4 Beatles Songs That Changed Drastically From Conception to Realization

The best artists tend to be perfectionists. They will tinker with music that most others would think is perfectly fine until they get it right where they want it to be. And they’re usually right about the end result.

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The Beatles certainly harbored the tendency to constantly fuss with their songs in a quest for transcendence. These four classics epitomize the correlation between their restlessness and their excellence.

“Yellow Submarine”

Even a group as anthologized as The Beatles has hidden surprises in the vault. In recent years, deep-dive reissues of the Fab Four’s most famous albums have been popping up with regularity. And, on Revolver, an early demo of John Lennon singing the verse melody to “Yellow Submarine” surfaced. Most folks had assumed that the song was a Paul McCartney creation. The lyrics to this unearthed demo were startling, with Lennon singing, “In the place where I was born/No one cared, no one cared.” That harrowing statement represents quite the 180 from where the song finished up, which was as a genial children’s song given over to Ringo Starr to bellow. One wonders what song might have emerged had Lennon followed up on his initial instincts.

“Tomorrow Never Knows”

By the time The Beatles made it to Revolver in 1966, they insisted on testing the limits of the studio. In “Tomorrow Never Knows”, they found the perfect vehicle for such exploration. The song, in its basic form, mostly lurched about on a single chord. Meanwhile, John Lennon spouted profound lyrics about the nature of existence. You can hear on the Anthology version of the song that the group was messing around with a bizarre rhythm that sounded like a steamer muscling its way through heavy waves. They eventually scrapped that in favor of insistent drum patter and wild tape loops that were thrown together at random for maximum anarchy.

“Strawberry Fields Forever”

The Beatles wanted to make a statement with their first single of 1967, considering it was the first music they were releasing after their decision to stop touring. “Strawberry Fields Forever” made that statement in hallucinatory, haunting fashion. John Lennon wrote it on acoustic guitar and then brought it into the studio without any set idea of how it should sound. He liked it when the band added a more traditional rock backing behind him. And he also liked it when an “Eleanor Rigby”-like string section was used as a foundation. The eventual decision was to meld both approaches together. Producer George Martin handled the technical aspects to make this difficult request happen.

“Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da”

In the case of the other three songs on this list, all four Beatles seem to have been on board with the fiddling. That does not seem to have been the case with “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da”. Paul McCartney refused to let the song go until he found the right feel for it. As a result, he coaxed the other three Beatles into endless takes. At one point, the song took on a samba feel, which certainly would have been a departure. It eventually made its way to a reggae-style rhythm. And what about the somewhat uncharacteristically aggressive piano opening? That came courtesy of a frustrated John Lennon finally deciding once and for all how the intro would go.

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