Birthday

From BeatlesWiki

Birthday is the first song off the second disc of The Beatles' 1968 self-titled album. It was written mostly by Paul McCartney with much help from John Lennon.

[edit] Writing

The song started with a riff-based jam, which Paul took and wrote into a full-blown song. The Beatles had scheduled the session earlier than they would have because Little Richard's film The Girl Can't Help It was being shown on TV and The Beatles all wanted to see it. As producer for this session, Chris Thomas, said, "I had mentioned to Paul a couple of days earlier about The Girl Can't Help It being on television during this evening. The idea was to start the session earlier than usual, about five o'clock in the afternoon, and then all nip around the corner to Paul's house in Cavendish Avenue, watch the film and go back to work. So on the day Paul was the first one in, and he was playing the Birthday riff. Eventually the others arrived, by which time Paul had literally written the song, right there in the studio. We had the backing track down by about 8.30, popped around to watch the film as arranged and then came back and actually finished the whole song. It was all done in a day!" Chris Thomas was sitting in for George Martin, who was out of town at the time. Paul recalls that the song was a joint effort between him and John. "We thought, 'Why not make something up?' So we got a riff going and arranged it around this riff. We said, 'We'll go to there for a few bars, then we'll do this for a few bars.' We added some lyrics, then we got the friends who were there to join in on the chorus. So that is 50-50 John and me, made up on the spot and recorded all on the same evening. I don't recall it being anybody's birthday in particular but it might have been, but the other reason for doing it is that, if you have a song that refers to Christmas or a birthday, it adds to the life of the song, if it's a good song, because people will pull it out on birthday shows, so I think there was a little bit of that at the back of our minds." John Lennon told Playboy in 1980 that the song was written in India, and although the other members dispute this and it is well known that it was written in the studio, he did say how they got the effect on the piano, "That, like all The Beatles [White] album, was written in India. Once we had our mantra, we sat in the mountains eating lousy vegetarian food with a lot of time to write all those songs. Paul wanted to write a song about birthdays, so he did that one. It's a piece of garbage, but there is one interesting sound in it: We put the piano through a guitar amplifier and put the tremolo in, which may have been the first time that happened."

[edit] Recording

The song was straightforward to record, with all four Beatles contributing (which was unusual for this album). Pattie Harrison and Yoko Ono added backing vocals. Everyone, plus Mal Evans, added handclaps to the song.