This is another example of how haphazard and collective songwriting could be in the Beatles circle that included Eric Clapton. Clapton started this song, then a collaboration session with George Harrison ensued. According to George, he helped with both the music and the words: “Eric had some of the melody and I helped him finish the tune and then wrote the words.” [24]
Eric took the title, “Badge” from an upside down misreading of “Bridge,” a word which George had written on the lyric sheet.
An inebriated Ringo also wandered in to make a contribution. [25] George said, “we were up to the lines: ‘I told you not to drive around in the dark / I told you’ — and Ringo said: ‘… about the swans that live in the park.’ It’s a bit silly, but that’s what happened, folks.” [26]
“Goodbye / Sparrow” single — Mary Hopkin, March 28, 1969
Goodbye — (McCartney) (recorded March 1, 1969)
Mary Hopkin had won a vocal competition, and when Paul heard her, he was impressed. He signed her to Apple, produced her first single, “Those Were the Days,” a phenomenal international hit, then her first album, Post Card . [27]
In February 1969, [28] Paul reportedly dashed off “Goodbye,” one of the best of the songs the Beatles gave away, in great haste, because a follow-up to “Those Were the Days” was needed. Miles wrote, “Over in Cavendish Avenue Paul quickly wrote one called ‘Goodbye.’” [29] Mary later said, “He said he wrote ‘Goodbye’ in about ten minutes. I’m not sure how true that is! It probably is.” [30] He made a demo for Mary, still extant.
Sparrow (Benny Gallagher, Graham Lyle)
“Get Back / Don’t Let Me Down” single, April 11, 1969
This single was the only release from the Get Back sessions for more than a year.
Get Back — (McCartney-Lennon)
(lead vocals: Paul) (recorded on January 27, 1969)
This song’s genesis is captured on tape, remarkably enough. On January 7, Paul plays a “galloping bass riff,” then vocalizes a melody over it, while George plays a few “discordant” comments on guitar. Paul repeats it, and on the third trial it “comes together” and we have the verse tune of “Get Back.” Two days later, the chorus has been added, and a few mentions of Arizona and California. (Paul had recently visited Arizona.) On the same day, Jo Jo appears in the lyrics. On the thirteenth, Paul and John are working on the lyrics as they rehearse. Loretta is now a character. The third verse is political, dealing with the issue of too many Pakistanis living in small flats.
When the Beatles rehearsed the song again on the 23rd, the political lyrics had been dropped, but the lyrics and music were nowhere near finished. Nevertheless, the song became more polished with repeated rehearsals. The performance used for this single, and the album, was recorded on January 27th. [31]
Paul sometimes claimed this song: “I originally wrote it as a political song,” he said sometime before 1979. [32] However, at other times, he emphasized that it was the product of group improvisation. In 1969, he said, “We were sitting in the studio and we made it up out of thin air . . . we started to write words there and then . . . when we finished it, we recorded it at Apple Studios and made it into a song to roller-coast by.” [33] Twenty years later, he explained, “We were jamming, and then we were just making up words. . . . [About too many Pakistanis living in small flats. Then they realized] It’s gonna be seen as racist or something . . . So we dumped that, and we got these other lyrics. [34] ‘Jo Jo was a man.’ It’s all silly stuff really, but — it was a jam that just developed through that.” [35] And before 1999, he mentioned “‘Get Back,’ which we were making up on the set of Let It Be. ” [36]
Miles/McCartney described this as a Paul song in genesis developed during jams and rehearsals, which I believe is correct. “It was basically Paul’s song, composed in the studios at Twickenham for the now abandoned television show. Paul had a rough idea for the words and music and began jamming it out. John joined him and together they worked on some lyrics.” [37]
John also ascribed this to Paul. In 1971 he put it on a list of songs written by Paul alone, and nine years later he said “‘Get Back’ is Paul.” [38] However, I believe John made a substantial contribution to the lyrics.
Don’t Let Me Down — (Lennon)
(lead vocals: John) (recorded on January 28, 1969)
“That’s me, singing about Yoko,” John said in 1980. [39] Paul felt it reflected John’s feelings of vulnerability and paranoia as a heroin user during the period. [40] “It was saying to Yoko, ‘I’m really stepping out of line on this one. I’m really letting my vulnerability be seen, so you must not let me down.’ I think it was a genuine cry for help.” [41]
Both John and Paul ascribed this song to John. [42] Paul doubted that he contributed to the song: “I sang harmony on it, which makes me wonder if I helped with a couple of the words, but I don’t think so. It was John’s song.” [43]
This version of “Don’t Let Me Down” was recorded on January 28, 1969. It was performed twice for the rooftop performance two days later, and one of these performances is in the film. However, Phil Spector dropped the song from his album version of Let It Be . A splice of the two rooftop performances found its way onto Let It Be . . . Naked .
Unfinished Music No.2: Life with the Lions album — John Lennon and Yoko Ono, May 9, 1969
Yoko had a miscarriage in November 1968, and on March 2, 1969, John and Yoko gave a live improvisatory performance at Cambridge. These events are reflected in this second experimental John and Yoko album. [44]
Electronic Sound album — George Harrison, May 9, 1969
On the cover, we read “Electronic Sound. Produced by George Harrison.” Another example of the Beatles’ interest in experimental music, [45] this includes two long pieces performed on Moog synthesizer. It is not music, in the traditional sense, but sounds. Harrison himself said, “Whatever came out when I fiddled with the knobs went on tape.” [46]
“Under the Mersey Wall” (Harrison)
This is eighteen minutes long.
SIDE TWO
“No Time or Space” (Harrison)
This is twenty-five minutes long. Bernie Krause, who demonstrated the Moog to George, later claimed that this was essentially a recording of his demonstration. [47] Harrison bought a Moog and the Beatles used it extensively on Abbey Road , on such songs as “Because” and “Here Comes the Sun.”
“The Ballad of John and Yoko / Old Brown Shoe” single, May 30, 1969
The Ballad of John and Yoko — (Lennon-McCartney)
(lead vocals: John) (recorded on April 14, 1969)
John wrote most of this song on his honeymoon with Yoko, and the lyrics tell, in “old-time ballad” fashion (that is, it’s a storytelling song), about their marriage on March 20, 1969, on the Rock of Gibraltar, and their subsequent honeymoon in Amsterdam and Vienna, which included their first bed-in for peace.
When John returned to England, he was anxious to record this song. He came to Paul and said, as Paul remembers, “‘I’ve got this song about our wedding and it’s called ‘The Ballad Of John And Yoko, Christ They’re Gonna Crucify Me,’ and I said ‘Jesus Christ, you’re kidding aren’t you? Someone really is going to get upset about it.’ He said, ‘Yeah, but let’s do it.’” [48]
John was having trouble with the last verse, so he and Paul sat down and worked it out, then on April 14, went to the studio. George and Ringo were out of town, but John wanted to record it as quickly as possible, so Paul agreed to play drums and bass. “So we did it,” Paul said, “and stood back to see if the other guys would hate us for it. Which I’m not sure about. They probably never forgave us. John was on heat, so to speak. He needed to record it so we just ran in and did it.” [49] They recorded the song in nine hours, John doing lead vocal, guitars and percussion, while Paul did drums, bass, piano and backing vocals.
So we have one more late example of a real Lennon-McCartney collaboration.
Both John and Paul agreed that this was mainly a
Lennon song. John said, in 1969, “It’s something I wrote, and it’s like an old-time ballad. It’s the story of us going along getting married, going to Paris, going to Amsterdam, all that. It’s ‘Johnny B. Paperback Writer.’” [50] In 1980, he explained, “I wrote that in Paris on our honeymoon. It’s a piece of journalism. It’s a folk song.” [51] However, there was some slight collaboration with Paul. [52]
Old Brown Shoe (Harrison)
(lead vocals: George) (recorded on April 16 and 18, 1969)
George began writing the chords for this song on piano, and then began lyrics from the idea of opposites in nature. Thus somewhat in the tradition of “Hello Goodbye.” [53]
It was performed during the Get Back sessions, on January 27-29. [54] George made a demo of it on February 25, which can be heard on Anthology 3 .
“Give Peace A Chance / Remember Love” single — Plastic Ono Band, July 4, 1969
Give Peace A Chance — (Lennon-Ono)
(recorded June 1, 1969)
In 1970, John said, “In me secret heart, I wanted to write something that would take over ‘We Shall Overcome,’ you know.” [55] And in the following year, “I was also pleased when the movement in America took up ‘Give peace a chance’ because I had written it with that in mind really. . . . I felt an obligation even then to write a song that people would sing in the pub or on a demonstration.” [56]
According to Derek Taylor, John wrote it for the Beatles, [57] but, as it was a Lennon-Ono composition, it ended up being performed and released by the Plastic Ono Band, which included John, Yoko, and whoever was performing with them at the time. It was recorded at a bed-in at the Hotel Le Reine Elizabeth in Montreal, Canada, on June 1, 1969, with many “guest artists,” including Tommy Smothers on guitar, and as back-up vocalists, Timothy Leary, Derek Taylor, singer Petula Clark, members of the hotel staff, and visitors from the local Radha Krishna Temple. [58] “By now, it was nearing midnight, and John decided that he wanted to record his newly-written song ‘Give Peace a Chance,’” wrote one journalist. [59]
It is a Lennon-Ono song, and Paul made no contribution to it. When it was first released, however, it was credited to “Lennon-McCartney.” John says he gave Paul this credit at first because he felt bad that he (John) was leaving the Beatles. “I was guilty enough to give McCartney credit as co-writer on my first independent single instead of giving it to Yoko, who had actually written it with me,” [60] he admitted. In re-issues, it has been credited to Lennon alone.
This is arguably the first post-Beatle solo record.
Remember Love (Yoko Ono)
“Penina / Wings Of Revenge” single — Carlos Mendes,
July 18, 1969
Penina — (McCartney)
While Paul and his new girlfriend, Linda Eastman, were on vacation in Portimão, Portugal in December 1968, one night he turned up “pissed out of [his] skull,” [61] at the hotel La Penina, and played drums with the band, Jota Herre.
And they said, “Give us a song,” so I said, “Yeah . . . I’ve been to Alberferra, I had a great time there,” you know. It was called “La Penina,” which was the name of the hotel, and I ended up in La Penina and they were all digging and singing along. . . .
Jota Herre asked if they could record the song, and Paul agreed. “So, William Hickey said that I had given away this 20,000 pound song. But then, Derek Taylor said, “It’s not that he gave away a song, he gave away more of a riff for them to build around.” [62]
Jota Herre did record the song, but they were preceded by Carlos Mendes.
The song is attributed to Paul alone. It is probably the least of all the songs the Beatles gave away, not surprising considering it isn’t really a song that was written; he just started singing it in public while playing drums in a state of inebriation one night.
Wings Of Revenge (JoãoMagalhães Pereira, Nuno Nazareth Fernandes)
Abbey Road album, September 26, 1969
After the misery and chaos of the Get Back sessions, and with the Get Back tapes making no progress toward release, the Beatles decided to make another album the old way, a studio album with George Martin as full producer. Martin, who had thought he would never work with the Beatles again, was stunned when Paul rang him up and told him that the Beatles wanted him to produce the album. “John included?” he asked incredulously. “Yes, honestly,” said Paul. [63]
So, as their last hurrah, the Beatles returned to Abbey Road, to make a real Beatles album. Everyone was upbeat because they knew it would be their last album.
Abbey Road ended up divided into two parts: side one was “normal” songs, two by John, two by Paul, one by Ringo, and one by George. But for side two, Paul had the idea of creating an extended rock suite; this allowed them to use a number of song fragments. “I wanted to do something bigger, a kind of operatic moment,” Paul said. [64]
John didn’t like the idea, at first. But he ended up accepting it, and contributed some of his own songs to the second side suite. George Martin said,
John objected very much to what we did on the second side of Abbey Road, which was almost entirely Paul and I working together, with contributions from the others. . . . But even on the second side, John helped. He would come and put his little bit in, and have an idea for sewing a bit of music into the tapestry. [65]
In fact, John has quite a substantial presence on side two, four songs, including his great song “Because.”
Somehow, the suite worked (for most listeners), and side two of Abbey Road became a fitting culmination for the entire Beatles era.
Come Together — (Lennon-McCartney-Harrison-Leary-Berry)
(lead vocals: John) (recorded July 21–30, 1969)
The labyrinthine story of the songwriting for this particular song begins when Timothy Leary, the psychedelic guru, decided to run for governor of California in 1969. Leary, it should be remembered, had become a hero to John Lennon, and helped inspire Revolver ’s climax, “Tomorrow Never Knows.”
Leary attended John and Yoko’s bed-in in Montreal in June 1969, on John’s invitation, and asked the Beatle to write him a campaign song, based on the slogan, “Come together, join the party.” John reportedly improvised a song on the spot, with the lyrics, “Come together right now, don’t come tomorrow, don’t come alone. Come together, right now, over me.” John made a demo of the song, and it was reportedly played on the radio and used in Leary’s campaign appearances. [66] “Leary was saying, ‘Write me a song’ for his campaign. And his campaign slogan was ‘Come Together.’ But obviously ‘Come Together’ is not a good campaign song,” John said in 1969. [67]
Leary was arrested for narcotics possession, his political career ended, and John began thinking of using the lyrics for a Beatles record. [68] Soon after his car crash on July 1, 1969, he began to rework the improvised campaign jingle into a real song. [69]
He turned to Chuck Berry’s “You Can’t Catch Me” as a model, musically and lyrically. He was, he said, “writing obscurely around an old Chuck Berry thing.” [70]
I was writing in the office just sort of — I can’t say this ’cause we’re gonna get sued, because it’s silly. But I was writing this, um, like, ‘You Can’t Catch Me,’ you know, the same rhythm and using the old words, I often do it, you know. If I’m trying to write one like ‘Long Tall Sally,’ or I’m just singing, . . . ‘gonna tell unk Mary’ and just make up, change, parodize the words. I was doing that and then when I got — I stopped and then said, just came out, ‘Come together,’ ‘cause ‘come together’ was rolling around in my head. [71]
“I left the line in ‘Here comes old flat-top,’” he said in 1980. [72] It was a quirky choice, but it shows he wasn’t trying to mask his debt to Berry. “And I think it’s a compliment to Chuck Berry.” [73]
According to Paul, John played the song for him, at a very up-tempo speed, and Paul pointed out that it was very similar to the Chuck Berry song, and they should try to find distance somehow. Paul suggested that they slow it down. As he put it, “John
came in with an up-tempo song that sounded exactly like Chuck Berry’s ‘You Can’t Catch Me,’ even down to the ‘flat-top’ lyric. I said, ‘Let’s slow it down with a swampy bass-and-drums vibe.’ I came up with a bass line and it all flowed from there. Great record.” [74]
John remembered the slowing down as a collective idea. In 1969, he said, “We said, ‘Let’s slow it down. Let’s do this to it, let’s do that to it,’ and it ends up however it comes out.” [75] “With ‘Come Together’ I just said to them, ‘I’ve got no arrangement for you, but you know how I want it. Give me something funky.’” [76]
And in fact, he said, “The thing was created in the studio.” [77] Geoff Emerick, back on the controls at Abbey Road, remembered, however, “It was Paul who suggested that it be done at a slower tempo, with a ‘swampy’ kind of sound, and Lennon went along with it uncomplainingly.” [78] Emerick also said that Paul also added a piano lick, which John learned and then played on the record. [79] George Harrison said that he “wrote some of the lyrics” of the song. [80]
All this came together, and the song became an impressive opening cut for Abbey Road .
Not surprisingly, Morris Levy, the owner of Berry’s “You Can’t Catch Me,” sued the Beatles in 1973 (compare “Here come ol’ flattop, he come groovin’ up slowly” to Berry’s “Here come a flattop, he was movin’ up with me”), and in a settlement, John agreed to record three other songs by the same publisher. He recorded “You Can’t Catch Me” and one of the other two required songs on his 1975 album of oldies, Rock ‘n’ Roll . Since the third song was not released, this opened him up to be sued again!
This is mainly a John song. “That’s my song,” he said in late 1969. [81] And, it was “one of my favorite Lennon tracks,” he said in 1980. [82] Paul agreed, in 1969: “Well, I like ‘Come Together.’ That’s a great one, which is John’s one, yeah.” [83] In the same year, George Harrison referred to it as “One of John’s songs.” [84] But its title comes from Timothy Leary; the first line from Chuck Berry. George Harrison says that he contributed to the lyrics. Paul convincingly describes reshaping the originally quite fast music into a slow, “smoky,” “swampy” song.
Who Wrote the Beatle Songs Page 31
