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Credit: Far Out \/ Alamy<\/p>\n
October 26th, 2026 \u00b7 10:06pm GMT <\/p>\n
During the recording of The Beatles<\/a>\u2018 1968 self-titled album, better known as The White Album, the band members often found themselves working in different studios at different times. That\u2019s never a good sign.<\/p>\n Working relationships were hitting an all-time low, and with the band\u2019s return from India finding them fractured and jaded, it wasn\u2019t uncommon to see only one or two of the once-Fab Four working on a track at any given time.<\/p>\n The biggest offender was Paul McCartney<\/a>, who recorded \u2018Martha My Dear\u2019, \u2018Mother Nature\u2019s Son\u2019, \u2018Wild Honey Pie\u2019, and \u2018Blackbird\u2019 completely by himself during the sessions. McCartney was working so efficiently on his own that he would simply make up songs in the moment and record them, regardless of whether any of his bandmates were around. <\/p>\n For one particularly tossed-off track, McCartney remembered a nature scene that took place during the band\u2019s trip to India. \u201cI was up on the flat roof meditating and I\u2019d seen a troupe of monkeys walking along in the jungle and a male just hopped on to the back of this female and gave her one, as they say in the vernacular,\u201d McCartney recalled in the book Many Years From Now.\u00a0<\/p>\n Adding, \u201cWithin two or three seconds he hopped off again, and looked around as if to say, \u2018It wasn\u2019t me,\u2019 and she looked around as if there had been some mild disturbance but thought, \u2018Huh, I must have imagined it,\u2019 and she wandered off.\u201d <\/p>\n Had Lennon been around, invigorated by his recent exploits in transcendentalism, he may well have dismissed that as far too flippant a song for a band who had only recently waded into the Vietnam War debate to peddle. He would have almost certainly found an ally in George Harrison. But the new constitution of their creative process precluded such an intervention.<\/p>\n McCartney, on the other hand, was working hard, and keen to ensure his inspiration went to good use. \u201cI thought, \u2018Bloody hell, that puts it all into a cocked hat, that\u2019s how simple the act of procreation is,\u201d he continued, \u201cthis bloody monkey just hopping on and hopping off.\u2019 There is an urge, they do it, and it\u2019s done with. And it\u2019s that simple. We have horrendous problems with it, and yet animals don\u2019t. So that was basically it.\u201d<\/p>\n Somehow, perhaps thanks to the influence of the Indian retreat, he had managed to muster a modicum of depth to it after all. \u201c\u2018Why Don\u2019t We Do It In The Road?\u2019 could have applied to either fucking or shitting, to put it roughly. Why don\u2019t we do either of them in the road? Well, the answer is we\u2019re civilised and we don\u2019t. But the song was just to pose that question,\u201d Macca added. <\/p>\n Alas, Lennon was more inclined to pen words like \u201cNothing\u2019s gonna change my world<\/a>\u201d during the period, and McCartney\u2019s more primordial approach didn\u2019t quite have the mysticism he was going for. \u201c\u2018Why Don\u2019t We Do It In The Road?\u2019 was a primitive statement to do with sex or to do with freedom really. I like it, it\u2019s just so outrageous that I like it,\u201d McCartney concluded. It seems half the band were at odds with outrage and urges.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s Paul. He even recorded it by himself in another room,\u201d Lennon groused to David Sheff in 1980, firmly distancing himself from it. However, the extent of his disdain was tied to how it came about rather than the silliness of the song itself. \u201cI was always hurt when Paul would knock something off without involving us,\u201d he revealed. \u201cBut that\u2019s just the way it was then.\u201d<\/p>\n Lennon was only partly right: McCartney provides almost all of the instrumentation on the record, but Ringo Starr was the drummer of the track. \u201c\u2019Why Don\u2019t We Do It In The Road?\u2019 was just Paul and me, and it went out as a Beatle track too,\u201d Starr clarifies in Anthology. \u201cWe had no problems with that.\u201d It seemed as though Starr wasn\u2019t too concerned with not recording songs as a full band the way Lennon was. He wasn\u2019t as fussed about their themes either.<\/p>\n McCartney, meanwhile, was far from ignorant of the situation. He simply said that Harrison and Lennon were busy, so he decided to finish the track in a hurry. After all, the spirit of the White Album was to capture a whole array of their capabilities. He even told Hunter Davies that Lennon did \u201cthe same with \u2018Revolution 9\u2019.<\/a> He went off and made that without me.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cNo one ever says that,\u201d he went on. \u201cJohn is the nice guy and I\u2019m the bastard. It gets repeated all the time.\u201d Yet, there is also a hint that he was burying his head in the sand to some degree. Both \u2018Revolution 9\u2019 and his own private endeavours were indicative of a rift rather than testing labour constraints. The vast contrast of the two songs is also indicative of the effects of that rift and the peculiar album it brought about.<\/p>\n Ultimately, \u2018Why Don\u2019t We Do It In The Road?\u2019 captures the strange contradictions that defined The Beatles during the fraught \u201968 sessions. On one hand, it was a deliberately crude little number, inspired by a fleeting moment in nature and recorded with little of the grand ambition associated with the band\u2019s most celebrated work. On the other, its creation exposed the growing distance between four musicians who had once seemed inseparable, right down to their shared love of crude little numbers.<\/p>\n It seems daft that such a song could signpost their impending demise, and there is little doubt that its creation also accelerated the arrival of their final chapter. Yet, its appeal also makes sense of the picture. It was a spontaneous burst of irreverence made at a time when spontaneity within the band was becoming increasingly difficult to come by. <\/p>\n Silliness had always been part of the band\u2019s lore. Now, things had clearly gotten too serious.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/The-Beatles-Paul-McCartney-John-Lennon-Ringo-Starr-George-Harrison-1968-Far-Out-Magazine-1024x768.jp.jpeg\")
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