{"id":281705,"date":"2025-11-25T02:34:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T02:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/281705\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T02:34:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T02:34:10","slug":"the-beatles-song-john-lennon-hated-and-he-wrote-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/281705\/","title":{"rendered":"The Beatles song John Lennon hated \u2014 and he wrote it!"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Beatles\u2019 Anthology 4 dropped on November 21, adding another volume of outtakes and rarities to the three Anthology albums released in the 1990s. Now, as the Anthology docu-series returns to screens this week \u2014 along with a revealing new Episode 9<\/a> \u2014 it\u2019s worth remembering that the group churned out a core catalog of 213 songs between 1962 and 1970.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a lot of tracks in just eight years. And, as you might imagine, the Beatles themselves weren\u2019t fans of everything they produced.<\/p>\n

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That goes double for John Lennon<\/a>. In the latter years of his career, the most critical Beatle took a particularly dim view of many songs in the group\u2019s catalog, including his own.<\/p>\n

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His most withering condemnations were saved for the songs he stamped out in cookie-cutter form or peeled off as nonsensical filler. “It’s Only Love” is an example of the former, a Help! track he called \u201cabysmal\u201d<\/a>, while the latter includes Abbey Road’s “Mean Mr. Mustard,” a bit of light-hearted fluff he denounced as \u201ca piece of garbage.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then there’s the song Lennon called his \u201cleast favorite.\u201d It appeared on the group’s 1965 album Rubber Soul, which may seem odd, given that record’s status as the group’s first conceptual work, in which every song received its own well-considered musical arrangement.<\/p>\n

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\"British\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Sergio del Grande\/Mondadori via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Released on December 3 of that year, it was the Beatles’ sixth album and the second to come out in 1965, following Help! As long-players go, it was something of a rush job, with 13 of its 14 songs written and recorded in two month’s time following the Fab Four’s U.S. tour. (Another two original songs \u2014 “We Can Work It Out” and “Day Tripper” \u2014 were also created for a single release during this time, such was the Beatles’ remarkable creative output.)<\/p>\n

Even so, the band took care in the studio to give the songs exactly what they required, experimenting with folkier sounds and new instruments, including George Harrison’s sitar on “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” and Paul McCartney’s fuzz bass on Harrison’s “Think for Yourself.”<\/p>\n

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As for that 14th song? It was “Wait,” a leftover from the Help! sessions. It was revived and added to Rubber Soul’s lineup when no one could muster the strength to write and record one more song to meet the long-player’s requisite 14-track quota.<\/p>\n

And John Lennon’s least favorite song? It’s the very first song recorded for Rubber Soul and the last one featured on the album: “Run for Your Life.”<\/p>\n

\u201cI never liked \u2018Run for Your Life\u2019 because it was a song I just knocked off,” he explained to Rolling Stone in 1970. “It was inspired from [Elvis Presley\u2019s] \u2018Baby, Let\u2019s Play House.\u2019”<\/p>\n

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\u201cJohn was always on the run, running for his life. He was married.”<\/p>\n

\u2014 Paul McCartney<\/p>\n

Released in April 1955, “Baby, Let’s Play House” was Presley’s fourth single for Sun Records. It was written Arthur Gunter, who cut and issued his own version of it in late 1954. Lennon was particularly enamored of its line “I’d rather see you dead little girl than to be with another man.” He took it for the opening phrase of “Run for Your LIfe,” and drove the point home in the chorus refrain: “Catch you with another man, that’s the end, little girl.”<\/p>\n

“So I wrote it around that,” he told Rolling Stone, “but I didn\u2019t think it was that important.\u201d<\/p>\n

Important or not, Lennon’s song, and it lyrical appropriation, said a lot about his insecurities at that time in his life. He could be extremely possessive in his relationships. And as Paul McCartney explained in his memoir, Many Years From Now, Lennon was also unhappily married at the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cJohn was always on the run, running for his life,” McCartney wrote. “He was married; whereas none of my songs would have ‘catch you with another man.’ It was never a concern of mine, at all, because I had a girlfriend and I would go with other girls….<\/p>\n

“I wasn’t as worried about that as John was. A bit of a macho song.”<\/p>\n

Run For Your Life (Remastered 2009) – YouTube
\n\"Run<\/p>\n

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Regardless of Lennon’s disregard for it, “Run for Your Life” had little chance of being cut. With Christmas around the corner, the rush was on to have a new Beatles disc in shops in time for the holidays.<\/p>\n

The album’s final session \u2014 a marathon that began at 4 p.m. on November 11 and ended at 7 a.m. the next morning \u2014 saw the group record two songs \u2014 McCartney’s “You Won’t See Me” and Lennons’ “Girl” \u2014 as well as add overdubs to “Wait.” There was simply no time left for anything more.<\/p>\n

Although Lennon might have wished that “Run for Your Life.” had been excised from Rubber Soul’s track listing \u2014 calling it his \u201cleast favorite Beatles song\u201d and one he \u201calways hated\u201d \u2014 there was one Beatle who loved it: George Harrison.<\/p>\n

\u201c[It was] sort of throwaway song of mine that I never thought much of, but it was always a favorite of George\u2019s,\u201d Lennon told author David Sheff in 1980. Most likely Harrison loved the chance it offered to play the twanging rockabilly riffs that punctuate its solo interludes, giving it an upbeat motif that stands in stark contrast to Lennon’s dark threats.<\/p>\n

In related news, John Lennon’s 12-string Framus<\/a> that was featured on “Help!” has been reissued following its landmark sale<\/a> last year, while McCartney has explained how his left-handed playing forced himself and Lennon to become ambidextrous<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That follows the auction of a letter Lennon had written to Eric Clapton in 1971<\/a> when he made an ill-fated attempt to start a supergroup with him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Beatles\u2019 Anthology 4 dropped on November 21, adding another volume of outtakes and rarities to the three…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281706,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,128,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-281705","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-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}