Birthday
By:
The Beatles
Lyrics:
Birthday Lyrics
Lead vocals:
McCartney with Lennon
Songwriter(s):
Lennon/McCartney
First released on:
The Beatles (White Album)
U.S. release date:
November 25, 1968
U.K. release date:
November 22, 1968
Length (≈):
2:42
Label:
Apple
Produced by:
George Martin
Recording date(s):
September 18, 1968 John Lennon and Paul McCartney collaborated to write Birthday, a song that appears on The Beatles (the double album commonly known as The White Album). It opens the third side and illustrates a trend back towards traditional Rock and Roll at the end of their "middle period." Paul came up with the main riff, and then with John, they hammered out the rest of the song at the Abbey Road studios during a recording session on September 18, 1968. Lennon said the song was just "made up on the spot." George Martin was not present at recording that day. Chris Thomas sat in for him. Paul and John share lead vocals (the only instance of this on The White Album). Recording notes show that "everyone in the studio" joined in the chorus of the song, and that the definitive mono mix was completed by 5 am the following morning. Birthday is a fairly simply song, opening with a drum fill and the guitar riff (in A, blues progression). Then, after 8 bars of drum break, the middle part of the song follows, set wholly on the dominant E. Then the riff repeats (with piano added) to a bridge, followed by a repeat of the vocal part. Paul sings at the top of his non-falsetto range. Lennon plays lead guitar while George plays bass. Patti Harrison and Yoko Ono are credited with providing backup vocals and handclaps. (Mal Evans also is credited with handclaps.)
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Beatles Birthday Song Theory
"Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue with that; I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first - rock 'n' roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me." - John Lennon c.1966
It has been theorized and received that John Lennon personally believed that the Beatles were such an extraordinary phenomenon that they would be able to replace modern institutions. In regards to the Birthday song, historians and musics fans have come to the conclusion that the Beatles wrote the birthday song in an attempt to undermine the institution of the "Happy Birthday Song."
I'd certainly much rather put
I'd certainly much rather put on Birthday by The Beatles at my birthday party. I'm not sure, though, how critical an institution the birthday song is to begin with. Perhaps instead they should have tried to undermine the Mexican Hat Dance if they really wanted to rattle the foundations of a society. Being serious... I don't doubt that The Beatles let their fame distort their perspective a bit when they were in the middle of the whole Beatlemania wave. It's easy to forget that John Lennon was only about 25 years old when he made his famous Jesus comments. As impolitic as it was to say so at the time, I think he was right, there are more probably more rock fans than bible fans in the U.S... I'm sure there are more garage bands out there than there are preachers. The really interesting thing is that the two are not mutually exclusive, so many bible fans nowadays are also Beatles fans... I'd guess they pretty much all are, in fact.
"A leaky house can fool the sun, but it can't fool the rain." - A Haitian Proverb
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