by Jonathan Cott 1968 Rolling Stone Magazine "What we're trying to do is rock and roll, -Lennon says- with less of your philosorock is what we're saying to ourselves and get on with rocking because rockers is what we really are. You can give me a guitar; stand me up in front of a few people. Even in the studio if I'm getting into it I'm just doing my old bit, you know, not quite doing Elvis Legs, but doing my equivalent – it's just natural. Everybody says we must do this and that, but our thing is just rocking – you know, the usual gig. That's what this new record is about. Definitely rocking. What we were doing on Pepper was rocking – and not rocking.
"A Day in the Life Of" – that was something. I dug it. It was a good piece of work between Paul and me. I had the "I read the news today" bit, and it turned Paul on, because now and then we really turn each other on with a bit of song, and he just said "yeah" – bang bang, like that. It just sort of happened beautifully, and we arranged it and rehearsed it, which we don't often do, the afternoon before. So we all knew what we were playing, we all got into it. It was a real groove, the whole scene on that one. Paul sang half of it and I sang half. I needed a middle-eight for it, but that would have been forcing it, all the rest had come out smooth, flowing, no trouble, and to write a middle-eight would have been to write a middle-eight, but instead Paul already had one there.
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Songs like "Good Morning, Good Morning" and "Penny Lane" convey a child's feeling of the world.
We write about our past. "Good Morning, Good Morning, I was never proud of it. I just knocked it off to do a song. But it was writing about my past so it does get the kids because it was me at school, my whole bit. The same with "Penny Lane." We really got into the groove of imagining Penny Lane – the bank as there, and that was where the tram sheds were and people waiting and the inspector stood there, the fire engines were down there. It was just re-living childhood.
In "Hey, Jude," as in one of your first songs, "She Loves You," you're singing to someone else and yet, you might as well be singing to yourself. Do you find that as well?
Oh, yeah. Well when Paul first sang "Hey, Jude" to me – or played me the little tape he'd made of it – I took it very personally. Ah, it's me! I said. It's me. He says, no it's me. I said "Check, we're going through the same bit." So we all are. Whoever is going through that bit with us is going through it, that's the groove.
Was "Hey, Jude" influenced – perhaps unconsciously – by mantras?
No, it's nothing conscious – you mean the repeat at the end? I never thought of that, but it's all valid, you see. I mean we'd just come back from India. But I always related it to some early Drifters song or "You'd Better Move On" or Sam Cooke's "Bring It On Home To Me" or "Send Me Some Loving" – it has that feeling.
Does "Tell Me What You See" have the same singing-to-myself feeling to you?
Not consciously, no. I can't remember, it's way back. As soon as you mention that I just remember running down the stairs at EMI and we went into the middle-eight, because there wasn't one – that's the picture I get. I'd have to hear it to get the rest of it. Otherwise it's just an image of the day I worked on it, what I went through, what I was going through at the time.
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How do you feel now about your first couple of albums?
Depends what track it is. I was listening to the very first albums a few weeks back, and it's embarrassing. It was embarrassing then because we wanted to be like this. We knew what we wanted to be, but we didn't know how to do it, in the studio. We didn't have the knowledeg or experience. But still some of the album is sweet, it's all right.
Wasn't it about the time of Rubber Soul that you moved away from the old records to something quite different?
Yes, yes, we got involved completely in ourselves then. I think it was Rubber Soul when we did all our own numbers. Something just happened. We controlled it a bit, whatever it was we were putting over, we just tried to control it a bit.
Do you feel free to put anything in a song?
Yes. In the early days I'd – well, we all did – we'd take things out for being banal, clichés, even chords we wouldn't use because we thought they were clichés. And even just this year there's been a great release for all of us, going right back to the basics, like on "Revolution" I'm playing the guitar and I haven't improved since I was last playing. But I dug it. It sounds the way I wanted it to sound.
It's a pity I can't do better – the fingering, you know – but I couldn't have done that last year, I'd have been too paranoic. I couldn't play dddddddddddd, George must play or somebody better. My playing has probably improved a little bit on this session because I've been playing a little. I was always the rhythm guy anyway, but I always just fiddled about in the background, I didn't actually want to play rhythm. We all sort of wanted to be lead – as in most groups – but it's a groove now, and so are the clichés. We've gone past those days when we wouldn't have used words because they didn't make sense, or what we thought was sense.
With "I Am A Walrus," I had "I am here as you are here as we are all together." I had just these two lines on the typewriter, and then about two weeks later I ran through and wrote another two lines, and then when I saw something after about four lines I just knocked the rest of it off. Then I had the whole verse or verse and a half and then sang it. I had this idea of doing a song that was a police siren, but it didn't work in the end [sings like a siren]: "I-am-here-as-you-are-here-as..." You couldn't really sing the police siren.
Do you write your music with instruments or in your head?
On piano or guitar. Most of this session has been written on guitar cause we were in India writing and only had our guitars there. They have a different feel about them. I missed the piano a bit because you just write differently. My piano playing is even worse than me guitar. I hardly know what the chords are, so it's good to have a slightly limited palette, heh heh.
How do you feel about his new music?
It's fine, you know. I'm just a bit bored with the backing, that's all. But he's right what he's doing because he usually is. I've only heard the Landlord album. I haven't heard the acetate, I keep hearing about it. That's something else, you know.
Is there anybody else you've gotten something from musically?
Oh millions. All those I mentioned before – Little Richard, Presley.
What about the new desire to return to a more natural environment? Dylan's return to country music?
Dylan broke his neck and we went to India. Everybody did their bit. And now we're all just coming out, coming out of a shell, in a new way, kind of saying: remember what it was like to play.
Do you feel better now?
Yes...And worse.
