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Who Wrote the Beatle Songs

Page 22

by Todd M Compton


  In about 1966, Paul added words to it. [121] The following year, looking for material for Sgt. Pepper , he decided it would fit in. Its lyrics dealt with Sgt. Pepper themes of loneliness, and love possibly bridging that loneliness — or Paul may have added those themes as he and John prepared the song for recording. John remembers that “When I’m Sixty-Four” during the Cavern days was “half a song.” [122] I suspect that Paul added the beautiful middle section as he worked up the song for Sgt. Pepper .

  Though “When I’m Sixty-Four” had been Paul’s for many years, it was subjected to the normal Lennon-McCartney songwriting, editing gauntlet. In 1967, John mentioned some phrases that he contributed to the song: “We just stuck in a few more words, like ‘grandchildren on your knee,’ and ‘Vera Chuck and Dave.’” [123] And in 1971, he remembered that the song was written by “Paul.” But, “I think I helped Paul with some of the words, like ‘Vera, Chuck and Dave’ and ‘Doing the garden, digging the weeds.’” [124]

  Paul pointed to Fred Astaire as the song’s immediate influence. “Most of the songs I’ve written can be traced to some kind of influence — Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry to name a few. Even some of the Thirties-type tunes like ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’ or ‘Honey Pie.’ That’s influenced by Fred Astaire and people like that,” he said in 1980. [125] One of his favorite songs was “Cheek to Cheek,” written by Irving Berlin, and sung by Fred Astaire in the movie Top Hat (1935). Paul also pointed out that his home was filled with “music-hall music” when he was growing up. [126]

  Despite the reliable evidence for John’s contributions to the lyrics, both Paul and John often ascribed it to Paul alone. “I wrote ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’ when I was about sixteen,” he said in 1973. [127] In 1980, John asserted, “Paul’s completely.” [128]

  Lovely Rita — (McCartney-Lennon)

  (lead vocals: Paul) (recorded on February 23 and March 21, 1967)

  Paul got the title of this song “when someone told me that in America they call parking meter women meter maids. I thought that was great and it got to Rita Meter Maid and then Lovely Rita Meter Maid.” [129]

  Or he read about an American meter maid/traffic warden in the paper. [130] And with the character, came a story. “The song was imagining if somebody was there taking down my number and I suddenly fell for her, and the kind of person I’d be, to fall for a meter maid, would be a shy office clerk.” [131] There was a “meter maid,” Meta Davies, who claimed that the song was based on her after she gave Paul a ticket, but Paul discounts this as a coincidence. [132]

  As he began to build characters and a story around this Americanism, he walked the streets near his father’s house one night, working on the lyrics. [133] He had the music and most of the words, but at the last recording session for the song, there were still a few blank spots in the lyrics, so Paul, John, Mal and Neil retired to a corner of Studio 2 to complete them. [134] One photograph of the session shows Paul holding a lyric sheet with only the opening chorus and verse done; a couple more verses are written in Mal’s handwriting. [135]

  Paul claimed this song — “Yeah, that was mine,” he said in 1984. [136] John agreed, in 1971, putting this in a list of songs written by Paul alone. And similarly, in 1980, John said, “That’s Paul writing a pop song. Q: Was there really a Rita, do you know? Nah! He makes ‘em up like a novelist.” [137] But we know that there was some slight collaboration, finishing the lyrics at the studio.

  Good Morning, Good Morning — (Lennon)

  (lead vocals: John) (recorded February 8 to March 29, 1967)

  This was another “found title,” based on words from a television commercial. Hunter Davies wrote, in 1967,

  “Good Morning, Good Morning” was sparked off by listening to a cornflakes advertisement on TV. [John:] “I often sit at the piano, working at songs, with the telly on low in the background. If I’m a bit low and not getting much done, then the words from the telly come through. That’s when I heard “Goodmorning, Goodmorning.” [138]

  Paul felt that some phrases in the song, such as “nothing to do,” re­flected John’s life with Cynthia at the time, his boredom living in the sub­urbs. [139] But John, in 1968, said that “it was writing about my past . . . it was me at school, my whole bit.” [140]

  The rest of the Beatles certainly collaborated on the animal noises, which Paul described as “our first major use of sound effects, I think. We had horses and chickens and dogs and all sorts running through it.” [141] Calling this the first significant use of sound effects in the Beatles canon seems debatable, considering previous Beatle songs such as “Tomorrow Never Knows” and “Yellow Submarine.” Nevertheless, Paul’s statement shows that he thought the sound experimentation on this song was important, and he described the effects in detail in interviews. [142] Geoff Emerick made the point that John had thought carefully about the sequence of these sound effects: “John said to me during one of the breaks that he wanted to have the sound of animals escaping and that each successive animal should be capable of frightening or devouring its predecessor.” [143]

  So even on one of the lesser songs on Sgt. Pepper , there was complex aural experimentation going on.

  John claimed this song, though it was not one of his favorites. “‘Good Morning, Good Morning,’ I was never proud of it,” he said in 1968. “I just knocked it off to do a song.” [144] He was a bit more sympathetic in 1971: “Me. A bit of gobbledygook one, but nice words.” [145] But in 1980, he claimed the song, but looked at it more negatively, as a “throw-away piece of garbage.” [146]

  Paul, in 1984, agreed that it was a John song: “‘Good Morning’ — John’s.” [147] However, in 1995, he said, “This is largely John’s song,” and that “largely” opens up the possibility that there was some minor collaboration. [148]

  Sgt. Pepper’s reprise — (McCartney-Aspinall)

  (recorded on April 1, 1967)

  The “Sgt. Pepper’s reprise” unifies the album by closing the “show” just before the final song.

  According to Neil Aspinall and George Martin, the idea of bringing back the first song as if we were at the end of a concert came from Neil. He remembers Paul and Mal coming to his apartment when Paul was working on “Sgt. Pepper’s”:

  At the end of every Beatles show, Paul used to say, “It’s time to go. We’re going to go to bed, and this is our last number.” Then they’d play the last number and leave. . . . I said to Paul, “Why don’t you have Sgt Pepper as the compère of the album? He comes on at the beginning of the show and introduces the band, and at the end he closes it.” A bit later, Paul told John about it in the studio, and John came up to me and said, “Nobody likes a smart-arse, Neil.” [149]

  But, according to Martin, all the Beatles “thought this was a great idea,” and thus we have “Sgt. Pepper’s reprise.” [150] Since Neil’s statement is included in Anthology , presumably the Beatles agreed with it.

  You could argue that Aspinall contributed to the words of this song, and the basic idea of the song, so I include him as a co-writer. Interestingly, for the band-within-the-band conceit of the album, the lyrics of the song are to a certain extent “found” words — Aspinall using Paul’s words at the end of Beatle shows.

  The applause and laughter were added from the EMI sound effects library. [151]

  A Day in the Life — (Lennon-McCartney)

  (lead vocals: John; middle part, Paul) (recorded January 19 to February 10, 1967)

  According to John, he wrote the main song for “A Day in the Life” partially with “found” lyrics from the Daily Mail , a story dealing with the death of Tara Browne, heir of the Guinness fortune, who had been killed in a traffic accident on December 18, 1966. “I was writing the song with the Daily Mail propped up in front of me on the piano,” he said in 1967. [152] He started writing the song on January 17, 1967, when the Daily Mail reported the coroner’s verdict on the Tara Browne case. John took some license with the story. Tara died in a straight traffic accident, but, J
ohn said, he “didn’t copy the accident. Tara didn’t blow his mind out. But it [the death of Browne] was in my mind when I was writing that verse.” [153]

  Paul strongly denied that the main character in the first verse was based on Tara Browne. “I don’t think John had that in mind at all,” Paul said in a very early interview. [154] And he emphasized, “The verse about the politician blowing his mind out in a car we wrote together.” [155] In his view, there was actually a story of a man who was high on drugs, then stopped in the middle of an intersection, and didn’t know that the lights had changed. He looked like a politician. Paul described the song as “black comedy,” one of the Beatles’ first “surreal” songs. [156] However, by 1995, Paul ad­mitted, “as we were writing it, I was not attributing it to Tara in my head. In John’s head it might have been.” [157] In view of John’s definite statements, I think we can accept that the story of the death of Browne certainly was in his mind.

  More found lyrics came from the unlikely source of a news story on potholes in the roads of Lancashire: “There are 4000 holes in the road in Blackburn Lancashire, one twenty-sixth of a hole per person, according to a council survey. If Blackburn is typical then there are over two million holes in Britain’s roads and 300,000 in London.” [158] Later, as John worked on the song, he knew the holes had some connection to the Albert Hall. As often, he turned to a Beatles insider for help. “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.” [159] Doran was a friend of John who lived at Kenwood and helped run Apple for a time.

  The fact that the song began from newspaper stories led to the first line of the song, “I read the news today oh boy.” [160]

  John brought the melody, the first verse, and the beginning of the second verse to Paul at Cavendish Avenue. John said, in 1968, “I’d written the first section and I let Paul hear it.” [161] In the same year, he described how Paul was the first fan of the song. “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.” [162] John had brought the newspaper to Paul’s house, and they went up to the music room and began to fill in the second verse together. [163]

  According to John, Paul added a lovely melodic fragment, “I’d love to turn you on,” a nod to drugs and Timothy Leary, and the main song was almost complete. [164] Paul remembered the phrase as co-written. [165]

  John felt the song was going so well that he didn’t want to turn to writing a “middle-eight,” and Paul suggested combining it with a song he’d written about an average day and a dream. John said, in 1968, “I needed a middle-eight for it . . . All the rest had come out smooth, flowing, no trouble . . . but instead Paul already had one there.” [166] According to John, in 1967, “He [Paul] said what about this: ‘Woke up, Fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head.’ This was a song he’d written on his own, with no idea of what I was working on. I said yeh, that’s it.” [167] And in 1970, John said that Paul “was a bit shy about it, cause I think he thought, ‘Well, it’s [already] a good song. . . . We were doing it in his room with the piano, and he’s saying, ‘Would you — should we do this?’ I said, ‘Yeah , let’s do that.’” [168]

  The two songs seemed to fit together. Paul, in 1967, described his section as:

  It was just me remembering what it was like to run up the road to catch a bus to school, having a smoke and going into class. We decided: “The hell with this, we’re going to write a turn-on song.” It was reflection of my school days — I would have a Woodbine [a brand of cigarette] then, and somebody would speak, and I would go into a dream. This was the only one on the album written as a deliberate provocation. [169]

  It was “a little party piece of mine,” said Paul. [170] On the finished recording, Paul sings, “Somebody spoke and I went into a dream,” and then there is a chanted, partially orchestral “dream” sequence that is presumably part of Paul’s middle section.

  At the studio, Paul evidently felt that somehow the two songs needed some separation, so he decided to record a sequence of percussion between them and fill it later. [171] George Martin, in 1971, said that he suggested they have a definite number of bars, twenty-four, and they would have Mal count them out, “One . . . two . . . three. . . .” [172] They asked Paul what they were going to do with it. “We’ll worry about it later,” he said.

  Martin and the Beatles decided to have an orchestra play in the gap, and “freak out,” starting quietly then making a crescendo to their highest register. This idea has been ascribed to John, Paul, and both of them. In 1967, John said, “Then we thought we needed some sort of connection bit, a growing noise to lead back into the first bit,” [173] which is an example of collaboration ascription. In 1971, George Martin said, “Paul said he wanted a symphony orchestra, and I said don’t be silly, Paul, it’s all right having 98 men, but you can do it with a smaller amount. He said, ‘I want a symphony orchestra to freak out.’” Martin booked the smaller orchestra, then Paul and John (or Paul alone or John alone) came up with the idea to have a crescendo ending in a shriek. [174] According to Geoff Emerick, it was Paul who suggested that the musicians start with the lowest sounds on their instruments, then slowly rise to the highest part of their instruments. Then John suggested that they play louder and louder as they did this, till it became an “orgasm” of sound. [175]

  Paul ascribes the huge crescendo to his immersion in avant-garde classical music:

  Because of all this Cage and Stockhausen stuff, what we did was I thought “OK I’d try this idea on John” and said let’s take 15 bars, count 15 bars and we’ll do one of these avant-garde ideas. We’ll say to all the musicians, You’ve got to start at the lowest note on your instrument, which is like a physical limitation, and go to your highest note. [176]

  As Paul remembers, he had to “sell” the idea to John. [177]

  So there is no definitive answer to who originally came up with the idea of the orchestral “freak-out” crescendos. I tend to think the Paul had the idea for the orchestra rising in pitch, and John had the idea of increase in volume until the noise became absolutely overwhelming.

  After the Beatles decided to put the gap with orchestra crescendo in the middle of the song, according to Emerick, Paul suggested that they use it again at the end of the song, and John agreed. [178]

  After the second instrumental crescendo, there was a moment of silence, then a monumental crash of five pianos, then their continued echo, which ended the song.

  Thus, this tragic story of someone committing suicide in a car, told with surreal additions, was combined with John’s poignant elegiac melody. Then a contrasting middle section about a “day in the life,” with experimental orchestral sections connecting the two songs, was added, leading to an overwhelming orchestral climax.

  Paul in 1984 emphasized that “A Day in the Life” “was mainly John’s, I think.” [179] While John dominated the main part of the song, Paul’s con-tribution to the finished recording was substantial. Aside from helping write the lyrics to the second and third verses, and providing the middle song, he worked on the song’s unique avant-garde effects. [180] John in 1970 gave this as an example of a collaborative song: “Paul and I definitely were working together, especially on ‘A Day in the Life.’” [181] It is one of the great Lennon-McCartney collaborations, and without it, Sgt. Peppers would not have been the masterpiece that it is.

  * * *

  [1] See on the White Album, below.

  [2] Robbins, “Interview with John Lennon.”

  [3] Coleman, McCartney: Yesterday & Today , ch. 5. See also Badman, Beatles off the Record , 257.

  [4] Interview with Nicholas Jackson, cited in Elson, McCartney: Songwriter , 156. See also McCartney, interview with Sunday Times, as ci
ted in Madinger, Liner Notes to the Family Way album. John once noted that Paul wrote the soundtrack but he (John) got royalties from it, and offered to give them back to Paul. Paul said, “Don’t be soft.” Fallon, “Will the Real John Lennon” (1969).

  [5] Anthology , 223. See also McCartney 1995 (Oobu Joobu, Show 7); George Martin in 1979 (All You Need is Ears , 223).

  [6] George Martin, New Musical Express , #1941, December 24, 1966, as cited in “The Family Way (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack),” in the Beatles Bible. See also Martin, All You Need is Ears , 223.

  [7] McCartney in 1995 (Oobu Joobu, Show 7).

  [8] Sheff, The Playboy Interviews, 162-63. See on “In My Life” above.

  [9] Cott, “The Rolling Stone Interview.” See also Anthology , 237. On the place, Strawberry Fields, see McCartney in Miles, Many Years from Now , 307-8.

  [10] James, “Beatles Talk,” March 1967.

  [11] Cott, “The Rolling Stone Interview.” See also Sheff, The Playboy Interviews, 165, 166-69. McLean, “Stories Behind the Song: ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’.”

  [12] McLean, “Stories Behind the Song: ‘Strawberry Fields Forever.’”

  [13] Howard Smith, “Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono,” Dec. 12, 1970.

  [14] Tobler and Grundy, “George Martin.”

  [15] Unterberger, The Unreleased Beatles , 153-58; Turner, A Hard Day’s Write , 119.

  [16] James, “Beatles Talk,” March 1967.

  [17] Martin, With a Little Help from My Friends , 17-18. Emerick, Here, There and Everywhere , 136.

  [18] Hugh Nolan, Interview with Geoffrey Emerick, Disc and Music Echo , March 30, 1968, in Sandercombe, The Beatles , 236. Lewisohn, The Beatles Recording Sessions , 87-90.

  [19] John Lennon, interview with Kenny Everett, Feb. 4, 1968; Winn, That Magic Feeling , 150. Hennessey, “Who Wrote What,” Record Mirror.

 

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