Free as a bird

This article is about the Beatles song Free as a Bird ; for the Supertramp album see Free as a Bird (album) .

Free as a bird
The Beatles
publication	November 20, 1995
length	4 min 26 s
Genre (s)	Pop rock
Author (s)	John Lennon / Paul McCartney / George Harrison / Ringo Starr
album	Anthology 1

Free as a Bird ( english Free as a bird ) is a song that as a virtual reunion of the British rock band The Beatles in November 1995 on the album Anthology 1 was released. In December 1995 the song was also released as a single .

origin

The origin of Free as a Bird is an unfinished composition by John Lennon . He had recorded it privately in New York - presumably in 1977 - on a normal audio cassette . During this recording he accompanied himself exclusively on a piano. John Lennon was unable to complete the song until his death in 1980. In the middle section in particular, a few lines of text and harmonies were missing.

In January 1994, Lennon's widow Yoko Ono handed the tape to the remaining Beatles Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr so that they could finish or complete the recording. They asked Jeff Lynne to co-produce it.

admission

The three Beatles who were still alive at the time said they would pretend when recording Free as a Bird that Lennon had gone on vacation after starting work and had left them to finish the song.

“Let's pretend John's gone on holiday, and he sent us a cassette and said 'finish this up, I trust you, just do your stuff on it, finish it up for me.'”

- Paul McCartney

The final recordings took place in February and March 1994. First of all, Lennon's original cassette recording had to be reworked and re-cut to the exact beat. After this elaborate work, which was mainly carried out by producer Jeff Lynne, McCartney, Harrison and Starr added the recordings of their instruments (electric and acoustic guitars , bass , piano and drums ). They filled the middle section, which Lennon had left incomplete, with newly written text and a new melody.

The song ends with a slightly psychedelic sounding outro in which a ukulele can be heard among other things . A reverse-played quote from John Lennon was incorporated into the outro, which, when played the right way round, results in the sentence “Turned out nice again”. This saying is attributed to the British singer George Formby , whom Harrison and Lennon admired.

publication

Free as a Bird first appeared in November 1995 as the first track on the album Anthology . In December 1995 it was released as a single in various formats. It was initially released on CD and cassette , and a week later on vinyl . In addition to Free as a Bird , all formats included the piece Christmas Time (Is Here Again) , which was originally included on a 1967 Christmas record for members of the Beatles fan club. The CD single also contained two other previously unreleased pieces by the Beatles. On the one hand an alternative version of the song I Saw Her Standing There , on the other hand an alternative version of This Boy . In Great Britain the single reached number two in the singles charts; ranked sixth on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US . In Germany , 37th place was the best.

When a video compilation called 1+ was released in 2015, the song was remixed by Jeff Lynne , Steve Ray, Giles Martin and Sam Okell. Sometimes alternative guitar tracks by George Harrison were used and Lennon's vocals were mixed louder. In addition, Lennon's saying at the end of the song “Turned out nice again” can now be heard played forward.

Video

Vincent Joilet and Joe Pytka produced a video for the song in which different locations can be seen from the perspective of a flying bird, which have been specially prepared for countless references to Beatles songs . The video won a Grammy Award in 1997 for Best Short Form Music Video .

Individual references in the video for Free as a Bird 

• At the beginning of the song there is a flutter of birds like in Across the Universe (Wildlife Version),
• there are children's pictures of the Beatles
• the Liverpool docks in memory of John Lennon's father,
• the dock workers (text line from Rain : “[…] they run and hide their heads […]”),
• a performance by the Beatles at the Cavern Club in Liverpool ,
• Strawberry Fields by Strawberry Fields Forever ,
• running children of Lady Madonna - (“[…] see how they run”),
• a delivery truck with the label “Egg. Co. "and an egg man from I Am the Walrus ,
• two men who look like Taxman officials graze the picture,
• the "Poppy Girl" from Penny Lane ,
• the barber has a picture of the Beatles in the window of Penny Lane ,
• a lizard can be seen for a short moment on the windowsill (“[…] like a lizard on a window pane […]” from Happiness Is a Warm Gun )
• two women leave a shop, one of them is Polythene Pam ,
• In the shop window there is a "Help wanted" sign inspired by Help! ,
• a boy whispers something in his girlfriend's ear, a reference to Do You Want to Know a Secret ,
• two people sit in the car: Drive My Car ,
• the anthology album cover in a shop window,
• a birthday cake from Birthday with the number 64 from When I'm Sixty-Four ,
• a sign that reads Dr. Robert ,
• a crowd and the traffic accident (“A crowd of people […] He blew his mind out in a car” from A Day in the Life ) ,
• a fire engine from Penny Lane (“He likes to keep his fire engine clean”),
• “Pretty little policemen in a row” from I Am the Walrus ,
• a helter-skelter slide made from helter skelter ,
• a dragon ( English : 'kite') of Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! ,
• someone disappears over a ladder into a window from She Came In Through the Bathroom Window ,
• a large sunflower (“Everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers, that grow so incredibly high” from Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds ),
• Children with pig masks, inspired by Piggies ,
• a writer working at a desk, inspired by paperback writer ,
• the clock shows 10:09 a.m. - One After 909 ,
• green apples in a fruit bowl as a symbol for their record label Apple Records ,
• The Beatles are televised during their appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show ,
• a newspaper entitled "4,000 Holes Found In Blackburn, Lancashire" from A Day in the Life ,
• a portrait of the Queen , inspired by Her Majesty , text line in Penny Lane (“And in his pocket is a portrait of the Queen”),
• a man repairs a roof like in Fixing a Hole ,
• a “Blue Meanie” from the film Yellow Submarine peeps out of a hole in the road (“[…] sleeps in a hole in the road […]” from Mean Mr. Mustard) ,
• a monkey on a roof: Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey ,
• a bulldog is walking on the left side of the street: Hey Bulldog ,
• a "Newspaper Taxi" like in Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds drives up the street,
• a woman disappears in a taxi: She's Leaving Home ,
• a picture of Mao Zedong is carried in the background: “But if you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao” from Revolution ,
• John Lennon and Yoko Ono dance the waltz to I Me Mine and The Ballad of John and Yoko ,
• the Magical Mystery Tour bus at the end of the street,
• a man with a hunting rifle and a pith helmet ( The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill or Happiness Is a Warm Gun )
• an elephant from The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill ,
• former Beatles bassist Stuart Sutcliffe can be seen in the hotel,
• Ravi Shankar plays a sitar in the entrance hall ( Norwegian Wood , Love You To and Within You Without You ) ,
• many people from the Sgt.-Pepper album cover,
• reflective sunlight is reminiscent of Here Comes the Sun and Good Day Sunshine ,
• a statue of "Mother Mary" (Mother Mary from Let it be ),
• a tombstone with the inscription Eleanor Rigby ,
• Father McKenzie from Eleanor Rigby steps back from her tombstone,
• an old English sheepdog runs through the picture (Paul McCartney had one: Martha My Dear ),
• a woman is walking on a long and winding road ,
• Paul McCartney on a little hill from The Fool on the Hill ,
• a girl alone with a suitcase like in She's Leaving Home ,
• the zebra crossing from the Abbey Road album cover,
• a policewoman on the left side of the street from Lovely Rita .

criticism

Frank Goosen wrote about Free as a Bird : “Even the first few bars dragged on in the same Jeff Lynne sound. [...] And didn't anyone actually wonder why John Lennon didn't finish writing Free as a Bird ? It's a viscous kitsch [...], shockingly irrelevant, limp and powerless. "

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Bruce Spizer: The Beatles on Apple Records . New Orleans: 498 Productions, 2003. p. 280.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Bruce Spizer: The Beatles on Apple Records . New Orleans: 498 Productions, 2003. p. 262.
3. ^ Walter Everett: The Beatles as Musicians. Revolver through the Anthology . New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. pp. 286 f.
4. ^ Walter Everett: The Beatles as Musicians. Revolver through the Anthology . New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. pp. 288 f.
5. ↑ Free As A Bird References ( Memento from November 19, 2012 in the Internet Archive ). Accessed May 9, 2011.
6. ^ F. Goosen: The Beatles. Cologne 2020. p. 69.