Who Wrote the Beatle Songs

by Todd M Compton

  I waited and waited. I felt really nackered 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 fill in the time, I wrote a song about waiting for him in Blue Jay Way. There was a little Hammond organ in the corner of this rented house which I hadn’t noticed. I messed around on this and the song came. [49]

  From this prosaic situation came a rather outré, Indian-flavored song.

  Your Mother Should Know — (McCartney)

  (lead vocals: Paul) (recorded August 22, 23 and September 16, 29, 1967)

  Paul wrote this at Cavendish Avenue, on a harmonium in his dining room, when his Aunty Jin (of “I’ve Just Seen a Face” and “Let ‘Em In” fame) and Uncle Harry were visiting. Their presence inspired him to write a song against the generation gap — the opposite of the Who’s “My Generation.”

  I dreamed up “Your Mother Should Know” as a production number. . . . It’s a very music-hall kind of thing . . . I’ve always hated generation gaps. . . . In “Your Mother Should Know” I was basically trying to say your mother might know more than you think she does. Give her credit. [50]

  In 1971, John put this on a list of songs that Paul had written alone. [51]

  I am the Walrus (Lennon)

  See the “Hello Goodbye / I Am the Walrus” single, above.

  SIDE TWO

  Hello, Goodbye (McCartney)

  See the “Hello Goodbye / I Am the Walrus” single, above.

  Strawberry Fields Forever (Lennon-McCartney)

  See the “Strawberry Fields Forever / Penny Lane” single, above.

  Penny Lane (McCartney-Lennon)

  See the “Strawberry Fields Forever / Penny Lane” single, above.

  Baby, You’re a Rich Man (Lennon-McCartney)

  See the “All You Need is Love / Baby, You’re a Rich Man” single, above.

  All You Need Is Love (Lennon)

  See the “All You Need is Love / Baby, You’re a Rich Man” single, above.

  “Christmas Time (Is Here Again),” from Christmas fan club disc, December 11, 1967

  Christmas Time (Is Here Again) — (Lennon-McCartney-Harrison-Starkey)

  (recorded on November 28, 1967)

  Released only to members of the Beatles fan club on the annual Christmas record in 1967, this song was attributed to all the Beatles. It was originally 6:17 seconds long, including spoken sections (only parts of which are on the Christmas record), but a three minute version was released as the B-side of the “Free as a Bird” CD single in 1995. [52]

  Paul said, in 1989, that the Christmas records

  were ad-libbed. Hardly ever scripted. I mean, I think some of them are great. It developed each year, we thought, “Well, we can’t do that, we’ve said hello. So this year, let’s make up a Christmas song.” [sings ] “Oh, Christmas Time Is Here Again.” Cause we knew that the fans would like anything that was just exclusive for them. [53]

  It is not known whether any of the Beatles dominated in the composition of this song.

  * * *

  [1] Mal Evans and Neil Aspinall in 1967, see Evans and Aspinall, “Magical Mystery Tour,” 8. Gambaccini, “The Rolling Stone Interview.” Lost Lennon Tapes, Aug. 29, 1988.

  [2] Gambaccini, “The Rolling Stone Interview.”

  [3] Anthology , 273.

  [4] George Martin before 1999, in Pritchard and Lysaght, The Beatles: an Oral History , 251. For Martin on this song, see also All You Need is Ears , 199; Anthology , 257.

  [5] Kenny Everett, Interview with Paul McCartney, June 26-30, 1967.

  [6] Emerick, Here There Everywhere , 203-4. Martin remembers himself cracking the whip, All You Need is Ears , 199.

  [7] As cited in Turner, A Hard Day’s Write , 136.

  [8] Miles, Many Years from Now , 354.

  [9] Read, “McCartney on McCartney,” episode 3.

  [10] Anthology , 257.

  [11] Evans and Aspinall, “Mal and Neil Tell You How ‘All You Need is Love’ was Recorded.”

  [12] Miles, Many Years from Now , 371.

  [13] Hennessey, “Who Wrote What,” Record Mirror. Sheff, The Playboy Interviews, 194.

  [14] Miles, Many Years from Now , 371.

  [15] Lewisohn, Complete Beatles Chronicle , Appendix, “What They Played”; Miles, Many Years from Now , 38; Sulpy and Schweighardt, Get Back , 246; Unterberger, The Unreleased Beatles , 348.

  [16] Miles, Many Years from Now , 439. Engelhart, Beatles Undercover , 40.

  [17] Chris Barber before 1987, quoted in Elson, McCartney — Songwriter , 170.

  [18] Miles, Many Years from Now , 38.

  [19] Letter to Mr. Low, in Davies, The Beatles , 63.

  [20] Winn, Way Beyond Compare , 17; Unterberger, The Unreleased Beatles , 252.

  [21] Pritchard and Lysaght, The Beatles: an Oral History , 251.

  [22] Taylor, Yesterday: The Beatles Remembered , 172-73.

  [23] Forsyth, “The Alistair Taylor Interview.”

  [24] Interview in Lewisohn, The Beatles Recording Sessions , (1988), 16.

  [25] Miles, Many Years from Now , 370. For Paul’s further comments on the philosophy of the song, Ray Coleman, Interview with Lennon and McCartney, Disc and Music Echo (Dec. 16, 1967), in Sandercombe, The Beatles , 224; Read, “McCartney on McCartney,” (1989), episode 4.

  [26] Hennessey, “Who Wrote What,” Record Mirror ; Sheff, The Playboy Interviews, 207-8.

  [27] Pritchard and Lysaght, The Beatles: an Oral History , 257. Davies, The Beatles , 276-77.

  [28] Cott, “The Rolling Stone Interview.”

  [29] Davies, The Beatles , 276-77.

  [30] Cott, “The Rolling Stone Interview.”

  [31] Davies, The Beatles , 276-77.

  [32] Lost Lennon Tapes, March 28, 1988, cf. Sheff, The Playboy Interviews , 194-95.

  [33] Davies, The Beatles , 276-77.

  [34] Ray Coleman, Interview with Lennon and McCartney, Disc and Music Echo , Dec. 16, 1967, in Sandercombe, The Beatles , 224.

  [35] Shotton and Schaffner, The Beatles, Lennon and Me, 217-18. Lost Lennon Tapes, March 28, 1988.

  [36] Lennon in 1970, see Anthology , 273. Sheff, The Playboy Interviews , 194-95.

  [37] Hennessey, “Who Wrote What,” Record Mirror. Similar: John in Badman, Beatles Off the Record , 310. Anthology , 273.

  [38] White, “Paul McCartney: Farewell,” 50; Miles, Many Years from Now , 357.

  [39] Evans and Aspinall, “Magical Mystery Tour,” 8.

  [40] Winn, That Magic Feeling , 103.

  [41] Davies, The Beatles , 272-73.

  [42] Miles, Many Years from Now , 352. Barkers at carnivals had shouted “Roll up! Roll up!” from time immemorial, but Paul said there was also the double meaning of rolling a joint in it. For the history of fairgrounds, see The Dingles Fairground Heritage Center website.

  [43] Badman, Beatles Off the Record , 310.

  [44] Miles, Many Years from Now , 365-66. See also Hilburn, “From ‘Yesterday’ to Today” (1989). Turner, A Hard Day’s Write , 143–144, suggests that a mystical experience Paul and Alistair Taylor had on Primrose Hill led to the song. However, Taylor does not link the experience to “Fool on the Hill.” Yesterday , 167-68. In addition, Taylor dates the mystical experience to the time after Paul broke up with Jane Asher (mid-1968), but Paul started writing the song in 1967.

  [45] Davies, The Beatles , 268.

  [46] Sheff, The Playboy Interviews , 195-96, 208. See also Hennessey, “Who Wrote What,” Record Mirror.

  [47] Miles, Many Years from Now , 364.

  [48] Lewisohn, Beatles Recording Sessions , 123, 127.

  [49] Davies, The Beatles , 321-22. See also I Me Mine , 114; Somach et al., Ticket to Ride , 221 (Derek Taylor’s account). Neil Aspinall in 1967 (“George’s California Trip,” 25).

  [50] Miles, Many Years from Now , 355.

  [51] Hennessey, “Who Wrote What,” Record Mirror. See also, Sheff, The Playboy Interviews, 208.

&n
bsp; [52] Unterberger, The Unreleased Beatles , 185-86.

  [53] Read, “McCartney on McCartney,” episode 4.

  12

  “I was going humity-humity in my head and the songs were coming out” —

  THE BEATLES (THE WHITE ALBUM)

  M ost of the songs we have covered so far were written in England, in the homes of the Beatles, or during tours or vacations. Most of the White Album songs were written in the most exotic locale imaginable — Rishikesh, at the foot of the Himalayas, in northern India, from February to March 1968, as the Beatles attended a Transcendental Meditation training camp at the ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Which is one more example of how much George’s Indian leanings had influenced the whole group. A number of other celebrities were attending: actress Mia Farrow, her sister Prudence, Donovan, and Mike Love of the Beach Boys. All would impact the White Album, in different ways.

  The White Album songs represent an important development in the Lennon-McCartney songwriting relationship: there is much more complete ownership of songs on this album than on previous albums — in other words, in previous albums often a song was a Paul song or a John song, but the other songwriter helped finish it. Only occasionally a song might be all Paul or all John. However, in The Beatles , most “Lennon-McCartney” songs were either all Lennon or all McCartney. In fact, John later regarded this as not even a Beatle album, but as the first album after the real Beatles breakup. [1] Both John and George Martin agree that The Beatles marked a point of much less collaboration among the Beatles, both in songwriting and recording. There were still a few collaborative songs — such as “Glass Onion” and “Birthday” — but they were in the minority.

  On the other hand, the album represents an upsurge in creativity, judging by the quantity of songs alone. While these songs were mostly written in the peace of the Transcendental Meditation sessions in India, they were often recorded in the midst of intra-Beatle conflict. Sometimes all the Beatles were not present during a particular song session, but when they were present bitter arguments often took place. In fact, engineer Geoff Emerick abruptly quit one day, depressed by the expletive-filled, non-stop back and forth. John had found a new partner, Yoko Ono, and he often introduced her into recording sessions, which was another source of tension, and it was often hard to communicate with him due to his use of drugs at the time.

  John regarded the White Album as his return to productivity after a couple years of lying “fallow.” The stay at the ashram gave the Beatles time to write without distractions. [2] “I was going humity-humity in my head and the songs were coming out. For creating it was great. It was just pouring out!” [3]

  John also felt that the White Album was better than the previous two albums:

  Paul was always upset about the White Album. He never liked it because on that one I did my music, he did his, and George did his. And first, he didn’t like George having so many tracks. He wanted it to be more a group thing, which really means more Paul. So he never liked that album, and I always preferred it to all the other albums, including Pepper , because I thought the music was better. The Pepper myth is bigger, but the music on the White Album is far superior, I think. Q: That’s your favorite, of all the Beatle albums? Yeah, because I wrote a lot of good shit on that. I like all the stuff I did on that, and the other stuff as well. I like the whole album. [4]

  Whether or not Paul disliked the album, as John contended, he contributed many memorable songs to it, from full-tilt rockers such as “Back in the U.S.S.R” and “Helter Skelter” to the haunting folk ballads “I Will,” “Mother Nature’s Sun” and “Blackbird.”

  George Martin felt it was an album in which the individual Beatles “tended to go off in their own directions,” after the death of Brian Epstein on August 27, 1967. And he felt it varied widely in quality, due to quantity of songs supplied. [5] Some songs might have been left off the final recording, but it would not be easy to reach a consensus on which ones should have stayed and which should have been deep-sixed. The album has been recognized as a masterpiece, [6] including many songs by Lennon and McCartney at the top of their form, and also four top-drawer Harrison songs, including two really great songs, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” and “Long Long Long.”

  After they came home from India, the Beatles met at George’s home, Kinfauns, in Esher, a suburb of London, in late May 1968, and made rough demos of the new songs (called either the Kinfauns demos or the Esher demos). [7] Some of these demos were released on Anthology 3 . Aside from the White Album songs, a number of songs from later Beatle albums and solo albums were written during this period, such as George’s “Not Guilty,” Paul’s “Junk” and “Teddy Boy,” Lennon’s “Look at Me” and “Jealous Guy” (with different lyrics). In more ways than one, the White Album harked forward to the Beatles’ solo careers.

  “Step Inside Love / I Couldn’t Take My Eyes Off You”

  single — Cilla Black, March 8, 1968

  Step Inside Love — (McCartney)

  (recorded on February 28, 1968)

  Cilla Black was starting a TV show in early 1968, produced by Michael Hurll, and she and Hurll approached Paul backstage one night and asked him to write a song for the show. “So I said yes,” said Paul. “I did a little demo of it, with myself double-tracked, up at Cavendish, and that was it. I quite like the song, it’s very cabaret, it suited her voice. It was just a welcoming song for Cilla.” [8]

  Cilla, herself, seems to portray Paul as hoping to write the theme song for the TV show: “Paul said he’d like to write a signature theme for my television series Cilla at the beginning of 1968.” [9] Apparently, at first Paul wrote only the tune and first verse. “He wrote enough for the TV show itself,” said Cilla. This was used for the first few weeks of the show, but before too long Cilla and Hurll asked for the complete song, and he gave her more lyrics. [10] Hurll remembered that

  Paul came over to the BBC Theatre in Shepherd’s Bush and sat with me and Cilla and worked on a second verse. It started off with the line, ‘You look tired, love’, because Cilla was tired after a lot of rehearsing and most of what he wrote related to what was going on that day. [11]

  Paul added a third verse, and Paul and Cilla recorded a demo of the finalized song on November 21, 1967. [12] When the complete song was recorded, Paul “came to all the band calls,” said Black, “just to look after the backing.” [13] The song reached number eight in Britain.

  Both Paul and John agreed that this was a Paul song. [14] The Beatles did an informal version of it on September 16, 1968, during the White Album sessions, and this can be heard on Anthology 3 .

  I Couldn’t Take My Eyes Off You (Bobby Willis, Clive Westlake)

  “Lady Madonna / The Inner Light” single, March 15, 1968

  Lady Madonna — (McCartney-Lennon)

  (lead vocals: Paul) (recorded on February 3 and 6, 1968)

  One day at Cavendish, Paul sat down at the piano and tried to write “a bluesy boogie-woogie thing.” He began playing an “an ascending boogie-woogie left hand,” “an arpeggio thing,” against a descending right hand. The song reminded him of Fats Domino, so he started singing in that style. [15]

  The song may have also been influenced by “Bad Penny Blues,” by the Humphrey Lyttleton band, a jazz recording produced by George Martin in 1956. In a 1968 interview, Ringo said, “Paul plays piano on it [Lady Madonna]. What he’s doing on piano is a sort of ‘Bad Penny Blues.’ We said to George Martin, ‘How did they do it on ‘Bad Penny Blues’?” [16] In 1989, Paul admitted that this influence was possible, as “Bad Penny Blues” had been a favorite record of the early Beatles, but he then downplayed that possibility, instead pointing to Fats Domino as an influence. [17]

  The words are Paul’s ode to “all women”: “How do they do it? — bless ’em — it’s that one, you know. Baby at your breast, how do they get the time to feed them? Where do you get the money? How do you do this thing that women do?” he asked, in 1986. [18] Paul apparently first thought of the Vi
rgin Mary, then it became a “working-class woman,” then it became every woman, “the Madonna image but as applied to ordinary working-class women.” [19]

  John, in 1971, put this in a list of songs that Paul wrote alone. [20] Ringo also attributed it to Paul. [21] In 1980, John ascribed it to Paul, but said that he “maybe” helped with some of the lyrics. [22] Mal Evans and Neil Aspinall also seemed to reflect some collaboration, stating that Paul had “done most of the words and music for this item.” [23]

  The Inner Light — (Harrison-Tao Te Ching- Mascaró)

  (lead vocals: George)

  (recorded on January 12, February 6 and 8, 1968)

  On September 29, 1967, George and John appeared on the David Frost show to discuss Transcendental Meditation, and a Sanskrit translator from Cambridge University, Juan Mascaró, was included in a panel of experts. Later Mascaró wrote a letter to George, praising “Within You Without You,” and sent him his book, Lamps of Fire (1958), suggesting that George write a song from the Chinese mystical text, Tao Te Ching , the words on page 66 of the book. George obliged, using those words to create the lyrics for this song. [24] In Legge’s translation, the Tao Te Ching reads:

  Without going outside his door,

  one understands (all that takes place) under the sky;

  without looking out from his window,

  one sees the Tao of Heaven.

  The farther that one goes out (from himself),

  the less he knows.

  Therefore the sages got their knowledge without travelling;

  gave their (right) names to things without seeing them;

  and accomplished their ends without any purpose of doing so.