BEING FOR THE BENEFIT OF MR KITE!
“Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” is a song by the English rock band the Beatles, from their 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. It was primarily written and composed by John Lennon, with additional input claimed by Paul McCartney. The song is credited to Lennon–McCartney. (More from Wikipedia)
Perhaps because of the possible LSD reference in “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, rumors of drug references in other lyrics by the Beatles also became manifest. Wikipedia reports: “Concerns that some of the lyrics in Sgt. Pepper refer to recreational drug use led to the BBC banning several songs from British radio, such as ‘A Day in the Life’ because of the phrase ‘I’d love to turn you on’, with the BBC claiming that it could ‘encourage a permissive attitude towards drug-taking.’ . . . They also banned ‘Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!’ because of the lyric which mentions ‘Henry the Horse’, a phrase that contains two common slang terms for heroin. Fans speculated that Henry the Horse was a drug dealer, and ‘Fixing a Hole’ was a reference to heroin use. Others noted lyrics such as ‘I get high’ from ‘With a Little Help from My Friends’, ‘take some tea’ – slang for cannabis use – from ‘Lovely Rita’, and ‘digging the weeds’ from ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’.” I had heard about “Horse” but not “Henry”; maybe any word starting with “H” could refer to heroin.
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The most remarkable story behind the songwriting on the Sgt. Pepper album is “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” While the Beatles were making a promotional film for “Strawberry Fields Forever”, John Lennon found a poster for a circus performance dating from the 1840’s in an antique store. He later said of the song: “Everything from the song is on that poster, except the horse wasn’t called Henry.”
The title, “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” is practically in the center of the poster. Other lines on the poster figure into the lyrics, almost verbatim in some cases:
Mr. Henderson will undertake the arduous task of throwing twenty-one somersets, on the solid ground.
Mssrs. Kite and Henderson, in announcing the following entertainments, assure the public that this night’s production will be one of the most splendid ever produced in this town, having been some days in preparation.
Over men & horses, through hoops, over garters, and lastly through a hogshead of real fire!
In this branch of the profession Mr. H challenges the world!
Several of the people mentioned in the song were prominent in the circus world at that time. The poster is headlined “Pablo Fanque’s Circus Royale”; Fanque owned a circus back in Victorian times. John Henderson performed with his wife Agnes Henderson throughout Europe and Russia in the 1840’s and 1850’s. Mr. Kite is believed to be William Kite; he worked for Pablo Fanque from 1843 to 1845. “Somerset” is an early term for what we call a somersault, and that word made it into the song’s lyrics.
(June 2015)
