An in-depth Look at the Songs on Side-Four

1. Rev­o­lu­tion 1

It doesn’t mat­ter if it’s your first time: you turn to side four expect­ing nov­elty, but you’ve heard this all before. Lis­ten­ing in 2001, it’s the same tune you heard cov­ered at a 9/11 ben­e­fit. In 1987, you rec­og­nized the dis­torted gui­tars from a Nike ad; two years ear­lier it was a Ford com­mer­cial. Even if you got there as early as any­one, on Novem­ber 22, 1968, “Rev­o­lu­tion 1” was hardly rev­o­lu­tion­ary. The real sur­prise came three months ear­lier when, on August 28, the Bea­t­les released their “Hey Jude” sin­gle, car­ry­ing on its b-side both a musi­cal and lyri­cal jolt to an unsus­pect­ing audi­ence. This ver­sion, recorded six weeks after the album take, is how “Rev­o­lu­tion” entered the world.

Lennon had wanted to release the orig­i­nal record­ing, but was over­ruled by his band mates who all thought it too slow. All par­ties com­pro­mised a bit, and a faster, rougher ver­sion was recorded and released, though never as a sin­gle. This likely had more than a lit­tle to do with McCartney’s other objec­tion to the song: its polit­i­cal con­tent which he deemed a poor fit for the band’s style. “Rev­o­lu­tion 1” is the most overtly polit­i­cal song the band ever released, and it’s this dis­tinc­tion that, its many musi­cal mer­its aside, earns the song so promi­nent a place in the Bea­t­les canon.

Why Lennon wrote “Rev­o­lu­tion” in 1968 is no mys­tery. For such a socially engaged artist to have made it through that tumul­tuous year with­out com­ment­ing on events through his work would have been the real sur­prise. “You say you want a rev­o­lu­tion / Well you know / We all want to change the world”: These lyrics are now famil­iar to the point of cliché, but when they first flew off the aft side of a 7-inch, they were hardly plat­i­tudes. Thanks to the suc­cess of three straight mas­ter­pieces (Rub­ber Soul, Revolver, and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band), the Bea­t­les had largely shed the image cul­ti­vated in their early career and revealed a more mature, yet unde­ni­ably play­ful, psy­che­delic flower power ethos. “Rev­o­lu­tion” played bril­liantly against type.

You say you’ll change the con­sti­tu­tion / Well, you know / We all want to change your head / You tell me it’s the insti­tu­tion / Well, you know / You bet­ter free your mind instead”
~ John Lennon

In a sense, Lennon’s lyrics are small-c con­ser­v­a­tive. They express skep­ti­cism about the wis­dom and effi­cacy of rapid social change and lament the futil­ity of mere finger-pointing. The slower pace of “Rev­o­lu­tion 1” empha­sizes this mourn­ful under­cur­rent, while the b-side’s unre­strained roar pro­vides an iron­i­cally tri­umphal­ist coun­ter­point. But this cer­tainly isn’t a right-wing song, no mat­ter how aggres­sively the forces of reac­tion try to lay claim to it (National Review once laugh­ably named it one of the 50 Great­est Con­ser­v­a­tive Rock Songs).

“But if you go car­ry­ing pic­tures of Chair­man Mao / You ain’t gonna make it with any­one any­how.” These are the lines con­ser­v­a­tives most empha­size in their attempts at appro­pri­a­tion, but it doesn’t take a staunch anti­com­mu­nist to be trou­bled by the Great Leap For­ward, and besides, these lyrics are pri­mar­ily an appeal to prag­ma­tism. You don’t win con­verts by prais­ing tyrants. So, Lennon’s words weren’t a broad assault against the coun­ter­cul­ture move­ment nor were they a blan­ket dis­missal of anti-war pro­tes­tors. This was, after all, the man who’d go on to write “Imag­ine” and “Give Peace a Chance”. What “Rev­o­lu­tion” rep­re­sents isn’t par­ti­san vit­riol or mind­less self-denunciation, but the thought­ful, mea­sured sen­ti­ments of a polit­i­cally engaged man who knew which side he was on, but wasn’t always com­fort­able with those stand­ing next to him.

But agree or dis­agree with this inter­pre­ta­tion, one fact remains uncon­tro­ver­sial: few lis­ten­ers expe­ri­ence “Rev­o­lu­tion 1” out­side the con­text of The Bea­t­les. It’s the b-side that gets all the glory. It’s that ver­sion that you remem­ber, that you hear in your mind at the mere men­tion of the song, that you rec­og­nize spilling out from the ear­buds of a fel­low sub­way pas­sen­ger, and yes, it’s that ver­sion that sells you sneak­ers. Poor, over­looked “Rev­o­lu­tion 1” just has to set­tle for being one of the very best songs on one of the very best albums by the great­est band of all time.

— Nav Purewal

2. Honey Pie

In the book Here, There and Every­where: The 100 Best Bea­t­les Songs, “Honey Pie” doesn’t rank, but is men­tioned once. It’s described as “some­what ridicu­lous”. Some­what ridicu­lous? It is ridicu­lous: a dive-right-in trib­ute to British music hall, some­thing akin to vaude­ville in the US. “Honey Pie” is fluff, albeit fluff with a great melody and sharp musicianship—not unlike much of the Bea­t­les’ discog­ra­phy. Of course the joy of play­ing fluff wears off even­tu­ally, as it did with the Bea­t­les, but in this moment, one pre­served on record for eter­nity, it sounds like they’re hav­ing a ball.

Clearly McCartney’s baby, the song is a trib­ute to show­tune music of the past that keeps all of the goofy the­atri­cal­ity intact, right from the intro, which sets the scene firmly within the world of show busi­ness. And not show­biz today, but that fan­tasy world of yes­ter­year. “Now she’s hit the big time,” McCart­ney announces, his voice jux­ta­posed with the sound of a scratchy phono­graph. When the main tune rolls in on a piano, you can prac­ti­cally see McCart­ney bound­ing across the stage with a hat and cane, that silly grin on his face. The sil­li­est part is McCartney’s near-scat singing in one sec­tion: a growl that turns into a falsetto cry. “I like this kind of hot kind of music,” he sings, seem­ingly on the fly, unable as always to resist mak­ing a sen­ti­men­tal state­ment, even while ham­ming it up.

The song’s a costume—one of many the Bea­t­les wear on The Bea­t­les. And yes, the rest of the band is in on the act too. Lennon’s con­tri­bu­tion is most notable. He goes at the jazz angle with a Django Reinhardt-like gui­tar solo, a nim­ble one that almost slips into the back­ground at first, but becomes the song’s secret star once you catch on. It’s the scene-stealer at the back of the stage, the one the audi­ence really remem­bers later on that night. Or maybe that gui­tar solo just adds to the atmos­phere, which is roman­tic but not. “I’m in love but I’m lazy,” runs the basic sen­ti­ment, and the song itself doesn’t seem to care much about love, at least com­pared to the joy of grin­ning under the spot­light, or lis­ten­ing to some­one else ham it up through a fuzzy radio.

It’s prob­a­bly the kitsch fac­tor that has made “Honey Pie” a cover of choice for easy listening/vocal jazz types, like Bar­bara Streisand, even. The song’s goofy shuf­fle isn’t about rock ‘n’ roll, though the song does fore­shadow the mul­ti­tude of rock bands in years to come will­ing to throw in non-rock horns or get the­atri­cal. “Honey Pie” dares to be goofier than any of those bands are likely brave enough to be. It holds lit­tle back for enter­tain­ment, like those music hall per­form­ers giv­ing it all for the applause of the crowd. And though “Honey Pie” is often cast aside as one of the album’s low points, so much of The Bea­t­les is silly, goofy, corny. The Bea­t­les are a corny band, after all, and not just McCart­ney. Did you see Help? Yel­low Sub­ma­rine? A Hard Day’s Night?

The “putting on a show” qual­ity of “Honey Pie”, and the entire “White Album”, comes from that same place. The Bea­t­les told dumb jokes and wore cos­tumes, not just in their early years but most of the way through. Don’t for­get about that. Don’t mis­take their “ridicu­lous” side for weak­ness or a lack of sub­stance, either. Every tough-faced, hard-living rock band is putting on just as much of an act, even the Stones. But if the White Album is itself a vari­ety show, and it is, then “Honey Pie” could just be the heart and soul of the album. It’s at least as rep­re­sen­ta­tive, maybe more so, of the double-album’s essence as any of the more seri­ous or “clas­sic” songs. “Honey Pie” is a lark, but so is the album. It’s Bea­t­les on Vacation.

—Dave Heaton

3. Savoy Truffle

Harrison’s fourth and last con­tri­bu­tion to The Bea­t­les , “Savoy Truf­fle” is prob­a­bly the clos­est he ever came to writ­ing a stu­pid song, or a song about a stu­pid, absurd topic in the same vein that his peers had long been doing, espe­cially Lennon. Using a sim­i­lar writ­ing tech­nique as Lennon did when pen­ning the lyrics to “Being for the Ben­e­fit of Mr. Kite!” (that is, copy­ing names from a cir­cus line-up of acts), Har­ri­son effec­tively decided to write about his dear friend Eric Clapton’s addic­tion to choco­late. And in order to do so, he copied the ingre­di­ents infor­ma­tion from a box of Mack­in­tosh Good News chocolates.

Appar­ently, the cho­rus “But you’ll have to have them all pulled after the savoy truf­fle” is a direct ref­er­ence to the dete­ri­o­ra­tion of the teeth because of eat­ing so much choco­late. From this idea, I extract two direct con­se­quences: 1. Amongst other things, Clap­ton should be eter­nally grate­ful to Har­ri­son for not hav­ing to expend thou­sands on den­tistry bills. 2. Monty Python surely got their inspi­ra­tion for Mr. Creosote’s sketch in The Mean­ing of Life from this song. It has to be so, given the friend­ship between Har­ri­son and the sex­tet of come­di­ans (Is it nec­es­sary to remem­ber that Har­ri­son pro­duced Life of Brian?) and tak­ing into account that the last thing Mr. Cre­osote eats before vom­it­ing and explod­ing is, yes, a tablet of chocolate.

Musi­cally, it’s inter­est­ing to notice that “Savoy Truf­fle” is the last rock song on The Bea­t­les. After it, there’s only time for the melan­choly of “Cry Baby Cry”, the artsi­ness of “Rev­o­lu­tion 9” , and the ten­der­ness of “Good Night”.

And although Lennon did not par­tic­i­pate in the record­ing, Harrison’s song sounds like a band effort, with McCartney’s bass and Starr’s drums resound­ing in full force. The sound the trio achieved on that occa­sion seems to make sense as a direct prece­dent to Harrison’s solo mate­r­ial: “Savoy Truf­fle” is closer to any of the rock num­bers in the Phil Spector-produced All Things Must Pass than to any­thing Har­ri­son ever did with the Bea­t­les. “Savoy Truf­fle” is more “Wah Wah” than “Tax­man”, much more “What Is Life” than “I Want to Tell You”. No won­der that Har­ri­son stuck with Starr on drums for his solo albums, ‘cos part of the vibe in his last songs within the Bea­t­les clearly comes from the genius of the under­rated drum­mer. In “Savoy Truf­fle”, Starr gives a mas­ter class of his art, with the help of a bit of delay in the snare micro­phone (this is some­thing that’s pretty obvi­ous at the start of the song, and in the mid­dle break).

Indeed this song has a groove like no other on The Bea­t­les, a cadence closer to bossa nova, jazz-funk, and/or acid jazz, thanks to the impor­tance and adher­ence of the syn­co­pated melody line that the sax­o­phone sex­tet draws. This is even more pal­pa­ble in the cover ver­sion that Ella Fitzger­ald recorded just a year later, in 1969. But the rhythm pat­tern sus­tained by sax­o­phones, bass, and drums is so inte­gral to the song, that it per­sists not only in that one, but in absolutely all the cover ver­sions of “Savoy Truf­fle” that I have lis­tened to, includ­ing the most improb­a­ble of them all, one by They Might Be Giants. It’s funny, though, tak­ing into account that Har­ri­son decided to dis­tort the sound of the sax­o­phones, to great dis­plea­sure of the orig­i­nal players.

It’s not just the saxes, but the falset­tos, too, the way some of the gui­tars dou­ble the vocal melody, and the knife-like guitars—with that one that howls at a very high pitch rate dur­ing the sec­ond cho­rus act­ing as a farewell to rock—always made me think that this was one of the songs with the most mod­ern vibe in all the Bea­t­les’ reper­toire, sec­ond only to “Tomor­row Never Knows”. And now that I revisit it again and lis­ten to it more closely, it strikes me as hav­ing some kind of Franz Ferdinand-ish qual­ity, to look for some mod­ern ref­er­ence. Would they ever dare to cover it?

—Pablo Amor

4. Cry Baby Cry

“Cry Baby Cry” is the kind of song Bea­t­les fans love to pick apart. Its cryp­tic singsong lyrics reflect an absence, like the blank can­vas adorn­ing The Bea­t­les‘ album cover. The char­ac­ters and actions of its verses beg to be decon­structed, but defy cer­tainty of expli­ca­tion. It is plu­ral­is­tic and dis­cur­sive, a cryp­to­graphic cipher and addlepated col­lec­tion of gib­ber­ish all at once. Lennon him­self, in one his final inter­views, called the song “rub­bish” and dis­owned it to McCart­ney. Yet, it remains on many fans’ favorites lists and has been revered enough to gar­ner a hand­ful of rev­er­ent cov­ers by artists as diverse as Ram­sey Lewis, Throw­ing Muses, Phish, and Bardo Pond .

The verses, about the affairs of roy­alty (both per­func­tory and extra­mar­i­tal), mime the old nurs­ery rhyme “Sing a Song of Six­pence”, but with an explicit role rever­sal. In “Sing a Song of Six­pence”, the extrav­a­gances of the lav­ish king and queen, count­ing their money and feast­ing, take their toll on the worker in gar­den (the maid), who has her nose pecked off by black­birds that were baked into a royal pie. Lennon’s verse imag­ines a royal fam­ily with fealty to the younger gen­er­a­tion, who can com­mand the mother to sigh, make the queen play them par­lor songs and paint them pic­tures, and haunt their elders with séances of his­tory repeat­ing. With the ‘60s so focused on the incom­ing gen­er­a­tion, the adult world was at their behest, await­ing each next step.

Lennon’s “cry” is a priv­i­lege of the young (who are known here as “baby”, a term of both pueril­ity and endear­ment), but Lennon insists it be used tac­ti­cally. The cry could be a mourn­ful weep, a rejec­tion of prin­ci­ples, a call for change, a spoilt whine, or a barter (Lennon took the line from an adver­tise­ment which implored chil­dren to “Cry baby cry / Make your mother buy”). In any of the above instances, it’s enough to make your mother sigh. Mother is old enough that she should see in her young a kind of reci­procity of demand. The expec­ta­tions instilled in the baby boom gen­er­a­tion, the first gen­er­a­tion of Bea­t­les fans who were given to enough leisure time to decode their indoc­tri­na­tion, gave them over to cries for free­dom, peace, equal­ity, and rev­o­lu­tion. Yet, mother is resigned to sigh. She begrudg­ingly accepts the world at face value, unwill­ing to peel back the lay­ers of the glass onion for fear of dis­rupt­ing the sta­tus quo.

In a sense, “Cry Baby Cry” is clearly rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the ironies and the dual­i­ties of The Bea­t­les as a whole. The Bea­t­les is a cross-genre smat­ter­ing of cul­tural, his­tor­i­cal, and the­o­ret­i­cal brico­lage. “Cry Baby Cry” is a stand­out on that album only in its clever infu­sion of uncon­scious psy­chodrama, which mas­quer­ades under the sub­dued bathos of incon­se­quen­tial­ity. Much has been made of the dou­ble album’s appar­ently arbi­trary track place­ment, but it’s no small mis­take that “Cry Baby Cry” was placed directly before the musique con­crète pop cul­ture pas­tiche “Rev­o­lu­tion 9”, per­haps the most rad­i­cally abstract song ever pro­duced by a main­stream pop group. The nurs­ery rhyme juve­nilia lulls the lis­tener into a false sense of secu­rity, the false­ness per­pet­u­ated by the under­gird­ing dark­ness of the seem­ingly inno­cent lyrics, which hint at bas­tard chil­dren, infi­delity, and impotence.

The song ends with McCart­ney ask­ing “Can you take me back where I came from? Can you take me home?” Hav­ing been shown child­hood and the cur­dling tears of a weep­ing child in “Cry Baby Cry”, McCart­ney begs to be taken even fur­ther back, back to birth, back to where it all started. It’s fit­ting then that he should use a blues gui­tar, the very seed of rock ‘n’ roll, as a way of com­mu­ni­cat­ing this desire. He repeats the two lines, but upon rep­e­ti­tion addresses his ques­tion­ing to Brahma, god of cre­ation (though some will dis­pute that he says “Brother” or “Robert”, as in the Bea­t­les’ psy­chotropic phar­ma­col­o­gist “Doc­tor Robert”, one of The Bea­t­les‘ many self-reflexive ref­er­ences). “Brahma, can you take me back?”

The lis­tener is then taken per­haps fur­ther back than any­one could have antic­i­pated, back to the pri­mor­dial ooze of “Rev­o­lu­tion 9”, an acid-soaked night­mare, pre­lit­er­ate, pre­c­og­nizant, and defi­ant of any solid perime­ters or struc­ture. Amer­ica and Britain regressed back to Pangaea.

“At twelve o’clock a meet­ing ‘round the table for a séance in the dark / With voices out of nowhere put on spe­cially by the chil­dren for a lark”, goes the last offi­cial verse of “Cry Baby Cry”. The “voices out of nowhere” fore­shadow the ran­dom spec­tral spoken-word snip­pets that float through “Rev­o­lu­tion 9” like ghosts at a séance. But was it all a lark, the whole album, the whole Bea­t­les cat­a­logue, the whole decade?

Years later, when the jaded Lennon would look back and say “noth­ing changed except that we all dressed up a bit, leav­ing the same bas­tards run­ning every­thing” and singing “I don’t believe in Bea­t­les”, he hinted at what he might have been insin­u­at­ing with the whole lark that is The Bea­t­les. It was a rejec­tion of every­thing, not least of all the ulti­mate author­ity, that which had become an insti­tu­tion, a sacred idol even. The Bea­t­les them­selves. The “White Album” was the Bea­t­les’ anti-bible, an epis­teme of future thought forged through the purg­ing of the past.

—Tim­o­thy Gabriele

5. Rev­o­lu­tion 9

Except for Charles Man­son, every Bea­t­les fan seems to despise this musique con­crete track the most. But if they lis­ten closely, they might under­stand that the song really is a rev­o­lu­tion, just not nec­es­sar­ily the kind that they imag­ined or wanted to know about.

The musi­cal roots of “Rev­o­lu­tion 9” come not only from Ono’s Fluxus back­ground, but also the­atri­cal com­po­si­tions from avant com­posers like Berio and Kagel. McCart­ney and Har­ri­son had been skew­ing song form (with the unre­leased “Car­ni­val of Lights” and the sound­track Won­der­wall Music, respec­tively), but their exper­i­men­ta­tions were not being included on offi­cial Bea­t­les albums. Even the band had made a habit of screw­ing with the con­ven­tions of 4/4 time and verses and cho­ruses on “Tomor­row Never Knows”, “Hap­pi­ness Is a Warm Gun”, and “I Am the Wal­rus” (all Lennon tunes, too). “Rev­o­lu­tion 9” is an exten­sion, or log­i­cal con­clu­sion, of these outré urges from what was the world’s most pop­u­lar band.

Rev­o­lu­tion 9 was an uncon­scious pic­ture of what I actu­ally think will hap­pen when it hap­pens; just like a draw­ing of a rev­o­lu­tion.“
~ John Lennon

If you think about the song con­cep­tu­ally, what was Lennon really say­ing? For all exten­sive pur­poses, it’s a polit­i­cal song, but not one that takes sides or preaches view­points. It’s more like the Stones’ “Street Fight­ing Man”, the Moth­ers of Invention’s “Trou­ble Every Day”, or Mar­vin Gaye’s “What’s Goin’ On”, describ­ing prob­lems and divi­sions, but in a more graphic way here. In some ways, “Rev­o­lu­tion 9” is akin to Dylan’s early elec­tric phase where he rejected protest songs and crafted sur­real songs of spir­i­tual and exis­ten­tial crises.

But in a way, “Rev­o­lu­tion 9” is about some­thing more per­sonal for Lennon. (He was doing sim­i­lar exper­i­ments along with Ono at the same time, which would soon turn up as their Two Vir­gins album.) McCart­ney and George Mar­tin hated the song and begged Lennon to keep it off the album, but he refused. He didn’t care if it would alien­ate or con­fuse fans. Lennon wanted to make a state­ment by keep­ing it on a Bea­t­les record. In a way, it’s say­ing what the rest of The Bea­t­les is only telling its lis­ten­ers obliquely—for all exten­sive pur­poses, the Bea­t­les were finished.

A rev­o­lu­tion is not a din­ner party, or writ­ing an essay, or paint­ing a pic­ture, or doing embroi­dery… A rev­o­lu­tion is an insur­rec­tion, an act of vio­lence..“
~ Mao Zedong

It wasn’t just that “Rev­o­lu­tion 9“‘s anar­chic struc­ture blew apart the band’s image or sound; it was also loaded with ref­er­ences to the Bea­t­les them­selves. Just as “Glass Onion” glee­fully picked apart the group’s myth with all sorts of sly lyri­cal ref­er­ences, or “I’m So Tired” told of Lennon’s spir­i­tual malaise, “Rev­o­lu­tion 9” con­tains torn bits of “Rev­o­lu­tion” and “A Day in the Life”, and sup­pos­edly tapes of Bea­t­les fans scream­ing for them (as well as the dead McCart­ney clues, if you want to believe those). In some ways, Lennon was recy­cling and digest­ing these Bea­t­les snip­pets and sal­vaging them for the mad­ness that they had become. You could argue that Lennon wasn’t just describ­ing tur­moil in the streets, but also in his own group. Just as he was ambiva­lent about the idea of insur­rec­tion on “Rev­o­lu­tion 1”, he was also torn about the Bea­t­les them­selves. Within a year, he would quit the group, effec­tively spelling the end of the band. His first “proper” solo album, 1970’s Plas­tic Ono Band, would be a purg­ing of his per­sona and the group.

But other than this his­tor­i­cal drama, “Rev­o­lu­tion 9” shouldn’t be seen only as an annoy­ing, use­less noise-fest. For one thing, there are some nice musi­cal bits sub­merged there (the intro piano, lulling mel­lotron tones, the fran­tic strings) and plenty of humor too—when Alarm Will Sound recently cov­ered it live for their 1969 series, these two points finally became clear; play­ing it along­side Stock­hausen gave the piece the con­text it usu­ally lacked along­side the other Bea­t­les songs on the “White Album”. And the song def­i­nitely had fans out­side of Manson’s Fam­ily: Nurse With Wound, Neg­a­tiv­land, Ground Zero, and oth­ers all seemed to take “Rev­o­lu­tion 9“‘s m.o. as their blue­print, and maybe have the tune to thank for help­ing to open up the avant world to the rock/pop world. That might be the song’s real legacy, detrac­tors be damned.

And not sur­pris­ing, the song does sound even creepier back­wards, as you can hear here. It really does sound like some guy is say­ing, “Turn me on dead man.”

—Jason Gross

6. Good Night

Bea­t­les fans have always con­sid­ered Lennon the smart Bea­tle, the intel­lec­tual whose clev­er­ness off­set the pop sen­si­bil­i­ties of McCart­ney, the spir­i­tu­al­ity of Har­ri­son, and the goofi­ness of Starr. Lis­ten­ers believed Lennon was the witty Bea­tle, the one who made the band bright and brainy. This may be true, but John was more than that. He was also the sappy Bea­tle, the one who most wore his emo­tions on his sleeve. Nowhere is this more evi­dent than on The Bea­t­les‘ clos­ing song.

Lennon com­posed “Good Night” as a lul­laby for his five-year-old son Julian. Lennon never recorded a ver­sion, although McCart­ney told an inter­viewer about the time when Lennon sang it to the band in order to teach it to Starr. McCart­ney said Lennon’s singing of the tune revealed the ten­der, lov­ing, gen­er­ous side of Lennon and is one of McCartney’s favorite mem­o­ries of the deceased Beatle.

Starr sings “Good Night” on the record, and is the only Bea­tle who per­forms on the track. No other Bea­tle sings or plays a note. George Mar­tin arranged an orches­tra that con­sisted of 12 vio­lins, three vio­las, three cel­los, three flutes, one harp, one clar­inet, one horn, one vibra­phone, and one string bass. The Mike Sammes Singers pro­vided back up vocals.

Lennon wanted the song to sound soft and lush. “Good Night” fol­lows the wild weird­ness of “Rev­o­lu­tion 9” and like all lul­la­bies, it is meant to soothe the lis­tener. This is evi­dent from the first notes. The strings softly swirl and crescendo in wel­come. Some­thing celes­tial hap­pens, as if dream­land is a place right next to heaven, if not par­adise itself.

The lyrics are sim­ple and easy to under­stand. From the very begin­ning, the mean­ing is clear. “Now it’s time to say good night / Good night, sleep tight,” Starr croons in a hushed tone. He never raises his voice. Starr wants you to slum­ber and rest easy. The most com­monly repeated phrase, in a song full of calm­ing redun­dan­cies, is “dream sweet dreams”. The corni­ness of the sen­ti­ments bor­der on self-parody, but Starr’s richly sung into­na­tions make it clear that the song is meant to com­fort. The inter­play between Starr’s voice and the grand instru­men­tal arrange­ments that sur­round him heighten the effect. If Starr’s voice is a yawn, then the orches­tra­tions are a sigh. Sleep is the time when all peo­ple can be the gods of their per­fect worlds.

This impres­sion is rein­forced by the softly whis­pered, spo­ken word end­ing, “Good night, good night every­body / Every­body, every­where, good night”. Note that the record that began with a song called “Back in the U.S.S.R.” ends with a call to “every­body, every­where” and acknowl­edges the band’s global audi­ence. The Bea­t­les know that mil­lions of peo­ple across the earth are hun­grily wait­ing to hear what the band has to say. And the Bea­t­les say now is the time to chill.

The Bea­t­les released this album into a world of wars and civil unrest. In Amer­ica, the nation had recently elected a con­ser­v­a­tive, Repub­li­can pres­i­dent, Richard Nixon, instead of a lib­eral Demo­c­rat for the first time dur­ing the ‘60s. There were rev­o­lu­tions of one sort or another hap­pen­ing here, there, and every­where. Sev­eral other songs on the album reflect that the Bea­t­les were aware of this unrest, but here they are ask­ing their lis­ten­ers to relax. “Close your eyes / And I’ll close mine,” Starr intones in a dul­cet voice. Yes, this is Lennon offer­ing words of com­fort to his lit­tle boy, but when Starr sings it, he is talk­ing to all of us. There will always be prob­lems. We will always need to sleep. Tomor­row is another day, and as another clos­ing song writ­ten by Lennon from a pre­vi­ous album says, tomor­row never knows.

—Steven Horowitz

Note: The sound files on this page are demos, out-takes and/or alter­nate mixes selected from the authors per­sonal col­lec­tion and to his knowl­edge have never appeared on an offi­cial Bea­t­les release.