By the late 1960s, George Harrison was ready to leave The Beatles and go off alone. Not only did he feel creatively stifled by Paul McCartney and John Lennon, but he was also fed up with the band’s business side. He wrote a few songs to air out his grievances, and one song he referred to as a ‘piss-take.’
George Harrison wrote ‘Only a Northern Song’ to express his frustration with The Beatles’ publishing company
“Only a Northern Song” is a Beatles track written by George Harrison that debuted on 1969’s Yellow Submarine soundtrack. The lyrics consist of Harrison sharing his discontent with The Beatles’ publishing company as he says none of the chords he’s playing or lyrics he’s singing matter since it’s “only a Northern song.”
In a 1999 Billboard interview (shared via Rolling Stone), Harrison wrote the song as a “piss-take” after realizing he owned none of his music and the business profits more from his work than he does.
“It was at the point that I realized Dick James had conned me out of the copyrights for my own songs by offering to become my publisher. As an 18- or 19-year-old kid, I thought, ‘Great, somebody’s gonna publish my songs!’ But he never said, ‘And incidentally, when you sign this document here, you’re assigning me the ownership of the songs,’ which is what it is. It was just a blatant theft. By the time I realized what had happened, when they were going public and making all this money out of this catalog, I wrote ‘Only a Northern Song’ as what we call a ‘piss-take,’ just to have a joke about it.”
The Beatles elected to leave it off of ‘Sgt. Pepper’s’
While “Only a Northern Song” debuted in 1969, George Harrison wrote it for The Beatles’ 1967 album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. It was left off the album as the band elected to leave it off the album. Producer George Martin and engineer Geoff Emerick were also dissatisfied with the song and felt the band didn’t like it either.
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In Emerick’s memoir Here There and Everywhere: Recording the Music of The Beatles, Emerick said George felt “embarrassed” by the song and John Lennon didn’t bother to record the backing track.
“The Beatles were clearly underwhelmed,” Emerick wrote. “John was so uninspired, in fact, that he decided not to participate in the backing track at all. Still, Paul, Ringo and George ambled through quite a few takes of ‘Only a Northern Song.’ It took a long time because nobody could really get into it, not even George himself. I think he was actually a bit embarrassed about the song – his guitar playing had no attitude as if he didn’t care.”
George Harrison wrote a few songs to voice his anger toward the band and the business
“Only a Northern Song” isn’t the only time Harrison took shots at the business or his other band members. Harrison became so frustrated with the other Beatles during the Let it Be recording sessions that he temporarily quit the band. Within that time, he wrote “Wah-Wah”, a track he later included on All Things Must Pass. The track was Harrison’s way of calling his other bandmates annoying and accusing them of giving him a headache.
Even “Here Comes the Sun” is a track Harrison wrote while avoiding a meeting with The Beatles Apple Corps organization. The Abbey Road track is a pleasant tune, and Harrison wrote it as a way to relax and hope for better days ahead.
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