The Beatles (18 page)

Intended for the
Help!
album, it was left to die after this session.

THAT MEANS A LOT

Written primarily by Paul, this was another song intended for
Help!
but which the Beatles were never able to record in what they considered to be a definitive version. In sessions on February 20th and March 30th, 1965 they attempted the song 24 times before finally abandoning it.

The song takes the point of view of a third party looking in on a relationship, a device first used in ‘She Loves You’. The shift in viewpoint opened up the possibility of writing in voices other than their own and expressing attitudes that were not necessarily their own.

“We found that we just couldn’t sing it,” summarised John some time later. “In fact, we made such a hash of it that we thought we’d better give it to someone who could do it well.” That someone was P.J. Proby, an American singer who’d been invited to Britain by Brian Epstein in April 1964 to take part in a Beatles TV special, and who had become friendly with the group. Proby recorded ‘That Means A Lot’ and it made number 30 in the British charts in October 1965.

12-BAR ORIGINAL

Recorded between ‘What Goes On’ and ‘I’m Looking Through You’ in November 1965, was this song meant for
Rubber Soul?
Two takes were recorded, one was mixed, but neither was ever released.

It is one of the least typical Beatles’ tracks and appears to be an attempt to mimic the Memphis soul sound. The obvious template is Booker T. & The MG’s – keyboard player Booker T. Jones, drummer Al Jackson, bass player ‘Duck’ Dunn and guitarist Steve Cropper – the Stax Records session musicians who played behind such soul greats as Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, and Eddie Floyd. They had enjoyed a string of instrumental hits under their own name beginning with ‘Green Onions’ in 1962. ‘ 12-Bar Original’, which is credited to all four Beatles, sounds like a pastiche of ‘Green Onions’ and its follow-up ‘Jellybread’ minus the distinctive keyboard playing.

The track was recorded at a point when the Beatles were striving for recognition as musicians and was also at a juncture in British pop when the heavier sounds of the Animals, Yardbirds, Kinks and Pretty Things were taking over from Tin Pan Alley.

JUNK

Paul wrote ‘Junk’ while in India and first recorded it in May 1968 when all four Beatles met up at George’s home on Claremont Drive, Esher, Surrey. It’s this version, an acoustic demo with unfinished lyrics, that appears on
Anthology.
Paul hoped to complete it for inclusion on
Abbey Road
but instead recorded it for his first solo album,
McCartney
, which was released in April 1970.

The demo is nothing more than a rough sketch. An unfinished verse is repeated twice, he is still thinking up words for the chorus and the gaps are filled with humming and giggling.

It’s impossible to determine the story because Paul’s way of composing at the time was to fit interesting words to a tune he had hit upon, in this case words to do with a scrap yard and a junk shop. In the press release that went out with his solo album his only comment was; “Originally written in India, at Maharishi’s camp, and completed bit by bit in London.”

NOT GUILTY

Recorded during the White Album sessions in August 1968 George had already spent two months in the studio with only one of his songs – ‘ While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ – having been picked up by the group. Over 100 takes and rehearsals of this song were produced between August 7 and August 12 but for some reason it wasn’t included in the final line-up.

The song didn’t surface until 1979 when a re-recorded version was used on the album
George Harrison.
Structurally the song remained the same, with the exception of the addition of the lines; ‘not guilty for being on your street/ Getting underneath your feet’.

Around this time George explained the song as being about the problems that were beginning to affect him as a part of the Beatles in 1968: “Paul, John, Apple, Rishikesh, Indian friends etc.” Written when he was starting to be regarded as the freaky, mystical Beatle he seems to be saying, “Don’t blame me for getting you involved with freak culture. Hey, I’m not asking for too much. I just want to do my job and get a bit of respect.”

It’s hard not to see such lines as, ‘I’m not trying to be smart/ I only want what I can get’ as a bitter comment on his inability to increase his presence within the group and become regarded as a songwriting equal to John and Paul.

Maybe that’s why it didn’t get on the album.

WHAT’S THE NEW MARY JANE

“This was a thing I wrote half with our electronic genius Alex,” said John in 1969. “It was called ‘What A Shame Mary Jane Had A Pain At The Party’ and it was meant for
The Beatles
album.”

Written in India when the Greek-born John Alexis Mardas paid a visit, it was demoed at George’s Esher home in May 1968. At this stage it was a little over two and a half minutes long and as the Beatles improvised towards the end of the track one of them shouted, “Ooh. What’s the news?…What are you saying? What a shame Mary Jane had a pain at the party. What’s the new Mary Jane… Oh, my God! Mary! Mary!” This gave rise to the unusual title.

The studio version, recorded by John and George with help from Yoko and Mal Evans, went on for over six minutes with a two-minute ‘freak out’ before the final verse. The lyric remained the same as demoed in May except for the line ‘He cooking such groovy spaghetti’ which came out, whether by accident or creative play, as ‘He groovy such cooking spaghetti’.

The syntax of the lyric is unorthodox. There is a deliberate use of wrong tenses and wrong words which suggest that John may have been imitating the way that Indians often speak English when it is their second language. The story told is either deliberate or a coded putdown of someone in Maharishi’s circle. Significantly, John had been recording ‘Sexy Sadie’ the day before.

At the end of the recording John can be heard saying, “Let’s hear it before we get taken away”. A year later he planned to have it released as a B side to ‘ You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)’ as a Plastic Ono Band single but it was pulled at the last minute. “It was real madness,” said John describing the track in 1969. “I’d like to do it again.”

STEP INSIDE LOVE

Cilla Black, real name Priscilla White, was a Liverpool typist signed by Brian Epstein and given a contract with Parlophone. Her first single, released in February 1963, was ‘Love Of The Loved’, an old Quarry Men song written by Paul and used by the Beatles at their Decca Records audition. Paul turned up for the recording.

In 1964 he wrote ‘It’s For You’ for her and then in 1968, after hearing that she was to front her own BBC TV series, he offered to write the theme song for her. Entertainment shows of the time were traditionally book-ended by big band numbers but Cilla wanted to change that.

“Paul understood what I felt,” she said. “He said to me: ‘I know what they’re doing. They’re sending you these Billy Cotton Band-type of numbers and that’s not you. You’re the kind of person that should invite people into your house. You should have a song that that starts off very quietly and then builds up.’”

Paul did a demo of ‘Step Inside Love’ at his home in Cavendish Avenue and double tracked it with his own voice. “All he had given us was one verse and a chorus with him playing on guitar,” remembers director and producer Michael Hurll. “We played it that way for the first couple of weeks and then decided that we needed a second
verse. Paul came over to the BBC Theatre in Shepherd’s Bush and sat with me and Cilla and worked on a second verse. It started off with the line ‘You look tired love’ because Cilla was tired after a lot of rehearsing and most of what he wrote related to what was going on that day.”

The version of the song included on
Anthology
was captured in September 1968 while the Beatles were waiting to record ‘I Will’. Paul begins with the chorus and slips straight into the second verse which he forgets, singing ‘kiss me goodnight’ instead of ‘love me tonight’, leaving a line out and concluding with the last line of what should have been the third verse.

‘Step Inside Love’ became a Top Ten hit for Cilla in Britain, was released in America in May and earned her a ban in South Africa where it was considered to be a play on a prostitute’s invitation. It could have been worse. Tony Bramwell remembers that Paul’s initial idea was ‘Come Inside Love’.

“I quite like the song,” said Paul. “It was just a welcoming song for Cilla. It was very cabaret. It suited her voice.”

LOS PARANOIAS

This was nothing more than an extended studio joke initiated by Paul when, at the end of his bossa nova version of ‘Step Inside Love’ he announced in the voice of an MC, ‘Joe Prairie and the Prairie Wall Flyers’. John responded with ‘Los Paranoias’ which was enough to get Paul improvising a South American spoof about Los Paranoias.

The likely inspiration was the Paraguayan group Trio Los Paraguayas led by Luis Alberto Del Parana who appeared in variety shows on British TV during the 1950s with their ‘Latin American rhythms’ and released a
Best Of
album in 1957.

TEDDY BOY

“Another song started in India,” announced Paul in 1970 when ‘Teddy Boy’ was included on his first solo album. “It was recorded for the
Get Back
album but later not used.” It was started during one of the Maharishi’s lectures at Rishikesh when Paul turned to John and sang the first line in his ear and was then finished in Scotland and London.

Strictly speaking, it was never ‘ recorded’ by the Beatles because there was no final take, no mixing and in January 1969 Paul had still not completed the lyric. What is presented on
Anthology
is a rough sketch of a song offered by Paul in the hopes that John, George and Ringo would like it. The atmosphere is so informal that Paul laughs in parts, whistles over the unwritten patches and John can be clearly heard talking to others in the studio as he played along.

This inconsequential tale of a boy called Ted who is told to be good by his mother is not one that would have warmed John’s heart. He once referred to Paul’s story songs as being about, “Boring people doing boring things”. This is probably why, as the song ended during this session, John picked up the rhythm on his guitar and turned it into a clunky square-dance song; ‘ Take your partners do-si-do/ Hold them tight and don’t let go’. That was his none-too-subtle comment about where ‘Teddy Boy’ fitted into sixties rock culture.

ALL THINGS MUST PASS

In November 1968, after finishing up his work on the
White Album
, George had gone to Woodstock to stay with Bob Dylan. Here he also spent time with The Band, Dylan’s former backing group, who had just recorded
Music From Big Pink.

This album was seen at the time as a reaction against the excesses of psychedelia and a return to the mainstream of American music. The bluntness of the group’s name and the rustic simplicity of their publicity photographs suggested a swing away from surrealism and a return to the roots of American culture.

Their music was particularly appealing to seasoned musicians weary of the demands of fan hysteria. It was instrumental in the breakup of Cream, for example. “I got the tapes of
Music From Big Pink
and I thought this is what I want to play – not extended solos and maestro bullshit but just good, funky songs,” he explained in 1974.

George’s song ‘All Things Must Pass’, which he played during Beatles recording sessions in January 1969 and then recorded alone on February 25th, was an attempt to capture the feeling that the
Band had captured on their single ‘ The Weight’. In fact, when George first played it through to John and Paul he openly enthused about the Band and their music.

The lyric was based on a poem from Timothy Leary’s book
Psychedelic Prayers After The Tao Te Ching
(Poets Press, New York, 1966). The poem was a ‘translation from English to psychedelese’ of part of the 23rd chapter of the Tao that Leary had titled ‘All Things Pass’;
‘All things pass/ A sunrise does not last all morning/ All things pass/ A cloudburst does not last all day…’
As George was to admit; “I remembered one of these prayers and it gave me the idea for this thing.”

Despite George’s frequent references to the song while the others were recording it wasn’t considered for either
Let It Be
or
Abbey Road.
Instead, it became the title track of his debut solo album in December 1970 which reached number 4 in the British album charts and topped the American charts.

COME AND GET IT

Apple Films, which was being run by Denis O’Dell, were planning a film of Terry Southern’s 1958 novel
The Magic Christian
and O’Dell asked Paul to do the music. Paul agreed, reluctantly it now seems, and with a shooting script in hand began to write.

He started with a song to be used over a scene where Sir Guy Grand, the world’s richest man, (played by Peter Sellers), throws banknotes into a vat of filth and gets pleasure from seeing respectable people wallowing in slime in the hopes of grabbing some free cash. The idea came to him late at night while at Cavendish Avenue and he came downstairs and taped it in a whisper so as not to wake Linda. When he played it back the next day he believed that he had come up with “a very catchy song”.

On July 5th, 1969 one of the Apple label signings, a group called The Iveys, gave an interview to
Disc & Music Echo
in which they complained of being neglected by the Beatles. Three weeks later Paul contacted the group and on July 29th he met them at their home and offered them ‘Come And Get It’ which he’d recorded alone with engineer Phil MacDonald five days previously at Abbey Road. He also suggested that they might make other contributions to the film
soundtrack as he was trying to put his energies into recording the
Abbey Road
album.

Paul produced the group on August 2nd, choosing Tom Evans to do the lead vocal and encouraging them to stick to the simplicity of his demo on which he’d played only piano, drums, bass and maracas. He told them that if they did it right he could guarantee them a hit and if they didn’t do it right then he’d keep it for a Beatles single. “That challenge really made us work hard,” said Evans.