When the surviving Beatles — Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr — reunited in the studio in the mid ’90s, the band members felt they weren’t alone, as “strange goings-on” hinted at John Lennon’s supernatural presence.
The trio’s team-up, coming 25 years after the Fab Four disbanded, and a decade and a half after the death of John Lennon, represented the time they’d worked on new music together as they set about bringing the unreleased John Lennon song “Free as a Bird” to life.
It was one of two new songs, alongside “Real Love” — also born from John Lennon’s mind — to feature on 1995’s Anthology box set. As news of a fourth addition in the Anthology series broke last week, McCartney’s reflections on the unusual incidents that surrounded the recording of “Free as a Bird” have come to light.
“There were a lot of strange goings-on in the studio — noises that shouldn’t have been there and equipment doing all manner of weird things,” McCartney once told OnHike.com (via The Mirror). “There was just an overall feeling that John was around.”
Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, had given the rest of the band the two of his demos with the view of transforming them into finished songs. The unexplainable occurrences weren't exclusive to "Free as a Bird" either; the "Real Love" sessions were just as creepy.
“We put one of those spoof backward recordings on the end of the single for a laugh, to give all those Beatles nuts something to do,” McCartney said with a laugh. “I think it was the line of a George Formby song.” Formby was a popular entertainer when the Beatles were growing up and a favorite of the group's members, particularly Harrison.
“Then we were listening to the finished single in the studio one night, and it gets to the end, and it goes, ‘zzzwrk nggggwaaahhh jooohn lennnnnon qwwwrk.’ I swear to God.
“We were like, ‘It’s John. He likes it!’”
Lennon once told his son Julian if he ever needed to contact him from beyond the grave, he'd send a white feather. That wasn't lost on McCartney when the three musicians stepped outside the studio for an impromptu photo opportunity. At the last minute, a white peacock entered the frame.
“That’s John. Spooky, eh?” McCartney reflects. “It was like John was hanging around. We felt that all through the recording.”
Those kinds of instances might have given them the chills, but in truth, the band had welcomed Lennon's presence into the studio. Starr himself had said they kept hitting a wall when they pushed on as a trio, with Lennon’s absence a gaping hole.
“I invented a little scenario,” McCartney later said (via the HollyHobs YouTube channel). “He’s gone away on holiday, and he’s just rung us up and says, 'Just finish the track for us, will you? I’m sending the cassette, I trust you.'
“That was the key thing, 'I trust you, just do your stuff on it.'
“I told this to the other guys, and Ringo was particularly pleased. It was very nice, and it was very reverent toward John.”
Years later, after Harrison had also passed on, Starr would reunite with McCartney for his solo track "Grow Old With Me." As things stand, it is the only track from one of the four's solo releases to feature songwriting credits from the entirety of the Fab Four, with another old Lennon demo revitalized, and a touching tribute to Harrison woven into its music.
As hoped for, the band's latest Anthology release includes outtakes and rarities, and the band's now nine-part documentary has been expanded with another episode that charts the making of the first Anthology in 1994 and 1995. The ghost of JohnLennon will undoubtedly haunt that, too.
