The rest of their songs owe something, even if it’s very little, to inspiration of some kind. But even when an idea has suddenly come to them, they rarely sit down and work it all out. Very often they put it away at the back of their head till they need it. Even if they are in the process of doing an album, they still tend to bring out the song for the other one to hear, or bring it to the studio, still half finished. It’s due to laziness as much as anything else. They want to get the others to help.
Paul’s song ‘Eleanor Rigby’ came to him when he was looking at a shop window in Bristol and liked the name — Daisy Hawkins. Playing with the name in his head, it turned into a rhythm, and then into Eleanor Rigby. He saw the tune all through his head, but he still hadn’t finished the words by the time it was recorded. The last verse was thought of by all of them, making suggestions at the last minute in the studio.
The only song either of them can think of that came straight out and was then recorded unaltered was John’s ‘Nowhere Man’. He’s not particularly proud of it.
‘I was just sitting, trying to think of a song, and I thought of myself sitting there, doing nothing and going nowhere. Once I’d thought of that, it was easy. It all came out. No, I remember now, I’d actually stopped trying to think of something. Nothing would come. I was cheesed off and went for a lie down, having given up. Then I thought of myself as Nowhere Man — sitting in his nowhere land.’
Very little inspiration comes simply out of the air. But a lot comes out of their immediate environment, past (like ‘Penny Lane’) or present (’Lovely Rita’). John, particularly, has taken many ideas from the media surrounding him at the time he’s been looking for a song.
‘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 in Surrey or somewhere filming a TV piece to go with ‘Strawberry Fields For Ever’. There was a break and I went into this shop and bought an old poster advertising a variety show that starred Mr Kite.
‘It said the Hendersons would also be there, late of Pablo Fanques Fair. There would be hoops and horses and someone going through a hogshead 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.
‘I wasn’t very proud of that. There was no real work. I was just going through the motions because we needed a new song for Sergeant Pepper at that moment.’
Almost the same sort of lifted inspiration caused what many people thought was their best song on the Sergeant Pepper LP, ‘A Day In The Life’.
This was the one banned by the BBC on the grounds that it contained references to drugs — ‘I’d love to turn you on.’ Even John himself is quite pleased with this song.
Most of the words of the first section — the verses that begin with ‘I read the news today, oh boy’ — came from genuine pieces of news John was reading the day he wrote the song.
‘I was writing the song with the Daily Mail propped up in front of me on the piano. I had it open at their News in Brief, or Far and Near, whatever they call it. There was a paragraph about 4,000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire, being discovered. There was still a word missing in that verse when we came to record. I knew the line had to go “Now they know how many holes it takes to… something, the Albert Hall.” It was a nonsense verse really, but for some reason I couldn’t think of the verb. What did the holes do to the Albert Hall?
‘It was Terry who said “fill” the Albert Hall. And that was it. Perhaps I was looking for that word all the time, but couldn’t put my tongue on it. Other people don’t necessarily give you a word or a line, they just throw in the word you’re looking for anyway.’
The film mentioned in the song wasn’t in the newspaper, but was a reference to his own film, which he’d just finished acting in — How I Won The War. The film is about the English army winning the war. It was originally a book.
‘The lucky man who made the grade’ in a car accident was based, rather indirectly, on the death of a friend of John’s, and of all the Beatles — Tara Brown. Michael McCartney, Paul’s brother, was a particularly close friend of his. There was a reference to his death in the paper on the day John was writing the song.
‘I didn’t copy the accident. Tara didn’t blow his mind out. But it was in my mind when I was writing that verse.’ Tara wasn’t from the House of Lords either, but he was the son of a peer, Lord Oranmore and Browne, and a member of the Guinness family, which is the next best thing.
‘Goodmorning, Goodmorning’ was sparked off by listening to a cornflakes advertisement on TV. ‘I often sit at the piano, working at songs, with the telly on low in the background. If I’m a bit low and not getting much done, then the words on the telly come through. That’s when I heard Goodmorning, Goodmorning.’
Many times the first starting point of John’s songs is a basic piece of rhythm, then words are fitted to it so that the rhythm, which originally consisted of only three or four notes, can be gone over and over and developed, either in his head or at the piano.
One day, down at his home in Weybridge John had just heard a police car going past in the distance with its siren shrieking. This consists of two notes, up and down, repeated over and over again, like a primitive wailing. The rhythm had stayed in his head and he was playing with putting words to it.
’Mis-ter, Ci-ty, p’lice-man, sit-tin, pre-tty.’
He’d got as far as trying the words in a slightly different order. ‘— Sitting pretty, like a policeman’, but hadn’t got much further. He said it would be a basis for a song, but there was no need to develop now. It could be dragged out next time he needed a song. ‘I’ve written it down on a piece of paper somewhere. I’m always sure I’ll forget it, so I write it down, but I wouldn’t.’
He’d written down another few words that day, just daft words, to put to another bit of rhythm. ‘Sitting on a cornflake, waiting for the man to come.’ I thought he said ‘van to come’, which he hadn’t, but he liked it better and said he’d use it instead.
He also had another piece of tune in his head. This had started from the phrase, ‘sitting in an English country garden’. This is what he does for at least two hours every day, sitting on the step outside his window looking at his garden. This time, thinking about himself doing it, he’d repeated the phrase over and over again, till he’d put a tune to it.
‘I don’t know how it will all end up. Perhaps they’ll turn out to be different parts of the same song — sitting in an English country garden, waiting for the van to come. I don’t know.’
Which is what did happen. He put all the pieces together and made ‘I Am The Walrus’. In the backing to the song can be heard the insistent rhythm of a police siren, which had sparked the song off in the first place. This very often happens. Bits of songs which have started off separately end up as the one song, when the time comes to empty his head and find a new song.
John is sparked off by rhythms, but more and more he is setting his own poetry, or often simply disconnected thoughts, to music. With Paul, the tune usually comes first. John woke up at seven o’clock one morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. He found the words ‘pools of sorrow, waves of joy’ going through his head. He got up and wrote them out, writing about ten lines in all which eventually became ‘Across the Universe’. In this first, early morning version, when he knew he was writing down some sloppy, corny phrases, just to get himself on to the next line, his handwriting got worse and more illegible, out of embarrassment, in case anyone should see lines he didn’t like. This is what he did in his poems as a boy, or in letters to Stu, trying to cover up his soft sentimental thoughts in case Mimi or anyone should read them.