The Beatles, album "The Beatles Box"
Lyrics of the album -
Listen the albumBoxsets on CD - Studio EMI Studios - 1980 CD: 03.11.1980
 -
-
JOHN 1963: 'It came to the charts in two days. And everybody thought it was a 'fiddle' because our manager's stores send in these… what is it… record returns. And everybody down south thought, 'Aha! He's just fiddling the charts.' But he wasn't.' JOHN 1972: 'Paul wrote the main structure of this when he was sixteen, or even earlier. I think I had something to do with the middle.' RINGO 1976: 'The first record, 'Love Me Do,' for me that was more important than anything else. That first piece of plastic. You can't believe how great that was. It was so wonderful. We were on a record!' JOHN 1980: ''Love Me Do' is Paul's song. He had the song around in Hamburg even, way, way before we were songwriters.' PAUL 1982: 'In Hamburg we clicked… At the Cavern we clicked… but if you want to know when we 'knew' we'd arrived, it was getting in the charts with 'Love Me Do.' That was the one. It gave us somewhere to go.' PAUL 1984: ''Love Me Do' …the first song we recorded, like, for real. First serious audition. I was very nervous, I remember. John was supposed to sing the lead, but they changed their minds and asked me to sing lead at the last minute, because they wanted John to play harmonica. Until then, we hadn't rehearsed with a harmonica; George Martin started arranging it on the spot. It was very nerve-wracking.' PAUL 1988: ''Love Me Do' was us trying to do the blues. It came out whiter because it always does. We're white, and we were just young Liverpool musicians. We didn't have the finesse to be able to actually sound black. But 'Love Me Do' was probably the first bluesy thing we tried to do.' PAUL circa-1994: 'George Martin said, 'Can anyone play a harmonica? It would be rather nice. Couldn't think of some sort of bluesy thing, could you John?' John played a chromatic harmonica… I actually had one too but he'd been clever – he learned to play it. John expected to be in jail one day and he'd be the guy who played the harmonica. The lyric crossed over the harmonica solo, so I suddenly got thrown the big open line, 'Love me do,' where everything stopped. Until that session John had always done it. I didn't even know how to sing it… I can still hear the nervousness in my voice.' -
JOHN 1980: 'That's Paul's song. He was trying to write a 'Soldier Boy' like the Shirelles. He wrote that in Germany, or when we were going to and from Hamburg. I might have contributed something. I can't remember anything in particular. It was mainly his song.' PAUL circa-1994: 'A theme song based on a letter… It was pretty much mine. I don't think John had much of a hand in it. There are certain themes that are easier than others to hang a song on, and a letter is one of them… It's not based in reality, nor did I write it to my girlfriend from Hamburg, which some people think.' -
JOHN 1980: 'That's Paul doing his usual job of producing what George Martin used to call a 'potboiler.' I helped with a couple of the lyrics.' PAUL 1988: 'I wrote it with John. We sagged off school and wrote it on guitars. I remember I had the lyrics, 'Just seventeen/Never been a beauty queen,' which John… it was one of the first times he ever went, 'What? Must change that!' And it became, 'you know what I mean.'' PAUL circa-1994: 'Sometimes we would just start a song from scratch, but one of us would nearly always have a germ of an idea, a title, or a rough little thing they were thinking about and we'd do it. 'I Saw Her Standing There' was my original. I'd started it and I had the first verse, which therefore gave me the tune, the tempo, and the key. It gave you the subject matter, alot of information, and then you had to fill in. So it was co-written… and we finished it that day. -
02:00 Please Please Me (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 26.11.1962JOHN 1963: 'Our recording manager (George Martin) thought our arrangement was fussy, so we tried to make it simpler. We were getting tired though, and just couldn't seem to get it right. In the following weeks we went over it again and again. We changed the tempo a little, we altered the words slightly, and we went over the idea of featuring the harmonica just as we'd done on 'Love Me Do.' By the time the session came around we were so happy with the result, we couldn't get it recorded fast enough.' JOHN 1980: ''Please Please Me' is my song completely. It was my attempt at writing a Roy Orbison song, would you believe it? I wrote it in the bedroom in my house at Menlove Avenue, which was my auntie's place. I heard Roy Orbison doing 'Only The Lonely' or something. That's where that came from. And also I was always intrigued by the words of 'Please Lend Your Ears To My Pleas,' a Bing Crosby song. I was always intrigued by the double use of the word 'please.' So it was a combination of Bing Crosby and Roy Orbison.' PAUL 1988: 'It's very Roy Orbison when you slow it down. George Martin up-tempo'd it. He thought it was too much of a dirge, and probably too like Orbison. So he cleverly speeded us up… and we put in the little scaled riff at the beginning, which was very catchy.' -
JOHN 1980: 'It was kind of a John song, more than a Paul song… but it was written together.' PAUL 1988: 'John and I were a songwriting team, and what songwriting teams did in those days was wrote for everyone. 'Misery' was for Helen Shapiro, and she turned it down. It may not have been that successful for her because it's rather a downbeat song… 'the world is treating me bad, misery.' It was quite pessimistic. And in the end Kenny Lynch did it. Kenny used to come out on tour with us, and he used to sing it. That was one of his minor hits.' -
JOHN 1980: 'Well, I can't say I wrote it 'for' George. My mother was always… she was a good comedienne and a singer. Not professional, but she used to get up in pubs and things like that. She had a good voice. She could do Kay Starr. She used to do this little tune when I was one or two years old… she was still living with me then. The tune was from a Disney movie: (sings) 'Do you want to know a secret? Promise not to tell? You are standing by a wishing well.' So, I had this sort of thing in my head, and I wrote it and just gave it to George to sing. I thought it would be a good for him, because it had only three notes and he wasn't the best singer in the world. He has improved a lot since then; but in those days, his ability was very poor.' PAUL 1984: 'A song we really wrote for George to sing. Before he wrote his own stuff, John and I wrote things for him and Ringo to do.' GEORGE 1994: ''Do You Want To Know A Secret' was my song on the album. I didn't like the vocal on it. I didn't know how to sing.' -
-
JOHN 1963: 'I always hate singing the song, 'Twist And Shout' when there's a colored artist on the bill with us. It doesn't seem right, you know. I feel sort of embarrassed… It makes me curl up. I always feel they could do the song much better than me.' JOHN 1971: 'The more interesting songs to me were the black ones because they were more simple. They sort of said shake-your-arse, or your prick, which was an innovation really. The blacks were singing directly and immediately about their pain, and also about sex, which is why I like it.' JOHN 1976: 'The last song nearly killed me. My voice wasn't the same for a long time after – everytime I swallowed it was like sandpaper. I was always bitterly ashamed of it because I could sing it better than that, but now it doesn't bother me. You can hear I'm just a frantic guy doing his best.' PAUL 1988: 'There's a power in John's voice there that certainly hasn't been equaled since. And I know exactly why – It's because he worked his bollocks off that day. We left 'Twist And Shout' until the very last thing because we knew there was one take.' RINGO 1994: 'We started (recording the album) about noon and finished it at midnight, with John being really hoarse by 'Twist And Shout.'' -
PAUL 1964: ''From Me To You.' It could be done as an old Ragtime tune… especially the middle-eight. And so, we're not writing the tunes in any particular idiom. In five years time, we may arrange the tunes differently. (jokingly) But we'll probably write the same old rubbish!!' JOHN 1980: 'We were writing it in a car, I think… and I think the first line was mine. I mean, I know it was mine. (humms melody) And then after that we just took it from there. We were just writing the next single. It was far bluesier than that when we wrote it. The notes, today… you could rearrange it pretty funky.' PAUL circa-1994: 'The thing I liked about 'From Me To You' was it had a very complete middle. It went to a surprising place. The opening chord of the middle section of that song heralded a new batch for me. That was a pivotal song. Our songwriting lifted a little with that song. It was very much co-written.' -
JOHN 1980: ''Thank You Girl' was one of our efforts at writing a single that didn't work. So it became a B-side or an album track.' PAUL 1988: 'We knew that if we wrote a song called, 'Thank You Girl' that alot of the girls who wrote us fan letters would take it as a genuine thank you. So alot of our songs were directly addressed to the fans.' -
JOHN 1963: 'We wrote that two days before we recorded it, actually.' PAUL 1963: 'John and I wrote it together. We were in a van up in Newcastle somewhere, and we'd just gone over to our hotel. I originally got an idea of doing one of those answering songs, where a couple of us sing about 'she loves you' …and the other one sort of says the 'yes, yes' bit. You know, 'yeah yeah' answering whoever is saying it. But we decided that was a crummy idea anyway. But we had the idea to write a song called 'She Loves You' then. And we just sat up in the hotel bedroom for a few hours and wrote it, you know.' JOHN 1963: ''Yeah.' That's sort of the main catch phrase from 'She Loves You.' We'd written the song, and then suddenly realized we needed more… so we added 'yeah, yeah, yeah' and it caught on.' JOHN 1980: 'It was written together (with Paul) and I don't remember how. I remember it was Paul's idea – instead of singing 'I love you' again, we'd have a third party. The 'Woooo' was taken from the Isley Brothers 'Twist And Shout,' which we stuck into everything.' PAUL 1982: 'Occasionally, we'd overrule George Martin, like on 'She Loves You,' we end on a sixth chord, a very jazzy sort of thing. And he said, 'Oh, you can't do that! A sixth chord? It's too jazzy.' We just said, 'No, it's a great hook, we've got to do it.'' PAUL 1988: 'We rehearsed the end bit of 'She Loves You' and took it to George. And he just laughed and said, 'Well, you can't do the end of course… that sixth… it's too like the Andrew Sisters.' We just said, 'Alright, we'll try it without,' and we tried it and it wasn't as good. Then he conceded, 'You're right, I guess.' But we were both very flexible. We would listen to George's ideas too, because he was a producer and a musician, and he obviously knew what he was talking about. There was good to-and-fro. We loved that bit, and we rehearsed it alot. John and I wrote that in a hotel room, on twin beds during an afternoon off – I mean, God bless their little cotton socks, those boys WORKED! Here I am talking about an afternoon off, and we're sitting there writing! We just loved it so much. It wasn't work.' -
JOHN 1980: ''It Wont Be Long' is mine. It was my attempt at writing another single. It never quite made it. That was the one where the guy in the 'London Times' wrote about the 'Aeolian cadences of the chords' which started the whole intellectual bit about the Beatles.' PAUL circa-1994: 'We'd spot the double meaning… In 'It won't BE LONG till I BELONG to you' it was that same trip.' -
PAUL 1984: 'Influenced by the Marvelettes, who did the original version.
We got it from our fans, who would write 'Please Mr. Postman' on the back of the envelopes.
'Posty, posty, don't be slow, be like the Beatles and go, man, go!' That sort of stuff.' -
02:04 All My Loving (Paul McCartney – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 30.07.1963JOHN 1972: 'This was one of his first biggies.' JOHN 1980: ''All My Loving' is Paul, I regret to say. Because it's a damn fine piece of work. But I play a pretty mean guitar in back.' PAUL 1984: 'Yeah, I wrote that one. It was the first song I ever wrote where I had the words before the music. I wrote the words on a bus on tour, then we got the tune when I arrived there. The first time I've ever worked upside down.' PAUL 1988: 'I think that was the first song where I wrote the words without the tune. I wrote the words on the tour bus during our tour with Roy Orbison. We did alot of writing then.' PAUL circa-1994: 'It was a good show song. It worked well live.' -
-
-
-
PAUL 1964: 'Let's see, we were told we had to get down to it. So we found this house when we were walking along one day. We knew we had to really get this song going, so we got down in the basement of this disused house and there was an old piano. It wasn't really disused, it was rooms to let. We found this old piano and started banging away. There was a little old organ too. So we were having this informal jam and we started banging away. Suddenly a little bit came to us, the catch line. So we started working on it from there. We got our pens and paper out and just wrote down the lyrics. Eventually, we had some sort of a song, so we played it for our recording manager and he seemed to like it. We recorded it the next day.' JOHN 1980: 'We wrote alot of stuff together, one on one, eyeball to eyeball. Like in 'I Want To Hold Your Hand,' I remember when we got the chord that made the song. We were in Jane Asher's house, downstairs in the cellar playing on the piano at the same time. And we had, 'Oh you-u-u/ got that something…' And Paul hits this chord, and I turn to him and say, 'That's it!' I said, 'Do that again!' In those days, we really used to absolutely write like that – both playing into each other's noses.' PAUL circa-1994: ''Eyeball to eyeball' is a very good description of it. That's exactly how it was. 'I Want To Hold Your Hand' was very co-written.' -
02:11 This Boy (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 21.12.1963JOHN 1980: 'Just my attempt at writing one of those three-part harmony Smokey Robinson songs. Nothing in the lyrics… just a sound and a harmony. There was a period when I thought I didn't write melodies… that Paul wrote those and I just wrote straight, shouting rock 'n roll. But of course, when I think of some of my own songs – 'In My Life,' or some of the early stuff – 'This Boy,' I was writing melody with the best of them.' PAUL 1988: 'Fabulous. And we just loved singing that three-part too. We'd learned that from: (sings) 'To know know know her is to love love love her…' We learned that in my dad's house in Liverpool.' -
JOHN 1972: 'John and Paul, but mainly Paul.' JOHN 1980: 'That's Paul completely. Maybe I had something to do with the chorus, but I don't know. I always considered it his song.' PAUL 1984: 'We recorded it in France, as I recall. Went over to the Odeon in Paris. Recorded it over there. Felt proud because Ella Fitzgerald recorded it, too, though we didn't realize what it meant that she was doing it.' PAUL circa-1994: ''Can't Buy Me Love' is my attempt to write a bluesy mode. The idea behind it was that all these material possessions are all very well but they won't buy me what I really want.' -
JOHN 1964: 'I'd find it a drag to play rhythm all the time, so I always work myself out something interesting to play. The best example I can think of is like I did on 'You Can't Do That.' There really isn't a lead guitarist and a rhythm guitarist on that, because I feel the rhythm guitarist role sounds too thin for records. Anyway it drove me potty to play chunk-chunk rhythm all the time. I never play anything as lead guitarist that George couldn't do better. But I like playing lead sometimes, so I do it.' JOHN 1980: 'That's me doing Wilson Pickett. You know, a cowbell going four-in-the bar, and the chord going 'chatoong!'' -
RINGO 1964: 'We went to do a job, and we'd worked all day and we happened to work all night. I came up still thinking it was day I suppose, and I said, 'It's been a hard day…' and I looked around and saw it was dark so I said, '…night!' So we came to 'A Hard Day's Night.'' JOHN 1980: 'I was going home in the car and Dick Lester suggested the title, 'Hard Day's Night' from something Ringo had said. I had used it in 'In His Own Write,' but it was an off-the-cuff remark by Ringo. You know, one of those malapropisms. A Ringo-ism, where he said it not to be funny… just said it. So Dick Lester said, 'We are going to use that title.' And the next morning I brought in the song… 'cuz there was a little competition between Paul and I as to who got the A-side – who got the hits. If you notice, in the early days the majority of singles, in the movies and everything, were mine… in the early period I'm dominating the group. The only reason he sang on 'A Hard Day's Night' was because I couldn't reach the notes. (sings) 'When I'm home/ everything seems to be right/ when I'm home…' – which is what we'd do sometimes. One of us couldn't reach a note but he wanted a different sound, so he'd get the other to do the harmony.' PAUL circa-1994: 'The title was Ringo's. We'd almost finished making the film, and this fun bit arrived that we'd not known about before, which was naming the film. So we were sitting around at Twickenham studios having a little brain-storming session… and we said, 'Well, there was something Ringo said the other day.' Ringo would do these little malapropisms, he would say things slightly wrong, like people do, but his were always wonderful, very lyrical… they were sort of magic even though he was just getting it wrong. And he said after a concert, 'Phew, it's been a hard day's night.'' -
JOHN 1980: 'That's me.
Just a song – It doesn't mean a damn thing.' -
02:16 If I Fell (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 27.02.1964JOHN 1980: 'That was my first attempt at a ballad proper. That was the precursor to 'In My Life.' It has the same chord sequences as 'In My Life' – D and B minor and E minor, those kinds of things. And it's semi-autobiographical, but not consciously. It shows that I wrote sentimental love ballads – silly love songs – way back when.' PAUL 1984: 'This was our close-harmony period. We did a few songs… 'This Boy,' 'If I Fell,' 'Yes It Is' …in the same vein, which were kind of like the Fourmost – an English vocal group, only not really.' -
JOHN 1972: 'Both of us wrote it. The first half was Paul's and the middle-eight is mine.' JOHN 1980: ''And I Love Her' is Paul again. I consider it his first 'Yesterday.' You know, the big ballad in 'A Hard Day's Night.' PAUL 1984: 'It's just a love song. It wasn't for anyone. Having the title start in midsentence, I thought that was clever. Well, Perry Como did 'And I Love You So' many years later. Tried to nick the idea. I like that… it was a nice tune, that one. I still like it.' -
JOHN 1980: 'Paul's. Good song.' PAUL circa-1994: 'I wrote 'Things We Said Today' on acoustic (guitar). It was a slightly nostalgic thing already, a future nostalgia: we'll remember the things we said today, sometime in the future, so the song projects itself into the future and then is nostalgic about the moment we're living now, which is quite a good trick.' -
02:22 I'll Be Back (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 01.06.1964JOHN 1972: 'A nice tune, though the middle is a bit tatty.' JOHN 1980: ''I'll Be Back' is me completely. My variation of the chords in a Del Shannon song.' PAUL circa-1994: ''I'll Be Back' was co-written, but it was largely John's idea.' -
-
02:02 I Call Your Name (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 01.03.1964JOHN 1980: 'That was my song. When there was no Beatles and no group, I just had it around. It was my effort as a kind of blues originally, and then I wrote the middle-eight just to stick it in the album when it came out years later. The first part had been written before Hamburg even. It was one of my 'first' attempts at a song.' PAUL circa-1994: 'We worked on it together, but it was John's idea. When I look back at some of these lyrics, I think, 'Wait a minute. What did he mean? 'I call your name but you're not there.' Is it his mother? His father? I must admit I didn't really see that as we wrote it because we were just a couple of young guys writing. You didn't look behind it at the time, it was only later you started analyzing things.' -
RINGO 1964: 'I'm featured on it.
Actually it was written by Carl Perkins about six years ago.
Carl came to the session.
I felt very embarrassed.
I did it just two days before I went in the hospital (with tonsilitis) so please forgive my throat.' -
-
02:57 She's a Woman (Paul McCartney – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 26.11.1964JOHN 1980: 'That's Paul with some contribution from me on lines, probably. We put in the words 'turns me on.' We were so excited to say 'turn me on' – you know, about marijuana and all that… using it as an expression.' PAUL circa-1994: 'This was my attempt at a bluesy thing… instead of doing a Little Richard song, whom I admire greatly, I would use the (vocal) style I would have used for that but put it in one of my own songs.' -
02:19 I Feel Fine (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 16.07.1964JOHN 1964: 'George and I play the same bit on the guitar together – that's the bit that'll set your feet a-tapping, as the reviews say. The middle-eight is the most tuneful part, to me, because it's a typical Beatles bit.' JOHN 1972: 'This was the first time feedback was used on a record. It's right at the beginning.' JOHN 1974: 'I wrote this at a recording session. It was tied together around the guitar riff that opens it.' JOHN 1980: 'That's me completely. Including the guitar lick with the first feedback anywhere. I defy anybody to find a record… unless it is some old blues record from 1922… that uses feedback that way. So I claim it for the Beatles. Before Hendrix, before the Who, before anybody. The first feedback on record.' PAUL circa-1994: 'John had a semi-acoustic Gibson guitar. It had a pick-up on it so it could be amplified… We were just about to walk away to listen to a take when John leaned his guitar against the amp. I can still see him doing it… and it went, 'Nnnnnnwahhhhh!' And we went, 'What's that? Voodoo!' 'No, it's feedback.' Wow, it's a great sound!' George Martin was there so we said, 'Can we have that on the record?' 'Well, I suppose we could, we could edit it on the front.' It was a found object – an accident caused by leaning the guitar against the amp. The song itself was more John's than mine. We sat down and co-wrote it with John's original idea. John sang it, I'm on harmonies.' -
-
JOHN 1972: 'Both of us wrote it. I think we wrote this when we were trying to write the title song for 'Help!' because there was at one time the thought of calling the film, 'Eight Arms To Hold You.'' JOHN 1980: 'Eight Days A Week' was never a good song. We struggled to record it and struggled to make it into a song. It was his (Paul's) initial effort, but I think we both worked on it. I'm not sure. But it was lousy anyway.' PAUL 1984: 'Yeah, he (Ringo) said it as though he were an overworked chauffeur: (in heavy accent) 'Eight days a week.' (Laughter) When we heard it, we said, 'Really? Bing! Got it!'' (Laughs) -
JOHN 1972: 'I remember (Beatles music publisher) Dick James coming up to me after we did this one and saying, 'You're getting better now – that was a complete story.' Apparently, before that, he thought my songs wandered off.' JOHN 1980: 'That's my song. That's the one where Dick James the publisher said, 'That's the first complete song you've written that resloves itself,' you know, with a complete story. It was sort of my version of 'Silhouettes.' (sings) 'Silhouettes, silhouettes, silhouettes…' I had that image of walking down the street and seeing her silhouetted in the window and not answering the phone, although I never called a girl on the phone in my life. Because phones weren't part of the English child's life.' PAUL circa-1994: 'We wrote 'No Reply' together but from a strong original idea of his. I think he pretty much had that one, but as usual, if he didn't have a third verse and the middle-eight, then he'd play it to me pretty much formed. Then we'd shove a bit in the middle or I'd throw in an idea.' -
02:31 I'm a Loser (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 14.08.1964JOHN 1980: 'That's me in my Dylan period. Part of me suspects I'm a loser, and part of me thinks I'm God almighty.' (laughs) PAUL circa-1994: 'We used to listen to alot of country and western songs and they were all about sadness and 'I lost my truck' so it was quite acceptable to sing 'I'm a loser.' You really didn't think about it at the time, it's only later you'd think, God! That was pretty brave of John.
'I'm a Loser' was very much John's song and there may have been a dabble or two from me.' -
JOHN 1972: 'A nice one.' JOHN 1980: 'That's Paul again. Can't you tell? I mean – 'Tomorrow may rain so/ I'll follow the sun.' That's another early McCartney, you know… written almost before the Beatles, I think. He had alot of stuff.' PAUL 1988: 'I wrote that in my front parlour in Forthlin Road. I was about 16. There was a few from then – 'Thinking Of Linking,' ever heard of that one? So 'I'll Follow The Sun' was one of those very early ones. I seem to remember writing it just after I'd had the flu… I remember standing in the parlour looking out through lace curtains of the window and writing that one. We had this hard R&B; image in Liverpool, so I think songs like 'I'll Follow The Sun,' ballads like that, got pushed back to later.' -
-
JOHN 1980: ''Every Little Thing' is his song. Maybe I threw in something.' PAUL circa-1994: ''Every Little Thing,' like most of the stuff I did, was my attempt at the next single… but it became an album filler rather than the great almighty single. It didn't have quite what was required.' -
JOHN 1974: 'That was a very personal one of mine.' JOHN 1980: 'That's me!' -
-
GEORGE 1965: 'We are always worried with each record. With 'Ticket To Ride' we were even more worried. There's bound to be a time when we come in at 19 (on the charts). But this 'number one' business doesn't seem to stop – great while it lasts – but now we'll have to start all over again and people will start predicting funny things for the next one.' JOHN 1970: 'It's a heavy record, and the drums are heavy too. That's why I like it.' JOHN 1980: 'That was one of the earliest heavy-metal records made. Paul's contribution was the way Ringo played the drums.' PAUL circa-1994: 'I think the interesting thing is the crazy ending – instead of ending like the previous verse, we changed the tempo. We picked up one of the lines, 'My baby don't care,' but completely altered the melody. We almost invented the idea of a new bit of a song on the fade-out with this song… It was quite radical at the time.' -
02:30 I'm Down (Paul McCartney – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 16.02.1965JOHN 1980: 'That's Paul… with a little help from me, I think.' PAUL circa-1994: 'I could do Little Richard's voice which is a wild, hoarse, screaming thing – It's like an out-of-body experience. You have to leave your current sensibilities and go about a foot above your head to sing it. Alot of people were fans of Little Richard so I used to sing his stuff, but there came a point when I wanted to do one of my own, so I wrote 'I'm Down.'' -
JOHN 1965: 'We think it's one of the best we've written.' JOHN 1980: 'The whole Beatle thing was just beyond comprehension. When 'Help' came out, I was actually crying out for help. Most people think it's just a fast rock 'n roll song. I didn't realize it at the time; I just wrote the song because I was commissioned to write it for the movie. But later, I knew I really was crying out for help. So it was my fat Elvis period. You see the movie: He – I – is very fat, very insecure, and he's completely lost himself. And I am singing about when I was so much younger and all the rest, looking back at how easy it was. Now I may be very positive… yes, yes… but I also go through deep depressions where I would like to jump out the window, you know. It becomes easier to deal with as I get older; I don't know whether you learn control or, when you grow up, you calm down a little. Anyway, I was fat and depressed and I was crying out for help.' PAUL 1984: 'John wrote that… well, John and I wrote it at his house in Weybridge for the film. I think the title was out of desperation.' -
JOHN 1965: ''The Night Before' that Paul does is good.' PAUL circa-1994: 'I would say that's mainly mine. I don't think John had alot to do with that.' -
JOHN 1965: 'One I do which I like is, 'You've Got To Hide Your Love Away.' But it's not commercial.' JOHN 1971: 'It's one of those that you sort of sing a bit sadly to yourself, 'Here I stand/Head in hand.' I started thinking about my own emotions. I don't know when exactly it started, like 'I'm A Loser' or 'Hide Your Love Away,' or those kind of things. Instead of projecting myself into a situation I would just try to express what I felt about myself which I had done in me books. I think it was Dylan helped me realize that – I had a sort of professional songwriter's attitude to writing Pop songs, but to express myself I would write 'Spaniard In The Works' or 'In His Own Write' – the personal stories which were expressive of my personal emotions. I'd have a separate 'songwriting' John Lennon who wrote songs for the sort of meat market, and I didn't consider them, the lyrics or anything, to have any depth at all. Then I started being me about the songs… not writing them objectively, but subjectively.' JOHN 1980: 'That's me in my Dylan period again. I am like a chameleon… influenced by whatever is going on. If Elvis can do it, I can do it. If the Everly Brothers can do it, me and Paul can. Same with Dylan.' PAUL 1984: 'That was John doing a Dylan… heavily influenced by Bob. If you listen, he's singing it like Bob.' -
-
02:02 Another Girl (Paul McCartney – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 16.02.1965JOHN 1980: ''Another Girl' is Paul.' PAUL circa-1994: 'It's a bit much to call them fillers because I think they were a bit more than that, and each one of them made it past the Beatles test. We all had to like it.' -
JOHN 1980: 'That's me.' -
-
02:04 Yesterday (Paul McCartney – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 14.06.1965 -
-
PAUL circa-1994: ''I seem to remember it as mine… Not awfully memorable.' -
01:53 It's Only Love (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 15.06.1965JOHN 1972: 'That's the one song I really hate of mine. Terrible lyric.' JOHN 1980: ''It's Only Love' is mine. I always thought it was a lousy song. The lyrics are abysmal. I always hated that song.' PAUL circa-1994: 'Sometimes we didn't fight it if the lyric came out rather bland on some of those filler songs like 'It's Only Love.' If a lyric was really bad we'd edit it. But we weren't that fussy about it, because it's only a rock 'n roll song. I mean, this is not literature.' -
-
JOHN 1980: 'That's Paul.' PAUL circa-1994: 'I think of this as totally by me. It was slightly country and western from my point of view. It was faster, though. It was a strange uptempo thing. I was quite pleased with it. The lyric works. It keeps dragging you forward… it keeps pulling you to the next line. There's an insistent quality about it.' -
JOHN 1972: 'Me. But I think Paul helped with the verse.' JOHN 1980: 'That's mine. Including the guitar lick, the guitar break, and the whole bit. It's just a rock 'n roll song. Day trippers are people who go on a day trip, right? Usually on a ferry boat or somethng. But it was kind of – you know, you're just a weekend hippie. Get it?' PAUL circa-1994: 'Acid was coming on the scene, and we'd often do these songs about 'the girl who thought she was it.' Mainly the impetus for that used to come from John – I think John met quite a few girls who thought they were it… But this was just a tongue-in-cheek song about someone who was a day tripper, a sunday painter, a sunday driver, somebody who was committed only in part to the idea. Where we saw ourselves as full-time trippers, fully committed drivers, she was just a day tripper. That was a co-written effort – we were both making it all up but I would give John the main credit.' -
JOHN 1980: 'Paul did the first half, I did the middle-eight. But you've got Paul writing, 'We can work it out/ We can work it out' real optimistic, you know. And me, impatient, 'Life is very short and there's no time/ for fussing and fighting, my friend.'' PAUL circa-1994: 'I wrote it as more of an up-tempo thing, country and western. I had the basic idea, the title, had a couple of verses… then I took it to John to finish it off and we wrote the middle together, which is nice – 'Life is very short/ And there's no time for fussing and fighting my friend.' Then it was George Harrison's idea to put the middle into waltz time, like a german waltz… The lyrics might have been personal. It is often a good way to talk to someone or to work your thoughts out. It saves you going to a psychiatrist, you allow yourself to say what you might not say in person.' -
JOHN 1972: 'Both of us. I wrote the middle with him.' PAUL 1977: ''Michelle' was like a joke French tune for when you go to a party or something. That's all it was. And then after a while you say, 'Well, that's quite a good tune. Let's put some real words to it.'' JOHN 1980: 'He and I were staying somewhere and he walked in and hummed the first few bars, with the words, and he says, 'Where do I go from here?' I had been listening to (blues singer) Nina Simone. I think it was 'I Put A Spell On You.' There was a line in it that went, 'I love you, I love you.' That's what made me think of the middle-eight for 'Michelle.' So, my contributions to Paul's songs was always to add a little bluesy edge to them. Otherwise, 'Michelle' is a straight ballad, right? He provided a lightness, an optimism, while I would always go for the sadness, the discords, the bluesy notes.' PAUL 1988: 'I'll never forget putting the bass line in 'Michelle' because it was a kind of Bizet thing. It really turned the song around. You could do that with bass. It was very exciting.' -
GEORGE 1977: 'If Paul had written a song, he'd learn all the parts and then come in the studio and say 'Do this.' He'd never give you the opportunity to come out with something. But on 'Drive My Car' I just played the line, which is really like a lick off 'Respect,' you know, the Otis Redding version. And I played the line on the guitar and Paul laid that with me on the bass. We laid that track down like that. We played the lead part later on top of it.' JOHN 1980: 'His (Paul's) song, with contributions from me.' PAUL circa-1994: 'This is one of the songs where John and I came nearest to having a dry session. The lyrics I brought in were something to do with golden rings, which are always fatal (to songwriting). 'Rings' is fatal anyway, 'rings' always rhymes with things and I knew it was a bad idea. I came in and I said, 'These aren't good lyrics but it's a good tune.' Well, we tried, and John couldn't think of anything, and we tried, and eventually it was, 'Oh let's leave it, let's get off this one.' 'No, no. We can do it, we can do it.' So we had a break… then we came back to it, and somehow it became 'drive-my-car' instead of 'gol-den-rings,' and then it was wonderful – because this nice tongue-in-cheek idea came.' -
02:00 Nowhere Man (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 22.10.1965JOHN 1980: 'I'd spent five hours that morning trying to write a song that was meaningful and good, and I finally gave up and lay down. Then 'Nowhere Man' came, words and music… the whole damn thing, as I lay down. So letting it go is what the whole game is. You put your finger on it, it slips away, right? You know, you turn the lights on and the cockroaches run away. You can never grasp them.' PAUL 1984: 'That was John after a night out, with dawn coming up. I think at that point in his life, he was a bit wondering where he was going.' PAUL 1988: 'I remember we wanted very treble-y guitars – which they are – they're among the most treble-y guitars I've ever heard on record. The engineer said, 'Alright, I'll put full treble on it,' and we said, 'That's not enough.' He said, 'But that's all I've got.' And we replied, 'Well, put that through another lot of faders and put full treble up on that. And if that's not enough we'll go through another lot of faders.' They said, 'We don't do that,' and we would say, 'Just try it… if it sounds crappy we'll lose it, but it might just sound good.' You'd then find, 'Oh it worked,' and they were secretly glad because they had been the engineer who put three times the allowed value of treble on a song. I think they were quietly proud of those things.' -
JOHN 1980: 'Paul.' PAUL circa-1994: 'Normally I write on guitar and have full chords, or on piano and have full chords, but this was written around two little notes, a very slim phrase – a two-note progression that I had very high on the first two strings of the guitar… Then I wrote the tune for 'You Won't See Me' against it. It was 100 percent me, but I am always happy to give John a credit because there's always a chance that on the session he might have said, 'That'd be better.'' -
02:40 Nowhere Man (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 22.10.1965JOHN 1980: 'I'd spent five hours that morning trying to write a song that was meaningful and good, and I finally gave up and lay down. Then 'Nowhere Man' came, words and music… the whole damn thing, as I lay down. So letting it go is what the whole game is. You put your finger on it, it slips away, right? You know, you turn the lights on and the cockroaches run away. You can never grasp them.' PAUL 1984: 'That was John after a night out, with dawn coming up. I think at that point in his life, he was a bit wondering where he was going.' PAUL 1988: 'I remember we wanted very treble-y guitars – which they are – they're among the most treble-y guitars I've ever heard on record. The engineer said, 'Alright, I'll put full treble on it,' and we said, 'That's not enough.' He said, 'But that's all I've got.' And we replied, 'Well, put that through another lot of faders and put full treble up on that. And if that's not enough we'll go through another lot of faders.' They said, 'We don't do that,' and we would say, 'Just try it… if it sounds crappy we'll lose it, but it might just sound good.' You'd then find, 'Oh it worked,' and they were secretly glad because they had been the engineer who put three times the allowed value of treble on a song. I think they were quietly proud of those things.' -
JOHN 1980: 'That's me, writing about this dream girl – the one that hadn't come yet. It was Yoko.' PAUL circa-1994: 'It was John's original idea, but it was very much co-written. I remember writing 'the pain and pleasure,' and 'a man must break his back.' …It was amusing to see if we could get a naughty word on the record. The Beach Boys had a song out where they'd done 'la la la la' and we loved the innocence of that and wanted to copy it but not use the same phrase. So we were looking around for another phrase – 'dit dit dit dit,' which we decided to change it in our waggishness to 'tit tit tit tit.' And it gave us a laugh. It was good to get some light relief in the middle of this real big career that we were forging. If we could put in something that was a little bit subversive then we would. George Martin would say, 'Was that dit-dit or tit-tit you were singing?' 'Oh! dit-dit George, but it does sound a bit like that, doesn't it?' Then we'd get in the car and break down laughing.' -
JOHN 1980: 'Paul. He must have had an argument with Jane Asher.' PAUL circa-1994: 'As is one's wont in relationships, you will from time to time argue or not see eye to eye on things, and a couple of the songs around this period were that kind of thing… I would write it out in a song and then I've got rid of the emotion. I don't hold grudges so that gets rid of that little bit of emotional baggage… I think it's my song totally. I don't remember any of John's assistance.' -
02:23 In My Life (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 22.10.1965JOHN 1980: 'It was the first song I wrote that was consciously about my life. (Sings) 'There are places I'll remember/ All my life though some have changed…' Before, we were just writing songs a la Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly – pop songs with no more thought to them than that. The words were almost irrelevant. 'In My Life' started out as a bus journey from my house at 250 Menlove Avenue to town, mentioning every place I could remember. I wrote it all down and it was ridiculous… it was the most boring sort of 'What I Did On My Holiday's Bus Trip' song and it wasn't working at all. But then I laid back and these lyrics started coming to me about the places I remember. Paul helped with the middle-eight. It was, I think, my first real major piece of work. Up till then it had all been sort of glib and throw-away. And that was the first time I consciously put my literary part of myself into the lyric.' PAUL 1984: 'I think I wrote the tune to that; that's the one we slightly dispute. John either forgot or didn't think I wrote the tune. I remember he had the words, like a poem… sort of about faces he remembered. I recall going off for half an hour and sitting with a Mellotron he had, writing the tune… which was Miracles inspired, as I remember. In fact, a lot of stuff was then.' -
-
JOHN 1972: 'Paul. I think I might have helped with some of the lyrics, Yes, I did. But it was mainly Paul's tune.' JOHN 1980: ''Paperback Writer' is son of 'Day Tripper' …meaning a rock 'n roll song with a guitar lick on a fuzzy loud guitar.' PAUL circa-1994: 'I arrived at Weybridge and told John I had this idea of trying to write off to a publishers to become a paperback writer, and I said, 'I think it should be written like a letter.' I took a bit of paper out and I said it should be something like, 'Dear Sir or Madam, as the case may be…' and I proceeded to write it just like a letter in front of him, occasionally rhyming it… And then we went upstairs and put the melody to it. John and I sat down and finished it all up, but it was tilted towards me – the original idea was mine. I had no music, but it's just a little bluesy song, not alot of melody. Then I had the idea to do the harmonies, and we arranged that in the studio.' -
02:59 Rain (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 16.04.1966JOHN 1966: 'After we'd done the session on that particular song – it ended at about four or five in the morning – I went home with a tape to see what else you could do with it. And I was sort of very tired, you know, not knowing what I was doing, and I just happened to put it on my own tape recorder and it came out backwards. And I liked it better. So that's how it happened.' JOHN 1980: 'That's me again – with the first backwards tape on record anywhere… I got home from the studio and I was stoned out of my mind on marijuana… and, as I usually do, I listened to what I'd recorded that day. Somehow it got on backwards and I sat there, transfixed, with the earphones on, with a big hash joint. I ran in the next day and said, 'I know what to do with it, I know… listen to this!' So I made them all play it backwards. The fade is me actually singing backwards with the guitars going backwards. (sings) 'Sharethsmnowthsmeanss!' That one was the gift of God… of Ja actually – the god of marijuana, right? So Ja gave me that one.' RINGO 1984: 'My favorite piece of me is what I did on 'Rain.' I think I just played amazing. I was into the snare and hi-hat. I think it was the first time I used the trick of starting a break by hitting the hi-hat first instead of going directly to a drum off the hi-hat. I think it's the best out of all the records I've ever made. 'Rain' blows me away. It's out in left field. I know me and I know my playing… and then there's 'Rain.'' PAUL circa-1994: 'It was nice. I really enjoyed that one.' -
JOHN 1972: 'This was a great one of his.' JOHN 1980: 'That's Paul's song completely, I believe. And one of my favorite songs of the Beatles.' PAUL 1984: 'I wrote that by John's pool one day. When we were working together, sometimes he came in to see me. But mainly, I went out to see him.' PAUL circa-1994: ''Here, There and Everywhere' has a couple of interesting structural points about it… each verse takes a word. 'Here' discusses here, Next verse, 'there' discusses there, then it pulls it all together in the last verse with 'everywhere.' …John might have helped with a few last words.' -
GEORGE 1980: ''Taxman' was when I first realized that even though we had started earning money, we were actually giving most of it away in taxes. It was and still is typical.' JOHN 1980: 'I remember the day he (George) called to ask for help on 'Taxman,' one of his first songs. I threw in a few one-liners to help the song along because that's what he asked for. He came to me because he couldn't go to Paul. Paul wouldn't have helped him at that period. I didn't want to do it. I just sort of bit my tongue and said OK. It had been John and Paul for so long, he'd been left out because he hadn't been a songwriter up until then.' PAUL 1984: 'George wrote that and I played guitar on it. He wrote it in anger at finding out what the taxman did. He had never known before then what could happen to your money.' GEORGE 1987: 'I was pleased to have Paul play that bit on 'Taxman.' If you notice, he did like a little Indian bit on it for me.' -
JOHN 1980: 'It's got backwards guitars… that's me dreaming my life away.' PAUL circa-1994: 'It was a nice idea – 'There's nothing wrong with it. I'm not being lazy, I'm only sleeping, I'm yawning, I'm meditating, I'm having a lay-in.' The luxury of all that was what it was all about. The song was co-written but from John's original idea.' -
JOHN 1972: 'Paul. But I think maybe I helped him with some of the lyric.' JOHN 1980: ''Good Day Sunshine' is Paul's. Maybe I threw in a line or something.' PAUL 1984: 'Wrote that out at John's one day… the sun was shining. Influenced by the Lovin' Spoonful.' PAUL circa-1994: ''Good Day Sunshine' was me trying to write something similar to 'Daydream.' John and I wrote it together at Kenwood, but it was basically mine and he helped me with it.' -
PAUL 1966: 'It's a happy place, that's all. You know, it was just… We were trying to write a children's song. That was the basic idea. And there's nothing more to be read into it than there is in the lyrics of any children's song.' JOHN 1972: 'Paul wrote the catchy chorus. I helped with the blunderbuss bit.' JOHN 1980: ''Yellow Submarine' is Paul's baby. Donovan helped with the lyrics. I helped with the lyrics too. We virtually made the track come alive in the studio, but based on Paul's inspiration. Paul's idea. Paul's title… written for Ringo.' PAUL 1984: 'I wrote that in bed one night. As a kid's story. And then we thought it would be good for Ringo to do.' PAUL circa-1994: 'I was laying in bed in the Asher's garret, and there's a nice twilight zone just as you're drifting into sleep and as you wake from it – I always find it quite a comfortable zone. I remember thinking that a children's song would be quite a good idea… I was thinking of it as a song for Ringo, which it eventually turned out to be, so I wrote it as not too rangey in the vocal. I just made up a little tune in my head, then started making a story – sort of an ancient mariner, telling the young kids where he'd lived. It was pretty much my song as I recall… I think John helped out. The lyrics got more and more obscure as it goes on, but the chorus, melody and verses are mine.' GEORGE 1999: 'Paul came up with the concept of 'Yellow Submarine.' All I know is just that every time we'd all get around the piano with guitars and start listening to it and arranging it into a record, we'd all fool about. As I said, John's doing the voice that sounds like someone talking down a tube or ship's funnel as they do in the merchant marine. (laughs) And on the final track there's actually that very small party happening! As I seem to remember, there's a few screams and what sounds like small crowd noises in the background.' -
PAUL 1966: 'I was sitting at the piano when I thought of it. The first few bars just came to me, and I got this name in my head… Daisy Hawkins picks up the rice in the church. I don't know why. I couldn't think of much more so I put it away for a day. Then the name Father McCartney came to me, and all the lonely people. But I thought that people would think it was supposed to be about my Dad sitting knitting his socks. Dad's a happy lad. So I went through the telephone book and I got the name McKenzie. I was in Bristol when I decided Daisy Hawkins wasn't a good name. I walked 'round looking at the shops, and I saw the name Rigby. Then I took the song down to John's house in Weybridge. We sat around, laughing, got stoned and finished it off.' JOHN 1980: 'Paul's baby, and I helped with the education of the child… The violin backing was Paul's idea. Jane Asher had turned him on to Vivaldi, and it was very good.' PAUL 1984: 'I got the name Rigby from a shop in Bristol. I was wandering round Bristol one day and saw a shop called Rigby. And I think Eleanor was from Eleanor Bron, the actress we worked with in the film 'Help!' But I just liked the name. I was looking for a name that sounded natural. Eleanor Rigby sounded natural.' -
JOHN 1972: 'Another horror.' JOHN 1980: 'Another of my throwaways.' GEORGE 1987: 'I think it was Paul and me, or maybe John and me, playing (guitar) in harmony – quite a complicated little line that goes through the middle-eight.' PAUL 1995: 'One of my favorites on the Anthology is, 'And Your Bird Can Sing,' which is a nice song, but this take of it was one we couldn't use at the time. John and I got a fit of the giggles while we were doing the double-track. You couldn't have released it at the time. But now you can. Sounds great just hearing us lose it on a take.' -
02:03 For No One (Paul McCartney – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 19.05.1966JOHN 1972: 'Another of his I really liked.' JOHN 1980: 'Paul's. One of my favorites of his. A nice piece of work.' PAUL 1984: 'I wrote that on a skiing holiday in Switzerland. In a hired chalet amongst the snow.' PAUL circa-1994: 'I suspect it was about another argument. I don't have easy relationships with women, I never have. I talk too much truth.' -
JOHN 1972: 'Me. I think Paul helped with the middle.' JOHN 1980: 'Another of mine. Mainly about drugs and pills. It was about myself. I was the one that carried all the pills on tour… later on the roadies did it. We just kept them in our pockets, loose, in case of trouble.' PAUL circa-1994: 'John and I thought that was a funny idea – the fantasy doctor who would fix you up by giving you drugs. It was a parody on that idea.' -
JOHN 1968: 'We were doing our Tamla Motown bit. You see, we're influenced by whatever's going. Even if we're not influenced, we're all going that way at a certain time.' JOHN 1972: 'I think George and I helped with some of the lyrics. I'm not sure.' JOHN 1980: 'Paul. I think that was one of his best songs, too, because the lyrics are good and I didn't write them. You see? When I say that he could write lyrics if he took the effort – here's an example.' PAUL 1984: 'That's mine – I wrote it. It was the first one we used brass on, I think. One of the first times we used soul trumpets.' PAUL circa-1994: 'I'd been a rather straight working class lad, but when we started to get into pot it seemed to me to be quite uplifting. It didn't seem to have too many side effects like alcohol or some of the other stuff, like pills, which I pretty much kept off. I kind of liked marijuana and to me it seemed it was mind-expanding, literally mind-expanding. So 'Got To Get You Into My Life' is really a song about that. It's not to a person, it's actually about pot. It's saying, 'I'm going to do this. This is not a bad idea.' So it's actually an ode to pot, like someone else might write an ode to chocolate or a good claret. I haven't really changed my opinion too much, except if anyone asks me for real advice, it would be stay straight. That is actually the best way, but in a stressful world I still would say that pot was one of the best of the tranquilizing drugs. I have drunk and smoked pot and of the two I think pot is less harmful. People tend to fall asleep on it rather than go out and commit murder, so it's always seemed to me to be a rather benign one.' -
03:00 Penny Lane (Paul McCartney – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 17.01.1967JOHN 1968: 'We really got into the groove of imagining Penny Lane – the bank was there, and that was where the tram sheds were and people waiting and the inspector stood there, the fire engines were down there. It was just reliving childhood.' JOHN 1980: 'Penny Lane is not only a street but it's a district… a suburban district where, until age four, I lived with my mother and father. So I was the only Beatle that lived in Penny Lane.' PAUL circa-1994: 'John and I would always meet at Penny Lane. That was where someone would stand and sell you poppies each year on British Legion poppy day… When I came to write it, John came over and helped me with the third verse, as often was the case. We were writing childhood memories – recently faded memories from eight or ten years before, so it was recent nostalgia, pleasant memories for both of us. All the places were still there, and because we remembered it so clearly we could have gone on.' -
JOHN 1968: 'Strawberry Fields was a place near us that happened to be a Salvation Army home. But Strawberry Fields – I mean, I have visions of Strawberry Fields. And there was Penny Lane, and the Cast Iron Shore, which I've just got in some song now, and they were just good names – just groovy names. Just good sounding. Because Strawberry Fields is anywhere you want to go.' PAUL 1974: 'That wasn't 'I buried Paul' at all – that was John saying 'Cranberry sauce.' It was the end of Strawberry Fields. Thatīs Johnīs humor. John would say something totally out of sync, like cranberry sauce. If you donīt realize that Johnīs apt to say cranberry sauce when he feels like it, then you start to hear a funny little word there, and you think, 'Aha!'' JOHN 1980: 'Strawberry Fields is a real place. After I stopped living at Penny Lane, I moved in with my auntie who lived in the suburbs… not the poor slummy kind of image that was projected in all the Beatles stories. Near that home was Strawberry Fields, a house near a boys' reformatory where I used to go to garden parties as a kid with my friends Nigel and Pete. We always had fun at Strawberry Fields. So that's where I got the name. But I used it as an image. Strawberry Fields Forever. 'Living is easy with eyes closed. Misunderstanding all you see.' It still goes, doesn't it? Aren't I saying exactly the same thing now? The awareness apparently trying to be expressed is – let's say in one way I was always hip. I was hip in kindergarten. I was different from the others. I was different all my life. The second verse goes, 'No one I think is in my tree.' Well, I was too shy and self-doubting. Nobody seems to be as hip as me is what I was saying. Therefore, I must be crazy or a genius – 'I mean it must be high or low,' the next line. There was something wrong with me, I thought, because I seemed to see things other people didn't see. I thought I was crazy or an egomaniac for claiming to see things other people didn't see. I always was so psychic or intuitive or poetic or whatever you want to call it, that I was always seeing things in a hallucinatory way. Surrealism had a great effect on me, because then I realized that the imagery in my mind wasn't insanity; that if it was insane, I belong in an exclusive club that sees the world in those terms. Surrealism to me is reality. Psychic vision to me is reality. Even as a child. When I looked at myself in the mirror or when I was 12, 13, I used to literally trance out into alpha. I didn't know what it was called then. I found out years later there is a name for those conditions. But I would find myself seeing hallucinatory images of my face changing and becoming cosmic and complete. It caused me to always be a rebel. This thing gave me a chip on the shoulder; but, on the other hand, I wanted to be loved and accepted. Part of me would like to be accepted by all facets of society and not be this loudmouthed lunatic musician. But I cannot be what I am not.' -
-
-
JOHN 1970: 'Paul had the line about 'a little help from my friends.' He had some kind of structure for it, and we wrote it pretty well fifty-fifty from his original idea.' JOHN 1980: 'That's Paul, with a little help from me. 'What do you see when you turn out the light/ I can't tell you but I know it's mine' is mine.' PAUL circa-1994: 'This was written out at John's house in Weybridge for Ringo… I think that was probably the best of our songs that we wrote for Ringo actually. I remember giggling with John as we wrote the lines, 'What do you see when you turn out the light/ I can't tell you but I know it's mine.' It could have been him playing with his willie under the covers, or it could have been taken on a deeper level. This is what it meant but it was a nice way to say it – a very non-specific way to say it. I always liked that.' -
JOHN 1980: 'My son Julian came in one day with a picture he painted about a school friend of his named Lucy. He had sketched in some stars in the sky and called it 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,' Simple. The images were from 'Alice in Wonderland.' It was Alice in the boat. She is buying an egg and it turns into Humpty Dumpty. The woman serving in the shop turns into a sheep and the next minute they are rowing in a rowing boat somewhere and I was visualizing that. There was also the image of the female who would someday come save me… a 'girl with kaleidoscope eyes' who would come out of the sky. It turned out to be Yoko, though I hadn't met Yoko yet. So maybe it should be 'Yoko in the Sky with Diamonds.' It was purely unconscious that it came out to be LSD. Until somebody pointed it out, I never even thought it, I mean, who would ever bother to look at initials of a title? It's NOT an acid song. The imagery was Alice in the boat and also the image of this female who would come and save me – this secret love that was going to come one day. So it turned out to be Yoko… and I hadn't met Yoko then. But she was my imaginary girl that we all have.' PAUL circa-1994: 'I went up to John's house in Weybridge. When I arrived we were having a cup of tea, and he said, 'Look at this great drawing Julian's done. Look at the title!' So I said, 'What's that mean?' thinking Wow, fantastic title! John said, 'It's Lucy, a freind of his from school. And she's in the sky.' …so we went upstairs and started writing it. People later thought 'Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds' was LSD. I swear – we didn't notice that when it first came out.' -
02:35 Fixing a Hole (Paul McCartney – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 21.02.1967PAUL 1967: 'It's really about the fans who hang around outside your door day and night. 'See the people standing there/ They worry me, and never win/ And wonder why they don't get in my door.' If they only knew the best way to get in is not to do that, because obviously anyone who is going to be straight and be like a real friend is going to get in… but they simply stand there and give off the impression, 'Dont let us in.' I actually do enjoy having them in. I used to do it more, but I don't as much now because I invited one in once and the next day she was in The Daily Mirror with her mother saying we were going to get married.' JOHN 1980: 'That's Paul… again writing a good lyric.' PAUL 1984: 'Yeah, I wrote that. I liked that one. Strange story, though. The night we went to record that, a guy turned up at my house who announced himself as Jesus. So I took him to the session. You know – couldn't harm, I thought. Introduced Jesus to the guys. Quite reasonable about it. But that was it. Last we ever saw of Jesus.' -
PAUL 1984: 'I wrote that.
My kind of ballad from that period.
One of my daughters likes that.
Still works.
The other thing I remember is that George Martin was offended that I used another arranger.
He was busy and I was itching to get on with it; I was inspired.
I think George had a lot of difficulty forgiving me for that.
It hurt him; I didn't mean to.' -
JOHN 1968: ''Mr. Kite' was a straight lift. I had all the words staring me in the face one day when I was looking for a song. It was from this old poster I'd bought at an antique shop. We'd been down to Surrey or somewhere filming a piece. There was a break, and I went into this shop and bought an old poster advertising a variety show which starred Mr. Kite. It said the Henderson's would also be there, late of Pablo Fanques Fair. There would be hoops and horses and someone going through a hogs head of real fire. Then there was Henry the Horse. The band would start at ten to six. All at Bishopsgate. Look, there's the bill – with Mr. Kite topping it. I hardly made up a word, just connecting the lists together. Word for word, really.' JOHN 1972: 'The story that Henry the Horse meant 'heroin' was rubbish.' JOHN 1980: 'It's all just from that poster. The song is pure, like a painting. A pure watercolor.' -
JOHN 1967: 'I was writing the song with the 'Daily Mail' propped up in front of me on the piano. I had it open to the 'News In Brief' or whatever they call it. There was a paragraph about four thousand holes being discovered in Blackburn Lancashire. And when we came to record the song there was still one word missing from that verse… I knew the line had to go, 'Now they know how many holes it takes to – something – the Albert Hall.' For some reason I couldn't think of the verb. What did the holes do to the Albert Hall? It was Terry Doran who said 'fill' the Albert Hall. And that was it. Then we thought we wanted a growing noise to lead back into the first bit. We wanted to think of a good end and we had to decide what sort of backing and instruments would sound good. Like all our songs, they never become an entity until the very end. They are developed all the time as we go along.' JOHN 1968: ''A Day in the Life' – that was something. I dug it. It was a good piece of work between Paul and me. I had the 'I read the news today' bit, and it turned Paul on. Now and then we really turn each other on with a bit of song, and he just said 'yeah' – bang bang, like that. It just sort of happened beautifully, and we arranged it and rehearsed it, which we don't often do, the afternoon before. So we all knew what we were playing, we all got into it. It was a real groove, the whole scene on that one. Paul sang half of it and I sang half. I needed a middle-eight for it, but Paul already had one there.' JOHN 1980: 'Just as it sounds: I was reading the paper one day and I noticed two stories. One was the Guinness heir who killed himself in a car. That was the main headline story. He died in London in a car crash. On the next page was a story about 4000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire. In the streets, that is. They were going to fill them all. Paul's contribution was the beautiful little lick in the song 'I'd love to turn you on.' I had the bulk of the song and the words, but he contributed this little lick floating around in his head that he couldn't use for anything. I thought it was a damn good piece of work.' PAUL 1984: 'That was mainly John's, I think. I remember being very conscious of the words 'I'd love to turn you on' and thinking, Well, that's about as risque as we dare get at this point. Well, the BBC banned it. It said, 'Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall' or something. But I mean that there was nothing vaguely rude or naughty in any of that. 'I'd love to turn you on' was the rudest line in the whole thing. But that was one of John's very good ones. I wrote… that was co-written. The orchestra crescendo and that was based on some of the ideas I'd been getting from Stockhausen and people like that, which is more abstract. So we told the orchestra members to just start on their lowest note and end on their highest note and go in their own time… which orchestras are frightened to do. That's not the tradition. But we got 'em to do it.' PAUL 1988: 'Then I went around to all the trumpet players and said, 'Look all you've got to do is start at the beginning of the 24 bars and go through all the notes on your instrument from the lowest to the highest – and the highest has to happen on that 24th bar, that's all. So you can blow 'em all in that first thing and then rest, then play the top one there if you want, or you can steady them out.' And it was interesting because I saw the orchestra's characters. The strings were like sheep – they all looked at each other: 'Are you going up? I am!' and they'd all go up together, the leader would take them all up. The trumpeters were much wilder.' -
JOHN 1967: ''When I'm Sixty Four' was something Paul wrote in the Cavern days. We just stuck in a few more words, like 'grandchildren on your knee,' and 'Vera Chuck and Dave.' It was just one of those ones that he'd had, that we've all got, really – half a song. And this was just one of those that was quite a hit with us. We used to do it when the amps broke down, just sing it on the piano.' JOHN 1972: 'I think I helped Paul with some of the words.' JOHN 1980: 'Paul's, completely. I would never dream of writing a song like that. There's some things I never think about, and that's one of them. PAUL 1984: 'I wrote the tune when I was about 15, I think, on the piano at home, before I moved from Liverpool. It was kind of a cabaret tune. Then, years later, I put words to it.' PAUL circa-1994: 'I thought it was a good little tune but it was too vaudvillian, so I had to get some cod lines to take the sting out of it, and put the tongue very firmly in cheek.' -
02:43 Lovely Rita (Paul McCartney – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 21.03.1967JOHN 1980: 'That's Paul writing a pop song. He makes 'em up like a novelist. You hear lots of McCartney-influenced songs on the radio now. These stories about boring people doing boring things – being postmen and secretaries and writing home. I'm not interested in writing third-party songs. I like to write about me, 'cuz I know me.' PAUL 1984: 'Yeah, that was mine. It was based on the American meter maid. And I got the idea to just… you know, so many of my things, like 'When I'm Sixty-Four' and those, they're tongue in cheek! But they get taken for real! And similarly with 'Lovely Rita' – the idea of a parking-meter attendant's being sexy was tongue in cheek at the time.' -
PAUL 1967: 'We had been told we'd be seen recording it by the whole world at the same time. So we had one message for the world – Love. We need more love in the world.' PAUL circa-1994: ''All You Need Is Love' was John's song. I threw in a few ideas, as did other members of the group, but it was largely ad libs like singing 'She Loves You' or 'Greensleeves' or silly little things like that at the end, and we made those up on the spot.' -
JOHN 1968: 'In 'Baby You're a Rich Man' the point was, stop moaning. You're a rich man and we're all rich men, heh, heh, baby!' JOHN 1980: 'That's a combination of two seperate pieces, Paul's and mine, put together and forced into one song. One-half was all mine. (sings) 'How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people/ Now that you know who you are…' Then Paul comes in with, (sings) 'Baby you're a rich man,' which was a lick he had around.' -
-
PAUL circa-1994: 'I dreamed up 'Your Mother Should Know' as a production number… I've always hated generation gaps.
I always feel sorry for a parent or a child that doesn't understand each other.
A mother not being understood by her child is particularly sad because the mother went through pain to have that child, and so there is this incredible bond of motherly love, like an animal bond between them.
But because we mess things up so readily they have one argument and hate each other for the rest of their lives.
So I was advocating peace between the generations.
In 'Your Mother Should Know' I was basically trying to say your mother might know more than you think she does.
Give her credit.' -
JOHN 1980: 'Now that's Paul. Another good lyric. Shows he's capable of writing complete songs.' PAUL circa-1994: ''Fool On The Hill' was mine and I think I was writing about someone like the Maharishi. His detractors called him a fool. Because of his giggle he wasn't taken too seriously… I was sitting at the piano at my father's house in Liverpool hitting a D6 chord, and I made up 'Fool On The Hill.'' -
04:35 I Am the Walrus (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 29.09.1967PAUL 1967: 'Everyone keeps preaching that the best way is to be 'open' when writing for teenagers. Then when we do we get criticized. Surely the word 'knickers' can't offend anyone. Shakespeare wrote words alot more naughtier than knickers!' JOHN 1967: 'We chose the word (knickers) because it is a lovely expressive word. It rolls off the tongue. It could 'mean' anything.' GEORGE 1967: 'People don't understand. In John's song, 'I Am The Walrus' he says: 'I am he as you are he as you are me.' People look for all sorts of hidden meanings. It's serious, but it's also not serious. It's true, but it's also a joke.' JOHN 1968: 'We write lyrics, and I write lyrics that you don't realize what they mean till after. Especially some of the better songs or some of the more flowing ones, like 'Walrus.' The whole first verse was written without any knowledge. With 'I Am the Walrus,' I had 'I am he as you are he as we are all together.' I had just these two lines on the typewriter, and then about two weeks later I ran through and wrote another two lines and then, when I saw something, after about four lines, I just knocked the rest of it off. Then I had the whole verse or verse and a half and then sang it. I had this idea of doing a song that was a police siren, but it didn't work in the end (sings like a siren) 'I-am-he-as-you-are-he-as…' You couldn't really sing the police siren.' JOHN 1980: 'The first line was written on one acid trip one weekend. The second line was written on the next acid trip the next weekend, and it was filled in after I met Yoko. Part of it was putting down Hare Krishna. All these people were going on about Hare Krishna, Allen Ginsberg in particular. The reference to 'Element'ry penguin' is the elementary, naive attitude of going around chanting, 'Hare Krishna,' or putting all your faith in any one idol. I was writing obscurely, a la Dylan, in those days. It's from 'The Walrus and the Carpenter.' 'Alice in Wonderland.' To me, it was a beautiful poem. It never dawned on me that Lewis Carroll was commenting on the capitalist and social system. I never went into that bit about what he really meant, like people are doing with the Beatles' work. Later, I went back and looked at it and realized that the walrus was the bad guy in the story and the carpenter was the good guy. I thought, Oh, shit, I picked the wrong guy. I should have said, 'I am the carpenter.' But that wouldn't have been the same, would it? (singing) 'I am the carpenter…'' -
-
JOHN 1980: 'That's another McCartney. An attempt to write a single. It wasn't a great piece. The best bit was at the end, which we all ad-libbed in the studio, where I played the piano. Like 'Ticket To Ride,' where we just threw something in at the end.' PAUL circa-1994: ''Hello Goodbye' was one of my songs. There are Geminian influences here I think – the twins. It's such a deep theme of the universe, duality – man woman, black white, high low, right wrong, up down, hello goodbye – that it was a very easy song to write. It's just a song of duality, with me advocating the more positive. You say goodbye, I say hello. You say stop, I say go. I was advocating the more positive side of the duality, and I still do to this day.' -
02:17 Lady Madonna (Paul McCartney – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 06.02.1968RINGO 1968: 'It sounds like Elvis, doesn't it? No, it doesn't sound like Elvis… it IS Elvis. Even those bits where he goes very high.' JOHN 1980: 'Paul. Good piano lick, but the song never really went anywhere. Maybe I helped him on some of the lyrics.' PAUL 1986: ''Lady Madonna' is all women. How do they do it? – bless 'em. Baby at your breast, how do they get the time to feed them? Where do they get the money? How do you do this thing that women do?' PAUL circa-1994: 'The original concept was the Virgin Mary, but it quickly became symbolic of every woman – the Madonna image but as applied to ordinary working-class women. 'Lady Madonna' was me sitting down at the piano trying to write a bluesy boogie-woogie thing. It reminded me of Fats Domino for some reason, so I started singing a Fats Domino impression. It took my voice to a very odd place.' -
07:11 Hey Jude (Paul McCartney – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 01.08.1968JOHN 1968: 'Well, when Paul first sang 'Hey Jude' to me… or played me the little tape he'd made of it… I took it very personally. 'Ah, it's me,' I said, 'It's me.' He says, 'No, it's me.' I said, 'Check. We're going through the same bit.' So we all are. Whoever is going through a bit with us is going through it, that's the groove.' JOHN 1972: 'That's his best song.' PAUL 1974: 'I remember I played it to John and Yoko, and I was saying, 'These words won't be on the finished version.' Some of the words were: 'The movement you need is on your shoulder,' and John was saying, 'It's great!' I'm saying, 'It's crazy, it doesn't make any sense at all.' He's saying, 'Sure it does, it's great.'' JOHN 1980: 'He said it was written about Julian. He knew I was splitting with Cyn and leaving Julian then. He was driving to see Julian to say hello. He had been like an uncle. And he came up with 'Hey Jude.' But I always heard it as a song to me. Now I'm sounding like one of those fans reading things into it… Think about it: Yoko had just come into the picture. He is saying. 'Hey, Jude' – 'Hey, John.' Subconsciously, he was saying, 'Go ahead, leave me.' On a conscious level, he didn't want me to go ahead. The angel in him was saying, 'Bless you.' The devil in him didn't like it at all, because he didn't want to lose his partner.' PAUL 1985: 'I remember on 'Hey Jude' telling George not to play guitar. He wanted to do echo riffs after the vocal phrases, which I didn't think was appropriate. He didn't see it like that, and it was a bit of a number for me to have to 'dare' to tell George Harrison – who's one of the greats – not to play. It was like an insult. But that's how we did alot of our stuff.' PAUL circa-1994: 'There is an amusing story about recording it… Ringo walked out to go to the toilet and I hadn't noticed. The toilet was only a few yards from his drum booth, but he'd gone past my back and I still thought he was in his drum booth. I started what was the actual take – and 'Hey Jude' goes on for hours before the drums come in – and while I was doing it I suddenly felt Ringo tiptoeing past my back rather quickly, trying to get to his drums. And just as he got to his drums, boom boom boom, his timing was absolutely impeccable.' -
03:22 Revolution (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 21.06.1968JOHN 1968: 'On 'Revolution' I'm playing the guitar and I haven't improved since I was last playing, but I dug it. It sounds the way I wanted it to sound.' JOHN 1972: 'I should never have put that in about Chairman Mao. I was just finishing off in the studio when I did that.' JOHN 1980: 'The statement in 'Revolution' was mine. The lyrics stand today. It's still my feeling about politics. I want to see the plan. That is what I used to say to Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. Count me out if it is for violence. Don't expect me to be on the barricades unless it is with flowers. For years, on the Beatles' tours, Brian Epstein had stopped us from saying anything about Vietnam or the war. And he wouldn't allow questions about it. But on one of the last tours, I said, 'I'm going to answer about the war. We can't ignore it.' I absolutely wanted the Beatles to say something about the war.' -
PAUL 1968: 'Chuck Berry once did a song called 'Back In The USA,' which is very American, very Chuck Berry. Very sort of, uhh… you know, you're serving in the army, and when I get back home I'm gonna kiss the ground. And you know – Can't wait to get back to the States. And it's a very American sort of thing, I've always thought. So this one is like about… In my mind it's just about a spy who's been in America a long long time, you know, and he's picked up… And he's very American. But he gets back to the USSR, you know, and he's sort of saying, 'Leave it till tomorrow, honey, to disconnect the phone,' and all that. And 'Come here honey,' but with Russian women. It concerns the attributes of Russian women.' JOHN 1980: 'Paul completely. I play the six-string bass on that.' PAUL 1984: 'I wrote that as a kind of Beach Boys parody. And 'Back in the USA' was a Chuck Berry song, so it kinda took off from there. I just liked the idea of Georgia girls and talking about places like the Ukraine as if they were California, you know? It was also hands across the water, which I'm still conscious of. 'Cuz they like us out there, even though the bosses in the Krelmin may not. The kids do.' PAUL 1986: 'I'm sure it pissed Ringo off when he couldn't quite get the drums to 'Back In The U.S.S.R.' and I sat in. It's very weird to know that you can do a thing someone else is having trouble with. If you go down and do it, just bluff right through it, you think, 'What the hell, at least I'm helping.' Then the paranoia comes in – 'But I'm going to show him up!' I was very sensitive to that.' -
JOHN 1980: 'I might've given him a couple of lyrics, but it's his song, his lyric.' PAUL 1984: 'A fella who used to hang around the clubs used to say, (Jamaican accent) 'Ob-la-di, ob-la-da, life goes on,' and he got annoyed when I did a song of it, 'cuz he wanted a cut. I said, 'Come on, Jimmy, it's just an expression. If you'd written the song, you could have had a cut.' He also used to say, 'Nothin's too much, just outta sight.' He was just one of those guys who had great expressions, you know.' -
GEORGE 1980: 'I had a copy of the I Ching – the Book of Changes, which seemed to me to be based on the Eastern concept that everything is relative to everything else, as opposed to the Western view that things are merely coincidental. The idea was in my head when I visited my parents' home in the North of England. I decided to write a song based on the first thing I saw upon opening any book – as it would be relative to that moment, at that time. I picked up a book at random, opened it – saw 'gently weeps' – than laid the book down again and started the song. Some of the words to the song were changed before I finally recorded it.' GEORGE 1987: 'I worked on that song with John, Paul, and Ringo one day, and they were not interested in it at all. And I knew inside of me that it was a nice song. The next day I was with Eric Clapton, and I was going into the session, and I said, 'We're going to do this song. Come and play on it.' He said, 'Oh no. I can't do that. Nobody ever plays on the Beatles records.' I said, 'Look, it's my song, and I want you to play on it.' So Eric came in, and the other guys were as good as gold – because he was there. Also, it left me free to just play the rhythm and do the vocal. So Eric played that, and I thought it was really good. Then we listened to it back, and he said, 'Ah, there's a problem though; it's not Beatley enough.' So we put it through the ADT (automatic double-track) to wobble it up a bit.' -
JOHN 1980: 'Oh, that was written about a guy in Maharishi's meditation camp who took a short break to go shoot a few poor tigers, and then come back to commune with God. There used to be a character called Jungle Jim, and I combined him with Buffalo Bill. It's a sort of teenage social comment song, and a bit of a joke. Yoko's on that one, I believe.' PAUL circa-1994: 'I remember John singing 'Bungalow Bill' in Rishikesh. This is another of his great songs and it's one of my favorites to this day because it stands for alot of what I stand for now. 'Did you really have to shoot that tiger' is its message. 'Aren't you a big guy? Aren't you a brave man?' I think John put it very well.' -
PAUL 1968: 'The idea of 'Happiness Is A Warm Gun' is from an advert in an American paper. It said, Happiness is a warm gun, and it was 'Get ready for the long hot summer with a rifle,' you know, 'Come and buy them now!' It was an advert in a gun magazine. And it was so sick, you know, the idea of 'Come and buy your killing weapons,' and 'Come and get it.' But it's just such a great line, 'Happiness Is A Warm Gun' that John sort of took that and used that as a chorus. And the rest of the words… I think they're great words, you know. It's a poem. And he finishes off, 'Happiness Is A Warm Gun, yes it is.' It's just good poetry.' JOHN 1972: 'Thay all said it was about drugs, but it was more about rock 'n roll than drugs. It's sort of a history of rock 'n roll… I don't know why people said it was about the needle in heroin. I've only seen somebody do something with a needle once, and I don't like to see it at all.' JOHN 1980: 'A gun magazine was sitting around and the cover was the picture of a smoking gun. The title of the article, which I never read, was 'Happiness Is a Warm Gun.' I took it right from there. I took it as the idea of happiness after having shot somebody. Or some animal.' -
PAUL 1968: 'You see, I just start singing some words with a tune, you know what I mean. Mainly I'm just doing a tune and then some words come into my head, you know. And these happened to be 'Martha My Dear, though I spend my days in conversation.' So you can read anything you like into it, but really it's just a song. It's me singing to my dog.' (laughs) PAUL circa-1994: 'When I taught myself piano I liked to see how far I could go, and this (song) started off as a piece you'd learn as a piano lesson.
It's quite hard for me to play, It's a two-handed thing, like a little set piece.
Then when I was blocking out words – you just mouth out sounds and some things come – I found the words 'Martha my dear.' So I made up another fantasy song… I mean, I'm not really speaking to Martha, it's a communication of some sort or affection, but in a slightly abstract way – 'You silly girl, look what you've done…' Whereas it would appear to anybody else to be a song to a girl called Martha, it's actually a dog, and our relationship was platonic, believe me.' -
02:01 I'm So Tired (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 08.10.1968JOHN 1980: ''I'm So Tired' was me, in India again. I couldn't sleep, I'm meditating all day and couldn't sleep at night. The story is that. One of my favorite tracks. I just like the sound of it, and I sing it well.' PAUL circa-1994: 'It has that very special line, 'And curse Sir Walter Raleigh/ He was such a stupid git.' That's a classic line and it's so John that there's no doubt who wrote it. I think it's 100 percent John.' -
GEORGE 1980: ''Piggies' is a social comment. I was stuck for one line in the middle until my mother came up with the lyric, 'What they need is a damn good whacking' which is a nice simple way of saying they need a good hiding. It needed to rhyme with 'backing,' 'lacking,' and had absolutely nothing to do with American policemen or Californian shagnasties!' JOHN 1980: 'I gave George a couple of lines about forks and knives and eating bacon.' -
JOHN 1968: 'We've just done two tracks, both unfinished.
The second one is Ringo's first song that we're working on this very moment.
He composed it himself in a fit of lithargy.' -
02:57 Julia (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 13.10.1968JOHN 1972: 'Me. Yoko helped me with this one.' JOHN 1980: 'Julia was my mother. But it was sort of a combination of Yoko and my mother blended into one. That was written in India… We wrote tons of songs in India.' PAUL circa-1994: 'The interesting thing for me on 'Julia' is the finger-picking (guitar) style. He learned to fingerpick off Donovan or Gypsy Dave… That was John's song about his mum, folk finger-picking style, and a very good song.' -
JOHN 1971: 'I enjoyed it when football crowds in the early days would sing 'All Together Now.'' PAUL circa-1994: 'When they were singing a song, to encourage the audience to join in they'd say 'All together now,' so I just took it and read another meaning into it, of – we are all together now. So I used the dual meaning. It's really a children's song. I had a few young relatives and I would sing songs for them.' -
-
03:09 Get Back (Paul McCartney – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 27.01.1969PAUL 1969: 'We were sitting in the studio and we made it up out of thin air. We started to write words there and then… When we finished it, we recorded it at Apple Studios and made it into a song to rollercoast by.' JOHN 1980: ''Get Back' is Paul. That's a better version of 'Lady Madonna.' You know, a potboiler rewrite.' -
JOHN 1969: (to Ringo, regarding the cymbal smash in the intro) 'Give me a big 'kzzzsshhhh!' Give me the courage to come screaming in.' JOHN 1980: 'That's me, singing about Yoko.' PAUL circa-1994: 'It was a very tense period. John was with Yoko, and had escalated to heroin and all the accompanying paranoias and he was putting himself out on a limb. I think that, as much as it excited and amused him, at the same time it secretly terrified him. So 'Don't Let Me Down' was a genuine plea, 'Don't let me down, please, whatever you do. I'm out on this limb…' It was saying to Yoko, 'I'm really stepping out of line on this one. I'm really letting my vulnerability be seen, so you must not let me down.' I think it was a genuine cry for help. It was a good song. We recorded it in the basement of Apple for 'Let It Be' and later did it up on the roof for the film. We went through it quite alot for this one. I sang harmony on it, which makes me wonder if I helped with a couple of the words, but I don't think so. It was John's song.' -
-
JOHN 1972: 'One of my best songs. Not one of the best recordings, but I like the lyrics.' JOHN 1980: 'I was a bit more artsy-fartsy there. I was lying next to my first wife in bed, (song originally written in 1967) you know, and I was irritated. She must have been going on and on about something and she'd gone to sleep – and I kept hearing these words over and over, flowing like an endless stream. I went downstairs and it turned into a sort of cosmic song rather than an irritated song – rather than 'Why are you always mouthing off at me?' or whatever, right? …and I've sat down and looked at it and said, 'Can I write another one with this meter?' It's so interesting. 'Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup/ They slither while the pass, they slip away across the universe.' 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. I didn't want to write it… and I couldn't get to sleep until I put it on paper… It's like being possessed – like a psychic or a medium. The thing has to go down. It won't let you sleep, so you have to get up, make it into something, and then you're allowed to sleep. That's always in the middle of the night when you're half-awake or tired and your critical facilities are switched off.' -
GEORGE 1980: ''For You Blue' is a simple twelve-bar song following all the normal twelve-bar principles, except that it's happy-go-lucky!' -
03:33 Two of Us (Paul McCartney – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 31.01.1969PAUL AND GEORGE 1969: (arguing during the recording of the song 'Two Of Us') PAUL: 'It's complicated now. We can get it simpler, and then complicate it where it needs complications.' GEORGE: 'It's not complicated.' PAUL: 'This one is like, shall we play guitars through 'Hey Jude' …well, I don't think we should.' GEORGE: 'Ok well I don't mind… I'll play, you know, whatever you want me to play, or I wont play at all if you don't want to me to play. Whatever it is that will please you… I'll do it!' JOHN: 'I wish that we could start hearing the tapes now. Like – Do it, and then hear what it is. Is it just 'cuz we don't feel like it, or is it 'Does the guitar sound alright, really.'' JOHN 1969: (ad-libbing during the recording sessions) ''Two of us wearing postcards.'' -
PAUL 1970: 'The album was finished a year ago, but a few months ago American record producer Phil Spector was called in by John Lennon to tidy up some of the tracks. But a few weeks ago, I was sent a re-mixed version of my song 'The Long And Winding Road' with harps, horns, an orchestra, and a women's choir added. No one had asked me what I thought. I couldn't believe it. The record came with a note from Allen Klein saying he thought the changes were necessary. I don't blame Phil Spector for doing it, but it just goes to show that it's no good me sitting here thinking I'm in control because obviously I'm not. Anyway, I've sent Klein a letter asking for some things to be altered, but I haven't received an answer yet.' JOHN 1980: 'Paul again. He had a little spurt just before we split.' PAUL circa-1994: 'It's rather a sad song. I like writing sad songs, it's a good bag to get into because you can actually acknowledge some deeper feelings of your own and put them in it. It's a good vehicle, it saves having to go to a psychiatrist. Songwriting often performs that feat – you say it, but you don't embarrass yourself because it's only a song, or is it? You are putting the things that are bothering you on the table and you are reviewing them, but because it's a song, you don't have to argue with anyone… It's a sad song because it's all about the unattainable; the door you never quite reach. This is the road that you never get to the end of.' -
04:01 Let It Be (Paul McCartney – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 04.01.1970JOHN 1980: 'That's Paul… I think it was inspired by 'Bridge Over Troubled Water.' That's my feeling, although I have nothing to go on. I know he wanted to write a 'Bridge Over Troubled Water.'' PAUL 1986: 'I had alot of bad times in the '60s. We used to lie in bed and wonder what was going on and feel quite paranoid. Probably all the drugs. I had a dream one night about my mother. She died when I was fourteen so I hadn't really heard from her in quite a while, and it was very good. It gave me some strength.' PAUL circa-1994: 'One night during this tense time I had a dream I saw my mum, who'd been dead ten years or so. And it was great to see her because that's a wonderful thing about dreams, you actually are reunited with that person for a second… In the dream she said, 'It'll be alright.' I'm not sure if she used the words 'Let it be' but that was the gist of her advice, it was 'Don't worry too much, it will turn out okay.' 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.' -
04:16 Come Together (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 30.07.1969PAUL 1969: 'On the new album I like 'Come Together,' which is a great one of John's.' JOHN 1980: ''Come Together' is me – writing obscurely around an old Chuck Berry thing. I left the line 'Here comes old flat-top.' It is nothing like the Chuck Berry song, but they took me to court because I admitted the influence once years ago. I could have changed it to 'Here comes old iron face,' but the song remains independent of Chuck Berry or anybody else on earth. The thing was created in the studio. It's gobbledygook – 'Come Together' was an expression that Tim Leary had come up with for his attempt at being president or whatever he wanted to be, and he asked me to write a campaign song. I tried and I tried, but I couldn't come up with one. But I came up with this, 'Come Together,' which would've been no good to him – you couldn't have a campaign song like that, right? Leary attacked me years later, saying I ripped him off. I didn't rip him off. It's just that it turned into 'Come Together.' What am I going to do, give it to him? It was a funky record – it's one of my favorite Beatle tracks, or, one of my favorite Lennon tracks, let's say that. It's funky, it's bluesy, and I'm singing it pretty well. I like the sound of the record. You can dance to it. I'll buy it!' (laughs) -
PAUL 1969: 'I like George's song 'Something.' For me I think it's the best he's written.' GEORGE 1969: 'I wrote the song 'Something' for the album before this one, but I never finished it off until just recently. I usually get the first few lines of words and music together, both at once… and then finish the rest of the melody. Then I have to write the words. It's like another song I wrote when we were in India. I wrote the whole first verse and just said everything I wanted to say, and so now I need to write a couple more verses. I find that much more difficult. But John gave me a handy tip. He said, 'Once you start to write a song, try to finish it straight away while you're still in the same mood.' Sometimes you go back to it and you're in a whole different state of mind. So now, I do try to finish them straight away.' GEORGE 1980: ''Something' was written on the paino while we were making the White Album. I had a break while Paul was doing some overdubbing so I went into an empty studio and began to write. That's really all there is to it, except the middle took some time to sort out. It didn't go on the White Album because we'd already finished all the tracks.' -
GEORGE 1969: 'The song 'Maxwell's Silver Hammer' is one of Paul's which we've been trying to record for ages. It's one of those instant whistle-along tunes which some people hate, and other people really like. It's a fun song, but it's kinda sick because Maxwell keeps on killing everyone.' PAUL circa-1994: ''Maxwell's Silver Hammer' is my analogy for when something goes wrong out of the blue, as it so often does, as I was beginning to find out at that time in my life. I wanted something symbolic of that, so to me it was some fictitious character called Maxwell with a silver hammer. I don't know why it was silver, it just sounded better than Maxwell's hammer. It was needed for scanning. We still use that expression now when something unexpected happens.' -
GEORGE 1969: ''Octopus's Garden' is Ringo's song. It's only the second song Ringo has ever written, mind you, and it's lovely. Ringo gets bored with just playing drums all the time, so at home he sometimes plays a bit of piano, but unfortunately he only knows about three chords. He knows about the same on guitar too. This song gets very deep into your consciousness, though because it's so peaceful. I suppose Ringo is writing cosmic songs these days without even realizing it.' RINGO 1981: 'He (a ship captain) told me all about octopuses – how they go 'round the sea bed and pick up stones and shiny objects and build gardens. I thought, 'How fabulous!' because at the time I just wanted to be under the sea, too. I wanted to get out of it for a while.' -
GEORGE 1980: '…written at a time when Apple was getting like school, where we had to go and be businessmen – all this signing accounts, and 'sign this' and 'sign that.' Anyway, it seems as if winter in England goes on forever; by the time spring comes you really deserve it.
So one day I decided, 'I'm going to sag-off Apple,' and I went over to Eric Clapton's house.
I was walking in his garden.
The relief of not having to go and see all those dopey accountants was wonderful.
And I was walking around the garden with one of Eric's acoustic guitars, and wrote 'Here Comes The Sun.' -
02:45 Because (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 05.08.1969PAUL 1969: 'I like John's 'Because' on the second side. To say, 'Because the world is round it turns me on' is great. And 'Because the wind is high it blows my mind'' GEORGE 1969: 'I think my favorite one on the album is 'Because.' The lyrics are uncomplicated… but the harmony was actually pretty difficult to sing. I think it's one of those tunes that will definitely impress most people.' JOHN 1980: 'I was lying on the sofa in our house, listening to Yoko play Beethoven's 'Moonlight Sonata' on the piano. Suddenly, I said, 'Can you play those chords backward?' She did, and I wrote 'Because' around them. The song sounds like 'Moonlight Sonata,' too. The lyrics are clear, no bullshit, no imagery, no obscure references.' -
GEORGE 1969: 'Another very melodic tune of Paul's which is also quite nice.' PAUL 1969: 'I was just playing the piano in Liverpool at my dad's house, and my sister Ruth's piano book… she was learning piano… and 'Golden Slumbers and your old favorites' was up on the stand, you know – it was a little book with all those words in it. I was just flipping through it and I came to 'Golden Slumbers.' I can't read music so I didn't know the tune… I can't remember the old tune… so I just started playing 'my' tune to it. And then, I liked the words so I just kept that, you know, and then it fitted with another bit of song I had – which is the verse in between it. So I just made that into a song. It just happened 'cuz I was reading her book.' -
JOHN 1980: 'That's Paul. Apparently he was under strain at that period.' PAUL circa-1994: 'I'm generally quite upbeat, but at certain times things get to me so much that I just can't be upbeat anymore and that (the tensions leading to the break-up) was one of those times. 'Carry that weight a long time' – like forever! That's what I meant… in this heaviness there was no place to be. It was serious, paranoid heaviness and it was just very uncomfortable.' -
02:04 The End (Paul McCartney – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 18.08.1969JOHN 1980: 'That's Paul again, the unfinished song, right? Just a piece at the end. He had a line in it, (sings) 'And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make,' which is a very cosmic, philosophical line – which again proves that if he wants to, he can think.' PAUL 1988: 'Ringo would never do drum solos. He hated drummers who did lengthy drum solos. We all did. And when he joined the Beatles we said, 'Ah, what about drum solos then?' and he said, 'I hate 'em!' We said, 'Great! We love you!' And so he would never do them. But because of this medley I said, 'Well, a token solo?' and he really dug his heels in and didn't want to do it. But after a little bit of gentle persuasion I said, '…it wouldn't be Buddy Rich gone mad,' because I think that's what he didn't want to do. … anyway we came to this compromise, it was a kind of a solo. I don't think he's done one since.' -
00:23 Her Majesty (Paul McCartney – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 02.07.1969PAUL 1969: 'That was just… I don't know.
I was in Scotland, and I was just writing this little tune.
I can never tell, like, how tunes come out.
I just wrote it as a joke.'
|
Calendar
Songs of Beatles
Solo
|
