The Let It Be LP and documentary film finally received release dates for May 1970. To tie in with the release, the title track was released as the group’s next – and final – single. Release of the single was also prompted by unofficial airplay that pirated copies of the track had been receiving in the US.
You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)
John – lead and
backing vocals, guitar, maracas
Paul – lead, harmony and backing vocals, piano, bass
George – guitar, vibraphone
Ringo – drums, bongos
Brian Jones – alto saxophone
Mal Evans – effects
The B-side of ‘Let It Be’ sits out there with ‘Revolution 9’ in the annals of Beatles oddities. However, whereas John’s sound collage from The Beatles stands repeated listening and so is well suited as an album track, ‘You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)’ is sheer novelty fun, and is ideally placed on the back of the group’s valedictory single.
John told Playboy that he had seen the title as a logo on a telephone book at Paul’s house, and that he intended to make a Four Tops-type song out of the D–F#m–G–A7 (I–iii7–IV–V7) chord changes. But he later decided to make a comedy record out of the unfinished music. Paul also remembered the track fondly, because of its insanity. He remembered John coming to the studio with a new song. “I said ‘What’s the words’ and he replied ‘You know my name look up the number’. I asked ‘What’s the rest of it?’ ‘No, no other words, those are the words. And I wanna do it like a mantra!’”
The 4’18” song was edited down from a longer master recording – and this, at 6’08”, was even longer than the 5’40” version that appears on Anthology 2, which is a brand new stereo mix created specially for the CD release. The group recorded the song’s rhythm track in five separate parts in May/June 1967, with John and Paul overdubbing the vocals almost two years later.
The first section was taped on 17 May 1967 in 14 near-identical takes. Overdubs were recorded on 7 June, including a flute and organ, but these were left off the final version. The version on Anthology 2 shows that this part was originally nearly half a minute longer than the version edited for release. The rhythm tracks of the remaining sections were all recorded on 8 June.
The second section continues the theme in Caribbean style, as can be heard on the Anthology 2 track – this whole section was excised from the released version. The third, Latin section, often referred to as “Slaggers”, is substantially the same in both versions – though for some reason a couple of seconds was removed from the very start of the single version so that this section starts in the middle of a bar, which is a little off-putting. Some sources suggest the vocal in this section is by Ringo (probably because John apparently announces that it is “featuring Dennis O’Bell – and Ringo!”), although the crooning is certainly Paul. Neither Ringo nor George were in the studio when the vocals were recorded.
The Goonish fourth part also shows signs of editing – the introduction of the Anthology 2 version is longer, but, strangely, omits Paul’s jocular “number three, number four” vocals. This part was the last section to be recorded, and was unsurprisingly nailed in a single take, with bongos, bird whistle and various other instruments from the cupboard under the stairs.
The final section, with scat vocals over jazzy lounge-bar backing, lasts over a minute and features a “ropey, shaky” alto saxophone played by Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones (and not by a session musician of the same name, as claimed by Ray Coleman in John Lennon).
During this period of recording the instrumental tracks for ‘You Know My Name’, the Beatles, in extraordinary contrast, released their Sgt Pepper album. Indeed, it was a strange time for the group. They had poured so much creative energy into Sgt Pepper, the last recording session for which had taken place on 3 April 1967, that they seem to have emerged from the end of it blinking in the sunlight. Paul, possibly somewhat prematurely, had chivvied the group into the relatively disappointing Magical Mystery Tour project, for clearly they were all artistically exhausted. Between completing Sgt Pepper and taking a summer break, all the tracks they recorded show signs of fatigue – ‘Only A Northern Song’, ‘Baby You’re A Rich Man’, ‘All Together Now’, ‘You Know My Name’ and ‘It’s All Too Much’. On 1 June, the official release date for Sgt Pepper, the group went into De Lane Lea studios (significantly not Abbey Road) and recorded a series of what Mark Lewisohn calls “untitled, unplanned, highly tedious and – frankly – downright amateurish instrumental jams”. In this Pepper post-natal period, it seems to have been only the globe-spanning Our World TV special, for which John wrote ‘All You Need Is Love’, that elicited any inspiration.
‘You Know My Name’ remained in a semi-complete state for almost two years, until John and Paul recorded their vocals (including a belch at the end of the song), along with strange sounds effects, such as Mal Evans shovelling gravel. A mono mix of the track was then made. Second engineer Nick Webb remembers that although they were not always getting along well at that time, as with ‘The Ballad Of John And Yoko’, they could still have fun in their music, and, in a throwback to ‘If I Fell’, shared a microphone for the recording of the vocals. The reason for their exhumation of this obscure piece of tape in April 1969 became clear later in the year. On 26 November, John worked with Geoff Emerick as nominally joint producers on a mixing session that saw the mono mix of the track edited down from over six minutes to a more releasable 4’18”. This session took place with the intention of producing the new Plastic Ono Band single. The single was to have ‘You Know My Name’ on the A-side, and a similarly bizarre track on the back. ‘What’s The New Mary Jane’ was recorded on 14 August 1968, during the sessions for the White Album. It featured just two Beatles – John on vocals and piano and George on guitar – with contributions from Yoko and Mal Evans. Three complete takes were made, the last one being 6’35”, which was edited down to just over six minutes. The song itself was decidedly impromptu, based around the phrase “What a shame Mary Jane had a pain at the party”. After three obscure verses inspired by ‘Cry Baby Cry’ (“she jumping as Mexican bean / to make that her body more thin … she having always good contacts / she making with Apple a contract / What a shame Mary Jane had a pain at the party”) there follows some three minutes of bells, scrapes, jingles and electronic whooping (or is it Yoko wailing?), all laced with echo. The noises are so sporadic that the song seems to finish two or three times, only to be resurrected with further sound effects. Finally the early verses reappear in the background and the song rather inconsequentially washes away into the distance. In fact, for those who have not had the privilege of hearing the song, the best idea of its general spirit can be judged from the fact that it was intended to be the B-side of ‘You Know My Name’ – in other words, ‘What’s The New Mary Jane’ is to ‘You Know My Name’ what ‘You Know My Name’ is to ‘Let It Be’.
Although ‘You Know My Name’ was never considered as an album track, John had wanted ‘What’s The New Mary Jane’ to be included on The Beatles. It was only at a comparably late stage that it was left off due to lack of space, to the probable relief of the other members of the group and their producer. The track was finally released in 1996 on Anthology 3.
But if the Beatles didn’t want the songs, then John did. With Get Back seemingly tied up indefinitely, he evidently wanted the world to experience the Beatles with their guard down. Apple had copies of the Plastic Ono Band single pressed and, rather bizarrely, announced that the single – with John and Yoko singing, backed by “many of the greatest show business names of today” (namely, the Beatles) – would be released on 5 December. For some reason, possibly objections from EMI, the single never came out. Mark Lewisohn points out that the same pressing was used for the Beatles B-side as was intended for the Plastic Ono Band single – evidenced by the provisional catalogue number of the Plastic Ono Band single (followed by an “A” for A-side) being visible in the run-out groove of the early pressings of the Beatles record.
Because the editing session on 26 November used a mono mix of the song rather than a copy of the four-track tape, the final song was effectively fixed in mono, and a stereo mix of this edited version was therefore impossible. So, with ‘Only A Northern Song’ finally appearing in stereo on the Yellow Submarine Songtrack, ‘You Know My Name’ remains the only (unedited) song since 1963 that has never been mixed for stereo. The version on Anthology 2 is a curious hotch-potch of mixes, with the vocal stereo picture abruptly changing between edits, particularly during Goon-like section. The final section, featuring noticeable tape hiss, is largely in mono, possibly based on a mix made by John in 1969.