The most fun Lennon and McCartney had in the studio
- aimeeelkington153
- Oct 9
- 5 min read
The Lennon-McCartney pairing created some of the most recognisable tunes of the 20th Century. But there is one, slightly silly, slightly Monty Python-esque song that often gets forgotten. In 1988, McCartney unexpectedly said You Know My Name (Look Up the Number) was his favourite Beatles track, simply because it was:
“So insane”
-Paul McCartney, The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, Mark Lewisohn
This recording could be the most fun John Lennon and Paul McCartney had in a studio together.
It was May 1967, just before the release of Sgt. Pepper. Lennon arrived at a recording session, inspired by a London telephone directory he had spotted in Paul McCartney’s house. According to Lennon in David Sheff's All We Are Saying, on the front cover of the directory, was the slogan ‘You know the name, look up the number.’
“I was waiting for him in his house, and I saw the phone book was on the piano with ‘You know the name, look up the number.’ That was like a logo, and I just changed it. It was going to be a Four Tops kind of song – the chord changes are like that – but it never developed and we made a joke of it.”
Lennon brought the slogan to the session initially as a 15 minute chant, almost like a mantra. Instead of dismissing it, as let's be honest most of us probably would if our mate rocked up with a 15 minute mantra from a phone book, McCartney got to work.
The track had 5, slightly bizarre sections. The first part might fool you into thinking its a classic Beatles song. It’s a simple chord progression, with Lennon and McCartney chanting the mantra over and over again.
In the next section, they switch to Ska, again repeating the same mantra. And this sudden change in genre sort of foreshadows the fun they are about to have with this track.
Section 3 takes place in a fictional nightclub. Lennon introduces it with the line “Good evening and welcome to Slaggers. Featuring Denis O’Bell.” What a great name for a nightclub.
And who is Denis O’Bell you ask? None other than Paul McCartney!
He takes on the role of a lounge singer, and the name is thought to be inspired by film producer Denis O’Dell, who had worked on A Hard Day’s Night.
Funnily enough, when the track was eventually released, O’Dell suddenly started to get inundated with phone calls from Beatles fans who had taken the mantra a little too literally. In A Hard Day's Write by Steve Turner, he recalled this strange time.
“There were so many of them my wife started going out of her mind [...] Then I happened to be in one Sunday and picked up the phone myself. It was someone on LSD calling from a candle-making factory in Philadelphia and they just kept saying, ‘We know your name and now we’ve got your number’.”
It was only when Ringo Starr later showed him the song that he understood why this was happening. As hilarious as that is to think about today, I’m sure it was far from funny for O’Dell and his wife at the time!
The fourth section is possibly the weirdest. It contains a mix of cuckoo noises, silly voices, bongos and many more intriguing sounds. You can tell just by listening to it how much fun they had recording it. It almost takes you back to the schoolboy sense of humour you might expect from teenagers, not established rock stars.
The track’s finale turns nice and jazzy. They actually enlisted the help of Rolling Stone’s member Brian Jones to come and play with them in one session. He apparently rocked up to the session wearing an Afghan coat and looking a bit nervous.
But what he ended up doing in this session surprised everyone. As reported in the book Many Years From Now by Barry Miles, McCartney assumed, as you would, that Jones would bring along his guitar. Instead, he opted for his saxophone.
“I thought it would be a fun idea to have him, and I naturally thought he’d bring a guitar along to a Beatles session [...] but to our surprise he brought his saxophone…He was a really ropey sax player, so I thought, Ah-hah. We’ve got just the tune.”
Jones provided a jazzy saxophone solo, and thus, the final section was born, however unfortunately, Jones didn’t live to see the release of this song.
The overall joy of this track is that it never pretends to be anything else. It’s incredibly silly and Lennon and McCartney very clearly had a lot of fun with it. The different layers to it shows how seriously they took this comedy project.
All four Beatles took part in the first 3 recording sessions in May and June of 1967. Brian Jones’ saxophone solo was recorded on the third session. But after that, the song was abandoned for a bit.
It wasn’t until April 1969 that the track was revisited. In this session, Lennon and McCartney laid down all the vocal tracks and added some additional sound effects - perhaps the essential stuff, like more cuckoo noises? - and just generally tied up any loose ends that the song had. George Harrison and Ringo Starr did not attend this session.
Finally, after a few long recording sessions, the track was complete. However it still wasn’t released until a year later.
Interestingly, it initially was’t meant to be released as a Beatles song, despite featuring all four Beatles. Instead, Lennon planned to release You Know My Name (Look up the Number) as the A Side of a Plastic Ono Band single. The label at the time spun the album as a collaboration between John Lennon and Yoko Ono, with features from “many of the greatest show business names of today.”
Journalists read between the lines and assumed that the ‘special guests’ were actually the rest of the Beatles. It even got to the point where Lennon edited You Know my Name to a more single-friendly 4 minutes 21 seconds, and the single was issued an Apple catalogue number and a release date under the Plastic Ono Band for December that year.
However, this record release was eventually cancelled, and with it the hope of blessing everyone's ears with the madness of You Know My Name.
Not to be deterred, the track found a new home on the B Side of the single Let it Be in March 1970. The original Plastic Ono Band catalogue number was still visible, just scratched out, in the runout groove of the British Let it Be single pressings.
The legacy of this track is quite refreshing in Beatles history. It came at a time when Lennon and McCartney weren’t exactly getting along so well, so this track allowed them to… have a bit of fun together again, like the good old days..
Two friends recording a song and… figuring out how to get the weirdest sound effects possible into it.
Sound effects like Mal Evans digging gravel with a shovel. No, seriously. McCartney spoke about this in The Complete Beatles' Recording Sessions.
“We had these endless, crazy fun sessions. And eventually we pulled it all together […] and we just did a skit, Mal and his gravel. I can still see Mal digging the gravel. And it was just so hilarious to put that record together.”
I love the idea that when Paul McCartney looks back to his days recording with John Lennon, he thinks of the sessions for this song. No arguing, no obsessing over every detail, no tension - just having a laugh with his mate, creating an utterly ridiculous song.
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