The next day John and George assembled at Paul’s house. Ringo wasn’t there. They were just going to do the singing track for ‘It’s Getting Better’ and he wouldn’t be needed. Ivan Vaughan, the school friend of John and Paul, was also at Paul’s house. At seven thirty they all moved round to EMI where George Martin, like a very understanding housemaster, was ready and waiting for them.
A technician played the backing for ‘It’s Getting Better’ they’d recorded the night before. It was played over and over again. George Harrison and Ivan went off to chat in a corner, but Paul and John listened carefully. Paul instructed the technician which levers to press, telling him what he wanted, how it should be done, which bits he liked best. George Martin looked on, giving advice where necessary. John stared into space.
Dick James, the Beatles’ song publisher, arrived wearing a camel coat. He said hello to them all, very jolly and breezy. He made a joke about there being no truth in the rumour that EMI was buying Northern Songs. He listened to the backing of ‘It’s Getting Better’ and showed no expression. Then they played him one of their other songs, about the girl leaving home. George Martin said this was the one that almost made him cry. Dick James listened and said yes, it was very good. He could do with more of them. ‘You mean you don’t like the freak-out stuff?’ Dick James said no, no, he didn’t mean that. Then he left.
They played ‘It’s Getting Better’ for what seemed the hundredth time, but Paul said he wasn’t happy about it. They better get Ringo in and they would do it all again. Someone went to ring for Ringo.
Peter Brown arrived. He’d just returned from a trip to America. He gave them some new American LPs, which they all jumped on. They played him ‘She’s Leaving Home’ and a few other of the Sergeant Pepper songs, already recorded. Then they played him the backing track of ‘It’s Getting Better’. As it was being played, Paul talked to one of the technicians and told him to try a slightly different sound mix. The technician did so, and Paul said that was much better. It would do. They didn’t need to bring Ringo in now after all.
‘And we’ve just ordered Ringo on toast,’ said John. But Ringo was cancelled in time and the studio was made ready to record the sound track, the voices. As it was being set up by Neil, Mal brought in tea and orange juice on a tray. Paul let his tea go cold while he played with an oscillating box he’d found in a corner. By playing around with the switches, he managed to produce six different noises. He said to one of the sound engineers that if someone could produce oscillating boxes with the sounds controlled and in order, it would be a new electronic instrument.
They were ready at last. The three of them held their heads round one microphone and sang ‘It’s Getting Better’ while up in the control box George Martin and his two assistants got it all down on the track. The three Beatles were singing, not playing, but through headphones strapped to their ears they could hear the backing track. They were simply singing to their already recorded accompaniment.
In the studio itself, all that could be heard were the unaccompanied, unelectrified voices of the Beatles singing, without any backing. It all sounded flat and off key. They ran through the song about four times and John said he didn’t feel well. He could do with some fresh air. Someone went to open the back door of the studio. There was the sound of loud banging and cheering on the other side. The door began to move slightly inward under the strain of a gang of fans who’d somehow managed to get inside the building.
George Martin came down from his box and told John it would be better to go up on the roof and get some air, rather than go outside. ‘How’s John?’ Paul asked into the microphone to George Martin up in the control box.
‘He’s looking at the stars,’ said George Martin.
‘You mean Vince Hill?’ said Paul. He and George started singing ‘Edelweiss’ and laughing. Then John came back.
In the corner of the studios, Mal and Neil and Ivan, the friend, couldn’t hear the jokes over the headphones. They’d finished their tea. Ivan was writing a letter to his mother. Neil was filling in his diary. He’d only started it two weeks earlier. He said he should have started one about five years ago.
A man in a purple shirt called Norman arrived; he used to be one of their recording engineers and now had a group of his own, The Pink Floyd. Very politely he asked George Martin if his boys could possibly pop in to see the Beatles at work. George smiled unhelpfully. Norman said perhaps he should ask John personally, as a favour. George Martin said no, that wouldn’t work. If by chance he and his boys popped in about eleven o’clock, he might just be able to see what he could do.
They did pop in around eleven, and exchanged a few half-hearted hellos. The Beatles were still going through the singing of ‘It’s Getting Better’ for what now seemed the thousandth time. By two o’clock they had it, at least to a stage that didn’t make them unhappy.
I mentioned in my account of the evening that John felt ill and went up on the roof–but I was not aware at the time of the reason, nor was George Martin, who suggested John should go out on the roof to get some fresh air. John was suffering the ill effects of having taken too much LSD earlier in the day. It wasn’t something they normally did when they were working, or even about to start working. In the circumstances, going on the roof was a pretty dangerous move–still under the influence, he might well have decided he could fly.
The manuscript, in Paul’s hand, is on a piece of notepaper, a flier from the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm, North London, not far from Paul’s house, where a rave was about to be held.
He has included in the lyrics, at the end of the second and third lines, in brackets, ‘now I can’t complain’, which on the record you can hear John singing, but these words are not included in the lyrics printed on the album sleeve. Note also the odd Ah and Oh written out, though these sound spontaneous on the record.
It’s getting better all the time
I used to get mad at my school (No, I can’t complain)
The teachers who taught me weren’t cool (No, I can’t complain)
You’re holding me down
Turning me round
Filling me up with your rules
I’ve got to admit it’s getting better (Better)
It’s a little better all the time (It can’t get no worse)
I have to admit it’s getting better (better)
It’s getting better
Since you’ve been mine
Me used to be a angry young man
Me hiding me head in the sand
You gave me the word, I finally heard
I’m doing the best that I can
I’ve got to admit it’s getting better (Better)
A little better all the time (It can’t get no worse)
I have to admit it’s getting better (Better)
It’s getting better
Since you’ve been mine
‘Getting Better’, from Sgt. Pepper, January 1967, in Paul’s hand on notepaper for a Roundhouse Rave.
Getting so much better all the time!
I used to be cruel to my woman
I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved
Man, I was mean but I’m changing my scene
And I’m doing the best that I can (ooh)
I admit it’s getting better
A little better all the time (It can’t get no worse)
Yes, I admit it’s getting better, it’s getting better
Since you’ve been mine
Getting so much better all the time
Fixing A Hole
Usually Beatles songs were investigated for hidden meanings about drugs–but in this case, the opposite happened. Most commentators decided that the song was about a real hole in a real roof–the one on the remote cottage Paul had bought in Scotland in June 1966, which needed fixing. The timing appeared right, but in 1997, during an interview with Barry Miles, Paul admitted that it began as another ode to pot (not heroin, despite the use of the word ‘fix’), the drug that g
ot him out of everyday worries and allowed his mind to explore. And it was written not in Scotland but at his new house in Cavendish Avenue, where he was by this time living alone, though still officially with Jane Asher.
The analogy of fixing a hole in a roof/a hole in the mind is an attractive one, and he was well aware of all the double meanings. He was beginning to feel oppressed by his relationship with Jane and by the Beatles’ financial and legal affairs which were becoming a burden. There’s a sense here of him longing to be free to experiment more–with life, the arts, and yes drugs and stimulants, and not worry about silly people telling him what he should or should not do, that he is right even if he is wrong. It sounds very like John–which just goes to show that Paul could do moody, personal stuff. The lyrics appealed greatly to hippies everywhere.
The manuscript in Paul’s hand has one rather interesting difference from the finished version. At the end of the second verse and then repeated as the final line, he has written ‘flying around in a world it is dying to know’, which was not used, but is a good line.
At the end, he or someone has written Suddenly-on-Sea–which I think must have been a play on words–for Suddenly I See. Back to Lennon–McCartney’s fondness for things being seen or not seen, or seen through.
I’m fixing a hole where the rain gets in
And stops my mind from wondering
Where it will go
I’m filling the cracks that ran through the door
And kept my mind from wondering
Where it will go
And it really doesn’t matter if I’m wrong I’m right
Where I belong I’m right
Where I belong.
‘Fixing A Hole’, from Sgt. Pepper, January 1967, in Paul’s hand. Was Suddenly-on-Sea a joke version of Suddenly I See?
See the people standing there
who disagree and never win
And wonder why they don’t get in my door
I’m painting my room in a colourful way
And when my mind is wandering
There I will go
Silly people run around they worry me
And never ask me why they don’t get past my door
I’m taking the time for a number of things
That weren’t important yesterday
And I still go
I’m fixing a hole where the rain gets in
And stops my mind from wandering
Where it will go
She’s Leaving Home
Usually John was the one to draw inspiration from a newspaper story, but this time it was Paul, reading a story in the Daily Mail on 27 February 1967 about a girl, Melanie Coe, who had run away from home at the age of seventeen. In the account, her parents were quoted as saying they couldn’t understand it as they had given her everything. It was that last line which inspired Paul: the clash of the generation gap, the misunderstanding between parents and their children.
There were quite a few stories of this sort at the time, both in the UK and the USA, as an older generation brought up in the more restrictive post-war era, began finding that their sixties teenagers did not aspire to a life devoted to a boring job with a secure pension, or a marriage to someone their parents considered suitable; instead they wanted to go off on the hippie trail to California or Soho and Carnaby Street and find themselves.
Paul’s narrative, with John’s help–imagining the scene, and what the parents might be saying when they discovered their daughter had gone–turned out to be pretty near the truth. Melanie herself later admitted that she had been given a car, a diamond ring, a mink coat, but she had felt stifled as an only child in her North London home. ‘Living alone for so many years’ as Paul had imagined it. She had in fact met Paul and the Beatles three years earlier when she appeared on a TV pop show, Ready Steady Go!, as one of the dancers–but none of the Beatles remembered her.
The lyrics are well crafted, creating a genuine narrative, poignant and moving without teetering into sentimentality, painting a picture of society known to many people at the time–and throughout time. Paul sings it in the third person, describing what is happening, then John comes in with a refrain in the background as the parents, and the two are skilfully blended together. John probably had the image of Aunt Mimi in his head when helping with the words, all her reprimands and self-righteous homilies about never thinking of herself.
In the song, it turns out the girl has gone off to meet a man from the motor trade. At the time, this was assumed to have referred to Terry Doran, the Beatles’ friend, who sold expensive motor cars, but Paul has said he was not thinking of anyone in particular. He just liked singing ‘a man from the motor trade’, which conjured up a suitably sleazy image. In real life, Melanie had met a man from a casino–which would have done just as well.
The musical arrangement, using a cello, violins and harp, was for the first time not the work of George Martin. He was busy working on a Cilla Black recording. Paul was in a hurry, couldn’t wait, and so he instructed and hired another arranger, Mike Leander, which did not please George Martin. None of the other Beatles played on the record–it is just Paul, with some extra vocals from John.
The manuscript, in Paul’s hand, was sold at Sotheby’s in August 1982, with the proceeds going to a children’s hospital.
The Daily Mail story from 27 February 1967, which sparked off ‘She’s Leaving Home’.
‘She’s Leaving Home’, from Sgt. Pepper, January 1967, in Paul’s hand. Address at bottom not known. WEL, short for WELbeck, was a St Marylebone, London, phone number in the sixties.
Wednesday morning at five o’clock as the day begins
Silently closing her bedroom door
Leaving the note that she hoped would say more
She goes downstairs to the kitchen clutching her handkerchief
Quietly turning the backdoor key
Stepping outside she is free.
She (We gave her most of our lives)
is leaving (Sacrificed most of our lives)
home (We gave her everything money could buy)
She’s leaving home after living alone
For so many years. Bye, bye.
Father snores as his wife gets into her dressing gown
Picks up the letter that’s lying there
Standing alone at the top of the stairs
She breaks down and cries to her husband Daddy our baby’s gone
Why would she treat us so thoughtlessly
How could she do this to me?
She (We never thought of ourselves)
is leaving (Never a thought for ourselves)
home (We struggled hard all our lives to get by)
She’s leaving home after living alone
For so many years. Bye, bye.
Friday morning at nine o’clock she is far away
Waiting to keep the appointment she made
Meeting a man from the motor trade.
She (What did we do that was wrong)
is leaving (We didn’t know it was wrong)
home (Fun is the one thing that money can’t buy)
Something inside that was always denied
For so many years. Bye, bye
She’s leaving home. Bye, bye
Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite!
Inspired by a Victorian circus poster that John had acquired in an antiques shop in Sevenoaks, Kent, while they were filming a promotional video for ‘Strawberry Fields’ in January 1967. Almost every line in the song was lifted, word for word. (The circus could presumably have charged a copyright fee if the song had been done earlier, but the poster is dated 1843 and such copyright normally runs out in seventy years.)
‘Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite’ appears in large letters on the poster, along with ‘Mr Henderson’, ‘Pablo Fanque’, ‘hoops’, ‘trampoline’ and a ‘Hogshead of real fire’. On the poster, the horse is called Zanthus, which they were probably unsure how to pronounce, so they changed its name to Henry.
The
poster was hanging on John’s wall when Paul arrived for a writing session. John had already started putting it to music–and together they finished it off. George Martin added all the swirling fairground noises, as suggested by John.
They cleverly twisted their tongues round all the phrases and some complicated names, even managing quite a few rhymes, only adding the odd modern phrase such as ‘what a scene’. It finished the first side of the album with a period flavour, just in case we had forgotten we were supposed to be listening to Sergeant Pepper’s Edwardian band.
In 1967, when I interviewed him for the biography, John rather dismissed the song, saying he was just going through the motions, there was no real work, but by 1980, when talking to Playboy, he had decided it was rather beautiful. ‘The song is pure, like a painting, a pure watercolour.’
The manuscript, in John’s hand, is written in capitals, presumably so that other people in the studio would be able to read it. It has been nicely decorated at the top, to give it a poster feeling.
The original 1843 poster which inspired ‘Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite!’ from which most of the lyrics were lifted.
The ‘Mr Kite’ lyrics, from Sgt. Pepper, January 1967, in John’s neat capitals.
For the benefit of Mr Kite
there will be a show tonight on trampoline.
The Hendersons will all be there
late of Pablo Fanque’s Fair–what a scene
Over men and horses hoops and garters
The Beatles Lyrics Page 21