VIDEO

Paul McCartney: "I was going out in my car, just vaguely singing this song, and it was like 'Hey, Jules'...And then I just thought a better name was Jude. A bit more country & western for me." (1973:Rolling Stone)

John Lennon: "He said it was written about Julian. He knew I was splitting with Cyn and leaving Julian then. He was driving to see Julian to say hello. He had been like an uncle. And he came up with 'Hey Jude.' But I always heard it as a song to me. Now I'm sounding like one of those fans reading things into it... Think about it: Yoko had just come into the picture. He is saying. 'Hey, Jude'-- 'Hey, John.' Subconsciously, he was saying, 'Go ahead, leave me.' On a conscious level, he didn't want me to go ahead. The angel in him was saying, 'Bless you.' The devil in him didn't like it at all, because he didn't want to lose his partner." (1980: Playboy)

Paul McCartney: "I remember I played it to John and Yoko, and I was saying, 'These words won't be on the finished version.' Some of the words were: 'The movement you need is on your shoulder,' and John was saying, 'It's great!' I'm saying, 'It's crazy, it doesn't make any sense at all.' He's saying, 'Sure it does, it's great.'" (1974)
**KILL ME**

(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

Paul McCartney � lead vocal, piano, bass, handclaps
John Lennon � backing vocal, acoustic guitar, handclaps
George Harrison � backing vocal, lead guitar, handclaps
Ringo Starr � backing vocal, drums, tambourine, handclaps
Uncredited 36-piece orchestra � 10 violins, three violas, three cellos, two double basses, two flutes, two clarinets, one bass clarinet, one bassoon, one contrabassoon, four trumpets, two horns, four trombones, and one percussion instrument; 35 of these musicians on additional backing vocals and handclaps

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Ken Scott, Barry Sheffield
Recorded at: Trident Studios, London, England, Jul. 31�2 Aug. 2, 1968

**KILL ME**

VIDEO

John Lennon: "Strawberry Fields was a place near us that happened to be a Salvation Army home. But Strawberry Fields-- I mean, I have visions of Strawberry Fields. And there was Penny Lane, and the Cast Iron Shore, which I've just got in some song now, and they were just good names-- just groovy names. Just good sounding. Because Strawberry Fields is anywhere you want to go." (1968)

Paul McCartney: "That wasn't 'I buried Paul' at all-- that was John saying 'Cranberry sauce.' It was the end of Strawberry Fields. That�s John�s humor. John would say something totally out of sync, like cranberry sauce. If you don�t realize that John�s apt to say cranberry sauce when he feels like it, then you start to hear a funny little word there, and you think, 'Aha!'" (1974)
**KILL ME**

John Lennon: "Strawberry Fields is a real place. After I stopped living at Penny Lane, I moved in with my auntie who lived in the suburbs... not the poor slummy kind of image that was projected in all the Beatles stories. Near that home was Strawberry Fields, a house near a boys' reformatory where I used to go to garden parties as a kid with my friends Nigel and Pete. We always had fun at Strawberry Fields. So that's where I got the name. But I used it as an image. Strawberry Fields Forever. 'Living is easy with eyes closed. Misunderstanding all you see.' It still goes, doesn't it? Aren't I saying exactly the same thing now? The awareness apparently trying to be expressed is-- let's say in one way I was always hip. I was hip in kindergarten. I was different from the others. I was different all my life. The second verse goes, 'No one I think is in my tree.' Well, I was too shy and self-doubting. Nobody seems to be as hip as me is what I was saying. Therefore, I must be crazy or a genius-- 'I mean it must be high or low,' the next line. There was something wrong with me, I thought, because I seemed to see things other people didn't see. I thought I was crazy or an egomaniac for claiming to see things other people didn't see. I always was so psychic or intuitive or poetic or whatever you want to call it, that I was always seeing things in a hallucinatory way. Surrealism had a great effect on me, because then I realized that the imagery in my mind wasn't insanity; that if it was insane, I belong in an exclusive club that sees the world in those terms. Surrealism to me is reality. Psychic vision to me is reality. Even as a child. When I looked at myself in the mirror or when I was 12, 13, I used to literally trance out into alpha. I didn't know what it was called then. I found out years later there is a name for those conditions. But I would find myself seeing hallucinatory images of my face changing and becoming cosmic and complete. It caused me to always be a rebel. This thing gave me a chip on the shoulder; but, on the other hand, I wanted to be loved and accepted. Part of me would like to be accepted by all facets of society and not be this loudmouthed lunatic musician. But I cannot be what I am not." (1980)
**KILL ME**

(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

John Lennon � lead vocals, acoustic guitar, bongos, Mellotron
Paul McCartney � Mellotron, bass, electric guitar, timpani, bongos
George Harrison � slide guitar, swarmandal, timpani, maracas
Ringo Starr � drums, percussion
George Martin � producer, cello and trumpet arrangement
Geoff Emerick � engineer
Mal Evans � tambourine
Neil Aspinall � g�iro
Terry Doran � maracas
Tony Fisher � trumpet
Greg Bowen � trumpet
Derek Watkins � trumpet
Stanley Roderick � trumpet
John Hall � cello
Derek Simpson � cello
Norman Jones � cello

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Geoff Emerick
Recorded at: EMI Studios, London, England, Nov 24� Dec 22, 1966
**KILL ME**

VIDEO

Paul McCartney: "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 ting 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.' I'm not sure if she used the words 'Let it be' but that was the gist of her advice, it was, 'Don't worry too much, it will turn out OK.' It was such a sweet dream I woke up thinking, Oh, it was really great to visit with her again. I felt very blessed to have that dream. So that got me writing the song Let It Be. I literally started off 'Mother Mary', which was her name, 'When I find myself in times of trouble', which I certainly found myself in. The song was based on that dream." (1997:Many Years From Now)

Paul McCartney: "I had a lot of bad times in the '60's. We used to lie in bed and wonder what was going on and feel quite paranoid. Probably all the drugs. I had a dream one night about my mother. She died when I was fourteen so I hadn't really heard from her in quite a while, and it was very good. It gave me some strength." (1980:Musician)
**KILL ME**

(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

Paul McCartney � lead/backing vocals, piano, maracas, Wurlitzer electric piano, bass
John Lennon � backing vocals
George Harrison � lead guitar, backing vocals
Ringo Starr � drums
Billy Preston � Hammond organ
Linda McCartney - backing vocals
Session musicians - orchestration

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Glyn Johns, Jeff Jarratt, Phil McDonald
Recorded at: Apple Studio, London, England, Jan 31, 1969 (main recording),
.... and EMI Studios, London, England, Apr 30, 1969, Jan 4, 1970 (Harrison guitar solos)
**KILL ME**

VIDEO

Paul McCartney: "Let's see, we were told we had to get down to it. So we found this house when we were walking along one day. We knew we had to really get this song going, so we got down in the basement of this disused house and there was an old piano. It wasn't really disused, it was rooms to let. We found this old piano and started banging away. There was a little old organ too. So we were having this informal jam and we started banging away. Suddenly a little bit came to us, the catch line. So we started working on it from there. We got our pens and paper out and just wrote down the lyrics. Eventually, we had some sort of a song, so we played it for our recording manager and he seemed to like it. We recorded it the next day." (1964)

John Lennon: "We wrote a lot of stuff together, one on one, eyeball to eyeball. Like in 'I Want to Hold Your Hand,' I remember when we got the chord that made the song. We were in Jane Asher's house, downstairs in the cellar playing on the piano at the same time. And we had, 'Oh you-u-u/ got that something...' And Paul hits this chord and I turn to him and say, 'That's it!' I said, 'Do that again!' In those days, we really used to absolutely write like that � both playing into each other's noses." (1980:Playboy)

Paul McCartney: "'Eyeball to eyeball' is a very good description of it. That's exactly how it was. 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' was very co-written. It was our big number one; the one that would eventually break us in America." (1994)
**KILL ME**

(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

John Lennon � lead vocal, rhythm guitar, handclaps
Paul McCartney � lead vocal, bass guitar, handclaps
George Harrison � lead guitar, handclaps
Ringo Starr � drums, handclaps

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Norman Smith
Recorded at: EMI Studios, London, England, Oct 17, 1963
**KILL ME**

VIDEO

John Lennon: "I was writing the song with the 'Daily Mail' propped up in front of me on the piano. I had it open to the 'News In Brief' or whatever they call it. There was a paragraph about four thousand holes being discovered in Blackburn Lancashire. 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 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." (1967)

John Lennon: "Just as it sounds: I was reading the paper one day and I noticed two stories. One was the Guinness heir who killed himself in a car. That was the main headline story. He died in London in a car crash. On the next page was a story about 4000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire. In the streets, that is. They were going to fill them all. Paul's contribution was the beautiful little lick in the song 'I'd love to turn you on.' 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." (1980)

Paul McCartney: "That was mainly John's, I think. I remember being very conscious of the words 'I'd love to turn you on' and thinking, Well, that's about as risque as we dare get at this point. Well, the BBC banned it. It said, 'Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall' or something. But I mean that there was nothing vaguely rude or naughty in any of that. 'I'd love to turn you on' was the rudest line in the whole thing. But that was one of John's very good ones. I wrote... that was co-written. The orchestra crescendo and that was based on some of the ideas I'd been getting from Stockhausen and people like that, which is more abstract. So we told the orchestra members to just start on their lowest note and end on their highest note and go in their own time... which orchestras are frightened to do. That's not the tradition. But we got 'em to do it." (1984)

John Lennon: "Paul and I were definitely working together, especially on 'A Day in the Life' that was a real ... The way we wrote a lot of the time: you'd write the good bit, the part that was easy, like 'I read the news today' or whatever it was, then when you got stuck or whenever it got hard, instead of carrying on, you just drop it; then we would meet each other, and I would sing half, and he would be inspired to write the next bit and vice versa. He was a bit shy about it because I think he thought it's already a good song. Sometimes we wouldn't let each other interfere with a song either, because you tend to be a bit lax with someone else's stuff, you experiment a bit. So we were doing it in his room with the piano. He said 'Should we do this?' 'Yeah, let's do that.'"
**KILL ME**

(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

John Lennon � lead vocal, acoustic guitar, piano (final chord)
Paul McCartney � lead vocal (middle-eight), piano (throughout and final chord), bass
George Harrison � acoustic guitar, maracas
Ringo Starr � drums, congas, piano (final chord)
Mal Evans � alarm clock, counting, piano (final chord)
John Marson � harp
Erich Gruenberg, Granville Jones, Bill Monro, Jurgen Hess, Hans Geiger, D. Bradley, Lionel Bentley, David McCallum, Donald Weekes, Henry Datyner, Sidney Sax, Ernest Scott, Carlos Villa � violin
John Underwood, Gwynne Edwards, Bernard Davis, John Meek � viola
Francisco Gabarro, Dennis Vigay, Alan Delziel, Alex Nifosi � cello
Cyril Mac Arther, Gordon Pearce � double bass
Roger Lord � oboe
Basil Tschaikov, Jack Brymer � clarinet
N. Fawcett, Alfred Waters � bassoon
Clifford Seville, David Sandeman � flute
Alan Civil, Neil Sanders � french horn
David Mason, Monty Montgomery, Harold Jackson � trumpet
Raymond Brown, Raymond Premru, T. Moore � trombone
Michael Barnes � tuba
Tristan Fry � timpani
Marijke Koger � tambourine

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Geoff Emerick
Recorded at: EMI Studios, London, England, Jan 19�20; Feb 3, 10, 22, 1967
**KILL ME**

VIDEO

George Harrison: (inspired by) "Maybe Patti, probably. ..... I wrote it at the time when we were making the last double album. And it's just the first line, 'Something in the way she moves' which has been in millions of songs. It's not a special thing. But it just seemed quite apt." (1969: BBC�s Scene and Heard)

George Harrison: "I wrote the song 'Something' for the album before this one, but I never finished it off until just recently. I usually get the first few lines of words and music together, both at once... and then finish the rest of the melody. Then I have to write the words. It's like another song I wrote when we were in India. I wrote the whole first verse and just said everything I wanted to say, and so now I need to write a couple more verses. I find that much more difficult. But John gave me a handy tip. He said, 'Once you start to write a song, try to finish it straight away while you're still in the same mood.' Sometimes you go back to it and you're in a whole different state of mind. So now, I do try to finish them straight away." (1969)

George Harrison: "I could never think of words for it. And also because there was a James Taylor song called 'Something In The Way She Moves' which is the first lin e of that. And so then I thought of trying to change the words, but they were the words that came when I first wrote it, so in the end I just left it as that, and just called it Something. When I wrote it, I imagined somebody like Ray Charles doing it. That's the feel I imagined, but because I'm not Ray Charles, you know, I'm sort of much more limited in what I can do, then it came out like this. It's nice. It's probably the nicest melody tune that I've written." (1969)

George Harrison: "'Something' was written on the piano while we were making the White Album. I had a break while Paul was doing some overdubbing so I went into an empty studio and began to write. That's really all there is to it, except the middle took some time to sort out. It didn't go on the White Album because we'd already finished all the tracks." (1980:Dark Horse)

George Harrison: (inspired by Patti?) "Well no, I didn�t. I just wrote it, and then somebody put together a video. And what they did was they went out and got some footage of me and Patti, Paul and Linda, Ringo and Maureen, it was at that time, and John and Yoko and they just made up a little video to go with it. So then, everybody presumed I wrote it about Patti, but actually, when I wrote it, I was thinking of Ray Charles..... But that�s what I was thinking of. I could hear in my head Ray Charles singing it." (1993:Cashmere interview)
**KILL ME**

(George Harrison)

George Harrison � lead vocals, lead guitar, rhythm guitar
Paul McCartney � bass, backing vocals
John Lennon � piano
Ringo Starr � drums
Billy Preston � Hammond organ
George Martin � string arrangement

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Jeff Jarratt, Glyn Johns, Geoff Emerick, Phil McDonald
Recorded at: EMI Studios, London, England, May 2, 5, 16, Jul, 15 1969;
..... and Olympic Sound Studios, London, England, Aug 1969 (lead guitar/bass overdubs)
**KILL ME**

VIDEO

John Lennon: "It was the first song I wrote that was consciously about my life. (Sings) 'There are places I'll remember/ All my life though some have changed...' Before, we were just writing songs a la Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly -- pop songs with no more thought to them than that. The words were almost irrelevant. 'In My Life' started out as a bus journey from my house at 250 Menlove Avenue to town, mentioning every place I could remember. I wrote it all down and it was ridiculous... it was the most boring sort of 'What I Did On My Holiday's Bus Trip' song and it wasn't working at all. But then I laid back and these lyrics started coming to me about the places I remember. Paul helped with the middle-eight. It was, I think, my first real major piece of work. Up till then it had all been sort of glib and throw-away. And that was the first time I consciously put my literary part of myself into the lyric." (1980:Playboy)

Paul McCartney: "I think I wrote the tune to that; that's the one we slightly dispute. John either forgot or didn't think I wrote the tune. I remember he had the words, like a poem... sort of about faces he remembered. I recall going off for half an hour and sitting with a Mellotron he had, writing the tune... which was Miracles inspired, as I remember. In fact, a lot of stuff was then." (1984)

John Lennon: ��In My Life� was, I think, my first real, major piece of work. Up until then it had all been glib and throw-away. I had one mind that wrote books and another that churned out things about �I love you� and �you love me,� because that�s how Paul and I did it� It was the first song that I wrote that was really, consciously, about my life� a remembrance of friends and lovers of the past.�
**KILL ME**

(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

John Lennon � double-tracked lead vocal, rhythm guitar
Paul McCartney � bass, harmony vocal
George Harrison � lead guitar, harmony vocal
Ringo Starr � drums, tambourine, bells
George Martin � piano

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Norman Smith
Recorded at: EMI Studios, London, England, Oct 18,22, 1965
**KILL ME**

VIDEO

Paul McCartney: "I just sat down at my piano in Scotland, started playing and came up with that song, imagining it was going to be done by someone like Ray Charles. I have always found inspiration in the calm beauty of Scotland and again it proved the place where I found inspiration."

Paul McCartney: "It' doesn't sound like him at all, because it's me singing and I don't sound anything like Ray, but sometimes you get a person in your mind, just for an attitude, just for a place to be, so that your mind is somewhere rather then nowhere, and you place it by thinking, Oh, I love that Ray Charles, and think, Well, what might he do then? So that was in my mind, and would have probably had some bearing on the courds structure of it, which is slightly jazzy. I think I could attribute that to having Ray in my mind when I wrote that one.

It's a rather sad song. I like writing sad songs, it's a good bag to get into because you can actually acknowledge some deeper feelings of your own and put them in it. It's a good vehicle, it saves having to go to a psychiatrist. Songwriting often performs that feat, you say it but you don't embarrass yourself because it's only a song, or is it? You are putting the things that are bothering you on the table and you are reviewing them, but because it's a song, you don't have to argue with anyone. I was a bit flipped out and tripped out at the time. It's a sad song because it's all about the unattainable; the door you never quite reach. This is the road that you never get to the end of." (1997:Many Years From Now)

John Lennon: "That's Paul. He had a little spurt before we finally split up. I think the shock of what was happening between Yoko and me gave him the creative spurt for 'Let It Be' and 'The Long and Winding Road'. That was the last gasp from him." (1980:Playboy)
**KILL ME**

McCartney originally wrote the song at his farm in Scotland, and was inspired by the growing tension among the Beatles ..... The "long and winding road" of the song was claimed to have been inspired by the B842, a thirty-one mile (50 km) winding road in Scotland, running along the east coast of Kintyre into Campbeltown, and part of the eighty-two mile (133 km) drive from Lochgilphead. �.. McCartney recorded a demo version of the song, with Beatles' engineer Alan Brown assisting, in September 1968, during the recording sessions for The Beatles (White Album). (Wikipedia)
**KILL ME**

(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

Paul McCartney � lead vocals, piano
John Lennon � six-string bass
George Harrison � electric guitar
Ringo Starr � drums
Billy Preston � Fender Rhodes
Uncredited orchestral musicians � 18 violins, 4 violas, 4 cellos, harp, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, 2 guitars, 14 female voices
Richard Hewson � orchestral arrangement
John Barham � choral arrangement

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Glyn Johns, Peter Bown
Recorded at: Apple Studio, London, England, Jan 26,31, 1969
..... andEMI's Abbey Road Studios, London, England, Apr 1, 1970
**KILL ME**

VIDEO

George Harrison: "I wrote While My Guitar Gently Weeps at my mother's house in Warrington. I was thinking about the Chinese I Ching, the Book of Changes... The Eastern concept is that whatever happens is all meant to be, and that there's no such thing as coincidence - every little item that's going down has a purpose.

While My Guitar Gently Weeps was a simple study based on that theory. I decided to write a song based on the first thing I saw upon opening any book - as it would be a relative to that moment, at that time. I picked up a book at random, opened it, saw 'gently weeps', then laid the book down again and started the song." (Anthology)

George Harrison: "I worked on that song with John, Paul, and Ringo one day, and they were not interested in it at all. And I knew inside of me that it was a nice song. The next day I was with Eric Clapton, and I was going into the session, and I said, 'We're going to do this song. Come and play on it.' He said, 'Oh no. I can't do that. Nobody ever plays on the Beatles records.' I said, 'Look, it's my song, and I want you to play on it.' So Eric came in, and the other guys were as good as gold-- because he was there. Also, it left me free to just play the rhythm and do the vocal. So Eric played that, and I thought it was really good. Then we listened to it back, and he said, 'Ah, there's a problem though; it's not Beatley enough.' So we put it through the ADT (automatic double-track) to wobble it up a bit." (1987)
**KILL ME**

(George Harrison)

George Harrison � double-tracked lead vocals, backing vocal, acoustic guitar, twelve-string guitar, Hammond organ
Paul McCartney � piano, bass, harmony vocal
John Lennon � electric guitar with tremolo, 6 string bass
Ringo Starr � drums, tambourine, castanets
Eric Clapton � lead guitar (uncredited)

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Ken Scott
Recorded at: EMI Studios, London, England, Sep 5�6, 1968
**KILL ME**

VIDEO

Paul McCartney: "It fell out of bed. I had a piano by my bedside and I... must have dreamed it, because I tumbled out of bed and put my hands on the piano keys and I had a tune in my head. It was just all there, a complete thing. I couldn't believe it. It came too easy. In fact, I didn't believe I'd written it. I thought maybe I'd heard it before, it was some other tune, and I went around for weeks playing the chords of the song for people, asking them, 'Is this like something? I think I've written it.' And people would say, 'No, it's not like anything else, but it's good.'" (1984)

Paul McCartney: "I remember mulling over the tune 'Yesterday', and suddenly getting these little one-word openings to the verse. I started to develop the idea ... da-da da, yes-ter-day, sud-den-ly, fun-il-ly, mer-il-ly and Yes-ter-day, that's good. All my troubles seemed so far away. It's easy to rhyme those a's: say, nay, today, away, play, stay, there's a lot of rhymes and those fall in quite easily, so I gradually pieced it together from that journey. Sud-den-ly, and 'b' again, another easy rhyme: e, me, tree, flea, we, and I had the basis of it." (1965)

John Lennon: "The song was around for months and months before we finally completed it. Every time we got together to write songs for a recording session, this one would come up. We almost had it finished. Paul wrote nearly all of it, but we just couldn't find the right title. We called it 'Scrambled Eggs' and it became a joke between us. We made up our minds that only a one-word title would suit, we just couldn't find the right one. Then one morning Paul woke up and the song and the title were both there, completed. I was sorry in a way, we'd had so many laughs about it."

Paul McCartney: "The hits are always the ones you thought wouldn't be hits, like 'Yesterday' or 'Mull Of Kintyre.' I didn't want to put them out. We didn't put 'Yesterday' out in England, it was only here (America) that it was a single. We didn't think it was going to be a good idea... so it's crazy how it goes." (1986)
**KILL ME**

(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

Paul McCartney � lead vocals, acoustic guitar
Tony Gilbert � violin
Sidney Sax � violin
Kenneth Essex � viola
Peter Halling - cello
Francisco Gabarro � cello
George Martin � string arrangement

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Norman Smith
Recorded at: EMI Studios, London, England, Jun 14, 1965
**KILL ME**

VIDEO

John Lennon: "'Norwegian Wood' is my song completely. It was about an affair I was having. I was very careful and paranoid because I didn't want my wife, Cyn, to know that there really was something going on outside of the household. I'd always had some kind of affairs going on, so I was trying to be sophisticated in writing about an affair... but in such a smoke-screen way that you couldn't tell. But I can't remember any specific woman it had to do with." (1980:Playboy)

Paul McCartney: "In our world the guy had to have some sort of revenge. It could have meant I lit a fire to keep myself warm, and wasn't the decor of her house wonderful? But it didn't, it meant I burned the fucking place down as an act of revenge, and then we left it there and went into the instrumental"

George Harrison: "I had bought, earlier, a crummy sitar in London... and played the 'Norwegian Wood' bit." (1980)
**KILL ME**

(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

John Lennon � double-tracked vocals, acoustic guitar
Paul McCartney � bass guitar, harmony vocals
George Harrison � 12-string acoustic guitar, double-tracked sitar
Ringo Starr � tambourine, maracas, bass drum, finger cymbals

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Norman Smith
Recorded at: EMI Studios, London, England, Oct 12,21, 1965
**KILL ME**

VIDEO

George Harrison: "It was written on a nice sunny day this early summer, in Eric Clapton's garden. We'd been through hell with business, and on that day I just felt as though I was sagging off, like from school, it was like that. I just didn't come in one day. And just the release of being in the sun and it was just a really nice day. And that song just came. It's a bit like If I Needed Someone, you know, like that basic sort of riff going through it is the same as all those 'Bells Of Rhymney' sort of Byrd-type things." (1969)

George Harrison: "We had meetings and meetings and with all this, you know, banks, bankers and lawyers and all sorts of things. And contracts and shares. And it was really awful, 'cuz it's not the sort of thing we enjoy. And one day I didn't come in to the office. I just sort of, it was like sagging off school. ..... And I went to a friend's house in the country. And it was just sunny and it was all just the release of that tension that had been building up on me. And it was just really nice sunny day. And I picked up the guitar, which was the first time I'd played the guitar for a couple of weeks because I'd been so busy. And the first thing that came out was that song. It just came. And I finished it later when I was on holiday in Sardinia." (1969: BBC�s Scene and Heard)

George Harrison: "'Here Comes The Sun' was written at the time when Apple was getting like school, where accounts, and 'sign this' and 'sign that'. Anyway it seems as if winter in England goes on forever, by the time spring comes you really deserve it. So one day I decided--I'm going to 'sag off' Apple, and I went over to Eric's (Clapton) house: I was walking in his garden. The relief of not having to go and see all those dopey accountants was wonderful, and i was walking around the garden with one of Eric's acoustic guitars and wrote 'Here Comes The Sun'." (1980:Dark Horse)
**KILL ME**

(George Harrison)

George Harrison � lead/backing vocals, acoustic and electric guitars, harmonium, Moog synthesizer, handclaps
Paul McCartney � bass, handclaps, backing vocals
Ringo Starr � drums, handclaps
Uncredited � four violas, four cellos, double bass, two piccolos, two flutes, two alto flutes, two clarinets

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Phil McDonald, Geoff Emerick
Recorded at: EMI Studios, London, England, Jul 7-Aug 19, 1969
**KILL ME**

VIDEO

John Lennon: "The whole Beatle thing was just beyond comprehension. When 'Help' came out, I was actually crying out for help. Most people think it's just a fast rock 'n roll song. I didn't realize it at the time; I just wrote the song because I was commissioned to write it for the movie. But later, I knew I really was crying out for help. So it was my fat Elvis period. You see the movie: He -- I -- is very fat, very insecure, and he's completely lost himself. And I am singing about when I was so much younger and all the rest, looking back at how easy it was. Now I may be very positive... yes, yes... but I also go through deep depressions where I would like to jump out the window, you know. It becomes easier to deal with as I get older; I don't know whether you learn control or, when you grow up, you calm down a little. Anyway, I was fat and depressed and I was crying out for help." (1980:Playboy)

Paul McCartney: "John wrote that... well, John and I wrote it at his house in Weybridge for the film. I think the title was out of desperation." (1984:Playboy)
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(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

John Lennon � double-tracked lead vocals, acoustic twelve-string rhythm guitar
Paul McCartney � bass guitar, backing vocals
George Harrison � lead guitar, backing vocals
Ringo Starr � drums, tambourine

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Norman Smith
Recorded at: EMI Studios, London, England, Apr 13, 1965,
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VIDEO

Paul McCartney: "I was sitting at the piano when I thought of it. The first few bars just came to me, and I got this name in my head... Daisy Hawkins picks up the rice in the church. I don't know why. I couldn't think of much more so I put it away for a day. Then the name Father McCartney came to me, and all the lonely people. But I thought that people would think it was supposed to be about my Dad sitting knitting his socks. Dad's a happy lad. So I went through the telephone book and I got the name McKenzie. I was in Bristol when I decided Daisy Hawkins wasn't a good name. I walked 'round looking at the shops, and I saw the name Rigby. Then I took the song down to John's house in Weybridge. We sat around, laughing, got stoned and finished it off." (1966)

Paul McCartney: "I got the name Rigby from a shop in Bristol. I was wandering round Bristol one day and saw a shop called Rigby. And I think Eleanor was from Eleanor Bron, the actress we worked with in the film 'Help!' But I just liked the name. I was looking for a name that sounded natural. Eleanor Rigby sounded natural." (1984:Playboy)

John Lennon: "Paul's baby, and I helped with the education of the child... The violin backing was Paul's idea. Jane Asher had turned him on to Vivaldi, and it was very good." (1980:Playboy)
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(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

Paul McCartney � lead/harmony vocals
John Lennon � harmony vocals
George Harrison � harmony vocals
Tony Gilbert � violin
Sidney Sax � violin
John Sharpe � violin
Juergen Hess � violin
Stephen Shingles � viola
John Underwood � viola
Derek Simpson � cello
Stephen Lansberry � cello
Peter Halling - cello
George Martin � string arrangement

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Geoff Emerick
Recorded at: EMI Studios, London, England, Apr 28�29, Jun 6, 1966
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VIDEO

John Lennon: "'Come Together' is me-- writing obscurely around an old Chuck Berry thing. I left the line 'Here comes old flat-top.' It is nothing like the Chuck Berry song, but they took me to court because I admitted the influence once years ago. I could have changed it to 'Here comes old iron face,' but the song remains independent of Chuck Berry or anybody else on earth. The thing was created in the studio. It's gobbledygook-- 'Come Together' was an expression that Tim Leary had come up with for his attempt at being president or whatever he wanted to be, and he asked me to write a campaign song. I tried and I tried, but I couldn't come up with one. But I came up with this, 'Come Together,' which would've been no good to him-- you couldn't have a campaign song like that, right? Leary attacked me years later, saying I ripped him off. I didn't rip him off. It's just that it turned into 'Come Together.' What am I going to do, give it to him? It was a funky record-- it's one of my favorite Beatle tracks, or, one of my favorite Lennon tracks, let's say that. It's funky, it's bluesy, and I'm singing it pretty well. I like the sound of the record. You can dance to it. I'll buy it!" (laughs) (1980:Plaboy)

John Lennon: "'Come Together' changed at the session. 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. I just said, 'Look, I've got no arrangement for you, but you know how I want it.' I think that's partly because we've played together a long time. So I said, 'Give me something funky and set up a beat, maybe.' And they all just joined in." (1969)

Paul McCartney: "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." (Rolling Stone)

George Martin: "A song like "Come Together" really shows how the boys worked. If I had to pick one song that showed the four disparate talents and the ways they combined to make a great sound, I would choose that one. And the bittersweet irony of "Abbey Road," of course, was that we all knew it was the last album, we really did." (2007:MSN Music)
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(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

John Lennon � lead/backing vocals, rhythm guitar, electric piano, handclaps
Paul McCartney � bass guitar, backing vocals
George Harrison � lead guitar
Ringo Starr � drums, maracas

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Geoff Emerick, Phil McDonald
Recorded at: EMI Studios, London, England, Jul 21�30, 1969,
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VIDEO

Paul McCartney: "Chuck Berry once did a song called 'Back In The USA,' which is very American, very Chuck Berry. Very sort of, uhh... you know, you're serving in the army, and when I get back home I'm gonna kiss the ground. And you know-- Can't wait to get back to the States. And it's a very American sort of thing, I've always thought. So this one is like about... In my mind it's just about a spy who's been in America a long long time, you know, and he's picked up... And he's very American. But he gets back to the USSR, you know, and he's sort of saying, 'Leave it till tomorrow, honey, to disconnect the phone,' and all that. And 'Come here honey,' but with Russian women. It concerns the attributes of Russian women." (1968)

Paul McCartney: "I wrote that as a kind of Beach Boys parody. And 'Back in the USA' was a Chuck Berry song, so it kinda took off from there. I just liked the idea of Georgia girls and talking about places like the Ukraine as if they were California, you know? It was also hands across the water, which I'm still conscious of. 'Cuz they like us out there, even though the bosses in the Kremlin may not. The kids do." (1984:Playboy)

Paul McCartney: "It�s tongue in cheek. This is a travelling Russkie who has just flown in from Miami Beach; he�s come the other way. He can�t wait to get back to the Georgian mountains: �Georgia�s always on my mind�; there�s all sorts of little jokes in it� I remember trying to sing it in my Jerry Lee Lewis voice, to get my mind set on a particular feeling. We added Beach Boys style harmonies." (1997:Many Years From Now)
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(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

Paul McCartney � double-tracked vocals, backing vocal, bass, lead guitar, piano, handclaps, drums, percussion
John Lennon � rhythm guitar, six-string bass, handclaps,percussion, backing vocals
George Harrison � rhythm and lead guitar, bass, handclaps, percussion, backing vocals
George Martin � piano

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Ken Scott
Recorded at: EMI Studios, London, England, Aug 22�23, 1968,
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VIDEO

Ringo Starr: "We went to do a job, and we'd worked all day and we happened to work all night. I came up still thinking it was day I suppose, and I said, 'It's been a hard day...' and I looked around and saw it was dark so I said, '...night!' So we came to 'A Hard Day's Night.'" (1964)

John Lennon: "I was going home in the car and Dick Lester suggested the title, 'Hard Day's Night' from something Ringo had said. I had used it in 'In His Own Write,' but it was an off-the-cuff remark by Ringo. You know, one of those malapropisms. A Ringo-ism, where he said it not to be funny... just said it. So Dick Lester said, 'We are going to use that title.' And the next morning I brought in the song... 'cuz there was a little competition between Paul and I as to who got the A-side-- who got the hits. If you notice, in the early days the majority of singles, in the movies and everything, were mine... in the early period I'm dominating the group. The only reason he sang on 'A Hard Day's Night' was because I couldn't reach the notes. (sings) 'When I'm home/ everything seems to be right/ when I'm home...' --which is what we'd do sometimes. One of us couldn't reach a note but he wanted a different sound, so he'd get the other to do the harmony." (1980:Playboy)

Paul McCartney: "The title was Ringo's. We'd almost finished making the film, and this fun bit arrived that we'd not known about before, which was naming the film. So we were sitting around at Twickenham studios having a little brain-storming session... and we said, 'Well, there was something Ringo said the other day.' Ringo would do these little malapropisms, he would say things slightly wrong, like people do, but his were always wonderful, very lyrical... they were sort of magic even though he was just getting it wrong. And he said after a concert, 'Phew, it's been a hard day's night.'" (c1994)
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(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

John Lennon � double-tracked vocals (verses), electric and acoustic rhythm guitars
Paul McCartney � double-tracked vocals (middle-eight), harmony vocals, bass
George Harrison � twelve-string lead guitar
Ringo Starr � drums, bongos, cowbell
George Martin � piano

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Norman Smith
Recorded at: EMI Studios, London, England, Apr 16, 1964
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VIDEO

John Lennon: "I thought it was about time we spoke about it [revolution], the same as I thought it was about time we stopped not answering about the Vietnamese war. I had been thinking about it up in the hills in India." ()

John Lennon: "We recorded the song twice. The Beatles were getting really tense with one another. I did the slow version and I wanted it out as a single: as a statement of the Beatles' position on Vietnam and the Beatles' position on revolution. For years, on the Beatle tours, Epstein had stopped us from saying anything about Vietnam or the war. And he wouldn't allow questions about it. But on one tour, I said, "I am going to answer about the war. We can't ignore it." I absolutely wanted the Beatles to say something. The first take of "Revolution" -- well, George and Paul were resentful and said it wasn't fast enough. Now, if you go into details of what a hit record is and isn't maybe. But the Beatles could have afforded to put out the slow, understandable version of "Revolution" as a single. Whether it was a gold record or a wooden record. But because they were so upset about the Yoko period and the fact that I was again becoming as creative and dominating as I had been in the early days, after lying fallow for a couple of years, it upset the apple cart. I was awake again and they couldn't stand it?

You look at the song and see my feeling about politics, radicalism and everything. I want to see the plan. Waving Chairman Mao badges or being a Marxist or a thisist or thatist is going to get you shot, locked up. If that's what you want, you subconsciously want to be a martyr. You see, I want to know what you are going to do after you have knocked it all down. Can't we use some of it? If you want to change the system, change the system. Don't go shooting people." (1980:Playboy)

John Lennon: "Ah, sure, 'Revolution' .There were two versions of that song but the underground left only picked up on the one that said 'count me out'. The original version which ends up on the LP said 'count me in' too; I put in both because I wasn't sure. There was a third version {hat was just abstract, musique concrete, kind of loops and that, people screaming. I thought I was painting in sound a picture of revolution - but I made a mistake, you know. The mistake was that it was anti-revolution. On the version released as a single I said 'when you talk about destruction you can count me out'. I didn't want to get killed. I didn't really know that much about the Maoists, but I just knew that they seemed to be so few and yet they painted themselves green and stood in front of the police waiting to get picked off. I just thought it was unsubtle, you know. I thought the original Communist revolutionaries coordinated themselves a bit better and didn't go around shouting about it. That was how I felt - I was really asking a question. As someone from the working class I was always interested in Russia and China and everything that related to the working class, even though I was playing the capitalist game. At one time I was so much involved in the religious bullshit that I used to go around calling myself a Christian Communist, but as Janov says, religion is legalised madness. It was therapy that stripped away all that and made me feel my own pain." (1971)
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In early 1968, media coverage in the aftermath of the Tet Offensive spurred increased protests in opposition to the Vietnam War, especially among university students. The protests were most prevalent in the US, but on 17 March, several thousand demonstrators marched to the American embassy in London's Grosvenor Square and violently clashed with police. Major protests concerning other political issues made international news, such as the March 1968 protests in Poland against their communist government, and the campus uprisings of May 1968 in France. ..... By and large, the Beatles had avoided publicly expressing their political views, with "Taxman" being their only overtly political track thus far. During his time in Rishikesh, Lennon decided to write a song about the recent wave of social upheaval.

Despite Lennon's antiwar feelings, he had yet to become anti-establishment, and expressed in "Revolution" that he wanted "to see the plan" from those advocating toppling the system. The repeated phrase "it's gonna be alright" in "Revolution" came directly from Lennon's Transcendental Meditation experiences in India, conveying the idea that God would take care of the human race no matter what happened politically. Another influence on Lennon was his burgeoning relationship with avant-garde artist Yoko Ono; Ono attended the recording sessions, and participated in the unused portion of "Revolution 1" which evolved into "Revolution 9".
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(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

John Lennon � lead vocals, lead guitar, handclaps, scream
Paul McCartney � bass guitar, Hammond organ, handclaps
George Harrison � lead guitar, handclaps
Ringo Starr � drums, handclaps
Nicky Hopkins � electric piano

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Geoff Emerick
Recorded at: EMI Studios, London, England, Jul 9�13, 1968
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VIDEO

John Lennon: �I was lying next to my first wife in bed, you know, and I was irritated. She must have been going on and on about something and she�d gone to sleep and I�d kept hearing these words over and over, flowing like an endless stream. I went downstairs and it turned into sort of a cosmic song rather than an irritated song; rather than a �Why are you always mouthing off at me?� or whatever, right? �

But the words stand, luckily, by themselves. They were purely inspirational and were given to me as boom! I don�t own it, you know; it came through like that. I don�t know where it came from, what meter it�s in, and I�ve sat down and looked at it and said, �Can I write another one with this meter?� It�s so interesting: �Words are flying [sic] out like [sings] endless rain into a paper cup, they slither while they pass, they slip away across the universe.� Such an extraordinary meter and I can never repeat it! It�s not a matter of craftsmanship; it wrote itself. It drove me out of bed. I didn�t want to write it, I was just slightly irritable and I went downstairs and I couldn�t get to sleep until I put it on paper, and then I went to sleep.

It�s like being possessed; like a psychic or a medium. The thing has to go down. It won�t let you sleep, so you have to get up, make it into something, and then you�re allowed to sleep. That�s always in the middle of the bloody night, when you�re half awake or tired and your critical facilities are switched off.� (1980:All We Are Saying)

John Lennon: "I was a bit more artsy-fartsy there. I was lying next to my first wife in bed, (song originally written in 1967) you know, and I was irritated. She must have been going on and on about something and she'd gone to sleep-- and I kept hearing these words over and over, flowing like an endless stream. I went downstairs and it turned into a sort of cosmic song rather than an irritated song-- rather than 'Why are you always mouthing off at me?' or whatever, right? ...and I've sat down and looked at it and said, 'Can I write another one with this meter?' It's so interesting. 'Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup/ They slither while the pass, they slip away across the universe.' Such an extraordinary meter and I can never repeat it! It's not a matter of craftsmanship-- it wrote itself. It drove me out of bed. I didn't want to write it... and I couldn't get to sleep until I put it on paper... It's like being possessed-- like a psychic or a medium. The thing has to go down. It won't let you sleep, so you have to get up, make it into something, and then you're allowed to sleep. That's always in the middle of the night when you're half-awake or tired and your critical facilities are switched off." (1980:Playboy)

John Lennon: "It's one of the best lyrics I've written. In fact, it could be the best. It's good poetry, or whatever you call it, without chewin' it. See, the ones I like are the ones that stand as words, without melody. They don't have to have any melody, like a poem, you can read them." (1970:Rolling Stone)
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One night in 1967, the phrase "words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup" came to Lennon after hearing his then-wife Cynthia, according to Lennon, "going on and on about something". Later, after "she'd gone to sleep � and I kept hearing these words over and over, flowing like an endless stream", Lennon went downstairs and turned it into a song. He began to write the rest of the lyrics and when he was done, he went to bed and forgot about them.

The flavour of the song was heavily influenced by Lennon's and the Beatles' interest in Transcendental Meditation in late 1967 � early 1968, when the song was composed. Based on this, he added the mantra "Jai guru deva om" (Sanskrit: ?? ??????? ?) to the piece, which became the link to the chorus. The Sanskrit phrase is a sentence fragment whose words could have many meanings. Literally it approximates as "glory to the shining remover of darkness" and can be paraphrased as "Victory to God divine", "Hail to the divine guru", or the phrase commonly invoked by the late Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in referring to his spiritual teacher, "All glory to Guru Dev".

The song's lyrical structure is straightforward: three repetitions of a unit consisting of a verse, the line "Jai guru deva om" and the line "Nothing's gonna change my world" repeated four times. The lyrics are highly image-based, with abstract concepts reified with phrases like thoughts "meandering", words "slithering", and undying love "shining". The title phrase "across the universe" appears at intervals to finish lines, although it never cadences, always appearing as a rising figure, melodically unresolved. It finishes on the leading note; to the Western musical ear, the next musical note would be the tonic and would therefore sound complete. (Wikipedia)
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(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

John Lennon � lead vocals, acoustic guitar
George Harrison � tambura, sitar
Ringo Starr � maracas, drums
Phil Spector � strings, choir

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Martin Benge, Ken Scott, Peter Bown
Recorded at: EMI Studios, London, England, Feb 4, 1968
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VIDEO

Paul McCartney: "'Penny Lane' was kind of nostalgic, but it was really a place that John and I knew; it was actually a bus terminus. I�d get a bus to his house and I�d have to change at Penny Lane, or the same with him to me, so we often hung out at that terminus, like a roundabout. It was a place that we both knew, and so we both knew the things that turned up in the story." (2009:Clash)

Paul McCartney: "I like some of the things the Animals try to do, like the song Eric Burdon wrote about places in Newcastle on the flip of one of their hits. I still want to write a song about the places in Liverpool where I was brought up. Places like The Docker's Umbrella which is a long tunnel through which the dockers go to work on Merseyside, and Penny Lane near my old home." (1966)

Paul McCartney: "John and I would always meet at Penny Lane. That was where someone would stand and sell you poppies each year on British Legion poppy day... When I came to write it, John came over and helped me with the third verse, as often was the case. We were writing childhood memories-- recently faded memories from eight or ten years before, so it was recent nostalgia, pleasant memories for both of us. All the places were still there, and because we remembered it so clearly we could have gone on." (1994:Playboy)

John Lennon: "We really got into the groove of imagining Penny Lane-- the bank was there, and that was where the tram sheds were and people waiting and the inspector stood there, the fire engines were down there. It was just reliving childhood." (1968)

John Lennon: "Penny Lane is not only a street but it's a district... a suburban district where, until age four, I lived with my mother and father. So I was the only Beatle that lived in Penny Lane." (1980:Playboy)
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(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

Paul McCartney � lead vocals, pianos, bass, harmonium, tambourine, effects
John Lennon � pianos, guitar, congas, handclaps, backing vocals
George Harrison � lead guitar, handclaps, backing vocals
Ringo Starr � drums, handbell
George Martin � piano, orchestral arrangement
Ray Swinfield � flutes, piccolos
P. Goody � flutes, piccolos
Manny Winters � flutes, piccolos
David Mason � piccolo trumpet solo
Leon Calvert � trumpets, flugelhorn
Freddy Clayton � trumpets, flugelhorn
Bert Courtley � trumpets, flugelhorn
Duncan Campbell � trumpets, flugelhorn
Dick Morgan � oboes, cor anglais
Mike Winfield � oboes, cor anglais
Frank Clarke � double bass

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Geoff Emerick
Recorded at: EMI Studios, London, England, Dec 29, 1966�Jan 17, 1967
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VIDEO

John Lennon: "Paul had the line about 'a little help from my friends.' He had some kind of structure for it, and we wrote it pretty well fifty-fifty from his original idea." (1970)

Paul McCartney : "This was written out at John's house in Weybridge for Ringo... I think that was probably the best of our songs that we wrote for Ringo actually. I remember giggling with John as we wrote the lines, 'What do you see when you turn out the light/ I can't tell you but I know it's mine.' It could have been him playing with his willie under the covers, or it could have been taken on a deeper level. This is what it meant but it was a nice way to say it-- a very non-specific way to say it. I always liked that." (C1994)

John Lennon: "That's Paul, with a little help from me. 'What do you see when you turn out the light/ I can't tell you but I know it's mine' is mine." (1980:Playboy)
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Lennon and McCartney finished writing this song in mid-March 1967, written specifically as Starr's track for the album. ... It was briefly called "Bad Finger Boogie" (later the inspiration for the band name Badfinger), supposedly because Lennon composed the melody on a piano using his middle finger after having hurt his forefinger. ... Speaking in the Anthology, Starr insisted on changing the first line which originally was "What would you think if I sang out of tune? Would you throw ripe tomatoes at me?" He changed the lyric so that fans would not throw tomatoes at him should he perform it live. (Wikipedia)
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(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

Ringo Starr � lead vocals, drums, tambourine
Paul McCartney � bass, piano, backing vocals
John Lennon � cowbell, backing vocals
George Harrison � , lead and rhythm guitars, backing vocals
George Martin � Hammond organ

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Geoff Emerick
Recorded at: EMI Studios, London, England, March 29�30, 1967
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VIDEO

Paul McCartney: "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 rollercoast by." (1969:Rolling Stone)

John Lennon: "The way we're writing at the moment, it's straightforward and there's nothing weird. Songs like 'Get Back,' things like that. We recorded that one on the Apple roof but I'm not sure if that's the (single) that went out. We always record about ten versions. You get lost in the end." (1969)

Paul McCartney: "When we were doing LET IT BE, there were a couple of verses to'Get Back' which were actually not racist at all--they were anti-racist. There were a lot of stories in the newspapers then about Pakistanies crowding out flats--you know, living sixteen to a room or whatever. So in one of the verses of 'Get Back,' which we were making up on the set of LET IT BE [the film], one of the outtakes has something about 'too many Pakistanis living in a council flat'--that's the line. Which to me was actually talking out against overcrowding for Pakistanies...If there was any group that was not racist, it was the Beatles. I mean, all our favorite people were always black. We were kind of the first people to open international eyes, in a way, to Motown." (1986:Rolling Stone)

John Lennon: "We'd been talking about it since we recorded it, and we kept saying 'That's a single.' Eventually we got so fed up talking about it we suddenly said 'Okay, that's it. Get it out tomorrow.'" (1969)

Paul McCartney: "Many people have since claimed to be the Jo Jo and they�re not, let me put that straight! I had no particular person in mind, again it was a fictional character, half man, half woman, all very ambiguous. I often left things ambiguous, I like doing that in my songs." (1997:Many Years From Now)

John Lennon: "I think there�s some underlying thing about Yoko in there. You know, �Get back to where you once belonged.� Every time he sang the line in the studio, he�d look at Yoko. Maybe he�ll say I�m paranoid. You know, he can say, �I�m a normal family man, those two are freaks.� That�ll leave him a chance to say that one." (1980:All We Are Saying)
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The song's melody grew out of some unstructured jamming on 7 January 1969 during rehearsal sessions on the sound stage at Twickenham Studios. Over the next few minutes, McCartney introduced some of the lyrics, reworking "Get back to the place you should be" from fellow Beatle George Harrison's "Sour Milk Sea" into "Get back to where you once belonged". McCartney had played bass on Jackie Lomax's recording of "Sour Milk Sea" a few months earlier. On 9 January McCartney brought a more developed version of "Get Back" to the group, with the "Sweet Loretta" verse close to its finished version.

The released version of the song is composed of two verses, with an intro, outro, and several refrains. The first verse tells the story of a man named Jojo, who leaves his home in Tucson, Arizona, for some 'California grass'. McCartney's soon-to-be wife Linda had attended the University of Arizona in Tucson, where the couple later owned a spacious ranch. The second verse is about a sexually ambiguous character named "Loretta Martin", who "thought she was a woman, but she was another man." The single version includes a coda urging Loretta to "get back" to where she once belonged.

In the US the single was released in stereo. It was the Beatles' first single to be released in true stereo instead of mono as part of the "stereo only" movement gaining force in 1969. (Wikipedia)
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(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Glyn Johns
Recorded at: EMI Studios, London, England, Jan 27,28, 1969
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VIDEO

Ringo Starr: "We were big enough to command an audience of that size, and it was for love. It was for love and bloody peace. It was a fabulous time. I even get excited now when I realise that's what it was for: peace and love, people putting flowers in guns." (Anthology)

John Lennon: "We just put a track down. Because I knew the chords I played it on whatever it was, harpsichord. George played a violin because we felt like doing it like that and Paul played a double bass. And they can't play them, so we got some nice little noises coming out. It sounded like an orchestra, but it's just them two playing the violin and that. So then we thought, 'Ah, well, we'll have some more orchestra around this little freaky orchestra that we've got.' But there was no perception of how it sounded at the end until they did it that day, until the rehearsal. It still sounded a bit strange then." (1980:Anthology)

Paul McCartney: "All You Need Is Love was John's song. I threw in a few ideas, as did the other members of the group, but it was largely ad libs like singing She Loves You or Greensleeves or silly things at the end and we made those up on the spot. .... The chorus, 'All you need is love', is simple, but the verse is quite complex; in fact I never really understood it, the message is rather complex. It was a good song that we had handy that had an anthemic chorus." (Many Years From Now)

Brian Epstein: "The time got nearer and nearer and they still hadn't written anything. Then, about three weeks before the programme, they sat down to write. The record was completed in 10 days. ..... This is an inspired song, because they wrote it for a worldwide programme and they really wanted to give the world a message. It could hardly have been a better message. It is a wonderful, beautiful, spine-chilling record." (Anthology)
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For Our World, the Beatles were asked to provide a song with a message that could be easily understood by everyone. The band undertook the assignment at a time when they were committed to two film projects: a planned television special, Magical Mystery Tour, and the animated feature Yellow Submarine, for which they were contractually obliged to United Artists to supply four new recordings. "All You Need Is Love" was selected for Our World for its contemporary social significance over the Paul McCartney-written "Your Mother Should Know".

It was written by John Lennon and credited to Lennon�McCartney. The Beatles performed the song over a pre-recorded backing track as Britain's contribution to Our World, the first live global television link. Watched by over 400 million in 25 countries, the programme was broadcast via satellite on 25 June 1967. The song captured the utopian sentiments of the Summer of Love era and topped singles charts in Britain, the United States and many other countries. (Wikipedia)
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(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

John Lennon: lead vocals, harpsichord, banjo
Paul McCartney: bass, double bass, backing vocals
George Harrison: guitar, violin, backing vocals
Ringo Starr: drums
George Martin: piano
Sidney Sax: violin
Patrick Halling: violin
Eric Bowie: violin
John Ronayne: violin
Lionel Ross: cello
Jack Holmes: cello
Rex Morris: tenor saxophone
Don Honeywill: tenor saxophone
Stanley Woods: trumpet
David Mason: trumpet
Evan Watkins: trombone
Harry Spain: trombone
Jack Emblow: accordion
Mick Jagger: chorus
Keith Richards: chorus
Marianne Faithfull: chorus
Jane Asher: chorus
Mike McCartney: chorus
Pattie Harrison: chorus
Eric Clapton: chorus
Graham Nash: chorus
Keith Moon: chorus
Hunter Davies: chorus
Gary Leeds: chorus
Mike Vickers: conductor

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Eddie Kramer, Geoff Emerick
Recorded at: Olympic Sound Studios, London, England;
..... and EMI Studios, London, England, Jun 1967
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VIDEO

Paul McCartney: "I wrote it as more of an up-tempo thing, country and western. I had the basic idea, the title, had a couple of verses..... The lyrics might have been personal. It is often a good way to talk to someone or to work your own thoughts out. It saves you going to a psychiatrist, you allow yourself to say what you might not say in person. ..... I had the idea, the title, had a couple of verses and the basic idea for it, then I took it to John to finish it off and we wrote the middle together. Which is nice: 'Life is very short. There's no time for fussing and fighting, my friend.' Then it was George Harrison's idea to put the middle into waltz time, like a German waltz. That came on the session, it was one of the cases of the arrangement being done on the session. ..... The other thing that arrived on the session was we found an old harmonium hidden away in the studio, and said, 'Oh, this'd be a nice colour on it.' We put the chords on with the harmonium as a wash, just a basic held chord, what you would call a pad these days." (c1994:Many Years From Now)

John Lennon: "Paul did the first half, I did the middle-eight. But you've got Paul writing, 'We can work it out/ We can work it out' real optimistic, you know. And me, impatient, 'Life is very short and there's no time/ for fussing and fighting, my friend.'" (1980:All We Are Saying)
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McCartney wrote the words and music to the verses and the chorus, with lyrics that "might have been personal", probably a reference to his relationship with Jane Asher (Wikipedia)
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(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

Paul McCartney � double-tracked lead vocal, bass guitar
John Lennon � acoustic guitar, harmonium, harmony vocal
George Harrison � tambourine
Ringo Starr � drums

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Norman Smith
Recorded at: EMI Studios, London, England, Oct 20 & 29, 1965
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VIDEO

Paul McCartney: "The original concept was the Virgin Mary, but it quickly became symbolic of every woman-- the Madonna image but as applied to ordinary working-class women. '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." (c1994)

Paul McCartney: "'Lady Madonna' is all women. How do they do it? --bless 'em. Baby at your breast, how do they get the time to feed them? Where do they get the money? How do you do this thing that women do?" (1986)

John Lennon: "Paul. Good piano lick, but the song never really went anywhere. Maybe I helped him on some of the lyrics." (1980)
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"Lady Madonna" is a song by the Beatles, written by Paul McCartney and credited to Lennon�McCartney. ..... Paul McCartney based his piano part for the song on Humphrey Lyttelton's 1956 trad jazz rendition of "Bad Penny Blues" which had been recorded by George Martin in the 1950s. ..... John Lennon helped write the lyrics, which give an account of an overworked, exhausted (possibly single) mother, facing a new problem each day of the week. (Wikipedia)
**KILL ME**

(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

Paul McCartney � lead vocal, piano, bass, handclaps
John Lennon � lead guitar, handclaps, backing vocal
George Harrison � lead guitar, handclaps, backing vocal
Ringo Starr � drums, drums (with brushes), handclaps
Ronnie Scott � tenor saxophone
Bill Povey � tenor saxophone
Harry Klein � baritone saxophone
Bill Jackman � baritone saxophone

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Ken Scott, Geoff Emerick
Recorded at: EMI Studios, London, England, Feb 3,6 1968
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VIDEO

John Lennon: "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.' The story came out that only Paul and I were on the record, but I wouldn't have bothered publicizing that. It doesn't mean anything. It just so happened that there were only two of us there -- George was abroad and Ringo was on the film and he couldn't come that night. Because of that, it was a choice of either re-mixing or doing a new song -- and you always go for doing a new one instead of fiddling about with an old one. So we did and it turned out well." (1969)

John Lennon: "Well, guess who wrote that? I wrote that in Paris on our honeymoon. It's a piece of journalism. It's a folk song. That's why I called it, 'The Ballad Of...'" (1980)

Paul McCartney: "John came to me and said, '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.' I was a little worried for him because of the lyric but he was going through alot of terrible things. He came around to my house, wanting to do it really quick. He said, 'Let's just you and me run over to the studio.' I said 'Oh alright, I'll play drums, I'll play bass.' John played guitar. So we did it 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." (1988)

Yoko Ono: "Paul knew that people were being nasty to John, and he just wanted to make it well for him. Paul has a very brotherly side to him."
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Authored by Lennon while on his honeymoon in Paris, it tells of the events of his marriage, in March 1969, to Ono, and their publicly held honeymoon activities, including their "Bed-In" at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel and their demonstration of "bagism".

Lennon brought the song to McCartney�s home on 14 April 1969, before recording it that evening. Recalling the controversy engendered by Lennon's "more popular than Jesus" remark in 1966, McCartney was alarmed at the references to Christ in the new song but agreed to assist Lennon. (Wikipedia)
**KILL ME**

(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

John Lennon � lead vocal, lead guitars, acoustic guitar, percussion
Paul McCartney � bass, drums, piano, maracas, harmony vocal

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Geoff Emerick
Recorded at: EMI Studios, London, England, Apr 14, 1969
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VIDEO

Paul McCartney: "It was an idea I had, I think, when I was flying from L.A. to somewhere. I thought it would be nice to lose our identities, to submerge ourselves in the persona of a fake group. We would make up all the culture around it and collect all our heroes in one place. So I thought, A typical stupid-sounding name for a Dr. Hook's Medicine Show and Traveling Circus kind of thing would be 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.' Just a word game, really." (1984)

Paul McCartney: "We were fed up with being Beatles. We really hated that fucking four little mop-top boys approach. We were not boys, we were men. It was all gone, all that boy shit, all that screaming, we didn't want anymore, plus, we'd now got turned on to pot and thought of ourselves as artists rather than just performers... then suddenly on the plane I got this idea. I thought, 'Let's not be ourselves. Let's develop alter egos so we're not having to project an image which we know. It would be much more free.'" (c1994)

John Lennon: "'Sgt. Pepper' is Paul after a trip to America and the whole West Coast long-named group thing was coming in. You know, when people were no longer the Beatles or the Crickets-- they were suddenly Fred And His Incredible Shrinking Grateful Airplanes, right? So I think he got influenced by that and came up with this idea for the Beatles." (1980)
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In November 1966, on the flight back to England after a holiday, McCartney conceived an idea in which an entire album would be role-played, with each of the Beatles assuming an alter-ego in the "Lonely Hearts Club Band", which would then perform a concert in front of an audience. The inspiration is said to have come when roadie Mal Evans innocently asked McCartney what the letters "S" and "P" stood for on the pots on their in-flight meal trays, and McCartney explained it was for salt and pepper. This then led to the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band concept, as well as the song.

The group's road manager, Neil Aspinall, suggested the idea of Sgt. Pepper being the comp�re, as well as the reprise at the end of the album. According to his diaries, Evans may have also contributed to the song. John Lennon attributed the idea for Sgt. Pepper to McCartney, although the song is officially credited to Lennon�McCartney. (Wikipedia)
**KILL ME**

(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

Paul McCartney � lead vocal, rhythm guitar, bass guitar, lead guitar
John Lennon � harmony vocal
George Harrison � harmony vocal, lead/rhythm guitar
Ringo Starr � drums
George Martin � organ
Neill Sanders � French horn
James W. Buck � French horn
Tony Randell � French horn
John Burden � French horn

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Geoff Emerick
Recorded at: EMI Studios, London, England, Apr 1,1967
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VIDEO

John Lennon: "That's mine. Including the guitar lick, the guitar break, and the whole bit. It's just a rock 'n roll song. Day trippers are people who go on a day trip, right? Usually on a ferry boat or somethng. But it was kind of-- you know, you're just a weekend hippie. Get it?" (1980:All We Are Saying)

John Lennon: "Day Tripper was (written) under complete pressure, based on an old folk song I wrote about a month previous. It was very hard going, that, and it sounds it. It wasn't a serious message song. It was a drug song. In a way, it was a day tripper - I just liked the word." (Anthology)

John Lennon: "Me. But I think Paul helped with the verse." (1972:Hit Parader)

Paul McCartney: "Day Tripper was to do with tripping. Acid was coming on the scene, and we'd often do these songs about 'the girl who thought she was it.' Mainly the impetus for that used to come from John-- I think John met quite a few girls who thought they were it... But this was just a tongue-in-cheek song about someone who was a day tripper, a sunday painter, a sunday driver, somebody who was committed only in part to the idea. Where we saw ourselves as full-time trippers, fully committed drivers, she was just a day tripper. That was a co-written effort-- we were both making it all up but I would give John the main credit. .... I remember with the prick teasers we thought, That'd be fun to put in. That was one of the great things about collaborating, you could nudge-nudge, wink-wink a bit, whereas if you're sitting on your own, you might not put it in." (c1994:Many Years From Now)
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Under the pressure of needing a new single for the Christmas market, John Lennon wrote much of the music and most of the lyrics, while Paul McCartney worked on the verses. "Day Tripper" was a typical play on words by Lennon. In his 1970 interview with Rolling Stone, however, Lennon used "Day Tripper" as one example of their collaboration, where one partner had the main idea but the other took up the cause and completed it. For his part, McCartney claimed it was very much a collaboration based on Lennon's original idea. (Wikipedia)
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(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

John Lennon � double-tracked lead vocal, rhythm guitar, lead guitar (solo)
Paul McCartney � double-tracked lead vocal, bass
George Harrison � lead guitar
Ringo Starr � drums, tambourine

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Norman Smith
Recorded at: EMI Studios, London, England, Oct 16, 1965
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VIDEO

John Lennon: "We write lyrics, and I write lyrics that you don't realize what they mean till after. Especially some of the better songs or some of the more flowing ones, like 'Walrus.' The whole first verse was written without any knowledge. With 'I Am the Walrus,' I had 'I am he as you are he as we are all together.' I had just these two lines on the typewriter, and then about two weeks later I ran through and wrote another two lines and then, when I saw something, after about four lines, I just knocked the rest of it off. Then I had the whole verse or verse and a half and then sang it. I had this idea of doing a song that was a police siren, but it didn't work in the end (sings like a siren) 'I-am-he-as-you-are-he-as...' You couldn't really sing the police siren." (1968)

John Lennon: "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 'Element'ry 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. It's from 'The Walrus and the Carpenter.' 'Alice in Wonderland.' To me, it was a beautiful poem. 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, shit, 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...'" (1980:Playboy)

Paul McCartney: "John worked with George Martin on the orchestration and did some very exciting things with the Mike Sammes Singers... Most of the time they got asked to do Sing Something Simple and all the old songs, but John got them doing all sorts of swoops and phonetic noises. It was a fascinating session. That was John's baby, great one, a really good one." (c1994:Many Years From Now)
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John Lennon received a letter from a pupil at Quarry Bank High School, which he had attended. The writer mentioned that the English master was making his class analyse Beatles' lyrics. (Lennon wrote an answer, dated 1 September 1967, which was auctioned by Christie's of London in 1992.) Lennon, amused that a teacher was putting so much effort into understanding the Beatles' lyrics, decided to write in his next song the most confusing lyrics that he could.

According to author Ian MacDonald, the "model" for "I Am the Walrus" was most likely Procol Harum's "A Whiter Shade of Pale", which was a hit single during the summer of 1967 and Lennon's favourite song of the period. The lyrics came from three song ideas that Lennon had been working on, the first of which was inspired by hearing a police siren at his home in Weybridge; Lennon wrote the lines "Mis-ter cit-y police-man" to the rhythm and melody of the siren. The second idea was a short rhyme about Lennon sitting amidst his garden, while the third was a nonsense lyric about sitting on a corn flake. Unable to finish the three different songs, he combined them into one. The lyrics also included the phrase "Lucy in the sky", a reference to the Beatles' earlier song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds".

The walrus refers to Lewis Carroll's poem "The Walrus and the Carpenter" (from the book Through the Looking-Glass). Lennon later expressed dismay upon belatedly realising that the walrus was a villain in the poem.

The final piece of the song came together when Lennon's friend and former fellow member of the Quarrymen, Peter Shotton, visited, and Lennon asked him about a playground nursery rhyme they sang as children.

Lennon borrowed a couple of images from the first two lines. Shotton was also responsible for suggesting that Lennon change the lyric "waiting for the man to come" to "waiting for the van to come". The Beatles' official biographer Hunter Davies was present while the song was being written and wrote an account in his 1968 biography of the Beatles. According to this biography, Lennon remarked to Shotton, "Let the fuckers work that one out." (Wikipedia)
**KILL ME**

(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

John Lennon � lead vocal, backing vocal, electric piano, Mellotron
Paul McCartney � bass guitar, tambourine, backing vocals
George Harrison � electric guitar, backing vocals
Ringo Starr � drums
Session musicians � strings, brass and woodwinds
Mike Sammes singers � backing vocals
Ray Thomas � backing vocals
Mike Pinder � backing vocals

Produced: George Martin.
Engineered: Geoff Emerick, Ken Scott
Recorded at: EMI Studios, London, England, Sep 5, 1967
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VIDEO

Paul McCartney: "You knew, the minute you got there, cup of tea and you'd sit and write, so it was always good if you had a theme. I'd had a thought for a song and somehow it was to do with the Daily Mail so there might have been an article in the Mail that morning about people writing paperbacks. Penguin paperbacks was what I really thought of, the archetypal paperback. ..... I arrived at Weybridge and told John I had this idea of trying to write off to a publishers to become a paperback writer, and I said, 'I think it should be written like a letter.' I took a bit of paper out and I said it should be something like, 'Dear Sir or Madam, as the case may be...' and I proceeded to write it just like a letter in front of him, occasionally rhyming it... And then we went upstairs and put the melody to it. John and I sat down and finished it all up, but it was tilted towards me-- the original idea was mine. I had no music, but it's just a little bluesy song, not alot of melody. Then I had the idea to do the harmonies, and we arranged that in the studio." (c1994:Many Years From Now)

John Lennon: "Paul. I think I might have helped with some of the lyrics, Yes, I did. But it was mainly Paul's tune." (1972:Hit Parader)

George Martin: "Paperback Writer had a heavier sound than some earlier work - and very good vocal work, too. I think that was just the way it worked out, that the rhythm was the most important part of their make-up by this time." (Anthology)
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In a 2007 interview, McCartney recalled that he started writing the song after reading in the Daily Mail about an aspiring author, possibly Martin Amis. The Daily Mail was Lennon's regular newspaper and copies were in Lennon's Weybridge home when Lennon and McCartney were writing songs.

The song's lyrics are in the form of a letter from an aspiring author addressed to a publisher. The author badly needs a job and has written a paperback book based on a book by a "man named Lear". Aside from deviating from the subject of love, McCartney had it in mind to write a song with a melody backed by a single, static chord. (Wikipedia)
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(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

Paul McCartney � lead vocal, lead guitar (riff), bass
John Lennon � tambourine, backing vocal
George Harrison � backing vocal, rhythm guitar, lead guitar (fills)
Ringo Starr � drums

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Geoff Emerick
Recorded at: EMI Studios, London, England, Apr 13,14, 1966
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VIDEO

John Lennon: "My son Julian came in one day with a picture he painted about a school friend of his named Lucy. He had sketched in some stars in the sky and called it 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,' Simple. The images were from 'Alice in Wonderland.' It was Alice in the boat. She is buying an egg and it turns into Humpty Dumpty. The woman serving in the shop turns into a sheep and the next minute they are rowing in a rowing boat somewhere and I was visualizing that. There was also the image of the female who would someday come save me... a 'girl with kaleidoscope eyes' who would come out of the sky. It turned out to be Yoko, though I hadn't met Yoko yet. So maybe it should be 'Yoko in the Sky with Diamonds.' It was purely unconscious that it came out to be LSD. Until somebody pointed it out, I never even thought it, I mean, who would ever bother to look at initials of a title? It's NOT an acid song. The imagery was Alice in the boat and also the image of this female who would come and save me-- this secret love that was going to come one day. So it turned out to be Yoko... and I hadn't met Yoko then. But she was my imaginary girl that we all have." (1980:Playboy)

John Lennon: "The images were from Alice In Wonderland. It was Alice in the boat. She is buying an egg and it turns into Humpty-Dumpty. The woman serving in the shop turns into a sheep, and the next minute they are rowing in a rowing boat somewhere and I was visualising that. There was also the image of the female who would someday come save me - a 'girl with kaleidoscope eyes' who would come out of the sky. It turned out to be Yoko, though I hadn't met Yoko yet. So maybe it should be Yoko In The Sky With Diamonds.

It was purely unconscious that it came out to be LSD. Until somebody pointed it out, I never even thought of it. I mean, who would ever bother to look at initials of a title? It's not an acid song. The imagery was Alice in the boat. And also the image of this female who would come and save me - this secret love that was going to come one day. So it turned out to be Yoko, though, and I hadn't met Yoko then. But she was my imaginary girl that we all have." (1980:All We Are Saying)

Paul McCartney: "I went up to John's house in Weybridge. When I arrived we were having a cup of tea, and he said, 'Look at this great drawing Julian's done. Look at the title!' So I said, 'What's that mean?' thinking Wow, fantastic title! John said, 'It's Lucy, a freind of his from school. And she's in the sky.' ...so we went upstairs and started writing it. People later thought 'Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds' was LSD. I swear-- we didn't notice that when it first came out." (1994:Playboy)
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**KILL ME**

(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

John Lennon � double-tracked lead vocals, maracas
Paul McCartney � Lowrey organ, bass, harmony vocals
George Harrison � lead guitar, acoustic guitar, tambura
Ringo Starr � drums
George Martin � piano

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Geoff Emerick
Recorded at: EMI Studios, London, England, Mar 1, 1967
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VIDEO

Paul McCartney: "We went to a cinema show in a village where a guy put up a mobile screen and all the villagers came along and loved it. I remember walking down a little jungle path with my guitar to get to the village from the camp. I was playing 'Desmond has a barrow in the market place...'

I had a friend called Jimmy Scott who was a Nigerian conga player, who I used to meet in the clubs in London. He had a few expressions, one of which was, 'Ob la di ob la da, life goes on, bra'. I used to love this expression... He sounded like a philosopher to me. He was a great guy anyway and I said to him, 'I really like that expression and I'm thinking of using it,' and I sent him a cheque in recognition of that fact later because even though I had written the whole song and he didn't help me, it was his expression.

It's a very me song, in as much as it's a fantasy about a couple of people who don't really exist, Desmond and Molly. I'm keen on names too. Desmond is a very Caribbean name. " (Anthology)

John Lennon: "I might've given him a couple of lyrics, but it's his song, his lyric." (1980:All We Are Saying)

Geoff Emerick: "After about four or five nights doing Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da John Lennon came to the session really stoned, totally out of it on something or other, and he said 'Alright, we're gonna do Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da'. He went straight to the piano and smashed the keys with an almighty amount of volume, twice the speed of how they'd done it before, and said 'This is it! Come on!' He was really aggravated. That was the version they ended up using." (The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions)
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**KILL ME**

(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

Paul McCartney � lead vocals, bass, acoustic bass, handclaps, vocal percussion
John Lennon � piano, handclaps, spoken word, vocal percussion, backing vocalv George Harrison � acoustic guitar, handclaps, spoken word, vocal percussion, backing vocalv Ringo Starr � drums, bongos, other percussion, handclaps, vocal percussion
George Martin - horn arrangement

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Geoff Emerick
Recorded at: EMI Studios, Abbey Road, Studio 2,London, England
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VIDEO

John Lennon: "That was one of the earliest heavy-metal records made. Paul's contribution was the way Ringo played the drums." (1980:All We Are Saying)

Paul McCartney: "We wrote the melody together; you can hear on the record, John's taking the melody and I'm singing harmony with it. We'd often work those out as we wrote them. Because John sang it, you might have to give him 60 per cent of it. It was pretty much a work job that turned out quite well...

John just didn't take the time to explain that we sat down together and worked on that song for a full three-hour songwriting session, and at the end of it all we had all the words, we had the harmonies, and we had all the little bits.

I think the interesting thing was a crazy ending: instead of ending like the previous verse, we changed the tempo. We picked up one of the lines, 'My baby don't care', but completely altered the melody. We almost invented the idea of a new bit of a song on the fade-out with this song; it was something specially written for the fade-out, which was very effective but it was quite cheeky and we did a fast ending. It was quite radical at the time." (1997:Many Years From Now)

John Lennon: "Ticket To Ride was slightly a new sound at the time. It was pretty fucking heavy for then, if you go and look in the charts for what other music people were making. You hear it now and it doesn't sound too bad; but it'd make me cringe. If you give me the A track and I remix it, I'll show you what it is really, but you can hear it there. It's a heavy record and the drums are heavy too. That's why I like it." (1970)
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While the lyrics describe a girl "riding out of the life of the narrator", the inspiration of the title phrase is unclear,[6] as is the meaning of the song. McCartney said the title referred to "a British Railways ticket to the town of Ryde on the Isle of Wight", and Lennon said it described cards indicating a clean bill of health carried by Hamburg prostitutes in the 1960s. The Beatles played in Hamburg early in their musical career, and a "ride" was British slang for having sex. Gaby Whitehill and Andrew Trendall of Gigwise have interpreted the song to be about a woman leaving her boyfriend to become a prostitute. (Wikipedia)
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(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

John Lennon � double-tracked lead vocal, rhythm guitar
Paul McCartney � bass guitar, lead guitar, harmony vocal
George Harrison � lead guitar (12-string), rhythm guitar
Ringo Starr � drums, tambourine, handclaps

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Norman Smith
Recorded at: EMI's Abbey Road Studio, London, England, Feb 15, 1965
**KILL ME**

VIDEO

Paul McCartney: "I'd been a rather straight working class lad, but when we started to get into pot it seemed to me to be quite uplifting. It didn't seem to have too many side effects like alcohol or some of the other stuff, like pills, which I pretty much kept off. I kind of liked marijuana and to me it seemed it was mind-expanding, literally mind-expanding. So 'Got To Get You Into My Life' is really a song about that. It's not to a person, it's actually about pot. It's saying, 'I'm going to do this. This is not a bad idea.' So it's actually an ode to pot, like someone else might write an ode to chocolate or a good claret. I haven't really changed my opinion too much, except if anyone asks me for real advice, it would be stay straight. That is actually the best way, but in a stressful world I still would say that pot was one of the best of the tranquilizing drugs. I have drunk and smoked pot and of the two I think pot is less harmful. People tend to fall asleep on it rather than go out and commit murder, so it's always seemed to me to be a rather benign one." (1994:Playboy)

Paul McCartney: "That's mine-- I wrote it. It was the first one we used brass on, I think. One of the first times we used soul trumpets." (1984)

John Lennon: "Paul. I think that was one of his best songs, too, because the lyrics are good and I didn't write them. You see? When I say that he could write lyrics if he took the effort-- here's an example." (1980:All We Are Saying,)

John Lennon: "We were doing our Tamla Motown bit. You see, we're influenced by whatever's going. Even if we're not influenced, we're all going that way at a certain time." (1968)
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(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

Paul McCartney � double-tracked lead vocal, bass
John Lennon � rhythm guitar, organ
George Harrison � lead guitar
Ringo Starr � drums, tambourine
Eddie Thornton � trumpet
Ian Hamer � trumpet
Les Condon � trumpet
Alan Branscombe � tenor saxophone
Peter Coe � tenor saxophone

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Geoff Emerick
Recorded at: EMI Studios, London, England, Apr 7/Jun 17, 1966
**KILL ME**

VIDEO

George Harrison: "I started the chord sequences on the piano, which I don't really play, and then began writing ideas for the words from various opposites... Again, it's the duality of things-- yes no, up down, left right, right wrong, etcetera." (1980:I Me Mine)
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(George Harrison)

George Harrison � lead vocal, guitars, Hammond organ, bass guitar
John Lennon � backing vocal
Paul McCartney � tack piano, backing vocal
Ringo Starr � drums

Produced: George Martin, Chris Thomas
Engineered: Jeff Jarratt
Recorded at: EMI Studios, London, England, Apr 16,18,1969
**KILL ME**

VIDEO

Paul McCartney: "'Michelle' was a tune that I'd written in Chet Atkins' finger- pickin' style. There is a song he did called 'Trambone' with a repetitive top line, and he played a bass line whilst playing a melody. This was an innovation for us; even though classical guitarists had played it, no rock �n� roll guitarists had played it. The first person we knew to use finger-pickin' technique was Chet Atkins, and Colin Manley, one of the guys in the Remo Four in Liverpool, who used to play it very well and we all used to stop and admire him. ... But based on Atkins's 'Trambone', I wanted to write something with a melody and a bass line on it, so I did. I just had it as an instrumental in.

There used to be a guy called Austin Mitchell who was one of John's tutors at art school and he used to throw some pretty good all-night parties. ... I remember sitting around there, and my recollection is of a black turtleneck sweater and sitting very enigmatically in the corner, playing this rather French tune. I used to pretend I could speak French, because everyone wanted to be like Sacha Distel, or Juliette Greco ... that French existential thing, they were all in turtlenecks and black and down the bohemian clubs. It was bohemia! So I used to sit around and murmur. It was my Maurice Chevalier meets Juliette Greco moment: me trying to be enigmatic to make girls think, 'Who's that very interesting French guy over in the corner?'

I would literally use it as that, and John knew this was one of my ploys. Years later, John said, 'D'you remember that French thing you used to do at Mitchell's parties?' I said yes. He said, 'Well, that's a good tune. You should do something with that.' We were always looking for tunes, because we were making lots of albums by then and every album you did needed fourteen songs, and then there were singles in between, so you needed a lot of material. So I did.

[Whilst visiting with Ivan Vaughn; who introduced Paul to John — and his French-teacher wife Jan]''' I said, 'I like the name Michelle. Can you think of anything that rhymes with 'Michelle', in French?' And she said, 'Ma belle', I said, 'What's that mean?' 'My beauty.' I said, 'That's good, a love song, great.' We just started talking, and I said, 'Well, those words go together well, what's French for that? 'Go together well.' 'Sort les mots qui vont tres bien ensemble: I said, 'All right, that would fit.' And she told me a bit how to pronounce it, so that was it. I got that off Jan, and years later I sent her a cheque around. I thought I better had because she's virtually a co-writer on that. From there I just pieced together the verses. The other interesting point was there's a very jazzy chord in it: 'Michelle, ma belle.' That second chord. ... It was a chord shown to us by a jazz guitarist called Jim Gretty who worked behind the counter at Frank Hessey's where we used to buy our instruments on the never-never in Liverpool. ... I'll give him ten points for that. I remember 'Michelle' particularly. Because it was only on four little tracks, it was very easy to mix. There were no decisions to make, we'd made them all in the writing and in the recording. We would mix them, and it would take half an hour, maybe. Then it would go up on a shelf, in a quarter-inch tape box. And that was it. That was the only thing we ever did to 'Michelle'." (1997:Many Years From Now)

John Lennon: "He and I were staying somewhere and he walked in and hummed the first few bars, with the words, and he says, 'Where do I go from here?' I had been listening to (blues singer) Nina Simone. I think it was 'I Put A Spell On You.' There was a line in it that went, 'I love you, I love you.' That's what made me think of the middle-eight for 'Michelle.' So, my contributions to Paul's songs was always to add a little bluesy edge to them. Otherwise, 'Michelle' is a straight ballad, right? He provided a lightness, an optimism, while I would always go for the sadness, the discords, the bluesy notes." (1980:All We Are Saying)
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(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

Paul McCartney � lead vocal, bass, acoustic guitar
John Lennon � backing vocal, classical acoustic guitar
George Harrison � backing vocal, 12-string acoustic guitar, lead guitar
Ringo Starr � drums

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Norman Smith
Recorded at: EMI Studios, London, England, Nov 3, 1965
**KILL ME**

VIDEO

Paul McCartney: "Yoko said "I've got a couple of tracks I'll play you, you might be interested". I'd never heard them before but she explained that they're quite well known to Lennon fans as bootlegs. I said to Yoko, "Don't impose too many conditions on us, it's really difficult to do this, spiritually. We don't know, we may hate each other after two hours in the studio and just walk out. So don't put any conditions, it's tough enough. If it doesn't work out, you can veto it." When I told George and Ringo I'd agreed to that, they were going, "What? What if we love it?" It didn't come to that, luckily."

Jeff Lynne: "We tried out a new noise reduction system, and it really worked. The problem I had with Real Love was that not only was there a 60 cycles mains hum going on, there was also a terrible amount of hiss, because it had been recorded at a low level. I don't know how many generations down this copy was, but it sounded like at least a couple. So I had to get rid of the hiss and the mains hum, and then there were clicks all the way through it. When we saw the graph of it on the computer, there were all these spikes happening at random intervals throughout the whole song. There must have been about 100 of them. We'd spend a day on it, then listen back and still find loads more things wrong. But we could magnify them, grab them and wipe them out. It didn't have any effect on John's voice, because we were just dealing with the air surrounding him, in between phrases. That took about a week to clean up before it was even usable and transferable to a DAT master. Putting fresh music to it was the easy part!" (1995:Sound On Sound)
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According to Beatles biographer John T. Marck, "Real Love" originated as part of an unfinished stage play that Lennon was working on at the time titled The Ballad of John and Yoko. The song was first recorded in 1977 with a handheld tape recorder on his piano at home. Eventually the work evolved under the title "Real Life", a song Lennon would record at least six takes of in 1979 and 1980, and then abandoned. The song was eventually combined with elements of another Lennon demo, "Baby Make Love to You". In June 1978, Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono told the press that they were working on a musical, The Ballad of John and Yoko, which had been planned during the previous year. Songs proposed to be included up to this point were "Real Love" and "Every Man Has a Woman Who Loves Him".

In later versions, Lennon altered portions of the song; for example, "no need to be alone / it's real love / yes, it's real love" became "why must it be alone / it's real / well it's real life." Some takes included an acoustic guitar, while the eventual Beatles release features Lennon on piano, with rudimentary double-tracked vocals, and a tambourine. The version released in 1996 most closely reflected the lyrical structure of the early demo takes of the song.

Lennon appears to have considered recording "Real Love" for his and Ono's 1980 album Double Fantasy. A handwritten draft of the album's running order places it as the possible opening track on side two. The song remained largely forgotten until 1988, when the take 6 of "Real Love" appeared on the Imagine: John Lennon soundtrack album. The song was also released on the Acoustic album in 2004. The demo with just Lennon on piano was issued in 1998 on John Lennon Anthology and then later on Working Class Hero: The Definitive Lennon.

By the early 1990s, the idea of redoing some of Lennon's old songs was inspired by former Beatles road manager Neil Aspinall and Harrison, who first requested some demos from Ono. In January 1994, McCartney went to New York City for Lennon's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. While there, he received at least four songs from Ono. According to Aspinall, it was "two cassettes" which "might have been five or six tracks".
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(John Lennon)

John Lennon � double-tracked lead vocals, piano
Paul McCartney � acoustic guitar, piano, bass/double bass, harmonium, harpsichord, percussion. backing vocals
George Harrison � electric guitars, acoustic guitar, percussion. backing vocals
Ringo Starr � backing vocals, drums, percussion
Jeff Lynne � guitar

Produced: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Jeff Lynne
Engineered: Geoff Emerick, Jon Jacobs
Recorded at: Dakota Apartments, New York, New York, 1979
..... and McCartney's studio, Sussex, England, Feb 1995
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VIDEO

Paul McCartney: "'Hello Goodbye' was one of my songs. There are Geminian influences here I think-- the twins. It's such a deep theme of the universe, duality-- man woman, black white, high low, right wrong, up down, hello goodbye-- that it was a very easy song to write. It's just a song of duality, with me advocating the more positive. You say goodbye, I say hello. You say stop, I say go. I was advocating the more positive side of the duality, and I still do to this day." (1994:Many Years From Now)

John Lennon: "That's another McCartney. An attempt to write a single. It wasn't a great piece. The best bit was at the end, which we all ad-libbed in the studio, where I played the piano. Like 'Ticket To Ride,' where we just threw something in at the end." (1980)

Paul McCartney: From the recording aspect I remember the end bit where there's the pause and it goes 'Heba, heba hello'. We had those words and we had this whole thing recorded but it didn't sound quite right, and I remember asking Geoff Emerick if we could really whack up the echo on the tom-toms. And we put this echo full up on the tom-toms and it just came alive. We Phil Spector'd it. And I noticed that this morning and I said to Linda, 'Wait! Full echo on the toms, here we go!' And they came in quite deep, like a precursor to Adam and the Ants. (1988:The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions)
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(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

Paul McCartney � double-tracked lead vocal, backing vocal, piano, bass, bongos, conga
John Lennon � lead guitar, Hammond organ, backing vocals
George Harrison � lead guitar, backing vocals
Ringo Starr � drums, maracas, tambourine, backing vocals (over coda)
Kenneth Essex � viola
Leo Birnbaum � viola

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Ken Scott, Geoff Emerick
Recorded at: EMI Studios, London, England, Oct 2 - Nov 2, 1967
**KILL ME**

VIDEO

Paul McCartney: "I was laying in bed in the Asher's garret, and there's a nice twilight zone just as you're drifting into sleep and as you wake from it-- I always find it quite a comfortable zone. I remember thinking that a children's song would be quite a good idea... I was thinking of it as a song for Ringo, which it eventually turned out to be, so I wrote it as not too rangey in the vocal. I just made up a little tune in my head, then started making a story-- sort of an ancient mariner, telling the young kids where he'd lived. It was pretty much my song as I recall... I think John helped out. The lyrics got more and more obscure as it goes on, but the chorus, melody and verses are mine." (1994:Many Years From Now)

Paul McCartney: "It's a happy place, that's all. You know, it was just... We were trying to write a children's song. That was the basic idea. And there's nothing more to be read into it than there is in the lyrics of any children's song." (1966)

John Lennon: "'Yellow Submarine' is Paul's baby. Donovan helped with the lyrics. I helped with the lyrics too. We virtually made the track come alive in the studio, but based on Paul's inspiration. Paul's idea. Paul's title... written for Ringo." (1980:All We Are Saying)

John Lennon: "Paul wrote the catchy chorus. I helped with the blunderbuss bit." (1972:Hit Parader)

Donovan: "He played one about a yellow submarine. He said he was missing a line and would I fill it in. I left the room and returned with this: 'Sky of blue and sea of green/In our yellow submarine.' It was nothing really, but he liked it and it stayed in." (1994:Many Years From Now)
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(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

Ringo Starr � lead vocals, drums
Paul McCartney � bass, backing vocals
John Lennon � acoustic guitar, sound effects (bubbles), backing vocals
George Harrison � acoustic guitar, tambourine, backing vocals
Mal Evans � bass drum, backing vocals
Alf Bicknell � sound effects (rattling chains)
Brian Jones � sound effects (clinking glasses), backing vocals
George Martin � backing vocals
Geoff Emerick � backing vocals
Neil Aspinall � backing vocals
Pattie Boyd � backing vocals
Marianne Faithfull � backing vocals
Brian Epstein � backing vocals

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Geoff Emerick
Recorded at: EMI Studios, London, England, May 26, Jun 1 1966
**KILL ME**

VIDEO

John Lennon: "That's me, singing about Yoko." (1980)

John Lennon: "When it gets down to it, when you're drowning, you don't say, "I would be incredibly pleased if someone would have the foresight to notice me drowning and come and help me," you just scream." (1970:Rolling Stone)

Paul McCartney: "It was a very tense period. John was with Yoko, and had escalated to heroin and all the accompanying paranoias and he was putting himself out on a limb. I think that, as much as it excited and amused him, at the same time it secretly terrified him. So 'Don't Let Me Down' was a genuine plea, 'Don't let me down, please, whatever you do. I'm out on this limb...' 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. It was a good song. We recorded it in the basement of Apple for 'Let It Be' and later did it up on the roof for the film. We went through it quite alot for this one. 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." (1994:Many Years From Now)
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(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

John Lennon � lead vocals, rhythm guitars
Paul McCartney � bass guitar, harmony vocals
George Harrison � lead guitar, backing vocals
Ringo Starr � drums
Billy Preston � electric piano

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Glyn Johns
Recorded at: Apple Studio, London, England, Jan 28, 1969
**KILL ME**

VIDEO

Paul McCartney: "'Fool On The Hill' was mine and I think I was writing about someone like the 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 D6 chord, and I made up 'Fool On The Hill.'

I just ad-libbed the whole thing. I went, 'Right, get over there: let me dance. Let me jump from this rock to this rock. Get a lot of the sun rising. Get a perfect shot and let me stand in front of it.' I just had a little Philips cassette to mime to and roughly get the feeling of the song. There was no clapper because there was no sound... It was very spontaneous, as was the whole of Magical Mystery Tour. Later, when we came to try to edit it all, it was very difficult because I hadn't sung it to synch.

We shouldn't have really had just one cameraman, it was anti-union. That was another reason to go to France. The unions wouldn't have allowed it in Britain, nor probably in France, but they didn't know we were doing it. " (1994:Many Years From Now)

John Lennon: "Now that's Paul. Another good lyric. Shows he's capable of writing complete songs." (1980)

: "" ()


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(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

Paul McCartney � lead vocals, piano, acoustic guitar, recorder, bass, penny whistle
John Lennon � harmonica, Jew's harp
George Harrison � acoustic guitar, harmonica
Ringo Starr � drums, maracas, zill
Christopher Taylor � flute
Richard Taylor � flute
Jack Ellory � flute
Unknown musicians - celesta, tambourine

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Ken Scott
Recorded at: Sep 25�27 & 20 Oct 20, 1967
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VIDEO

Paul McCartney: "'Can't Buy Me Love' is my attempt to write a bluesy mode. The idea behind it was that all these material possessions are all very well but they won't buy me what I really want." (1994:Many Years From Now)

John Lennon: "That's Paul completely. Maybe I had something to do with the chorus, but I don't know. I always considered it his song." (1980)

Paul McCartney: "We recorded it in France, as I recall. Went over to the Odeon in Paris. Recorded it over there. Felt proud because Ella Fitzgerald recorded it, too, though we didn't realize what it meant that she was doing it." (1984:Playboy)
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(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

Paul McCartney � double-tracked vocals, bass
John Lennon � acoustic rhythm guitar
George Harrison � double-tracked twelve-string lead guitar
Ringo Starr � drums
Norman Smith � hi-hat

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Norman Smith, Geoff Emerick
Recorded at: Path� Marconi Studios, Paris, France, Jan 24, Feb 25, Mar 10, 1964
**KILL ME**

VIDEO

John Lennon: "You've Got To Hide Your Love Away is my Dylan period. It's one of those that you sort of sing a bit sadly to yourself, 'Here I stand/Head in hand.' I started thinking about my own emotions. I don't know when exactly it started, like 'I'm A Loser' or 'Hide Your Love Away,' or those kind of things. Instead of projecting myself into a situation I would just try to express what I felt about myself which I had done in me books. I think it was Dylan helped me realize that-- I had a sort of professional songwriter's attitude to writing Pop songs, but to express myself I would write 'Spaniard In The Works' or 'In His Own Write' --the personal stories which were expressive of my personal emotions. I'd have a separate 'songwriting' John Lennon who wrote songs for the sort of meat market, and I didn't consider them, the lyrics or anything, to have any depth at all. Then I started being me about the songs... not writing them objectively, but subjectively." (1971:Rolling Stone)

Paul McCartney: "That's me in my Dylan period again. I am like a chameleon... influenced by whatever is going on. If Elvis can do it, I can do it. If the Everly Brothers can do it, me and Paul can. Same with Dylan." (1980:All We Are Saying)
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The song lyrics are ambiguous. They may tell of an unrequited love and hidden feelings. John could also have been referring to the fact that as a Beatle he was expected to keep the fact he was married a secret. He could also have been writing about his inability to express his true 'loving' self in public and his feelings of isolation and paranoia related to fame. Some, such as singer Tom Robinson, have suggested that it was written for their manager Brian Epstein, who had to hide his homosexuality from the public. Lennon himself however never discussed the inspiration for the lyrics. When the song was first written, Lennon used "two-foot tall" to rhyme with the "wall" in the first verse, but mistakenly said "two-foot small" when he sang the line to McCartney, and decided to keep it this way. Pete Shotton, Lennon's former bandmate from The Quarrymen, was present when the song was being composed, and he suggested adding "Hey" to the start of the line in refrain. (Wikipedia)
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(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

John Lennon � double-tracked lead vocals, 12-string acoustic guitar
Paul McCartney � bass
George Harrison � classical acoustic guitar
Ringo Starr � brushed snare drum, tambourine, maracas
John Scott � tenor/alto flutes

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Norman Smith
Recorded at: EMI Studios, London, England, Feb 18, 1965
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VIDEO

Paul McCartney: "I think that was the first song where I wrote the words without the tune. I wrote the words on the tour bus during our tour with Roy Orbison. We did alot of writing then." (1988)

John Lennon: "'All My Loving' is Paul, I regret to say. Because it's a damn fine piece of work. But I play a pretty mean guitar in back." (1980)
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(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

Paul McCartney � double-tracked lead vocals, bass, harmony, backing vocals
John Lennon � rhythm guitar, backing vocals
George Harrison � lead guitar, backing vocals
Ringo Starr � drums

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Norman Smith
Recorded at: EMI Studios, London, England, Jul 30, 1963
**KILL ME**

VIDEO

John Lennon: "That's me completely. Including the guitar lick with the first feedback anywhere. I defy anybody to find a record... unless it is some old blues record from 1922... that uses feedback that way. So I claim it for the Beatles. Before Hendrix, before the Who, before anybody. The first feedback on record." (1980)

John Lennon: "I wrote this at a recording session. It was tied together around the guitar riff that opens it." (1974)

Paul McCartney: "John had a semi-acoustic Gibson guitar. It had a pick-up on it so it could be amplified... We were just about to walk away to listen to a take when John leaned his guitar against the amp. I can still see him doing it... and it went, 'Nnnnnnwahhhhh!" And we went, 'What's that? Voodoo!' 'No, it's feedback.' Wow, it's a great sound!' George Martin was there so we said, 'Can we have that on the record?' 'Well, I suppose we could, we could edit it on the front.' It was a found object-- an accident caused by leaning the guitar against the amp. The song itself was more John's than mine. We sat down and co-wrote it with John's original idea. John sang it, I'm on harmonies." (1994:Many Years From Now)


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(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

John Lennon � double tracked lead vocalS, lead/rhythm guitar
Paul McCartney � bass, harmony vocals
George Harrison � lead/rhythm guitar, harmony vocals
Ringo Starr � drums

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Norman Smith
Recorded at: EMI Studios, London, England, Oct 18, 1964
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VIDEO

Paul McCartney: "It's just a love song. It wasn't for anyone. Having the title start in midsentence, I thought that was clever. Well, Perry Como did 'And I Love You So' many years later. Tried to nick the idea. I like that... it was a nice tune, that one. I still like it." (1984:Playboy)

Paul McCartney: "The 'And' in the title was an important thing � 'And I Love Her,' it came right out of left field, you were right up to speed the minute you heard it," McCartney said. "The title comes in the second verse and it doesn't repeat. You would often go to town on the title, but this was almost an aside: 'Oh . . . and I love you.'"

Paul McCartney: "the middle eight is mine.... I wrote this on my own. I would say that John probably helped with the middle eight, but he can't say 'It's mine'."

John Lennon: "'And I Love Her' is Paul again. I consider it his first 'Yesterday.' You know, the big ballad in 'A Hard Day's Night.' (1980)

John Lennon: "Both of us wrote it. The first half was Paul's and the middle-eight is mine." (1972:Hit Parader)


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(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

Paul McCartney � lead vocal, 1963 H�fner 500/1 bass guitar through Vox AC-100 bass amp.
John Lennon � 1964 Rickenbacker 325 electric guitar through Vox AC-50 guitar amp
George Harrison � 1964 Rickenbacker 360-12 12 string electric guitar through Vox AC-50 guitar amp
Ringo Starr � congas

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Norman Smit
Recorded at: EMI studios, London, England, Feb 25-27, 1964
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VIDEO

Paul McCartney: "I'd never heard them before but she explained that they're quite well known to Lennon fans as bootlegs. I said to Yoko, 'Don't impose too many conditions on us, it's really difficult to do this, spiritually. We don't know, we may hate each other after two hours in the studio and just walk out. So don't put any conditions, it's tough enough. If it doesn't work out, you can veto it.' When I told George and Ringo I'd agreed to that they were going, 'What? What if we love it?' It didn't come to that, luckily."

Jeff Lynne: "It was very difficult, and one of the hardest jobs I've ever had to do, because of the nature of the source material; it was very primitive sounding, to say the least. I spent about a week at my own studio cleaning up both tracks on my computer, with a friend of mine, Marc Mann, who is a great engineer, musician and computer expert... Putting fresh music to it was the easy part! Free As A Bird, however, wasn't a quarter as noisy as Real Love, and only a bit of EQ was needed to cure most problems." (1995:Sound On Sound)
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McCartney, Harrison and Starr originally intended to record some incidental background music, as a trio, for the Anthology project, but later realised, according to Starr, that they wanted to record "new music". According to Harrison, they had always agreed that if one of them was not in the band, the others would never replace them and, "... go out as the Beatles", and that the "only other person that could be in it was John."

McCartney then asked Ono if she had any unreleased recordings by Lennon, so she sent him cassette tapes of four songs. "Free as a Bird" was recorded by Lennon in 1977, in his and Ono's Dakota building apartment in New York City, but was not complete. Lennon introduced the song on the cassette by imitating a New York accent and saying, "Free�as a boid" (bird). The other songs were "Grow Old With Me", "Real Love", and "Now and Then". Ono says that it was Harrison and former Beatles road manager Neil Aspinall who initially asked her about the concept of adding vocals and instrumentation to Lennon's demo tapes.

The original 1977 tape of Lennon singing the song was recorded on a mono cassette, with vocals and piano on the same track. They were impossible to separate, so Lynne had to produce the track with voice and piano together, but commented that it was good for the integrity of the project, as Lennon was not only singing occasional lines, but also playing on the song.

The Beatles' overdubs and production were recorded between February and March 1994 in Sussex, England, at McCartney's home studio. It ends with a slight coda including a strummed ukulele by Harrison (an instrument he was known to have played often) and the voice of John Lennon played backwards. The message, when played in reverse, is "Turned out nice again", which was the catchphrase of George Formby. The final result sounds like "made by John Lennon", which, according to McCartney, was unintentional and was only discovered after the surviving Beatles reviewed the final mix. When Starr heard McCartney and Harrison singing the harmonies, and later the finished song, he said that it sounded just like them [the Beatles]. He explained his comment by saying that he looked at the project as "an outsider". Lynne fully expected the finished track to sound like the Beatles, as that was his premise for the project, but Harrison added: "It's gonna sound like them if it is them... It sounds like them now." : "" (Wikipedia)
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(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

John Lennon � lead vocals, piano
Paul McCartney � lead vocals, harmony vocal, bass, acoustic guitar, piano, synthesizer
George Harrison � lead vocals, harmony vocal, electric slide guitar, acoustic guitar, ukulele
Ringo Starr � drums, harmony vocals

Produced: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Jeff Lynne
Engineered: Geoff Emerick
Recorded at: Dakota Apartments, New York, New York, 1977
..... and McCartney's studio, Sussex, England, 19
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VIDEO

Ringo Starr: "He (a ship captain) told me all about octopuses-- how they go 'round the sea bed and pick up stones and shiny objects and build gardens. I thought, 'How fabulous!' because at the time I just wanted to be under the sea, too. I wanted to get out of it for a while." (1981)

Ringo Starr: "I wrote Octopus's Garden in Sardinia. Peter Sellers had lent us his yacht and we went out for the day... I stayed out on deck with [the captain] and we talked 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!" (Anthology)

George Harrison: "'Octopus's Garden' is Ringo's song. It's only the second song Ringo wrote, and it's lovely. Ringo gets bored playing the drums, and at home he plays a bit of piano, but he only knows about three chords. He knows about the same on guitar. I think it's a really great song, because on the surface, it just like a daft kids' song, but the lyrics are great. For me, you know, I find very deep meaning in the lyrics, which Ringo probably doesn't see, but all the thing like 'resting our head on the sea bed' and 'We'll be warm beneath the storm' which is really great, you know. Because it's like this level is a storm, and if you get sort of deep in your consciousness, it's very peaceful. So Ringo's writing his cosmic songs without noticing." (1969)
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The idea for the song came about when Starr was on a boat belonging to comedian Peter Sellers in Sardinia in 1968. 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.") The boat's captain then told Starr about how octopuses travel along the sea bed picking up stones and shiny objects with which to build gardens. Starr's songwriting was further inspired by his desire to escape mounting hostility among the Beatles; he would later admit that he had "just wanted to be under the sea, too." Uncredited assistance in developing the song's chord changes was provided by Harrison, who can be seen helping Starr work the song out on piano in the Let It Be documentary.
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(Richard Starkey)

Ringo Starr � lead vocals, drums, percussion
George Harrison � lead guitar, sound effects, backing vocals
Paul McCartney � bass, piano, backing vocals
John Lennon � rhythm guitar, backing vocal (over chorus and coda)

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Jeff Jarratt, Phil McDonald
Recorded at: EMI's Abbey Road Studio, Apr 26/27, Jul 17/18, 1969
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VIDEO

George Harrison: "I had discovered I was paying a huge amount of money to the taxman. You are so happy that you've finally started earning money - and then you find out about tax.

In those days we paid 19 shillings and sixpence [96p] out of every pound, and with supertax and surtax and tax-tax it was ridiculous - a heavy penalty to pay for making money. That was a big turn-off for Britain. Anybody who ever made any money moved to America or somewhere else." (Anthology)

John Lennon: "I remember the day he called to ask for help on Taxman, one of his first songs. I threw in a few one-liners to help the song along, because that's what he asked for. He came to me because he couldn't go to Paul, because Paul wouldn't have helped him at that period. I didn't want to do it. I thought, Oh, no, don't tell me I have to work on George's stuff. It's enough doing my own and Paul's. But because I loved him and I didn't want to hurt him when he called that afternoon and said, 'Will you help me with this song?' I just sort of bit my tongue and said OK. It had been John and Paul for so long, he'd been left out because he hadn't been a songwriter up until then." (1980:All We Are Saying)

Paul McCartney: "George wrote that and I played guitar on it. He wrote it in anger at finding out what the taxman did. He had never known before then what could happen to your money." (1984:Playboy)

George Harrison: "I was pleased to have Paul play that bit on 'Taxman.' If you notice, he did like a little Indian bit on it for me." (1987)
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(George Harrison)

George Harrison � lead vocals, rhythm guitar
John Lennon � tambourine, backing vocals
Paul McCartney � lead/bass guitars, backing vocals
Ringo Starr � drums, cowbell

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Geoff Emerick
Recorded at: EMI Studios, London, England, Apr 20�22, May 16, Jun 21, 1966,
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VIDEO

Paul McCartney: "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. Rather romantic and slightly surreal! All these old dears with the blue rinses going off to mysterious places. Generally there's a crate of ale in the boot of the coach and you sing lots of songs. It's a charabanc trip. So we took that idea and used it as a basis for a song and the film.

I used to go to the fairgrounds as a kid, the waltzers and the dodgems, but what interested me was the freak shows: the boxing booths, the bearded lady and the sheep with five legs, which actually was a four-legged sheep with one leg sewn on its side. When I touched it, the fellow said, 'Hey, leave that alone!' these were the great things of your youth. So much of your writing comes from this period; your golden memories. If I'm stuck for an idea, I can always think of a great summer, think of a time when I went to the seaside. Okay, sand sun waves donkeys laughter. That's a pretty good scenario for a song.

'Magical Mystery Tour' was co-written by John and I, very much in our fairground period. One of our great inspirations was always the barker: 'Roll up! Roll up!' The promise of something-- the newspaper ad that says 'guaranteed not to crack,' the 'high class' butcher, 'satisfaction guaranteed' from Sgt. Pepper... You'll find that pervades alot of my songs. If you look at all the Lennon/McCartney things, it's a thing we do alot.

Because those were psychedelic times it had to become a magical mystery tour, a little bit more surreal than the real ones to give us a licence to do it. But it employs 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. 'Magical Mystery Tour is waiting to take you away,' so that's a kind of drug, 'it's dying to take you away' so that's a Tibetan Book of the Dead reference. We put all these words in and if you were just an ordinary person, it's a nice bus that's waiting to take you away, but if you're tripping, it's dying, it's the real tour, the real magical mystery tour. We stuck all that stuff in for our 'in group' of friends really.

Magical Mystery Tour was the equivalent of a drug trip and we made the film based on that. 'That'll be good, a far-out mystery tour. Nobody quite knows where they're going. We can take 'em anywhere we want, man!' Which was the feeling of the period. 'They can go in the sky. It can take off!' In fact, in the early script, which was just a few fireside chats more than a script, the bus was going to actually take off and fly up the the magicians in the clouds, which was us all dressed in red magicians' costumes, and we'd mess around in a little laboratory being silly for a while." (1994:Many Years From Now)

John Lennon: "Paul wrote it. I helped with some of the lyric." (1972:Hit Parader)
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(John Lennon, Paul McCartney)

Paul McCartney � lead vocals, piano, bass, ringmaster's voice
John Lennon � lead vocals, backing vocals, acoustic rhythm guitar, percussion
George Harrison � lead guitar, percussion, backing vocals
Ringo Starr � drums, percussion
Mal Evans � percussion
Neil Aspinall � percussion
David Mason � trumpet
Elgar Howarth � trumpet
Roy Copestake � trumpet
John Wilbraham � trumpet

Produced: George Martin
Engineered: Geoff Emerick
Recorded at: Apr 25�27, May 3, 1967
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