Celebrating the Beatles’ ‘Birthday’
- edgarstreetbooks
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
'200 Greatest 60s Rock Songs Vol. 2' Book Excerpt
Frank Mastropolo
“Birthday” was written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney and appeared on the Beatles’ 1968 White Album. The raw rocker only took one day to compose and record at Abbey Road Studios. “We thought, ‘Why not make something up?’ So we got a riff going and arranged it around this riff,” McCartney recalled in Many Years From Now.
“The film The Girl Can’t Help It was on television, an old rock film, Fats Domino, Gene Vincent, and Eddie Cochran were in it, and we wanted to see it, so we started at 5 o’clock and just did a backing track, a very simple 12-bar blues thing with a few bits here and there. We had no idea what it was going to be. Then we went back to my house, watched the film and then went back to the studio and made up some words to go with it all.
“We said, ‘We’ll go to there for a few bars, then we’ll do this for a few bars.’ We added some lyrics, then we got the friends who were there to join in on the chorus. So that is 50–50 John and me, made up on the spot and recorded all on the same evening.
“I don’t recall it being anybody’s birthday in particular but it might have been, but the other reason for doing it is that, if you have a song that refers to Christmas or a birthday, it adds to the life of the song, if it’s a good song, because people will pull it out on birthday shows, so I think there was a little bit of that at the back of our minds.”
“It’s one of my favorites because it was instantaneous,” McCartney told Radio Luxembourg.
“Also, it’s a good one to dance to. As for the big long drum break, normally we might have four bars of drums, but, with this, we thought, ‘No, let’s keep it going,’ We all like to hear drums plodding on.”
Frank Mastropolo is the author of 200 Greatest Rock Songs Vol. 2, part of the Greatest Performances series. For more on our latest projects, visit Edgar Street Books.
Comments