Yellow Submarine (song)

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Yellow Submarine
The Beatles
publication 5th August 1966
length 2 min 39 s
Genre (s) pop
Author (s) Lennon / McCartney
album revolver
Cover version
look here

Yellow Submarine ( English Yellow Submarine ) is on the album Revolver published in 1966 Song of the Beatles . In 1968 it became the namesake and theme song of the cartoon Yellow Submarine and appeared on the corresponding soundtrack of the same name . The song is under the copyright of Lennon / McCartney , which was common in Beatles times .

Emergence

Sheet music sample: Refrain from Yellow Submarine ( audio sample ? / I )Audio file / audio sample

Paul McCartney , who essentially wrote Yellow Submarine , wrote the song in the home of his partner Jane Asher's parents' house , where he lived at the time. From the start, he intended to write a nursery rhyme that Beatles drummer Ringo Starr would sing. Because of its small vocal range , the vocal melody only has a small pitch range .

McCartney, who was born and raised in the port city of Liverpool , wrote the song from the perspective of a sailor who describes his life to children (“In the town where I was born, lived a man who sailed to sea; […]”). John Lennon helped out with the text in a few places, and Donovan also contributed a line. McCartney later protested against any deeper interpretation of the song, insisting that it was just a meaningless nursery rhyme.

admission

Yellow Submarine was recorded on a four-track machine at Abbey Road Studios in London over two days . George Martin was the producer and Geoff Emerick was the sound engineer . The main instruments were played by all four Beatles on May 26, 1966:

  • John Lennon: acoustic guitar
  • Paul McCartney: acoustic guitar
  • George Harrison : Bass
  • Ringo Starr: drums

On June 1, 1966, many effects were added that were taken from a cabinet in the recording studio: chains, ship bells, whistles or even a cash register. Lennon blew air into a glass of water with a straw, and he and McCartney called naval commands.

For the recording on June 1, 1966, the Beatles invited friends to participate in the recording, including Marianne Faithfull , Donovan and Brian Jones . The close employees of the Beatles - u. a. their chauffeur - contributed vocals and effects.

After the line “and the band begins to play […]”, Geoff Emerick added the recording of a brass band. Since there could have been copyright problems here, he cut up the recording and reassembled the audio snippets at random in order to obscure the source of the recording.

Yellow Submarine originally had an introduction spoken by Ringo Starr, which was discarded when the song was finally mixed. It wasn't until 1994 that Yellow Submarine was published, including the introduction, as part of the Anthology series. This version also contains a number of sound effects that were mixed out in the original version.

publication

The single Yellow Submarine was the Beatles' 13th single in the UK and was released on August 5, 1966, the day before the Beatles album Revolver , on which the song also appeared. The single was a so-called double A-side , on the other side of the single the song Eleanor Rigby was published.

The song sold better in the UK than in the US . The single reached number one on the UK singles chart and was there for 13 weeks. It became the UK's best-selling single of 1966. In the United States, the single fell short of number one. One reason for this may have been a controversial discussion in 1966 about John Lennon's statement that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus .

On the other hand, the Beatles album Yesterday and Today had just been released in the USA , which depicted the four Beatles in meat clothes and decorated with dismantled toy dolls and lumps of meat on the front, which was also publicly criticized. Still, the single sold over a million copies in the United States, earning the band its 21st  gold record . The Beatles had overtaken Elvis Presley . In Germany , Yellow Submarine was also number one in the German single charts and stayed in the top ten for 13 weeks.

Cover versions

As with many Beatles songs, countless cover versions of this song appeared in various languages in the years that followed . In 1966 there was a French version by Maurice Chevalier entitled Le sous-marin vert . Bill Ramsey published a German version titled Yellow, Yellow, Yellow is the Yellow Submarine . Also in the children's show Sesame Street was Yellow Submarine feeder. While the English text is sung there in the US version, Volker Ludwig translated the text for the German broadcast as “We live in the green and yellow submarine”.

Football battle chant

The catchy and easy to singing the chorus of Yellow Submarine meant that the melody was adopted for singing fans at football matches. The text varies, however - depending on the teams involved. The most widespread is the text “Take off Bayern 's lederhosen!”, The author of which is considered to be the Kaiserslautern stadium announcer Udo Scholz . Supporters of FSV Mainz 05 use the melody for the text "We are just a carnival club!"

In tourism

A diving boat christened the Yellow Submarine in a dry dock on Gran Canaria

Sometimes tourist submarines are painted yellow and christened Yellow Submarine . Such an underwater excursion is often accompanied by the original song or a cover version in the respective national language.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Beatles Interview Database: Yellow Submarine
  2. ↑ Barry Miles: Paul McCartney. Many years from now . Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1999. ISBN 3-499-60892-8 ; P. 330.
  3. ^ Mark Lewisohn : The Complete Beatles Chronicle , ISBN 0-600-61001-2 .
  4. ^ Mark Lewisohn: The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions , ISBN 0-600-61207-4 .
  5. ↑ Geoff Emerick: You make the Beatles! , ISBN 3-442-36746-8 .
  6. ^ Mark Lewisohn: Booklet for the Anthology
  7. ↑ Yellow Submarine - The history of this classic Beatles song
  8. ↑ Yellow Submarine In: The Beatles-Bible
  9. ↑ charts-surfer.de
  10. ↑ Cracker in all corners - Yellow Submarine - The Beatles ( Memento from July 1, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) . At: 90elf.de