“Rocky Raccoon”

• Published on 1968
• Author: Lennon/McCartney
• Track 13 on “The Beatles – White Album“

Beatles quotes about “Rocky Raccoon”

PAUL 1968: “I was sitting on the roof in India with a guitar– John and I were sitting ’round playing guitar, and we were with Donovan. And we were just sitting around enjoying ourselves, and I started playing the chords of ‘Rocky Raccoon,’ you know, just messing around. And, oh, originally it was Rocky Sassoon, and we just started making up the words, you know, the three of us– and started just to write them down. They came very quickly. And eventually I changed it from Sassoon to Raccoon, because it sounded more like a cowboy. So there it is. These kind of things– you can’t really talk about how they come ‘cuz they just come into your head, you know. They really do. And it’s like John writing his books. There’s no… I don’t know how he does it, and he doesn’t know how he does it, but he just writes. I think people who actually do create and write… you tend to think, ‘Oh, how did he do that,’ but it actually does flow… just flows from into their head, into their hand, and they write it down, you know. And that’s what happened with this. I don’t know anything about the Appalachian mountains or cowboys and indians or anything. But I just made it up, you know. And the doctor came in stinking of gin and proceeded to lie on the table. So, there you are.”

PAUL circa-1994: “I like talking-blues so I started off like that, then I did my tongue-in-cheek parody of a western and threw in some amusing lines. The bit I liked about it was him (Rocky) finding Gideon’s Bible and thinking, ‘Some guy called Gideon must have left it for the next guy.’ I like the idea of Gideon being a character. You get the meaning, and at the same time get in a poke at it. All in good fun.”