In 1995, The Beatles stunned the world with a new single release, 25 years after the band had broken up and 15 years after the death of John Lennon. ‘Free as a Bird’ may not have been peak Beatles, but it still combined all the elements that made them the most revered rock act in history, including a vocal and piano part from Lennon.
The song originated from a home demo the dead Beatle had written and recorded in 1977, marking the tape on which he’d saved it “For Paul”. His widow, Yoko Ono, donated the tape to McCartney, and the rest is history. The remaining Beatles finished the song, adding new lyrics, vocals, guitar, keyboard, bass and drum parts. These included a slide guitar solo by George Harrison akin to his early post-Beatles solo work.
Harrison also plays the ukulele in a slightly unsettling ending to the song, which features a snippet of John Lennon’s voice, seemingly back from the dead. In the song’s award-winning music video, we see reversed footage of the young Beatles before the camera settles on a flat-capped performer playing to a theatre audience.
This performer is supposed to be northern English music hall star George Formby, a famous ukulele player The Beatles all grew up listening to in their childhood years. Formby was probably the biggest name in British music during the 1940s. And so, his appearance and the sound of his ukulele, as performed by Harrison, the end of ‘Free as a Bird’ invokes a sense of ending where it all began for the band. It’s as though their entire history is being played in reverse.
Indeed, the inclusion of a ukulele vignette is a direct reference to Lennon’s musical roots, too. The instrument was the first he learned to play, via his mother Julia, and served as a bridge to him picking up his first guitar.
But what about Lennon’s voice?
The voice snippet is placed very deliberately over the ukulele part at the end of the track since what Lennon says in the snippet is a famous catchphrase of Formby’s. Doing an impression of his first musical hero, the Beatle says, “Turned out nice again!” This expression is a fitting finale to the song, as it works on several levels, referring not only to the musical tradition that The Beatles inherited but to their successful completion of a new recording and placing a full stop at what appeared to be the conclusion of their recording career.
In typical Beatles fashion, however, the group took things a step further by playing around with the recorded snippet rather than simply incorporating it into their song as it was. They reversed the recording, adding a sped-up, backwards rendering of Lennon’s impression into the mix immediately after the original version.
McCartney, Harrison and Starr were especially happy with the results of this trick because, by accident, it sounded like Lennon was saying, “Made by John Lennon”. They’d inadvertently created yet another curiosity to add to the thousands of minute idiosyncrasies already abundant throughout The Beatles’ studio recordings. Something that little bit extra for fans to treasure.
