News The song John Lennon said he was “never proud of”
From day one, The Beatles never intended to be the best band in the world. While they probably had their eyes set on being big enough to rival their idols like Elvis Presley and Little Richard, none of the Fab Four could have predicted their music being revered as one of the most perfect bodies of work ever conceived by human hands. Because at the end of the day, they were still human, and John Lennon was more than happy to let people know that he wasn’t proud of one Sgt Pepper classic.
Before The Beatles had even made it to the studio to make their 1967 masterpiece, it was clear that they weren’t going to make the same mop-top songs they had been known for back in the day. They had had their fill of girls screaming at them at every show, and their departure from the road coincided with them approaching the studio in a different way, looking for different ways to make traditional rock and roll.
While the band already stretched their creative muscles on albums like Revolver, Paul McCartney came up with the idea of an imaginary band that they could inhabit for an entire project. Instead of making the kind of songs that The Beatles were supposed to make, this gave them free rein to make songs that no one had ever thought of.
Despite Macca being enthusiastic about the idea, none of the other Beatles could get on board with the concept. Although Lennon had already written a future classic in ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, most of the songs that ended up on the album would come from different pieces that Lennon had lying around.
Turning in surrealistic images on songs like ‘Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds’ and ‘Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite’, ‘Good Morning Good Morning’ would be one of the most energetic songs on the entire project. Outside of its unconventional time signature, the song is a wild ride through a man going about his daily routine, taking time to look back on his old school and eventually settling down for tea.
Even though the song provides a nice bit of energy towards the end of the album, Lennon admitted that it was far from his best work, saying in 1968, “‘Good Morning, Good Morning’, I was never proud of it. I just knocked it off to do a song. But it was writing about my past so it does get the kids because it was me at school, my whole bit”.
Then again, Lennon’s disdain might come from the slapdash way he came up with the song. Since he had to compete with McCartney’s track record, Lennon found inspiration for the song while sitting at his piano watching TV, coming up with the premise after seeing a commercial for cornflakes with the same title.
While Lennon may not have thought highly of his material, he knew the band had hit a peak with ‘A Day in the Life’, bringing the album to a rousing finish with one of the most ambitious endings to a rock album ever conceived. Whether Lennon liked the songs or not, Sgt Pepper took the entire genre of rock and roll from a passing fad to high art.
