‘Wild Honey Pie’: The Beatles song Paul McCartney made up on the spot
There are many words associated with The Beatles’ discography: innovative, genius, and prolific. The latter of the bunch was largely a good thing for the Liverpudlian four-piece. Their prolific output was merely a by-product of their genius, an ability to turn on a smooth-running tap of creativity and continuously turn sonic water into wine.
But with all things prolific, there are bound to be a few misfires. In the case of The Beatles, there really are just a few to pick from. For many, the pristine, clean-cut days of Please Please Me and the toe-curling lyrics in ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ should be consigned to the bins of history while their undeniably iconic Abbey Road features one too many Ringo Starr-led songs for fans’ liking.
But ultimately, at the heart of most bad Beatles songs is a contention amongst fans. They’re loved and hated equally, sparking debates amongst devotees as to why it may be bad or good. Generally, there’s no universality to the thinking that one song reigns as particularly bad.
The only exception to that rule is perhaps ‘Wild Honey Pie’. Existing in the annoying end of McCartney’s spectrum of nonsense and experimentation, it could be deemed an arrogant showcasing of their artistic invisibility. A sort of odds and ends of studio experimentation, it would rightly be dismissed without hesitation in any other studio session, but for The Beatles, they’ve clearly been tempted by the idea of putting literally anything out with the safe knowledge that it will likely be regarded as genius.
In 1994, McCartney conceded it was a product of loose creativity, saying: “We were in an experimental mode, and so I said, ‘Can I just make something up?’ I started off with the guitar and did a multitracking experiment in the control room… It was very homemade– it wasn’t a big production at all”.
He added: “I just made up this short piece and I multitracked the harmony to that, and a harmony to that, and a harmony to that, and built it up sculpturally with a lot of vibrato on the (guitar) strings, really pulling the strings madly– hence ‘Wild Honey Pie.'”
The fairly modest beginnings of the idea behind ‘Wild Honey Pie’ are arguably no different from any other Beatles track. Ultimately, it’s the execution that largely differs. The harmonies throughout the track echo through you like a fever dream, which, combined with a chord progression that uses all major chords, ends up sounding like a bad trip at a 20th-century circus.
In relation to the point I opened this article with, it’s hard to argue that it was, in fact, their legacy of genius that allowed them to get away with this. It’s somewhat ironic; the failure of this track largely rests on their complacency that their genius knows no bounds, but ultimately, the pardoning of such a failing stems from their pre-existing genius. We can only wonder what the legacy of The Beatles may have been if this track had been released five years earlier; would they be heralded as forward-thinking creatives or simply another bunch of misinformed youths barking up a nonsensical tree?
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