“Honey Pie”

• Published on 1968
• Author: Lennon/McCartney
• Track 26 on “The Beatles – White Album“

Beatles quotes about “Honey Pie”

PAUL 1968: “My dad’s always played fruity old songs like that, you know. And I liked ’em. I like the melody of old songs, and the lyrics actually as well. There’s some old lyrics, like, you know– the woman singing about the man, and she’s saying something about ‘I wanna have his initial on my monogram.’ You know what I mean? There’s good lyrics and just good thoughts that you don’t sort of hear so much these days, you know. And so, I would quite like to have been a 1920’s writer, ‘cuz I like that thing, you know. Umm, you know, up in top hat and tails and sort of coming-on to ’em. So this kind of number, I like that thing. But, uhh… So this is just me doing it, pretending I’m living in 1925.”

GEORGE 1987: “John played a brilliant solo on ‘Honey Pie’ –sounded like Django Reinhardt or something. It was one of them where you just close your eyes and happen to hit all the right notes… sounded like a little jazz solo.”

PAUL circa-1994: “I very much liked that old crooner style– the strange fruity voice that they used, so ‘Honey Pie’ was me writing one of them to an imaginary woman, across the ocean, on the silver screen, who was called Honey Pie. It’s another of my fantasy songs. We put a sound on my voice to make it sound like a scratchy old record. So it’s not a parody, it’s a nod to the vaudville tradition that I was raised on.”