The Beatles song that Paul McCartney rescued for his solo debut
The crossover between Beatles songs and solo songs was never much of an issue. By and large, nobody in the band was contemplating a full solo career outside of the band while they were together. Paul McCartney frequently gave away songs not used by The Beatles to artists like Mary Hopkin and Peter & Gordon, while John Lennon and George Harrison both put out experimental solo releases before The Beatles officially disbanded.
However, the difficulty of keeping credits within the band was contentious as early as 1965. When McCartney recorded ‘Yesterday’ without the accompaniment of his bandmates, producer George Martin suggested releasing the song as a solo McCartney single. Manager Brian Epstein vetoed the idea in the name of group unity, and the song later appeared as both a single and an album track credited to The Beatles.
All four members would go on to record songs credited to the band but featuring themselves as the only performers. John Lennon had ‘Julia’, George Harrison had ‘Within You Without You’, and Ringo Starr had ‘Good Night’. By the end of their partnership, Lennon and McCartney were rarely writing songs together anymore, and the division caused some conflict when it came time to choose songs for album inclusion.
During the particularly tense Get Back sessions, McCartney introduced one of his new songs, ‘Teddy Boy’. “Another song started in India, and completed in Scotland and London, gradually,” was how McCartney described the track in 1970. “This one was recorded for the Get Back film, but later not used.”
Indeed, rehearsal tapes show a couple of different renditions of ‘Teddy Boy’ rehearsed during the sessions. The song never got past rehearsals, even though Glyn Johns included the track in his own original mix of the Get Back album. It seemed that Lennon’s keen lack of interest was why ‘Teddy Boy’ was ultimately rejected for the final album.
It didn’t take long for McCartney to resurrect ‘Teddy Boy’. Before Let It Be even hit store shelves, McCartney had already released a studio recording of ‘Teddy Boy’ on his debut solo album McCartney. At that point, Let It Be had already been taken over by Phil Spector and sequenced to line up with Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s documentary film. One of the rehearsals of ‘Teddy Boy’ eventually wound up on Anthology 3, featuring a few McCartney flubs and some clear mockery from Lennon.
“We’ve now put together a version, an edit of one of the takes of us trying it, which sounds interesting,” McCartney would say about the Anthology 3 version. “You can hear on it that the band wasn’t very interested in it. I don’t know why. Maybe I hadn’t finished it enough or something. Maybe it was just tension coming in. The bit I’d like to keep actually was John sort of making fun of it. He starts towards the end of it, going, ‘Grab your partners, do-si-do,’ so we’ve kept that on. And while it was, in some way, indicative of friction, it was good-humoured friction.”
Check out the Anthology 3 version of ‘Teddy Boy’ down below.
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