A HARD DAY'S WRITE:
THE STORIES BEHIND SOME OF THE BEATLES' GREATEST HITS
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/212660/A-hard-day-s-write-The-stories-behind-some-of-The-Beatles-greatest-hits
November 20,2010
By Adam Edwards
THEY broke up more than 40 years ago but the past few days have once
more proved the extraordinary hold of The Beatles on our affections.
Earlier this week, after years of delay and disagreement, the Fab
Four's entire catalogue of songs joined the digital age as they
became available to download on iTunes.
The music-buying public's response has stunned even music industry
experts. Within 24 hours of the songs going on sale, the band's hits
occupied 15 per cent of iTunes' Top 200 downloads. The best seller so
far has been hey Jude, with Twist And Shout and Let It Be not far behind.
The songwriting partnership of John Lennon and Paul McCartney is the
most successful in music history. Here we reveal the events in their
lives that proved the inspiration behind some of their best-loved hits.
A Day in the Life
A compilation of two songs, one by John Lennon and the other by Paul
McCartney. John's part was mostly drawn from newspapers. The
reference to "4,000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire" came from a
paragraph in the Daily Express in 1967 about the number of potholes
in the city. The man who "blew his mind out in a car" was Irish
socialite Tara Browne, 21, who died when a Volkswagen jumped lights
in Kensington and hit his Lotus.
Hey Jude
Lennon's son Julian was five when McCartney wrote this to try to
comfort him in 1968. At the time Lennon and his first wife Cynthia
were divorcing and McCartney, who was close to the youngster, later
told him: "I had been thinking about your circumstances and what you
were going through when I wrote it." It was first called hey Julian
but its eventual title was inspired by the character Jud in Oklahoma
"it sounded more cowboy-like", McCartney later explained.
Helter Skelter
McCartney wrote this after hearing I Can See For Miles by The Who,
which he described as "the loudest, most raucous rock and roll".
Later the band recorded a shorter version of it, at the end of which
Ringo Starr can be heard shrieking: "I've got blisters on my fingers."
Cult leader Charles Manson, who horrifically murdered actress Sharon
Tate in 1969 in a ritual killing, claimed the song was warning
America of racial conflict and was telling him and his followers to
escape an expected holocaust by disappearing into the desert. The
words "helter skelter" were daubed in blood at one of his murder scenes.
Strawberry Fields Forever
Strawberry Field (Lennon added the "s") was a Victorian building with
extensive wooded grounds in Beaconsfield Road, a five-minute walk
from Lennon's childhood home in Menlove Avenue, Liverpool. It had
been a children's home since 1936 with an annual fete to which John's
aunt Mimi took him regularly.
Eleanor Rigby
The song was originally titled Miss Daisy Hawkins. However it was
later discovered that the gravestone of a real Eleanor Rigby stood in
the cemetery of St Peter's Parish Church in Woolton, Liverpool
within yards of the spot where John and Paul first met at a church
fete in 1957.
I'm A Loser
John Lennon later revealed that this song came about after a 1964
meeting with newsreader and journalist Kenneth Allsop. They met in
the green room at the BBC's Lime Grove Studios, during which Allsop
encouraged Lennon not to hide his true feelings behind the usual
banalities of a pop song. A few weeks later this song was the result.
Lennon later told a friend that the meeting marked a significant
turning point in his songwriting.
Let It Be
One of the best-loved songs was written at one of the darkest
moments. By the late Sixties the band had had bitter arguments and
were close to breaking up. Let It Be reflected the despair felt by
McCartney, who was being accused by the other three of wanting to
take over the band. The "Mother Mary" mentioned was his mother Mary,
who had died while McCartney was still a teenager.
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
Most people assume that because of the initials of the drug matching
the song title, this is about the psychedelic drug LSD. But Lennon
always insisted it was written after his son Julian came home from
nursery school with a painting of his classmate Lucy O'Donnell.
Julian described the painting to his father as a picture of Lucy "in
the sky with diamonds". Lennon also told Spike Milligan that the song
was one of several of their hits that had been influenced by The Goon
Show. "We used to talk about 'Plasticine ties' in The Goon Show and
this came up in Lucy In The Sky as 'Plasticine porters with
looking-glass ties'," said Milligan later.
Norwegian Wood
A love song to a woman with whom Lennon had an affair behind his wife
Cynthia's back. He went back to the woman's home where the fur-
nishings were made out of what was in the Sixties the very
fashionable Norwegian Pine. The meaning behind the song was kept
deliberately obscure because at the time he and Cynthia were still married.
I Am The Walrus
A nonsense song inspired by Lewis Carroll's poem The Walrus And The
Carpenter. "Semolina Pilchard" referred to Sgt Norman Pilcher of the
Metropolitan Police known for targeting pop stars for drug
possession. Other words came from a Northern children's song that
went: "Scab and matter custard, green snot pie, all mixed up with a
dead dog's eye. Slap it on a butty, nice and thick then wash it down
with a cup of cold sick."
Martha My Dear
Martha was an Old English sheepdog that had been McCartney's pet but
he admitted later that the song was about former girlfriend, actress
Jane Asher. By the time he wrote the lyrics, McCartney was dating his
eventual first wife Linda Eastman but he still held a torch for Asher
and was asking her not to forget him.
Ob-la-di Ob-la-da
The song title was dreamt up by Nigerian conga player Jimmy Scott,
whom McCartney met at the Bag O' Nails club in Soho, London. Scott
later asked for a cut of the royalties from the record and threatened
to go to court but he dropped his claim later when McCartney agreed
to pay Scott's legal expenses when the latter was charged with
failing to pay maintenance to his ex-wife.
Penny Lane
The Liverpool street after which the song is named is now a tourist
attraction but it also refers to the area that surrounds its junction
with Smithdown Road. It was the neighbourhood where Lennon and
McCartney spent their teenage years. The song includes many
references to their lives there.
Julia
Was the name of Lennon's mother. Although he was looked after by his
aunt Mimi because his mother, who would later die in a car crash in
1958, had run off with another man, it was Julia who introduced the
young John to the guitar, as portrayed in recent film Nowhere Boy.
Many of the lyrics were written by his then girlfriend Yoko Ono and
the first two lines of the song: "Half of what I say is meaningless
but I say it so that the other half may reach you" is taken from a
work by Lebanese poet Khalil Gibran.
Savoy Truffle
This was one of George Harrison's relatively rare compositions for
The Beatles and was about Eric Clapton's love of chocolate. The
chocolates are mostly from the now discontinued Mackintosh's Good
News double-centre chocolate assortment (creme tangerine, montelimar,
ginger sling and Savoy truffle). The only invented choco- lates in
the song were cherry cream and coconut fudge.
PolyThene Pam
A jokey song on the band's final Abbey Road album, it refers to two
people. One was a fan in the group's Cavern Club days who had a habit
of eating polythene and was known as Polythene Pat. The second was a
girl named Stephanie, who dressed in a polythene bag and had an
affair with Lennon on Guernsey. The two were morphed into Polythene Pam.
She Came In Through The Bathroom Window
The girl fans who followed The Beatles everywhere were known as
"Apple scruffs". One climbed in to McCartney's London home in St
John's Wood when he was away, the door and let her fellow "scruffs"
in. They took clothes and photographs but nothing else.
Sexy Sadie
Reflects the group's disillusionment with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi,
the Indian guru they briefly followed. In particular it was about the
claim that the late Maharishi had attempted to rape actress Mia
Farrow while the band were at his retreat. Originally the Maharishi's
name was in the song, which was so obscene its lyrics had to be
altered. Then his name was changed to Sexy Sadie for fear of being sued.
Yesterday
Written by McCartney, its first line originally read: "Scrambled
eggs, oh you've got such lovely legs." He was on holiday in Portugal
in 1965 staying at the villa of Shadows guitarist Bruce Welch when
he completed the lyrics and hit on the idea of using a one- word
title. Some claim the song is about the death of his mother and the
regret over his inability to express his grief at the time.
Come Together
Timothy Leary, the American drug guru and friend of Lennon, decided
to run for political office with the campaign slogan "Come Together"
and asked John to write him a song around those words. However before
he could use the song he was arrested and jailed and Lennon claimed
the tune and title back for The Beatles.
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