Paul McCartney and John Lennon Made a Psychedelic Lyric Sheet for a 'Rubber Soul' Song

Yoko Ono gave the handwritten lyrics of a song from The Beatles' 'Rubber Soul' to a composer. The piece later fell into different hands.

Paul McCartney and John Lennon put so much extra work into their music sometimes that it’s remarkable. For example, they once turned the handwritten lyrics of a song from The Beatles’ Rubber Soul into a work of art. The piece soon fell into the possession of a famous musician.

On the surface, The Beatles’ “The Word” isn’t much of a psychedelic song. It has more in common with the Motown music of the 1960s than Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Despite this, “The Word” has hippie vibes. It proclaims the importance of love, which The Beatles would later do in their most popular psychedelic song, “All You Need Is Love.” “The Word” also paved the way for John’s high-minded solo songs like “Imagine” and “Happy Xmas (War Is Over).”

In the 1997 book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, Paul recalled creating a psychedelic manuscript of the tune’s lyrics with John. “We smoked a bit of pot, then we wrote out a multi-colored lyric sheet, the first time we’d ever done that,” he said. “We normally didn’t smoke when we were working. It got in the way of songwriting because it would just cloud your mind up ‘Oh, s***, what are we doing?’ It’s better to be straight. But we did this multi-color thing.”

Source: Matthew Trzcinski/cheatsheet.com

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