| The Beatles – You Know My Name (Look Up the Number) Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| "People are only just discovering the B-sides of Beatles singles. They're only just discovering things like 'You Know My Name' --probably my favorite Beatles track! Just because it's so insane. All the memories-- I mean, what would you do if a guy like John Lennon turned up at the studio and said, 'I've got a new song.' I said, 'What's the words?' and he replied, 'You know my name look up the number.' I asked, 'What's the rest of it?' '...No. No other words, those are the words. And I wanna do it like a mantra!' We did it over a period of maybe two or three years. We started off and we just did 20 minutes, and we tried it again and it didn't work. We tried it again, and we had these endless, crazy fun sessions. Eventually we pulled it all together and I sang, (sings in jazzy voice) 'You know my name...' and we just did a skit. Mal (Evans) and his gravel. I can still see Mal digging the gravel. And it was just so hilarious to put that record together. It's not a great melody or anything, it's just unique. Some people haven't discovered that song yet." | |
| The Beatles – Don't Let Me Down Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| "It was a very tense period. John was with Yoko, and had escalated to heroin and all the accompanying paranoia 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." | |
| The Beatles – Get Back Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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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 Pakistanis crowding out flats - you know, living 16 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, 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 Pakistanis… If there was any group that was not racist, it was the Beatles. I mean, all our favourite people were always black. We were kind of the first people to open international eyes, in a way, to Motown. 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. Lennon: Yes, I played the solo on “Get Back.” When Paul was feeling kindly, he would give me a solo! Maybe if he was feeling guilty that he had most of the a-side or something, he would give me a solo. And I played the solo on that. |
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| The Beatles – For You Blue Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| Harrison: It’s a simple 12-bar song following all the normal 12-bar principles, except that it’s happy-go-lucky! | |
| The Beatles – The Long and Winding Road Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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McCartney: I was a bit flipped out and tripped out at that 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. 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. McCartney: It’s rather a 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. Martin: That made me angry - and it made Paul even angrier, because neither he nor I knew about it till it had been done. It happened behind our backs because it was done when Allen Klein was running John. He’d organized Phil Spector and I think George and Ringo had gone along with it. They’d actually made an arrangement with EMI and said, ‘This is going to be our record.’ Martin: EMI came to me and said, ‘You made this record originally but we can’t have your name on it.’ I asked them why not and they said: ‘Well, you didn’t produce the final thing.’ I said, ‘I produced the original and what you should do is have a credit saying: “Produced by George Martin, over-produced by Phil Spector”.’ They didn’t think that was a good idea. |
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| The Beatles – One After 909 Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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McCartney: It’s not a great song but it’s a great favourite of mine because it has great memories for me of John and I trying to write a bluesy freight-train song. There were a lot of those songs at the time, like “Midnight Special,” “Freight Train,” “Rock Island Line,” so this was the “One After 909;” she didn’t get the 909, she got the one after it! It was a tribute to British Rail, actually. No, at the time we weren’t thinking British, it was much more the Super Chief from Omaha. Lennon: The “One After 909,” on the whatsit LP, I wrote when I was 17 or 18. We always wrote separately, but we wrote together because we enjoyed it a lot sometimes, and also because they would say, well, you’re going to make an album together and knock off a few songs, just like a job. |
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| The Beatles – Let It Be Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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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. McCartney: Mother Mary makes it a quasi-religious thing, so you can take it that way. I don’t mind. I’m quite happy if people want to use it to shore up their faith. I have no problem with that. I think it’s a great thing to have faith of any sort, particularly in the world we live in. Lennon: That’s Paul. What can you say? Nothing to do with the Beatles. It could’ve been Wings. I don’t know what he’s thinking when he writes “Let It Be.” 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.” (It should be noted that John was way off here because “Let It Be” was actually recorded well before “Bridge Over Troubled Water” was released. Also I think George’s beautiful guitar solo is an important part of the song. I sense jealousy in this quote.) |
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| The Beatles – Across the Universe Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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Lennon: I was lying next to my first wife in bed and I was thinking. It started off as a negative song and she must have been going on and on about something. She’d gone to sleep and I kept hearing, ‘Words are flowing out like endless streams…’ I was a bit irritated and I went downstairs and it turned into a sort of cosmic song rather than, ‘Why are you always mouthing off at me?’… The words are purely inspirational and were given to me - except for maybe one or two where I had to resolve a line or something like that. I don’t own it; it came through like that. 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 chewing 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. Lennon: This was one of my favorite songs, but it’s been issued in so many forms that it’s missed it as a record. I gave it at first to the World Wildlife Fund, but they didn’t do much with it, and then we put it on the Let It Be album. Emerick: “Across the Universe” was probably the gentlest, sweetest John Lennon song I’d heard to date, and it took me very much by surprise. Emerick: We recorded that vocal over and over again because John was unhappy with the job he was doing, despite the fact that we, and the entire group, were effusive in our praise. |
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| The Beatles – I Me Mine Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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Harrison: “I Me Mine,” it’s called. I don’t care if you don’t want it… It’s a heavy waltz. Harrison: Having LSD was like someone catapulting me out into space. The LSD experience was the biggest experience that I’d had up until that time… Suddenly I looked around and everything I could see was relative to my ego, like ‘that’s my piece of paper’ and ‘that’s my flannel’ or ‘give it to me’ or ‘I am’. It drove me crackers, I hated everything about my ego, it was a flash of everything false and impermanent, which I disliked. But later, I learned from it, to realize that there is somebody else in here apart from old blabbermouth. Who am ‘I’ became the order of the day. Anyway, that’s what came out of it, “I Me Mine.” The truth within us has to be realized. When you realize that, everything else that you see and do and touch and smell isn’t real, then you may know what reality is, and can answer the question ‘Who am I?’ Harrison: “I Me Mine” is the ego problem. There are two ‘I’s: the little ‘i’ when people say ‘I am this’; and the big ‘I’ - ie duality and ego. There is nothing that isn’t part of the complete whole. When the little ‘i’ merges into the big ‘I’ then you are really smiling. |
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