The Beatles influenced a wide variety of artists who followed in their wake. But they were also fans themselves who imbibed the music of others. Occasionally, they paid homage by borrowing some good stuff.
These four Beatles songs all borrowed at least partially from the lyrics of another song. The four songs that acted as antecedents show just how widely the Fab Four cast their net for inspiration.
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“Please Please Me”
This case isn’t a word-for-word rip. But it’s clear that The Beatles’ song in question wouldn’t have been the same without the original inspiration. This example also shows that the group had a wide range of musical interests outside rock and roll. Which makes sense, because their childhood days came before the genre even really existed. John Lennon was fascinated by the opening line to the Bing Crosby song, “Please”, which went, “Lend your little ear to my pleas,” and played off the title of the song. Lennon remembered the homophones when constructing “Please Please Me”, which also includes a musical motif lifted from Roy Orbison.
“It’s All Too Much”
George Harrison probably didn’t consider it that much of an honor that the group allowed him to write two of the four songs that they included in the soundtrack to the animated film Yellow Submarine. After all, the band considered the project a bit of a nuisance and purposely offered what they considered leftovers to the film. Nonetheless, Harrison came through with two psychedelically adventurous songs in “Only A Northern Song” and “It’s All Too Much”. On the latter, Harrison can be heard during one of the song’s trippy musical breakdowns singing the line “With your long blonde hair and your eyes of blue.” That lyric came from the song “Sorrow”, a British hit by the band The Merseys in 1966.
“Something”
The Beatles’ association with James Taylor was brief but notable. When they started up their record label Apple, they made Taylor one of their first signings after he auditioned for them. He recorded his debut album in England with the band nearby, occasionally even sneaking into the sessions and playing backup. But because of the chaos surrounding their own career at the time, they couldn’t really devote much time to promoting him, and he was gone from the label by his second album. Nonetheless, they were certainly listening. George Harrison borrowed from the title of Taylor’s song “Something In The Way She Moves” for the opening line of his classic ballad “Something”.
“Come Together”
Here’s the one example in this list where the borrowing ended up costing The Beatles, or at least one of its members, down the road. John Lennon acknowledged right from the start that he used some lines from the Chuck Berry song “You Can’t Catch Me” to start off the lyrics to “Come Together”: “Here come old flat-top, he come groovin’ up slowly.” When Paul McCartney heard it, he helped Lennon alter the music enough so that the reference wasn’t as obvious. But the song’s publishers noticed it clearly enough and hounded Lennon into his solo career about it. The debt was considered repaid when Lennon included a version of Berry’s song on his 1975 covers album Rock ‘N’ Roll.
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