PAUL circa-1994: “‘Flying’ was an instrumental that we needed for (the film) ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ so in the studio one night I suggested to the guys that we made something up. I said, ‘We can keep it very, very simple, we can make it a 12-bar blues. We need a […]
1967
PAUL 1967: “It’s really about the fans who hang around outside your door day and night. ‘See the people standing there/ They worry me, and never win/ And wonder why they don’t get in my door.’ If they only knew the best way to get in is not to do […]
JOHN 1968: “‘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 to Surrey or somewhere filming a piece. There […]
Listen to “She’s Leaving Home” PAUL 1984: “I wrote that. My kind of ballad from that period. One of my daughters likes that. Still works. The other thing I remember is that George Martin was offended that I used another arranger. He was busy and I was itching to get […]
JOHN 1980: “Now that’s Paul. Another good lyric. Shows he’s capable of writing complete songs.” PAUL circa-1994: “‘Fool On The Hill’ was mine and I think I was writing about someone like the Maharishi. His detractors called him a fool. Because of his giggle he wasn’t taken too seriously… I […]
About “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)” On the homonymous album, the song “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” appears twice: as the opening track (followed by “With a Little Help from My Friends“), and as “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)“, the penultimate track (followed by “A […]
JOHN 1970: “Paul had the line about ‘a little help from my friends.’ He had some kind of structure for it, and we wrote it pretty well fifty-fifty from his original idea.” JOHN 1980: “That’s Paul, with a little help from me. ‘What do you see when you turn out […]
PAUL 1966: “I like some of the things the Animals try to do, like the song Eric Burdon wrote about places in Newcastle on the flip of one of their hits. I still want to write a song about the places in Liverpool where I was brought up. Places like […]
PAUL circa-1994: “I dreamed up ‘Your Mother Should Know’ as a production number… I’ve always hated generation gaps. I always feel sorry for a parent or a child that doesn’t understand each other. A mother not being understood by her child is particularly sad because the mother went through pain […]
JOHN 1972: “Paul wrote it. I helped with some of the lyric.” JOHN 1980: “Paul’s song. Maybe I did part of it, but it was his concept.” PAUL circa-1994: “‘Magical Mystery Tour’ was co-written by John and I, very much in our fairground period. One of our great inspirations was […]
JOHN 1967: “‘When I’m Sixty Four’ was something Paul wrote in the Cavern days. We just stuck in a few more words, like ‘grandchildren on your knee,’ and ‘Vera Chuck and Dave.’ It was just one of those ones that he’d had, that we’ve all got, really– half a song. […]
JOHN 1980: “It is a diary form of writing. All that ‘I used to be cruel to my woman, I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved’ was me. I used to be cruel to my woman, and physically… any woman. I was a hitter. […]