Thursday, December 10, 2020

Still learning new factoids about the Beatles


A Salon article from this year:

...one afternoon, when Lennon heard a familiar voice crackling over the car radio. "F*ck a pig! It's Paul!" he exclaimed. And sure enough, it was "Coming Up," McCartney's latest single. To Lennon's ears, it was simply infectious. Indeed, while he had tended to dismiss much of Paul's recent work as empty-headed instances of bubblegum pop, this new tune had truly caught his imagination.

*** 

For Lennon, hearing "Coming Up" that afternoon in the station wagon had a revelatory effect on him. "I thought that 'Coming Up' was great," he remarked later that year. "And I like the freak version that he made in his barn better than that live Glasgow one," adding that "if I'd have been with him, I'd have said, 'That's the one to do.'"


This is apparently the "freak version."