The Beatles, The #1 Artist of the Rock Era, Part Ten

  Although McCartney had a sheepdog named Martha, Paul wrote this song about his muse, "the voice in his head that tells him what words and music to write," he said in the book A Hard Day's Write. 

Fourteen session musicians played strings and horns, Lennon played guitar while Harrison played bass.  Paul talked about the piano part in "Martha My Dear":

              When I taught myself piano I liked to see

              how far I could go, and this started like

              almost as a piece you'd learn as a piano

              lesson.  It's quite hard for me to play, it's

              a two-handed thing, like a little set piece.  

              In fact, I remember one or two people

              being surprised that I'd played it because

              it's slightly above my level or 

              competence really, but I wrote it as that,

              something a bit more complex for me to

              play.  Then while I was blocking out 

              words--you just mouth out sounds and

              some things come--I found the words

              "Martha my dear."

The Beatles departed for India in February, 1968 for a three-month meditation "Guide Course" with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.  The group was inspired to write numerous songs during this period, many of which appeared on their next album.  But Starr couldn't take the food and left after just 10 days, and McCartney too left a month later.  

After an electronics technician known as Magic Alex suggested to Lennon and Harrison that the Maharishi was trying to manipulate them and alleged that the Maharishi had made sexual advances to women attendees, Lennon left before the end of the course, bringing Harrison with him.  John wrote a blistering song called "Maharishi", which was renamed "Sexy Sadie" to avoid potential legal issues.  McCartney commented to Bill Harry for the 2000 book The Beatles Encyclopedia:  Revised and Updated, "We made a mistake.  We thought there was more to him than there was."  

Listeners to The White Album in 1968 and for several years assumed "Sexy Sadie" was about a sex symbol or another beautiful girl the Beatles knew.  So it came as a surprise when Lennon revealed the true subject behind the song:

            That was inspired by Maharishi.  I wrote

            it when we had our bags packed and we

            were leaving.  It was the last piece I 

            wrote before I left India.  I just called 

            him, "Sexy Sadie" instead of 

            "Maharishi, what have you done, you 

            made a fool..."  I was just using the

            situation to write a song, rather

            calculatingly but also to express what I

            felt.  I was leaving the Maharishi with a

            bad taste.

 

That was Lennon's quote from 1980.  "I think Maharishi was a mistake, but the teachings have got some truth in them," John said at a press conference on May 14, 1968 in New York, but he was more blunt about the experience two years later:

            I wouldn't write "Maharishi, what have

            you done, you made a fool of 

            everyone," but now it can be told, fab

            listeners...That was about the

            Maharishi.  There was a big hullabaloo

            about him trying to rape Mia Farrow, 

            and things like that.  So we went to see

            him.  I was the spokesman, as usual

            whenever the dirty work came.  I said,

            "We're leaving."  He asked, "Why?", 

            and all that sh*t, and I said, "Well if

            you're so cosmic, you'll know why."

 

"Cry Baby Cry" is another song Lennon didn't like, yet the largely undiscovered song at the time received high praise. 

Ian MacDonald, in the book Revolution In The Head, said the song is "one of the most evocative products of that creative channel."  "An underrated Lennon royalty satire; it's his most accomplished Lewis Carroll pastiche," wrote Tim Riley.  David Quantick said it is "A song with an air of a particularly dreamlike ghost story...one of the strangest and most beautiful lyrics on the White Album."  "Alice trips gently through Lennonland for just about the last time...(it ranks) among his most magical," said Nicholas Schaffner.

This next fan favorite came about as the result of a jam session in Abbey Road's studio two.  The Beatles scheduled their September 18, 1968 session earlier than usual so they could watch the film The Girl Can't Help It, which aired for the first time on British television that night. 

Assistant producer Chris Thomas was filling in for George Martin that day, and recalled to Mark Lewisohn for his book The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions how "Birthday" came about:

            I had mentioned to Paul a couple of days

           earlier about "The Girl Can't Help it" being on

           television during this evening.  The idea was 

           to start the session earlier than usual, about

           five o'clock in the afternoon, and then all nip

           around the corner to Paul's house in 

          Cavendish Avenue, watch the film and go 

          back to work.

          So on the day Paul was the first one in, and 

          he was playing the "Birthday" riff.  

          Eventually the others arrived, by which time

          Paul had literally written the song, right there

          in the studio.  We had the backing track 

          down by about 8:30, popped around to 

          watch the film as arranged and then came

          back and actually finished the whole song.

          It was all done in a day!

McCartney told author Barry Miles for the book Many Years From Now that he remembered the song to be a collaborative effort with Lennon:

           We thought, "Why not make something up?" 

           So we got a riff going and arranged it around

           this riff.  We said, "We'll go there for a few 

           bars."  We added some lyrics, then we got the

           friends who were there to join in on the 

           chorus.  So that is 50-50 John and me, made

           up on the spot and recorded all on the same

           evening.  I don't recall it being anybody's

           birthday in particular but it might have been,

           but the reason for doing it is that, if you have

           a song that refers to Christmas or a birthday,

           it adds to the life of the song, if it's a good

           song, because people will pull it out on

           birthday shows, so I think there was a little

           bit of that at the back of our minds.

Lennon wrote this while at the Transcendental Meditation camp in India when was unable to sleep.  Notice how John used music and tempo to accentuate the sleepy feeling of the lyrics in "I'm So Tired".

McCartney and the rest of the group undoubtedly heard of Eurasian Blackbirds, which were common in the gardens and throughout the countryside in Great Britain.  But Paul was singing about racial strife in the American South in the 1960's here, not about the bird.  

Paul recalled to Barry Miles that he viewed his song as empowerment:

            I had in mind a black woman, rather than

            a bird.  Those were the days of the civil

            rights movement, which all of us cared

            passionately about, so this was really a

            song from me to a black woman,

            experiencing these problems in the

            States:  "Let me encourage you to keep

            trying, to keep your faith; there is hope."

            As is often the case with my things, a

            veiling took place, so rather than

            saying, "Black woman living in Little

            Rock" and be very specific, she 

            became a bird, became symbolic, so

            you could apply it to your particular

            problem.

McCartney wrote this song on the roof of the ashram in India, with Lennon and Donovan helping out.  "Rocky Sassoon" was the original title, but was changed to make the protagonist sound "more like a cowboy".

AmericanSongwriter.com calls this next song:

             a kind of impressionistic meditation by an

             earthbound man on the ethereal presence

             of a woman calling to him yet hovering  

             out of his reach.  Or at least that's how it

             sounds removed from any context.  In

             actuality, Lennon was writing the song as

             an indirect tribute to his deceased mother

             Julia. 

    

Lennon's mother was only casually involved in his formative years after his father left the family when John was an infant.  The two did get closer when John was a teenager, but in 1958, Julia was hit by a car and killed while crossing a street.

John is the only Beatle performing on the song, which became more common as the group became more fractured.  Even with the double-tracked vocals, listeners can detect the loneliness in Lennon's voice as he sings of his mother.  There are undoubtedly elements of the song that were influenced by Yoko.

John borrowed some of his lines from the poem "Sand And Foam" by Kahlil Gibran; "Half of what I say is meaningless/But I say it just to reach you."  Lennon used imagery to convey both beauty and distance:  "Silent cloud", "Morning moon", and "Her hair of floating sky."  

The album that became Let It Be was inspired by McCartney, who suggested the Beatles record and rehearse an album of new material, then perform it in a filmed and recorded show before a live audience.  The group, which hadn't performed live since 1968, was initially interested in the idea because of their positive experience filming the promotional video for "Hey Jude" before a live audience.   

The project was originally to be called Beatles at Work, a one-hour television program filmed by director Michael Lindsay-Hogg, with the album to be titled Get Back, representative of the Beatles "getting back to their roots".  Many hours of footage were captured on film, but Martin said the project was "not at all a happy recording experience.  It was a time when relations between the Beatles were at their lowest ebb."  

Harrison walked out of the sessions, upset at both McCartney and Lennon.  When he returned five days later, he threatened to leave the group unless they abandoned the idea of performing live and instead concentrated on finishing the new album using songs recorded for the TV special.  George also demanded that they quit working at Twickenham Film Studios and relocate to the newly finished Apple Studio.  The rest of the members agreed, but saved the footage shot for the television idea for use in a feature movie instead.

With group chemistry at an all-time low, Harrison invited keyboardist Billy Preston to join the last nine days of the sessions.  There was much deliberation about the location to film a live performance before the group decided to film it on the rooftop of the Apple Corps building at 3 Savile Row in London on January 30, 1969.

The Beatles performed a 42-minute surprise concert, which was not announced to anyone, joined by Preston before the Metropolitan Police asked them to stop.  The band performed nine takes of five songs as crowds below, many on their lunch break, looked up.  The show ended with "Get Back", with Lennon joking, "I'd like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves and I hope we've passed the audition."  It was the final public performance of the group's career.   

Five weeks later, engineer Glyn Johns began assembling an album of new material (originally to be called Get Back), as the band, according to Mark Lewisohn's 1992 book The Complete Beatles Chronicle:  The Definitive Day-By-Day Guide To the Beatles' Entire Career, had "all but washed their hands of the entire project."

More problems arose when the band realized they needed to hire a new financial adviser now they had lost the genius of Epstein.  Lennon, Harrison and Starr wanted Allen Klein, former manager of the Rolling Stones, while McCartney preferred Lee and John Eastman, the father and brother, respectively, of Linda Eastman, whom Paul married on March 12.  Unable to reach an agreement, the group hired Klein as their business manager and the Eastmans as their attorneys.

However, the group subsequently fired the Eastmans and named Klein as manager of the Beatles on May 8.  Outvoted by the other members, McCartney refused to sign the management contract with Klein.

 

The melody for this song was born during an unstructured jam session on January 7, 1969 during rehearsals at Twickenham Studios.  Over the next several minutes, McCartney began singing "Get back to where you once belonged", a reworking of "Get back to the place you should be" from Harrison's song "Sour Milk Sea".  On January 9, Paul brought a more developed version of "Get Back" into the studio with the "Sweet Loretta" verse close to its final version.  

With the recording sessions not going well, the group decided that "Get Back", originally the title of the album, would be released instead as a single prior to the album, and was a #1 smash in nearly every country in the world (including #1 for 5 weeks in the United States), a Quadruple Platinum seller that ranks as The #35 Song of the Rock Era*.

 Here's another song written and recorded while the group was working on the "Get Back" sessions.  "Don't Let Me Down", like many of Lennon's songs written in this period, were about Yoko Ono, whom he married a few months after the Beatles recorded this song.  Paul said it was "a very intense period", and explained that statement to author Barry Miles:

            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, and [at] the same time it secretly

            terrified him.  So "Don't Let Me Down" was a

            genuine plea...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.

The Beatles rehearsed the song in the basement of the group's Apple Records building on January 21, 1969.  The change in location was necessary to fulfill Harrison's requirements in order to rejoin the band after a disagreement about the direction of the project.  

The group recorded the version that appears on the single on January 28 with keyboardist Billy Preston.  The Beatles also filmed it two days later on the rooftop of Apple Records, featured in the Let It Be film.

The wounds resulting from the recording sessions for the "Get Back" project were deep, but began to heal on April 14 as Lennon and McCartney worked to finish this song.  Martin was back at producer and engineer Geoff Emerick, who had walked out of the White Album sessions, also returned. 

However, neither Harrison nor Starr was a part of the recording.  George was on vacation, while Ringo was filming the movie Magic Christian.  McCartney played piano, bass, drums and maracas while Lennon played guitars and added additional percussion.   "The Ballad Of John And Yoko" also rose to #1 in every major country except New Zealand, where it stopped at #2, and the U.S., where it peaked at #8.  

To Martin's surprise, McCartney asked him to produce another album for the group.  George had the same feelings as the group members--the "Get Back" sessions were miserable and Martin "thought it was the end of the road for all of us," according to Jonathan Gould's 2007 book Can't Buy Me Love:  The Beatles, Britain and America. 

Nevertheless, the Beatles began recording the bulk of the new album on July 2, 1969 (the group had done some work on two tracks in February and April before taking a break).  

On July 4, Lennon released the solo single "Give Peace A Chance", credited to the Plastic Ono Band.  August 20 marked the last time that all four members were together in the studio. 

On September 8 while Starr was in the hospital, the other Beatles discussed recording a new album, but just 12 days later, Lennon announced to the rest of the group that he was leaving.  John agreed to not share this decision publicly so as to keep from harming sales of the upcoming album.

The Beatles released Abbey Road on September 26, with the new album selling four million copies within three months.  Abbey Road dominated the U.K. Album chart for 17 weeks.

 

The group released the single "Something", the only Harrison song to ever appear as an A-side, which is unfortunate given the high quality of George's songs that you have heard throughout these segments.  It was a huge #1 hit in most countries and has sold over four million copies.  Today, "Something" ranks as The #29 Song of the Rock Era*.

The acoustical guitar work in "Something" is some of Harrison's finest, but it is his vocals, in which he pours so much emotion into, that carry the song.  Billy Preston played organ on the song, one of the most covered Beatles songs with at least 150 known remakes.  

 

With McCartney's legendary bass riff and John's bluesy vocals and cryptic though decipherable lyrics, this next song is Lennon's song about each Beatle.  Verse one about "Old flat top" refers to Ringo, with his flat top haircut.  The second verse refers to George, who liked going barefoot and the "monkey fingers" are homage to Harrison's quick guitar playing.  

The third verse is about John himself.  "Feet below the knees" is about John's stubbornness in letting anyone tell him what to do while Lennon uses "disease" to refer to his depression and emotional state.  The final verse is about Paul, with "roller coaster" referring to McCartney's moodiness, being controlling and demanding at times and calm and laid back at others.  

"Come Together" then is John's summary about how he felt about each Beatle.  The single reached the Top 5 nearly everywhere in the world, including #1 in the United States and is The #74 Song of the Rock Era*.

Taken together, "Something" and "Come Together" rank as The #2 Double-Sided Hits of the Rock Era*.

Much more to come--don't miss Part Eleven!

The Beatles, The #1 Artist of the Rock Era, Part Nine

 

(Continued from Part Eight)

The Beatles recorded their next album from May to October of 1968.  The Beatles, a double album known as The White Album, was another solid effort featuring more innovations and great creativity.  

However, relations between the members soured during this period, and recorded footage of the group shows open arguments and hostility between the four members who had been great friends in the beginning.  Starr quit the band for two weeks, with McCartney playing drums on "Back In The U.S.S.R." and "Dear Prudence".  The incredible Lennon/McCartney songwriting partnership broke apart as well.  

Lennon further aggravated tensions when he brought his girlfriend Yoko Ono to the sessions, even though the Beatles had established a rule that girlfriends were not allowed in the recording studio.

By that time, recording technology had evolved into an eight-track console, which made layering much easier than the incredible but difficult recording they achieved with Sgt. Pepper.  Each member recorded their parts separately, which led to the album to be regarded more as solo efforts rather than a cohesive band project.

The Beatles released the White Album in November, the first on Apple Records.  There were two million advance orders, and sales reached four million in little over a month.  Radio stations in America began to play album tracks, breaking from the tradition of only playing singles, and tracks on the White Album received tremendous airplay.  

At the time Lennon wrote this next song, world conditions were as turbulent as in any year since World War 2.  The assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy, two of the most loved and promising leaders in a generation, turned the Summer of Love in 1967 into a year of disillusionment, anger, and discontent in 1968.  Student protests in Paris had crippled France.  Anti-Vietnam fervor in both the U.S. and the U.K. resulted in numerous clashes with police with hundreds wounded and deaths.  Clashes between those simply demanding civil rights for all and police turned ugly.

Seeing and being witness to all of these world events moved John to address the situation.  In it, he suggested that things were going to be OK, that rather than challenge institutions, people would be better off freeing their own minds.   However, Lennon was in India when he wrote this song, far away from the madness.  “I still had this ‘God will save us’ feeling about it," John said later. "That it’s gonna be all right.”

 

“There were three ‘Revolutions’” Lennon said in 1971,  “two songs and one abstract. I don’t know what you’d call it… musique concrète, loops and that, which was a picture of a revolution.”

The Beatles began recording on May 30, the same day that nearly half a million people took to the streets of Paris to protest.  The final take of that day, Take 18, evolved into a jam session of 10 minutes and 30 seconds.  The final six minutes were a sonic portrait of chaos, spiced by sound effects, screaming, and other assorted noises.

As Lennon wanted "Revolution" to be a single, the last six minutes were cut, a segment that would become the foundation for "Revolution #9", another track on the album.

The group worked further on Take 18 in the next few days, with John recording vocals lying on his back to attempt to create a different sound.  Tape loops and further instrumentation were added.  On June 21, Harrison added a lead guitar track and Martin scored a brass section to finish the song.

But Paul and George felt the track, which is included on the album, was too slow, so the Beatles recorded a faster and heavier version on July 9.  It is this re-recorded version that was included as the flip side of "Hey Jude".  

"Revolution" reached #1 in New Zealand but only #12 in the U.S.

McCartney wrote this next Jamaican-styled song incorporating a phrase by Jimmy Scott-Emuakpor (a Nigerian musician who lived in London) for the title and chorus.  Paul began writing the song while the group was in Rishikesh early in 1968.  McCartney's character of Desmond was a reference to Reggae singer Desmond Dekker.  

After the Beatles returned from India, they went to Harrison's home in Surrey in May to record demos for their new album, and this song was one of 27 demos the group recorded there.  McCartney double-tracked his vocal, which, because it wasn't perfectly synchronized, created an echoing effect.

On July 8, the group recorded "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da", which included Scott on congas and a trio of saxophonists.  Lennon openly expressed his dislike of the song.  John left the studio at one point and returned under the influence of marijuana.  

Frustrated at being forced to continue working on the song, John strode to the piano and played the opening chords louder and faster.  He claimed this was how the song should be played, and it became the version you hear.  

Paul made a mistake in the final verse by singing "Desmond stays at home and does his pretty face" (rather than Molly), but the group kept it in as the other Beatles liked it.

 

Ever the perfectionist, however, McCartney wasn't happy and the Beatles

reworked it in the afternoon of July 9.  This was a particularly acrimonious session and producer George Martin offered Paul his suggestions.  But when McCartney retorted, "Well, you come down and sing it," the usually calm Martin shouted back, "Then bloody sing it again!  I give up.  I just don't know any better how to help you," according to Mark Lewishohn's 2013 book The Beatles - All These Years, Volume One:  Tune In. 

That intense argument led engineer Geoff Emerick to quit, citing the exchange between McCartney and Martin, as well as the unpleasant atmosphere of the White Album sessions in general, as the reasons for his leaving. 

 After listening to it, however, Paul decided the one recorded the previous day was the best and that evening, overdubs were added.

The other Beatles didn't like the song and refused to let McCartney release it as a single except for limited release in some European countries.  "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" topped charts in Australia, New Zealand, West Germany, Switzerland and Japan.

After the song was released, Scott asked to get songwriting credit but was denied.  However, McCartney later paid Scott's legal bills while he was in Brixton Prison awaiting the trial for failing to pay maintenance to his ex-wife.  

This next song underwent quite a transformation before it became the song we all know today.  The early versions were soft, with Harrison singing to his own acoustic guitar accompaniment on July 25, backed only by a harmonium played by McCartney.  This version was released in 1996 on the album Anthology 3.  

Harrison utilized a guitar picking method he learned from Donovan while in Rishikesh.  It sounded fine, but it wasn't the sound that George wanted, so he drastically changed it and dropped many of the lyrics before he was satisfied.

George began writing the song as an experiment using a theory from the I Ching while Harrison was visiting his parents.  “‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ was just a simple study based on the theory that everything has some purpose for being there at that given moment,” George explained  in the book Anthology.  "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."

“I was thinking that anything I see when I open a book, I’m going to write a song about. So I opened this book and I saw ‘gently weeps.’ I shut the book and then I started the tune,” Harrison said.

The Beatles returned to the song on August 16 and recorded 14 takes before they added overdubs on September 3, the first using Abbey Road's new eight-track recording equipment.  In this latter session, Harrison worked by himself, spending eight hours trying to record a backwards guitar solo.  George recorded two lead vocal parts on September 5, with maracas, drums and lead guitar also added.  But after hearing the result, George scrapped that version as well.

George didn't feel the other Beatles were taking the song seriously.  So he brought in a famous guitar player to give him some more credibility with his bandmates:

                We tried to record it, but John and Paul 

                were so used to just cranking out their

                tunes that it was very difficult at times to

               get serious and record one of mine.  It

               wasn't happening.  They weren't taking it

               seriously and I don't think they were even

               all playing on it, and so I went home that

               night thinking, "Well, that's a shame,"

               because I knew the song was pretty

               good.

               The next day I was driving into London

               with Eric Clapton, and I said, "What are

               you doing today?  Why don't you come

               to the studio and play on this song for

               me?"  He said, "Oh, no - I can't do that.

               Nobody's ever played on a Beatles

               record and the others wouldn't like it."

               I said, "Look, it's my song and I'd like 

               you to play on it.

              So he came in.  I said, "Eric's going to

               play on this one," and it was good

               because that then made everyone act

               better.  Paul got on the piano and I

               played a nice intro and they all took it

               more seriously.

 

The Beatles recorded 28 takes that same day, with Clapton playing the Gibson Les Paul guitar, nicknamed Lucy, that he had given to Harrison the month before.

The band finally finished "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" on September 6 with the addition of a distorted bass part from McCartney, organ by Harrison and percussion from Starr.  George recorded his lead vocals with backing from McCartney.

Although the mention of "Georgia" without it referring to a U.S. state upset weird people in the United States (likely the same ones who have betrayed their country by now adopting Soviet philosophy), the Beatles were one of the few things that bridged the gap between the West and the Iron Curtain.

"The Beatles brought us the idea of democracy," Rocker Sasha Lipnitsky said to Leslie Woodhead for the book How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin.  "For many of us, it was the first hole in the Iron Curtain."  Now, in everyone's best interests, the world has to get power away from the evil Vladimir Putin.

To be clear, "Back In The U.S.S.R." was a tongue-in-cheek song, and a spoof of the Beach Boys' "California Girls", and Mike Love of the group, who was with the Beatles in India, gave the song his approval.

One group who didn't approve was the far right John Birch Society, the same group which now endorses Putin and opposes freedom and democracy, the very ideals that the United States was founded upon.  We now know all of their bemoanings were a line of crap they fed to Americans who were easily brainwashed, and the true intention of "conservatives" all along was to destroy the country.  They have fooled people along the way.  We now know what they are all about.

 

This is the song which launches the White Album with the sound of squealing aircraft engines and the matching screeching guitar.

The greatness of the album, however, masks the internal dissension.  It is during the recording sessions of the White Album that Starr quit briefly.  "Ringo was always sitting in the reception area waiting, just sitting there or reading a newspaper," Ron Richards of the Abbey Road staff told author Mark Lewishohn.  "He used to sit there for hours waiting for the others to turn up.  One night, he couldn't stand it any longer."

Starr returned to the band after a couple of weeks, but the Beatles recorded this song without him.  Although the three remaining Beatles get credit for playing drums on the song, it is most likely the accomplished McCartney who played in Ringo's absence.

When Ringo returned, his drum kit was decorated with flowers and "Welcome Back" signs, and recording continued on the album.

Next up, a plea to a fellow guest in India learning Transcendental Meditation from Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.  During their stay, Prudence Farrow, the 19-year-old sister of actress Mia Farrow, locked herself in her hut where she and Mia were studying TM along with the Beatles, Donovan, Mike Love, and others.  Prudence had been meditating far longer than everyone else (three weeks) and the others began to worry about her.

McCartney said, "Prudence Farrow got an attack of the horrors, paranoia, what you'd call these days an identity crisis, and wouldn't come out."  "We all got a bit worried about her," Paul continued.  "So we went up there and knocked.  [We said]:  "Hi, Prudence, we all love you.  You're wonderful!  But nobody could persuade her out."

Lennon did the thing he was best at--he wrote a song, "Dear Prudence, won't you come out and play..."  John and Paul perfected the song which they sang to her, and finally, they were able to bring Prudence back to reality.

 

John used fingerpicking on his guitar, something the Beatles learned from Donovan:

                It's a difficult style that requires

                perseverance.  When John had it down he

                was so pleased to find a whole new way

                of songwriting emerge.  That's what

                happens to a natural songwriter when you

                get a new set of performing skills.  He

                immediately wrote 'Dear Prudence' and

                'Julia'.

       

     

When they returned to England, the Beatles (minus Ringo, was still on Peter Sellers' yacht in the Mediterranean in a self-imposed exile) went to Trident Studios in London and recorded "Dear Prudence" from August 28-30, 1968.

As for the inspiration behind the song, Prudence claimed to have no memory of hearing it while in India.  "George was the one who told me about it," she said.  "At the end of the course, just as they were leaving, he mentioned that they had written a song about me but I didn't hear it until it came out on the album.  I was flattered.  It was a beautiful thing to have done."

Lennon, who never fully was committed to what the Beatles were doing in India said, "Regardless of what I was supposed to be doing, I did write some of my best songs while I was there."  "The experience was worth it if only for the songs that came out."

On May 28, the Beatles gathered at George's home in Surrey, England, to record demos of songs that they were working on for the White Album.  

"Yer Blues" was one of the first ones demoed that day.

Harrison had recorded lead vocals for "Not Guilty" in the control room, searching for an on-stage feeling.  Ken Scott recalled the event to Mark Lewisohn for Mark's book The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions:

             Lennon heard him and said, "bloody hell, 

             the way you lot are carrying on, you'll be

             wanting to record everything in the room

             next door! [which had no proper studio walls

             or acoustic setup of any kind].  John then 

             said, "That's a great idea; let's try it on the

             next number!'  The "next number" was "Yer

             Blues" and we literally had to set it all up in

             this minute room.  That's how they recorded

             "Yer Blues", and it worked out great!"

          

"And 'Yer Blues' on the White Album, you can't top it," Ringo said.  "It was the four of us.  That is what I'm saying:  it was really because the four of us were in a box, a room about eight by eight, with no separation.  It was this group that was together."

Here's another of the songs the group worked on while they were in Risikesh, India.  McCartney recounted to Barry Miles the writing of this one:

             I was doing a song, "I Will", that I had as

             a melody for quite a long time but I didn't

             have any lyrics to it.  I remember sitting

             around with Donovan, and maybe a 

             couple of other people.  We were just

             sitting around one evening after our day

             of meditation and I played him this one

             and he liked it, and we were trying to

             write some words.  We kicked around a

             few lyrics, something about the moon, 

             but they weren't very satisfactory and I 

             thought the melody was better than the

             words so I didn't use them.  I kept

             searching for better words and I wrote

             my own set in the end; very simple 

             words, straight love-song words really.

             

             I think they're quire effective.  It's still

             one of my favourite melodies that I've

             written.  You just occasionally get lucky

             with a melody and it becomes rather

             complex and I think this is one of them;

             quite a complete tune.            

            

Love songs, of course, usually take much longer to record than Rock songs, because mistakes can't be hidden in the noise.  It took 67 takes for the Beatles to finish this song.  Harrison didn't participate in recording, but Paul, John and Ringo began recording at 7 p.m. on September 16 and did not finish until 3 a.m. 

These recordings included take 19, which was an improvised song built on the line, "Can you take me back where I came from?"  That take was trimmed to just 28 seconds and used on the White Album between "Cry Baby Cry" and "Revolution 9".  The full version of that improvisation was released in 2018 as "Can You Take Me Back? (Take 1)".

 

The version of "Helter Skelter" that Paul warmed up with before recording "Blackbird" was a far cry from the screaming number the group released on the album.  That evening, Paul sang with a falsetto with acoustic accompaniment. 

The Beatles began to record it on July 18, but even those were nothing like the final version.  One of the takes resulted in a jam that lasted 27 minutes and 11 seconds.  Paul sought to record the heaviest Beatles song yet, but none of the attempts sounded like what he had in mind.

On September 9-10, the group tried again at Abbey Road and turned all volume controls up, with Paul's screaming vocal supported by John and George.  John squealed out a saxophone part and roadie Mal Evans blasted away on a trumpet. 

"Helter Skelter" was "a track we did in total madness and hysterics in the studio, "Ringo later said.  Paul remembered the recording in his biography, Many Years From Now:

              We got the engineers and [the producer] to

              hike up the drum sound and really get it as

              loud and horrible as it could and we played

              it and said, "No, it still sounds too safe, it's

              got to get louder and dirtier."  In the end 

              you can hear Ringo say, "I've got blisters

              on my fingers!"  That wasn't a joke put-on:

              his hands were actually bleeding at the

              end of the take, he'd been drumming so

              ferociously.  We did work very hard on

              that track.

Paul wrote this next song drawing inspiration from his childhood, the teachings of Mahesh Yogi and the song "Nature Boy".  As McCartney told author Barry Miles, he wrote it after stopping at his father's home in Liverpool--"Visiting my family I'd feel in a good mood, so it was often a good occasion to write songs."   

Paul remembered his explorations of the country while writing "Mother Nature's Son":

             I was always able to take my bike and in

            five minutes I'd be in quite deep 

            countryside.  This is where my love of the

            country came from.  I remember the Dam

            Wood, which had millions of 

            rhododendron bushes.  This is what I was

            writing about in "Mother Nature's Son"; it

            was basically a heartfelt song about my

            child-of-nature leanings.

 

Paul recorded a demo at Harrison's home in May of 1968, but he didn't complete the song for over two months.  On August 9, Paul recorded his vocals and acoustic guitar part at Abbey Road Studios.  McCartney recorded 25 takes, with take 24 being the best.  On August 20, Paul overdubbed timpani, another acoustic guitar part and drums. 

McCartney and producer George Martin worked on the brass arrangement and two trumpet players and two trombonists recorded their parts on August 20.  This was the same day that Lennon and Starr were working on "Yer Blues" in another studio.  

When John and Ringo arrived at the studio, "you could cut the atmosphere with a knife," engineer Ken Scott said to author Mark Lewisohn for the book Complete Beatles Recording Sessions.  "An instant change.  It was like that for 10 minutes and then, as soon as they left, it felt great again.  It was very bizarre." 

Harrison wrote this song, said to be inspired by his friend Eric Clapton's sweet tooth.  Clapton had just come back from an appointment with his dentist, who told Eric he had to give up candy.  "Savoy Truffle" was of several candy names that George wrote into the song.

Up next, another song Lennon started to write in India, but it appears only one verse was written there, as the demo recorded in late May contained just that one verse.  McCartney explained how the two consulted on their songwriting:

              I would encourage him to keep lines in his

              songs that he didn't think were very good.

             And I'd say, "No, that's a really great line."

            There was a song of his called "Glass 

            Onion" where he had a line about, "Here's

            another clue for you all, the walrus was

            Paul."  And he wanted to keep it but he

            needed to check; it with me.  He said, 

            "What do you think of that line?"  I said,

            "You know, it's a spoof on the way 

            everyone was always reading into our

            songs.  Here you go, you know, you've

            given them another clue to follow."  So

            we would check stuff against each other

            and it was obviously very handy for our

            writing to be able to do that.

 

"Glass Onion" mentions several Beatles songs, including "Strawberry Fields Forever", "I Am The Walrus", "The Fool On The Hill", "Lady Madonna" and "Fixing A Hole".  The final two mentions were added when John recorded his lead vocals on September 12.

There are several phrases in "Glass Onion" which draw out curiosity in the lyrics, one being "bent back tulips".  Derek Taylor, press officer of Apple Records, says the phrase refers to a flower arrangement found in a London restaurant called Parkes:

        

              You'd be in Parkes sitting around your

              table wondering what was going on with

              the flowers and then you'd realize that

              they were actually tulips with their petals

              bent all the way back, so that you could

              see the obverse side of the petals and

              also the stamen.  This is what John 

              meant about "seeing how the other half

              lives."  He meant seeing how the other

              half of the flower lives but also, because

              it was an expensive restaurant, how the

              other half of society lived.

Another phrase is "cast iron shore", which is the nickname for a coastal area of South Liverpool, while a "dovetail joint" is a joinery technique most commonly used in woodworking to attach one piece to another.

 

This song may appear as a love song, but Harrison wrote it about the happiness he felt when he found God.  The group recorded 67 takes on October 7 without Lennon.  McCartney played the Hamond organ on the track.  The band came up with the ending of "Long, Long, Long" by accident, as Martin's assistant Chris Thomas explained to Mark Lewisohn for the book The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions:

             There's a sound near the end of the song

             which is a bottle of Blue Nun wine rattling

             away on top of a Leslie speaker cabinet.

             It just happened.  Paul hit a certain note 

             and the bottle started vibrating.  We

             thought it was so good that we set the 

             mikes up and did it again.  The Beatles

             always took advantage of accidents.

The Beatles still had two more albums in them.  Be sure to catch Part Ten, exclusively on Inside The Rock Era!