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TL;DR:

  • One song from The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was inspired by mean teachers.
  • Paul McCartney compared the lingo in the song to the music of Chuck Berry.
  • Sgt. Pepper became The Beatles’ biggest studio album in the United Kingdom.
A vinyl copy of The Beatles' 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'
The Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ | MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle via Getty Images / Contributor

One song from The Beatles‘ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was inspired by mean teachers. Despite this, Paul McCartney saw it as an optimistic song. He initially found it similar to the music of Chuck Berry.

Paul McCartney wrote 1 of the songs from The Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’ to make himself feel better

In the 1997 book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, Paul discussed the origin of “Getting Better” from Sgt. Pepper. “‘Getting Better’ I wrote on my magic Binder, Edwards and Vaughan piano in my music room,” he said. “It had a lovely tone, that piano, you’d just open the lid and there was such a magic tone, almost out of tune, and of course the way it was painted added to the fun of it all.”

Paul discussed the tone of “Getting Better.” “It’s an optimistic song,” he opined. “I often try and get on to optimistic subjects in an effort to cheer myself up and also, realizing that other people are going to hear this, to cheer them up too. And this was one of those.”

Why Paul McCartney and John Lennon wrote about an ‘angry young man’ in ‘Sgt. Pepper’

The song’s lyrics are about someone who used to be an “angry young man.” “The ‘angry young man’ and all that was John and I filling in the verses about schoolteachers,” Paul said. “We shared a lot of feelings against teachers who had punished you too much or who hadn’t understood you or who had just been bastards generally. So there are references to them.” Paul said he enjoyed writing the track together with John.

Paul said he once thought the lingo in the song was inspired by Chuck Berry’s lyrics. In retrospect, he felt it was more similar to Jamaican slang. Paul noted he liked writing lyrics that were considered grammatically incorrect.

How The Beatles’ ‘Getting Better’ performed on the pop charts in the United States and the United Kingdom

“Getting Better” was never a single so it didn’t chart on the Billboard Hot 100. The song’s parent album, Sgt. Pepper, reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 for 15 weeks. It stayed on the chart for a total of 233 weeks. It remained atop the chart for a longer time than any of the group’s other studio albums.

“Getting Better” was not a single in the United Kingdom; therefore, The Official Charts Company reports the song didn’t chart there. Meanwhile, Sgt. Pepper hit No. 1 in the U.K. and stayed on the chart for 28 weeks. The album lasted a total of 277 on the chart, making it the Fab Four’s most popular studio album in the United Kingdom.

Paul and John encountered some terrible teachers and that inspired them to write a classic song.

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