122. Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds

 

 

"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" is a song written mainly by John Lennon (credited to Lennon/McCartney) in 1967, and recorded by The Beatles for their album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

 

 

Arrangement

The song has a complex arrangement typical of later Lennon-McCartney compositions; much of the song is in triple metre (3/4 time), except the chorus, where it switches to 4/4 time. The song also shifts between musical keys, using the key of A for the verse, B-flat for the pre-chorus or bridge section, and G for the chorus. It consists of a very simple melody (reminiscent of a nursery song), sung by Lennon over an increasingly complicated underlying arrangement which features a tamboura, played by George Harrison, and a Lowrey organ (made to sound like an electric harpsichord) played by John Lennon.

 

 

Lyrics and title

The lyrics of the song — which are commonly believed to be about an acid trip — feature image-laden verses which present an overtly psychedelic travelogue, describing a boat trip through a fantastic land of "rocking horse people", "newspaper taxis" and "marshmallow pies", alternating with chorus sections which simply repeat the song's title. The Beatles, however, have steadily maintained that the initials of the title forming the word "LSD" (Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds) is mere coincidence, as the title is taken from a drawing by a young Julian Lennon.

 

Session tapes from the initial March 1, 1967 recording of this song reveal that John originally sang the line "Cellophane flowers of yellow and green" as a broken phrase, but Paul suggested that he sing it more fluidly, thus improving the song.

 

 

Julian's drawing

According to the Beatles, one day in 1966 Lennon's son, Julian, came home from nursery school with a drawing he said was of his classmate, a girl named Lucy. Showing the artwork to his father, young Julian described the picture as "Lucy — in the sky with diamonds."

 

 

Lucy — in the sky with diamonds by a young Julian LennonJulian later said, "I don't know why I called it that or why it stood out from all my other drawings, but I obviously had an affection for Lucy at that age. I used to show dad everything I'd built or painted at school, and this one sparked off the idea for a song about Lucy in the sky with diamonds."

 

His son's artwork appears to have inspired Lennon to draw heavily on his own childhood affection for Lewis Carroll's "Wool and Water" chapter from Through the Looking-Glass. At least one lyric was influenced by both Carroll and skits on a popular British radio comedy programme (The Goon Show) making references to "plasticine ties", which showed up in the song as "Plasticine porters with looking glass ties". A parody of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", recited by the Mad Hatter, appears in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

 

Carroll's work has also been cited as having influenced Lennon's "I Am the Walrus" which refers to a character from Through the Looking-Glass and his two books, In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works.

 

 

Who was Lucy?

The Lucy referred to in the song was probably Lucy O'Donnell, born in Weybridge in 1963 (making her the same age as John's son). She was a classmate of Julian at Heath House School. She has met up with him on a few occasions in the last few years, and occasionally appears on daytime shows for the anniversary of the "Sergeant Pepper's" album. She is featured in the book "A Hard Days Write". She now lives in Surbiton in Surrey, and owned a nanny agency for children with special needs until she was taken ill with psoriatic arthritis and lupus some years ago.

 

There is another candidate for the original Lucy — British comedian Peter Cook's daughter, Lucy. Lennon and Cook were seeing quite a bit of each other at the time (Lennon made a guest appearance on Cook's TV show Not Only... But Also as a doorman). According to Cook's biographer, Harry Thompson, Lennon told Cook's then wife, Wendy, that the song was inspired by Lucy Cook.

 

 

Reference to drugs and the title of the song

While Lennon and the Beatles were often frank about their drug use, for decades they denied that "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" had anything to do with LSD. In a 2004 interview, however, Paul McCartney spoke openly about his Beatles-era drug use, revealing that songs such as "Day Tripper" and "Got To Get You Into My Life" were written directly about LSD and marijuana. When questioned about "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," he noted that Julian's painting had inspired the song, but that it was "pretty obvious" that the song was about an acid trip.

 

In a 1971 interview Lennon recalled hearing about how the initials of the title spelled out LSD, then checking if the same thing had happened with other Beatles songs and finding "they didn't spell out anything." In that same interview, he stated the song was composed in a conscious attempt to craft poetry, and in 1980 he confirmed the images were taken from Alice in Wonderland.

 

In The Beatles Anthology (2000), Ringo Starr claimed he was present when Julian showed his "crazy little painting". Paul recounted the time he and John spent in John's music room, swapping suggestions for lyrics, saying, "We never noticed the LSD initial until it was pointed out later, by which point people didn't believe us."

 

Although the Beatles say they did not name the song after LSD, the song was conceived and recorded during a time when the Beatles were experimenting with LSD frequently, and creating much of their music under the influence.

 

 

Elton John version

The most successful remake was a single recorded in 1974 by Elton John, which also appeared on the ephemeral 1976 musical documentary, All This and World War II, with background vocals and guitar by John Lennon (who used the pseudonym Dr. Winston O'Boogie). The single topped the Billboard pop charts for two weeks in January 1975.

 

During their collaboration, John appeared on Lennon's song "Whatever Gets You Thru the Night". Lennon promised to appear live with John at Madison Square Garden if it became a number 1 single. It did, and on Thanksgiving Night, November 28, 1974, Lennon kept his promise. They performed "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", "Whatever Gets You Through the Night", and "I Saw Her Standing There". Those live versions are available on the Lennon box set, as well as Elton John's Here and There. "It is a song that I never do in a set at a concert simply because it reminds me too much of John Lennon. This is the same with Empty Garden".

123. Getting Better

 

 

"Getting Better" is a song written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney based on an original idea by McCartney. It was recorded by The Beatles for the 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The song's music suggests optimism yet the lyric, strongly influenced by Lennon, alludes to more sinister themes. In this sense, it exaggerates the contrasting personas of the two most active songwriters in the group. In response to McCartney's line, "It's getting better all the time," Lennon replies, "It can't get no worse!" Lennon also claimed the lyric that begins, "I used to be cruel to my woman..."

 

According to Hunter Davies, the initial idea for the song's title came from a phrase often spoken by Jimmy Nicol, the group's stand-in drummer for the Australian leg of a 1964 tour.

 

The song, musically reminiscent of the hit single "Penny Lane", moves forward by way of regular chords, produced by Lennon's guitar and George Martin, who struck the strings of a pianette with a mallet. These heavily accented and repetitive lines cause the song to sound as if it is based on a drone. Lead guitarist George Harrison adds an Indian tambura part to the final verse, which further accentuates this impact.

 

The song was performed live for the first time by McCartney during his 2002 and 2003 US and World Tours.

 

 

Cover versions

In 1976, Status Quo covered the song for the transitory musical documentary All This and World War II.

In the late 1990s, the song was recorded as a cover for the Australian television show Better Homes and Gardens.

In 2000, it was covered by Gomez on their album Abandoned Shopping Trolley Hotline, this version was used as a theme song for the Philips' television ad campaigns in 2001.

In 2003, the song was again covered by the band Smash Mouth for the film adaptation of Dr. Seuss's The Cat in the Hat.

In 2007, Kaiser Chiefs re-recorded the song for It Was 40 Years Ago Today, a BBC television film with contemporary acts recording the album's songs using the same studio, technicians and recording techniques as the original.

124. Fixing A Hole

 

Paul live 2002

 

Fixing a Hole" is a song written by Paul McCartney (credited to Lennon/McCartney) and performed by The Beatles on the 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

 

 

Recording

The first of two recording sessions for the song was at Regent Sound Studio in London on 9 February 1967. Regent was used because Abbey Road was not available that night. This was the first time the Beatles used a studio other than Abbey Road for recording a track for an EMI album.

 

The lead vocal was recorded at the same time as the rhythm track, a change from their post-1963 approach of overdubbing the vocal.

 

 

Inspiration

A common theory is the song was about heroin, but McCartney said the song was "another ode to pot." He further said the song was about having the freedom to let one's mind roam freely. Another theory is the song is about McCartney repairing the roof of his Scottish farmhouse, but McCartney said he didn't get around to that until much later.

 

McCartney has added to the confusion:

 

In an interview with Q magazine from around the time of his 1997 album Flaming Pie, McCartney said that the song's lyric began with the simple idea of someone mending a hole in the road, and that he was living alone and smoking a lot of pot when he wrote it.

In a 1967 interview, McCartney said the following lines were about those fans who hung around outside his door day and night and whose actions put him off.

See the people standing there

who disagree, and never win

And wonder why they don't get in my door

 

 

Writing credits controversy

According to Mal Evans' diaries—from which extracts have recently been released—he helped McCartney to write "Fixing a Hole". Evans wrote in his diary, on 27 January 1967:

 

“ Sgt Pepper: Started writing song with Paul upstairs in his room, he on piano. What can one say about today — ah yes! Four Tops concert at Albert Hall. Beatles get screams they get the clap. Off to Bag after gig. Did a lot more of "where the rain comes in". [Evans' title for "Fixing a Hole"] Hope people like it. Started Sergeant Pepper. ”

 

He also wrote on 1 February 1967:

 

“ "Sergeant Pepper" sounds good. Paul tells me that I will get royalties on the song — great news, now perhaps a new home. ”

 

He never received royalties and had to make do with £38-a-week pay. McCartney and the Apple label have not commented about the diaries, or the songwriting credits. Keith Badman, who is the author of "The Beatles Off the Record", stated that he obtained a tape of Evans talking before his death, on which Evans repeated the claims. According to Badman, Evans was asked (before the record came out) if it would be a problem that his name was not credited, as the Lennon-McCartney writing name was "a really hot item".

 

 

Other versions

In the 1978 film based on the album, the song was performed by George Burns in a soft shoe style.

The Fray performed the song on June 2, 2007 in the same studios that the Beatles used to record the original. The remake was part of a tribute to 40 years of the album Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band.

125. She's Leaving Home

 

Paul live 2002

 

"She's Leaving Home" is a song, written and sung by Paul McCartney, and released in 1967 on The Beatles album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. McCartney wrote the verse and Lennon the chorus.

 

 

Background

Paul McCartney:

 

“ John and I wrote 'She's Leaving Home' together. It was my inspiration. We'd seen a story in the newspaper about a young girl who'd left home and not been found, there were a lot of those at the time, and that was enough to give us a story line. So I started to get the lyrics: she slips out and leaves a note and then the parents wake up ... It was rather poignant. I like it as a song, and when I showed it to John, he added the long sustained notes, and one of the nice things about the structure of the song is that it stays on those chords endlessly. Before that period in our songwriting we would have changed chords but it stays on the C chord. It really holds you. It's a really nice little trick and I think it worked very well.

 

 

While I was showing that to John, he was doing the Greek chorus, the parents' view: 'We gave her most of our lives, we gave her everything money could buy.' I think that may have been in the runaway story, it might have been a quote from the parents. Then there's the famous little line about a man from the motor trade; people have since said that was Terry Doran, who was a friend who worked in a car showroom, but it was just fiction, like the sea captain in "Yellow Submarine", they weren't real people.

”

 

The newspaper story McCartney mentioned was from the front page of the Daily Mirror, about a girl named Melanie Coe. Although McCartney made up most of the content, Coe, who was 17 at the time claims that he got most of it right. Her parents wondered why she had left... "She had everything she wanted". In real life, Melanie did not "meet a man from the motor trade", but instead a croupier, and left in the afternoon while her parents were at work. The adventure ended a week later.

 

Coincidentally, Coe had met McCartney three years earlier when she was a contestant and prize winner on ITV's Ready Steady Go!.

 

 

Recording

The day before McCartney wanted to work on the string arrangement, he learned that George Martin was not available to do the score. He contacted Mike Leander, who did it in Martin's place. It was the first time a Beatle song was not arranged by Martin. Martin was hurt by McCartney's actions, but he produced the song and conducted the string section. The harp was played by Sheila Bromberg, the first female musician to appear on a Beatles record.

 

 

Cover versions

In 1967, Harry Nilsson covered this song on Pandemonium Shadow Show.

In 1976, Bryan Ferry covered the song for the evanescent musical documentary All This and World War II.

In 1988, Billy Bragg's version of the song, a double A-side with Wet Wet Wet's "With a Little Help from My Friends" which reached #1 in the UK.

In 2007, the American Idol finale featured a tribute medley from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, in which the song was performed by Carrie Underwood.

In 2007, Magic Numbers re-recorded the song for It Was 40 Years Ago Today, a television film with contemporary acts recording the album's songs using the same studio, technicians and recording techniques as the original.

126. Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite!

 

 

Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" is a 1967 song from The Beatles album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band composed primarily by John Lennon with input from Paul McCartney and credited to Lennon/McCartney.

 

 

The poster upon which the song is based.Lennon wrote the song taking inspiration from a nineteenth century circus poster which he purchased in an antique shop in January or February of 1967, while filming the promotional video for the song "Strawberry Fields Forever" in Kent.

 

 

Recording

One of the more musically complex songs on Sgt. Pepper, it was recorded on 17 February 1967 with overdubs on 20 February (organ sound effects), 28 March (harmonica, organ, guitar), 29 March (more organ sound effects), and 31 March. Lennon wanted the track to have a "carnival atmosphere", and told producer George Martin that he wanted "to smell the sawdust on the floor." In the middle eight bars, multiple recordings of fairground organs and calliope music were spliced together to attempt to produce this request; after a great deal of unsuccessful experimentation, George Martin instructed Geoff Emerick to chop the tape into pieces with scissors, throw them up in the air, and re-assemble them at random.

 

On 17 February, before take 1, Lennon sings "For the benefit of Mr. Kite" in a joke accent, just before Emerick announces, "For the Benefit of Mr. Kite!, take 1." Lennon immediately responds, "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!", reinforcing his title preference, a phrase lifted intact from the original poster. The exchange is recorded in The Beatles Recording Sessions (slightly misquoted) and audible on track 8 of disc 2 of Anthology 2.

 

Although Lennon once said of the song that he "wasn't proud of that" and "I was just going through the motions," in 1980 he described it as "pure, like a painting, a pure watercolour."

 

It was one of three songs from the Sgt. Pepper album that was banned from playing on the BBC, supposedly because the phrase "Henry the Horse" combined two words that were individually known as slang for heroin. Lennon denied that the song had anything to do with heroin.

 

127. Within You Without You

 

LOVE Version with Tomorrow Never Knows

 

"Within You Without You" is a song written by George Harrison and recorded with a group of Indian musicians, without any input from his fellow Beatles. It was the second of Harrison's songs to be explicitly influenced by Indian classical music, after "Love You To". It was released in 1967 on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the last song to be completed for the album.

 

Harrison wrote this as a 30-minute piece. He trimmed it down into a mini-version for the album. The laughter at the end was Harrison's idea to lighten the mood and follow the theme of the album. Sped up to C#, an instrumental version at the original speed and key appears on the Anthology 2 album.

 

"Within You Without You" was written on a harmonium at the house of long-time Beatles friend, Klaus Voormann, while "there were lots of joints being smoked". Harrison sought out Indian musicians to aid him in the track's recording, although all of them went uncredited. Of those who were credited, producer George Martin arranged the string section, charging £33, and Harrison and assistant Neil Aspinall played the tambura.

 

 

Lyrical Interpretation

Many of the song's lyrics make references to Hindu ideas. One example of this is in the first verse:

 

"We were talking - about the space between us all

And the people - who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion

Never glimpse the truth - then it's far too late - when they pass away."

The Hindu idea of Maya, which is the idea that all mortal people live in a false reality, and what people perceive as reality is actually an illusion. Thus, this quote refers to humanity and its belief in the false reality. Then, in the next line, Harrison references the idea that if a person doesn't realise the concept of Maya, it is too late for them, in this life. However, Hinduism teaches reincarnation and therefore that person will eventually realise that its all within and without him.

 

In addition to the reference to Maya in the first verse of the song, the song is littered with references to Hinduism and Indian culture. The second verse:

 

"We were talking - about the love we all could share - when we find it

To try our best to hold it there - with our love.

With our love - We could save the world - if they only knew...

Try to realise it's all within yourself, no one else can make you change."

The love that could save the world is an obvious reference to the Hindu doctrine of Dharma. Dharma is the ethical code of Hinduism. George Harrison was trying to reference the idea that people could keep the world from being destroyed (due to its cyclical nature) by following Dharma. A great cycle of the universe is called a Maha Yuga. At the end of the Maha Yuga, the concept of Dharma is no longer followed and therefore the world must be destroyed. However, the universe is cyclical and like a phoenix, the earth rises again. So, George was trying to say that if we were to follow Dharma and love one another, we could hold the world from the destruction. In addition, the last line of the verse says that "no one else can make you change" this being a reference to the eastern concept of looking within oneself as opposed to the western ideas of looking to a savior, prophet, or God.

 

In the third verse we have references to the vastness of the universe and another reference to reincarnation.

 

"And to see you're really only very small

and life flows on within you and without you."

Seeing that we are very small shows the vastness of the universe because it enforces the idea that we are not significant, most of our lives do not change the world. This also leads us to the idea that life will go on without us because we will come back via reincarnation. This idea of life going on can be found in a number of Beatles songs, including Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da from the White Album.

 

"We were talking - about the love that's gone so cold and the people,

Who gain the world and lose their soul.

They don't know. They can't see. Are you one of them?

When you see beyond yourself then you may find,

peace of mind, is waiting there."

The fourth verse, touches again on the eventual destruction of the universe by the Hindu god, Shiva. This destruction would occur in the fourth age of the Maha Yuga, the Kali Yuga. Concepts of this final age are a battered world where the love (Dharma) has "gone so cold". People believe in capitalism losing their soul to gain the world. They don't know of the concept of Dharma, but if they did, peace of mind would be waiting there to greet them.

 

In the final verse:

 

"And the time will come when you see we're all one,

and life flows on within you and without you."

Harrison touches on the Hindu concept on monism, the idea that ultimately all things are one. This doctrine stems from observations of water. Water, whether it is in the form of a river, a lake, rain, ice, or a stream, all water will end up in the ocean. The ocean being one continuous body of water shows that everything, like water is all connected and is ultimately all one thing. Life, just like the waters of the ocean flows on within and without you.

 

 

Cover versions

Patti Smith performs the song on her April, 2007 cover album twelve.

Sonic Youth recorded the song for the tribute album Sgt. Pepper Knew My Father. This version appears on the deluxe edition of the album Daydream Nation.

Oasis recorded a version of the song for a 2007 Sgt. Pepper's tribute album.

 

128. When I'm Sixty-Four

 

 

When I'm Sixty-Four" is a love song by The Beatles, written by Paul McCartney (but co-credited to John Lennon) and released in 1967 on their album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. It is sung by a young man to his lover, and is about his plans of growing old together with her. Although the theme is about aging, it was one of the first songs McCartney wrote, when he was sixteen. The Beatles used it in the early days as a song they could play when the amplifiers broke down or the electricity went off. Both George Martin and Mark Lewisohn speculated that McCartney may have thought of the song when recording began for Sgt. Pepper in December 1966 because his father turned 64 earlier that year.

 

Lennon said of the song, "Paul wrote it in the Cavern days. We just stuck a few more words on it like 'grandchildren on your knee' and 'Vera, Chuck and Dave' ... this was just one that was quite a hit with us." In his 1980 interview for Playboy he said, "I would never even dream of writing a song like that." Many People don't realise that the song was probably a satirical view at Jim McCartney's days in the northern english bands that he used to play in."

 

The song was nearly released on a single as the B-side with either "Strawberry Fields Forever" or "Penny Lane" as the A-side. Instead, Martin decided on a double-A-sided-disc, and now calls that decision, "the biggest mistake of my life." As a result of the double-A designation, sales for the single were split, and even though more discs were sold than the competition ("Release Me" by Engelbert Humperdinck), each of the two songs got credit for only half. The single did not make #1 in the UK, breaking a string of #1 singles going back to 1963. If "When I'm Sixty-Four" had been issued as a B-side, it would not have appeared on Sgt. Pepper.

 

According to Ian MacDonald, the song was "aimed chiefly at parents, and as a result got a cool reception from the [beatles'] own generation."

 

 

Instrumentation

A clarinet trio (two B-flat soprano clarinets and a bass clarinet), are featured prominently in the song, unusual in most music genres, but particularly in the context of rock and roll. Scored by Martin, he said they were added at McCartney's request to "get around the lurking schmaltz factor" by using the clarinets "in a classical way." In the song's final verse, the bass clarinet is played in harmony with McCartney's vocal: an unusual method of harmonization, especially in 1967. Supporting instruments include the piano, (plucked) cello, chimes, and electric guitar.

 

 

Recording

The song was recorded on 6 December 1966, during one of the first sessions for the as-yet-unnamed next album that became Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. There were multiple overdub sessions, including the lead vocal by McCartney on 8 December and backing vocals by McCartney, Lennon, and George Harrison on 20 December. The clarinets were recorded on 21 December.

 

The song is in the key of C sharp major. The Beatles recorded the song in C major but the master take was sped up in order to raise the key by one semitone at the insistence of McCartney. Martin remembers that McCartney suggested this change in order to make his voice sound younger. McCartney says, "I wanted to appear younger, but that was just to make it more rooty-tooty; just lift the key because it was starting to sound turgid."

 

 

Cover versions

In 1976, Keith Moon recorded a version for the evanescent musical documentary All This and World War II.

In the 1978 film, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Frankie Howard and Sandy Farina sing the song.

It was featured in an Allstate Insurance commercial with Julian Lennon singing.

It was used as the theme song for the movie version of John Irving's novel The World According to Garp

During the 1980s, an instrumental version opened each episode of the BBC feedback programme Points of View.

For the 40th anniversary version for BBC Radio 2, Russell Brand did a version with Oscar-winning composer, David Arnold.

Cherie Blair sang a vocal rendition of it in the far-east whilst being broadcast on TV, as husband and Prime Minister Tony Blair smiled awkwardly and sang along.

 

Cultural references

The song accompanies the "Sea of Time" sequence in the film Yellow Submarine.

The song was parodied by The Rutles as "Back in '64" on the album Archaeology.

When I'm 64 (using the numerals instead of spelling out the numbers) is also the name of a BBC television series starring Paul Freeman and Alun Armstrong as two older men who surprise themselves by falling in love with each other.

The song's beat was sampled in the Beastie Boys track "The Sounds of Science" on their 1989 album Paul's Boutique.

A special website tribute involving indie French pop bands was launched as McCartney turned 64 on June 18, 2006. Called When I'm 64, it features many different renditions of this famous song.

McCartney's children recorded a special version of "When I'm Sixty-Four" at Abbey Road Studios as a surprise present for McCartney's 64th birthday, and played it for him at his birthday party. They changed the lyrics to fit the occasion with the help of Giles Martin.

The song was often humorously referenced in 2006, when McCartney divorced Heather Mills, ironically, at the age of 64.

129. Lovely Rita

 

 

"Lovely Rita" is a song by The Beatles performed on the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, written and sung by Paul McCartney (writing credits: Lennon/McCartney). It is about a female traffic warden and the narrator's affection for her.

 

Ringo Starr's instrumentation in this song is very progressive. The snare sound used here is two large cymbals being held together tightly while Ringo strikes the cymbals very hard with his drumstick, giving the illusion of a snare drum.

 

The song plays an important role in the Paul is Dead hoax that occurred during The Beatles' fame. The song figures in to the hoax apparently because McCartney was distracted by her while driving, which led to the car crash that ended his life. In truth, the song emanates from when McCartney was issued with a parking ticket outside Abbey Road Studios, by a female traffic warden named Meta Davis. Instead of becoming angry, he accepted it with good grace and expressed his feelings (sarcastically) in song. When asked why he had called her "Rita", McCartney replied: "Well, she looked like a Rita to me".

 

The term "meter-maid," American slang for a female traffic warden, now known as a parking attendant, was largely unknown in the UK prior to the song's release.

 

 

 

Recording process

Recording began with a rare live performance by the entire band on Febrary 23, 1967. Using a four-track recorder, this first performance featured Harrison's guitar on Track 1, Lennon's guitar on Track 2, Ringo's drums on the third track, and McCartney's piano set for the final track. Once those tracks were "bounced," the band later added lead vocal, bass, and a three-part backing vocal section. By March 21, the final mono mix was completed and a month later, the stereo mix was done.

 

The unusual noises during the song after the lines "and the bag across her shoulder/ made her look a little like a military man" were John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison playing the comb-and-paper.

 

 

Lennon on the roof

One of the recording sessions for "Lovely Rita" is famous for an incident involving Lennon. During the March 21, 1967 session in which producer George Martin added a piano solo, Lennon complained that he didn't feel well and couldn't focus. Lennon had accidentally taken LSD when he meant to take an upper. Martin took him up to the roof of Abbey Road Studio, and returned to Studio Two where McCartney and Harrison were waiting. They knew why Lennon wasn't well and rushed up to the roof to retrieve him and prevent an accident.

 

 

Other versions

In 1976, Roy Wood of ELO and Wizzard recorded the song for the evanescent musical documentary All This and World War II. The song was also recorded by Fats Domino.

 

In 2007, Travis recorded the song for It Was 40 Years Ago Today, a television film with contemporary acts recording the album's songs using the same studio, technicians and recording techniques as the original.

 

 

In popular culture

When the iPhone was unveiled in January of 2007, Apple Inc.'s Steve Jobs chose to play "Lovely Rita" to show off the device's music-playing functionality.

130. Good Morning Good Morning

 

No Video

 

"Good Morning Good Morning" is a song composed by John Lennon (credited to Lennon/McCartney) and performed by The Beatles on the 1967 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album.

 

Inspiration for the song came to Lennon from a television commercial for Kellogg's Corn Flakes. The jingle went: "Good morning, good morning, The best to you each morning, Sunshine Breakfast, Kellogg's Corn Flakes, Crisp and full of fun".

 

The line "It's time for tea and Meet the Wife" refers to a BBC sitcom Meet the Wife starring Thora Hird and Freddie Frinton which began in 1963 and ran for three years.

 

 

Recording

The track was recorded on February 8, 1967, with overdubs on February 16 (bass and vocals), March 13 (brass section), March 28 (backing vocals and guitar solo), and March 29 (animal noises). The guitar solo was played by Paul McCartney on a Fender Esquire.[citation needed]

 

At Lennon's request, George Martin brought in Sounds Incorporated to play the brass section with their signature saxophone sound.

 

Lennon asked engineer Geoff Emerick to arrange the animal noises heard at the end of the song so that the animal was capable of devouring or frightening the animal that came before it.

 

Despite the peaceful title, the song is highly aggressive. With loud saxophone, animal noises, pounding drums, strong vocals and large amounts of complex strumming guitar, it is quite a powerful wake-up call.

 

This song features double-bass drum playing by Ringo Starr.

 

The final sound effect of a chicken clucking was so placed that it transforms into the guitar on the following track "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)". It is one of the reasons that people use to argue that the album is the first concept album.

131. A Day In The Life

 

 

"A Day in the Life" is a song composed by John Lennon and Paul McCartney and recorded by The Beatles for their album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967. The song is actually a merging of two different, but complementary, song fragments originally authored independently by Lennon and McCartney, with McCartney's fragment added to the middle of Lennon's. It featured groundbreaking elements, including impressionistic lyrics, innovative production techniques and a complex arrangement including a cacophonous, partially-improvised orchestral crescendo.

 

Inspiration from a newspaper

Lennon started writing the song while reading the Daily Mail newspaper. Two stories caught his eye; one was about the death of Tara Browne, the heir to the Guinness fortune, and friend of The Beatles, who drove his Lotus Elan into the back of a parked lorry in Redcliffe Square, South Kensington, London on 18 December 1966. The other was about a plan to fill 4,000 potholes in the streets of Blackburn, Lancashire.

 

However, the song did not include a literal description of Browne's fatal accident. Lennon said:

 

“ I didn't copy the accident. Tara didn't blow his mind out. But it was in my mind when I was writing that verse. The details of the accident in the song — not noticing traffic lights and a crowd forming at the scene — were similarly part of the fiction. ”

 

Later, fans eager to locate clues about McCartney's supposed death seized upon this segment of the song as a depiction of his alleged accident.

 

Lennon also sang about a film in which "the English army had just won the war" in the song. Although Lennon is not known to have explained his exact intention, it is thought to be a reference to Lennon's role in the surrealist comedy film How I Won the War, which saw release in October of that year.

 

McCartney then added the middle section, which was a short piano piece he had been working on previously, with lyrics about a commuter whose uneventful morning routine leads him to drift off into a reverie. McCartney also contributed the line "I'd love to turn you on," which serves as a chorus to the first section of the song. Lennon explained:

 

“ I had the bulk of the song and the words, but he contributed this little lick floating around in his head that he couldn't use for anything. I thought it was a damn good piece of work. ”

 

McCartney explained that he wrote the piece as a wistful recollection of his younger years:

 

“ It was another song altogether, but it happened to fit. It was just me remembering what it was like to run up the road to catch a bus to school (Liverpool Institute for Boys with George Harrison), having a smoke and going into class... it was a reflection of my school-days. I would have a Woodbine (a cheap unfiltered British cigarette) and somebody would speak and I would go into a dream. ”

 

McCartney's section of the song was followed by a short wordless vocal chorus which segued back into Lennon's part of the song. On 27 August 1992, Lennon's original handwritten lyrics to the song were auctioned, eventually selling for US$87,000 (£50,000).

 

 

Impromptu work in the studio

 

"A Day in the Life" is characterised by crescendoes and sudden instrumental changes. The repeated motif at the end is the famous "studio chatter".The Beatles began recording this new song, at that point titled "In the Life Of. . ." on 19 January 1967, but at the time, Lennon had not yet decided how he would fill in a glaring gap in the song. The two sections of the song were separated by 24 bars. At first, The Beatles were not sure how to fill this transition; at the conclusion of the recording session for the basic tracks this section consisted of a simple repeated piano chord and the voice of assistant Mal Evans counting the bars. Evans' guide vocal was treated with gradually increasing amounts of echo effect, perhaps an early indication of the bands' desire to have some type of crescendo during this section. The Beatles, particularly Lennon, were enamored of echo effects at this time; Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick recalled: "We'd send a feed from John's vocal mic into a mono tape machine and then tape the output. . . and then feed that back in again. Then we'd turn up the record level until it started to feed back on itself and give a twittery sort of vocal sound."

 

The 24-bar bridge section ended with the sound of an alarm clock (accidentally) triggered by Evans. The original intent was to edit out the ringing of the alarm clock when The Beatles had filled in the missing section, but because it complemented McCartney's piece very well (particularly because the first line of McCartney's song began "woke up, fell out of bed"), the decision was made to keep the sound. Perhaps it would have remained in any event; Martin later made a cryptic mention that editing it out would have been unfeasible.

 

Lennon experienced another problem from his unfinished job of composing the song — as he recalled: "And when we came to record the song there was still one word missing from that verse... I knew the line had to go, 'Now they know how many holes it takes to — something — the Albert Hall.' For some reason I couldn't think of the verb. What did the holes do to the Albert Hall? It was [Lennon's friend] Terry Doran who said 'fill' the Albert Hall. And that was it. Then we thought we wanted a growing noise to lead back into the first bit. We wanted to think of a good end and we had to decide what sort of backing and instruments would sound good. Like all our songs, they never become an entity until the very end. They are developed all the time as we go along."

 

 

An orchestral "soft upward glissando"

The basic track for the song was refined with remixing and additional parts added at recording sessions on 20 January and 3 February. By now the original name for the song had been abandoned in favour of the eventual final title. However, The Beatles still had no solution in sight to their missing section of the song, when McCartney had the idea of bringing in a full orchestra and having them "freak out" for the 24-bar middle section. Concern arose, however, that classically-trained musicians would not be able to improvise in this manner, so producer George Martin had to write a loose score for the section — an extended, atonal crescendo — for the musicians to follow (though the musicians would still be encouraged to improvise within the defined framework).

 

The orchestral part for the song was recorded on 10 February, with McCartney and Martin conducting a 40-piece orchestra. The recording session was completed at a total cost of £367 for the players, considered an extravagance at the time. Martin later described explaining his improvised score to the puzzled orchestra:

 

“ What I did there was to write, at the beginning of the twenty-four bars, the lowest possible note for each of the instruments in the orchestra. At the end of the twenty-four bars, I wrote the highest note each instrument could reach that was near a chord of E major. Then I put a squiggly line right through the twenty-four bars, with reference points to tell them roughly what note they should have reached during each bar... Of course, they all looked at me as though I were completely mad. ”

 

McCartney also recounted explaining to the orchestra how it was to be done, and the amusing result:

 

“ Then I went around to all the trumpet players and said, 'Look, all you've got to do is start at the beginning of the 24 bars and go through all the notes on your instrument from the lowest to the highest — and the highest has to happen on that 24th bar, that's all. So you can blow 'em all in that first thing and then rest, then play the top one there if you want, or you can steady them out.' And it was interesting because I saw the orchestra's characters. The strings were like sheep — they all looked at each other: 'Are you going up? I am!' and they'd all go up together, the leader would take them all up. The trumpeters were much wilder. ”

 

McCartney had originally wanted a 90-piece orchestra but this proved unfeasible; the difference was more than made up, however, as the semi-improvised segment was recorded multiple times and eventually four different recordings were overdubbed into a single massive crescendo. For all the chaos of the recording session, the results were a brilliant success; in the final edit of the song the orchestral crescendo is reprised, in even more cacophonous fashion, at the conclusion of the song.

 

It had been prearranged for this session to be filmed by NEMS Enterprises for use in a planned television special. However, the film was never released in its entirety, although portions of it can be seen in the "A Day in the Life" promotional film, including shots of studio guests like Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithfull, Keith Richards, Donovan, Pattie Boyd and Michael Nesmith.

 

Reflecting The Beatles' taste for experimentation and avant garde at this point, the orchestra players (mostly conservative, middle-aged professional musicians) were decked out in formal dress for the film, but also asked to wear or were given a "fancy dress" (costume) piece, leading to different players wearing anything from red noses to fake stick-on nipples. George Martin recalled that the lead violinist performed wearing a gorilla paw, while a bassoon player placed a balloon on the end of his instrument.

 

 

The chord

Following the final orchestral crescendo, the song ends with one of the most famous final chords in music history: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, George Martin, and Mal Evans, simultaneously playing an E-major chord on three different pianos. The sound of the final chord was manipulated to ring out for as long as possible (nearly a minute) by increasing the sound level to the tape as the vibration faded out. Near the end of the chord the recording levels were turned so high that the sound of papers rustling, a chair squeaking, and someone saying "Shhh!" (as if they are advising the band members or production staff to keep quiet) can all be heard. Some claim that the hum of the Abbey Road studios air conditioning can be heard, despite the fact that the chord was recorded in February.

 

The piano chord was a replacement for a failed vocal experiment: on the evening following the orchestra recording session, The Beatles had originally recorded an ending of their voices humming the chord, but, even after multiple overdubs, found that they wanted something with more impact.

 

Due to the multiple takes required to perfect the orchestral cacophony and the finishing chord, as well as The Beatles' considerable procrastination in composing the song, the total duration of time spent recording "A Day in the Life" was 34 hours, a rather long time for the production of one song by The Beatles and standing in marked contrast to their earliest work: their first album, Please Please Me, was recorded in its entirety in only 10 hours.

 

The Anthology 3 version of "The End" concludes with a "final chord" intended to bring closure to the CD series. It was actually the final chord of "A Day in the Life" played backwards to the point where it began, then forwards as it plays at the end of "Sgt. Pepper".

 

 

After the chord

Immediately following the dying moments of the crashing piano chord is an extremely high-pitched tone - too high-pitched for some, especially old humans to hear but audible to dogs and other animals. The high tone was inserted, as was John Lennon's intention, to irritate the listener's dog. However, the tone was only inserted on the first 5000 copies of the LP (save for the American Capitol Records pressing), but is now available on all copies of the CD.

 

This noise is interrupted by a loop of incomprehensible Beatles studio chatter, spliced together apparently at random sections would play forward and others backward. This lasts for two seconds and the final three syllables are on the final groove creating a loop that is repeated 'endlessly'. This noise was placed in the concentric run-out groove of the vinyl LP. If the listener's record player had an auto return mechanism, a short burst of noise would be heard before the needle was lifted and moved back into place. Otherwise, the sound would loop infinitely, leading the listener to wonder if something had gone wrong with the record or the record player. Rumours of a 'hidden message', audible only when one played the vinyl copy backwards, abounded for many years without substantiation. This was mainly due to the practical difficulties involved with manually spooling the record backwards whilst maintaining a constant speed. All four Beatles denied the obscene backwards message and said it was complete gibberish that they did for laughs.

 

This combined coda to "A Day in the Life" and the Sgt. Pepper LP was included in British pressings but not originally in American pressings. The 1987 CD rerelease—in any country—recreates this effect, although, since an infinite loop cannot be created on compact discs, the Beatle chatter is looped eight or nine times before fading slowly out.

 

On Anthology II, in an early, pre-orchestral version of the song, Paul can be heard saying "Y'see, the worst thing about doing this, or doing something like this, is that I think at first people sort of, are a bit suspicious. You know, 'come on, what are you up to?'. But the thing is, it really is just..." before the song fades out.

 

The Who lampooned this effect later in 1967 with their album The Who Sell Out. The album, an ode to pirate radio that included genuine and false advertisements, ended with an infinite loop featuring voices repeating the words "Track Records"—the Who's record label—over and over.

 

Brand New also lampooned this noise on their 2003 album Deja Entendu. After the ending of the final track, "Play Crack the Sky", you can hear lead singer Jesse Lacey walk to the back of the room, sing the noise in an upwards crescendo and walk out of a door.

 

 

Lyrics and alternate versions

Lyrically, the song is actually a fitting together of two entirely different pieces of music, segued together seamlessly to create a powerful and disturbing portrait of a narrator so consumed by the distractions of his everyday life that he is equally unmoved by a tragic car crash, a brutal war film, and a story about potholes, each of which is recounted in the same trivial tone. At the end of the otherwise fairly upbeat Sgt. Pepper album, this sudden note of profound fatalism is rather startling.

 

The song has been released in several versions with minor variations. The version on Sgt. Pepper has its beginning cross-faded with the end of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)". The versions on the LP release of The Beatles 1967-1970 (the "Blue Album") collection and on a 1978 single have a fade-in in the intro, while the 1988 compilation album Imagine: John Lennon and the CD release of The Beatles 1967-1970 have the song with a clean intro. The Anthology 2 release includes an alternate take of the basic track starting with Lennon's bizarre count-in of "Sugar-plum fairy, sugar-plum fairy", then edited together with an alternate mix of the "Woke up, fell out of bed" section, which ends in McCartney flubbing the vocal line and swearing. The version on The Beatles' Love features several differences. It includes the "Sugar-Plum Fairy" intro, but omits the high-frequency sound and chatter loop after the final chord. In addition, the stereo split of the opening is transposed, with the guitar introduction being played through the left channel rather than the right. With regard to the vocals, Lennon's originally started on the right and gradually 'moved across' to the left after the first verse, while McCartney's stayed on the right; however, the Love version places both tracks in the centre of the soundscape.

 

 

Controversy

 

Drug references

The song became notorious for its supposedly numerous references to drugs — on 1 June 1967 (two days before the Sgt. Pepper LP was released), the BBC announced it was banning "A Day in the Life" from British stations due to the "I'd love to turn you on" line, which according to them, implicitly advocated drug use.

 

Other verses of the song allegedly referring to drugs include the verses "Found my way upstairs and had a smoke / Somebody spoke and I went into a dream". A spokesman for the BBC stated: "We have listened to this song over and over again. And we have decided that it appears to go just a little too far, and could encourage a permissive attitude to drug-taking."

 

Lennon and McCartney publicly complained about the ban at a dinner party their manager, Brian Epstein, hosted, to celebrate their new album. Lennon said:

 

“ The laugh is that Paul and I wrote this song from a headline in a newspaper. It's about a crash and its victim. How can anyone read drugs into it is beyond me. Everyone seems to be falling overboard to see the word drug in the most innocent of phrases. ”

 

McCartney said about his part of the song:

 

“ The BBC have misinterpreted the song. It has nothing to do with drug taking. It's only about a dream." ”

 

McCartney later flatly denied the allegations regarding the verse that got his and Lennon's song banned from British Broadcasting Corporation's stations:

 

“ This [line] was the only one on the album written as a deliberate provocation. But what we want to do is to turn you on to the truth rather than on to pot. ”

 

However, regarding McCartney's segment of the song, Martin said:

 

“ At the time I had a strong suspicion that 'went upstairs and had a smoke' was a drug reference. They always used to disappear and have a little puff but they never did it in front of me. They always used to go down to the canteen and Mal Evans used to guard it. ”

 

It has been claimed that the BBC's ban has not officially been lifted, but like other former BBC bans it has clearly fallen into abeyance, because the Corporation has played the song quite frequently in recent years. "A Day in the Life" was, tellingly, the last song played by the British offshore pirate station Radio London before it closed down on 14 August 1967 to avoid contravening the Marine Etc. (Broadcasting) Offences Act - pop radio would soon be put into the hands of the BBC, and "Big L" were clearly reflecting a strong feeling at the time that the BBC could never do pop radio in the true, uncensored sense in the way that the much-mourned offshore stations could.

 

 

Paul Is Dead

The song also became an integral part of the "Paul Is Dead" urban legend, with part of the song falling under suspicion as the depiction of a motor accident which proved fatal for McCartney.

 

 

9/11 Attacks

Controversy about the song remained some 34 years later: In the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, a list of songs, including "A Day in the Life", circulated on the Internet purportedly from Clear Channel Communications to its affiliates recommending that the listed songs not be played in order to avoid hurting the sensitivities of the American public (it was later revealed that the original list was the work of a few program directors working on their own, and that the list grew and changed as it was circulated). An urban legend was perpetuated that the intent was an officially sanctioned ban on the listed songs, but this has been denied by Clear Channel Communications.

 

 

Recognition

The song placed twelfth on CBC's 50 Tracks, the second highest Beatles song on the list, second to "In My Life", and also placed 26th on the Rolling Stone Magazine's list of the 500 best songs of all time. It was placed first in Q Magazine's list of the 50 greatest British songs of all time, and also came top of Mojo Magazine's 101 Greatest Beatles Songs, as decided by a panel of musicians and journalists.

 

 

Cover versions and references

The final chord of "An American Symphony" that concludes the film, Mr. Holland's Opus, is identical to the final chord of "A Day in the Life." Throughout the film are other various Beatles references, so this is most likely not a coincidence.

The Fall covered the song on a NME compiled Beatles cover album, Sgt. Pepper Knew My Father.

An element of the chorus was used a year after the release of "A Day in the Life" by Deep Purple for their first single "Hush".

Jeff Beck performed an instrumental version of the song, which was released on the George Martin album In My Life.

Towards the end of David Bowie's plastic soul song "Young Americans", Bowie's back-up singers, two black females, stop the beat to sing "I heard the news today, oh boy," nearly identical to the famous first line of A Day in the Life.

Bowie's "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide", which concludes the album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars as "A Day in the Life" concludes Sgt. Pepper, begins as a slow, solo acoustic piece, then builds in both sonic and emotional intensity, adding backing vocals and instrumentation. After seemingly reaching a final cadence there is a momentary pause, followed by a sustained chord.

Phish has covered the song several times throughout their career.

The experimental metal/hardcore/punk band Ramallah covered the song in 2005 on their album Kill a Celebrity.

The Cat's Miaow have also recorded a version of "A Day in the Life", minus the Paul McCartney parts. This version is available on their A Kiss and A Cuddle CD.

Alternative rock band Mae recorded their own version of the song.

The Devo song "Some Things Never Change" from the album Total Devo pays homage to the song, starting each verse with the a nearly identical "I saw the news today oh boy" and following similar (although not identical) structure.

Texas heavy-metal band Galactic Cowboys reference A Day in the Life in their song "It's Not Over", which appeared on their 1998 album At The End Of The Day. It contains a similarly unnerving ending to the song.

Type O Negative have referenced the song on many occasions. Two notable examples include the songs "Stay Out Of My Dreams" and "Kill You Tonight (Reprise)", both of which contain a similar piano chord as an outro.

The Swedish pop band Sugarplum Fairy has taken its name from the song.

The Rutles song "Cheese and Onions" is a homage to the song.

Grant Green (jazz guitarist) covers the song on his 1970 album "Green is Beautiful" (Blue Note Records).

The Libertines' Carl Barat and Pete Doherty cover this song for BBC Radio 2's 40-year-anniversary celebration of Sgt. Pepper, broadcast June 16 2007.

132. All You Need Is Love

 

 

"All You Need Is Love" is a song written by John Lennon with contributions from Paul McCartney and credited to Lennon/McCartney. It was first performed by The Beatles on Our World, the first ever live global television link. Broadcast to 26 countries and watched by 350 million people, the programme was broadcast via satellite on June 25, 1967. The BBC had commissioned the Beatles to write a song for the UK's contribution and this was the result. It is among the most famous and significant songs performed by the group.

 

The song was recorded during the Magical Mystery Tour EP sessions, and later appeared on the LP version which was first released in the US.

 

Release

Asked to come up with a song containing a simple message that would be understood by viewers of all nationalities, Lennon's "All You Need is Love" extended the message that he had first tried to put across in "The Word", from their 1965 album Rubber Soul. "It was an inspired song and they really wanted to give the world a message," said Brian Epstein. "The nice thing about it is that it cannot be misinterpreted. It is a clear message saying that love is everything." Lennon was fascinated by the power of slogans to unite people and was never afraid to create art out of propaganda. When asked in 1971 whether songs like "Give Peace a Chance" and "Power to the People" were propaganda songs, he answered, "Sure. So was 'All You Need Is Love'. I'm a revolutionary artist. My art is dedicated to change."

 

 

The song was so well-received that the band decided it should be their next single. Released in the UK on July 7th, it went straight to No. 1 and remained there for three weeks. It was similarly successful in the US (also appearing on the American LP version of Magical Mystery Tour in November).

 

It was also the last song both recorded and released by the band before the death of their manager, Brian Epstein, on August 27, 1967, little more than a month after the song was released.

 

The interviews on The Beatles Anthology documentary series reveal that Paul McCartney and George Harrison were unsure as to whether the song was written especially for the Our World broadcast. However, George Martin and Ringo Starr assert that it was. When asked, McCartney replied:

 

"I don't think it was written specially for it. But it was one of the songs we had. [...] It was certainly tailored to it once we had it. But I've got a feeling it was just one of John's songs that was coming there. We went down to Olympic Studios in Barnes and recorded it and then it became the song they said, 'Ah. This is the one we should use.' I don't actually think it was written for it."

 

 

Live broadcast

For the live broadcast, the Beatles were (except for Ringo) seated on stools, and accompanied by a small studio orchestra. They were surrounded by many friends and acquaintances (seated on the floor), who sang along with the refrain during the fade-out, including Mick Jagger and Kim McLagan. Lennon, despite affecting indifference, was said to be quite nervous about the broadcast, given the potential size of the international TV audience. Somewhat dissatisfied with his vocal performance, he subsequently re-recorded the solo verses in the studio for use on the single release. Contrary to popular belief, McCartney wore a rose in his headset not to go along with the theme of the performance, but to spite Lennon, with whom he spoke prior to the show. Lennon insisted that McCartney wear green. After getting his way, McCartney went looking around the studio for something red until he eventually came across a vase of roses outside George Harrison's dressing room.

 

The black and white footage of the performance was colourised for its inclusion on The Beatles Anthology documentary.

 

 

Structure

Because of the setting of a worldwide satellite broadcast, the song was deliberately given an international feel, opening with the French anthem "La Marseillaise", and including snatches of several other pieces during the long fade-out, including "2-part Invention #8 in F" by Johann Sebastian Bach (transposed to G and played on 2 piccolo trumpets), "Greensleeves" (played by the strings), Glenn Miller's "In The Mood" (played on a saxophone), one of the Beatles' seminal hits (particularly in Great Britain and the United States), "She Loves You" (spontaneously ad-libbed by John and Paul), and Jeremiah Clarke's "Prince of Denmark's March" lilting off at the end. (Many sources, including Beatles' producer George Martin, have misremembered or misidentified the Bach quote as being from the "Brandenburg Concerto No. 2".)

 

The structure of the song is somewhat complex. The main body of the song (the verse) is in the very unusual and infrequently used 7/4 time signature with two measures of 7/4, one measure of 8/4, then back to a measure of 7/4 with the intro background vocals repeatedly singing "Love, love, love", over the top of which enter Lennon's enigmatic lyrics:

 

“ There's nothing you can do that can't be done

Nothing you can sing that can't be sung

Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game

It's easy ”

 

By contrast, the chorus, is (almost) pure simplicity: "All you need is love", in 4/4 time repeated against the horn response but, each chorus has only six measures (as opposed to the usual eight), and each chorus ends with a measure of 6/4, then back to the verse in 7/4.

 

Lennon had previously experimented with mixed time signatures. McCartney's song "We Can Work It Out" from 1965 has a sixteen measure bridge composed by Lennon in which he juxtaposes 4 measures each of 4/4 and 3/4; possibly inspired by the Dave Brubeck song "Three to get Ready" from the 1959 "Time Out (album)" which alternates two measures each of 3/4 and 4/4 for the entire piece- an album George Martin would certainly have been familiar with and possibly played for the Beatles. Lennon, in turn, may have inspired The Band with his adventurous use of time signatures; on their eponymous second album (from 1969), Robbie Robertson and Richard Manuel composed the song "Jawbone" in 6/4 time.

 

"All You Need is Love" remains one of only two songs (along with Pink Floyd's "Money" from 1973) written in 7/4 time to reach the top 20 charts in the United States.

 

The track was remixed by George Martin and his son, Giles Martin, for the Beatles' soundtrack for the Cirque du Soleil show Love. The main differences are a more central sound to the song's introductory vocals and strings (rather than the left/right stereo split of the original) and a number of overdubs for the ending, finally closing with the outro from the song "Good Night".

 

In the film Yellow Submarine (1968), the second verse, as well as the instrumental, are deleted. Also, the last choruses are switched around, with the "All Together Now", and "Everybody", coming first before the last group of choruses.

 

 

In popular culture

The song was later used in the series finale of the science fiction television series The Prisoner. Patrick MacGoohan, in an interview, said the song is used to illustrate the point that a lot of lip service is given to the idea of caring for each other, but that it's something which isn't actually done very much.

The song appeared again in the wedding scene in the movie Love Actually.

A part of the song is used in the movie Moulin Rouge!.

The song is part of the soundtrack of "Michael" and John Travolta sings it in the movie.

There was a reference to the song by Judd Hirsch playing Julius Levinson in the film Independence Day during a conversation with Margaret Colin playing Constance Spano about her continuing love for her ex-husband David Levinson played by Jeff Goldblum.

 

Covers

Elvis Costello sang it with the aid of just one guitar at the Wembley leg of Live Aid. The British crowd (who sang along with practically every artist that day) sang the accompanying horn parts.

Entrain sang it on Cape Cod Covers, Vol. 2 "The Beatles".

It was also used to herald the entrance of Queen Elizabeth II into the Millennium Dome during the United Kingdom's millennial celebrations on 31 December 1999, having been voted the nation's favourite song. For that reason it was sung by choirs across the country during the Golden Jubilee of Elizabeth II celebrations on 2 June 2002, beginning in Slough and being picked up in many other cities.

The britpop band Oasis has performed this song live.

Nada Surf's 2006 cover of "All You Need is Love" was featured in a Chase Credit Card commercial in the U.S.

Synth-pop band New Musik covered it on their 1982 album Warp, appearing on the album after an original song with the same title.

Echo & The Bunnymen's cover can be found on the 2003 re-releasing of the CD Ocean Rain.

Einstürzende Neubauten's song "Headcleaner" (Tabula Rasa) contains the lyrics for "All You Need Is Love", except they are in a skewed tense.

Where the original goes:

 

“ There's nothing you can do that can't be done

Nothing you can sing that can't be sung

Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game

It's easy ”

 

In Neubauten's version the line goes:

 

“ Cause nothing has been done that can't be done

Nothing has been sang that can't be sung

And nothing has been set, so forget how to play the game

It's easy ”

 

The line 'All you need is love' is also replaced with 'All you need is headcleaner'.

 

 

Parody

In their film All You Need Is Cash, the Rutles parodied "All You Need Is Love" as "Love Life". The "Battle Hymn of the Republic" replaces "La Marseillaise" at the beginning, and "Love is the meaning of life. Life is the meaning of love" is the refrain at the end while their song "Hold My Hand, Yeah Yeah" replaces "She Loves You" as the self-parody.

133. Baby You're A Rich Man

 

 

"Baby You're a Rich Man" is a song by The Beatles recorded on 11 May 1967 at Olympic Sound Studios, the first song by the band recorded and mixed completely outside Abbey Road Studios.

 

The song started out as two different, unfinished songs. The verses taken from "One of the Beautiful People" by John Lennon, were combined with Paul McCartney's previously unaccompanied "Baby, you're a rich man..." chorus. The two songs were combined in a similar fashion to "A Day in the Life".

 

The song was recorded during sessions for the Magical Mystery Tour EP, but was not intended for release there (see below). The unusual oboe-like sound was created with an Clavioline.

 

Releases

The song was included as the b-side on the "All You Need is Love" single, and then on the US release of Magical Mystery Tour, in 1967. Initially intended for the Yellow Submarine animated film, "Baby You're a Rich Man" was used in the film, but did not appear on the original soundtrack album released in 1969.

 

 

The original single mix vs. German mix

When the song was first released in 1967, stereo was not commonplace on singles so for many years the song was only available in either mono or simulated stereo. Producer George Martin and recording engineer Geoff Emerick created a true stereo mix of the song in 1971 for the release of the Magical Mystery Tour album in Germany. However when the song was remixed, an effect that had been created in the mixing stage in 1967 was left out. On the 1967 mono mix, a delay effect, which was made to feedback, after the lines "far as the eye can see" and "Often enough to know" was included. This acted as a fill from the end of one line of the verse to the start of the next. Its omission from the stereo mix explains why there is an instrumental break after these lines. Subsequently when the song was remixed again in 1999 for the Yellow Submarine Songtrack the effect was again left off the song.

 

134. Hello Goodbye

 

 

"Hello, Goodbye" is a 1967 song by the The Beatles. It was the Christmas single for 1967, and topped the charts in both America and Britain (where it spent seven weeks at number one). It also appeared on the American album Magical Mystery Tour - in fact, the song was recorded during sessions for the British double EP of the same name, though the LP is the current official version.

 

Though the songwriting credit is Lennon/McCartney, it was written only by Paul McCartney.

 

Alistair Taylor, who worked for the Beatles' manager, Brian Epstein, once asked McCartney how he wrote his songs, and McCartney took him into his dining room to give him a demonstration on his harmonium. He asked Taylor to shout the opposite of whatever he sang as he played the instrument. Taylor later said, "I wonder whether Paul really made up that song as he went along or whether it was running through his head already." In any case, McCartney soon had completed a demo of his newest single — originally titled "Hello Hello".

 

John Lennon wasn't fond of the song, which he called "three minutes of contradictions and meaningless juxtapositions." His distaste for the song grew further when it pushed "I Am the Walrus" to the B-side of the single. Though Lennon had anticipated "I Am the Walrus" being the A-side of the single, Paul McCartney and George Martin believed that "Hello, Goodbye" was the more commercial tune (their judgement was vindicated when the song hit Number 1, and was particularly popular in the American charts). This dispute fed the series of debates over single releases between Lennon and McCartney which prompted Lennon to say after the Beatles' breakup, "I got sick and tired of being Paul's backup band". Lennon felt that some of his best and most innovative pieces ("I Am the Walrus", "Across the Universe") were wrongly placed as B-sides to songs he regarded as "un-worthy" ("Hello, Goodbye" and "Lady Madonna"), although he was willing to compromise with fellow songwriter McCartney during this period with songs he considered stronger, such as "Hey Jude".

 

The final lines of the song, where the entire band sings "Hela, hey-ba hello-a" (the portion that plays over the end titles of the Magical Mystery Tour film) came spontaneously in the studio. When the song was released, McCartney gave a more mystical explanation of the meaning of his song in an interview with Disc: "The answer to everything is simple. It's a song about everything and nothing. If you have black you have to have white. That's the amazing thing about life."

 

At least three promotional videos were filmed for "Hello, Goodbye", but not aired by the BBC due to its strict rules on miming.

 

An alternate version of the song was released on The Beatles Anthology series, containing a guitar part for melody rather than the original strings.

 

 

Trivia

 

A version of "Hello, Goodbye" was used in a commercial for the arrival of David Beckham to the United States in 2007.

"Hello, Goodbye" was the song used by Paul McCartney to open his Back in the U.S. and Back in the World tour concerts during 2002/2003.

In 2006 and 2007, the song (as a cover) was used in an advertising campaign for Telstra's Next G network.

In early 2007, a television commercial for the Target Corporation used a cover of "Hello, Goodbye" by American singer Sophia Shorai that aired during the 2007 Academy Awards. The Coca-Cola corporation has also used the Beatles' song, "Hello Goodbye," in their television commercials. Although, the song is not original and a different voice is singing the song.

hellogoodbye, a power pop emo band, derived its name from the song.

The album Love uses the outro sequence of Hello Goodbye in part of the closing of the remixed Strawberry Fields Forever and a small section of the refrain was mixed into Glass Onion.

135. I Am The Walrus

 

 

"I Am the Walrus" is a 1967 song by The Beatles, written by John Lennon and credited to Lennon-McCartney. Lennon later claimed he wrote the first two lines on separate acid trips. The song was used in the Beatles' 1967 television film and album Magical Mystery Tour, and was released as the B-side to the #1 hit "Hello, Goodbye".

 

Lennon composed the song by combining three separate songs he had been working on. Additionally, when he learned that a teacher at his old primary school was having his students analyse Beatles' lyrics, he added a verse of specifically nonsensical words designed to confuse listeners.

 

The walrus within the song is a reference to the walrus in Lewis Carroll's The Walrus and the Carpenter. Lennon later expressed dismay at learning that the walrus was the villain within the poem (see below).

 

 

 

Origins

The genesis of the lyrics is found in three different song ideas that Lennon was working on, the first of which was inspired by hearing a police siren while at his home in Weybridge; Lennon wrote the lines "Mis-ter cit-y police-man" to the rhythm of the siren. The second idea was a short rhyme about Lennon sitting in his Weybridge garden, while the third idea was a nonsense lyric about sitting on a corn flake. Unable to finish the ideas as three different songs, he instead chose to combine them into one.

 

Sometime later, Lennon received a letter from a pupil attending Quarry Bank Grammar School, which he had attended as a child. The writer mentioned that the English master was making his class analyze Beatles song lyrics. (John wrote an answer to the letter, dated September 1, 1967, which was auctioned by Christie's of London in 1992.)

 

Lennon, amused that a teacher was putting so much effort into understanding Beatles lyrics, decided to write the most confusing, unusual lyric he could. Lennon's childhood friend and former fellow member of the Quarrymen Peter Shotton was visiting, and he asked Shotton about a silly playground nursery rhyme that they used to sing when they were kids.

 

Shotton remembered the words:

 

"Yellow matter custard, green slop pie,

All mixed together with a dead dog's eye,

Slap it on a butty, ten foot thick,

Then wash it all down with a cup of cold sick".

Lennon borrowed a couple of words from the rhyme, added the three old unfinished ideas and the result was the lyrics to "I Am the Walrus". Beatles official biographer Hunter Davies was present while the song was being written and wrote an account in his 1968 book on the band. Upon finishing the lyrics, Lennon remarked to Shotton, "Let the f***ers work that one out."

 

An interesting observation about the music is that all the chords used are major chords or seventh chords, and all the 'musical' letters of the alphabet (A, B, C, D, E, F, and G) are used. The song ends with a chord progression built on ascending and descending lines in the bass and strings, repeated over and over as the song fades out. Musicologist Alan W. Pollack analyzes the section like this: "The chord progression of the outro itself is an harmonic Moebius strip with scales in bassline and top voice that move in contrary motion." The bassline descends stepwise A, G, F, E, D, C, and B, while the strings' part rises A, B, C, D, E, F#, G: this sequence repeats as the song fades, with the strings rising higher on each iteration. Pollack also notes that the repeated cell is seven bars long, which means that a different chord begins each four-bar phrase.

 

The line "See how they fly like Lucy in the sky" refers to Lennon's earlier psychedelic song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

 

Lennon explained much of the song in an interview he gave to Playboy in 1980:

 

"The first line was written on one acid trip one weekend. The second line was written on the next acid trip the next weekend, and it was filled in after I met Yoko. Part of it was putting down Hare Krishna. All these people were going on about Hare Krishna, Allen Ginsberg in particular. The reference to "Elementary penguin" is the elementary, naive attitude of going around chanting, "Hare Krishna," or putting all your faith in any one idol. I was writing obscurely, a la Dylan, in those days." (Lennon said this despite the remarkably little-noted fact that the song's opening line, "I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together", seems an obvious parody of the opening line of the song "Marching to Pretoria", by the Weavers: "I'm with you and you're with me and we are all together.")

"It never dawned on me that Lewis Carroll was commenting on the capitalist and social system. I never went into that bit about what he really meant, like people are doing with the Beatles' work. Later, I went back and looked at it and realized that the walrus was the bad guy in the story and the carpenter was the good guy. I thought, Oh, $h!t, I picked the wrong guy. I should have said, 'I am the carpenter.' But that wouldn't have been the same, would it? [singing] 'I am the carpenter....'"

The song also contains the unusual exclamation goo goo g'joob. Various unsatisfactory hypotheses exist regarding the origin and meaning of these syllables. One claim is that the phrase was derived from the very similar "koo koo ka choo" in Paul Simon's song Mrs. Robinson, written in 1967. However, the film The Graduate, where "Mrs. Robinson" debuted, was not released until December 1967, a month after the release of "I Am the Walrus", and The Graduate Original Soundtrack (which contained only fragments of the final version of "Mrs. Robinson") was not released until January 1968.

 

Perhaps due to the close chronological timing of the release of the two songs, the "Walrus" chorus is often misquoted as "Mrs. Robinson"'s "koo koo ka choo," although the lyrics to "Walrus" were published as part of the Magical Mystery Tour EP packaging, so there is no debate to the actual lyric.

 

It has also been noted that James Joyce's Finnegans Wake contains the words googoo goosth at the top of page *557, where it appears:

 

...like milk-juggles as if it was the wrake of the hapspurus or old Kong Gander O'Toole of the Mountains or his googoo goosth she seein, sliving off over the sawdust lobby out of the backroom, wan ter, that was everywans in turruns, in his honeymoon trim, holding up his fingerhals...

It is not clear that Joyce is the source, or what it would mean if he were, but Lennon was a reader and admirer of Joyce.

 

The unusual monologue buried in the mix towards the end of the song is a few lines of Shakespeare's King Lear (Act IV, Scene VI), which were added to the song direct from an AM radio receiving the broadcast of the play on the BBC Home Service (or possibly the BBC Third Programme). The bulk of the audible dialogue, heard in the fadeout, is the death scene of the character Oswald (including the words, "O untimely Death! Death!"); this is just one additional piece of "evidence" used to support the Paul is Dead urban legend.

 

The basic backing track of "I Am the Walrus" featuring the Beatles was released in 1996 on Anthology 2. George Martin arranged and added an orchestral accompaniment that included violins, cellos, horns, clarinet and a 16-piece choir. Paul McCartney has said more recently that Lennon gave very specific instructions to Martin as to how he wished the orchestration to be scored, including singing most of the parts as a guide. A large group of vocalists (eight girls and eight boys), named "Mike Sammes Singers", took part in the recording as well.

 

The original 1967 stereo mix of the record has an interesting twist: At almost exactly two minutes into the song, the mix changes from regular stereo to "fake stereo", with most of the bass on one channel, and most of the treble on the other. The mix appears to 'wander' sonically in the fadeout, from left to right. The reason for the change in mixes was that the radio broadcast was inserted during the mono mixdown. The U.S. mono single mix also includes an extra bar of music before the words "yellow matter custard" - an early, overdub-free mix of the song released on The Beatles Anthology 2 reveals John singing the lyrics "Yellow mat - " too early; this was edited out. The U.S. version opens with a four-beat chord while foreign mixes feature six beats on the initial chord.

 

In 2003, the first-ever stereo mix of the entire song (except for the intro) was included as part of the soundtrack for the DVD release of The Beatles Anthology.

 

In 2006, the first-ever stereo mix of the complete song (from beginning to end, including the "fake stereo" second half) was issued on the Beatles' album Love.

 

 

Who was the Walrus?

In the booklet that accompanies the Magical Mystery Tour album, "I Am the Walrus" is given the subtitle (in small print) "'No you're not!' said Little Nicola." The 1968 Beatles song "Glass Onion", written by Lennon, and featured on the White Album, refers to earlier Beatles compositions. Referring to "I Am the Walrus", Lennon sings, "Here's another clue for you all, the walrus was Paul."

 

In the 1980 Playboy interview, John responded to the confusion:

 

"I threw the line in — 'the Walrus was Paul' — just to confuse everybody a bit more. And I thought 'Walrus' has now become me, meaning 'I am the one.' Only it didn't mean that in this song."

 

Lennon also comments in The Beatles Anthology that he wrote the song at a point when the band was beginning to fall apart, and he hoped that by inserting this line in combination with "I told you 'bout the walrus and me man, you know that we're as close as can be man", he could begin to patch things up with the band.

 

Lennon said that the fact that McCartney was dressed as a walrus on the cover of the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour LP inspired the line. Also, Lennon himself was dressed as a walrus in the music video for "I Am the Walrus", instead of Paul who is wearing a hippopotamus costume.

 

Paul also responded to the lyric in an interview broadcast on a Beatles documentary on WYNY 1981:

 

"[John] happened to have a line go 'the walrus was Paul' and we had a great giggle to say 'yeah, let's do that,' because everybody's gonna read into it and go crackers cause they all thought that John was the walrus."

On Lennon's 1970 solo album Plastic Ono Band, the song "God" contains the lines "I was the walrus, but now I'm John."

 

 

Cover versions

Men Without Hats recorded a version for their 1991 album Sideways.

Spooky Tooth recorded a version for their 1969 album The Last Puff.

Leo Sayer covered the song for the 1976 ephemeral musical documentary All This and World War II.

Manchester rock band Oasis covered the song live on numerous occasions, and released one version on the B-side to their 1994 single "Cigarettes & Alcohol". The track can also be found on their album The Masterplan.

A performance of the song by actor and comedian Jim Carrey appears on George Martin's album In My Life. At the end of his version, he cries, "There, I did it! I've defiled a timeless piece of art! For my next trick I'll paint a clown face on the Mona Lisa using the Shroud of Turin as a drop cloth!"

Frank Zappa covered the song during his 1988 tour (actually, Ike Willis sang it). Zappa was refused the rights to issue his cover version of this and other Beatles tunes by then-catalog owner Michael Jackson, who was offended by Zappa's "Why Don't You Like Me?," which mocked the pop star. Thus, these recordings have yet to appear on an official release, although audience recordings have circulated on bootlegs.

In 2004, the rock band Styx performed a cover of the song at Eric Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festival, where the song was received so well that it was the basis of a whole album of covers, 2005's The Big Bang Theory, as well as consistently being played by Styx during concert. Their cover reached the Top 10 on the Mediabase Classic Rock charts.

The German singer Klaus Lage released a closely translated German version of the song on his 1980 debut album Die Musikmaschine.

The German band Die Toten Hosen covered the song on their 1999 album Crash Landing.

The punk band Gray Matter covered the song on their 1985 album Food for Thought

The band Oingo Boingo covered the song on their 1994 album Boingo.

Jeff Martin (of Racer X) made a heavy metal cover of "I Am The Walrus" on his solo album The Fool (2006), with bandmate Paul Gilbert.

Japanese rock band Boris collaborated with noise legend Merzbow for a cover of "I Am The Walrus". This was released on the Walrus/Groon 12" EP in 2007.

Australian singer/songwriter Russell Morris included a version on his 2007 album "Fundamentalist".

 

Cultural references

 

Parodies

"Piggy in the Middle" by the Rutles ("I am the Waitress" is also mentioned by the narrator, but this is not the same as this song, and does not appear)

"The Mole from the Ministry" by XTC (under the pseudonym The Dukes of Stratosphear)

"When We Was Fab" by George Harrison

"Sowing The Seeds Of Love" Tears for Fears

"Vertical Man" Ringo Starr

"I Am The Lesley" by Beatlesex

"I Am Thesaurus" by Andrew Hansen

"Jye Is Tyrannosaurus" by Jye

 

Television references

Comedian Chris Farley referenced the song during a skit on Saturday Night Live in 1993. Acting as motivational speaker Matt Foley, Farley speaks to a group of teenagers who had just thrown eggs onto a house. At one point in his speech, Foley exclaims "Hey man, look at me go, I'm throwing eggs! I'm the eggman, GOO... GOO... G'JOOB!"

In the short-lived Weird Al Show, there was a cartoon segment called "FatMan" where Al played a superhero of the same name who, due to a glandular problem, would become obese and have superhero-like powers. In one episode, an enemy by the name of "The Eggman" introduced himself, then following the barking of a Walrus in his helicopter commented, "and that's the Walrus," to which a nearby police officer exclaimed "Goo goo goo joob!"

In the BBC comedy show The Office, Tim Canterbury references the song: "It's like an alarm clock's gone off, and I've just got to get away. I think it was John Lennon who said, 'Life is what happens when you're making other plans,' and that's how I feel. Although he also said, 'I am the Walrus, I am the eggman,' so I don't know what to believe."

In Six Feet Under, a reference to the song is made in one of the characters' dreams. David sees his boyfriend Keith with a bucket of eggs; the latter then declares: "I am the eggman," to which David replies, "Goo goo ga joob?".

The Simpsons has referenced the song multiple times:

In "El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer (The Mysterious Voyage of Homer)", Homer eats too many hot peppers at a local chili fair and experiences what resembles a bad acid trip. He stumbles around the fairgrounds, and at one point has a vision of Jasper saying "Goo goo ga joob?".

In Bart of War, Bart gets trippy from an old novelty Beatles soda, and begins hallucinating. He remarks, "Yellow matter custard, dripping from a dead dog's eye," as Milhouse morphs through the different phases of John Lennon's career.

A SpongeBob SquarePants episode called "Sing a Song of Patrick" originally had the title "I am the Starfish". It was changed because EMI didn't allow the producers to parody it. (as the song in the episode was supposed to be hated by the Bikini Bottomites)

In an episode of Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi, the title characters eat bad sushi and envision themselves underwater. Ami exclaims, "I see a walrus and we are heading straight for it's mouth!" to which Yumi replies, "We're goning to be ku-ku-ka-chewed!"

The Doctor Who serial The Three Doctors references the song. It happens when one of the Doctors tries to explain that he and the other two Doctors are all the same person. His explanation follows closely to the lyrics when he says, "I am he, and he is me..." Jo Grant, his main companion at the time, breaks in and finishes the line, "and we are all together, goo goo goo joob?" This confuses the Doctors until the assistant explains, "It's a song by the Beatles."

Stephen Colbert has opened his show, The Colbert Report, with the line, "I am the walrus, koo koo ka-truth."

In one episode of Yvon of the Yukon, Harland kills Yvon's pet walrus. Yvon is convinced that the walrus is still alive, and finds a man that looks like one. After he hugs the man for a long time, the man climbs onto a truck, and complains to Yvon, "I am not a walrus. I am the egg man!" as he throws eggs at Yvon.

In a Family Guy parody of Kids Say the Darndest Things, Bill Cosby pretends to go skiing and yells the line "Goo goo goo joob!" for no known reason.

The X-Files has referenced the song multiple times:

In the episode "Eve", Dana Scully asks Eve 8, "Are you Sally Kendrick?" to which she replies, "No. But she is me... and I am her... and we are all together!"

In "Hollywood AD", a speech purportedly by Jesus Christ recorded on the surface of a piece of pottery is translated as saying "I am the bearded cow-like sea beast." The original Aramaic is heard as "Goo goo g'joob."

In episode 2.10 of the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "What's My Line, Part Two," Xander says, "I am the bugman, coo coo ka choo," when looking for information on an assassin made entirely of bugs.

In the "Asses To Ashes" episode of The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air, when Philip Banks is congratulating Carl Robertson on his election victory, a forgetful Carl mistakens Philip's name. When Philip corrects him, Carl replies, "And I am the walrus, coo coo ka choo!"

In "Match of the Day" they showed a close-up of West Ham United chairman Eggert Magnusson. Commentator Jonathan Pearce said 'He is the eggman, goo goo g'joob!'

In episode 9 of The Chaser's War on Everything, the song was parodied for the 150th anniversary of Roget's Thesaurus, and had a faux Roget singing synonyms to the tune of the song.

 

Movie references

Ferris Bueller: "I quote John Lennon: 'I don't believe in Beatles — I just believe in me'. A good point there. After all, he was the Walrus. I could be the Walrus - I'd still have to bum rides off of people."

The Big Lebowski (1998) references the song as follows:

The Dude: "It's like what Lenin said... you look for the person who will benefit, and, uh, uh..."

 

Donny: "I am the walrus."

 

The Dude: "You know what I'm trying to say..."

 

Walter Sobchak: "That f***ing b**ch..."

 

Donny: "I am the walrus."

 

Walter Sobchak: "Shut the f*** up, Donny! V.I. Lenin! Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov!"

In The Million Dollar Hotel (2000), one of the residents of the hotel (played by Peter Stormare) claims that he is the Walrus and complains that he never received "royalties" for all the songs he wrote for the Beatles. He plays "I Am the Walrus" during the film's climax.

In The Breakfast Club, Brian mutters over his essay "Who am I? Who am I? I am the Walrus."

In Antitrust (2001), when Milo gets introduced to his new workmates, they call themselves "the eggmen", and shout "Whooo", lifting their arms like in the song's videoclip.

 

Other

There is a musical reference in Veruca Salt's song "Volcano Girls" (explaining who the Seether was, an earlier Veruca Salt song):

 

"I told you about the Seether before.

You know the one that's neither or nor.

Well here's another clue if you please,

The Seether's Louise."

 

which is similar in lyrics and sound to "Glass Onion" (explaining who the Walrus was):

 

"I told you 'bout the walrus and me man,

You know that we're as close as can be man.

Here's another clue for you all,

The walrus was Paul."

 

I.M.D. Walrus (I am dee walrus) is a character in Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie. He is head of "The Eggheads" which is a kind of scientific organization on the planet Kahani.

9-years-old Oskar Schell, the narrator of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer recalls his Dad who sometimes would whistle "I Am the Walrus" — "because that was his favorite song, even though he couldn't explain what it meant, which frustrated me."

In Strong Bad's 151st email, Strong Bad (as he often does with postal abbreviations) confuses Matt M. WA for "Matt M., Walrus Association". An easter egg found by clicking "WA" brings up a mock business card for "Walrus Association", and the quote at the bottom reads "Koo koo ka-choo or summat", an obvious reference to the famous chorus.

The main villain of the Sonic the Hedgehog Series is named Doctor Eggman, possibly referencing this song. Further, in the game Sonic Adventure 2, the character's theme song includes the line "I am the Eggman." At least once, the character Rotor the Walrus has replied "I am the Walrus!"

In the spin-off Sonic the Hedgehog American comic book series published by Archie Comics, the story in Sonic the Hedgehog #75 is titled "I Am the Eggman" in reference to Doctor Eggman (see above). In a strange coincidence, the British Sonic Comic, Sonic the comic, Sonic often compares Robotnik(Eggman) to a walrus.

In Stephen King's Dreamcatcher, one of the main characters, Henry, continually quotes the song and calls himself the "eggman" or the "walrus."

In the Broadway musical Avenue Q, the character Princeton makes Kate a mix tape with "I Am the Walrus" on it.

The Beatles tribute band Yellow Matter Custard was named after a lyric in this song. It is composed of Matt Bissonette (of Joe Satriani), Mike Portnoy (of Dream Theater), Neal Morse (of Spock's Beard), and Paul Gilbert (of Racer X and Mr. Big).

In the Ricky Nelson song "Garden Party", Nelson refers to John Lennon's attendance at a concert at Madison Square Garden with the words, "Yoko brought her walrus".

In the Firesign Theater recording "The Further Adventures of Nick Danger" on the album How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere at All, there are references to numerous Beatles songs, most notably "Rocky Raccoon", as well as the use of "Goo Goo ga Joob". The album cover also features the likeness of John Lennon next to Groucho Marx, a visual pun on Marx/Lenin, the architects of Soviet Communism.

In the MMORPG RuneScape, while doing a treasure trail, you may come across a man named Uri who makes random jokes on culture. One of his jokes is: "I am the eggman. Or you one of the eggmen?". Your character will respond with "No, I am the walrus!".

In a Ren & Stimpy comic,(in the back there was an ask Stimpy, who goes by Dr. Stupid, page) a child asked Stimpy "Who Am I?", Stimpy replies, "I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together. I am the egg man. They are the egg men. I am the walrus. Koo koo ka-joob!"

In the May 2007 issue of the Nintendo Power magazine, The "Mii of the Month" is a walrus saying "Coo coo ca choo" and the article title is "I Am the Walrus."

In the Coheed and Cambria song "The Velorium Camper I: Faint of Hearts", "Coo coo ca choo" is said several times in the song.

The Christian hip hop group Futhermore created a song entitled "Are You The Walrus." The music video followed a similar pretense to the song "I am the Walrus."

In the third episode of the Sam and Max episodic game series, entitled The Mole, The Mob, and the Meatball, there is a scene where the player must use a password to get into a door. The player can choose in a dialouge box to guess a password, which will make Max say something random. One of the possible passwords is "I am the Walrus."

The sheet of stickers that shipped with Iomega Zip Drives used to label Zip disks with phrases like "i am Confidential Stuff" or "I am offsite Backup" always included one sticker with the phrase "i am the walrus" (the "i" in all of the phrases was shown as the Iomega logo).

136. Magical Mystery Tour

 

 

"Magical Mystery Tour" is a song by The Beatles, the opening track and theme song for the record and made-for-TV film of the same name. Richie Unterberger of All Music Guide called it "a pleasant, get-up-and-go tune, but not one of the Beatles' very best songs," and unlike the theme songs for their 4 primary film projects, it was not a smash hit.

 

Composition

The song is credited to Lennon/McCartney, and Paul McCartney said it was co-written. John Lennon said, "Paul's song. Maybe I did part of it, but it was his concept."

 

McCartney said the "Roll up! Roll up!" introduction was inspired by a barker, and is also a sly reference to rolling a joint. The remaining lyrics explain in a general way the premise of the film: a mystery tour of the type that was popular in Britain when the Beatles were young. Lennon and McCartney expanded the tour to make it magical, which allowed it to be "a little more surreal than the real ones."

 

 

Recording

Recording began on 25 April 1967, less than a week after the final sessions for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The song was not complete when the session began and much of the evening was spent in rehearsals, but by the end of the evening the basic rhythm track was complete. The Beatles added bass guitar and vocal overdubs on 26 April and 27 April. On 3 May, the brass fanfare and other parts were added in a disorganized session where the trumpet players began the evening without a score. According to Philip Jones, a friend of one of the players who was present, one of the players eventually took matters into his own hands and wrote a score out for them.

 

 

Release

"Magical Mystery Tour" was released on a six-song EP in the UK on 8 December 1967. In the U.S., the EP was stretched to an LP by including five songs previously released as singles. During the CD era, the LP version was issued on CD in both countries.

 

 

Cover versions

"Magical Mystery Tour" was covered by Cheap Trick and released on their 1991 greatest hits compilation. It has also been covered live by Type O Negative on their Dead Again tour, and was a hit for Ambrosia in 1978.

137. The Fool On The Hill

 

 

"The Fool on the Hill" is a song by The Beatles. It was written and sung by Paul McCartney (credited to Lennon/McCartney) and recorded in 1967. It was included on the Magical Mystery Tour EP and album, and presented in the Magical Mystery Tour film, with a promotional sequence shot near Nice, in France.

 

McCartney said of the song:

 

“ 'Fool on the Hill' was mine and I think I was writing about someone like Maharishi. His detractors called him a fool. Because of his giggle he wasn't taken too seriously ... I was sitting at the piano at my father's house in Liverpool hitting a D 6th chord, and I made up 'Fool on the Hill.' ”

 

Alistair Taylor, in the book Yesterday, reports a mysterious incident involving a man who inexplicably appeared near him and McCartney during a walk on Primrose Hill and then disappeared again, soon after McCartney and Taylor had conversed about the existence of God; this allegedly prompted the writing of the song.

 

McCartney played the song for John Lennon during a writing session for "With a Little Help from My Friends," and Lennon told him to write it down. McCartney didn't; he was sure he wouldn't forget it. In his 1980 interview with Playboy, Lennon said, "Now that's Paul. Another good lyric. Shows he's capable of writing complete songs."

 

 

Recording

McCartney recorded a solo demo version of the song on 6 September 1967. This version was later released on the Anthology 2 compilation. Recording began in earnest on 25 September, with significant overdubs by the Beatles on 26 September. Mark Lewisohn said that the 26 September version was "almost a re-make." A take from 25 September is also included on Anthology 2. After another session on 27 September where McCartney added another vocal, the song sat for a month before flutes were added on 20 October. The final piece recorded was a bass guitar overdub on 25 October.

 

Critical reaction

Richie Unterberger of All Music Guide said that "The Fool on the Hill" was the best of the new songs on Magical Mystery Tour aside from I Am the Walrus. Tim Riley, a music critic who has contributed to NPR, was not impressed, and unfavorably compared the subject of this song to fools in Shakespeare. Riley wrote, "Possibilities in this song outweigh its substance—its the most unworthy Beatles standard since 'Michelle.'"

 

 

Cover versions

The All Music Guide lists more than 100 cover versions of the song including:

A 1968 cover by Sergio Mendes reached number 6 in the US.

Björk covered it on her 1977 album Björk. Released when she was 11, the album consists of cover versions of famous songs sung in Icelandic. The name of her cover is "Alfur Út Úr Hól".

138. Flying

 

 

"Flying" is an instrumental song by The Beatles which first appeared on the 1967 Magical Mystery Tour release (two EP discs in the United Kingdom, an LP in the United States).

 

A rare Beatles instrumental (the first since "Cry For A Shadow" in 1961), although wordless chanting is heard at the end, it was the first song to be credited as being written by all four members of the band, with the writing credits of "Lennon/McCartney/Harrison/Starkey" (another being "Dig It" off the Let It Be album). It was recorded on September 8, 1967 with mellotron, guitar, bass, maracas, drums, and tape loops overdubbed September 28.

 

"Flying" was originally titled "Aerial Tour Instrumental". The end of the recording originally included a fast-paced traditional New Orleans jazz-influenced coda, but this was removed and replaced with an ending featuring tape loops created by John Lennon and Ringo Starr during the September 28 session. The track is likely to have originally started simply as a jam session — it is in simple 12-bar blues form in a straight-forward 4/4 time and the key of C major. The original recording is 9:38 in duration, whereas the version used as the official release is much shorter at 2:16.

 

On the track as recorded and officially released, John Lennon plays the main theme on mellotron, accompanied by Paul McCartney and George Harrison (both on guitars, plus a later bass overdub) and Ringo Starr (on maracas and drums). All four Beatles added the chanting, and the track fades in an assortment of tape effects created by Lennon and Starr. This released version is identical to that heard on the soundtrack of the Magical Mystery Tour film; the music is accompanied in the film by colour-altered images of landscape in Iceland taken from an aeroplane. Those shots provide from outtakes of the Stanley Kubrick's movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.

 

A different version can be found on some Beatles bootleg albums (such as Back-track 1), and features added Hammond organ and strange whistling noises in the early parts of the track. The jazz-influenced ending is also present on this version, which is slightly shorter, clocking in at around 2:08.

 

 

Influence on music by other artists

In 1977, The Residents, on their The Beatles Play the Residents and the Residents Play the Beatles single release, cover "Flying" on the Residents Play the Beatles side of the single. Reportedly, the only reason they chose "Flying" was because it was the only song they could find that was credited to all of The Beatles as composers. The single is now fairly difficult to obtain, although the track can be found on the discontinued CD release of The Third Reich and Roll as a bonus track, as well as the rereleased radio interview Eat Exuding Oinks.

 

In 1994, Oasis released their second top-40 single from debut album, Definitely Maybe. The song was entitled, "Shakermaker". In structure, the chord changes and tempo are identical to "Flying". The Noel Gallagher–penned track merely added lyrics to "Flying", creating one of the biggest early hits for the Gallagher brothers.

139. Blue Jay Way

 

 

"Blue Jay Way" is a song written by George Harrison; it was first recorded and released by The Beatles on their Magical Mystery Tour album and EP in 1967.

 

The name of the song comes from an actual street, high in the Hollywood Hills overlooking Sunset Boulevard, which affords panoramic views of Hollywood and much of the Los Angeles basin. It is reached by following a rather complicated route, which is all the harder to navigate on a foggy night — thus creating the backdrop for the opening lines of the song:

 

"There's a fog upon L.A. / And my friends have lost their way"

According to Harrison: "Derek Taylor got held up. He rang to say he'd be late. I told him on the phone that the house was in Blue Jay Way. And he said he could find it OK... he could always ask a cop. So I waited and waited. I felt really knackered with the flight, but I didn't want to go to sleep until he came. There was a fog and it got later and later. To keep myself awake, just as a joke to pass the time while I waited, I wrote a song about waiting for him in Blue Jay Way. There was a little Hammond organ in the corner of this house which I hadn't noticed until then... so I messed around on it and the song came."

 

Recording

The song was recorded on 6 September 1967, with overdubs on 7 September and 6 October[2]. The record employs flanging, an audio delay technique, and the stereo and mono mixes differ slightly. The TV movie, Magical Mystery Tour, included the mono mix; the 1990s remastered version used a new stereo mix, sounding closer to the mono mix.

 

At the end of the song, there is what seems to be a malfunction of the cello tape loop. It is in fact a cover-up of what was to happen in the music video featured on Magical Mystery Tour. In the ending, George was supposed to be hit by the Magical Mystery Tour bus. The true ending was never shot, and is shown with the repeated ending.

 

 

Cultural references

A street in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, is named "Blue Jays Way", as a play on both the song[citation needed] and the home town of Major League baseball club, the Toronto Blue Jays; this street leads directly to the Rogers Centre (formerly Sky Dome), the home of the Blue Jays.

 

Cover versions

"Blue Jay Way" has been covered by:

 

Colin Newman on his 1982 album Not To

Borbetomagus on their 1990 album Buncha Hair That Long

Rodney Graham on his 2000 album What Is Happy, Baby?

Beatlejazz on their 2001 album Another Bite of the Apple

Siouxsie and the Banshees on their 2003 live album Seven Year Itch

 

Love Version

Blue Jay Way was used as a transition piece between Something and Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!. The opening lines from Nowhere Man, noises from Revolution 9, Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! tape loops, and (supposedly) Carnival of Light noises were mixed into the intro and half of the first chorus' left speaker channel. The piece sounds rudimentarily done, and scrambled.

140. Your Mother Should Know

 

 

"Your Mother Should Know" is a song by The Beatles from their 1967 record Magical Mystery Tour, released in the U.S. as an LP on 27 November 1967 and in the UK as a double-EP on 8 December 1967. It was written by Paul McCartney (credited to Lennon/McCartney). McCartney said he wrote it as a production number for the movie Magical Mystery Tour, supporting an old-fashioned dance segment that starts with the Beatles coming down a grand staircase in white tuxedoes. After they descend, boy scouts, RAF cadets and other groups march through. John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr are wearing red carnations, while McCartney's is black. The carnation difference contributed to the "Paul is Dead" controversy.

 

 

Recording

The song was recorded in three sessions on 22 August, 16 September, and 29 September 1967. The remake from 16 September was left unused, and overdubs layered on the best take from 22 August. Mixing didn't go any smoother, with sessions on 29 September, 30 September and 7 November 1967.

 

The 22 August session took place at Chappell Recording Studios because Abbey Road Studios was unavailable that night. The remaining sessions were all at Abbey Road.

 

The song was originally recorded with continuous drum rolls by Starr giving the impression of a funeral march. This version was later scratched in favour of the more fluid version (minus the drum rolls) in the released version.

141. Lady Madonna

 

 

"Lady Madonna" is a song by the The Beatles, written mostly by Paul McCartney and credited to Lennon/McCartney. In March 1968 it was released as a single, backed by "the Inner Light". The song was recorded at Abbey Road Studios during sessions on 3 February and 6 February 1968 before the Beatles left for India. This single was the last release by the band on Parlophone in the UK and Capitol Records in the U.S.. All subsequent releases, starting with "Hey Jude" in August of 1968, were released on their own label Apple Records, under EMI distribution, until the late 1970s, when Capitol and Parlophone re-released old material.

 

The song and in particular the intro are similar to Humphrey Lyttelton's "Bad Penny Blues" from 1956. John Lennon helped write the lyrics. The line "see how they run" was included after his suggestion (and was a theme that had been used in the previous year's "I Am the Walrus").

 

The piano playing on this song was inspired by 1950's rock/blues piano-player, Fats Domino. McCartney recalled in 1994, "'Lady Madonna' was me sitting down at the piano trying to write a bluesy boogie-woogie thing ... It reminded me of Fats Domino for some reason, so I started singing a Fats Domino impression. It took my voice to a very odd place." Domino himself would cover the song later in 1968, and it would become his most recent U.S. Hot 100 hit (peaking at exactly #100).

 

The saxophone solo was played by British jazz musician and club owner Ronnie Scott. The mix used in the single had much of Scott's saxophone removed, but the versions on Anthology 2 and Love feature a more prominent use of Ronnie's solo, at the end of the song. In a recent BBC documentary, Timewatch, McCartney explained the decision behind this saying that at the time, Scott had not been impressed that his music had been hidden behind other instruments, so McCartney had decided to fix it with the most recent mix in the hope.

 

A variation of this song can be heard on McCartney's Chaos and Creation at Abbey Road DVD (PBS Great Performances). McCartney calls it "An Old Lady in New Clothes".

 

"Lady Madonna" has been a regular staple on various compilation albums released by Apple Records:

 

Hey Jude, 1970

20 Greatest Hits, 1982

Past Masters, Volume Two, 1988

Anthology 2, 1996 (takes 3 and 4)

1, 2000

Love, 2006

The version on Love includes rain sound effects and is mixed with parts of Why Don't We Do It in the Road? and Hey Bulldog.

 

 

Cover versions

Fats Domino covered the song in 1968. McCartney says he may have told record producer Richard Perry that it was "based on Fats", leading to Domino's version.

"Lady Madonna" was performed by Romanian band Phoenix on their first EP, Vremuri ("Old times", 1968). The Electrecord studios didn't trust the sales success of the band's own songs ("Vremuri" and "Canarul"). This was a common practice in communist countries and the predominant way western music was reaching there officially.

 

Cultural references

This song can be heard in the arcade game Bomb Jack, at its second stage.

It was used as the opening theme song on the television show Grace Under Fire for several seasons.