Every song referenced in ‘All You Need Is Love’ by The Beatles
The last minute of ‘All You Need Is Love’ is very busy indeed. The outro features a host of musical quotations mixed with audio from The Beatles‘ Christmas recording. It’s not only a brilliantly inventive piece of production but an example of The Beatles’ continual quest to interrogate their own legacy while it was still unfolding.
Written by John Lennon for Our World, the first televised link-up between five continents, ‘All You Need Is Love’ marked the zenith of The Beatles’ cultural influence. The program was divided into subsections, which included This Moment’s World, The Hungry World, The Crowded World, Physical Excellence, Artistic Excellence and The World Beyond. On May 18th, 1967, it was announced that The Beatles would conclude the Artistic Excellence section with a recording of a new song recorded, especially for the program.
It was a huge moment. In just a few years, The Beatles had gone from performing skiffle music in social clubs to instructing world leaders to give love a chance. “We were big enough to command an audience of that size, and it was for love,” Ringo notes in Anthology. “It was for love and bloody peace. It was a fabulous time. I even get excited now when I realise that’s what it was for: peace and love, people putting flowers in guns.”
Rather boldly, The Beatles recorded the song just 11 days before the transmission date. They’d released Sgt. Pepper’s only two weeks before and were bristling with creative confidence. So much so, in fact, that Lennon left writing the song to the very last moment. “I don’t know if they had prepared any ideas, but they left it very late to write the song,” Geoff Emerick recalled in Mark Lewisohn’s The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions. “John said, ‘Oh God, is it that close? I suppose we’d better write something.'”
Thankfully, the song was an absolute gem. Paul and the other members threw in the odd idea, but John led the charge, coming up with something emotionally complex and anthemic. On arrival at Abbey Road, The Beatles taped vocals and set about recording a rather unconventional arrangement, with Lennon on harpsichord, McCartney on double bass, and Harrison on violin. Ringo Starr, meanwhile, stuck with the drums. The effect was one of a group of kids having a bash at forming a “freaky orchestra” – and it worked wonderfully.
The Beatles’ anarchical approach ended up defining the sound of ‘All You Need Is Love’. From take one (the first of 33 different takes), The Beatles were sure they wanted to include a snippet of the French national anthem ‘La Marseillaise’ so as to heighten the cooperative, international mood of the program. By the end of the initial recording session, George Martin was so taken with the record’s orchestral slant that he decided to write a rough orchestral arrangment, which was overdubbed onto take ten along with snippets of Glenn Miller’s wartime hit ‘In the Mood’, Bach’s ‘Invention No. 8 in F major’, ‘Greensleeves’ and The Beatles own 1963 hit ‘She Loves You’, which the Beatles decided to throw in last minute, all in the name of silliness.
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