The backwards lyrics that The Beatles added to a song for fun
After John Lennon’s tragic murder, there was no chance that The Beatles would ever get back together again. For all of the magic each individual held within themselves, there would never be a way to get every member on the same page without one of them missing. Once Yoko Ono discovered some old demos that Lennon hadn’t finished, ‘The Fab Three’ returned to the studio with ELO frontman Jeff Lynne to work their magic again.
Although ‘Real Love’ was a completed Lennon song that didn’t have a final recording yet, ‘Free as a Bird’ presented a bit of a challenge to the band’s surviving members. As opposed to a finished track, the song was still in the writing stages at the time of recording, with Lennon blocking out different pieces of the track with scat singing.
Since the rest of the group was given creative control, McCartney added his flair to the mix, nearly contradicting the original message of Lennon’s song in his verses. Although Lennon seems uneasy in his verses talking about “the life that we once knew”, Macca talks about how those days always made him feel free as a bird. Compared to the back and forth they were used to in their prime, the Lennon/McCartney partnership was back to making music together again.
Through some tough mixing choices on Lynne’s part, Lennon’s original demo recording at home was turned into a loop, making the song stay at a consistent tempo as the rest of the band added their own flavour. Capping things off with a brilliant guitar solo from George Harrison, the band also included one of their favourite tricks, backmasking.
Having toyed with backward music as far back as the days of Revolver, McCartney pointed out that the final few moments of the song contain pieces of nonsense strung together backwards, recalling to Observer Music Monthly that it was intended “to give all those Beatles nuts something to do”.
For many Beatles nuts, the fun was only just about to start. With the release of the video for the song, the editors crammed in every single Beatles reference they could think of. While showing clips of the band in their prime, there are different pieces of Beatles lore sprinkled throughout each frame, from the vision of the famous crosswalk at the front of Abbey Road Studios to ending on a view of a road with ‘Lovely Rita’ the meter maid delivering a ticket to a car parked on the side of the street. The video of ‘Real Love’ was equally heartbreaking, showing Lennon’s classic piano being lifted into the heavens alongside the group’s Sgt Pepper uniforms.
Despite some initial pushback from national radio, ‘Free As a Bird’ became one of the final hits of The Beatles’ career, wrapping up their legacy with a final hoorah and giving fans even more outtakes from their golden years with the release of the Anthology series. It had been over 20 years since the band played together again, but that internal chemistry amongst musical blood brothers never truly disappeared.
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