Picking up where I left off in this series (I’ve already done Let It Be & Abbey Road) I’m at 1969′s Yellow Submarine which I really don’t consider a true Beatles album, but here it is anyway.

Yellow Submarine only included four new Beatles songs. “Yellow Submarine” had already been included on 1966′s Revolver, and “All You Need Is Love” was included on 1967′s Magical Mystery Tour. The rest of the album (side 2) is filled with George Martin’s instrumentals. It’s only the four new Beatles songs I’m featuring in this post.

“It’s Only A Northern Song”

Harrison: “Only A Northern Song” was a joke relating to Liverpool, the Holy City in the North of England. In addition, the song was copyrighted Northern Songs Ltd, which I don’t own, so: ‘It doesn’t really matter what chords I play… as it’s only a Northern Song

Harrison: I realized Dick James had conned me out of the copyrights for my own songs by offering to become my publisher. As an 18 or 19-year-old kid, I thought, ‘Great, somebody’s gonna publish my songs!’ But he never said, ‘And incidentally, when you sign this document here, you’re assigning me the ownership of the songs,’ which is what it is. It was just a blatant theft. By the time I realized what had happened, when they were going public and making all this money out of this catalog, I wrote “Only A Northern Song” as what we call a ‘piss-take,’ just to have a joke about it.

McCartney: They wanted some new songs from us, so we recorded “Only A Northern Song” in Abbey Road. I remember playing a silly trumpet. My dad used to play. I can’t, but I can mess around a lot – and that song gave me the perfect framework. It was very tongue in cheek.

“All Together Now”

McCartney: It’s really a children’s song. I had a few young relatives and I would sing songs for them. I used to do a song for kids called “Jumping Round The Room,” very similar to “All Together Now,” and then it would be ‘lying on your backs’, all the kids would have to lie down, then it would be ‘skipping round the room’, ‘jumping in the air’. It’s a play away command song for children. It would be in G, very very simple chords, only a couple of chords, so that’s what this is. There’s a little subcurrent to it but it’s just a singalong really. A bit of a throwaway.

“Hey Bulldog”

Lennon: Paul said we should do a real song in the studio, to save wasting time. Could I whip one off? I had a few words at home so I brought them in.

Lennon: It’s a good-sounding record that means nothing.

McCartney: I remember “Hey Bulldog” as being one of John’s songs and I helped him finish it off in the studio, but it’s mainly his vibe. There’s a little rap at the end between John and I; we went into a crazy little thing at the end.

Emerick: “Hey Bulldog” was a really strong song. The vibe that day was great – all four Beatles were in an exceptionally good mood because they knew they would be heading to India in a matter of days.

Emerick: “Hey Bulldog” turned out so well there was some campaigning from Lennon that day for it to serve as the A-side of the single instead of “Lady Madonna.” Naturally enough, Paul wasn’t thrilled with the idea.

“It’s All Too Much”

Harrison: “It’s All Too Much” was written in a childlike manner from realizations that appeared during and after some LSD experiences and which were later confirmed in meditation.

Harrison: I just wanted to write a rock ‘n’ roll song about the whole psychedelic thing of the time. Because you’d trip out, you see, on all this stuff, and then whoops! you’d just be back having your evening cup of tea! ‘Your long blond hair and your eyes of blue’ – that was all just this big ending we had, going out. And as it was in those days, we had the horn players just play a bit of trumpet voluntarily, and so that’s how that Prince of Denmark bit was played. And Paul and John just came up with and sang that lyric of ‘your eyes of blue’.

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