Saturday, July 4, 2015

Composing Tape 1 for "Strawberry Fields Forever"

Sometime in September 1966, while John Lennon was filming the anti-war film "How I Won The War" in Spain, a new creation popped into his head and the tune was to be released for the new Beatles recordings commencing the following month in late November. The new song would be entitled "Strawberry Fields Forever" and the composing tape for the song exists in two parts. The first part was recorded in a hotel room at Santa Isabel in Spain.
The proceedings were recorded on a cassette. First up is a short instrumental lasting less than thirty seconds which was probably a warm up and then "Take 1" begins with a verse and lasts less than a minute. A second take is performed and once again only contains a verse with a lyric change for the first line of the song as it stands.
The next take and the fourth take introduce the chorus part of the song: "Let me take you down..." and then some ad libbed lyrics.
The last two takes feature a couple of verses and the very last section of the composing take also contains the lyrics to the chorus being put in place.
Most of these takes can be found on the CD "Revolution" as well as the bootleg LP "The Lost Lennon Tapes Volume Thirty. These can also be found on the bootleg "It's Not Too Bad".
I've included takes 5 and 6 from these sessions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaOZFz1ZJp0


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