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

1. Martha My Dear

A friend of mine once fell for a girl because when faced with an incom­plete yet impres­sive cat­a­log of Bea­t­les songs in a pub juke­box, she chose this song. He needed no fur­ther con­vinc­ing, beyond her beauty and charm, that she was the one for him: her choice of a deep cut rather than an over­played hit proved she was unpre­dictable; her endorse­ment of some­thing so explic­itly Paul spoke to a sweet­ness typ­i­cally absent from the alcohol-dictated arc of a bar­room playlist; and her weak­ness for melodic jaunts into falsetto was not a weak­ness at all, actu­ally, but a badge of honor to wear, proudly, while bound­ing back to the table in sync with the song’s spritely rhythm.

It’s those sud­den falsetto lift-offs that really make “Martha My Dear” so irre­sistible: “Look what you’ve done!” and “…with each other, silly girl!” That, and McCartney’s blossom-within-a-blossom-within-a-blossom melody, which moves through three dis­tinct sec­tions, each more rhyth­mi­cally aggres­sive and infec­tious than the last. (And we should take a moment to remind every­one that yes, the song’s sub­ject shares a name with McCartney’s Old Eng­lish sheep­dog; since the singer addresses her as “you silly girl”, we can assume the song is an ode to a fam­ily pet, because why would a grown man speak that way to a woman? OK? Kinda like how “Got to Get You Into My Life” is about pot.) The first sec­tion (“Martha, my dear…”) sounds like a com­bi­na­tion of a bar­rel­house piano vamp and British music hall; the sec­ond sec­tion (“Hold your head up, you silly girl…”) brings in the pump­ing brass, which attempts to ground McCartney’s increas­ingly light­headed melody; and the third sec­tion (“Take a good look around you…”), a rock-band arrange­ment tack­les an unex­pect­edly minor-key twist.

“Martha My Dear” was recorded soon after the band fin­ished “Hap­pi­ness Is a Warm Gun”, and as Ian Mac­Don­ald sug­gested in his book Rev­o­lu­tion in the Head, “it’s pos­si­ble that McCart­ney, his musi­cal fun­ny­bone tick­led by his partner’s eccen­tric­i­ties, here set out to cre­ate some­thing equally tricky for his own amuse­ment”. It’s not as ser­pen­tine a song as “Hap­pi­ness”, but it does sound blessed with the same kind of bud­ding cre­ativ­ity, as if the song­writer were dis­cov­er­ing music for the very first time while in the midst of writ­ing the song. It’s one of the hand­ful of songs on The Bea­t­les that McCart­ney knocked out on his own: he laid down the instru­ments and vocals in two days at Tri­dent Stu­dios, even hav­ing extra time to work a lit­tle on “Honey Pie” while he was at it. It’s pure McCart­ney all the way, this pretty lit­tle autonomous nugget that, like so many of his con­tri­bu­tions to The Bea­t­les, served as a pre­lude to immi­nent solo albums like McCart­ney and Ram.

I love the image of McCart­ney walk­ing into the stu­dio late one after­noon and ham­mer­ing out this tune, as if it were an afterthought—an aside, a thing of lesser con­se­quence. Of course, “Martha My Dear” is none of these things; it’s yet another pre­cious metal hid­den in The Bea­t­les‘ rough. And if some­one puts this on the juke­box at your neigh­bor­hood bar, then pro­ceed directly to his or her heart.

—Zeth Lundy

2. I’m So Tired

The best thing about “I’m So Tired” is that it’s a per­fect exam­ple of Lennon just being Lennon. The song was writ­ten in Rishikesh, and expresses Lennon’s grow­ing ambiva­lence about the Mahar­ishi and the expe­ri­ence in gen­eral. Appar­ently, all the med­i­ta­tion was, of all things, caus­ing Lennon insom­nia. A cou­ple years after the trip, he said, “the funny thing about the camp was although it was very beau­ti­ful and I was med­i­tat­ing about eight hours a day, I was writ­ing the most mis­er­able songs on earth”. Part of Lennon’s grumpi­ness here is due to his miss­ing a cou­ple of his usual vices. As a lis­tener, you become privy to the push-pull going on in Lennon’s head. “I won­der, should I get up and fix myself a drink?” he asks, before answer­ing his own ques­tion with a har­ried, “No, no, no!” Later, he admits, “Although I’m so tired, I’ll have another cig­a­rette.” But instead of get­ting down on him­self for giv­ing into the vice, he goes after the man who helped pop­u­lar­ize tobacco in the first place: “…and curse Sir Wal­ter Raleigh, he was such a stu­pid git”. Even in such a befud­dled, lethar­gic state, the acer­bic wit is sharp as ever. “I’m So Tired” is often com­pared to “I’m Only Sleep­ing” from Revolver. Some of the gen­eral sen­ti­ment may be the same, but there’s some­thing far more com­plex, even sin­is­ter, going on here.

Lennon thought his mate­r­ial for The Bea­t­les was some of his best. The authen­tic­ity in Lennon’s vocal def­i­nitely backs up that claim. By the time he sings, exas­per­ated, “I’d give you every­thing I’ve got for a lit­tle peace of mind”, you believe that at that moment, he would, custom-painted Rolls and all. How like Lennon to become so tor­tured on a soul-searching, med­i­ta­tive retreat. It’s not his fault that in express­ing his feel­ings he may have inspired a hun­dred latter-day rock stars to bitch about their rock ‘n’ roll lives.

Musi­cally, “I’m So Tired” is fairly straight­for­ward. Though parts of the orig­i­nal demo, includ­ing an extra verse, were trimmed, the track was recorded in a day’s work. Lennon’s shifty state of mind trans­fers per­fectly to the music. To what­ever extent they were “work­ing solo” at this point, the Bea­t­les remained peer­less inter­preters of each oth­ers’ songs. The soul­ful, laconic feel of the verse shifts to the dirty, bluesy cho­rus like a roller­coaster crest­ing the first big hill. Starr’s drum­ming lends to the illu­sion of a tempo change before, as musi­col­o­gist Alan W. Pol­lack notes, McCartney’s non­cha­lant lit­tle bass riff ush­ers the solip­sism back in. And catch the agi­ta­tion behind the bass/organ squawk at 1:54…one in an end­less list of the Bea­t­les’ “lit­tle touches”. At the time, Lennon’s mut­ter­ing at the end of the track was fac­tored into the whole “Paul Is Dead” con­spir­acy. What he’s say­ing, per­haps, is “Mon­sieur, mon­sieur, how about another one?” All this hap­pens in about two min­utes. Part of why “I’m So Tired” remains a favorite “White Album” track, and was one of Lennon’s, is those two min­utes are won­der­fully, quin­tes­sen­tially him.

—John Bergstrom

3. Black­bird

On an album that came to be known as the “White Album”, “Black­bird” might rightly be sub­ti­tled McCartney’s black song. This is because the tune is said to have been inspired by America’s racial trou­bles in the spring of 1968—lyrics like “take these bro­ken wings and learn to fly” can eas­ily be applied to the African-American strug­gle at that time. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, passed four years ear­lier, banned dis­crim­i­na­tion in employ­ment prac­tices and pub­lic accom­mo­da­tions. There was also the Vot­ing Rights Act of 1964, which restored and pro­tected vot­ing rights. Then in 1968, the Civil Rights Act of 1968 passed, which banned dis­crim­i­na­tion in the sale or rental of hous­ing. Yet despite all this progress, Mar­tin Luther King was assas­si­nated in April of 1968, in Mem­phis, Ten­nessee. Riots sub­se­quently broke out in more than 110 cities across the United States in the days that fol­lowed. These hot spots included many major metrop­o­lises, such as Chicago, Bal­ti­more, and Wash­ing­ton, D.C. These birds may have been freed, so to speak, but their wings were bro­ken by a gut-wrenching assas­si­na­tion and then tram­pled on the ground dur­ing angry riots.

But it wasn’t just King’s assas­si­na­tion that frus­trated many African-Americans. African-Americans may have had their legal rights prop­erly restored, but eco­nom­i­cally they were still down at the bot­tom rung. This is why Mal­colm X’s aggressive—not passive—resistance found such a huge fol­low­ing. It’s also par­tially why the Black Pan­ther Party came into vogue. Mal­colm X preached “by any means nec­es­sary”, because civil dis­obe­di­ence sim­ply didn’t fin­ish the job. Cer­tainly, one didn’t see white Amer­ica crowd­ing the ghet­tos in large Amer­i­can cities. Equal rights did not imme­di­ately lead to equal eco­nomic stand­ing, which forced many winged ones to sing “in the dead of night”.

Against this back­drop of anger and pain, how­ever, “Black­bird” is a beau­ti­ful song. If you lis­ten closely to McCartney’s acoustic gui­tar fin­ger pick­ing on it, you can hear how Bach’s Bour­rée in E minor inspired its melody. In fact, McCart­ney and Har­ri­son tried to learn that Bach piece as kids in order to show off their bud­ding gui­tar skills in front of of other aspir­ing musi­cians. Gui­tarists will imme­di­ately rec­og­nize how melody and bass notes are played simul­ta­ne­ously on the upper and lower strings, and how McCart­ney adapted a seg­ment of Bour­rée for the song’s intro. He also applies this musi­cal motif through­out the tune.

While this lyric alludes to the Civil Rights Move­ment, it can be eas­ily applied to almost any sit­u­a­tion where some­body is strug­gling against the for­bid­ing odds. At one point McCart­ney sings, “Black­bird fly / Into the light of the dark black night.” Even in the shadow of death, so to speak, there is always a glim­mer of light. McCart­ney takes on the role of an encour­ager when he sings these words. Cir­cum­stances may be bleak, but he believes in this strug­gling one and wants to see him or her overcome.

“Black­bird” fit with its time, but it also attained a sort of time­less­ness. You don’t need to know McCartney’s orig­i­nal musi­cal or lyri­cal inspi­ra­tions to appre­ci­ate it. Fur­ther­more, acts rang­ing from the Water­boys to Eddie Ved­der have cov­ered the song over the years. Clearly, its mes­sage has remained rel­e­vant, and its melody con­tin­ues to move lis­ten­ers. And to that we say fly, black­bird, fly.

—Dan Mac­In­tosh

4. Pig­gies

Even though Lennon was known as the polit­i­cal Bea­tle, Har­ri­son proved for the sec­ond time in the Bea­t­les’ cat­a­log that he, too, had polit­i­cal chops with “Pig­gies”. The song, intoned as a humor­ous social satire of class dynam­ics, serves as the per­fect follow-up to his scathing review of the British tax­a­tion sys­tem on Revolver‘s “Tax­man”.

The delight­ful Baroque-influenced tune, fea­tur­ing harp­si­chord and a four-piece string quar­tet, is a won­der­ful off­set to the lyri­cal con­tent, which on first lis­ten is light enough in itself, but upon sec­ond glance shows its deeper mean­ing. Lyri­cally, Harrison’s Orwellian pig­gies are bro­ken down into classes: the work­ing class “lit­tle pig­gies” and the upper class/aristocratic/political “big­ger pig­gies”. As life con­tin­ues to get harder for the lit­tle pig­gies, the big­ger pig­gies con­tinue prof­it­ing and lead­ing ever more extrav­a­gant lives:

Have you seen the lit­tle pig­gies
Crawl­ing in the dirt
And for all those lit­tle pig­gies
Life is get­ting worse
Always hav­ing dirt to play around in

Have you seen the big­ger pig­gies
In their starched white shirts
You will find the big­ger pig­gies
Stir­ring up the dirt
And they always have clean shirts to play around in

And in their styes with all their back­ing
They don’t care what goes on around
And in their eyes there’s some­thing lack­ing
What they need’s a damn good whacking…

Despite the dif­fi­culty the Bea­t­les were going through dur­ing this time period, all four were involved in record­ing “Pig­gies”. Starr pro­vided tam­bourine and McCart­ney pur­pose­fully went with a more plucking-style bass line to imi­tate the sound of pigs grunt­ing. Lennon did not con­tribute instru­men­tally, although he helped with the tape-loop pig grunt­ings that were used through­out the song and rec­om­mended that Har­ri­son change the final line from “Clutch­ing their forks and knives to cut their pork chops” to “Clutch­ing their forks and knives to eat their bacon”. The new play on words gave the big­ger pig­gies an even darker tone; instead of just hurt­ing their own, they can­ni­bal­ize their brethren.

Harrison’s mother, Louise, also con­tributed to the lyrics, rec­om­mend­ing the most vio­lent of the lines—“What they need’s a damn good whack­ing”—when Har­ri­son was look­ing for some­thing that would work with the pre­vi­ous line, “In their eyes there’s some­thing lacking”.

Sur­pris­ingly, the ver­sion that appears on The Bea­t­les was not the song it in its entirety. Harrison’s final verse was left out of the stu­dio cut and was only re-instituted in his con­certs in the 1990s. The song, includ­ing the addi­tional verse, can be heard on Harrison’s Live in Japan album:

Yeah, every­where there’s lots of pig­gies
Play­ing piggy pranks
And you can see them on their trot­ters
Down at the piggy banks
Pay­ing piggy thanks
To thee pig brother

Although Har­ri­son never intended the song as any­thing more than humor­ous com­men­tary, upon the album’s release in Novem­ber 1968 many peo­ple took the lyrics to be an attack on the police thanks to the ani­mal cho­sen to rep­re­sent human­ity in the song.

Unfor­tu­nately the song took on even more of a sin­is­ter tone in August 1969 when Charles Man­son used it as one of the proph­esy songs he “heard” within The Bea­t­les. Man­son saw the song, along with a hand­ful of oth­ers, as a “call to arms” to his fam­ily of fol­low­ers and in the racial war he had long been pre­dict­ing. This upris­ing, which became known to Man­son as Hel­ter Skel­ter (see also “Hel­ter Skel­ter”, on side three), was, in Manson’s eyes, the time for black peo­ple to give white peo­ple the “damn good whack­ing” he thought they were due. As the sum­mer pro­gressed and his vision wasn’t com­ing to pass, Man­son felt he would have to start things off by show­ing the way—by means of start­ing the mur­ders on his own.

Dur­ing the mur­ders of Sharon Tate, Leno and Rose­mary LaBi­anca, and four oth­ers that Man­son instructed, his min­ions left ref­er­ences to the song lyrics through­out the mur­der scenes. At both houses, “pigs” and “death to pigs” was writ­ten in blood on the victim’s walls and in the LaBi­anca mur­der, Leno LaBi­anca was stabbed and left with both a fork and knife in his body.

Many con­sider the Man­son mur­ders to be the end, or death knell, of the sum­mer of love. For these events to have been tied—even if just through the mind of a crazed and off-kilter fan—to the Bea­t­les cat­a­log, a band who espoused noth­ing but love and peace, was in itself a true crime.

—Stacey Allen

5. Rocky Raccoon

The Bea­t­les is that rare breed of album where eccen­tric­i­ties and curiosi­ties, like an acoustic West­ern ditty about spurned love and revenge, can fit in sim­ply because they stand out. The inspi­ra­tion for “Rocky Rac­coon” hit McCart­ney while the Bea­t­les were vis­it­ing India in the late ‘60s. An East­ern influ­ence, though, is not any­where evi­dent. “Rocky Rac­coon” is a thor­oughly Amer­i­can num­ber, com­plete with a back­woods set­ting, shootouts, hoe­downs, a copy of the Bible, and dubi­ous health care. It almost plays like a send-up of a Johnny Cash tune about the failed wiles of a like­able underdog.

Its frontier-folk nature even com­pels McCart­ney into char­ac­ter. He drops the refine­ment and light British­ness of his usual vocal in favor of rootsy, more rough­hewn inflec­tions. The way he mum­bles through “black min­ing hills of Dakota”, his down-home deliv­ery of “that boy”, and his mis­pro­nun­ci­a­tion of “Gideon” (“Gid­jin”) all insert McCart­ney, as a sym­pa­thetic nar­ra­tor, into the song’s comic the­atrics. His bumbling-bard per­sona is of a piece with the mood and spirit of “Rocky Rac­coon”.

The story itself is a well-worn account of shame and jealousy-sparked revenge, or the attempt at it any­way. Young Rocky Rac­coon, a good-hearted if impetu­ous chap, loses Nancy Mag­ill, “the girl of his fancy”, to another guy named Dan. With a shiner on his face and bad blood in his heart, Rocky plots his vengeance. It would be a show­down at the camp hoe­down. But Dan proves a quicker draw and shoots Rocky first, leav­ing him laid up and in the brief care of a boozy doc­tor. Down and out, Rocky ends his hoped-for reck­on­ing by defi­antly vow­ing a comeback.

McCart­ney col­lab­o­rated with Lennon and Scot­tish folk­ster Dono­van in flesh­ing out the con­cept for “Rocky Rac­coon”. The broad out­line is fairly stan­dard but it’s in the story’s seem­ing mar­gin­a­lia, its tossed-off nar­ra­tive details, that this trio of delight­fully whim­si­cal and imag­i­na­tive minds brings the song to life. Like how the divine seems to main­tain a watch­ful pres­ence in the form of Gideon’s Bible or how Rocky intends to harm Dan by shoot­ing off his legs. Per­haps the fun­ni­est scene is when the doc­tor, “stink­ing of gin”, arrives to aid Rocky and imme­di­ately lies down on a table him­self. These are the sort of quirks that aren’t unex­pected com­ing from a late-’60s McCart­ney com­po­si­tion but they still sur­prise with their blithe oddity.

As a piece of music, “Rocky Rac­coon” is exquis­itely tex­tured, though it takes its time in achiev­ing that form. It devel­ops grad­u­ally, with McCartney’s acoustic gui­tar ini­tially at the cen­ter, gar­nished by Starr’s light high-hat crunches and Lennon’s (unusual) go at a thud­ding six-string bass, which, when empha­sized, sounds like a brass sec­tion. The smoky gray­ness of the song’s begin­ning then gives way to an inven­tive flow of lively and col­or­ful instru­men­ta­tion: short spurts of har­mon­ica, George Martin’s slinky, saloon-style piano on the bridges, and warm patches of an accordion-like har­mo­nium. The story of Rocky’s tra­vails is too screwy for just an acoustic folk back­drop. That wouldn’t have done him jus­tice. And this is an album where sonic sim­plic­ity isn’t often the pre­ferred method.

All added up, this is a tune full of charm, wit, and odd­ball pop plea­sure. The Bea­t­les were peer­less in their capac­ity for such song­writ­ing. But can you imag­ine it with­out the snappy name “Rocky Rac­coon”? Would it have been so last­ing and mem­o­rable under a dif­fer­ent title, like “Rocky Sas­soon”, which was McCartney’s orig­i­nal idea? He later deter­mined that “Rac­coon” was more cow­boy­ish and, thus, a bet­ter match. In fact, the pair­ing of “Rocky” and “Rac­coon” per­fectly cap­tures the character’s mix of macho blus­ter and lowly inad­e­quacy. It’s absurdly well-calibrated. Rocky is a lov­able buf­foon who, from the out­set, doesn’t appear likely to pre­vail and prob­a­bly won’t learn his les­son after he fal­ters. The name “Rocky Rac­coon” ren­ders him an open book. But the details of his story and the baroque sounds that accom­pany it are far from pre­dictable. That is truly the hall­mark of The Bea­t­les as a whole. It careens, it devi­ates, it under­mines, and it pos­i­tively wows. The Bea­t­les may have been in col­lapse, but their art was still soaring.

—Barry Lenser

6. Don’t Pass Me By

Orig­i­nally called “Ringo’s Tune” and also “This Is Some Friendly”, the ditty that ulti­mately became “Don’t Pass Me By” was the first solo song writ­ten by Starr that the Fab Four ever recorded. Although the album was recorded in 1968, Starr prob­a­bly wrote the song years ear­lier in either 1963 or ‘64; indeed, bits of the song are heard on a 1964 BBC radio broad­cast in which Starr and McCart­ney dis­cuss its begin­nings in their interview.

Fans of Starr com­monly claim that his song­writ­ing tal­ents go under­ap­pre­ci­ated. But we have lit­tle mate­r­ial to judge his tal­ents by, at least in the con­text of the Bea­t­les. “Don’t Pass Me By” and Abbey Road‘s “Octopus’s Gar­den” are the only Bea­t­les songs Starr wrote by him­self, and there­fore the only pieces we have to judge his skill. Fans, dig­ging deep, claim the song’s sim­plic­ity is endear­ing, that the lyrics are telling (the line “You were in a car crash and you lost your hair” can be, with some stretch­ing, a ref­er­ence to the “Paul Is Dead” urban leg­end), or that the lively per­for­mance solid­i­fies its impor­tance in the scheme of the rest of the album. Crit­ics, of course, use the song merely as fur­ther proof of Starr’s lack of tal­ent in com­par­i­son to his band­mates’ much more inno­v­a­tive songwriting.

“Don’t Pass Me By” is cer­tainly dis­tinct com­pared to its fel­low White Album tracks, pos­sess­ing a bluesy, folk-inspired bounce. At 3:50, it is the second-longest track on the first disc. But its sim­plic­ity (it fol­lows a very basic blues pro­gres­sion, uti­liz­ing only three chords) makes it dif­fi­cult to claim that it holds any real impor­tance, espe­cially com­pared to The Bea­t­les‘ more exper­i­men­tal or pro­gres­sive cuts. How­ever, it could also be said that it is this sim­plis­tic form that allows for the free­dom found in the track’s brief bits of impro­vi­sa­tion, both by fid­dler Jack Fal­lon at the song’s end, and also in Starr’s short, tin­kling piano introduction.

The sig­nif­i­cance of “Don’t Pass Me By” is entirely sub­jec­tive, and ulti­mately the deci­sion of the lis­ten­ers them­selves. There are a few fans out there who will argue to the end that, although this song is nei­ther tech­ni­cally impres­sive nor musi­cally inno­v­a­tive, it is most cer­tainly enjoy­able. In the con­text of the avant-garde loops of “Rev­o­lu­tion 9” or the poignancy of “Black­bird”, “Don’t Pass Me By” is a dif­fer­ent ball­game if not a com­pletely dif­fer­ent sport. But in many ways this is the beauty of the The Bea­t­les, and per­haps “Don’t Pass Me By” should sim­ply be seen as what it is—if not a tri­umph for Starr him­self, then at least a nec­es­sary and vital piece of an unde­ni­ably tri­umphant whole.

—Eliz­a­beth Newton

7. Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?

“Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?” is posed lyri­cally as a ques­tion, one of the few Bea­t­les songs that uses this pop­u­lar rhetor­i­cal con­ven­tion in a title. How­ever, although the lyrics pro­vide no answers, instead just repeat­ing the ques­tion over and over again, its musi­cal form does. The song is fun­da­men­tally a med­i­ta­tion on sim­plic­ity. Not sim­plic­ity for the sake of being sim­ple, but rather, as an antithe­sis to the emo­tion­ally and intel­lec­tu­ally con­vo­luted ways we over­an­a­lyze every­thing. For McCart­ney, what we most fre­quently over­an­a­lyze is that which we hold most dear: our inti­mate and sex­ual relationships.

Invok­ing the sim­plest pos­si­ble approaches to rock ‘n’ roll song­writ­ing, namely two lines of repeated lyrics and the clas­sic 12-bar, 1–4-5 chord blues pro­gres­sion, the song is less than two min­utes long and fea­tures no solos or musi­cal bravado, just McCartney’s pro­gres­sively rowdy vocals. The song’s sim­plic­ity is a tes­ta­ment to its mes­sage, which chal­lenges, and even demands us, to answer this fun­da­men­tal ques­tion: Why do we com­pli­cate things so often? Whether it’s sex, pol­i­tics, reli­gion, or art, why do we com­pli­cate life with our emo­tional attach­ments? McCartney’s aggres­sive singing con­veys his mount­ing frus­tra­tion with this all-too-human limitation.

Inter­est­ingly, the only lyri­cal line beyond the title is the occa­sional rep­e­ti­tion of “No one will be watch­ing us”, sug­gest­ing that one key prob­lem in human sex­ual rela­tion­ships is our sur­ren­der­ing to social pres­sures. Given the pro­lif­er­a­tion of sex­u­ally explicit media in today’s soci­ety, and the pres­sures those assump­tions and stereo­types place on men and women, McCartney’s mes­sage is as pre­scient as ever.

McCartney’s inspi­ra­tion for the song occurred while trav­el­ing in India. Notic­ing two mon­keys cop­u­lat­ing in a street, he mused over the sim­plic­ity of their act when com­pared to the emo­tional war­fare humans expe­ri­ence while mak­ing love or main­tain­ing a rela­tion­ship. Quick, unin­hib­ited, and emo­tion­ally neu­tral, those horny mon­keys inspired some­thing pro­found in McCart­ney. Unlike ani­mals, which cop­u­late for repro­duc­tive pur­poses, our com­plex rela­tion­ships to sex­u­al­ity in pro­found ways shape our per­son­al­i­ties. “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?” is Paul’s pub­lic lamen­ta­tion about this para­dox: Why should some­thing that feels so good cause us so many prob­lems? Of course, in the midst of the ‘60s sex­ual rev­o­lu­tion, such a mes­sage gained instant resonance.

The song’s record­ing also prompted con­tro­versy among the increas­ingly more frac­tious super­group. Since McCart­ney played bass and lead gui­tar, sang the vocals, and recorded the song with­out Lennon’s or Harrison’s knowl­edge, and since only Starr con­tributed any­thing else (drums and hand­claps), Lennon in par­tic­u­lar was angry. Accord­ing to McCart­ney, Lennon and Har­ri­son were busy record­ing two other “White Album” songs, “Glass Onion” and “Pig­gies”. The song took five takes; take four, a slightly tamer ver­sion of the song, is avail­able on The Bea­t­les Anthol­ogy 3.

—Chris Jus­tice

8. I Will

Side two of the The Bea­t­les has always been my favorite. My love for it has grown enor­mously since age three when I was first amused by the hog grunts in “Pig­gies”. The vari­ety of styles on side two has kept me lis­ten­ing, as does the mean­ing I’ve col­lected about each song over the years. The stu­pe­fy­ing num­ber of direc­tions those nine tracks take are like pass­ports for nine com­pletely dif­fer­ent mini-excursions. No two songs are at all alike. It’s a thrilling ride.

Despite the kalei­do­scopic nature of the mate­r­ial, there is con­ti­nu­ity to how it’s sequenced, with one song pick­ing up right where the last leaves off. Even after years of lis­ten­ing to side two, there are aural ref­er­ence points that stir excite­ment about the sequence of the songs. Hear­ing the sound of bird­song on “Black­bird” sig­nals that the merry harp­si­chord melody that starts off “Pig­gies” is only sec­onds away. Try to iso­late any of these songs and see how dif­fi­cult it is not to antic­i­pate the song that fol­lows it.

The dynamic between the order of songs and the aural space between them is what makes “I Will” such a star­tlingly beau­ti­ful moment after the cym­bal crash that closes the raunchy blues bump ‘n’ grind of “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?”. In a way, the con­trast between the unbri­dled lust and roman­tic love between these two neigh­bor­ing cuts make inter­est­ing bed­fel­lows. McCartney’s car­nal cry gives way to a cool croon. His inces­sant demand to “do it” becomes an ode to life­long devotion.

Or does it? “I Will” boasts one of the sweet­est melodies McCart­ney has ever sung but it’s easy to take the lyrics for granted. I’ve always felt that, for what is osten­si­bly a love song, the words were a bit ambigu­ous in their sen­ti­ment. The third verse, the one that begins “Love you for­ever and for­ever”, gives the song its de facto wed­ding vow con­no­ta­tion, but the first two verses and the clos­ing fourth sug­gest that McCartney’s woman is more a roman­tic vision than an actual per­son, or some­one he’s merely glanced at rather than spo­ken to. “For if I ever saw you, I didn’t catch your name”, he sings in the sec­ond verse. It’s his hope that imbues the song with romance and just a tad melan­choly. He will wait a “lonely life­time” until at last he finds this elu­sive love. Doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily mean hap­pily ever after, does it?

Still, I argue that it’s much more fun to be swept away by the charm of the song rather than get buried under by any despon­dency that might be inter­preted. “I Will” is cer­tainly the cozi­est sound­ing song on The Bea­t­les. The unpre­ten­tious knock-and-shake per­cus­sive sounds, the chunky rise and dip of the bass line, the crys­talline gui­tar strum­ming, and, of course, McCartney’s creamy vocal per­for­mance cre­ate 1:46 of musi­cal ambrosia. It also sets-up the quiet hush that envelops Lennon’s “Julia”, which closes side two.

On an album that is, arguably, the most rev­o­lu­tion­ary in the Bea­t­les’ cat­a­log, “I Will” is a moment of tran­quil­ity. Forty years later, it offers an escape to a roman­tic vista where the sun never sets on the hope that love is everlasting.

—Chris­t­ian John Wikane

9. Julia

Clock­ing in at just under three min­utes, “Julia” is the last song on the first disc (or side two of the LP) of The Bea­t­les. It is the only song recorded solely by Lennon on any Bea­t­les record (and the final song to be recorded for The Bea­t­les). Lennon sang and played acoustic gui­tar, and though attrib­uted to Lennon-McCartney, the song is a solo Lennon com­po­si­tion. One of the last songs recorded on the album, “Julia” was writ­ten dur­ing the Bea­t­les’ trip to India in 1968. In fact, while on the same trip, Dono­van and Lennon spent a great deal of time play­ing the acoustic gui­tar together and it was Dono­van who taught Lennon the finger-picking style he uses in the song.

An ode to Lennon’s mother, “Julia” is a song of long­ing and sad­ness. Lennon was raised by his Aunt Mimi, hav­ing only lim­ited con­tact with his mother grow­ing up. How­ever, in his teenage years, they recon­nected and began to spend more time together. Her sud­den death (she was hit by a bus) when he was 17 was a shock, and the loss of his mother would go on to serve as inspi­ra­tion for songs through­out his life. He has said of the moment when he learned of his mother’s death: “It was the worst thing that ever hap­pened to me.”

While osten­si­bly about his mother, “Julia” also ref­er­ences Ono in the line “ocean­child calls me”, as Yoko means ocean­child in Japan­ese. The song also con­tains a ref­er­ence to Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet in the open­ing line, “Half of what I say is mean­ing­less / But I say it just to reach you / Julia.” The Gibran line is, “Half of what I say is mean­ing­less / But I say it so that the other half may reach you.” Lennon’s alter­ing of the line makes it more plead­ing and in keep­ing with the rest of the song.

Lennon’s gen­tle rep­e­ti­tion of “Julia” through­out the song evokes a dream­like, almost ethe­real feel­ing in the way that it often trails off from one lyric into the next, over­lap­ping words. The tech­nique of using double-tracked vocals and fad­ing one as another line begins lends an ephemeral air to the song, fur­ther empha­sized in imagery that speaks to the tem­po­rary, such as “windy smile”, “float­ing sky”, and “sleep­ing sand”. Per­haps no line echoes this sen­ti­ment bet­ter than “When I can­not sing my heart / I can only speak my mind / Julia”, as it speaks to the lim­its of com­mu­ni­cat­ing his thoughts.

His hushed vocal deliv­ery cou­pled with the ten­der­ness in which he sings the words makes “Julia” one of Lennon’s most inti­mate songs. Lennon repeats the line “So I sing a song of love / Julia” five dif­fer­ent times empha­siz­ing the sim­ple intent of the song. Regard­less of the beau­ti­ful imagery and oblique ref­er­ences, at its heart “Julia” is Lennon’s love song to his mother and it stands as one of the great songs on The Bea­t­les, as well as one of Lennon’s most heart­break­ing and heart­felt performances.

—Jes­sica Suarez

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.