Paul McCartney Recalls Beatles Once Formed Human ‘Sandwich’ to Avoid Freezing
When Paul McCartney was in The Beatles, he was very close with John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They got so close, in fact, that they once formed what McCartney calls a “Beatles sandwich.” He explained exactly what that entailed.
McCartney was a guest on the Inside Out with Paul Mercurio podcast on Oct. 10. Reminiscing about The Beatles’ career, McCartney told the “Beatles sandwich” story.
Touring with The Beatles’ wasn’t always glamorous
The Beatles toured throughout the ‘60s. Before they were the world’s most famous band, they didn’t always have the best amenities.
“I always say The Beatles was a unit,” McCartney said on Inside Out. “We were a unit that we’d worked together a lot. We lived in and out of each other’s pockets. I mean, Once when it was really cold and the window blew out on a van, we actually lay on top of each other in a Beatles sandwich. At this point, you’re getting pretty intimate, knowing each other.”
Paul McCartney swore off future Beatles sandwiches
By the time they wrote and recorded Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles were tired of touring conditions. McCartney said avoiding such Beatles sandwiches was a motivating factor in that landmark album.
I think we gave each other the confidence and as each little new canvas was painted, we go oh man, that’s cool. Okay, now let’s do something different, different, different, different. So it was a natural evolution but by the time we got fed up with touring, because we couldn’t really hear ourselves. That was getting a bit boring at that point because we’d worked very hard. We’d worked over 300 days out of the year we would work. So just the toll of the sheer physical working led us to have this idea. We thought let’s just make a record. Let’s just stop touring, go into the studio and we’ll make a record. Let the record go on tour. That was a whole new concept.
Paul McCartney, Inside Out with Paul Mercurio, 10/10/22
‘Sgt. Pepper’s’ was a big risk
McCartney remembers all the rumors afoot when The Beatles stopped touring.
“We hit upon this crazy idea so we just went into the studio, on and off over a period of about six months,” McCartney said. “People outside, the newspapers, musical press were starting to say, ‘They’ve dried up. They haven’t got any ideas.’ We were sitting in the studio tinkering away like the Seven Dwarves. We were tinkering away with this new stuff we were making and we were kind of giggling. When we’d hear ‘they’ve dried up,’ we’d go oh no we haven’t. Wait ‘til you hear what we’re working on.”
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was a concept album. It wasn’t for everyone, but it became a defining album for The Beatles.
“It turned out we lost some of the audience but we gained even more,” McCartney said. “At that point, this wasn’t us being worried about our audience. This was four artists in full flow. So it was more a question of look, the philosophy by then was if we like it, they’re going to like it. We had that confidence so we just hit upon this whole idea of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the new personas, we’ll have fictitious personas.
