980, he remembered: “That was something I wrote when I was about seventeen.” [98]
But in an early interview, in 1969, John talked about the song as something he and Paul hadn’t finished. “Paul: Our kid [Mike McCartney] has been saying, ‘You should do that [the song One after 909],’ for years. But, I said, ‘Well, you know, Mike, you don’t understand about these things, you know. . . . John: It’s like, we always thought it wasn’t finished. We couldn’t be bothered finishing it.” [99]
Paul remembered collaboration. In a very early booking letter that he wrote in 1960 he listed “One After 909” among the songs he and John had written. [100] In 1969, he said:
It’s from one of the first songs we ever wrote. Glyn Johns: “John wrote it when he was about 15, didn’t he? Paul: Yeah, we used to sag off every school day, go back to my house and the two of us would write: “Love Me Do,” “Too Bad About Sorrows.” [“Just Fun”] . . . . But we hated the words to “909.” [101]
Probably John started it, then he and Paul worked on it in collaborative sessions.
Paul wrote this in Scotland, during the White Album sessions, from May to October, 1968. He sat down at the piano and started playing and came up with the song. [102] He once played it, with the lyrics not yet finished, for Alistair Taylor after a White Album recording session. [103]
It is a nexus for a number of influences. One was “the dissension and troubled atmosphere within the band at the time.” [104] Paul said that writing sad songs such as this one often serves as therapy. “It’s a good vehicle, it saves having to go to a psychiatrist.” [105] Counterbalancing the negative feelings from the looming Beatle breakup was the “calm beauty of Scotland.” [106] One theory is that the “long and winding road” is the road that led to his farm in Scotland, BH42. [107]
On a musical level, Paul was channeling Ray Charles, which led to the song’s “slightly jazzy” chord structure. [108]
Paul and John both ascribed this to Paul. In 1988, he affirmed, “John never had any input on ‘The Long and Winding Road.’” [109] In 1980, John had agreed: “Paul again.” John felt that “the shock of Yoko” caused Paul to have a little “creative spurt” just before the breakup, which produced this song. [110]
As has been mentioned, this song later became the main victim of Phil Spector’s orchestrations on the Let It Be album, to the dismay of Paul and George Martin. Paul said, in 2000:
So now we were getting a ‘re-producer’ instead of just a producer, and he added on all sorts of stuff — singing ladies on ‘The Long and Winding Road’ — backing that I perhaps wouldn’t have put on. I mean, I don’t think it made it the worst record ever, but the fact that now people were putting stuff on our records that certainly one of us didn’t know about was wrong. [111]
“Plain” versions of this can be found on Anthology 3 (the January 26 version) and Let It Be . . . Naked (the January 31 version). I do prefer the plain versions, but have developed a fondness for Spector’s over-the-top orchestrated version over the years, which historically has been the most influential version. So we have three canonical versions of this great song — not to mention numerous recordings and live performances by Paul after the breakup.
Harrison’s second song on Let It Be is slight. His songs on Let It Be are dwarfed by his great songs on the White Album and Abbey Road . This is a 12-bar song, in the blues tradition, but instead of the blues, it’s “happy-go-lucky.” [112]
See “Get Back / Don’t Let Me Down” single, above.
The Let It Be movie included some songs not on the Let It Be album.
This song opens the film. Per Sulpy and Schweighardt, this is based on Barber’s “Adagio for Strings,” but to me and some classical music friends, it does not sound like that piece at all. [113]
To state the obvious, the performances of this, “Oh Darling,” and “Octopus’s Garden,” predated the Abbey Road versions.
See Abbey Road , above.
A primitive blues improvisation.
John seems to lead this improvised song, performed on January 9, 1969. [114] Some give it the title “Suzy’s Parlour.”
This performance is one of the charming highlights of the Let It Be film. The Beatles performed the bizarre Coasters song at the Decca audition, January 1, 1962, and at the EMI audition, on June 6 of the same year. The EMI version can be heard on Anthology 1 .
Paul said, in 1989, “You see we had a very sort of strange repertoire because of Hamburg and ’cause all these little B sides we’d looked up. We tried things like ‘Besame Mucho.’ ‘Du dududududu. Cha chacha, oy! Besame. Besame mucho.’ Weird song to do.” [115] Paul, typically, commented on the music and harmony of the song: “It’s a minor [key] song and it changes to major, and where it changes to major is such a big moment musically. That major change attracted me so much.” [116]
See Abbey Road , above.
John’s version of this is one of the high points of the movie. The Beatles first released it on With the Beatles , above.
Medley:
This was performed by Bill Haley and his Comets and Little Richard in 1956.
Written in 1954, this was recorded by Big Joe Turner and Bill Haley and his Comets the same year. It became a rock standard.
Medley:
See Beatles For Sale , above.
A Little Richard song, released as the B-side of his 1956 single “Jenny, Jenny.”
A 1952 hit single by Lloyd Price, this song was successfully covered by Elvis four years later.
Paul sings the first verse of this in the Let It Be movie, and reportedly performed the whole song on acoustic guitar during a soundcheck in Zurich in 2004. [117] In 1969, he said,
Yeah, we used to sag off every school day, go back to my house and the two of us would write: “Love Me Do,” “Too Bad About Sorrows.” There’s a lot from then. We have about a hundred that we never recorded because they’re all very unsophisticated songs. (singing in a very dumb voice) “They said our love was just fun/ The day that our friendship begun,/ There’s no blue moon that I can see/ There’s no blue moon in history” and we just thought “great, too much.” [118]
Twenty years later, Paul remembered: “One of the earliest [collaborations with John] I can remember, I can’t remember if it was exactly the earliest, was a song called ‘Just Fun.’” But the song had one bad line they never could fix: “‘There’s no blue moon that I can see, There’s never been in history.’ Terrible.” [119]
[1] Quoted in Torrance, “Don’t Let It Be.” See also Tobler and Grundy, “George Martin.” George Harrison, on the bonus fly-on-the wall disk Let It Be . . . Naked , also emphasized the necessity for no overdubs on this album.
[2] Williams, “Produced by George Martin.” This is slightly unfair; Martin had given a Beatle song like John’s “Goodnight” a lush orchestration, though at John’s request. See also George Martin (interview in Melody Maker , quoted in Doggett, Abbey Road , 78); George Martin in Pritchard & Lysaght, The Beatles: An Oral History , 307.
[3] Lennon, Rolling Stone Interview, Dec. 1970, BBC, part 4, cf. Wenner, Lennon Remembers , 120. See also 118-21.
[4] Read, “McCartney on McCartney,” episode 4. Salewicz, “Tug of War,” 60.
[5] Read, “McCartney on McCartney,” episode 4.
[6] As quoted in The Plastic Ono Band Unfinished Discography website. See also Williams, “John & Yoko (part 2).”
[7] As quoted in The Plastic Ono Band Unfinished Discography website.
[8] Wenner, Lennon Remembers , 15.
[9] Aldridge, Beatles Illustrated Lyrics , 210.
[10] Williams, “John & Yoko (part 1)”.
[11] Miles, Many Years from Now , 550. Thomson, “Paul McCartney,” (2005).
[12] Anthology , 289.
[13] Bill Collins, manager of Badfinger, in Aldridge, Beatles Illustrated Lyrics , 227.
[14] For the session, Lewisohn interview, Beatles Recording Sessions , (1988), 11; Anthology 289; Matovina, Without You , 63; Tom Evans of Badfinger, in Badman, Beatles Off the Record , 480.
[15] Matovina, Without You , 62.
[16] For this performance, see Mal Evans, “John and Yoko’s Toronto Concert.”; Winn, That Magic Feeling , 321.
[17] See Engelhardt, Beatles Undercover , 175. The Franklin album may have been delayed.
[18] Unterberger, The Unreleased Beatles , 354.
[19] George Harrison, quoted in liner notes from Doris Troy . Possibly from a 1970 interview, see Winn, That Magic Feeling , 376.
[20] Everett II, 198.
[21] Miles, Many Years from Now , 538.
[22] As quoted in Turner, Hard Day’s Write , 180. Similar: Salewicz, “Tug of War,” (1986), 68; Read, “McCartney on McCartney,” episode 4 (1989); McCartney interview, transcribed from “Sold on Song” website.
[23] For Paul, Interview in Smith, Off the Record , 201. Coleman: McCartney: Yesterday . . . and Today , 38-39. Snow, “Paul McCartney.” For John, Hennessey, “Who Wrote What,” Record Mirror.
[24] Sheff, The Playboy Interviews, 211.
[25] Badman, The Beatles Off the Record , 490.
[26] See the relevant dates in Lewisohn, The Beatles Recording Sessions , Sulpy and Schweighardt, Get Back .
[27] Sheff, The Playboy Interviews, 214.
[28] McCartney 1988 (Lewisohn interview, 15).
[29] As quoted in Winn, That Magic Feeling , 282.
[30] Sheff, The Playboy Interviews, 214.
[31] Smith, “Beatles Music Straightforward On Next Album.”
[32] McCartney 1988 (Lewisohn interview, 15). Miles, Many Years from Now , 438. Lewisohn, The Beatles Recording Sessions , 116.
[33] Lewisohn, The Beatles Recording Sessions , 175.
[34] Ibid., 194.
[35] For example, in 1971, Hennessey, “Who Wrote What,” Record Mirror.
[36] Smith, “Beatles Music Straightforward On Next Album.”
[37] Sheff, The Playboy Interviews, 214.
[38] “The McCartney Recording Sessions,” website.
[39] Ibid. White, “Paul McCartney On His Not-So-Silly Love Songs” (2001).
[40] Ibid. “I was always going to finish it, and I had another bit that went into a Spanish song, almost mariachi, but it just appeared as a fragment and was quite nice for that reason.”
[41] “The McCartney Recording Sessions.”
[42] Ibid.
[43] Sulpy and Schweighardt, Get Back , 210, 245.
[44] McCartney 1970 (self-interview insert for McCartney , as reprinted in DiLello, Longest Cocktail Party , 248).
[45] Ibid.
[46] Sulpy and Schweighardt, Get Back , 245-46; Unterberger, Unreleased Beatles , 253.
[47] Sulpy and Schweighardt, Get Back , 245-46.
[48] Lewisohn, Tune In , 91-92; Sulpy and Schweighardt, Get Back , 275. By Lewisohn’s chronology this, not “I Lost My Little Girl,” might be the first song Paul every wrote. Tune In , 811n16. Du Noyer, Conversations , 194.
[49] Miles, Many Years from Now , 183.
[50] Ibid. See also McCartney in 2003, quoted in Barnes, “Sinatra Rejected My Song, Says Sir Paul.”
[51] Miles, Many Years , 182-83; Unterberger, Unreleased Beatles , 256; Benitez, The Words and Music of Paul McCartney , 22.
[52] Information included in McCartney (1970), as reprinted in DiLello, Longest Cocktail Party , 253.
[53] Ibid. See also Unterberger, TheUnreleased Beatles , 198.
[54] Sulpy and Schweighardt, Get Back , 155; Unterberger, Unreleased Beatles , 244.
[55] Self-interview insert for McCartney (1970), as reprinted in DiLello, Longest Cocktail Party , 248-49.
[56] Self-interview insert for McCartney (1970), as reprinted in DiLello, Longest Cocktail Party , 248-49.
[57] McCartney 1970 (self-interview insert for McCartney (1970), as reprinted in DiLello, Longest Cocktail Party , 254). “Another song started in India and completed in Scotland and London, gradually.”
[58] Sulpy and Schweighardt, Get Back , index.
[59] McCartney ca 1996 (Gobnotch, “Recording Sessions Update - Part 12”).
[60] White, “Paul McCartney: Farewell” (1988), 47.
[61] Internet Movie Database gives February 17, 1970 as the date of release.
[62] Quoted in Badman, The Beatles: The Dream is Over , 13.
[63] Miles, Many Years from Now , 471. Du Noyer, Conversations , 203-4.
[64] Hennessey, “Who Wrote What,” Record Mirror.
[65] Sheff, The Playboy Interviews , 214.
[66] Ringo, in Yellow Submarine radio series, as cited in Sauter, “One John Lennon.”
[67] Transcript from Sauter, “One John Lennon.”
[68] See also Sulpy and Schweighardt, Get Back , 22.
[69] Ibid., 39.
[70] Doggett, Abbey Road , 83.
[71] Lost Lennon Tapes, Oct. 21, 1991, cf. Sheff, The Playboy Interviews, 214.
[72] Turner, Hard Day’s Write , 176.
[73] From the film, Imagine .
[74] Miles, Many Years from Now , 537.
[75] Sheff, The Playboy Interviews, 201-3.
[76] Lost Lennon Tapes, Apr. 18, 1988, cf. Sheff, The Playboy Interviews, 201-3.
[77] Lewisohn, Beatles Recording Sessions , 133-34. Overdubs were added in subsequent sessions.
[78] Winn, That Magic Feeling , 150.
[79] Lost Lennon Tapes, Apr. 18, 1988, cf. Sheff, The Playboy Interviews , 201-3.
[80] Lennon, Rolling Stone Interview, Dec. 1970, BBC, part 4, cf. Wenner, Lennon Remembers , 99, see also 85. Hennessey, “Who Wrote What,” Record Mirror. Similar: Miles, Beatles in Their Own Words , 105.
[81] Miles, Many Years from Now , 421. See also Brown, “McCartney: Life after Death” (1974), 63.
[82] Harrison, George. Interview with Johnny Moran, March 11, 1970.
[83] I Me Mine , 158.
[84] Doggett, Abbey Road , 86-87; see also Sulpy and Schweighardt, Get Back , 133.
[85] For example, Hennessey, “Who Wrote What,” Record Mirror.
[86] Aldridge, Beatles Illustrated Lyrics , 208..
[87] Miles, Many Years from Now , 536.
[88] Miles, Many Years from Now , 537. Similar: Paul in 2003 (Sennett, “At last, they let it be”).
[89] Lennon 1980, Sauter, “One John Lennon”; cf. Sheff, The Playboy Interviews, 215.
[90] Hennessey, “Who Wrote What,” Record Mirror.
[91] Miles, Many Years from Now , 537. Similar: Paul in 2003 (Sennett, “At last, they let it be”).
[92] Winn, That Magic Feeling , 231.
[93] Miles, Many Years from Now , 536. Paul also put it in a list of early collaborative songs, an improvement on “Just Fun,” “In Spite of All the Danger,” “Like Dreamers Do,” and leading up to “Love Me Do.” Ibid., 36.
[94] Winn, Way Beyond Compare , 4, 17.
[95] Lewisohn, Tune In , 440.
[96] Lennon and McCartney 1969 (Fly on the Wall bonus disc on Let It Be . . . Naked ). McCartney in Cott and Dalton, The Beatles Get Back , p. 85.
[97] Lennon, Rolling Stone Interview, Dec. 1970, BBC, part 2. Cf. Wenner, Lennon Remembers , 26. Hennessey, “Who Wrote What,” Record Mirror. See also Hennessey, “Lennon: the Greatest Natural Songwriter,” 12. Aldridge, Beatles Illustrated Lyrics , 192.
[98] Lost Lennon Tapes, Sept. 23, 1991, cf. Sheff, The Playboy Interviews, 213.
[99] Lennon and McCartney 1969 (Fly on the Wall bonus disc on Let It Be . . . Naked ).
[100] McCartney to “Mr. Low,” about 1959, see Davies, The Beatles , 63.
[101] McCartney in Cott and Dalton, The Beatles Get Back , p. 85. See also Miles, Many Years from Now , 536, quoted above. Paul also put it in a list of early collaborative songs, an improvement on “Just Fun,” “In Spite of All the Danger,” “Like Dreamers Do,” and leading up to “Love Me Do.” Ibid., 36.
[102] In Merritt, “Truth behind ballad that split Beatles.”
[103] Taylor is quoted in Matteo, Let It Be , 43-44.
[104] Miles/McCartney, Many Years from Now , 539.
[105] Miles, Many Years from Now , 539.
[106] In Merritt, “Truth behind ballad that split Beatles,”
[107] Matteo, Let It Be , 43.
[108] Miles, Many Years from Now , 539.
[109] White, “Paul McCartney: Farewell,” 48. See also: See Merritt, “Truth behind ballad that split Beatles.” Coleman, McCartney: Yesterday . . . and Today , 38; Interview in Smith, Off the Record , 201.
[110] Lost Lennon Tapes, Oct. 21, 1991, cf. Sheff, The Playboy Interviews , 214. Also Hennessey, “Who Wrote What,” Record Mirror.
[111] Anthology , 350.
[112] I Me Mine , 156. See also Harrison, interview with Johnny Moran, March 30, 1970; Mal Evans in 1969 (“The Beatles Get Back,” 27). As George’s spoken reference to Mississippi blues guitarist Elmore James shows, it’s modeled on that style. Womack, Long and Winding Roads , 260.
[113] Sulpy and Schweighardt, Get Back , 26.
[114] Ibid., 148.
[115] Read, “McCartney on McCartney,” episode 1.
[116] Miles, Many Years from Now , 81
[117] “Early Beatle Songs” website. Sulpy and Schweighardt, Get Back , 119.
[118] McCartney 1969 (Let It Be movie; Cott and Dalton, The Beatles Get Back , p. 85).
[119] Read, “McCartney on McCartney,” episode 1. See also Miles, Many Years from Now , 36.