The Beatles’ mixed feelings towards the recording sessions of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” can be attributed to several factors. By the mid-1960s, The Beatles were facing immense pressure to maintain their status as the world’s leading musical act. The constant touring and recording schedule was taking a toll […]
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
JOHN 1967: “I often sit at the piano, working at songs with the television on low in the background. If I’m a bit low and not getting much done, the words from the telly come through. That’s when I heard the words, ‘Good Morning Good Morning.’” JOHN 1968: “We write […]
Beatles quotes about “Lovely Rita” JOHN 1980: “That’s Paul writing a pop song. He makes ’em up like a novelist. You hear lots of McCartney-influenced songs on the radio now. These stories about boring people doing boring things– being postmen and secretaries and writing home. I’m not interested in writing […]
JOHN 1980: “‘Sgt. Pepper’ is Paul after a trip to America and the whole West Coast long-named group thing was coming in. You know, when people were no longer the Beatles or the Crickets– they were suddenly Fred And His Incredible Shrinking Grateful Airplanes, right? So I think he got […]
JOHN 1980: “My son Julian came in one day with a picture he painted about a school friend of his named Lucy. He had sketched in some stars in the sky and called it ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,’ Simple. The images were from ‘Alice in Wonderland.’ It was […]
Beatles quotes about “Within You Without You” GEORGE 1967: “I’m writing more songs now that we’re not touring. The words are always a bit of a hangup for me. I’m not very poetic. ‘Within You Without You’ was written after dinner one night at Klaus Voorman’s house. He had a […]
Beatles’ quotes about “A Day In The Life” JOHN 1967: “I was writing the song with the ‘Daily Mail’ propped up in front of me on the piano. I had it open to the ‘News In Brief’ or whatever they call it. There was a paragraph about four thousand holes […]
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 […]
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 […]