Only a Northern Song

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Only A Northern Song is the second song off The Beatles' 1969 soundtrack album, Yellow Submarine. It was written by George Harrison. Ppl like you get all the brains. I just get to say thanks for he asnwer.

Contents

[edit] Writing

The song was originally written in 1966 during the sessions for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. It was written as a pun of The Beatles' music publishing company. Northern Songs was established in 1963 by Brian Epstein and Dick James to publish Lennon and McCartney's songs. George said this about the song, "Only A Northern Song was a joke relating to Liverpool, the Holy City in the North of England. In addition, the song was copyrighted Northern Songs Ltd, which I don't own, so: 'It doesn't really matter what chords I play... as it's only a Northern Song'." By 1966, George was disappointed in his small role in The Beatles, as he was starting to get into writing songs. He wrote the song mainly to complain about John and Paul's dominance in The Beatles and the fact that he was only allowed to contibute a couple songs a year. George explained what he meant here, "I realized Dick James had conned me out of the copyrights for my own songs by offering to become my publisher. As an 18 or 19-year-old kid, I thought, 'Great, somebody's gonna publish my songs!' But he never said, 'And incidentally, when you sign this document here, you're assigning me the ownership of the songs,' which is what it is. It was just a blatant theft. By the time I realized what had happened, when they were going public and making all this money out of this catalog, I wrote Only A Northern Song as what we call a 'piss-take,' just to have a joke about it." It did not make it ont the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and was held back to be used on some future project. The opportunity came when the creators of the film Yellow Submarine asked for new songs to include on the soundtrack. Paul described it this way, "[The filmmakers] wanted some new songs from us, so we recorded Only A Northern Song in Abbey Road. I remember playing a silly trumpet. My dad used to play. I can't, but I can mess around a lot - and that song gave me the perfect framework. It was very tongue in cheek." In the song, a phasing effect was unintentionally created by mixing together two rhythm tracks.

[edit] Recording

The song was first recorded on February 13, 1967, under the working title Not Known. Nine takes of the rhythm track, four complete, were recorded. The best of these was Take 3, which was given two lead vocal overdubs the next day. They returned to the song on April 20, after Sgt. Pepper had been completed. The vocals from February 14 were taken off the recording andreplaced with bass, trumpet, and glockenspiel. They made another mix and overdubbed new vocals onto the song, mixed the two versions together, and called that Take 11, the mono album version. Another mix, slightly faster, was included on Anthology 2 in 1996. It included, drums, bass, organ, and George's original lead vocal, featuring different lyrics. The bass and guitar from April 20 were included on this version. The song was not released in true stereo until 1999, when the Yellow Submarine Songtrack was released. Good point. I hadn't tuhohgt about it quite that way. :)

Fell out of bed felneig down. This has brightened my day!

[edit] Personnel

[edit] The Beatles

[edit] Production

[edit] Source

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