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Sun 20 April 2025 17:30, UK
Despite the issues at the end, the Beatles were largely team players. Even in the band’s final days, when their personal and collaborative relationships were crumbling, they were good at putting things aside and getting the work done. The music came first, mostly, except in the case of a few songs when the bust-up got the better of them.
The Beatles’ history could be traced simply through the various walkouts. At one point or another, every member had their moment where they stormed out and had to be coaxed into coming back. George Harrison probably had the coolest one, picking up his jacket and leaving with the savage one-liner, “See you around the clubs.” But still, he came back. They always came back knowing that there was work to be done, and were still passionate about making the music, even if it was beginning to be tough to make it together.
However, occasionally, a fight could find its way onto the recording. Sometimes that was through the lyrics as the bandmates would write subtle little digs at one another into their work. But sometimes it was shown through an absence, with another great measure of the band’s history being the rare but revelatory moments where one member or another is missing.
It didn’t happen often. In the band’s whole discography, there are only a handful of songs that don’t feature the full lineup of all four members. Sometimes, the reason for that couldn’t be avoided, like when John Lennon missed some sessions for Abbey Road after getting into a car accident. But on occasion, the absence was fully out of spite, or a song had to switch singers when one of the members would go mute in the process.
They each took their turns. McCartney’s moment to be a brat came first, in 1966, when he refused to sing ‘She Said She Said’. It wasn’t even just singing, he refused to even play on the song. “I’m not sure, but I think it was one of the only Beatle records I never played on.” McCartney recalled in Many Years From Now, “I think we’d had a barney or something and I said, ‘Oh, fuck you!’ and they said, ‘Well, we’ll do it.’ I think George played bass.” Who knows what the argument was, but it was taken out on the song.
Next up was Ringo Starr’s turn, but this one makes sense. “Poking a little fun at Ringo was actually a lot of fun,” McCartney admitted years down the line. While the band were working away, they couldn’t resist using the music to prank their drummer, including forcing him to sing some potentially cruel lyrics. “The song ‘With A Little Help From My Friends’ was written specifically for me, but they had one line that I wouldn’t sing,” Starr said as he got wise to one trick.
“It was ‘What would you do if I sang out of tune? Would you stand up and throw tomatoes at me?’” He added, quoting the song’s original lyrics. He saw their game immediately, “I said, ‘There’s not a chance in hell am I going to sing this line,’ because we still had lots of really deep memories of the kids throwing jelly beans and toys on stage; and I thought that if we ever did get out there again, I was not going to be bombarded with tomatoes.” So he put his foot down and refused to sing until the lyric was edited.
Finally, John Lennon naturally took a turn being difficult. In the band’s final moments, he was difficult often, routinely refusing to be a part of a song. But on ‘Good Night’, despite writing the song, he wouldn’t sing it. It seemed too emotional for him, written about his son Julien, who he was already beginning to have an estranged relationship. Starr took on the vocals instead, but the band recalled how beautifully Lennon did it as McCartney said, “I think John felt it might not be good for his image for him to sing it, but it was fabulous to hear him do it; he sang it great.”
He added, “We heard him sing it in order to teach it to Ringo, and he sang it very tenderly. John rarely showed his tender side, but my key memories of John are when he was tender; that’s what has remained with me.”
The Beatles songs The Beatles refused to sing:
- ‘She Said She Said’
- ‘A Little Help From My Friends’
- ‘Good Night’
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