A tribute to British music hall. A “fantasy song.” A curious throwback, considering its 1968 origins. No matter how one chooses to describe it, “Honey Pie” reveals Paul McCartney’s continuing love of British music hall, big bands, and Hollywood musicals. It even owes a debt to jazz, as John Lennon performs a Django Reinhardt-inflected guitar solo. Like so many other Beatles tracks, “Honey Pie” results from a melting pot of influences, music that the foursome were reared on through television and film.
Despite being released on an album widely considered to be a time capsule of a turbulent year, “Honey Pie” traces its roots to the 1920s, specifically through a hugely popular London bandleader. Billy Cotton formed the London Savannah Band, his first orchestra, in 1924; originally a traditional English dance band, they transitioned into a music hall-style show featuring humor and even a tap dancer. After building a large following, Cotton debuted his first BBC radio show, the Billy Cotton Band Show, in 1949. The show proved so popular that hit was also broadcast on BBC television, beginning in 1957.
Although the program had ended by the recording of the White Album, Paul McCartney maintained fond memories of hearing Cotton’s brand of music. “Both John and I had a great love for music hall,” McCartney told biographer Barry Miles in Many Years from Now. “I’d heard a lot of that kind of music growing up with the Billy Cotton Band Show and all of that on the radio.” Typical of the sentimental, good-time music filling music halls, the Billy Cotton Band’s 1938 cover of “The Lambeth Walk” (a song from the 1937 musical Me and My Girl) exemplifies Cotton’s style, with lead singer Alan Breeze’s lighthearted performance a clear model for McCartney’s later song.
McCartney cites another inspiration: “I was also an admirer of people like Fred Astaire. One of my favorites of his was ‘Cheek to Cheek’ from a film called Top Hat, that I used to have an old 78,” he told Miles. “I very much liked that old crooner style, the strange fruity voice that they used.” Featuring Astaire’s unique vocal delivery, 1935’s “Cheek to Cheek” also contains jaunty lyrics describing a fantasy, a scene evocative of the film from which it came. “Dance with me, I want my arm about you / The charm about you, will carry me through to heaven,” Astaire sings.
McCartney later stated that he wanted to imitate this songwriting style, what he called a “fantasy song.” “‘Honey Pie’ was me writing one of them to an imaginary woman, across the ocean, on the silver screen who was called Honey Pie,” he told Miles. He clarified that the song was not meant as a parody, but an affectionate tribute to music he grew up on – partially courtesy of his father.
Paul McCartney first brought his new composition to the Esher sessions; this version lacked the introduction and featured incomplete lyrics. The lines “Honey pie, you are making me crazy / I’m in love but I’m lazy / So won’t you please come home” had yet to be written, and McCartney scatted through much of what would later become the “And now the thought of meeting you / Makes me weak in the knees” section. While Lennon may have later dismissed nostalgic tracks such as “Honey Pie” as “Paul’s granny shit,” he appears to enjoy himself as he yells “oh yeah” in the background. He and George Harrison can also be heard imitating horns kazoos on the recording; they obviously understood the sound McCartney tried to achieve.
On October 1, 1968, the Beatles entered Trident Studios to record the now-revised “Honey Pie.” After presumably running through several rehearsals (none exist on tape), the group recorded the basic track featuring McCartney on piano, Harrison on bass, Ringo Starr on drums, and Lennon on electric guitar. After finishing a rough mix, producer George Martin took the recording to score the brass and woodwind arrangement.
The next day, McCartney overdubbed his vocals. Martin’s score was finally ready to record on October 4, with seven musicians performing the saxophone and clarinet-driven arrangement. Toward the end of the session, McCartney laid down the line “now she’s hit the big time”; this was subsequently distorted and put through what the White Album box set liner notes describe as “a frequency filter to replicate what the tape box described as a ’78 vocal.’” The label clearly refers to the sound imitating a scratchy record sound.
While no solid evidence exists, Lennon’s guitar solo may have been influenced by gypsy-jazz guitarist Reinhardt. In 1987, George Harrison praised Lennon’s work on the track thusly: “John played a brilliant solo on ‘Honey Pie’ — sounded like Django Reinhardt or something. It was one of them where you just close your eyes and happen to hit all the right notes … sounded like a little jazz solo.”
Interesting that Lennon performed the solo, as Harrison identified himself as a Reinhardt fan from early on in his career. According to Graeme Thornson’s Behind the Locked Door, at 13 Harrison took guitar lessons from a friend who taught the young player Django Reinhardt-pioneered techniques. “His introduction to the great gypsy guitarist Reinhardt in particular gave Harrison an extra dimension to his playing that many of his contemporaries would lack,” Thomson posits. Whether Harrison encouraged Lennon to strum the guitar in such a manner remains a mystery.
One influence that is not in question is English music hall. In the opening lines, McCartney introduces the scene, taking on the role of the “chairman” (emcee or host) of the short play. The audience identifies with the titular character, a “working girl / North of England way.” The scratchy sound effects kick in on the line “now she’s hit the big time,” but the next lyric adds a twist: she found her success in the U.S., not England.
The narrator/chairman proclaims his love for “Honey Pie,” although he clarifies that he will not travel to see her: “I’m in love but I’m lazy,” McCartney drily sings. Paying homage to the Hollywood musical and the aforementioned Fred Astaire, the lyrics add that the woman “became a legend of the silver screen” and beg her to sing her “Hollywood song.”
Lennon’s rhythm guitar drives the song as well as Ringo Starr’s light-touch drums, with his short guitar solo conjuring images of the singer performing a soft shoe for the audience. McCartney’s ad-libbing and scatting encourages listeners to join in the good-natured fun, tapping into a key feature of music hall: audience participation. The Good Old Days, a long-running show that aired between 1953-83 on the BBC, recreated the Victorian-Edwardian era of British music hall with an audience singalong to “Oh You Beautiful Doll” that reveals the origins behind “Honey Pie.”
Like “Martha My Dear,” “Honey Pie” salutes the music hall tradition that the Beatles clearly cherished. In addition, Hollywood and stage musicals played a significant part from their Hamburg and Liverpool days through the end of the Beatles. Even jazz crept into their sound, further demonstrating how the group drew from varying genres to create wholly original music.
Paul McCartney would continue exploring music hall as well as musicals through songs such as “Baby’s Request” and “You Gave Me the Answer,” while Harrison would subtly nod to the genres with his covers of “True Love” and “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.” However, “Honey Pie” and White Album mark the final time the Beatles as a group would revisit the music they grew up with as lads in Liverpool.
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