The Beatles, album "Across the Universe"
Lyrics of the album -
Listen the albumMusical films - Studio Columbia Pictures - 2007 CD: 10.09.2007
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JOHN 1980: 'That's me, writing about this dream girl – the one that hadn't come yet. It was Yoko.' PAUL circa-1994: 'It was John's original idea, but it was very much co-written. I remember writing 'the pain and pleasure,' and 'a man must break his back.' …It was amusing to see if we could get a naughty word on the record. The Beach Boys had a song out where they'd done 'la la la la' and we loved the innocence of that and wanted to copy it but not use the same phrase. So we were looking around for another phrase – 'dit dit dit dit,' which we decided to change it in our waggishness to 'tit tit tit tit.' And it gave us a laugh. It was good to get some light relief in the middle of this real big career that we were forging. If we could put in something that was a little bit subversive then we would. George Martin would say, 'Was that dit-dit or tit-tit you were singing?' 'Oh! dit-dit George, but it does sound a bit like that, doesn't it?' Then we'd get in the car and break down laughing.' -
PAUL 1968: 'Umm, that came about just 'cuz I'd read a review of a record which said, 'And this group really got us wild, there's echo on everything, they're screaming their heads off.' And I just remember thinking, 'Oh, it'd be great to do one. Pity they've done it. Must be great – really screaming record.' And then I heard their record and it was quite straight, and it was very sort of sophisticated. It wasn't rough and screaming and tape echo at all. So I thought, 'Oh well, we'll do one like that, then.' And I had this song called 'Helter Skelter' which is just a ridiculous song. So we did it like that, 'cuz I like noise.' JOHN 1980: 'That's Paul completely. All that (Charles) Manson stuff was built 'round George's song about pigs and this one… Paul's song about an English fairground. It has nothing to do with anything, and least of all to do with me.' PAUL 1985: 'The Who had made some track that was the loudest, the most raucous rock 'n roll, the dirtiest thing they'd ever done. It made me think, 'Right. Got to do it.' I like that kind of geeking up. And we decided to do the loudest, nastiest, sweatiest rock number we could.' -
JOHN 1980: 'That was Paul's. Maybe I stuck some bits in there… I really don't remember. It was a pretty poor song and I was never really interested in it either way.' PAUL 1988: 'I can't remember much about that one. Certain songs were just 'work' songs… you haven't got much of a memory of them. That's one of them. You just knew you had a song that would work, a good melody. 'Hold Me Tight' never really had that much of an effect on me. It was a bit Shirelles.' PAUL circa-1994: ''Hold Me Tight' was a failed attempt at a single which then became acceptable album filler.' -
JOHN 1972: 'This was one of his first biggies.' JOHN 1980: ''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.' PAUL 1984: 'Yeah, I wrote that one. It was the first song I ever wrote where I had the words before the music. I wrote the words on a bus on tour, then we got the tune when I arrived there. The first time I've ever worked upside down.' PAUL 1988: '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.' PAUL circa-1994: 'It was a good show song. It worked well live.' -
PAUL 1964: '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.' JOHN 1980: 'We wrote alot 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.' PAUL circa-1994: ''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.' -
JOHN 1970: '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.' JOHN 1980: '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.' PAUL circa-1994: '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.' -
JOHN 1980: ''It Wont Be Long' is mine. It was my attempt at writing another single. It never quite made it. That was the one where the guy in the 'London Times' wrote about the 'Aeolian cadences of the chords' which started the whole intellectual bit about the Beatles.' PAUL circa-1994: 'We'd spot the double meaning… In 'It won't BE LONG till I BELONG to you' it was that same trip.' -
JOHN 1980: 'That's Paul.' PAUL circa-1994: 'I think of this as totally by me. It was slightly country and western from my point of view. It was faster, though. It was a strange uptempo thing. I was quite pleased with it. The lyric works. It keeps dragging you forward… it keeps pulling you to the next line. There's an insistent quality about it.' -
Let It Be (Paul McCartney – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 04.01.1970JOHN 1980: 'That's Paul… I think it was inspired by 'Bridge Over Troubled Water.' That's my feeling, although I have nothing to go on. I know he wanted to write a 'Bridge Over Troubled Water.'' PAUL 1986: 'I had alot of bad times in the '60s. 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.' PAUL circa-1994: 'One night during this tense time I had a dream I saw my mum, who'd been dead ten years or so. And it was great to see her because that's a wonderful thing about dreams, you actually are reunited with that person for a second… In the dream she said, 'It'll be alright.' 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 okay.' 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.' -
Come Together (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 30.07.1969PAUL 1969: 'On the new album I like 'Come Together,' which is a great one of John's.' JOHN 1980: ''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) -
JOHN 1972: 'Paul. One of his best.' JOHN 1980: 'That's Paul. He even recorded it by himself in another room. That's how it was getting in those days. We came in, and he'd made the whole record. Him drumming, him playing the piano, him singing. But he couldn't… maybe he couldn't make the break from the Beatles. I don't know what it was, you know. I enjoyed the track. Still I can't speak for George, but I was always hurt when Paul would knock something off without involving us. But that's just the way it was then.' PAUL 1981: 'There's only one incident I can think of, which John has publically mentioned. It was when I went off with Ringo and did 'Why Don't We Do It In The Road.' It wasn't a deliberate thing, John and George were tied up finishing something, and me and Ringo were free, just hanging around, so I said to Ringo, 'Let's go and do this.' I did hear John some time later singing it. He liked the song, and I suppose he wanted to do it with me. It was a very John sort of song anyway. That's why he liked it, I suppose. It was very John, the idea of it, not me. I wrote it as a ricochet off John.' -
If I Fell (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 16.07.1964JOHN 1980: 'That was my first attempt at a ballad proper. That was the precursor to 'In My Life.' It has the same chord sequences as 'In My Life' – D and B minor and E minor, those kinds of things. And it's semi-autobiographical, but not consciously. It shows that I wrote sentimental love ballads – silly love songs – way back when.' PAUL 1984: 'This was our close-harmony period. We did a few songs… 'This Boy,' 'If I Fell,' 'Yes It Is' …in the same vein, which were kind of like the Fourmost – an English vocal group, only not really.' -
GEORGE 1969: 'It is very heavy. John plays lead guitar and sings, and it's basically just an old blues riff he's doing, but again, it's a very original John-type song as well… It's a very good chord sequence he used on this particular one.' JOHN 1971: 'Simplicity is evident in 'She So Heavy.' In fact a reviewer wrote: 'He seems to have lost his talent for lyrics, it's so simple and boring.' 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.' JOHN 1980: 'That's me, about Yoko.' -
Dear Prudence (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 30.08.1968JOHN 1980: ''Dear Prudence' is me. Written in India. A song about Mia Farrow's sister, who seemed to go slightly balmy, meditating too long, and couldn't come out of the little hut we were livin' in. They selected me and George to try and bring her out because she would trust us. If she'd been in the West, they would have put her away… We got her out of the house. She'd been locked in for three weeks and was trying to reach God quicker than anybody else. That was the competition in Maharishi's camp – who was going to get cosmic first. What I didn't know was I was 'already' cosmic.' (laughs) PAUL circa-1994: 'He (John) wrote 'Dear Prudence, won't you come out and play…' and went in and sang it to her, and I think that actually did help.' -
PAUL circa-1994: ''Flying' was an instrumental that we needed for (the film) 'Magical Mystery Tour' so in the studio one night I suggested to the guys that we made something up.
I said, 'We can keep it very, very simple, we can make it a 12-bar blues.
We need a little bit of a theme and a little bit of a backing.' I wrote the melody, otherwise it's just a 12-bar backing thing.
It's played on the mellotron, on a trombone setting.
It's credited to all four (Beatles), which is how you would credit a non-song.' -
GEORGE 1968: 'Derek Taylor got held up.
He rang to say he'd be late.
I told him on the phone that the house was in Blue Jay Way.
And he said he could find it okay… he could always ask a cop.
So I waited and waited.
I felt really nackered with the flight, but I didn't want to go to sleep until he came.
There was a fog and it got later and later.
To keep myself awake, just as a joke to pass the time while I waited, I wrote a song about waiting for him in Blue Jay Way.
There was a little Hammond organ in the corner of this house which I hadn't noticed until then… so I messed around on it and the song came.' -
PAUL 1967: 'Everyone keeps preaching that the best way is to be 'open' when writing for teenagers. Then when we do we get criticized. Surely the word 'knickers' can't offend anyone. Shakespeare wrote words alot more naughtier than knickers!' JOHN 1967: 'We chose the word (knickers) because it is a lovely expressive word. It rolls off the tongue. It could 'mean' anything.' GEORGE 1967: 'People don't understand. In John's song, 'I Am The Walrus' he says: 'I am he as you are he as you are me.' People look for all sorts of hidden meanings. It's serious, but it's also not serious. It's true, but it's also a joke.' JOHN 1968: '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.' JOHN 1980: '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…'' -
JOHN 1968: ''Mr. Kite' was a straight lift. I had all the words staring me in the face one day when I was looking for a song. It was from this old poster I'd bought at an antique shop. We'd been down to Surrey or somewhere filming a piece. There was a break, and I went into this shop and bought an old poster advertising a variety show which starred Mr. Kite. It said the Henderson's would also be there, late of Pablo Fanques Fair. There would be hoops and horses and someone going through a hogs head of real fire. Then there was Henry the Horse. The band would start at ten to six. All at Bishopsgate. Look, there's the bill – with Mr. Kite topping it. I hardly made up a word, just connecting the lists together. Word for word, really.' JOHN 1972: 'The story that Henry the Horse meant 'heroin' was rubbish.' JOHN 1980: 'It's all just from that poster. The song is pure, like a painting. A pure watercolor.' -
Because (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 05.08.1969PAUL 1969: 'I like John's 'Because' on the second side. To say, 'Because the world is round it turns me on' is great. And 'Because the wind is high it blows my mind'' GEORGE 1969: 'I think my favorite one on the album is 'Because.' The lyrics are uncomplicated… but the harmony was actually pretty difficult to sing. I think it's one of those tunes that will definitely impress most people.' JOHN 1980: 'I was lying on the sofa in our house, listening to Yoko play Beethoven's 'Moonlight Sonata' on the piano. Suddenly, I said, 'Can you play those chords backward?' She did, and I wrote 'Because' around them. The song sounds like 'Moonlight Sonata,' too. The lyrics are clear, no bullshit, no imagery, no obscure references.' -
PAUL 1969: 'I like George's song 'Something.' For me I think it's the best he's written.' GEORGE 1969: '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.' GEORGE 1980: ''Something' was written on the paino 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.' -
JOHN 1980: ''Oh! Darling' was a great one of Paul's that he didn't sing too well. I always thought that I could've done it better – it was more my style than his. He wrote it, so what the hell, he's going to sing it. If he'd had any sense he should have let me sing it.' (laughs) PAUL circa-1994: 'I mainly remember wanting to get the vocal right, wanting to get it good, and I ended up trying each morning as I came into the recording session. I tried it with a hand mike, and I tried it with a standing mike, I tried it every which way, and finally got the vocal I was reasonably happy with. It's a bit of a belter and if it comes off lukewarm then you've missed the whole point. It was unusual for me – I would normally try all the goes at a vocal in one day.' -
JOHN 1968: '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.' PAUL 1974: 'That wasn't 'I buried Paul' at all – that was John saying 'Cranberry sauce.' It was the end of Strawberry Fields. Thatīs Johnīs humor. John would say something totally out of sync, like cranberry sauce. If you donīt realize that Johnīs apt to say cranberry sauce when he feels like it, then you start to hear a funny little word there, and you think, 'Aha!'' JOHN 1980: '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.' -
Revolution (John Lennon – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 21.06.1968JOHN 1968: 'On 'Revolution' I'm playing the guitar and I haven't improved since I was last playing, but I dug it. It sounds the way I wanted it to sound.' JOHN 1972: 'I should never have put that in about Chairman Mao. I was just finishing off in the studio when I did that.' JOHN 1980: 'The statement in 'Revolution' was mine. The lyrics stand today. It's still my feeling about politics. I want to see the plan. That is what I used to say to Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. Count me out if it is for violence. Don't expect me to be on the barricades unless it is with flowers. For years, on the Beatles' tours, Brian Epstein had stopped us from saying anything about Vietnam or the war. And he wouldn't allow questions about it. But on one of the last tours, I said, 'I'm going to answer about the war. We can't ignore it.' I absolutely wanted the Beatles to say something about the war.' -
GEORGE 1980: 'I had a copy of the I Ching – the Book of Changes, which seemed to me to be based on the Eastern concept that everything is relative to everything else, as opposed to the Western view that things are merely coincidental. The idea was in my head when I visited my parents' home in the North of England. I decided to write a song based on the first thing I saw upon opening any book – as it would be relative to that moment, at that time. I picked up a book at random, opened it – saw 'gently weeps' – than laid the book down again and started the song. Some of the words to the song were changed before I finally recorded it.' GEORGE 1987: '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.' -
JOHN 1972: 'One of my best songs. Not one of the best recordings, but I like the lyrics.' JOHN 1980: '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.' -
PAUL 1968: 'Umm, that came about just 'cuz I'd read a review of a record which said, 'And this group really got us wild, there's echo on everything, they're screaming their heads off.' And I just remember thinking, 'Oh, it'd be great to do one. Pity they've done it. Must be great – really screaming record.' And then I heard their record and it was quite straight, and it was very sort of sophisticated. It wasn't rough and screaming and tape echo at all. So I thought, 'Oh well, we'll do one like that, then.' And I had this song called 'Helter Skelter' which is just a ridiculous song. So we did it like that, 'cuz I like noise.' JOHN 1980: 'That's Paul completely. All that (Charles) Manson stuff was built 'round George's song about pigs and this one… Paul's song about an English fairground. It has nothing to do with anything, and least of all to do with me.' PAUL 1985: 'The Who had made some track that was the loudest, the most raucous rock 'n roll, the dirtiest thing they'd ever done. It made me think, 'Right. Got to do it.' I like that kind of geeking up. And we decided to do the loudest, nastiest, sweatiest rock number we could.' -
JOHN 1972: 'Both of us wrote it. The first half was Paul's and the middle-eight is mine.' JOHN 1980: ''And I Love Her' is Paul again. I consider it his first 'Yesterday.' You know, the big ballad in 'A Hard Day's Night.' PAUL 1984: '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.' -
PAUL 1968: 'The idea of 'Happiness Is A Warm Gun' is from an advert in an American paper. It said, Happiness is a warm gun, and it was 'Get ready for the long hot summer with a rifle,' you know, 'Come and buy them now!' It was an advert in a gun magazine. And it was so sick, you know, the idea of 'Come and buy your killing weapons,' and 'Come and get it.' But it's just such a great line, 'Happiness Is A Warm Gun' that John sort of took that and used that as a chorus. And the rest of the words… I think they're great words, you know. It's a poem. And he finishes off, 'Happiness Is A Warm Gun, yes it is.' It's just good poetry.' JOHN 1972: 'Thay all said it was about drugs, but it was more about rock 'n roll than drugs. It's sort of a history of rock 'n roll… I don't know why people said it was about the needle in heroin. I've only seen somebody do something with a needle once, and I don't like to see it at all.' JOHN 1980: 'A gun magazine was sitting around and the cover was the picture of a smoking gun. The title of the article, which I never read, was 'Happiness Is a Warm Gun.' I took it right from there. I took it as the idea of happiness after having shot somebody. Or some animal.' -
JOHN 1967: '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.' JOHN 1968: ''A Day in the Life' – that was something. I dug it. It was a good piece of work between Paul and me. I had the 'I read the news today' bit, and it turned Paul on. Now and then we really turn each other on with a bit of song, and he just said 'yeah' – bang bang, like that. It just sort of happened beautifully, and we arranged it and rehearsed it, which we don't often do, the afternoon before. So we all knew what we were playing, we all got into it. It was a real groove, the whole scene on that one. Paul sang half of it and I sang half. I needed a middle-eight for it, but Paul already had one there.' JOHN 1980: '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.' PAUL 1984: '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.' PAUL 1988: 'Then I went around to all the trumpet players and said, 'Look all you've got to do is start at the beginning of the 24 bars and go through all the notes on your instrument from the lowest to the highest – and the highest has to happen on that 24th bar, that's all. So you can blow 'em all in that first thing and then rest, then play the top one there if you want, or you can steady them out.' And it was interesting because I saw the orchestra's characters. The strings were like sheep – they all looked at each other: 'Are you going up? I am!' and they'd all go up together, the leader would take them all up. The trumpeters were much wilder.' -
Blackbird (Paul McCartney – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 11.06.1968PAUL 1968: 'It's simple in concept because you couldn't think of anything else to put on it. Maybe on 'Pepper' we would have sort of worked on it until we could find some way to put violins or trumpets in there. But I don't think it needs it, this one. You know, it's just… There's nothing to the song. It is just one of those 'pick it and sing it' and that's it. The only point where we were thinking of putting anything on it is where it comes back in the end… sort of stops and comes back in… but instead of putting any backing on it, we put a blackbird on it. So there's a blackbird singing at the very end. And somebody said it was a thrush, but I think it's a blackbird!' JOHN 1980: 'I gave him (Paul) a line on that one.' PAUL circa-1994: 'The original inspiration was from a well-known piece by Bach, which I never know the title of, which George and I had learned to play at an early age – he better than me actually. Part of its structure is a particular harmonic thing between the melody and the bass line which intrigued me… I developed the melody based on the Bach piece and took it somewhere else, took it to another level, then I just fitted words to it. I had in my 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 say '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.' -
Hey Jude (Paul McCartney – John Lennon and Paul McCartney) - 01.08.1968JOHN 1968: 'Well, when Paul first sang 'Hey Jude' to me… or played me the little tape he'd made of it… I took it very personally. 'Ah, it's me,' I said, 'It's me.' He says, 'No, it's me.' I said, 'Check. We're going through the same bit.' So we all are. Whoever is going through a bit with us is going through it, that's the groove.' JOHN 1972: 'That's his best song.' PAUL 1974: '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.'' JOHN 1980: '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.' PAUL 1985: 'I remember on 'Hey Jude' telling George not to play guitar. He wanted to do echo riffs after the vocal phrases, which I didn't think was appropriate. He didn't see it like that, and it was a bit of a number for me to have to 'dare' to tell George Harrison – who's one of the greats – not to play. It was like an insult. But that's how we did alot of our stuff.' PAUL circa-1994: 'There is an amusing story about recording it… Ringo walked out to go to the toilet and I hadn't noticed. The toilet was only a few yards from his drum booth, but he'd gone past my back and I still thought he was in his drum booth. I started what was the actual take – and 'Hey Jude' goes on for hours before the drums come in – and while I was doing it I suddenly felt Ringo tiptoeing past my back rather quickly, trying to get to his drums. And just as he got to his drums, boom boom boom, his timing was absolutely impeccable.' -
JOHN 1969: (to Ringo, regarding the cymbal smash in the intro) 'Give me a big 'kzzzsshhhh!' Give me the courage to come screaming in.' JOHN 1980: 'That's me, singing about Yoko.' PAUL circa-1994: '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.' -
PAUL 1967: 'We had been told we'd be seen recording it by the whole world at the same time. So we had one message for the world – Love. We need more love in the world.' PAUL circa-1994: ''All You Need Is Love' was John's song. I threw in a few ideas, as did other members of the group, but it was largely ad libs like singing 'She Loves You' or 'Greensleeves' or silly little things like that at the end, and we made those up on the spot.' -
JOHN 1980: '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.' PAUL circa-1994: '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.'
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