The Beatles Lyric that Formed a Lennon-McCartney Mashup

There’s an old football adage: When you have two starting quarterbacks on your team, you actually have none. The idea is that, if neither is a clear choice over the other, it will eventually be detrimental to your team.

But that’s not a problem with bands. If you have two great songwriters, it’s an embarrassment of riches, and you just need to figure out how to divvy up the assignments. Or, as The Beatles did on their 1967 song “Baby You’re a Rich Man,” you can take a song written by one group member, and another written by a second, and jam them together.

“Rich” History

The songwriting partnership between John Lennon and Paul McCartney developed throughout the years to the point they could create songs in several different ways. In the beginning, they often wrote together, each with a guitar, trading lines. As the band got busier and more successful, that didn’t happen all that often.

Instead, one or the other would tend to write at least the bare bones of a song by himself. That person would then bring it to the other for editing and suggestions. You could usually tell who the chief writer was by who sung lead on the song, although there were a few exceptions to that rule.

Toward the end of the band’s time together, there were songs credited to Lennon-McCartney that were written solely by just one of the men. And then there were a handful of songs which consisted of one song (or at least part of a song) written by Lennon and another written by McCartney. These two separate parts were then jammed together into one.

“A Day in the Life” and “I’ve Got a Feeling” were constructed in this way. As Lennon explained to author David Sheff, “Baby You’re a Rich Man,” which appeared as the B-side to “All You Need is Love” in 1967, also came together in this fashion:

“That’s a combination of two separate pieces, Paul’s and mine, put together and forced into one song. One half was all mine. (Sings) How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people, now that you know who you are, da da da da. Then Paul comes in with (sings) Baby, you’re a rich man, which was a lick he had around.”

Exploring the Lyrics to “Baby You’re a Rich Man”

Lennon’s sections of the song pose a series of questions to the beautiful people. Considering the era in which the song was recorded, we can assume Lennon was referring to the younger generation, whose influence over society was much stronger than it had been in previous eras. The lyrics seem to query these folks about what they’re going to do with this newfound clout.

Now that you know who you are, Lennon asks, What do you want to be? He also suggests that these folks might not be as enlightened as they think: What did you see when you were there / Nothing that doesn’t show.

Lennon compares their status to a pristine musical note: Tuned to a natural E. But he wonders how they’ll parlay that into something lasting: Now that you’ve found another key / What are you going to play? McCartney’s chorus comes chiming in to throw their affluence in their faces: Baby, you’re a rich man too / You keep all your money inside a big brown bag inside a zoo / What a thing to do.

The Beatles lent “Baby You’re a Rich Man” a psychedelic gloss, with Lennon whistling through the arrangement on an exotic keyboard known as a clavioline. It’s just the right touch to both praise and mock the group being addressed in “Baby You’re a Rich Man,” a song that displayed the sum of The Beatles’ songwriting parts.

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