A closer look at the poster that inspired The Beatles’ song ‘Mr Kite’
The Beatles had all manner of inspirations for songs across their catalogue. From their time spent with Maharishi in India, to LSD, to the onslaught of the Soviet Union, John Lennon and Paul McCartney always found something to write about. One fascinating source of inspiration came from a circus poster for the song ‘Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!’ on Sgt. Pepper’s.
Some have suggested that Lennon had written the song about heroin, as it mentioned the nickname for the drug, “horse”. However, Lennon was adamant that it had no such influence, even if he had previously written songs about other drugs like LSD.
Lennon once said: “There was Henry the Horse in a song I wrote called ‘Mr Kite’. The lyrics, which I got most of it off, were from an old poster for an old-fashioned circus from the 1800s, and it was all about a fair, and the horse was there, and they said Henry the horse was horse [heroin] which I did know anything about.”
The song had been inspired by a poster for a famous circus leader named Pablo Fanque. Fanque was one of the first black circus leaders in Britain for over 30 years, and his troupe was one of the most famous in Victorian England. Fanque performed in the act, and his most notorious stunt was leaping over a carriage on top of a horse.
During the creation of another Beatles song, Lennon first came across Pablo Fanque’s Circus Royale. On a break from creating the promotional video for ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, Lennon stumbled into an antique shop in Rochdale and was struck by the poster advertising Fanque’s troupe.
The gaudy artwork professed the wonders of “Mr. Henderson, the thrower, wire dancer, vaulter and rider”, Zanthus, “One of the best Broke Horses in the world”, and Mr. Kite, who was pictured playing the trumpet whilst balancing on his head. Lennon bought the poster, took it home and hung it in the room where he composed a number of Beatles songs.
Given the newfound history that the poster had after Lennon purchased it and referenced it in ‘Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite’, it was recreated by Peter Dean, who painstakingly used a Victorian press to make each individual print. Discussing his recreation, Dean said: “As a lifelong Beatles fan, I found myself simply wanting to hang a copy of this poster on my wall. As a designer, however, I couldn’t accept the many poor imitations I found – all of which use jarringly incorrect fonts (like Futura and Helvetica) and low-quality copies-of-copies of the illustrations.”
He added, “So I set about doing it properly. What I thought might be a few weeks of work became several months, where sometimes the prospect of one day owning this poster seemed far away. But we got there in the end, and I’m truly delighted with the end result.”
See the poster below.
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