The Beatles (10 page)

Paul has said that the tune was inspired, not by a blackbird’s singing, but by his memory of Bach’s Bourrée in E minor (from the lute suite BWV 996) that he had learned as a teenager from a guitar manual. He was partly thinking of the racial situation in America and wrote it as if offering encouragement to the typical black woman facing oppression.

Although written in 1968 it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact month since Paul has said that he wrote it not in India but on his Scottish farm. It’s likely that he started the music in India, influenced by Donovan, and completed it between his return on March 26 and the demo recordings at George’s house late in May. This makes it more likely that the lyric was written in the aftermath of Martin
Luther King’s death on April 4. On June 11 he performed it for an Apple promotional film that was being directed by Tony Bramwell.

The use of the term ‘blackbird’ to refer to people of African origin dates back to the slave trade and was always used pejoratively. In the sixties it was appropriated by the civil rights campaigners and given a positive spin. A civil rights musical,
Fly Blackbird
, with songs by C. Bernard Jackson and James Hatch, opened off-Broadway in 1962 and went on to win an Obie for Best Musical.

In the summer of 1968, Paul serenaded the fans gathered outside his home with an acoustic version of ‘Blackbird’. Margo Bird, a former Apple Scruff (the term for the group of fans who used to congregate outside the Apple offices in Savile Row) remembers: “I think he had a young lady round, Francie Schwartz. We’d been hanging around outside and it was obvious she wasn’t going to be leaving. He had a music room right at the top of the house and he opened the sash window, sat on the edge and played it to us. It was the early hours of the morning.”

Paul often cites ‘Blackbird’ as evidence that the best of his songs come spontaneously, when words and music tumble out as if they had come into being without conscious effort on his behalf.

PIGGIES

George referred to ‘Piggies’ as “a social comment” although the song did little more than mock the middle-classes by calling them pigs, a Sixties term of derision usually reserved for the police. Pigs were also the animal chosen by George Orwell in
Animal Farm
to represent tyrannical leaders.

The song became notorious in 1971 when it was revealed that Charles Manson, the self-appointed leader of the infamous Manson ‘family’, had interpreted the words as a warning to the white establishment that they were to get ready for an uprising.

Particularly significant, in Manson’s disturbed mind, was the suggestion that the piggies were in need of ‘a damn good whacking’. According to witnesses, this was one of Manson’s favourite lines, and one that he quoted frequently before his imprisonment for involvement in the murders which many saw as the final dark chapter in the hippie era.

The clue that eventually linked the eight murders – five at the residence of film star Sharon Tate, two at Leno LaBianca’s and one at Gary Hinman’s – was the painting of the word ‘pig’, ‘pigs’ or ‘piggy’ in the victims’ blood. The LaBiancas were even stabbed with knives and forks, apparently because these utensils are mentioned in the last verse.

George was horrified at Manson’s misguided interpretation of what he felt was a rather tame song, pointing out that the ‘damn good whacking’ line had been suggested by his mother when he was looking for something to rhyme with ‘backing’ and ‘lacking’. “It was nothing to do with American policemen or Californian shagnasties,” he said.

ROCKY RACCOON

‘Rocky Raccoon’ was a musical Western, written by Paul while in India. Set in the mountains of Dakota (probably because of the Doris Day song ‘Black Hills Of Dakota’ from the movie
Calamity Jane)
, it tells the tale of young Rocky whose girl, Nancy Magill, runs off with Dan. Rocky pursues Dan and attempts to shoot him down but is beaten to the draw. Afterwards, Rocky is treated in his hotel room by a doctor stinking of gin. “We were sitting on the roof at Maharishi’s just enjoying ourselves when I wrote this one,” said Paul. “I started laying the chords and originally the title was ‘Rocky Sassoon’. Then me, John and Donovan started making up the words, they came very quickly and eventually it became ‘Rocky Raccoon’ because it sounded more cowboyish.”

The lyric bears more that a passing resemblance to Robert Service’s ‘The Shooting of Dan McGrew’ (1907), a poem that also tells a story of love and revenge with similar-sounding characters. In both works a shooting takes place in a saloon. The femme fatale in Rocky’s case is described in the line ‘she called herself Lil…but everyone knew her as Nancy’. In Dan McGrew’s case the lady is ‘known as Lou’.

Apple Scruff Margo Bird heard that the character of the doctor was drawn from real life. “Paul had a quad bike which he came off one day towards the end of 1966. He was a bit stoned at the time and cut his mouth and chipped his tooth,” she says. “The doctor who came to treat him was stinking of gin and because he was a bit worse for wear he didn’t make a very good job of the stitching. That is why Paul had a nasty lump on his lip for a while and he grew a moustache to cover it.”

DON’T PASS ME BY

‘Don’t Pass Me By’ was Ringo’s first complete Beatles’ song. Until then, his only contribution to the Beatles’ songwriting had been the titles for ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ and ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, plus whatever musical contributions he made to ‘Flying’ and ‘What Goes On’.

Asked in December 1967 whether he had aspirations as a songwriter, Ringo replied: “I try. I have a guitar and a piano and play a few chords, but they’re all just chinga-lingas. No great tune comes out as far as I’m concerned.”

The truth is he’d been trying to get the Beatles to record ‘Don’t Pass Me By’ for years. During an interview for radio in New Zealand on their June 1964 tour of Australasia, Ringo could be heard urging the others to “sing the song I’ve written, just for a plug”. Paul responded by saying: “Ringo has written a song called ‘Don’t Pass Me By’. A beautiful melody. This is Ringo’s first venture into songwriting.”

After Paul and John had sung a verse, Ringo was asked more about it: “It was written as a country and western but Paul and John singing it with that blues feeling has knocked me out. Are the Beatles going to record it? I don’t know. I don’t think so, actually. I keep trying to push it on them every time we make a record.”

It was to remain unrecorded for another five years. “Unfortunately, there’s never enough time to fit Ringo’s song on an album,” Paul explained in 1964. “He never finished it.”

WHY DON’T WE DO IT IN THE ROAD?

One of the great strengths of the Lennon and McCartney team was that, although they now rarely sat down and created a song from scratch together, they did urge each other on to greater heights in what was increasingly to become solo work.

Sometimes they would try to outdo each other by composing in a style more often associated with the other.
The White Album
contained the sensitive ‘Julia’ and sentimental ‘Goodnight’ by John in Paul’s style, as well as gritty Lennon-like rock’n’roll numbers like ‘Helter Skelter’ and ‘Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?’ from Paul. ‘Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?’ upset John because Paul recorded it with Ringo in a separate studio at Abbey Road and Paul’s chosen style – a risqué lyric and sparse arrangements – was close to the style he had become associated with.

Paul had the idea for the song while in India when he saw two monkeys copulating in the open. He was struck by the apparently uncomplicated way in which animals mate compared with the rules, rituals and routines of human sex.

“The Beatles have always been a rock group,” Paul explained in November 1968. “It’s just that we’re not completely rock’n’roll. That’s why we do ‘Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da’ one minute, and this the next. When we played in Hamburg we didn’t just play rock’n’roll all evening because we had these fat old businessmen coming in – and thin old businessmen as well – and they would ask us to play a mambo or a samba. I never usually write a song and think: ‘Right, now this is going to be about something specific.’ It’s just that the words happen. I never try to make any serious social point. Just words to go with the music. And you can read anything you like into it.”

I WILL

Paul spent 67 takes getting ‘I Will’ right on September 16, 1968, with Ringo playing on cymbal and maracas and John tapping the rhythm with a piece of wood. It was the first of Paul’s songs to be written about Linda and he was still adding and changing lines as it was being recorded.

Unsurprisingly, there’s a sense of anticipation in the lyric, provoked no doubt by the knowledge that Linda and her daughter were arriving in London the very next week. Paul had previously only met Linda in London during the
Sgt Pepper
period and on two subsequent visits to America, but he obviously felt he knew enough about her to be confident in offering her his love ‘forever and forever’.

He had started the song in India but being unhappy with the original lyric he stripped it off and started again.

JULIA

Although many of John’s songs were shaped by the trauma of losing his mother as a teenager, ‘Julia’ was the first time he directly introduced his mother into a Beatles’ song.

Julia Stanley was born in Liverpool in 1914 and married Frederick Lennon in 1938. John was the only child they had together. By the time John was five, Julia gave birth to another man’s child and John was taken into the care of Julia’s sister Mimi. His mother was attractive and unconventional. She taught John to play banjo and it was through her that John heard his first Elvis Presley records.

Julia’s sudden death in a road accident in 1958 came just when John was becoming close to her again. He’d started using her home in Blomfield Road for band practices with the Quarry Men because Aunt Mimi didn’t like loud music in her house.

Although ‘Julia’ was addressed to his mother, it was also a coded message to his new love, Yoko Ono. The ‘ocean child’, who John says is calling him, is clearly a reference to Yoko whose name in Japanese means ‘child of the ocean’. “It was in India that she began writing to me,” John said. “She would write things like ‘I am a cloud. Watch for me in the sky.’ I would get so excited about her letters.”

The first two lines of the song are taken from
Sand And Foam
, a collection of proverbs by the Lebanese mystic, Kahlil Gibran, first published in 1927. Gibran wrote: “Half of what I say is meaningless; but I say it so the other half may reach you.” The rest of the song, John said, was finished with help from Yoko herself when they met up back in England because, besides being an artist and film maker, she was a poet who wrote in a minimalist style.

BIRTHDAY

The songs on The Beatles composed in India were guitar-orientated because guitars were the only instruments available at the ashram.

However, ‘Birthday’ was written in Abbey Road Studios, on September 18, 1968, with Paul thumping out the basic tune on a piano. According to John, Paul had been thinking of ‘Happy, Happy Birthday’, a 1957 hit in America for the Tuneweavers, but wanted to produce something which sounded contemporary and rock’n’roll. It was also Linda Eastman’s 26th birthday in six days’ time and Paul knew that she was arriving in London the following week, just in time to celebrate.

Paul went in the studio late in the afternoon and worked out the basic keyboard riff, the start of which was based on the introduction of Rosco Gordon’s ‘Just A Little Bit’ (1960). Later, George, John and Ringo came in and added a backing track. During the evening, the four of them took a break and went round to Paul’s house to watch the British television premiere of
The Girl Can’t Help It
(1956), which starred Jayne Mansfield and featured music by Fats Domino, Gene Vincent, the Treniers, the Platters, Little Richard and Eddie Cochran.

Perhaps inspired by this dose of early rock’n’roll, the Beatles returned to the studio around 11pm and completed the vocals. Each of the Beatles threw in lines and Yoko Ono and Pattie Harrison helped with the backing. “We just made up the words in the studio,” said Paul. “It’s one of my favourite tracks on the album because it was instantaneous. It’s a good one to dance to.”

John’s opinion, volunteered 12 years later, was par for the course: “It’s a piece of garbage.”

YER BLUES

‘Yer Blues’ was the most despairing song John had written to date, representing an anguished cry to Yoko for help. John felt he was at a crossroads in his life: his career as a performing Beatle was nearly over, his manager was dead and now he was contemplating bringing an end to his marriage.

He felt loyalty to Cynthia and yet he knew that in Yoko he’d met his artistic and intellectual match. She was, he later said, the girl he had always dreamed of meeting; the girl he had imagined when he wrote ‘Girl’.

During the stay in Rishikesh, John and Cynthia were often separated because of their different meditation routines and it wasn’t until the flight back to London from Delhi that John mentioned to Cynthia his indiscretions during their six-year marriage. She was shocked: “I never dreamt that he had been unfaithful to me during our married life. He hadn’t revealed anything to me. I knew of course that touring abroad and being surrounded by all the temptations any man could possibly want would have been impossible to resist. But even so my mind just couldn’t and wouldn’t accept the inevitable. I had never had anything concrete to go on, nothing tell-tale.”

John later said that this dilemma had made him feel suicidal. In this song, he jokingly compares himself to ‘Mr Jones’, the witless central character in Dylan’s ‘Ballad Of A Thin Man’. Musically, ‘Yer Blues’ was indicative of the direction he would eventually take with his post-Beatles career.

MOTHER NATURE’S SON

Both John and Paul wrote songs after hearing a lecture by the Maharishi about the unity of man and nature, but it was to be Paul’s ‘Mother Nature’s Son’ that made the album’s final selection.

John’s song, ‘A Child Of Nature’, made similar observations about the sun, sky, wind and mountains but, whereas Paul fictionalized his response by writing in the character of a ‘poor young country boy’, John wrote about himself ‘on the road to Rishikesh’.