{"id":376660,"date":"2026-04-13T01:38:20","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T01:38:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/376660\/"},"modified":"2026-04-13T01:38:20","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T01:38:20","slug":"mccartney-rehearses-blackbird-on-the-day-it-was-recorded-why-evolution-is-true","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/376660\/","title":{"rendered":"McCartney rehearses \u201cBlackbird\u201d on the day it was recorded \u2013 Why Evolution Is True"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my view, \u201cBlackbird,<\/a>\u201d a Beatles song written by Paul McCartney and released on the Beatles\u2019 \u201cWhite Album\u201d in November, 1968, is one of his finest works.\u00a0 Here we see him rehearsing it in the the EMI\u2019s Abbey Road Studios on the very day it was recorded: June 11, 1968. (The released version is here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

A few notes on the song from Wikipedia:<\/p>\n

McCartney explained on\u00a0Chaos and Creation at Abbey Road<\/a>\u00a0that the guitar accompaniment for \u201cBlackbird\u201d was inspired by\u00a0Johann Sebastian Bach\u2019s\u00a0Bourr\u00e9e in E minor, a well-known lute piece, often played on the classical guitar. As teenagers, he and\u00a0George Harrison\u00a0tried to learn\u00a0Bourr\u00e9e\u00a0as a \u201cshow off\u201d piece. The\u00a0Bourr\u00e9e\u00a0is distinguished by melody and bass notes played simultaneously on the upper and lower strings. McCartney said that he adapted a segment of the\u00a0Bourr\u00e9e\u00a0(reharmonised into the original\u2019s\u00a0relative major\u00a0key of\u00a0G) as the opening of \u201cBlackbird\u201d, and carried the musical idea throughout the song. The first three notes of the song, which then transitioned into the opening guitar\u00a0riff, were inspired from Bach.<\/p>\n

The first night his future wife\u00a0Linda Eastman\u00a0stayed at his home, McCartney played \u201cBlackbird\u201d for the fans camped outside his house.<\/p>\n

. . . Since composing \u201cBlackbird\u201d in 1968, McCartney has given various statements regarding both his inspiration for the song and its meaning. \u00a0He has said that he was inspired by hearing the call of a\u00a0blackbird\u00a0one morning when the Beatles were studying\u00a0Transcendental Meditation\u00a0in\u00a0Rishikesh, India, and also writing it in Scotland as a response to the\u00a0Little Rock Nine\u00a0incident and the overall\u00a0civil rights movement, wanting to write a song dedicated to people who had been affected by discrimination.<\/p>\n

You can listen to Bach\u2019s Bourr\u00e9 here<\/a>, but for the life of me I can\u2019t hear the germ of \u201cBlackbird\u201d in it.<\/p>\n

The sound is off at the beginning but starts 16 seconds in. There are a few other breaks in the sound.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s clear that the song was tweaked right up to the end, including the tempo, the pause, and the raising of the voice on the word \u201clife\u201d halfway into the song.<\/p>\n

The guy speaking to John and Paul is of course George Martin, who contributed so much to the greatness of the group\u2019s songs.\u00a0 Notice that Paul breaks into other songs from time to time, including Helter Skelter<\/a>\u00a0and Mother Nature\u2019s Son<\/a>, both also on the White Album. At about 6:15, Lennon tunes his guitar to McCartney\u2019s, as if wanting to accompany him on Blackbird. But no accompaniment was needed.<\/p>\n

Check out Macca\u2019s shoes! The woman sitting in the corner and then next to McCartney is identified by a commenter:<\/p>\n

Francie Schwartz is the lady appearing in the video alongside Paul. She was Paul McCartney\u2019s girlfriend during the summer of 1968, which coincides exactly with the White Album recording sessions. She wrote about her time at Abbey Road in her memoir Body Count (1972), giving a firsthand account of those legendary sessions.<\/p>\n

You can read about Schwartz here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This is McCartney at the apogee of his powers. The song is a work of genius.\u00a0 In all my life I will never figure out where the ability to produce songs like this comes from. All I can guess is that there\u2019s a kind of neuronal wiring in such people that can turn thoughts into wonderful music.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In my view, \u201cBlackbird,\u201d a Beatles song written by Paul McCartney and released on the Beatles\u2019 \u201cWhite Album\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":376661,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[156,157,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-376660","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/376661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}