HOW THE FAB FOUR WERE INSPIRED TO WRITE SOME OF THEIR GREATEST SONGS With a little help from our friends
PETER Jackson’s hotly anticipated Beatles documentary hits our screens this week.
It covers the making of 1970 album Let It Be, originally titled Get Back, and promises to change the way we view the band’s break-up.
But do you know how some of the Fab Four’s best-loved songs came about? NADINE LINGE reveals their origins…
Yesterday: Paul Mccartney came up with the entire melody in a dream at girlfriend Jane Asher’s place. When he woke up, he quickly ran to a piano and played the tune so he didn’t forget it.
Hey Jude: The idea came to Macca while visiting Cynthia Lennon, who’d recently split from John, and their son Julian. He thought of a song to cheer up the five-year-old. He later changed Jules to Jude as it scanned better.
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds: Long thought of as referring to drug LSD, the truth isn’t so trippy. Lennon said: “My son came home with a drawing and showed me this strange-looking woman flying around. He said, ‘It’s Lucy in the sky with diamonds.’”
Day Tripper: This one was about LSD – referring to someone who just did drugs on a part-time basis. Paul said it was “a tongue-in-cheek song about someone who was committed only in part to the idea. Whereas we saw ourselves as fulltime trippers.”
Here Comes The Sun: George Harrison penned this after bunking off a day of business meetings and visiting pal
Eric Clapton. He said:
“The relief of not having to go see all those dopey accountants was wonderful, and I walked around the garden with one of Eric’s acoustic guitars and wrote Here Comes The Sun.”
Eight Days A Week:
The idea came when
Paul lost his driving licence due to a speeding ticket and had a driver taking him to John’s place. He explained: “I said, ‘You been busy?’ And he said, ‘Busy? I’ve been working eight days a week.’”
Help! Unhappily married and stuffed with drugs, this was Lennon’s
cry for help – but he masked it with a jaunty tune and tempo. He later said: “I was fat and depressed, and I was crying out for help.”
She Said She Said: In the lyric: “She said: ‘I know what it’s like to be dead,’” the “she” is actor Peter Fonda who dropped acid with the band one day in Beverly Hills. As a child he had accidentally shot himself and said he knew what it was like to be dead.
Ticket To Ride: John said this harked back to their days in Hamburg, where sex workers were legal but had to carry a document.
Octopus’s Garden: Ringo Starr penned this after a holiday on Peter Sellers’ yacht, where octopus was on the menu. The captain told him how the creatures build gardens at the bottom of the sea.