In 1966, The Beatles released “Yellow Submarine”. On their Revolver record, “Yellow Submarine” is written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Out in 1966, the song became one of The Beatles’ many No. 1 hits.
An uptempo, light-hearted tune, “Yellow Submarine” begins with, “In the town where I was born / Lived a man who sailed to sea / And he told us of his life / In the land of submarines / So we sailed up to the sun / ’Til we found the sea of green / And we lived beneath the waves / In our yellow submarine.”
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The success of “Yellow Submarine” is surprising, since it was never written to be a mainstream hit. Instead, McCartney says it was originally supposed to be for their younger fans.
“‘Yellow Submarine’ is very simple but very different,” McCartney says. “It’s a fun song, a children’s song. Originally, we intended it to be Sparky, a children’s record. But now it’s the idea of a yellow submarine where all the kids went to have fun. I was just going to sleep one night and thinking if we had a children’s song, it would be nice to be on a yellow submarine where all your friends are with a band.”
What The Beatles Say About “Yellow Submarine”
It may have been written originally as a children’s song, but it quickly became not only a fan favorite but also a favorite of The Beatles.
“Paul came up with the concept of ‘Yellow Submarine’,” George Harrison later says. “All I know is just that every time we’d all get around the piano with guitars and start listening to it and arranging it into a record, we’d all fool about…John’s doing the voice that sounds like someone talking down a tube or ship’s funnel as they do in the merchant marine. And on the final track, there’s actually that very small party happening. As I seem to remember, there’s a few screams and what sounds like small crowd noises in the background.”
Drummer Ringo Starr did the lead vocals on “Yellow Submarine”, which is a rarity for The Beatles.
“I was thinking of it as a song for Ringo, which it eventually turned out to be,” McCartney says. “So I wrote it as not too rangey in the vocal. I just made up a little tune in my head, then started making a story– sort of an ancient mariner, telling the young kids where he’d lived. It was pretty much my song as I recall… I think John helped out. The lyrics got more and more obscure as it goes on, but the chorus, melody, and verses are mine.”
In 1969, The Beatles released their tenth record, Yellow Submarine, to coincide with an animated Yellow Submarine film, released in 1968, using the music of The Beatles.
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