The Bizarre Beatles Song Paul McCartney Wrote While in an ‘Experimental Mode’
The Beatles did have some odd songs in their discography. Tracks like “I Am the Walrus” and “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” are perfect examples of when the Liverpool band got weird. One of their most bizarre deep cuts came from Paul McCartney, who wrote and performed it while in an “experimental mode.”
‘Wild Honey Pie’ almost didn’t make ‘The White Album’
“Wild Honey Pie” is a solo recording from Paul McCartney. It’s a less-than-one-minute track that the artist wrote while in India. It’s a strange track that sounds like many instruments are being bashed together while McCartney annoyingly repeats the titular phrase.
According to McCartney, they weren’t sure what to do with “Wild Honey Pie”, but George Harrison’s wife, Pattie Boyd, liked the song so much they decided to keep it in the album.
“[‘Wild Honey Pie’] was just a fragment of an instrumental that we were not sure about, but Pattie Harrison liked it very much, so we decided to leave it on the album,” McCartney said.
Paul McCartney wrote this Beatles song in an ‘experimental mode’
Paul McCartney recorded “Wild Honey Pie” after the second and final recording session for “Mother Nature’s Son.” It was a quick session, and McCartney made it up on the fly. In Barry Miles’ Many Years From Now, McCartney described the improv session that led to the creation of this track.
“We were in an experimental mode, and so I said, ‘Can I just make something up?’ I started off with the guitar and did a multitracking experiment in the control room or maybe in the little room next door. It was very homemade; it wasn’t a big production at all. I just made up this short piece, and I multitracked a harmony to that, and a harmony to that, and a harmony to that, and built it up sculpturally with a lot of vibrato on the strings, really pulling the strings madly. Hence, ‘Wild Honey Pie’, which was a reference to the other song I had written called ‘Honey Pie’. It was a little experimental piece.”
McCartney recorded another song during this session that was never released
During this session, Paul McCartney wrote another song for The Beatles called “Etcetera.” However, McCartney didn’t believe it was any good, and it still hasn’t been released. In a 1994 interview with Club Sandwich, McCartney said he tried to give the song to other artists, but they didn’t want it.
“I offered it to Marianne Faithfull and Mick Jagger, who were looking for a song for Marianne to record, but it wasn’t what she wanted,” McCartney said. “I think she was looking for an ‘Eleanor Rigby’ and instead, I offered her an ‘Etcetera’. I’ve got a lot of those silly little songs — they can’t all work out well, and sometimes when people ask me for one I’ll pull out one of those.”
“Etcetera” must be a surprisingly bad song because it hasn’t yet been released, even as a possible demo. Even if it is unfinished, it’d be exciting to hear about another project from The Beatles era.
