All You Need Is Love

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All You Need Is Love is a song by The Beatles on their 1967 album Magical Mystery Tour. It was written by John Lennon and credited to Lennon/McCartney.

Contents

[edit] Writing

John Lennon wrote All You Need Is Love specifically for a 25-country live TV broadcast of The Beatles performing the song on Our World. Ringo said, "We were big enough to command an audience of that size, and it was for love. It was for love and bloody peace. It was a fabulous time. I even get excited now when I realise that's what it was for: peace and love, people putting flowers in guns." The BBC had gotten the idea of using new satelite relays to broadcast live around the world. The Beatles seemed like the right choice to represent Britain, so John wrote this song specifically for the broadcast. Engineer Geoff Emerick said, "I don't know if they had prepared any ideas but they left it very late to write the song. John said, 'Oh God, is it that close? I suppose we'd better write something.'" The Our World broadcast took place on June 25, 1967. The basic tracks had been recorded only eleven days before the broadcast itself. They recorded it only two weeks after the release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The Beatles decided to take the BBC's offer of playing in front of an audience, then estimated to be 400 million people. Paul recalled, "All You Need Is Love was John's song. I threw in a few ideas, as did the other members of the group, but it was largely ad libs like singing She Loves You or Greensleeves or silly things at the end and we made those up on the spot. The chorus, 'All you need is love', is simple, but the verse is quite complex; in fact I never really understood it, the message is rather complex. It was a good song that we had handy that had an anthemic chorus." Brian Epstein said, "The time got nearer and nearer and they still hadn't written anything. Then, about three weeks before the programme, they sat down to write. The record was completed in 10 days. This is an inspired song, because they wrote it for a worldwide programme and they really wanted to give the world a message. It could hardly have been a better message. It is a wonderful, beautiful, spine-chilling record."

[edit] Recording

The song was first recorded at Olympic Sound Studios in Barnes, London on June 14, 1967. The Beatles recorded the basic track along with some vocals. On this basic track, John plays harpsichord, Paul plays double bass, George plays violin, and Ringo plays drums. John told Playboy in 1980, "We just put a track down. Because I knew the chords I played it on whatever it was, harpsichord. George played a violin because we felt like doing it like that and Paul played a double bass. And they can't play them, so we got some nice little noises coming out. It sounded like an orchestra, but it's just them two playing the violin and that. So then we thought, 'Ah, well, we'll have some more orchestra around this little freaky orchestra that we've got.' But there was no perception of how it sounded at the end until they did it that day, until the rehearsal. It still sounded a bit strange then." On June 19, they recorded overdubs, including more drums, lead and backing vocals, George Martin's piano part, and John Lennon's banjo part. On June 23 and June 24, rehearsals and additional recording, including the orchestra overdub. During the morning of June 24, there was a press call for The Beatles, so more than 100 journalists and photographers came to the studio.

[edit] The "Our World" TV Broadcast

The Beatles spent much of the time on June 25, 1967, the day of the Our World broadcast, rehearsing. The Beatles played to a pre-recorded backing track, although some elements, such as the vocals, bass, guitar solo, drums, and orchestra, were live. Paul later said, "We went around to EMI for the show. We'd done a lot of pre-recording, so we sang live to the backing track. We'd worked on it all with George Martin's help, and it was a good day. We went in there early in the morning to rehearse with the cameras, and there was a bit orchestra - for all that stuff with Greensleeves playing on the way out of the song. The band was asked to invite people, so we had people like Mick and Eric, and all our friends and wifelets." The Beatles had very rarely, up to that point, had a TV camera in the recording studio. In fact, the only other time before was the recording of A Day In The Life for a planned Sgt. Pepper TV movie. For the program, all The Beatles, except for Ringo, sat on stools while their friends and family sat on the floor around them. Among the people on the floor were Mick Jagger (of The Rolling Stones), Marianne Faithfull (Pop star and Mick Jagger's girlfriend), Keith Richard (of The Rolling Stones), Keith Moon (of The Who), Eric Clapton (of Cream), Pattie Harrison (George Harrison's wife), Jane Asher (Paul McCartney's girlfriend), Mike McCartney (Paul McCartney's brother), Graham Nash, and Hunter Davies (Beatles associate who wrote the 1968 authorized biography on The Beatles). George Harrison recalled, "I remember the recording, because we decided to get some people in who looked like the 'love generation'. If you look closely at the floor, I know that Mick Jagger is there. But there's also an Eric Clapton, I believe, in full psychedelic regalia and permed hair, sitting right there. It was good: the orchestra was there and it was played live. We rehearsed for a while, and then it was: 'You're on at twelve o'clock, lads.' The man upstairs pointed his finger and that was that. We did it - one take." The program was sceduled to run at 9:36 in the local time, though it was close to being off-schedule due to technical problems. Producer George Martin recallled, "I was on camera for the broadcast. It was a bit of a panic because it was done in the big number one studio at EMI. The control room was then just at the bottom of the stairs. It wasn't very large, and there was Geoff Emerick, the tape operator and myself in there. We had prepared a basic track of the recording for the television show, but we were going to do a lot live. There was a live orchestra, the singing was live, the audience certainly was, and we knew it was going to be a live television show. There was also a camera in the control room. With about thirty seconds to go, there was a phone call. It was the producer of the show, saying: 'I'm afraid I've lost all contact with the studio - you're going to have to relay the instructions to them, because we're going on air any moment now.' I thought, 'My God, if you're going to make a fool of yourself, you might as well do it properly in front of 350 million people. At that point I just laughed." Though the broadcast only lasted six minutes and eleven seconds, The Beatles were not expecting it when they did go on air. In fact, they went on shortly before they were scheduled to. Engineer Geoff Emerick recalls, "We actually went on air about 40 seconds early. George and I were having a welcome shot of Scotch whisky when we got the word over the intercom. There was a big panic to hide the bottle and the glasses. We were shoving them under the mixing console!" The orchestra members wore formal dress and The Beatles and invited guests wore colorful clothes. All the studio guest sung in the fadeout, and some even daced in a conga line around the studio. George Martin, who was paid £15 to arrange the orchestra, wrote parts of Bach's Bradenburgh Concerto, Glenn Miller's arrangement of In The Mood, and La Marseillaise. John Lennon also ad-libbed parts of She Loves You into the song. Martin recalled, "In arranging it, we shoved La Marseillaise on the front, and a whole string of stuff on the end. I fell into deep water over that. I'm afraid that amongst all the little bits and pieces I used in the play-out, which the boys didn't know about, was a bit of In The Mood. Everyone thought In The Mood was in the public domain, and it is - but the introduction isn't. The introduction is an arrangement, and it was the introduction I took. That was a published work. EMI came to me and said: 'You put this in the arrangement, so now you've got to indemnify us against any action that might be taken.' I said, 'You must be joking. I got fifteen pounds for that arrangement, that's all.' They saw the joke. I think they paid a fee to Keith Prowse, or whoever the publisher was, and I wrote the arrangements out. Greensleeves was also there at half tempo, to weave in with a bit of Bach and the bit of In The Mood." After the broadcast was over and the guests had left, Ringo overdubbed a drum roll onto the intro and John rerecorded some of his vocals. They remixed the song with the new overdubs on June 26, in order for a single release.

[edit] Single Release

Surprisingly, The Beatles did not decide to release the song as a single until June 24, the day before the Our World broadcast. It was released in the UK on July 7, 1967 with Baby You're A Rich Man as the B-Side. This single was notable for the fact that it was the first single to credit George Martin for producing. Not surprisingly, the song was a big success around the world. On July 12, the single entered number one on the UK charts, staying there for four weeks. It was released in the US on July 17, entering the Top 40 on July 29. It would spend a week at number one.

[edit] LOVE Mix

A mix of this song was included on the 2006 remix album LOVE. The only difference between the original and the LOVE mix is the fadeout, which contains the guitar riff from Ticket To Ride and vocal parts from Rain and Sgt. Pepper's Loenly Hearts Club Band. Towards the end, the orchestral backing from Good Night and a short extract from The Beatles Third Christmas Record are played, although All You Need Is Love itself is already faded out.

[edit] Personnel

[edit] The Beatles

[edit] Guest Musicians

[edit] Production

[edit] Available Versions

[edit] Available On

[edit] Cover Versions

  • Bajaga & Instruktori
  • Cheap Trick featuring Billy Corgan
  • Elvis Costello
  • Echo and the Bunnymen
  • Les Fradkin
  • The Freedom Sounds
  • Noel Gallagher
  • Lynden David Hall
  • Tom Jones
  • Yoko Kanno
  • Kids Incorporated
  • Paul Kuhn
  • James Last
  • Dave Matthews
  • Ewan McGregor
  • Nada Surf
  • New Musik
  • Nirvana
  • Oasis
  • The Punkles
  • Jim Sturgess and Dana Fuchs featuring Martin Luther McCoy and TV Carpio
  • Bob Thiele & His New Happy Times Orchestra featuring The Sunflower Singers & Steve Allen
  • U2
  • The Undead

[edit] Source

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