The Beatles Lyrics

by Hunter Davies

  The first major auction of Beatles material was held at Sotheby’s in London in December 1981.

  I rang the British Museum, offering the collection to them on permanent loan, thinking they might say, Nah, we don’t do pop music, but they were pleased to accept it. When the new British Library building opened in 1997 in Euston Road, my collection was transferred to their Manuscript Room, where it remains to this day, next to Magna Carta and the works of Shakespeare, Beethoven, Wordsworth and a host of other creative greats. In my will, they will go permanently to the British Library–as some of them already have done. If I were to sell them on the open market, I know they would end up in the USA or Japan. I want them kept together, as a collection, here in the UK, available to be seen and studied.

  It was not until I began this project that I learned mine is the largest known collection of Beatles lyrics in a public archive. (We don’t know precisely what Paul and Yoko themselves own–but both have private archives.) I have discovered, though, another equally important and almost as extensive collection in the USA, at Northwestern University in Illinois, gathered together by John Cage (1912–92), the American composer whose most famous piece was called ‘4'33"’–because it lasted exactly 4 minutes and 33 seconds. The piece, which had to be performed in silence, still receives regular performances around the world. It was the sort of avant-garde music and art that by 1966 Paul and John, now they had become London arty types, were interested in.

  Back in 1966 Cage was collecting original musical scores and lyrics to benefit the Foundation of Contemporary Performance Arts. Yoko Ono, a friend of Cage’s, managed to persuade John (whom she had recently met although they were not as yet together) to hand over six lyrics. The Beatles were by then in the middle of Revolver, and the manuscripts were from that album. Then Yoko turned up at Paul’s one day and got from him the coloured manuscript of ‘The Word’ from Rubber Soul (here).

  Cage’s seven Beatles lyrics were acquired by Northwestern University in 1973–74. ‘Today they are some of the most valuable items we hold,’ says D.J. Hoek, the present head of the Music Library. ‘They are the initial expression of a musical idea on paper.’

  Aside from Northwestern, I have been unable to find any other proper collections of Beatles lyrics, at least not in known or public hands, but there could be some billionaire with a stash of them in his den. I doubt it, somehow; these days, they very rarely come up and prices start at around $250,000–and on two occasions they have reached the $1,000,000 mark. But there must be individual collectors who bought a lyric relatively cheaply when they first started appearing for sale in the 1980s. And also people like me, who were given them by John, Paul and George many years earlier. Those people who went on to sell them, often did so privately, through dealers rather than in the public auction rooms, so no records are available. I do know of one person, a friend of Paul’s, who was trying to sell seven lyrics back in the 1970s, offering them to various institutions (including Northwestern); in the end he sold them at a London auction house. They are now dispersed around the world, owned by various individuals.

  The Quarrymen in November 1957. Paul and John are at the microphones, in white jackets, indicating that they are the joint leaders.

  In trying to track down original manuscripts of the lyrics, I did the obvious things: approached all the main auctions houses, such as Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Bonhams, and the main memorabilia dealers, such as Tracks in the UK. I also contacted collectors who might have any, even copies, and also Beatles experts, researchers and academics who have made a life study of Beatles music. Fortunately, many of those I contacted had kept good scans, which they were kind enough to let me have. (They don’t of course own the publishing copyright; that belongs to our dear friends at Sony.)

  I also made contact with several private collectors who own original lyrics, but in almost every case they requested no publicity. They don’t want to run the risk of being burgled, or for people to know what they own.

  Some of the manuscripts are mere scraps, some hard to read, and some almost identical to the recorded lyric, but these remain of interest, to me anyway, if only to see their handwriting. The most difficult to locate have been the lyrics from the early years, perhaps because they were rarely written down in those days. ‘Love Me Do’, for example, has very few words, so there was little need to write them down. Those early recordings were done quickly, with the band in and out of the studio in as short a time as possible, with few people around. No one thought of preserving scruffy scraps of paper.

  When it came to the later albums, circa 1965 and onwards, I managed to track down more and more, till eventually–as in the case of Sgt. Pepper–I had succeeded in tracing some sort of manuscript version of every number on the entire album. So in the end I did reach my target of one hundred Beatles songs.

  How many songs are there in total? It depends how you define a Beatles song. My definition is a song composed and recorded by the Beatles, during the period they were the Beatles, i.e. until the band finally split in 1970. So that precludes recordings of songs composed by other people–something they often did in their early days; songs they composed but gave to others to perform and never recorded themselves; songs created after the Beatles ceased to exist and they became solo artists; songs without lyrics, i.e. instrumentals such as ‘Flying’ on the Magical Mystery Tour album; variations of the same song, such as the reprise of the Sgt. Pepper title song or ‘Revolution’. By that reckoning, my total of Beatles songs comes to 182.

  I have almost always tried to arrange them chronologically in the order in which we, the fans, heard them, which was not necessarily the order in which they were written or recorded. Roughly speaking, there was little divergence until the very end when Let It Be, the film and the album, came out chronologically last, for various complicated reasons, while the real last album, the final one they worked on and gave to us, was Abbey Road.

  Where I have secured a manuscript, by which I mean an image of an original handwritten version, I have also included the final recorded and published version, so you can compare the two. With the lyrics–i.e. the final recorded version–also note that when there are endless repetitions of the chorus, or verses, or the same lines, I did not always include the repetitions, just to save space.

  In considering them chronologically, I have also tried to tell the story of the band’s music-making and its development. Their music comes out of their lives, just as their lives and feelings and emotions got reflected back into their music. So in some ways it has become the story of their lives as told through their music.

  Paul and John–and George: a Brief Musical Biography

  Paul and John met through music–and for no other reason. They didn’t attend the same school or even live in the same area, in fact they had never even met prior to Saturday, 6 July 1957, when John’s little schoolboy group, the Quarrymen, played at a church fête in Woolton, Liverpool, and Paul was brought along by a mutual acquaintance, Ivan Vaughan, a friend of John’s who attended the same school as Paul.

  Paul, just turned fifteen, brought his guitar along, and after watching the Quarrymen perform he was introduced to John, the group’s leader, and proceeded to demonstrate his expertise on the guitar, playing a number called ‘Twenty Flight Rock’. John was impressed, but of course tried not to show it, being tough, being the boss. He realized that Paul knew more chords and was probably a better guitarist than him, so for a week he pondered whether it would be a good idea to introduce a rival into the group. On reflection, he decided yes and invited Paul to join. A year later, George Harrison, who was at the same school as Paul, a year younger but already as good a guitarist as either of them, was introduced by Paul to John and he too became one of the Quarrymen.

  John with the Quarrymen in 1957.

  Looking back, it was remarkable that three people we now consider to have been such talented performers and composers should have grown up together at the same time, in the same place, and then joine
d together, and stayed together, for the next thirteen years. There was every chance they might never have met–or met very briefly and then gone their separate ways. There were thousands of youths of their age in the Liverpool area, let alone the rest of Britain, all loving the same sort of music, trying to play it, joining little groups, breaking up and moving on to other ventures. One of the original Quarrymen, the drummer Colin Hanton, went on to become an upholsterer. Another, Rod Davis, who became head boy of Quarry Bank School and later went on to Cambridge, was at the time, back in 1957, just as proficient a musician as John and the others.

  So what was it in John, Paul and George that made them persevere when for a long time the world showed no interest in what they were doing–which was mainly begging for humble engagements at parties and village halls.

  John always said that, but for the Beatles coming along, he would have ended up like his dad, doing nothing very much, or failing that, a tramp. Paul, who was always more calculating, more clued up, did have some paper qualifications, having sat his A levels, and could well have gone on to training college and become a teacher, which would have pleased his father. But he, along with John and George, eventually became obsessed with making music, ignoring the advice of most adults and family members who warned that they would never make a living at it.

  In 1964, Paul gave an interview to an American Beatles magazine, just before their USA tour, in which he said that his ambition had always been to get into some sort of group and stay in it for a few years–hopefully till the age of twenty-five. Then he would give it up and go to art college, the one John had attended, ‘And hang out there for a few years.’

  I remembered his father, Jim, telling me that as a boy Paul had been just as interested in drawing and painting as he had been in music. Similarly, John, when he was growing up, had spent most of his spare time writing stories and poems, drawing cartoons and pictures. So that subsequent total passion for music, which came about in their teenage years, had not been an all-consuming factor when they were growing up.

  As youngsters, both John and Paul had been offered music lessons by devoted and caring parents, but both later admitted that they simply couldn’t be bothered, they were too lazy, moreover they hated people telling them how to do things. So where did the talent for music come from?

  In the case of John–born 9 October 1940, and brought up by his Aunt Mimi after his parents split–there was a vague musical background in the family. His father, Freddie, who went off to sea, had a good singing voice (so he told me, and of course I believed him) and would entertain his friends at get-togethers with a song or two, but he never did it for a living. His own father, also called John Lennon, had for a time toured the USA as part of a group of Kentucky minstrels. It proved to be nothing more than an interlude in his early life; at the end of the tour he returned to Liverpool, where he spent the remainder of his working days as a clerk.

  John’s mother, Julia, played the banjo well enough to teach John some basic chords and encourage him to continue. She also played the accordion, according to her daughter Julia Baird (John’s half-sister) and had a good singing voice, but could not read music. ‘She was forever singing,’ remembers Julia. John was fifteen when his mother died in a car accident, just as she was coming back into his life again.

  John’s Aunt Mimi was so against him playing guitar that she made him practise outside in the porch. She appears to have had no interest in music, at least popular music. ‘I think the maternal side of our family,’ says David Birch, John’s cousin (son of his Aunt Harriet), ‘can fairly be described as tone deaf–apart from his mother Julia.’

  Pauline Lennon, now Pauline Stone, the widow of Freddie, John’s father, says that Freddie couldn’t play an instrument or read music. ‘But he had excellent pitch and rhythm and loved to sing. In fact he was always singing. It was impossible ever to feel down with him around. Mainly it was popular ballads, like “Smile” or “Blue Moon” but also a bit of opera–I also remember him singing “Nessun Dorma”. He had a tenor voice, but I’d describe him as a “crooner”.’

  John also learned to play the mouth organ as a young boy, after a fashion. His Uncle George (husband of Mimi) had given him a cheap one and he took it with him on a bus trip to Edinburgh to stay with his aunt, playing it for the entire journey. The bus driver told him to come back to the bus station next day–and presented him with a much better one.

  Paul, born 18 June 1942, had a much stronger musical heritage. His father, Jim, although never a full-time professional musician (he spent his working life as a cotton salesman), did have his own little jazz band before the war: Jim Mac’s Band. Paul remembers as a boy loving all the family gatherings where his uncles and aunts would sing songs and play instruments. In this the McCartneys were fairly typical; most extended working-class families could boast at least one amateur musician able to play the piano or the fiddle–self-taught–always on call for a good old-fashioned family knees-up.

  Jim played the piano and the trumpet–until his teeth went–and they had instruments in the house, but because he played by ear he felt unable to teach Paul how to play, not knowing the rules and the language. Paul did have a couple of lessons, then gave up. But his aptitude was clearly always there, encouraged by Jim, who told him that if he learned the piano he would always be invited to parties.

  As for George, born 25 February 1943, neither of his parents appear to have been very musical. George’s father, a bus driver, had owned a guitar at one time, during the war, but he does not appear to have played it while George was growing up. George’s mother Louise enjoyed a sing-song and, unlike John’s Aunt Mimi, she actively encouraged George when he joined the Quarrymen, going along to watch them play.

  Both Paul and George grew up in homes where the radio was blaring out all the time, usually popular music, whereas John’s Aunt Mimi preferred silence. It was one of the reasons John was rather impressed by their musical knowledge in the early days.

  In 1963, the Record Mirror submitted seventy-eight questions to each of the Beatles. (The results were never published, presumably because only Paul and Ringo filled them in properly, while the other two mucked about and didn’t answer them all.) One of the questions asked them to name their biggest musical influence; Paul’s answer–in John’s handwriting–is ‘John’. Why? ‘Because he’s great’. Paul has then scored this out and written ‘My Dad’.

  Asked what his Dad thought of his music, Paul responded: ‘My Dad likes it, but he thinks we are away a bit too much.’ Did he encourage your music? ‘Not half. He suffered my practising for years.’ Asked what else his parents would have liked him to be, ‘Clever,’ replies Paul.

  Paul’s mother Mary died in 1956 from breast cancer. Paul was fourteen at the time and his younger brother Michael recalls it was around then that Paul’s obsession with the guitar began, throwing himself into learning to play it. Was it a compensation mechanism? Would it have happened otherwise? The first song Paul remembers writing was ‘I Lost My Little Girl’ which he thinks he wrote when he was about fourteen. He played it to John, not long after they first met.

  Mary McCartney, like George’s mother, was Roman Catholic, but neither Paul nor George were sent to Catholic schools. In fact, they attended Church of England Sunday schools, as did John. Paul was a keen choirboy, and he had a good clear singing voice, as did his younger brother Michael. Though none of the Beatles’ parents was overtly religious or even regular church-goers, the boys followed working-class conventions of forties and fifties Britain whereby children were sent to church or Sunday school on a Sunday, giving their parents a break and perhaps the opportunity for a bit of a Sunday-morning cuddle.

  The Beatles in 1960, then called the Silver Beetles, auditioning before Larry Parnes, which led to their first tour, two weeks as a backing group to the north of Scotland. Far left is Stu Sutcliffe, who had just joined the group. The drummer, looking pretty bored, was a stand-in. Left to right: John, Paul and George.

  Did
their Catholic mothers–in the case of Paul and George–and regular Church of England attendance have any influence on their musical tastes and knowledge? A case has been made out for the effect of religion on their music. But I think it is fairly minimal.

  And what of their Irish ancestry? Paul and John both had Irish roots, as did George, through his mother. The Irish, so we are always told, are very musical. But then so, traditionally, are Merseysiders. In fact we all are, if we go back far enough. The folk tradition of stories and songs passed on orally from one generation to the next exists in every culture.

  There is another minor element in their inherited make-up, which did come out in their music, and that is humour. Merseyside humour is built on mockery, irony, sarcasm, satire, not taking yourself too seriously, or others. According to the late Ian MacDonald, author of an excellent book on the Beatles records, mainly about their music, ‘Liverpool is a designated area of outstanding natural sarcasm’. As their lyrics progressed, there is a lot of humour, as we shall see, jokes, puns, word-play, pastiche. Even when being terribly serious and preachy–which they could be at times, delivering morals and messages–they usually ended with a laugh, mocking themselves.

  Even if we agree that John and Paul inherited some musical talent from one or other of their parents, and that their family life and upbringing in Liverpool did have an influence on their music, we all know that that is not quite enough to account for their genius, otherwise loads of us would have written ‘Yesterday’. One of the common clichés about genius is that it is 10 per cent inspiration to 90 per cent perspiration.

  The Beatles certainly worked extremely hard. When they first appeared, in London and later in New York, they were assumed to be overnight sensations who had come from nowhere. In fact they spent the six years leading up to 1963 unknown and mostly unpaid, struggling to be the Beatles, which equals the six years they spent as the world-famous Fab Four until the band broke up in 1969.