You know how a song gets stuck in your head?
Well, since sometime late last evening, I’ve had the Beatles’ “Your Mother Should Know” whirling through my brain. It was there when I was munching on some chips and dip before I went to bed last night, and it’s still there this morning. It’s as if something wants me to write about it this morning. So, okay.
As I would guess many know, the song first showed up as part of the soundtrack for the Beatles’ poorly received television film Magical Mystery Tour in December 1967 and was included on the six-track EP released in Britain at the time. Here in the U.S., those six tracks made up one side of the LP Magical Mystery Tour, with Side Two of the album made up of five singles and B-sides that had been already released on 45s here in the States but that had not yet shown up on any albums.
Releasing singles or EPs and then not putting them on any albums was standard practice for EMI in Britain; it was not in the U.S., which was one of the reasons – as I noted here at least once – that the group’s U.K. catalog was far different than the U.S. catalog until sometime in the 1990s, when CD releases worldwide reflected the original U.K. releases, with one major exception: The U.S. release of Magical Mystery Tour became the standard release. (What happened to those singles and B-sides released in the U.K. that never showed up on albums? They came out on two CDs titled Past Masters, Vol. 1 and 2.)
Anyway, I first heard “Your Mother Should Know” much later than did most of my peers – as was often the case with popular music. Having come late to the party, I was gathering during my senior year of high school as much of the group’s music as I could, and my pal Scott, evidently tiring of the album, passed Magical Mystery Tour my way.
And I discovered “Your Mother Should Know.” Written by Paul McCartney, the song was not rock or even current pop; its style hailed, I learned much later, from the British music hall tradition, as did his “When I’m Sixty-Four” from the Sgt. Pepper album. Author Tim Riley writes in Tell Me Why, a book dissecting every recording the Beatles made, that “Your Mother Should Know” is “When I’m Sixty-Four” “in knickers,” whatever that might mean. Barry Levin, in his McCartney biography Many Years From Now, quotes McCartney on the song’s origins:
I wrote it in Cavendish Avenue on the harmonium I have in the dining room there. My Aunty Jin and Uncle Harry and a couple of relatives were staying and they were in the living room just across the hall, so I just went to the dining room and spent a few hours with the door open with them listening. And I suppose because of the family atmosphere “Your Mother Should Know” came in. It’s a very music-hall kind of thing, probably influenced by the fact that my Aunty Jin was in the house.
The group recorded the tune in August 1967 at Chappell Studios in London, trying a second version that was not used in mid-September and then adding overdubs to the first version at the end of September. According to William J. Dowlding’s book Beatlesongs, McCartney played piano and bass and handled the lead vocal and backing vocals, Lennon played organ and added backing vocals, George Harrison played tambourine and tabla and sang backing vocals, and Ringo Starr played drums.
As I write, I’m thinking that I may have actually heard the tune a month or so earlier than when my friend Scott gave me the album: In August 1970, the evening DJ at WJON, a fellow calling himself Ronald P. Michaels – his initials were thus RPM – spent his entire three-hour shift playing nothing but Beatles tracks, and I recorded it all. I long ago lost the tapes and the carefully hand-written list of the tunes Michaels played, but it could be that “Your Mother Should Know” was included.
I thought, when I began doing a little digging this morning, that I would find some disparaging remarks about the song from Lennon. They may be out there, as Lennon was not fond of McCartney’s excursions in to the music hall style: He was particularly savage over the years in his comments about McCartney’s “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” from 1968’s The Beatles (better known as the White Album), and none of the other three Beatles liked McCartney’s “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” which showed up on 1969’s Abbey Road.
I don’t know that I’m as tickled by “Your Mother Should
Know” today as I was fifty-some years ago, but it’s still a pretty good piece
of pop-craft. And maybe writing this much about it drives it from my head this
morning. Here’s the tune as it was presented in the film Magical Mystery Tour:
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