The Quite Mature Beatles Lyric That Paul McCartney Wrote as a Teenager

Would the individual members of The Beatles have achieved musical success had they not found each other and formed the group? It’s an interesting hypothetical that’s ultimately impossible to know. After all, had The Beatles not arrived, the music landscape would have been a vastly different landscape for artists to navigate.

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But one factor in their favor is they were already showing talent on their own before the band had gained much momentum. For example, Paul McCartney wrote the lovely, wistful “I’ll Follow the Sun” when he was still just a teenager. The song later turned up as one of the finest numbers on The Beatles’ 1964 album Beatles for Sale.

“Sun” King

Considering so many of the ballads they wrote and recorded are now among the most beloved in popular music, it’s odd to think The Beatles once were reluctant to record such songs. There was a bit of a stigma about beat bands doing softer material, which explains why their first few records contained very few slow ones.

By the time they reached their fourth British LP, which was entitled Beatles for Sale and was released in 1964, they had largely left behind those concerns. Part of that was due to the demand for new material from songwriters John Lennon and Paul McCartney being so great they couldn’t afford to be picky.

That was especially the case on Beatles for Sale, as it was recorded at a time of intense activity by the band. To help fill out the running order, Paul McCartney reached back to a song he had first written as a teenager, as he explained in the book The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions:

“I wrote that in my front parlour in Forthlin Road. I was about 16. ‘I’ll Follow The Sun’ was one of those very early ones. I seem to remember writing it just after I’d had the flu and I had that cigarette—I smoked when I was 16—the cigarette that’s the ‘cotton wool’ one. You don’t smoke while you’re ill but after you get better you have a cigarette and it’s terrible, it tastes like cotton wool, horrible. I remember standing in the parlour, with my guitar, looking out through the lace curtains of the window, and writing that one.”

If McCartney’s estimates are correct and he wrote it at 16, that would put the date of its creation around 1958. That means it sat around for six years before The Beatles decided to give it a spin. And when they did, fans hearing those introspective lyrics would never have guessed they were written by a lad of tender years.

Behind the Lyrics to “I’ll Follow the Sun”

“I’ll Follow the Sun” is one of several songs written by McCartney as a youth that suggests he was an old-soul type. (“When I’m Sixty-Four,” another of those pre-fame compositions, goes even farther down that road, as Macca imagines himself in his autumn years trying to sustain a relationship).

In “I’ll Follow the Sun”, the narrator feels he must end a love affair for fear of missing out on some other opportunity in his life. For tomorrow may rain, so I’ll follow the sun, he insists. Heartbreak is sometimes the price that must be paid for personal growth: One day you’ll look to see I’ve gone, McCartney sings.

There’s also a sense the girl might not have appreciated his affection while they were together: One day you’ll know I was the one. In the middle eights, he reassures her that this parting is nothing that could have been avoided: And now the time has come and so my love I must go / And though I lose a friend, in the end you will know.

That’s quite the mature perspective for someone who, at the time he wrote it, likely hadn’t endured too many profound romantic relationships. “I’ll Follow the Sun” might have been written by a young man, but its observations and insight make it sound like the work of a guy who’s been around the block a time or two.

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