Paul McCartney and John Lennon Made a Psychedelic Lyric Sheet for a ‘Rubber Soul’ Song
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.
Paul McCartney got high and made colorful art inspired by The Beatles’ ‘Rubber Soul’
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.”
Yoko Ono gave The Beatles’ lyric sheet away to a famous composer
The story of the manuscript didn’t end there. Yoko Ono knew avant-garde composer John Cage. Cage is most known for the piece 4′33″, which is four minutes and 33 seconds of silence. Any sound heard during 4′33″ is ambient noise rather than music made by the person playing the piece.
Cage collected musical manuscripts. Yoko wanted to give him one of The Beatles’ manuscripts for his birthday and she managed to get him the colorful lyric sheet for “The Word.” What a gift!
A university owns a lyric sheet for a ‘Rubber Soul’ song and several ‘Revolver’ lyric sheets
According to Northwestern University, the handwritten lyrics for “The Word” are part of the John Cage Notations Project Collection owned by the Northwestern University Libraries. The collection also includes several other handmade Beatles lyrics sheets that Cage previously owned.
The other sheets in the collection are those for the songs “Eleanor Rigby,” “I’m Only Sleeping,” “Good Day Sunshine,” “And Your Bird Can Sing,” “For No One,” and “Yellow Submarine.” Except for “The Word,” all of those tunes are from Revolver. In a way, all the songs work as a set, as “The Word” has some instrumental similarities to the soundscapes of Revolver.
Northwestern is the sole library in the world to own such material besides the British Library. Because of their value, Northwestern University does not have the manuscripts on display. However, the public can view facsimiles whenever the libraries are open.
John and Paul made the lyric sheet for “The Word” into a work of art and now it’s rightfully preserved forever.
