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Penny Lane

Paul McCartney: Vocals, pianos, bass guitar, harmonium, tambourine, effects
John Lennon: Pianos, guitar, vocals, congas, handclaps
George Harrison: Guitar, vocals
Ringo Starr: Drums, handbell

George Martin: Piano
Ray Swinfield: Flute, piccolo
P. Goody: Flute, piccolo
Manny Winters: Flute, piccolo
Dennis Wilton: Flute, piccolo
David Mason: Trumpet, flugelhorn
Leon Calvert: Trumpet, flugelhorn
Freddy Clayton: Trumpet, flugelhorn
Bert Courtley: Trumpet, flugelhorn
Duncan Campbell: Trumpet, flugelhorn
Dick Morgan: Oboe, cor anglais
Mike Winfield: Oboe, cor anglais
Frank Clarke: Double bass

Recorded December 29, 30 1966 and January 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 12, 17 1967.

Available on:
Magical Mystery Tour
The Beatles 1967-1970(The Blue Album)
Anthology 2
The Beatles 1

Paul McCartney later said he wanted Penny Lane to have a "clean" sound becasue he was influenced by the Beach Boys at the time.

Paul and John initially got the idea to write songs about their childhood memories from Liverpool when they were working on the Rubber Soul album in 1965. This directly resulted in John's In My Life, but it would take another year before McCartney took the task to hand. The final result though was nothing but a master stroke.

There is indeed a street in Liverpool called Penny Lane, but what McCartney refers to in this song is the whole surburbian area where Beatles grew up, which also is called Penny Lane. Some of the people and places McCartney sings about actually excisted, and some are fictional.

There was a barber's shop in Penny Lane, run by a Mr Bioletti, who claimed to have cut hair for John, Paul and George as children. There were also two banks, a fire station and a shelter in the middle of the roundaout. But the banker without a mac, and the fireman with portrait of a queen in his pocket, are unlikely to ever have existed.

Paul also threw in a joke with the line 'Fish and finger pie', which is a sexual reference in Liverpudlian slang.

"It was just a nice little joke for the Livepool lads who like a bit of smut," he said.

"For months afterwards, girls serving in local chip shops had to put up with requests for 'fish and finger pie'."

Several sound effects were used to give the song the right feel. The firebell (a handbell played by Ringo) is the obvious one, but not everyone have noticed the doublebass depicting the banker lowering himself into the barber's chair for a trim.

The staccato piano chords were one of the song's trademarks. But what may sound like a fairly straight forward piano arrangement was in fact a complex process of multiple layers of piano tracks, recorded seperately and then mixed together. McCartney first recorded a basic take of piano chords, before overdubbing a second piano, which was recorded through a Vox guitar amplifier to get a reverb effect. A third piano track was recorded at half speed and speeded up at replay. Harmonium and percussion were also added to the mix. More piano tracks were later added by Lennon and producer George Martin.

The final mixing of Penny Lane had been completed when McCartney decided he wanted the song to have a trumpet solo. Paul had been watching David Mason perform Bach's Brandenburg Concerto Number 2 with the English Chamber Orchestra one evening on BBC 2. He must have liked what he saw, because Mason received a call the morning after. Could he help out on a Beatles recording?

"We spent three hours working it out," David Mason said in Mark Lewisohn's The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions.

"Paul sang the parts he wanted, George Martin wrote them out, I tried them. But the actual recording was done quite quickly. They were jolly high notes, but with the tapes rolling we did two takes as overdubs on top of the excisting song. "

Mason was paid a standard fee of 27 pounds and 10 shilling (about 47 US dollars) for his contribution. He added:

"I've spent a lifetime playing with top orchestras yet I'm most famous for playing on 'Penny Lane'!"

Penny Lane was originally written for Sgt. Pepper, but it never ended up on that album. The reason for this was that Capitol Records in the US desperately wanted a new Beatles single for the American market. The Beatles generally didn't want songs that had been released as singles to feature on albums as well. That's why neither Penny Lane nor Lennon's Strawberry Fields Forever were included on the Sgt Pepper album.

Penny Lane was released in the US on February 13 1967 together with Lennon's Strawberry Fields Forever, as a double A-sided single. It stayed at number one for a week. The single was a very interesting release, not just because of the sheer quality of both songs, but because both songs were about Liverpool.

Penny Lane was released in the UK on Fenruary 17 1967, but it "only" made it to number 2 on the charts. Number 1 was Engelbert Humperdinck's Release Me.

A Live version of Penny Lane from 1993 is available on the album Paul Is Live.

Penny Lane

Penny Lane there is a barber showing photographs
of every head he's had the pleasure to know
And all the people that come and go stop to say hello
On the corner is a banker with a motor car
the little children laugh at him behind his back
And the banker never wears a "mac" in the pouring rain
Very strange

Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
Wet beneath the blue suburban skies
I sit and meanwhile back in

Penny Lane there is a fireman with an hourglass
And in his pocket is a portrait of the Queen
He likes to keep his fire engine clean
It's clean machine

Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
Full of fish and finger pies
in summer meanwhile back

Behind the shelter in the middle of the roundabout
A pretty nurse is selling poppies from a tray
And though she feels as if she's in a play
She is anyway
Penny Lane, the barber shaves another customer
We see the banker sitting waiting for a trim
And then the fireman rushes in from the pouring rain
very strange

Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
Wet beneath the blue suburban skies
I sit and meanwhile back
Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
There beneath the blue suburban skies
Penny Lane