From The Beach Boys to Jerry Lee Lewis: the song that saw The Beatles channel their heroes
While firmly planted in the rock ‘n’ roll and R&B pop tradition of their youth in their infancy, The Beatles‘ inspirations from a broader scope of 20th-century songwriters began to reveal themselves as their musical ambitions grew from the mid-1960s.
Paul McCartney wore his influences on his sleeve with the greatest affection, often sitting at his figurative writing desk to pen a version of the music he loves—’Got to Get You into My Life’ was his stab at Motown; Chet Atkins’ unique fingerpicking guitar technique could be seen in ‘Michelle’; and the boyhood love of music hall vaudeville was made apparent in ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’. McCartney has never disguised the musical grab bag at his side when crafting some of his biggest hits.
Having ceased their touring schedule and while flexing their psychedelic fancies across the ‘Summer of Love’ era, The Beatles found the time to follow the Indian guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi to his Rishikesh ashram in February 1968 to further their study of transcendental meditation. This retreat was their most collectively fruitful spell of songwriting. Over half of the upcoming The Beatles double LP was sketched out at the ashram, plus future Abbey Road and eventual solo numbers.
One of the many pieces dreamed up was ‘Back in the USSR’. A mishmash of 1950s rock ‘n’ roll and The Beach Boys’ sunny harmonies, The Beatles‘ opener borrowed Chuck Berry’s ‘Back in the USA’ but twisted it with a play on Cold War tensions. It celebrated the Soviet Union with a nod to their samizdat smuggling fans behind the Iron Curtain, as well as wryly subverted Berry’s deeply square patriotism that had aged like milk in the countercultural age.
“It’s tongue in cheek,” McCartney confessed in 1997’s Many Years from Now. “This is a travelling Russkie who has just flown in from Miami Beach; he’s come the other way. He can’t wait to get back to the Georgian mountains: ‘Georgia’s always on my mind’; there’s all sorts of little jokes in it… I remember trying to sing it in my Jerry Lee Lewis voice to get my mind set on a particular feeling.”
It’s the song’s bridge that is remembered the most. It pilfers from The Beach Boys’ ‘California Girls’ and its celebration of America’s many kinds of girls to set it in the communist superstate—our well-travelled comrade’s heart still lost to the girls of Georgia, Ukraine, and Moscow. The Beach Boys‘ harmony was encouraged by Mike Love himself, who had joined the ashram retreat with the band.
Love recalled: “I was sitting at the breakfast table, and McCartney came down with his acoustic guitar, and he was playing ‘Back In The USSR’, and I told him that what you ought to do is talk about the girls all around Russia, Ukraine and Georgia. He was plenty creative not to need any lyrical help from me, but I gave him the idea for that little section… I think it was light-hearted and humorous of them to do a take on The Beach Boys.”
The Beatles would top the album charts worldwide and become a 24x platinum seller, but the affectionate pastiche of ‘Back to the USSR’ was still enough to rankle the conservative John Birch Society for its perceived Soviet subversion. Years later, Elton John would play his version during a Soviet tour in the run-up to the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, to the fans’ delight and the Russian authorities’ bewilderment.
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