2-10-11
Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five - Paul McCartney and Wings, 1973
When Paul McCartney's solo album, Band On The Run came out in 1973, Rolling Stone magazine described it as "the finest record yet released by any of the four musicians who were once called the Beatles."
It's a wonder it even got made, though. Sir Paul wanted to record in "someplace exotic" - so they ended up in Lagos, Nigeria - not exactly a vision of paradise, as they soon discovered. The country was run by the military, corruption and disease were rampant, and the recording studio was a wreck with only one tape machine on hand.
Then, while out walking one night against advice, Paul and Linda were robbed at knife point.
Still, in this song, Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five, McCartney the optimist says, "I just can't enough of that sweet stuff."
2-9-11
Twist And Shout, 1963
Twist And Shout, though not a Beatles original, showcased the group at their rock 'n' roll best. They played the song all the time at The Cavern Club in Liverpool.
In 1963, Producer George Martin wanted a show-stopper with which to close The Beatles Please Please Me album, and he had just one song in mind.
He said, "I knew that Twist And Shout was a real larynx-tearer and I said (to John Lennon), 'We're not going record that until the very end of the day, because if we record it early on, you're not going to have any voice left.' So that was the last thing we did that night."
Lennon said, "The last song nearly killed me. My voice wasn't the same for a long time after; every time I swallowed it was like sandpaper."
2-8-11
Helter Skelter, 1968
Helter Skelter was nothing more than a case of The Beatles trying to outdo The Who.
In an interview, Pete Townshend had described The Who's new single, I Can See For Miles, as the group's "most extreme sound to date."
Paul McCartney said, "I was in Scotland and I read in Melody Maker that Pete Townshend had said: 'We've just made the raunchiest, loudest, most ridiculous rock 'n' roll record you've ever heard.' I never actually found out what track it was that The Who had made, but that got me going; just hearing him talk about it. So I said to the guys, 'I think we should do a song like that; something really wild.' And I wrote Helter Skelter."
2-7-11
All My Loving, 1964
All My Loving is a song by Paul McCartney conceived while on a tour bus with Roy Orbison. He said, "It was the first song I'd ever written the words first. I never wrote words first. I've hardly ever done it since either."
After The Beatles tour bus arrived at the gig, McCartney wrote the music on the spot, on a piano, backstage.
The year was 1964 and Beatlemania was out of control.
Can't you just picture Paulie kissing his girlfriend goodbye as he heads toward yet another mob of screaming teenagers?
2-3-11
I'll Follow The Sun, 1964
The Beatles For Sale album was recorded at the absolute peak of their fame. In 1964 they released two new albums and an EP, starred in their first feature film, gave countless interviews, radio sessions and television appearances, and toured the world, all to screaming mobs of Beatlemaniacs.
Success is a wonderful thing, but it is very tiring. They were always on the go.
So on this record, they reached back for a song that was written in 1959 at Paul McCartney's family home in Liverpool, I'll Follow The Sun.
Paul said, "I wrote that in my (living room). I was about 16. I'll Follow The Sun was one of those very early ones. I remember standing in the parlour, with my guitar, looking out through the lace curtains of the window."
Tomorrow may rain, so I'll Follow The Sun.
2-1-11
If I Fell, 1964
If I Fell was a rare Beatles ballad, primarily written by John Lennon, which first appeared on the A Hard Day's Night film and soundtrack.
In 1964 Lennon wrote the lyrics on the back of a Valentine's Day card; If I fell in love with you, would you promise to be true and help me understand?
25 years later that card with the If I Fell lyrics sold at auction in London for over $11,000.
I fell over when I heard that.
1-31-11
Let It Be, 1970 (Let It Be....Naked)
As the 1960's wound down, so did The Beatles. Paul McCartney in particular was feeling insecure and wounded by The Beatles gradual disintegration.
He said, "One night during this tense time I had a dream. I saw my mum, who'd been dead 10 years or so. And it was so great to see her because that's a wonderful thing about dreams: you actually are reunited with that person for a second; there they are, and you appear to both be physically together again. It was so wonderful for me and she was very reassuring. In the dream she said, 'It'll be all right.'"
This version of Let It Be is from a record called Let It Be....Naked, where McCartney favors a slightly more stripped down approach.
1-28-11
Magical Mystery Tour, 1967
Magical Mystery Tour is the opening track and theme song for the Beatles album and TV film of the same name.
Paul McCartney said, "John and I remembered mystery tours, and we always thought this was a fascinating idea: getting on a bus and not knowing where you were going."
They actually stole the idea from Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters and their LSD-fueled bus of crazies traipsing around the west coast of hippie America.
McCartney added, "Because those were psychedelic times it had to become a magical mystery tour," with "all the circus and fairground barkers, 'Roll up! Roll up!', which was also a reference to rolling up a joint. We were always sticking those little things in that we knew our friends would get; veiled references to drugs and to trips."
Let's do it! Roll up, roll up for the magical mystery tour, step right this way!
1-27-11
Please Mr. Postman, 1963
Please Mr. Postman by a group called The Marvelettes was the first Motown song to hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
The year was 1961.
Fifteen years later, The Carpenters of all people also had a #1 hit with Please Mr. Postman. (I probably shouldn't mention that rapper Lil' Wayne, who was just released from prison, sampled The Carpenters version on one of his songs but, too late)
Anyway, In between The Marvelettes and The Carpenters was the Beatles version of Please Mr. Postman from their second album, With The Beatles. With John Lennon on lead vocals.
1-26-11
Working Class Hero - John Lennon, 1970
Working Class Hero is a song from John Lennon's first post-Beatles solo album called John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band.
After the Beatles' break-up in1970, Lennon went through controversial primal therapy treatment for four months in Los Angeles. Forced to confront the traumas of his childhood (abandonment, isolation and death), Lennon finally let his submerged anger and hurt rise to the surface and he dealt with it through his art.
Working Class Hero features only John Lennon and an acoustic guitar.
1-25-11
Sexy Sadie, 1968
John Lennon's most bitter song on The Beatles' White Album, Sexy Sadie, was a stick-it-to-the-Maharishi song, written literally while John was waiting for a taxi to take him to the airport and out of India and back to England.
There we're rumors that the Maharishi had been hitting on one of the ladies in The Beatles entourage; and Lennon wrote Sexy Sadie as a direct shot at the guy he called "a bloody old letch just like everybody else."
John Lennon said in his famous Playboy interview, "That's about the Maharishi, yes. I copped out and I wouldn't write 'Maharishi, what have you done? You made a fool of everyone.' But now it can be told, Fab Listeners.
1-24-11
What Goes On, 1965
Today, What Goes On, the only Beatles' song credited to Lennon/McCartney/Starkey.
"Starkey" would be Richard Starkey, aka Ringo Starr.
What Goes On was Ringo's first-ever composing credit on a Beatles song. However, when asked what his contribution was to the song, Ringo jokingly said, "About five words, and I haven't done a thing since."
What Goes On was actually one of John Lennon's early tunes, written before The Beatles' had a recording contract and never performed live. It wasn't released until 1965's Rubber Soul album and starred man-of-few-words, Ringo Starr, on vocals.
1-20-11
I Want To Hold Your Hand, 1963
I Want To Hold Your Hand sold more than a million copies…..in advance! It became The Beatles first US #1 hit, and kick-started the British Invasion of America.
John Lennon said of his songwriting partner Paul McCartney, "We wrote a lot of stuff together, one-on-one, eyeball to eyeball. Like in I Want To Hold Your Hand."
When The Beatles got word that they'd just hit #1 in the U.S. with that song, they were staying in Paris for 3 weeks of concerts, soon to head back to the recording studio to re-record the vocals to I Want To Hold Your Hand for the German market, as Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand.
Beatlemania was now worldwide.
1-19-11
Yer Blues, 1968
John Lennon's most emotionally-revealing moment on The Beatles' White Album, Yer Blues, was written in India, where John, Paul, George and Ringo we're studing transcendental meditation with the Maharishi.
Lennon said, "The funny thing about the camp was that although it was very beautiful and I was meditating about eight hours a day, I was writing the most miserable songs on earth. In Yer Blues, when I wrote, 'I'm so lonely I want to die,' I'm not kidding. That's how I felt."
1-18-11
All Together Now, 1969
All Together Now is a Paul McCartney song which found it's way on to The Beatles' Yellow Submarine soundtrack.
McCartney described the song as a children's sing-along with the tagline, All Together Now, inspired by an old music hall tradition of asking the audience to join in.
Combine that with the old hippie-peace-love-dope mantra of the 60's, "we are all together, man," and you end up with all four Beatles repeating that mantra at least 50 times.
C'mon. Sing along!
1-17-11
All I've Got To Do, 1963
All I've Got To Do, the second song on The Beatles' second album, was written by John Lennon specifically for the American market.
The song starts off with "Whenever I want you around, all I gotta do Is call you on the phone."
In England in the 60's, the idea of calling a girl on the telephone was unthinkable.
John Lennon said in an interview, "I have never called a girl on the 'phone in my life! Because 'phones weren't part of the English child's life."
1-14-11
It's All Too Much, 1969
It's All Too Much is a George Harrison song from The Beatles' Yellow Submarine album.
When John and Cynthia Lennon and George Harrison and Pattie Boyd went to Tahiti on vacation, they'd hardly been anywhere out of England, and never to anywhere that was tropical.
After a couple of days of shipboard seasickness, John Lennon said, "The next morning I woke and looked out of the porthole. It was fantastic. It was incredible; a smooth lagoon with the island in the background, with mountains and coconut palms. Five or six Tahitians were paddling an outrigger canoe, gliding across the calm sea. It blissed me out.
Apparently, it was all too much.
1-13-11
You Won't See Me, 1965
You Won't See Me was recorded during The Beatles' last session for the Rubber Soul album. John Lennon said Rubber Soul was the first album on which The Beatles were in complete creative control during recording.
You Won't See Me was written by Paul McCartney about his crumbling relationship with British actress Jane Asher.
Jane was McCartney's girlfriend between 1963 and 1968 - then she found him in bed with another woman.
Time after time you refuse to even listen.
1-12-11
Letting Go (Paul McCartney solo), 1975
Venus and Mars is the fourth album by Wings, Paul McCartney's group after The Beatles' split in 1970. The record was so successful that it launched a year-long worldwide tour. Maybe you were there at the Cow Palace for Wings Over America, June of 1976?
Great show. That tour was McCartney's first appearance in concert since the last Beatles tour in 1966, which ended right here in San Francisco.
The last track on side one of Venus and Mars is the surprisingly soulful top-40 hit, Letting Go, about a woman that sings so beautifully that Sir Paul McCartney said, "I Want To Put Her On The Radio."
1-11-11
Because, 1969
The final song to be recorded for The Beatles' Abbey Road album was a ballad, John Lennon's Because. The song was inspired by Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and featured The Beatles' distinctive three-part vocal harmonies, overdubbed three times to make nine voices in all.
John Lennon's not-yet wife, Yoko Ono, was a classically trained pianist whose interests we're somewhat avant garde. One day in 1969, however, she played Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 27, No. 2 - the Moonlight Sonata.
Lying on their sofa listening, John asked Yoko if she could play the chords backwards, "She did, and I wrote Because around them. The song sounds like Moonlight Sonata, too. The lyrics are clear, no bulls**t, no imagery, no obscure references."
1-10-11
Get Back, 1969
Get Back was written primarily by Paul McCartney and credited to "The Beatles with Billy Preston." That's Billy on electric piano, on The Beatles' only single that credited another artist.
Paul McCartney actually wrote the press release for Get Back; "Get Back is The Beatles' new single. It's the first Beatles record which is as live as live can be, in this electronic age. There's no electronic whatchamacallit. Get Back is a pure spring-time rock number. The Beatles, as nature intended."
1-7-11
Baby You're A Rich Man, 1967
Baby You're A Rich Man is a combination of two unfinished Lennon-McCartney song fragments and was recorded in a single day.
John Lennon said, "We just stuck two songs together for this one, the same as A Day In The Life."
Here's a tiny bit of geek-Beatle trivia that you're welcome to use anytime: Mick Jagger was present at the recording session for Baby You're A Rich Man, and one of the tape boxes had his name written alongside The Beatles', suggesting that he also perhaps might have maybe sang backing vocals.
Trust me, he did. And he's a rich man, baby.
1-6-11
Across The Universe, 1969
Today, John Lennon's Across The Universe, written one night in 1967, when the phrase "words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup" came to him after hearing his then-wife Cynthia, "going on and on about something."
Later, after "she'd gone to sleepland I kept hearing these words over and over, flowing like an endless stream," he went downstairs and it turned into a song and when he was done, he went to bed and forgot about it, the handwritten lyrics only to be found the next morning whereupon Lennon sat down at the piano to finish the song, never knowing that 41 years later, on February 4th, 2008, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration would transmit the Interstellar Message "Across the Universe" in the direction of the star Polaris, 431 light years from Earth, marking the first time a song had ever been intentionally transmitted into deep space and across the universe.
1-5-10
Love Me Do, 1964
The Beatles first single released in America, Love Me Do, was written by Paul McCartney five years earlier - while he was playing hooky from school one day!
Up until this time, The Beatles weren't THAT famous yet.
McCartney said, "If you want to know when we 'knew' we'd arrived, it was getting in the charts with Love Me Do. That was the one."
Love Me Do took exactly one month to top the charts in the U.S.
1-4-11
Octopus's Garden, 1969
Octopus's Garden is a song written by Ringo Starr from The Beatles' 1969 album, Abbey Road.
The idea for Octopus's Garden came about when Ringo was on a boat belonging to comedian Peter Sellers in Sardinia, an island in the Mediterranean. He ordered fish and chips for lunch, but instead of fish he got squid. It was the first time he'd eaten squid, and he said, "It was ok. A bit rubbery. Tasted like chicken."
Then, the boat's captain told Ringo all about octopuses; "He told me that they hang out in their caves and they go around the seabed finding shiny stones and tin cans and bottles to put in front of their cave like a garden. I thought this was fabulous, because at the time I just wanted to be under the sea too. A couple of tokes later with the guitar - and we had Octopus's Garden!"
1-3-11
Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey, 1968
Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey is a John Lennon song from The Beatles White Album of 1968.
Lennon said: "It was about me and Yoko. Everybody seemed to be paranoid except for us two, who were in the glow of love. Everything is clear and open when you're in love. Everybody was sort of tense around us: You know, 'What is she doing here at the session? Why is she with him?' All this sort of madness is going on around us because we just happened to want to be together all the time."
John and Yoko we're also shooting heroin together at the time. McCartney later said, "We didn't really see how we could help him. We just hoped it wouldn't go too far. In actual fact, he did end up clean but this was the period when he was on it."
Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey.
2-10-11
Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five - Paul McCartney and Wings, 1973
When Paul McCartney's solo album, Band On The Run came out in 1973, Rolling Stone magazine described it as "the finest record yet released by any of the four musicians who were once called the Beatles."
It's a wonder it even got made, though. Sir Paul wanted to record in "someplace exotic" - so they ended up in Lagos, Nigeria - not exactly a vision of paradise, as they soon discovered. The country was run by the military, corruption and disease were rampant, and the recording studio was a wreck with only one tape machine on hand.
Then, while out walking one night against advice, Paul and Linda were robbed at knife point.
Still, in this song, Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five, McCartney the optimist says, "I just can't enough of that sweet stuff."
2-9-11
Twist And Shout, 1963
Twist And Shout, though not a Beatles original, showcased the group at their rock 'n' roll best. They played the song all the time at The Cavern Club in Liverpool.
In 1963, Producer George Martin wanted a show-stopper with which to close The Beatles Please Please Me album, and he had just one song in mind.
He said, "I knew that Twist And Shout was a real larynx-tearer and I said (to John Lennon), 'We're not going record that until the very end of the day, because if we record it early on, you're not going to have any voice left.' So that was the last thing we did that night."
Lennon said, "The last song nearly killed me. My voice wasn't the same for a long time after; every time I swallowed it was like sandpaper."
2-8-11
Helter Skelter, 1968
Helter Skelter was nothing more than a case of The Beatles trying to outdo The Who.
In an interview, Pete Townshend had described The Who's new single, I Can See For Miles, as the group's "most extreme sound to date."
Paul McCartney said, "I was in Scotland and I read in Melody Maker that Pete Townshend had said: 'We've just made the raunchiest, loudest, most ridiculous rock 'n' roll record you've ever heard.' I never actually found out what track it was that The Who had made, but that got me going; just hearing him talk about it. So I said to the guys, 'I think we should do a song like that; something really wild.' And I wrote Helter Skelter."
2-7-11
All My Loving, 1964
All My Loving is a song by Paul McCartney conceived while on a tour bus with Roy Orbison. He said, "It was the first song I'd ever written the words first. I never wrote words first. I've hardly ever done it since either."
After The Beatles tour bus arrived at the gig, McCartney wrote the music on the spot, on a piano, backstage.
The year was 1964 and Beatlemania was out of control.
Can't you just picture Paulie kissing his girlfriend goodbye as he heads toward yet another mob of screaming teenagers?
2-3-11
I'll Follow The Sun, 1964
The Beatles For Sale album was recorded at the absolute peak of their fame. In 1964 they released two new albums and an EP, starred in their first feature film, gave countless interviews, radio sessions and television appearances, and toured the world, all to screaming mobs of Beatlemaniacs.
Success is a wonderful thing, but it is very tiring. They were always on the go.
So on this record, they reached back for a song that was written in 1959 at Paul McCartney's family home in Liverpool, I'll Follow The Sun.
Paul said, "I wrote that in my (living room). I was about 16. I'll Follow The Sun was one of those very early ones. I remember standing in the parlour, with my guitar, looking out through the lace curtains of the window."
Tomorrow may rain, so I'll Follow The Sun.
2-1-11
If I Fell, 1964
If I Fell was a rare Beatles ballad, primarily written by John Lennon, which first appeared on the A Hard Day's Night film and soundtrack.
In 1964 Lennon wrote the lyrics on the back of a Valentine's Day card; If I fell in love with you, would you promise to be true and help me understand?
25 years later that card with the If I Fell lyrics sold at auction in London for over $11,000.
I fell over when I heard that.
1-31-11
Let It Be, 1970 (Let It Be....Naked)
As the 1960's wound down, so did The Beatles. Paul McCartney in particular was feeling insecure and wounded by The Beatles gradual disintegration.
He said, "One night during this tense time I had a dream. I saw my mum, who'd been dead 10 years or so. And it was so great to see her because that's a wonderful thing about dreams: you actually are reunited with that person for a second; there they are, and you appear to both be physically together again. It was so wonderful for me and she was very reassuring. In the dream she said, 'It'll be all right.'"
This version of Let It Be is from a record called Let It Be....Naked, where McCartney favors a slightly more stripped down approach.
1-28-11
Magical Mystery Tour, 1967
Magical Mystery Tour is the opening track and theme song for the Beatles album and TV film of the same name.
Paul McCartney said, "John and I remembered mystery tours, and we always thought this was a fascinating idea: getting on a bus and not knowing where you were going."
They actually stole the idea from Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters and their LSD-fueled bus of crazies traipsing around the west coast of hippie America.
McCartney added, "Because those were psychedelic times it had to become a magical mystery tour," with "all the circus and fairground barkers, 'Roll up! Roll up!', which was also a reference to rolling up a joint. We were always sticking those little things in that we knew our friends would get; veiled references to drugs and to trips."
Let's do it! Roll up, roll up for the magical mystery tour, step right this way!
1-27-11
Please Mr. Postman, 1963
Please Mr. Postman by a group called The Marvelettes was the first Motown song to hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
The year was 1961.
Fifteen years later, The Carpenters of all people also had a #1 hit with Please Mr. Postman. (I probably shouldn't mention that rapper Lil' Wayne, who was just released from prison, sampled The Carpenters version on one of his songs but, too late)
Anyway, In between The Marvelettes and The Carpenters was the Beatles version of Please Mr. Postman from their second album, With The Beatles. With John Lennon on lead vocals.
1-26-11
Working Class Hero - John Lennon, 1970
Working Class Hero is a song from John Lennon's first post-Beatles solo album called John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band.
After the Beatles' break-up in1970, Lennon went through controversial primal therapy treatment for four months in Los Angeles. Forced to confront the traumas of his childhood (abandonment, isolation and death), Lennon finally let his submerged anger and hurt rise to the surface and he dealt with it through his art.
Working Class Hero features only John Lennon and an acoustic guitar.
1-25-11
Sexy Sadie, 1968
John Lennon's most bitter song on The Beatles' White Album, Sexy Sadie, was a stick-it-to-the-Maharishi song, written literally while John was waiting for a taxi to take him to the airport and out of India and back to England.
There we're rumors that the Maharishi had been hitting on one of the ladies in The Beatles entourage; and Lennon wrote Sexy Sadie as a direct shot at the guy he called "a bloody old letch just like everybody else."
John Lennon said in his famous Playboy interview, "That's about the Maharishi, yes. I copped out and I wouldn't write 'Maharishi, what have you done? You made a fool of everyone.' But now it can be told, Fab Listeners.
1-24-11
What Goes On, 1965
Today, What Goes On, the only Beatles' song credited to Lennon/McCartney/Starkey.
"Starkey" would be Richard Starkey, aka Ringo Starr.
What Goes On was Ringo's first-ever composing credit on a Beatles song. However, when asked what his contribution was to the song, Ringo jokingly said, "About five words, and I haven't done a thing since."
What Goes On was actually one of John Lennon's early tunes, written before The Beatles' had a recording contract and never performed live. It wasn't released until 1965's Rubber Soul album and starred man-of-few-words, Ringo Starr, on vocals.
1-20-11
I Want To Hold Your Hand, 1963
I Want To Hold Your Hand sold more than a million copies…..in advance! It became The Beatles first US #1 hit, and kick-started the British Invasion of America.
John Lennon said of his songwriting partner Paul McCartney, "We wrote a lot of stuff together, one-on-one, eyeball to eyeball. Like in I Want To Hold Your Hand."
When The Beatles got word that they'd just hit #1 in the U.S. with that song, they were staying in Paris for 3 weeks of concerts, soon to head back to the recording studio to re-record the vocals to I Want To Hold Your Hand for the German market, as Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand.
Beatlemania was now worldwide.
1-19-11
Yer Blues, 1968
John Lennon's most emotionally-revealing moment on The Beatles' White Album, Yer Blues, was written in India, where John, Paul, George and Ringo we're studing transcendental meditation with the Maharishi.
Lennon said, "The funny thing about the camp was that although it was very beautiful and I was meditating about eight hours a day, I was writing the most miserable songs on earth. In Yer Blues, when I wrote, 'I'm so lonely I want to die,' I'm not kidding. That's how I felt."
1-18-11
All Together Now, 1969
All Together Now is a Paul McCartney song which found it's way on to The Beatles' Yellow Submarine soundtrack.
McCartney described the song as a children's sing-along with the tagline, All Together Now, inspired by an old music hall tradition of asking the audience to join in.
Combine that with the old hippie-peace-love-dope mantra of the 60's, "we are all together, man," and you end up with all four Beatles repeating that mantra at least 50 times.
C'mon. Sing along!
1-17-11
All I've Got To Do, 1963
All I've Got To Do, the second song on The Beatles' second album, was written by John Lennon specifically for the American market.
The song starts off with "Whenever I want you around, all I gotta do Is call you on the phone."
In England in the 60's, the idea of calling a girl on the telephone was unthinkable.
John Lennon said in an interview, "I have never called a girl on the 'phone in my life! Because 'phones weren't part of the English child's life."
1-14-11
It's All Too Much, 1969
It's All Too Much is a George Harrison song from The Beatles' Yellow Submarine album.
When John and Cynthia Lennon and George Harrison and Pattie Boyd went to Tahiti on vacation, they'd hardly been anywhere out of England, and never to anywhere that was tropical.
After a couple of days of shipboard seasickness, John Lennon said, "The next morning I woke and looked out of the porthole. It was fantastic. It was incredible; a smooth lagoon with the island in the background, with mountains and coconut palms. Five or six Tahitians were paddling an outrigger canoe, gliding across the calm sea. It blissed me out.
Apparently, it was all too much.
1-13-11
You Won't See Me, 1965
You Won't See Me was recorded during The Beatles' last session for the Rubber Soul album. John Lennon said Rubber Soul was the first album on which The Beatles were in complete creative control during recording.
You Won't See Me was written by Paul McCartney about his crumbling relationship with British actress Jane Asher.
Jane was McCartney's girlfriend between 1963 and 1968 - then she found him in bed with another woman.
Time after time you refuse to even listen.
1-12-11
Letting Go (Paul McCartney solo), 1975
Venus and Mars is the fourth album by Wings, Paul McCartney's group after The Beatles' split in 1970. The record was so successful that it launched a year-long worldwide tour. Maybe you were there at the Cow Palace for Wings Over America, June of 1976?
Great show. That tour was McCartney's first appearance in concert since the last Beatles tour in 1966, which ended right here in San Francisco.
The last track on side one of Venus and Mars is the surprisingly soulful top-40 hit, Letting Go, about a woman that sings so beautifully that Sir Paul McCartney said, "I Want To Put Her On The Radio."
1-11-11
Because, 1969
The final song to be recorded for The Beatles' Abbey Road album was a ballad, John Lennon's Because. The song was inspired by Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and featured The Beatles' distinctive three-part vocal harmonies, overdubbed three times to make nine voices in all.
John Lennon's not-yet wife, Yoko Ono, was a classically trained pianist whose interests we're somewhat avant garde. One day in 1969, however, she played Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 27, No. 2 - the Moonlight Sonata.
Lying on their sofa listening, John asked Yoko if she could play the chords backwards, "She did, and I wrote Because around them. The song sounds like Moonlight Sonata, too. The lyrics are clear, no bulls**t, no imagery, no obscure references."
1-10-11
Get Back, 1969
Get Back was written primarily by Paul McCartney and credited to "The Beatles with Billy Preston." That's Billy on electric piano, on The Beatles' only single that credited another artist.
Paul McCartney actually wrote the press release for Get Back; "Get Back is The Beatles' new single. It's the first Beatles record which is as live as live can be, in this electronic age. There's no electronic whatchamacallit. Get Back is a pure spring-time rock number. The Beatles, as nature intended."
1-7-11
Baby You're A Rich Man, 1967
Baby You're A Rich Man is a combination of two unfinished Lennon-McCartney song fragments and was recorded in a single day.
John Lennon said, "We just stuck two songs together for this one, the same as A Day In The Life."
Here's a tiny bit of geek-Beatle trivia that you're welcome to use anytime: Mick Jagger was present at the recording session for Baby You're A Rich Man, and one of the tape boxes had his name written alongside The Beatles', suggesting that he also perhaps might have maybe sang backing vocals.
Trust me, he did. And he's a rich man, baby.
1-6-11
Across The Universe, 1969
Today, John Lennon's Across The Universe, written one night in 1967, when the phrase "words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup" came to him after hearing his then-wife Cynthia, "going on and on about something."
Later, after "she'd gone to sleepland I kept hearing these words over and over, flowing like an endless stream," he went downstairs and it turned into a song and when he was done, he went to bed and forgot about it, the handwritten lyrics only to be found the next morning whereupon Lennon sat down at the piano to finish the song, never knowing that 41 years later, on February 4th, 2008, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration would transmit the Interstellar Message "Across the Universe" in the direction of the star Polaris, 431 light years from Earth, marking the first time a song had ever been intentionally transmitted into deep space and across the universe.
1-5-10
Love Me Do, 1964
The Beatles first single released in America, Love Me Do, was written by Paul McCartney five years earlier - while he was playing hooky from school one day!
Up until this time, The Beatles weren't THAT famous yet.
McCartney said, "If you want to know when we 'knew' we'd arrived, it was getting in the charts with Love Me Do. That was the one."
Love Me Do took exactly one month to top the charts in the U.S.
1-4-11
Octopus's Garden, 1969
Octopus's Garden is a song written by Ringo Starr from The Beatles' 1969 album, Abbey Road.
The idea for Octopus's Garden came about when Ringo was on a boat belonging to comedian Peter Sellers in Sardinia, an island in the Mediterranean. He ordered fish and chips for lunch, but instead of fish he got squid. It was the first time he'd eaten squid, and he said, "It was ok. A bit rubbery. Tasted like chicken."
Then, the boat's captain told Ringo all about octopuses; "He told me that they hang out in their caves and they go around the seabed finding shiny stones and tin cans and bottles to put in front of their cave like a garden. I thought this was fabulous, because at the time I just wanted to be under the sea too. A couple of tokes later with the guitar - and we had Octopus's Garden!"
1-3-11
Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey, 1968
Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey is a John Lennon song from The Beatles White Album of 1968.
Lennon said: "It was about me and Yoko. Everybody seemed to be paranoid except for us two, who were in the glow of love. Everything is clear and open when you're in love. Everybody was sort of tense around us: You know, 'What is she doing here at the session? Why is she with him?' All this sort of madness is going on around us because we just happened to want to be together all the time."
John and Yoko we're also shooting heroin together at the time. McCartney later said, "We didn't really see how we could help him. We just hoped it wouldn't go too far. In actual fact, he did end up clean but this was the period when he was on it."
Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey.
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