‘Yellow Submarine’: The Beatles song Mick Jagger called “silly”
Neither The Beatles nor The Rolling Stones are immune to criticism. Both may be world-famous—The Beatles being arguably the most significant band in history—but that doesn’t mean they were beyond reproach. Reflecting the playful spirit of their generation, both bands often embraced silliness in their music. However, according to Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger, The Beatles occasionally took their frivolity too far—something he admitted he didn’t always appreciate.
That might seem rich coming from a man whose group have seldom been celebrated for writing songs of a weighty manner and are best known for their hellraising and drug-fuelled frolicking as they are their music, but, in a way, he’s bang on. The Beatles might have changed the world with some of their most thematically substantial tunes and, on the other end of the spectrum, efforts that tore up the established structures of popular music, but there were many moments when they were just darn goofballs.
Even their 1967 psychedelic masterpiece, Sgt Pepper’s, is littered with ridiculous moments. While you can put this down to the effects of extensive LSD-taking, it was just part and parcel of The Beatles. Although the group were one of the first to take after Bob Dylan in writing about emotional, personal matters, they were also no strangers to a bit of lighthearted fun. Many of these ostensibly silly moments were sardonic, too, and a way of the group taking the mick out of the rest of the world, but due to their subtlety and utter madness, people failed to see through it.
Mick Jagger also failed to see past the surface level. His ex-partner, singer Marianne Faithfull, revealed this in her 2007 memoir, Memories, Dreams & Reflections, when she claimed that Jagger dismissed the Fab Four’s 1966 radical departure, ‘Yellow Submarine’, as “a bit silly”.
“Mick might, very occasionally, put The Beatles down for their provincialism, which, if you’re from London and they’re from Liverpool, is a very natural reaction,” she wrote. “But he’d never put their music down. Well, of ‘Yellow Submarine’ or those whimsical Beatle songs, he might say, ‘Now that is a bit silly.’ I never thought so; I loved it, still do. Also, something like ‘With a Little Help from My Friends’, but these are obviously not the sort of things the Stones would be into.”
They might not have been the sort of tracks that The Rolling Stones were “into”, but they certainly had much more artistic merit than anything the London band have ever done. Furthermore, ‘Yellow Submarine’ might have been something of a novelty song, but the Revolver classic was completely devoid of standard rock instrumentation, a first for the genre, showing that it could be taken in many innovative routes. Its significance is tremendous, outside of the lighthearted chorus and acid-fuelled character.
Faithfull, who supplemented her fame with a cover of The Beatles’ ‘Yesterday’, has a much more balanced account of the Liverpudlians. She knew that beneath the sugary veneer, there was a real “edge” to their music. “Their sweetness is very superficial,” she maintained. “You hear the undercurrent in Paul’s bass playing, you hear it in John’s harmonies, you hear it in the call-and-response stuff.”
That was always one of the truly special things about The Beatles: depth. Although they weren’t the first to covet substance in popular music and followed Bob Dylan’s lead, what they did with it and how far they spread the message is remarkable.
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