The Beatles Multiverse Album
1. "Lucky One" - John
John couldn’t shake the phrase “I must be the lucky one” and wanted to use that as the basis for the LP. He made sure to lovingly tease his old mate in the beginning “From the cities to the farms, to the sounding of alarms.” Back to his old double entendres, he wrote of his own failure to stay sober at “Big Bob’s” singing “I got loaded in a hearse” and lastly, called out the record executive from EMI who, was apoplectic that the record had missed two release dates, and yelled at Paul that “If he was done having fun..it would be nice to have the new release before the millennium.”
Paul, trying to mitigate some of John’s worst political instincts, found a way to challenge John with his own sense of humor, sophisticated musicality and desire to place Beatles hints in the song (John called this “Beatle’d Up!”).
Ringo, happy to be with old mates, brought back a number of great fills to “Lucky One” (the beat in the beginning as Ticket to Ride, for instance) and the band agreed at the end of the song to abruptly switch into a dark, dirge-like tempo that recalled the last wordless minutes of “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” from Abbey Road. Since it was the first song on Side A, not the last, they couldn’t count on the LP hitting the ‘run off” so John suggested a noise on the next track, if properly loud and annoying, would break the spell. George suggested a clown horn. And so it was.
2. "It's only natural" John & PAUL
Paul was put off at the trial of the shooter that John and Yoko specifically prohibited him and Linda from attending, saying that instead of ‘Justice for “Big Bob” it would be a fookin’ Beatles reunion.” Paul understood that they literally would get one chance to take advantage of their reunion and the courtroom wasn’t the place for it, but he was eager to see justice done, as besides his own moral convictions, he was still angry that his mother’s killer was never jailed because he was a policeman.
He started writing the song based on his argument to John that ``It's only natural that I should want to be there with you.” To drive the point home, at least in the song, he wanted to use courtroom words but even he found they were mostly too out of place in a pop song, but he did like the phrase “circumstantial” which rhymed with only ‘natural’. For his Beatleology, he poked fun at John by writing “It’s nothing written in the sky”, a reference to both Imagine and Lucy in the Sky (and perhaps his opening to the song “Woman.”).
Because Paul wanted the song to be both of them singing in harmony (one of two tracks on the LP, the other is Blue) he invited John to contribute lyrics, and John took this liberty to introduce completely counterintuitive lines (a la “Getting Better”) but also to make the song more fun (and ‘dirty’ he said in the Rolling Stone interview) to sing. So where Paul had a line that said “You’ve seen me at my worst and it won’t be the last time” John added “I’m down there.”
For the next line Paul had “read me like a book” John added “that’s fallen down between your knees, Please let me have my way with you.”
3. "If You want my love" JOHN
John had always been privately jealous of his mates’ success but publicly cheeky. When Ringo, in 1972 scored a #1 hit with “Photograph,” he reportedly telegraphed him “How dare you? Please write me a #1.”
John was similarly jealous of George for scoring radio hits with the Wilburys (“What’s Bob Dylan got on me anyway?” he continually badgered throughout the sessions) and for working with Roy Orbison, who was one of their heroes.
John always went back to his very simple poetry-like songwriting and he had written the line “If you want my love, you have it.” But Paul immediately thought of a way to tweak the line that would be an in-joke to George, whose work with Roy Orbison both John and Paul were privately jealous of.
So it became “If you want my love you got it,” and they were off. (They also added a line “I thought you were a Mystery Girl” to poke fun at George’s duties on the Roy Orbison LP of the same name just a few years back).
Paul further thought the song (and all the songs) would harken and homage back to other songs from their catalogue, both as a way of creating connective tissue, and of course, to send fans back to re-buy the old songs on CD, which was the newest format the boys records were available in.
For this reason, the song begins with an “Ahhh” “Ahhhh” which is a direct lift from “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” They changed the melody a little so it was less derivative, but John still didn’t want it to be first. He was steadfast on “Lucky One,” but he did love Paul’s idea that they abruptly change the tempo for a slide into the end of “I Want You” as they faded out. It would be surprising to know that it was John who came up with adding the very Beatle-y “Oooh” at the end of the line, although he did it because they felt they were one syllable short on the line “I won’t throw your love away.”
Since they still wanted to make sure the song which is clearly a Lennon number continued to tweak Harrison, they added in a part that directly stole the bridge from “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” and used more Orbison lyrics (“You’re only lonely”) staring “Lonely is only a place” You couldn’t see me when I laid eyes on you is a reference to You couldn't tell That I'd been crying over you.
Finally, to bring home ‘the Orbison” they decided to make the singer (John) hit the highest part of his range with “hole in my heart, in my heart” (Paul thought he would have to sing it but John was in fine voice).
4. "LEt love rule" - PAUL
Paul initially objected to this track saying it was too “Plastic Ono Band.” George told him point-blank that the Plastic Ono Band was basically the Beatles without Paul on it and suggested he add a bass part to make the world forget Klaus Voorman. Paul agreed and counter suggested that he take the vocals since he believed he proved with “Oh! Darling” (and subsequently, “Let Me Roll It”) that he could handle it. They agreed. John also agreed to include a reference to “Little Child” as Paul had on “You Can Make Me Free.”
5. "I Don't mind at all" - PAUL
Paul insisted they have one track that was just guitars (and it turns out, with some support from George Martin's classical trio). Paul confessed that this was the song he had intended to put out as a statement when the Beatles broke up, but decided a confessional guitar song wouldn't have worked and he went with "Another Day." He revisited the song twice: one in 1973, when he was trying to think about making up with John (and instead recorded "Let Me Roll it") and in 1980 for McCartney II, but ultimately it wasn't a 'guitar album.'
6. "THE WAY" - GEORGE
George Harrison, had been riding the greatest success train and entered the group meetings in nearly the total opposite way in which he had last left them. In fact, rather than trying to get all of his songs onto the next Beatles LP, he was considering all the bands he was supporting (Roy Orbison, The Traveling Willburys, ELO’s Comeback and a remerging Splinter). This does not mean he was not an active participant; he sings, co-wrote, plays and arranged nearly every track. But his lone solo composition was this upbeat rocker much in line with a song he wrote about boys in Liverpool “All those Years ago” but this song was meant to point out both the overwhelming corruption of the corporate executives and their nearly mindless following of unreasonable directives. At Paul’s insistence, he included the line “the sun came up that day” twice, so the homage to his biggest record “Here Comes the Sun” wouldn’t be lost. At the final mixing, John suggested the turning of the radio open the song, and that Roy Orbison’s “You Got It” be one of the songs that is heard quickly as they pass by.
7. "KARMA POLICE" - JOHN
John had a fragment of a song called “Arrest this Man” and a title “Karma Police,” which was actually nicked from a conversation he had with Yoko in processing the incident. The other Beatles liked this idea and decided it should be grafted onto a plodding bassline and pronounced drum for a song called “Free as a Bird” which they had laid down but since Lennon came to have nothing but disdain for. They wanted it to be heavy, and, well, dirty. Like most Lennon songs in the Plastic Ono Band mode, Paul and George thought there wasn’t enough happening in the song.
Paul made two suggestions— one that they change the refrain from “This what you get when you mess with love” to “This is what you get when you mess with us.” That led to a fantasy discussion about what to do with this shooter, who was in prison, but would be eligible for parole in ten years. George said ‘leave it to Mal, he’ll still be on the payroll,” which made the room erupt in laughter and then Paul and John insisted that line be included in the song, which it was. Paul did not want John to sing the line about Hitler- but John insisted, as he had been poking fun at nazis since he could. It was Ringo’s suggestion that the ending would be similar to Helter Skelter and the A Day in the Life with the noise growing, and it would call back I Feel Fine if they brought in the right guitar feedback (they couldn’t find the original tape, so George was happy to oblige with some new feedback).