ONLY A NORTHERN SONG
“Only a Northern Song” is a song by English rock band the Beatles from their 1969 album Yellow Submarine. Written by George Harrison, it was recorded mainly in February 1967 during the sessions for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, but the Beatles chose not to include it on that album. Harrison wrote “Only a Northern Song” out of dissatisfaction with his status as a junior songwriter with the Beatles’ publishing company, Northern Songs. The recording features Hammond organ, played by Harrison, and an overdubbed montage of assorted sounds including trumpet blasts and spoken voices, anticipating John Lennon’s 1968 sound collage “Revolution 9”. The song has received a varied response from reviewers; while Ian MacDonald dismisses the track as a “self-indulgent dirge”, the website Ultimate Classic Rock identifies it as one of the Beatles’ best works in the psychedelic genre. A version of the song with a different vocal part, and omitting the sound collage overdubs, was issued on the Beatles’ 1996 outtakes compilation Anthology 2. (More from Wikipedia)
For Yellow Submarine, just four new songs were included on that album; and IMHO, George Harrison wrote the two best by far: “Only a Northern Song” and “It’s All Too Much”. The two Lennon/McCartney songs are “Hey Bulldog” and “All Together Now”; “Yellow Submarine” and “All You Need is Love” had been released previously.
(June 2015)
