In I Me Mine he describes it as ‘a joke, relating to Liverpool, the Holy City in the North of England. In addition the song was copyrighted Northern Songs, which I don’t own, so: it doesn’t really matter what chords I play, as it’s only a Northern Song…’
The basic recording was made in February 1967, during Sgt. Pepper, but wasn’t used at the time, an indication perhaps that they all felt it was a pretty feeble effort.
In the manuscript, George writes in the first verse that ‘he wrote it like that’ but in the recorded version he sings ‘we wrote it like that’, thus spreading the blame. There was also another verse, the fourth one, about his clothes, not in the manuscript.
‘Only A Northern Song’, from the Yellow Submarine album, January 1969, in George’s hand.
If you’re listening to this song
You may think the chords are going wrong
But they’re not
I just wrote it like that
When you listen late at night
You may feel the words are not quite right
But they are, I just wrote them myself
It doesn’t really matter what chords I play
What words I say or time of day it is
As it’s only a Northern song.
It doesn’t really matter what clothes I wear
Or how I fare or if my hair is brown
When it’s only a Northern song
If you think the harmony
Is a little dark and out of key
Then you’re right
’Cos I sing it myself
All Together Now
This time it’s Paul getting away with murder–doing a sing-along song, reciting the letters of the alphabet with some childlike activities thrown in, such as skip the rope, sail the ship. So, no lyrics worth commenting on. The ‘All Together Now’ chorus sounds as if it might by now have been appropriated as a political party anthem or as a football chant–but I have not heard it sung anywhere. Football fans around the world prefer to sing along to ‘Yellow Submarine’ or ‘Hey Jude’.
Hey Bulldog
Considering that John said this was meaningless, and therefore we can presume there was no bulldog nor bullfrog, which was the original idea, the words are not bad–very like some of his earlier poetry: ‘What makes you think you’re something special when you smile.’
The third line ‘Some kind of happiness is measured out in miles’ was originally ‘some kind of happiness is measured out in news’ but got misheard, and it was decided to use the misheard version. Either way it sounds familiar–with echoes of ‘I have measured out my life in coffee spoons’ from T.S. Eliot’s ‘Prufrock’. On the record, a lot of John’s words are indistinct, as he messes around, amusing himself, but, as he said, it was all fairly meaningless.
It’s All Too Much
George’s version of a childish nonsense verse–‘sail me on a silver sun’, ‘all the world is birthday cake’–but there are some fairly good lines–‘the more I learn the less I know’–and just when he’s getting too pretentious he concludes ‘and get me home for tea’. Some of the other lines sound a bit derivative and corny, such as long blonde hair and eyes of blue–which were used by the McCoys in their 1965 song ‘Sorrow’.
George said that he wrote it ‘after some LSD experiences which were later confirmed in meditation’. So any plagiarism was not his fault. But it’s a good song, worth digging out. The recorded song has some more verses–and a lot of repetition.
When I look into your eyes
Your love is there for me
And the more I go inside
The more there is to see
It’s all too much for me to take
The love that’s shining all around you
Everywhere it’s what you make for us to take
It’s all too much
Floating down the stream of time
From life to life with me
Makes no difference where you are
Or where you’d like to be
It’s all too much for me to take
The love that’s shining all around
All the world is birthday cake
So take a piece, but not too much
Sail me on a silver sun
Where I know that I’m free
Show me that I’m everywhere
And get me home for tea
It’s all too much for me to see
The love that’s shining all around here
The more I learn, the less I know
And what I do is all too much
With your long blonde hair and eyes of blue
You’re too much–aah
We are dead
Too much, too much, too much…
‘It’s All Too Much‘, from Yellow Submarine, in George’s hand.
Get Back
‘Get Back’ was released as a single in April 1969, two months after the Yellow Submarine album. The song had been Paul’s idea, and John helped out with the lyrics. In an improvised early version, mucking around in a jamming session–which was a feature of most of their creative sessions–‘Get Back’ acquired for a while a deeper meaning, possibly in reaction to a news story on that day. Newly arrived Pakistanis in the UK were being told to go home by right-wing fascist groups and Enoch Powell was forecasting rivers of blood. So the title they were already working on picked up that mood.
But as they worked on it they gradually realized that it was open to misinterpretation and people might use it the wrong way. In one of the bootlegged tapes, there was a line that referred to Pakistanis, but they later redid the lyrics and dropped all references to Asian immigrants and the like, substituting neutral locations such as Tucson, Arizona, and introducing a frivolous element: a man who thought he was a woman. Thus the notion ‘get back’–as in go back–could be interpreted almost any way you liked. ‘I often left things ambiguous,’ Paul said about the song. ‘I like doing that in my songs.’
Most people probably never worried or even took in all the words, as the beat was so infectious, an exciting trainride of a rocker that got to number 1 all over the world.
The part manuscript is typed with the second verse corrected in John’s hand–turning ‘in the Californian grass’ into ‘for the Californian grass’ which suggests a rather different meaning. You can also read the reference to Pakistanis in the third verse.
Jojo was a man who thought he was a loner
But he knew it wouldn’t last
Jojo left his home in Tucson, Arizona
For the California grass
Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Get back Jojo. Go Home.
Get back, get back.
‘Get Back’ single, April 1969, part typed, with Paul’s corrections.
Sweet Loretta Martin thought she was a woman
But she was another man
All the girls around her say she’s got it coming
But she gets it while she can
Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Get back, Loretta. Go home.
Your mother’s waiting for you
Wearing her high-heel shoes
And her low-neck sweater
Get on home Loretta
Get back, get back.
Get back to where you once belonged
Don’t Let Me Down
John is supposed to have commented, when they were working on ‘Get Back’, that Paul really meant it to refer to Yoko, whom he wanted to go back, as she was now constantly in the studio. That was how John felt–that everyone was against Yoko.
Now in this song he is wondering that one day she might let him down and leave him. The song–the B side of ‘Get Back’–is for Yoko, one of the most heartfelt, moving love songs John ever wrot
e, a late flowering in a way, getting back to a simple message and a simple rhythm, with no cluttered-up psychedelic sounds or nonsense lyrics.
He says he is in love for the first time, which must have saddened the now deserted Cynthia, and he is sure it is going to last for ever: ‘A love that has no past.’ He has fun with the past tense of ‘do’, deliberately using bad grammar, ‘she done me good’ instead of she did me good. It is a common colloquial usage, as is its sexual connotation: ‘I guess nobody really done me–she done me, she done me good.’ And yet the lyrics don’t hark on the sexual element–it is all about true love, and whether it will last. John comes across as incredibly needy and fragile, which of course he often was, scared that people would let him down. That’s what he believed had happened to him in the past, when his parents let him be brought up by Mimi.
I got a letter from John in 1968, about a year before this record was released, in which he adds a PS: ‘Don’t let me down.’ It was about a small matter in my biography, which he wanted me to see Mimi about, but it shows that this was a phrase he used often.
In the manuscript, mostly in Mal’s hand with corrections by John, you can see John is undecided whether to opt for correct grammar with ‘does’, or go with ‘do’ instead.
Don’t let me down
Don’t let me down
Don’t let me down
Don’t let me down
Nobody ever loved me like she do me
Ooo she does, yes she does
And if somebody loved me like she do me
Ooo she do me, yes she does
I’m in love for the first time
Don’t you know it’s gonna last?
It’s a love that lasts forever
It’s a love that had no past
And from the first time that she really done me
Ooo she done me, she done me good
I guess nobody ever really done me
Ooo she done me, she done me good
Hey, don’t let me down
Can you dig it?
Don’t let me down
‘Don’t Let Me Down’, the B side of the ‘Get Back’ single, in John’s hand, with some interesting grammatical changes.
The Ballad Of John And Yoko
Not a ballad in one sense; instead of slow, strumming music, this was a fast rocker, so you could just go along for the ride. But it is lyrically a ballad in that it has a straight narrative, telling a rather sad story. And the story is…? John’s.
It’s a recitation of true stuff, what had been happening to him in real life–and in his head. In real life they did try to set off to sail from Southampton, hoping to get to Holland or France, but never made it. Peter Brown was the management figure at Apple who did tell them they could get married at Gibraltar (which they did in March 1969). They went to Amsterdam for a bed in, and yes, the references to fifty acorns is true. They sent them to world leaders, asking them to plant them for peace. So the narrative is straight and factual.
But what about the narrative in his head? John finishes by singing ‘they’re gonna crucify me’. It is true that he and Yoko were being mocked by the media in most parts of the world, scoffed at for thinking that staying in bed for two weeks would somehow lead to peace. But the idea of being crucified was ridiculous, wasn’t it? Total paranoia, surely? Well, he’d harboured such delusions before. Even while only twenty, writing to his friend Stu from Hamburg, he was going on about being crucified, feeling the world was against him–and yet he had done nothing or said nothing to offend the world at large.
Now, he felt he really was being got at by everyone. And it did feel like being crucified. And in a sense, that is what happened to him in the end…
Old Brown Shoe
Written by George, the B side of ‘The Ballad of John and Yoko’ single, which came out in June 1969. It has a couple of very good lines at the beginning: ‘I want a love that’s right / But right is only half of what’s wrong’–which makes sense, if you think about it long enough. The second line though, developing the theme, descends into bathos, wanting a short-haired girl who sometimes wears it twice as long.
On the surface, it is a simple, fairly corny love song–‘for your sweet top lip I am in the queue’–but George is agonizing away behind the scenes, trying to tell us that opposites, right and wrong, left and right, love and hate, are all part of each other. And in heaven we are all one anyway. The material world is an illusion. In I Me Mine, he tells us the song is about the ‘duality of things’.
The title, ‘Old Brown Shoe’, comes from a passing remark in the first verse–‘stepping out of this old brown shoe’–which I take to mean stepping out of this old worn-out materialistic life down here.
The manuscript is interesting as you can see clearly some of his thought processes, with crossings-out and changes. The last verse has lines that never made it, about him being wakened by people knocking at his door.
‘Old Brown Shoes’, the B side of ‘The Ballad Of John And Yoko’, an early version in George’s hand, with an unused last verse.
I want a love that’s right but right is only half of what’s wrong.
I want a short haired girl who sometimes wears it twice as long.
Now I’m stepping out this old brown shoe, baby, I’m in love with you.
We’re so glad you came here, it won’t be the same now, I’m telling you.
Though you pick me up from where some try to drag me down
When I see your smile replacing every thoughtless frown
Got me escaping from this zoo
Baby I’m in love with you
So glad you came here
It won’t be the same now, now that I’m with you
If I grow up I’ll be a singer wearing rings on every finger.
Not worrying what they or you say I’ll live and love and maybe someday
Who knows, baby, you may comfort me.
I may appear to be imperfect but my love is something you can’t reject
I’m changing faster than the weather
If you and me should get together
Who knows baby? You may comfort me
I want that love of yours
To miss that love is something I’d hate
Make an early start, making sure that I’m not late
For your sweet top lip I’m in the queue
Baby I’m in love with you
So glad you came here
Won’t be the same now, when I’m with you
I’m so glad you came here
It won’t be the same now, now that I’m with you
13
LET IT BE
1969–1970
I nearly made it on to the Let It Be album–not as myself, but as the inspiration for a song. Or at least, so I have imagined, so I tell myself. Complete fantasy, I am sure, but we can all dream.
Late one night in December 1968, when my wife and family and I were living in a converted sardine factory right on the beach at Praia da Luz in the Algarve, there was loud banging and shouting from outside, which we thought at first must be drunken fishermen. I opened the door to find a rather cross taxi driver, who was demanding to be paid, having driven his fares all the way from Faro Airport, only to find they now said they had no money. Out of the taxi spilled Paul and a blonde American woman called Linda whom I had never seen before. When we had left London nine months earlier, Paul was still engaged to Jane Asher.
It gradually emerged that he had got together with Linda, a photographer. And she had a six-year-old daughter called Heather, who was also with them. That evening, in London, Paul had suddenly decided to come out and visit us, knowing we had two young children, just a bit younger than Heather. They didn’t ring, as we didn’t have a phone, but they knew our address as I had written to him. They simply asked Neil Aspinall, their road manager, to book them a private jet, and off they went.
They stayed for about two weeks, and we all had a jolly time, going on local expeditions, up in the hills, mucki
ng around on the beach. Paul had brought his guitar with him, as always, and even used to take it with him to the lavatory. One evening I happened to reveal that my real first name is Edward, but I had never ever been called that, only by my second name, Hunter. For some reason, Paul thought this was awfully funny–though I can’t think why, as Paul is not his real first name either; he was christened James Paul.
So he went off to the lavatory and when he came back he played us four bars of a song he had apparently just written called ‘There You Go Eddie’. He only had four lines–which consisted of the title repeated three times, then the line ‘Eddie you’ve gone’. I thought it was pretty good, and naturally encouraged him to finish it. He said he might, one day.
When we got back to London in 1969, I rushed to buy their next two albums–which alas, turned out to be their final two albums–hoping that Eddie would have been worked on, polished up, or even subsumed into another song, but nope, no sign of Eddie, in any form.
Quite recently, I heard a copy of a song about Eddie that had been found on a bootleg tape of the Let It Be recording sessions. (Apparently one hundred hours’ worth of bootlegs have crept out over the years.) You can hear Paul singing and playing the Eddie song to John. He had obviously worked on it a bit, as it had acquired a second verse and quite a decent middle section. In it, Eddie is referred to as ‘Eddie you dog’ who thinks he is one of the ‘In Crowd’. Surely I never thought that about myself? It had become a fairly decent song, as whole and complete as some of the songs they used to fill up their final album. But, curses, it never made the cut. On the bootleg tape, John can be heard muttering in the background. Paul does several versions, changing Eddie to Tiger, Bernard, Nigel and then to Mimi, which makes John laugh. When Paul has finally finished singing it, there is silence from John.
The Beatles Lyrics Page 30