The Beatles Song Paul McCartney Called ‘A Tribute to British Rail’
The Beatles wrote many songs that were love letters to various things and locations in the U.K. “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane” are both dedicated to locations they visited in Liverpool. Paul McCartney and John Lennon wrote one song in the early days of The Beatles as a “tribute to British rail.”
‘One After 909’ is one of the Beatles’ earliest songs
The Beatles first recorded “One After 909” in 1963 on the same day as “From Me to You.” However, The Beatles did perform it live earlier as The Quarrymen in 1960 and at the Cavern Club in 1962. The recorded version of the song wasn’t released until 1970’s Let it Be, the band’s final album. In a 1970 interview with Rolling Stone, John Lennon said he wrote the song around the age of 17 and claims it was primarily a solo job.
“I wrote it when I was 17 or 18,” Lennon said. “We always wrote separately, but we wrote together because we enjoyed it a lot sometimes and also because they would say, well, you’re going to make an album together and knock off a few songs, just like a job.”
Paul McCartney and John Lennon wrote the Beatles song as a love letter to the British train system
In Many Years From Now, Paul McCartney explained that he and Lennon wanted to write a Beatles song in the style of the American railroad songs that some of their musical heroes released. A few of these artists include Elizabeth Cotten, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and Johnny Cash.
“It has great memories for me of John and I trying to write a bluesy freight-train song,” McCartney explained. “There were a lot of those songs at the time, like ‘Midnight Special’, ‘Freight Train’, ‘Rock Island Line’, so this was the ‘One After 909’; she didn’t get the 909, she got the one after it! It was a tribute to British Rail, actually. No, at the time we weren’t thinking British, it was much more the Super Chief from Omaha.”
McCartney calls it one of his favorites but admits it’s ‘not great’
“One After 909” is one of the deeper cuts from The Beatles. However, it’s an interesting song to track because so many different versions exist throughout The Beatles’ history. While it’s not one of The Beatles’ biggest hits, Paul McCartney says it’s a “great favorite” of his, even if he admits the song isn’t all that great.
“It was a number we didn’t used to do much, but it was one that we always liked doing, and we rediscovered it,” he told author Barry Miles. “There were a couple of tunes that we wondered why we never put out; either George Martin didn’t like them enough to, or he favored others. It’s not a great song, but it’s a great favorite of mine.”
McCartney does tend to prefer some of the band’s underappreciated gems, like “Here, There and Everywhere” and “You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)”. Maybe McCartney’s recommendation will get more Beatles fans to appreciate it.
