A Star Loved Seeing Paul McCartney Flub The Beatles’ ‘Penny Lane’
Paul McCartney messed up while singing The Beatles’ “Penny Lane” as a 1960s star looked on. She enjoyed watching him make a mistake. Interestingly, Paul and John Lennon wrote some of the star’s biggest hits.
Paul McCartney forgot an entire verse of The Beatles’ ‘Penny Lane’
During a 2016 interview with Rolling Stone, Paul was asked to name the last major mistake he made during a concert. “I don’t remember the last one,” he said. “But I had a show in Paris where I started off with the second verse of ‘Penny Lane’ instead of the first. It should have been ‘a barber showing photographs.’ So I thought, ‘I’ll swap the verses — do verse two, then verse one and we’ll go into the middle bit.’ But the band correctly thought, ‘He skipped verse one — we’ll go into the middle.’
“It was a car crash in Penny Lane,” Paul joked. “I had to go, ‘Stop, stop. We’ve totally screwed it up. We’re gonna start again.’ The audience went wild. A friend, Cilla Black, who just passed away, came to me after the show: ‘I loved that bit. Do you do it every night?'”
Paul discussed learning lessons the more he performed. “I’ve learned some lessons,” he said. “I used to be terrified of making a mistake. I’ve learned that it’s OK. The audience actually likes it.”
Cilla Black has connections to Paul McCartney outside of a performance of ‘Penny Lane’
Black is not a star in the United States. However, she was huge in the United Kingdom. To Beatles fans, the most interesting about her might be the songs “Love of the Loved,” “Step Inside Love,” and “It’s For You.” Each of those tunes are credited to the Lennon-McCartney songwriting partnership.
“Love of the Loved,” “It’s For You,” and “Step Inside Love” appeared on the unique compilation album The Songs Lennon and McCartney Gave Away. That record also includes tunes by Peter and Gordon, Ringo Starr, and The Strangers with Mike Shannon. The compilation goes a long way to establish that Lennon-McCartney were very active in the 1960s outside of The Beatles and that they could have had big careers as studio songwriters.
The 3 songs that The Beatles gave to Cilla Black all became hits in the United Kingdom
According to The Official Charts Company, “Love of the Loved,” “It’s For You,” and “Step Inside Love” all charted in the U.K. “Love of the Loved” hit No. 35, “It’s For You” hit No. 7, and “Step Inside Love” hit No. 8. Who knows if Black’s career would have been the same without The Beatles?
Black also impacted recent popular culture. Her song “You’re My World” appeared in the thriller Last Night in Soho starring Anya Taylor-Joy. The film is a tribute to the British fashion, movies, and popular music of the 1960s, with a disturbing twist. Sadly, The Beatles’ music doesn’t appear in the film.
Black is part of The Beatles’ history and she even saw an entertaining flub from Paul.
