The Word

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The Word is a song off The Beatles' 1965 album Rubber Soul. It was written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

Contents

Writing

John recalled the inspiration for the song, "It sort of dawned on me that love was the answer, when I was younger, on the Rubber Soul album. My first expression of it was a song called The Word. The word is 'love', in the good and the bad books that I have read, whatever, wherever, the word is 'love'. It seems like the underlying theme to the universe." The song was the Beatles' first to deal with peace and love. Originally, they had intended to write a song around a single note. Paul recalled, "We smoked a bit of pot, then we wrote out a multicoloured lyric sheet, the first time we'd ever done that. We normally didn't smoke when we were working. It got in the way of songwriting because it would just cloud your mind up - 'Oh, shit, what are we doing?' It's better to be straight. But we did this multicoloured thing." John Lennon had let Yoko Ono give the lyrics away to John Cage as a fiftieth birthday present. Cag later reproduced the handwritten lyrics in his book Notations, a collection of scores from modern music.

Recording

The song was recorded in three takes in a 9:00 PM to 4:00 AM session on November 10, 1965. After the basic track was recorded, backing vocals, Paul playing piano, Ringo playing maracas, and George Martin playing harmonium were overdubbed.

Recording Sessions


LOVE Mix

A mix of The Word was included on the 2006 remix album LOVE, in an artificial medley with Drive My Car and What You're Doing. Also included in the mix were horn parts from Savoy Truffle.

Personnel

The Beatles

Guest Musicians

Production

Available Versions

Available On

Cover Versions

  • Johnny Dickinson
  • Mindy Smith

Source

Retrieved from "http://www.beatleswiki.org/wiki/The_Word"
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