Anyone who has been playing music for decades at a time is probably going to get tired of a handful of their tunes. Robert Plant has always talked about how naive he thought ‘Stairway to Heaven’ sounded, and there’s a good chance that anyone remotely affiliated with Elton John would probably be more than happy not to hear a track like ‘Crocodile Rock’ for the rest of their lives if they don’t have to. Despite Paul McCartney having a treasure trove of classic hits, he admitted that the song ‘I Will’ hasn’t lost its lustre in over 50 years.
Considering where The Beatles were when making The White Album, though, it would be understandable if none of them wanted to revisit that era ever again. Every member of the Fab Four was being pulled in a different direction, and it wasn’t clear whether or not they would survive intact, given that Ringo Starr quit halfway through and longtime engineer Geoff Emerick resigned after too many strained sessions.
It’s not even the band’s fault everything descended into chaos, either. Each of them had become a seasoned songwriter (sans Starr), and since they knew how they wanted everything to go, the rest of the group would end up being glorified session musicians when putting together tracks like ‘Happiness is a Warm Gun’ or ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’.
Out of all of them, McCartney always had a clear vision of what he wanted for his songs, and when listening to ‘I Will’, it’s not like he didn’t get his wish. Compared to the lavish tracks that he would make later on ‘The Long and Winding Road’, this is the kind of simple love song that feels like two minutes of perfection.
It’s not trying to do anything that complicated, but McCartney thought that was the reason why he loved it so much, saying, “We kicked around a few lyrics, something about the moon, but they weren’t very satisfactory, and I thought the melody was better than the words… it’s still one of my favourite melodies that I’ve written. You just occasionally get lucky with a melody, and it becomes rather complete, and I think this is one of them– quite a complete tune.”
Just because it’s complete doesn’t mean that it was going to be easy to put down in one sitting. Considering his breezy runtime and simple structure, the track reportedly went through 67 takes in order to get exactly right, which included everything from McCartney putting different backing vocals on top of it to John Lennon being demoted to hitting a piece of wood in rhythm with the beat.
Any artist who does that many takes will probably want to never walk into a studio again, but McCartney knew that it had to be absolutely right. Looking back on those sessions, this was around when he first became involved with Linda Eastman, so hearing him sing about finally finding the love of his life had to be as accurate as possible if it was about her.
‘I Will’ might not have needed 67 tries to be considered completely finished, but a perfectionist like McCartney always got an extra bolt of inspiration when love was the prime motivator. After all, it is all you need, right?
