Brian Epstein & The Beatles Top 100 Countdown (#30-26)

During the last few days we examined Brian Epstein's life before the Beatles, and with the Beatles. Today we'll examine the Beatles life after Brian.

Brian's death left the group disoriented and fearful about the future. Lennon recalled: "We collapsed. I knew that we were in trouble then. I didn't really have any misconceptions about our ability to do anything other than play music, and I was scared. I thought, 'We've had it now.'"

During recording sessions for the White Album, which stretched from late May to mid-October 1968, relations between the Beatles grew openly divisive. Starr quit for two weeks, and Lennon had lost interest in collaborating with McCartney. Describing the double album, Lennon later said: "Every track is an individual track; there isn't any Beatle music on it. [It's] John and the band, Paul and the band, George and the band." McCartney has recalled that the album "wasn't a pleasant one to make". Both he and Lennon identified the sessions as the start of the band's break-up.

Although Let It Be was the Beatles' final album release, it was largely recorded before Abbey Road. The project's impetus came from an idea Martin attributes to McCartney, who suggested they "record an album of new material and rehearse it, then perform it before a live audience for the very first time – on record and on film".

Producer George Martin has said that the project was "not at all a happy recording experience. It was a time when relations between the Beatles were at their lowest ebb." Lennon described the largely impromptu sessions as "hell ... the most miserable ... on Earth", and Harrison, "the low of all-time". Irritated by both McCartney and Lennon, Harrison walked out for five days. Upon returning, he threatened to leave the band unless they "abandon[ed] all talk of live performance" and instead focused on finishing a new album, initially titled Get Back, using songs recorded for the TV special.

New strains developed between the band members regarding the appointment of a financial adviser, the need for which had become evident without Epstein to manage business affairs. Lennon, Harrison and Starr favoured Allen Klein, who had managed the Rolling Stones and Sam Cooke. McCartney wanted Lee and John Eastman – father and brother, respectively, of Linda Eastman, whom McCartney married on 12 March. Agreement could not be reached, so both Klein and the Eastmans were temporarily appointed: Klein as the Beatles' business manager and the Eastmans as their lawyers. Further conflict ensued, however, and financial opportunities were lost. On 8 May, Klein was named sole manager of the band, the Eastmans having previously been dismissed as the Beatles' attorneys. McCartney refused to sign the management contract with Klein, but he was out-voted by the other Beatles.

Martin stated that he was surprised when McCartney asked him to produce another album, as the Get Back sessions had been "a miserable experience" and he had "thought it was the end of the road for all of us". The primary recording sessions for Abbey Road began on 2 July 1969. Lennon, who rejected Martin's proposed format of a "continuously moving piece of music", wanted his and McCartney's songs to occupy separate sides of the album. The eventual format, with individually composed songs on the first side and the second consisting largely of a medley, was McCartney's suggested compromise.

For the still unfinished Get Back album, one last song, Harrison's I Me Mine, was recorded on 3 January 1970. Lennon, in Denmark at the time, did not participate. In March, rejecting the work Johns had done on the project, now retitled Let It Be, Klein gave the session tapes to American producer Phil Spector, who had recently produced Lennon's solo single Instant Karma! In addition to remixing the material, Spector edited, spliced and overdubbed several of the recordings that had been intended as "live". McCartney was unhappy with the producer's approach and particularly dissatisfied with the lavish orchestration on The Long and Winding Road, which involved a fourteen-voice choir and 36-piece instrumental ensemble. McCartney's demands that the alterations to the song be reverted were ignored, and he publicly announced his departure from the band on 10 April 1970, a week before the release of his first, self-titled solo album.

On 8 May, the Spector-produced Let It Be was released. Film critic Penelope Gilliatt called it "a very bad film and a touching one ... about the breaking apart of this reassuring, geometrically perfect, once apparently ageless family of siblings".

McCartney filed suit for the dissolution of the Beatles' contractual partnership on 31 December 1970. Legal disputes continued long after their break-up, and the dissolution was not formalised until 29 December 1974.

During the time Brian Epstein managed the Beatles, they enjoyed the greatest success that any popular artists had ever achieved. Their career trajectory was meteoric. There was not a single reversal of fortune in the entire 5 3/4 years. Once he died the Beatles became embroiled in a tangle of conflicts, money squabbles and personal jealousies. They had lost the one man who united them and who was capable of resolving their differences.

From the first Beatles success until his tragic death in August 1967, Brian took care of every aspect of the Beatles' career. When he died the difference was immediately felt. While the Beatles continued to make magnificent music, their business affairs rapidly crumbled. Within two years of Brian's death the end of the Beatles was clearly in sight. By 1970 it was all over.

Now, let's get on with our Top 100 Beatles' songs countdown.

At #30 is Get Back, a Paul McCartney song. As a single, it went to #1 in every major market. It was also the single that broke the tie between the Beatles and Elvis in the US for the act with the most #1 singles. It was also the Beatles' only single that credited another artist at their request, being credited to "The Beatles with Billy Preston.".

As an album track, a Phil Spector remix of the same take, it was the closing track of the last studio album the Beatles released. It was also the last song to be played on their last concert of sorts, the gig on the roof of the Apple Records building on January 30th. In both cases, after the song we hear applause and then Lennon says: "I'd like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves and I hope we've passed the audition". It was certainly the Beatles' goodbye to the world.

There is also the business of a verse of the song that peaked my interest as a teenager and makes me feel that the song has an LGBT connection. The verse goes:

Sweet Loretta Martin thought she was a woman

But she was another man

All the girls around her say she's got it coming

But she gets it while she can

Am I the only one who thinks that this song preceded Lou Reed's Walk On The Wild Side as the first trans-inclusive hit?

The original lyrics to Get Back satirized the anti-immigrant sentiments in England at the time: "Don't dig no Pakistanis taking all the people's jobs" went one line. McCartney dropped the parodic race-baiting, leaving the tales of wandering Jo Jo and gender-flipping Loretta Martin. Lennon called Get Back, which features his bluesy lead guitar as well as a funky keyboard solo from Billy Preston, "a better version of Lady Madonna . . . a potboiler rewrite." But he also suspected that the song was secretly aimed at Yoko Ono: "You know, 'Get back to where you once belonged.' Every time [Paul] sang the line in the studio, he'd look at Yoko." This is the album version:

At #29, here's one paradox of Revolver: the album marks the period when the Beatles began exploring the myriad creative possibilities of the recording studio, yet at the same time, it contains some of the most streamlined, straightforward pieces in the group's catalog — among them McCartney's radiantly soothing love song Here, There and Everywhere. McCartney wrote it at Lennon's house in Weybridge while waiting for Lennon to wake up. "I sat out by the pool on one of the sun chairs with my guitar and started strumming in E," McCartney recalled. "And soon [I] had a few chords, and I think by the time he'd woken up, I had pretty much written the song, so we took it indoors and finished it up." McCartney has cited the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds as his primary influence for Here, There and Everywhere. McCartney had heard the album before it was released, at a listening party in London in May 1966, and was blown away.

The tune's chord sequence bears Brian Wilson's influence, ambling through three related keys without ever fully settling into one, and the modulations — particularly the one on the line "changing my life with a wave of her hand" — deftly underscore the lyrics, inspired by McCartney's girlfriend, actress Jane Asher. (The couple, whose careers often led to prolonged separations, would split in July 1968.) When George Martin heard the tune, he persuaded the musicians to hum together, barbershop-quartet style, behind the lead vocal. "The harmonies on that are very simple," Martin recalled. "There's nothing very clever, no counterpoint, just moving block harmonies. Very simple . . . but very effective."

McCartney has repeatedly identified it as one of his best compositions, a sentiment echoed by his songwriting partner: Lennon told Playboy in 1980 that it was "one of my favorite songs of the Beatles."

The group spent three days in the studio working on the song, an unusually long time for a single track during this period. After agreeing on a satisfactory rhythm track, the band did backing vocals, then McCartney recorded his lead vocal — which had a surprising inspiration. "When I sang it in the studio, I remember thinking, 'I'll sing it like Marianne Faithfull' — something no one would ever know," he said. "I used an almost falsetto voice and double-tracked it. My Marianne Faithfull impression."

Here's one of the takes:

Here's the final version that appears on the album:

Here, There And Everywhere

At #28 we find I Feel Fine, written by John Lennon and released on November 1964 as a single, topping almost all major markets.

I Feel Fine opens with a brief, throaty growl from Lennon's amplifier. The clipped distortion sounds polite next to the noise Pete Townshend and Jimi Hendrix would soon put on record, but the Beatles got there first. "I defy anybody to find a record — unless it's some old blues record in 1922 — that uses feedback that way," said Lennon. "I claim it for the Beatles."

According to George Martin, feedback was a routine nuisance at Beatles sessions. "John always turned the [volume] knob up full," the producer said. "It became kind of a joke. But he realized that he could do this to advantage." The feedback on I Feel Fine was very much on purpose, existing on the master tapes from the first take.

I Feel Fine also showcased the Beatles' evolving musicianship, with Starr chipping in a calypso-flavored dialogue between cymbal and tom-tom. "Ringo developed from a straight Rock drummer into quite a musical thinker," said Martin. "He was always trying out different ideas."

At #27 is You're Going To Lose That Girl (1965). The last song the Beatles completed for the Help! soundtrack before heading off to the Bahamas to begin filming, You're Going to Lose That Girl was knocked out in two takes. The song started with Lennon, and McCartney helped him complete it at Lennon's home in Weybridge.

Like She Loves You, You're Going to Lose That Girl is the rare Pop song in which a male singer addresses a wayward boyfriend. But where the earlier hit offered empathy, now Lennon issues a more aggressive warning: "I'll make a point of taking her away from you." Distinguished by Lennon's falsetto and Starr's manic bongo-playing, the song really comes alive through the background vocals. The bright call-and-response parts that comment on the action ("Watch what you do") illustrate the influence that the early-Sixties girl-group records still had on the Beatles. The band recorded a number of girl-group songs (Chains by the Cookies, Baby It's You and Boys by the Shirelles), flipping the genders in the lyrics as necessary.

In the film, the song is done in a smoky studio; McCartney wanted to show the material in a more natural setting than provided by most movie musicals. Ringo does the whole performance with a lit cigarette dangling from his lips.

You're Going To Lose That Girl

Finally for today, at #26, is one of the standout songs from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967). Written and sung primarily by Lennon, Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds is forever followed by the speculation that the first letter of each of the title nouns intentionally spelled LSD.

Lennon always insisted that Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds was not a drug song. As he told Rolling Stone in 1970, "I swear to God or swear to Mao or to anybody you like, I had no idea it spelled LSD." The inspiration was a picture that his four-year-old son, Julian, painted of Lucy O'Donnell, the girl who sat next to him at school. "He had sketched in some stars in the sky and called it Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds," Lennon said. "Simple."

Lennon showed McCartney the painting one morning over tea, and they decided it was too great a title to pass up. The song is dominated by Lennon's love of childish whimsy like Through the Looking-Glass. Lennon came up with the image of "kaleidoscope eyes," McCartney with "cellophane flowers" and "newspaper taxis," and before long, they had a psychedelic nursery rhyme with wordplay worthy of Lewis Carroll. "The images were from Alice in Wonderland," Lennon said in 1980. "It was Alice in the boat. She is buying an egg, and it turns into Humpty Dumpty. The woman serving in the shop turns into a sheep, and the next minute they are rowing in a rowing boat somewhere, and I was visualizing that."

In the Weybridge mansion where he wrote the song, Lennon spent most of his days alone, feeling numb in a collapsing marriage, watching TV and doing drugs. Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds was an image of hope. As he explained in 1980, "There was also the image of the female who would someday come save me — a 'girl with kaleidoscope eyes' who would come out of the sky. It turned out to be Yoko, though I hadn't met Yoko yet. So maybe it should be Yoko in the Sky With Diamonds."

Sadly, Lucy herself died in September 2009 of lupus, at the age of 46. Julian Lennon paid tribute to his former classmate by releasing a benefit single, Lucy, a few weeks later. (Julian's original "Lucy" drawing is currently owned by Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour.) When she first heard Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds as a teenager, she told her friends she was the Lucy who had inspired it. But they didn't believe her, informing her the song was about LSD. Lucy didn't argue because, as she admitted, "I was too embarrassed to tell them I didn't know what LSD was."

Brian Epstein & The Beatles Top 100 Countdown (#35-31)

Yesterday we started discussing Epstein's downward spiral, mainly caused by his addiction to prescription drugs. Today we continue with the story. What happened after the Beatles and Epstein together reached the top?

After two more years of non-stop touring, The Beatles made the decision to quit performing live. As Epstein neared the end of his five-year contract, he began to tell his friends that he would not be asked back as their manager. He was right: As the group entered the final act of their lives as Beatles, Epstein’s five-year contract was not renewed.

Following their farewell performance at Candlestick Park in August of 1966, Epstein’s anxiety had heightened, as the necessity of his role begun to diminish significantly. Add to that the fact that, despite his success with creating and selling the image of the band, he’d lost out on a number of lucrative deals, namely due to inexperience. Elvis’ own manager, Colonel Tom Parker, once told Epstein he’d thrown away “tens of millions” of dollars due to oversights in areas such as merchandising rights.

When the five-year contract between The Beatles and Epstein expired, the boys had elected to manage themselves, and did not renew the contract. Brian was found dead on the morning of 27th August 1967 in his Chapel Street home near Buckingham Palace, with the coroner concluding his death was accidental – a result of an ‘accidental self-overdosage’. He was 32 years old. He had returned to London alone the previous evening after a group of young men had failed to turn up to a party at his country home in Sussex. The events that followed are anybody’s guess, and like other 1960s tragic figures Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland, his death by prescription drugs is believed by some to have been intentional, and suggested by others to have been a murder.

Many theories went around: one theory suggested that Epstein decided to kill himself when the father of one 15-year-old, with whom he allegdly had sex in Lionel Bart's house, complained to the police, and an investigation was under way.

Another theory claims that the downward spiral began because his then current boyfriend, a hustler called Diz Gillespie, had robbed him of money and valuable documents. According to his attorney and close friend Nat Weiss, that accounted for 'his first major depression: that was the beginning of his loss of self-confidence.'

Then again, it could have been what the coroner concluded: that his death was accidental – a result of an ‘accidental self-overdosage’. We'll never really know, will we?

Tomorrow we'll examine the aftermath of Epstein's death. Now, let's get on with our Top 100 Beatles' songs countdown.

At #35 we have a Paul McCartney song called Lady Madonna. In March 1968, it was released as a single, peaking at #1 in the UK, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, Austria, #4 in the US and was a Top 3 hit in most other markets.

Like many of McCartney's finest songs, Lady Madonna is a tribute to working-class womanhood, expressed through Irish-Catholic imagery. "Lady Madonna started off as the Virgin Mary, then it was a working-class woman, of which obviously there's millions in Liverpool," he later said. "There are a lot of Catholics in Liverpool because of the Irish connection." The Madonna of the song is a long-suffering but indestructible matriarch, as tough as the title character of Eleanor Rigby, yet as comforting as Mother Mary from Let It Be.

Musically, Lady Madonna has an earthier inspiration: the New Orleans piano boogie of Fats Domino. McCartney called it "a Fats Domino impression," composed while trying to play something bluesy on the piano. The recorded version is a full-on tribute to the New Orleans R&B sound, with tootling saxophones. Domino must have taken it as a compliment. A few months after the song came out, he released his own cover version, which became the last Top 100 hit of his career.

Here's an OK version:

Here's a better one:

Lady Madonna

At #34, it's one of McCartney's finest moments in Sgt. Pepper's (1967). She's Leaving Home was inspired by a newspaper story about a well-to-do 17-year-old girl named Melanie Coe who disappeared from her parents' home in London. While McCartney took the perspective of the teen runaway, Lennon sang counterpoint (the "Greek chorus," as McCartney called it) in the voice of the heartbroken parents.

McCartney was so impatient to record the song, he hired arranger Mike Leander to orchestrate the strings instead of waiting for George Martin, who was busy with another artist. "I was surprised and hurt," Martin admitted. "It was just Paul being Paul."

The real-life Melanie Coe ended up going back home to her mom and dad after three weeks; she was pregnant and had an abortion. But the girl in the song represented all the teenagers who were running away from their conventional lives in the Sixties. In April 1967, McCartney visited Brian Wilson in L.A. to preview Sgt. Pepper, playing She's Leaving Home on the piano for him and his wife. "We both just cried," Wilson said. "It was beautiful."

At #33, a song that has a "lone dissenter". (See yesterday's comment section). In My Life appears on Rubber Soul (1965) and is written and sung mainly by John Lennon. It is ranked 23rd on Rolling Stone's "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time" as well as fifth on their list of the Beatles' 100 Greatest Songs. The song placed second on CBC's 50 Tracks. Mojo magazine named it the best song of all time in 2000.

As far as we were concerned, Snicks gave it a 10, while AFHI and I gave it a 9. Recordman, on the other hand, gave it a 3. He is "the lone dissenter".

In My Life represented a crucial breakthrough for John Lennon — as well as a creative struggle. The song began with a question: During a March 1964 interview with Lennon, journalist Kenneth Allsop asked why he hadn't written more lyrics about his life and experiences. "I had a sort of professional songwriter's attitude to writing Pop songs," Lennon said to Rolling Stone in 1970. "I would write [books like] In His Own Write, to express my personal emotions. I'd have a separate songwriting John Lennon who wrote songs for the meat market. I didn't consider them to have any depth at all. They were just a joke."

Taking Allsop's critique to heart, Lennon wrote a long poem about people and places from his past, touching on Liverpool landmarks like Penny Lane, Strawberry Field and Menlove Avenue. "I had a complete set of lyrics after struggling with a journalistic version of a trip downtown on a bus, naming every sight," he said. When he read the poem later, though, "it was the most boring 'What I Did on My Holidays' song, and it wasn't working. But then I laid back, and these lyrics started coming to me about the places I remember."

What happened next is a dispute that will never be resolved. In My Life is one of only a handful of Lennon-McCartney songs where the two strongly disagreed over who wrote what: According to Lennon, "The whole lyrics were already written before Paul even heard it. His contribution melodically was the harmony and the middle eight." According to McCartney, Lennon basically had the first verse done. At one of their writing sessions at Lennon's Weybridge estate, the two painstakingly rewrote the lyrics, making them less specific and more universal. (Some of Lennon's lines, like his reference to the late Stu Sutcliffe, the Beatles' former bassist, in "some are dead and some are living," remained.) McCartney also says he wrote the melody on Lennon's Mellotron, inspired by Smokey Robinson, as well as the gentle opening guitar figure.

Regardless of its true authorship, In My Life represented Lennon's evolution as an artist. "I started being me about the songs, not writing them objectively, but subjectively," Lennon said. "I think it was Dylan who helped me realize that — not by any discussion or anything, but by hearing his work." The Beatles were huge Dylan fans by early 1964, playing The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan nonstop in between gigs. When Dylan visited the Beatles in New York that August, he famously introduced them to marijuana. (He thought the Beatles were already pot smokers, having misheard the lyrics "I can't hide" in I Want to Hold Your Hand as "I get high.") Dylan and pot would be the great twin influences that led the Beatles out of their moptop period and on to their first masterpiece, Rubber Soul.

The song at #32 is also a Lennon song, also appears on Rubber Soul (1965) and also has a "lone dissenter". AFHI, Recordman & I have each given Norwegian Wood 9 points. Snicks gave it 5. He's "the lone dissenter".

Norwegian Wood had a timeless Rock & Roll inspiration: sex. As Lennon put it bluntly, "I was trying to write about an affair without letting me wife know I was writing about an affair. I was writing from my experiences, girls' flats, things like that." Graced by Harrison's sitar, Norwegian Wood was a huge step forward for the Beatles, continuing their move into more introspective songwriting influenced by Bob Dylan.

Lennon begins with a couplet that flips the usual Rock & Roll bravado: "I once had a girl/Or should I say, she once had me." He recounts a late-night fling with a worldly urban woman, one who lives in her own pad, has her own career and invites gentlemen up for wine. She is very different from the love interests in early Beatles' songs.

As McCartney later explained, it was popular for Swinging London girls to decorate their homes with Norwegian pine. "So it was a little parody really on those kinds of girls who when you'd go to their flat there would be a lot of Norwegian wood," he told biographer Barry Miles. "It was pine really, cheap pine. But it's not as good a title, 'Cheap Pine,' baby."

Even if it's a tale of a fling with a mod groupie, it's a strikingly adult one, from the London milieu to the way Lennon spends the night at her place (and wakes up in the bathtub). Lennon is the one who gets pursued and seduced, sitting nervously on her rug until she announces, "It's time for bed." Given all the oblique wordplay, Cynthia Lennon was hardly the only listener puzzled. When he wakes up alone the next morning, he lights a fire — does that mean he burns the girl's house down? Lennon never revealed the solution to this mystery; McCartney has endorsed the arson theory.

Although Lennon claimed in 1980 that Norwegian Wood was "my song completely," he told Rolling Stone a decade earlier that "Paul helped with the middle eight, to give credit where it's due." According to McCartney, Lennon came to him with just a first verse: "That was all he had, no title, no nothing."

Harrison's sitar debut was the song's most distinctive feature — yet it came from a moment of spontaneous studio experimentation. As Lennon told Rolling Stone in 1970, "George had just got the sitar, and I said, 'Could you play this piece?' . . . He was not sure whether he could play it yet, because he hadn't done much on the sitar, but he was willing to have a go."

Harrison first spotted the sitar on the set of the band's second movie, Help!, where Indian musicians were playing Beatles covers in a restaurant scene. Intrigued, he bought a sitar and "messed around" with it, eventually studying with sitar master Ravi Shankar. Harrison also became interested in Eastern religion and philosophy, which would become a lifelong pursuit.

Looking back in the 1990s, Harrison described the sitar on Norwegian Wood as "very rudimentary. I didn't know how to tune it properly, and it was a very cheap sitar to begin with." But "that was the environment in the band," he pointed out, "everybody was very open to bringing in new ideas. We were listening to all sorts of things — Stockhausen, avant-garde — and most of it made its way onto our records."

Norwegian Wood was swiftly recognized as a creative breakthrough. Brian Jones paid tribute with his sitar riff in the Rolling Stones' Paint It, Black, and Dylan did a sly parody on Blonde on Blonde, 4th Time Around, which he played for Lennon in person. "I was very paranoid about that," Lennon confessed to Rolling Stone in 1968. He was already sensitive because the other Beatles were "taking the mickey out of him" for copying Dylan, and he was afraid Dylan was ridiculing him with 4th Time Around. "He said, 'What do you think?' I said I didn't like it." Although Lennon said he later appreciated the song, he did stop wearing his peaked "Dylan cap."

Norwegian Wood

Finally for today, at #31 is another Lennon song, Happiness Is a Warm Gun. It is found in The White Album (1968).

Lennon called this rapid-fire, erotically charged minisuite one of his best songs. "Oh, I love it," he told Rolling Stone in 1970. "I think it's a beautiful song. I like all the different things that are happening in it. . . . It seemed to run through all the different kinds of rock music." The Beatles Anthology book includes a marked-up copy of the lyric sheet, in which Lennon outlines the three different sections that make up "Happiness": "Dirty Old Man," "The Junkie" and "The Gunman (Satire of '50s R&R)."

The title was inspired by a headline in a gun magazine George Martin had showed Lennon that read Happiness is a Warm Gun — a variation on Peanuts cartoonist Charles Schulz's 1962 bestseller Happiness Is a Warm Puppy. "I thought it was a fantastic, insane thing to say," Lennon said. "A warm gun means that you just shot something."

Lennon later claimed that the song "wasn't about 'H' at all," but the drug subtext is everywhere. The "Junkie" sequence from the middle of the song ("I need a fix 'cause I'm going down") was the entirety of his original demo, recorded in May 1968. By the time the song was cut in September, Lennon had begun using heroin — ever since he and Yoko Ono had moved into a London apartment Starr had rented them in July. The "Mother Superior" in the lyrics is a reference to Ono herself, whom Lennon took to calling "Mother."

At this point, Happiness Is a Warm Gun in Your Hand, as its original title ran, had expanded to its final form. A few of the surreal lines in the opening section, "Dirty Old Man," came from a stoned conversation with Apple press officer Derek Taylor: "Ate and donated to the National Trust," for instance, is a reference to people shitting on public land (a common problem Lennon encountered while walking in and around Liverpool), and the "velvet hand" alludes to a man who had told Taylor that wearing moleskin gloves gave him "a little bit of an unusual sensation when I'm out with my girlfriend." The "Satire of '50s R&R," with its classic doo-wop chord progression, was modified from a similar passage in Lennon's demo of I'm So Tired.

It took the Beatles 70 takes over two nights to master the tricky tempo shifts of "Happiness." McCartney was particularly fond of the result, calling it one of his favorite tracks on the White Album.