On the corner is a banker with a motorcar
The little children laugh at him behind his back
And the banker never wears a mac
In the pouring rain…
Very strange
Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
There beneath the blue suburban skies
I sit, and meanwhile back
In Penny Lane there is a fireman with an hourglass
And in his pocket is a portrait of the Queen.
He likes to keep his fire engine clean
It’s a clean machine
Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
Four of fish and finger pies
In summer, meanwhile back
Behind the shelter in the middle of a roundabout
A pretty nurse is selling poppies from a tray
And though she feels as if she’s in a play
She is anyway
Penny Lane the barber shaves another customer
We see the banker sitting waiting for a trim
Then the fireman rushes in
From the pouring rain…
Very strange
Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
There beneath the blue suburban skies
I sit, and meanwhile back
Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
There beneath the blue suburban skies…
Penny Lane.
Two versions of ‘Penny Lane’, both in Paul’s hand. The third line on the right never made it.
Both ‘Strawberry Fields’ and ‘Penny Lane’ were given A-side status on the single. Initially the two songs were intended to be part of the new album they were about to start work on, but they decided the themes didn’t quite fit in. However the two songs did go well together, making it the best single they ever did–which is why it deserves a chapter on its own.
These were the first Beatles songs to name real places. In the general run of British pop music, it was most unusual to hear a British location mentioned–or at least a location outside of London. Yet we all sang about places in America that none of us had ever visited and most probably never would, like Chicago, New Orleans, California, Massachusetts, New York New York.
Today, both Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane have taken on the status of mythical magical places. In New York, Strawberry Fields is the memorial garden in Central Park dedicated to John, near the building where he was shot. Penny Lane has also turned itself into a shrine of sorts, with a Penny Lane wine bar featuring photos of the Beatles. The barber’s shop, originally Mr Bioletti’s Barber Shop, is now unisex and called Tony Slavin, but it too features Beatles memorabilia. Tourists take photos of each other standing outside, just as they do on the Abbey Road pedestrian crossing in London.
There is a modern ironic use of the names Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, where in 2014 the American CIA detention camp were still holding suspected terrorists. One of the prison houses was known as Penny Lane and is next door to Strawberry Fields. The latter was named first, after the last word in its title–Forever.
The record came out at a time when social and cultural class barriers in Britain seemed to be on the verge of being broken down. Didn’t matter where you came from, even if it was a provincial place like Liverpool, you could still succeed and find fulfilment. We had just won the World Cup, our fashions and designs, films and art and popular music were being enjoyed around the world. Oh, being alive was heaven, back in 1967. That’s honestly how it felt.
George Martin has said that he considers ‘Strawberry Fields’/‘Penny Lane’ their best record–meaning best single. Looking back now, it still seems to sum up that era–and the Beatles in general. There was the psychedelic, futuristic, drug-inspired, mysterious words and weird musical arrangement of ‘Strawberry Fields’ juxtaposed with the fun and accessible words and music of ‘Penny Lane’. There was something for everyone, avant-garde or traditional, intellectual or otherwise, young and old, rich or poor, to enjoy, think about or just admire and hum and dance along to.
The record showed us the differences between John and Paul–which we had hitherto only suspected. It seemed to confirm that John saw music as a vehicle for thought whereas Paul saw it as a matter of mood and melody. Not always true, of course, as John could do love songs and Paul could do angst. But as a generalization, it seemed to stack up. Melody flows from Paul, out of every pore; musically, he is the more naturally gifted. John was interested in words, much more than Paul. But there again, each could do both.
The two songs illustrated the sort of subject matter they had gravitated towards. John always said that his best subject was himself. Once he realized he could write about himself, instead of boy–girl, blue moon love, that was what he concentrated on: ‘I’m not interested in writing third party songs,’ he told Playboy in 1980. ‘I like to write about me, ’cos I know me.’
Paul could and did write about his feelings, but even then he usually disguised them, preferring in his lyrics to go for narrative, a story, a setting, little vignettes, as in ‘Penny Lane’, using mainly the third person. He also loved nostalgia, pastiche, parodies of former forms of music.
Paul was the hard worker who beavered away, seeing it through rather than leaving things half done, the way John tended to. George Martin used to say that Paul came into the studio with fixed ideas, knowing how he wanted the song to sound. With John, it had to be dragged out of him, he didn’t quite know his own mind, or couldn’t express it as clearly as Paul.
Hence it was a great partnership, each producing different sorts of songs but at the same time able to inspire the other, help them improve. It was a competition, sibling rivalry, to impress the other. Which had worked brilliantly. So far.
But had the Beatles reached their zenith with ‘Strawberry Fields’ and ‘Penny Lane’? That was a thought that came into my head as I started work on their biography. Was it possible that the fans of Engelbert Humperdinck had got it right, the ones who kept his record at number 1 for six weeks? Honestly, some people, eh?
The NME chart for 8 March 1967 with Engelbert still topping the Beatles–shame.
9
SGT. PEPPER’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND
June 1967
Every day, in every way, on every album since With The Beatles in 1963, they seemed to be getting better, or at least different, moving on, or at least moving sideways, and of course sometimes deliberately backwards, but Sgt. Pepper turned out to be a multi-media, multi-level giant leap forward.
Take the album cover: endlessly voted the best cover ever, it was the first to have all the lyrics of the songs printed on the rear cover–which was a blessing. By this time, we all wanted to know the words. With most songs, most singers, you can easily mishear or misinterpret, as Dylan did, so it was handy to see every word written down, and spelled correctly.
Professor Colin Campbell, who compiled that concordance of the lyrics, had to listen to every word on every record, over and over, and write them down, exactly as he heard them, because he could not trust the several printed versions of lyrics to get all the words correct–until the Sgt. Pepper album came along and made his research much easier.
It was a gatefold album, which meant it opened like a book, rather than consisting of a single sleeve. Inside one pocket was the album, and in the other was a stiff cardboard sheet with cut-outs of Sergeant Pepper, his moustache, badges, stripes, picture and stand-up sign. The cover photograph, now such an iconic image, showed thirty-nine heroic or famous figures.
I remember being present for the photo shoot and seeing one figure they had been persuaded to abandon at the last moment: a full-size Hitler. I was surprised it got as far as the studio. Jesus was chucked out much earlier.
I like to think that including Albert Stubbins was my idea. At Paul’s one day, I heard them discussing the figures they might have and I said surely they should have one famous footballer, even though I knew that not one of them had been regular football fans as a
boy, or ever played football. John thought hard and chose Albert Stubbins, who had played for Liverpool in the fifties just because he had always thought Albert Stubbins was a funny name.
As we were leaving Paul’s house, he asked me to bring any interesting looking object that could be added to the photographic set. From his mantelpiece I picked up a little silvery statue thing that looked like a sputnik–apparently some award he had been given–which I plonked down at the front in the middle of the word Beatles, which was spelled out in flowers. Study the front cover carefully and you can just see it, between the L and E. I’ve boasted about that for decades.
My scruffy, badly typed, misspelt notes, written straight after going from Paul’s house to the photo session for the Sgt. Pepper cover, 30 March 1967. Hitler was there but not included.
The music, of course, was what it was and is all about, along with the fact that the songs were arranged in a special way, the conceit being that they were a band giving a concert. It became known as the first ever concept album, copied since by many other singers and artists.
It was a bit of a con, the so-called concept idea. There is in fact not much connection between the songs. There was nothing really to differentiate it from a traditional album made up of a collection of tunes, played one after the other. But it did originate with an overall concept: the Beatles would pretend to be another group, to submerge their individual personalities as Beatles–which they were all beginning to find a bit of a burden and a bore, especially George and John. Instead, they would be an Edwardian-style brass band giving a concert; the kind of band they’d seen giving Sunday concerts in the local park during the fifties, when they were growing up. Only they’d be bringing it into the modern age, and giving it psychedelic overtones.
There are several pastiche songs, performed tongue-in-cheek, affectionately mocking styles from an earlier age, and some nice period references in the lyrics: ‘guaranteed to raise a smile… may I inquire discreetly’. Ringo is at one stage introduced as Billy Shears, but aside from dressing up for the photograph and promo material, they didn’t keep up their alter egos and soon ignored them. But who cared. It turned out to be the most wonderful, innovative, brilliant, imaginative album they had done. Perhaps anyone had ever done, until then.
Sitting in Abbey Road, during the making of Sgt. Pepper, I did used to wonder how George Martin and his technicians must have felt, being made to sit silently behind their glass wall, twiddling their thumbs, while John and Paul messed around down below in the bowels of the studio, still working on the tune, insisting on going endlessly over the same stuff, which really they should have finalized before they had ever come into the studio. As of course they had done in their early days.
It took them almost five months in the studio, at a cost of some £25,000–compared with one day in the studio at a cost of £400 for their first album, Please Please Me. They had reached the point where they were the complete boss of their own brand, so they could spend whatever it took without asking anyone’s permission. Now that they had stopped touring and performing in live concerts, they could put all their energy and time into the art and craft of creating recorded music in a studio.
There is still some argument about where the name Sergeant Pepper came from. The story I like to believe, and which I was told at the time, while they were still making it, is that the words originated with Mal Evans, their roadie. During a meal he misheard someone’s request for salt and pepper as Sergeant Pepper.
Omnibus titles were in vogue, with groups choosing fanciful names like the Incredible String Band and Jefferson Airplane, and trendy fashion shops in London called Granny Takes a Trip and I Was Lord Kitchener’s Valet. Take an old-fashioned-sounding name, pair it with a modern, psychedelic design and you were at the height of fashion.
From what I saw, the driving force for the whole album, including the cover design, was Paul, who seemed to have taken on the lead role, having the final say on most decisions. This was partly because he was the only one living in the centre of London, handy for the West End and EMI Studios in Abbey Road, and so many meetings with designers and others took place at his house. I was never aware of Brian Epstein being involved with the production at all.
Another interesting aspect was that there wasn’t a single love song, certainly not a lovey-dovey, or unrequited love song. All their albums, even Rubber Soul and Revolver, had included at least one song about lurve. Sgt. Pepper had no love songs–unless you count lusting after a traffic warden in her uniform…
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
Paul introduces us to the band, and hopes we will enjoy the show, to cheers and applause from the audience, then they hear the brass band play, very loudly and proudly. They are told they are ‘a lovely audience–we’d like to take you home with us’, which is a good joke.
One of the things about the Beatles when they first appeared on stage was that they did not tell the audience they were lovely–a phoney tradition that went back decades and was very irritating and patronizing. When a fifties singer got up in his shiny suit and fake America accent, he invariably began by trying to ingratiate himself with the audience by saying he was thrilled to be in Hicksville, or wherever, and they were all lovely. Still goes on today.
The manuscript is in Paul’s hand, as the main begetter of Sgt. Pepper. The third and fourth lines didn’t make it: ‘He showed them how to please a crowd, the men’s leader has made them very proud.’
There is also a sketch, in Paul’s hand (sold at Sotheby’s in December 1982), which shows the band members in stylish Edwardian costumes, with droopy moustaches–which at the time they had in real life anyway. They are in a period living room with photographs and trophies on the wall–an early sketch of what became the cover. Paul, in some ways, is and was a better artist and draughtsman than John, in that he could do likenesses and draw to scale, though he was perhaps less imaginative and original than John–and less messy.
Drawing by Paul for the Sgt. Pepper cover, showing that he had a pretty good artistic hand.
Early version of the Sgt. Pepper title track in Paul’s hand, with lines three and four which were not used.
It was twenty years ago today,
Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play
They’ve been going in and out of style
But they’re guaranteed to raise a smile
So may I introduce to you
The act you’ve known for all these years
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
We’re Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
We hope you will enjoy the show
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
Sit back and let the evening go
Sgt. Pepper’s lonely, Sgt. Pepper’s lonely
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
It’s wonderful to be here
It’s certainly a thrill
You’re such a lovely audience
We’d like to take you home with us
We’d love to take you home
I don’t really want to stop the show
But I thought that you might like to know
That the singer’s going to sing a song
And he wants you all to sing along
So let me introduce to you
The one and only Billy Shears
And Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
With A Little Help From My Friends
This was one of the songs I witnessed being created, writing down what I observed happening from my 1968 biography (see below). I didn’t know, while watching, where it was going, whether it would be used or not. They had done some initial work on it, calling it at that stage ‘Bad Finger Boogie’, and now needed to complete it. The idea was to come up with a Ringo song, like ‘Yellow Submarine’, one for the kiddies, and one which would suit Ringo’s limited range. They were under pressure to finish it–and Ringo had been ‘ordered’, he would be turning up at the studio later that eveni
ng to record whatever it was they had created–yet I don’t remember any panic. It was mostly a laugh. But in between doing daft things, they kept returning to the matter in hand, knowing they had to solve the problems they had set themselves. Their subconscious was at work, even while doing apparently disconnected things.
It was a method they had used for some years–messing around together, very often with a little audience of friends around that they could use as a sounding board, though the audience knew not to interrupt unless their opinion was asked, which it very often was. Some of those present would come away thinking, hey, I helped on that line, that word was mine–which was pleasing, but I am sure that both Paul and John had already considered most possibilities, turning rhymes over and over in their heads, and were simply wanting a reaction. What was interesting was that they seemed to know instinctively when a suggestion would work, sensing that it would fit in with what was already floating around in their minds.
‘With A Little Help From My Friends’
In mid-March 1967 they were getting towards the end of the Sergeant Pepper album. They were halfway through a song for Ringo, a Ringo sort of song, which they’d begun the day before.
At two o’clock in the afternoon John arrived at Paul’s house in St John’s Wood. They both went up to Paul’s workroom at the top of the house. It is a narrow, rectangular room, full of stereophonic equipment and amplifiers. There is a large triptych of Jane Asher on the wall and a large silver piece of sculpture by Paolozzi, shaped like a fireplace with Dalek heads on top.
John started playing his guitar and Paul started banging on his piano. For a couple of hours they both banged away. Each seemed to be in a trance until the other came up with something good, then he would pluck it out of a mass of noises and try it himself. They’d already established the tune the previous afternoon, a gentle lilting tune, and its name, ‘With A Little Help From My Friends’. Now they were trying to polish up the melody and think of some words to go with it.
The Beatles Lyrics Page 19