All Together Now (The Beatles song)
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| “All Together Now” | |||||
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| Song by The Beatles | |||||
| Released | 13 January 1969 (US) 17 January 1969 (UK) |
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| Recorded | Abbey Road Studios 12 May 1967 |
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| Genre | Folk rock | ||||
| Length | 2 :10 | ||||
| Label | Apple Records | ||||
| Writer | Lennon/McCartney | ||||
| Producer | George Martin | ||||
| Yellow Submarine track listing | |||||
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| Yellow Submarine Songtrack track listing | |||||
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"All Together Now" is a song by The Beatles, originally released on the Yellow Submarine Soundtrack by Apple Records. The songwriting credit is Lennon/McCartney; Paul McCartney wrote the verses/refrain, John Lennon the middle-eight.
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[edit] Origins
Lennon and McCartney had no qualms about writing children's songs, and "All Together Now" typifies the kind of song sung in the school playground by girls in games with a skipping rope.
The lyrics of the song are very simple, and similar to "Yellow Submarine" in that regard. The song was performed in a skiffle style with acoustic guitar with bass and a bass drum. Banjo, harmonica and finger cymbals were added to the instrumental mix. McCartney sang the lead vocal while Lennon and George Harrison sang backing vocals and a chorus consisting of whoever appears in the studio. As with the song "Yellow Submarine", Harrison provides no guitar to the track, instead adding harmonica. Lennon, unusually, plays banjo. The song ends with an old fashioned hand-pumped car horn.
The track was recorded on 12 May 1967 and mixed the same day, but was not released until 17 January 1969, when it appeared on the soundtrack album. The song took only six hours to record and was recorded in nine takes.[1]
The song appears in an animated sequence in the film Yellow Submarine, and is also introduced by The Beatles themselves in a postscript to the film.
[edit] Cultural legacy
Football fans in the UK have sung the song during football matches. Verizon Wireless used the song in commercials in 2002. While the band was in India studying Transcendental Meditation, they sang a different version of the song changing the words "E F G H I J I Love You" to "E F G H I, Jai Guru Dev" in honor of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
The title All Together Now was also used for a discography of Beatle-related records written by Harry Castleman and Walter Podrazik, and published by Pierian Press in 1975.
The song is the final track in the Muppet album, Kermit Unpigged, where Kermit the Frog finally manages to get his friends together to sing the song.
The documentary DVD of the Cirque du Soleil show Love is titled All Together Now.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Mark Lewisohn, The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, p. 112, 164
[edit] References
- Walter Everett, The Beatles as Musicians: Revolver Through The Anthology Oxford University Press US 1999 ISBN 0-19-512941-5 pages 127, 160
