When The Beatles finally parted ways in April 1970, the media enjoyed stirring the pot and sensationalising any tension between the members. That said, during the recording of the band’s final two albums, Abbey Road and Let It Be, there were significant power struggles within the band as George Harrison fought Paul McCartney for album space and John Lennon became increasingly distracted by his new wife, Yoko Ono.
Following the untimely death of The Beatles’ beloved manager, Brian Epstein, in August 1967, McCartney became the band’s de facto leader on sufferance. As can be seen in Peter Jackson’s intensely revealing 2021 documentary, The Beatles: Get Back, McCartney was the dominating creative force in the final years of the ‘60s, much to the frustration of Harrison.
As it transpires, this simmering tension within the group can be traced back to 1968 during the recording of the epic eponymous double album, aka The White Album. Across a myriad of tracks, the group had returned from the conceptual piece of Sgt. Pepper and were now getting back to their roots. The album also allowed each member of the band more room to add their own songs, meaning George Harrison got his opportunity to shine.
It means the album is full of big-hitting Beatles numbers such as ‘Back in the U.S.S.R.’, ‘Savoy Truffle’, ‘Dear Prudence’ and countless other masterpieces. Across a plethora of songs, The Beatles once again proved to be on top of the world despite their inner turmoil.
A track on the classic record that both exemplified and evoked this growing bitterness within the band was McCartney’s ‘Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?’; ironically, a song inspired by harmoniously nonchalant relationships between monkeys.
“I was up on the flat roof meditating, and I’d seen a troupe of monkeys walking along in the jungle, and a male just hopped on to the back of this female and gave her one, as they say in the vernacular,” McCartney said of the song’s origin, via Barry Miles’ Many Years From Now. “Within two or three seconds he hopped off again, and looked around as if to say, ‘It wasn’t me,’ and she looked around as if there had been some mild disturbance but thought, Huh, I must have imagined it, and she wandered off. And I thought, bloody hell, that puts it all into a cocked hat, that’s how simple the act of procreation is, this bloody monkey just hopping on and hopping off”.
He added: “There is an urge, they do it, and it’s done with. And it’s that simple. We have horrendous problems with it, and yet animals don’t. So that was basically it. ‘Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?’ could have applied to either fucking or shitting, to put it roughly. Why don’t we do either of them in the road? Well, the answer is we’re civilised and we don’t. But the song was just to pose that question. ‘Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?’ was a primitive statement to do with sex or to do with freedom really. I like it, it’d just so outrageous that I like it.”
McCartney recorded ‘Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?’ with help from Starr and recording engineer Ken Townshend in October 1968 while Lennon and Harrison were busy finishing their contributions to another song.
McCartney’s decision to continue recording with the exclusion of half the band didn’t level with Lennon’s conscience. “That’s Paul,” Lennon said of the song via David Sheff’s All We Are Saying. “He even recorded it by himself in another room. That’s how it was getting in those days. We came in and he’d made the whole record. Him drumming. Him playing the piano. Him singing. But he couldn’t – he couldn’t – maybe he couldn’t make the break from The Beatles. I don’t know what it was, you know. I enjoyed the track. Still, I can’t speak for George, but I was always hurt when Paul would knock something off without involving us. But that’s just the way it was then.”
As Lennon alluded to in the above quote, McCartney did take over the drum kit during the White Album sessions, but only due to Starr’s absence. In August 1968, Starr took a break from The Beatles because of the constant bickering between the other members. It was also reported that he had begun to lose confidence in his ability as a drummer. In Ringo’s stead, McCartney took to the drum kit to record ‘Back in the U.S.S.R.’ and ‘Dear Prudence’.
Commenting on his divisive project with McCartney in Anthology, Starr appeared to see their work as a gift to Harrison and Lennon since it was released as a Beatles track. “‘Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?’ was just Paul and me, and it went out as a Beatle track too. We had no problems with that.”
After hearing Lennon’s bitter appraisal, McCartney defended his actions. “It wasn’t a deliberate thing,” McCartney said via The Beatles: The Illustrated And Updated Edition by Hunter Davies. “John and George were tied up finishing something and me and Ringo were free, just hanging around, so I said to Ringo, ‘Let’s go and do this’… Anyway, [Lennon] did the same with ‘Revolution 9’. He went off and made that without me. No one ever says that. John is the nice guy and I’m the bastard. It gets repeated all the time.”
