The all-star cast who sang backing vocals for ‘All You Need is Love’
May 18th, 1967—The Beatles signed a contract. On June 25th of that same year, in 38 days, they would be broadcast around the globe singing a song they had not yet written. There was one requirement: it needed a strong message written in plain, easily understood English. They could provide that, delivering something short, simple, and effective: “All you need is love.”
The band were on a deadline. In a short period of time, they didn’t just need to write a song, but they needed to write an anthem. They wanted to write an anthem as the group were hyperaware that it was going to spread around the world. By then, all their songs did. But this one was different. In this case, the Beatles were going to be in everybody’s living rooms for the OneWorld broadcast. There was a sense of pressure that the world was going to stop and listen, and they needed to be saying something good.
“It was an inspired song, and they really wanted to give the world a message,” Brian Epstein said of the track, “The nice thing about it is that it cannot be misinterpreted. It is a clear message saying that love is everything.” That was really all the band wanted to say. As they’d quit touring, having witnessed threats of violence and scenes of hatred and injustice, and had now begun to deep dive into the weed-fuelled hippie culture, love was on their mind.
It would still be a few years before the idea of love gave way to the idea of peace or of active, more in-your-face politics that would feature on tracks like ‘Revolution’. But for now, the band still believed in the power of this track. “I’m a revolutionary artist. My art is dedicated to change,” Lennon said, and he truly saw ‘All You Need Is Love’ as a weapon to get that. As they were about to be broadcast directly to global citizens, the band didn’t take the task lightly; they believed in the power they had in their hands. As Harrison had just declared on their last record, “With our love, we could save the world”, only this time, they were going to say it straight and sing straight to the people.
Maybe that’s why they decided to call in an all-star cast to help them. It would be easy to be cynical and claim that the choir of celebrities that surrounded them on the track and on that broadcast that launched the song was nothing more than a further stunt. A grumpier person would moan about the fact that the band were simply fulfilling a contract and was just using these ideas of peace and love, sung by their famous friends, to do so. But come on, let’s lean in a second; let’s trust in the love of it all.
The big day came around, and everyone was nervous. The engineers were drinking whisky, Paul McCartney was dealing with a public onslaught of hate after admitting to trying LSD, and the camera cut to the band 40 seconds too early. But surrounding the band, as if all co-signing their name to this message of love and peace, is a powerful choir.
Their partners are there: Pattie Boyd and Jane Asher. Keith Richards and Mick Jagger were there, along with his partner at the time, Marianne Faithfull. Eric Clapton is there. Keith Moon is there as the band convinced him to play the drums lightly for once in his career. Graham Nash is there as another countercultural figure making an appearance. The cast goes on.
As this powerful choir were broadcast worldwide, all joining their voices together for the refrain and all putting their faces to this message, ‘All You Need Is Love’ became the statement the band wanted it to be. “There was a tremendous feeling that [the Beatles] really did believe all this,” Barry Miles wrote of the moment, and the celebrity personnel on the track only makes that stronger.
Who sings on ‘All You Need Is Love?’
- John Lennon
- Paul McCartney
- Ringo Starr
- George Harrison
- Mick Jagger
- Keith Richards
- Eric Clapton
- Marianne Faithfull
- Pattie Boyd
- Jane Asher
- Mike McGear (AKA. Mike McCartney)
- Graham Nash
- Hunter Davies
- Gary Walker
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