1. And Your Bird Can Sing
“Discussing the track with Rick Rubin in 2021, Paul said, “You can hear the excitement of us just making stuff up, can’t you?””
The Beatles were and are producers of joy. For people like me, the joy of listening to The Beatles’ music can be increased by knowing more about the details. That includes details about the songwriting, the musical structure and arrangement, the lyrics, the recording process, the instruments played, and so on. Knowing these details can increase our appreciation of the songs and enhance our wonder that these magical recordings could be created by four twenty-something men from modest backgrounds, with no musical training. It’s a miracle that never ceases to amaze and inspire.
The focus of this podcast is the songs. I’ll be digging into the details of The Beatles’ songs, hoping to increase your appreciation and enhance your wonder. I’ll start in this first episode with “And Your Bird Can Sing”. Future episodes will cover the other songs, in a random order. Let’s get started.
{extract of “And Your Bird Can Sing” first verse}
The Byrds – B, Y, R, D, S – were Beatles fans. They formed as a folk trio named The Jet Set in early 1964. Following The Beatles’ visit to the US in February 1964, The Jet Set started to play Beatles songs in a folk style. After seeing A Hard Day’s Night in August, they bought instruments to match what The Beatles played, notably including a Rickenbacker 12-string electric guitar. Played by Jim McGuinn (who later re-named himself Roger McGuinn), the 12-string Rickenbacker, combined with the group’s close harmonies, became their signature sound. They developed a style that combined their strong Beatles influence with their folk roots. In late 1964 they changed their name to The Byrds, mimicking The Beatles’ name in several ways. The were The Somethings, and the something started with “B”, it was an animal name, and it was deliberately mis-spelled. They also mimicked The Beatles’ mop-top hair style.
After that, The Byrds got very successful very quickly. Their singles “Mr Tambourine Man”, and “Turn! Turn! Turn!” were number 1 hits in the US and big in many other countries.
{extract of Turn! Turn! Turn!}
For a short while, they were part of the upper echelon of the pop music world, and this threw them into The Beatles’ orbit. When the Byrds toured England in early August 1965, they met and socialised with The Beatles. They met up again when The Beatles toured the US a few weeks later. In the latter stages of the tour, The Beatles rented a fancy house in Benedict Canyon, Los Angeles. Byrds members Jim McGuinn and David Crosby were among the guests they invited to visit them there. According to McGuinn, although George was familiar with Indian music by then, he hadn’t heard of Ravi Shankar (https://www.guitarplayer.com/guitarists/roger-mcguinn-behind-the-beatles-she-said-she-said). The Byrds prompted George to listen to Ravi’s music, and they also invited him and Paul to attend a Byrds recording session (Gundersen 2016).
At around that time, The Beatles would say to interviewers that The Byrds were their favourite American band, and inevitably, The Byrds’ sound started to creep into some of The Beatles’ recordings. Most commonly, “Nowhere Man” (Scoppa 1971) and “If I Needed Someone” (MacDonald 2008) are given as example of songs whose sound was influenced by The Byrds, but the Beatles song that sounds most like them is “And Your Bird Can Sing” – not the version on Revolver, but the version they recorded prior to that, which was eventually released on Anthology 2 in 1995 and the Super Deluxe version of Revolver in 2022. The version on Anthology is rather overwhelmed by John and Paul’s giggling and laughing, which distracts from the fact that it’s such a Byrds clone, and such a terrific recording. Of course, it didn’t stay a Byrds clone, but we’ll come to how that happened later. First, let’s look at the writing of the song.
Writing
Unlike some Beatles songs, we don’t have any specific information about how, where or when “And Your Bird Can Sing” was written, apart from the fact that it was mainly written by John. Paul said, “‘And Your Bird Can Sing’ was John’s song. I suspect that I helped with the verses because the songs were nearly always written without second and third verses. I seem to remember working on that middle eight with him but it’s John’s song, 80-20 to John” (Miles 1997). John never revealed anything about the song, other than the fact that he didn’t think much of it.
They started recording it relatively early in the sessions for Revolver, just two weeks in. Early 1966 was a relatively quiet period for them, with no concerts, no recording sessions, and no radio or TV commitments, so there was time for song writing. This means that “And Your Bird Can Sing” could perhaps have been sitting around waiting to be recorded for some time. However, John tended to work better under pressure, and he didn’t really get going with his songwriting for Revolver until its recording dates were getting close (Leslie 2025). I’ll present some circumstantial evidence later that suggests it was probably written in April 1966, potentially in the week before it was first recorded.
Music
My aim is to talk about the music in a way that non-musicians will be able to enjoy, avoiding music jargon beyond some simple basics. The most technical thing I’ll talk about is chords, and even then I’ll keep it simple. If you’ve studied guitar or piano at any level, it will all make sense, and even if you haven’t, I’m aiming for it to still be interesting and informative.
“And Your Bird Can Sing” is a song that most people seem to like. George and Paul both found things in it to excite them decades later. In 1987, George said,
“Listening to some of the CDs, there are some really good things, like ‘And Your Bird Can Sing’, where I think it was Paul and me, or maybe John and me, playing in harmony – quite a complicated little line that goes right through the middle eight. We had to work those out, you know.” (George Harrison, Guitar, November 1987, cited in Dowlding 1989)
Discussing the track with Rick Rubin in 2021, Paul said, “You can hear the excitement of us just making stuff up, can’t you?”
The final recording, released on Revolver in most of the world and on Yesterday and Today in the US, is dominated by the twin lead guitars played in harmony. They are all over the song, including the introduction, the break between verses 1 and 2, both middle eights, two long solos, and a unique ending or outro.
{extract of isolated twin guitars from middle eight}
It’s only during the singing in the verses that the twin guitars are not playing.
Paul described George and himself working out the harmonising guitar parts. “We wrote [it] at the session and learned it on the spot, but it was thought out. George learned it, then I learned the harmony to it, then we sat and played it.”
One important aspect of the music is the high-level structure of a song. In this case, the structure of the song goes: intro, verse, verse, middle 8, solo, middle 8, verse, solo, ending. It’s unusual that there are two middle eights with no verse in between them, but the solo that is in between them has the same chords as a verse.
There is no chorus. Usually when The Beatles wrote a song without a chorus, they included a hook somewhere in the song – a hook is a memorable piece of the song that gets repeated (Pannell 2023), sometimes including the singing of the title. Obvious examples of songs with hooks include “From Me To You” and “We Can Work It Out”. But “And Your Bird Can Sing” doesn’t have that. The title is only sung once, and there is little repetition of any of the other words.
The introduction is essentially the first half of the solo, and the two solos are exactly the same as each other, so all the work they put into making up, memorising and rehearsing the solo was well utilised. The ending is the first bar of the solo repeated three times. The song is in the key of E major but it ends on an A chord, which leaves the listener hanging.
E is a favourite key for guitarists, but interestingly the isolated tracks reveal that John is playing a D shape on his guitar so he must be using a capo on the second fret to raise it up to E. He would have done this because they originally played the song in D, when they recorded it the first time, and using a capo meant that John didn’t have to memorise a new set of chord shapes when they changed the key to E.
Most of the song aside from the middle eights is just sitting on the E chord, with occasional excursions onto F#m and A.
{extract of John’s isolated rhythm guitar from verse}
The only sections not dominated by E chords are the middle eights, the bits that start “When your prized possessions” and “When your bird is broken”. Like all middle eights, these provide some variation, starting with G#m. There is a descending line in the middle eight that runs through the guitar part and is picked up by the bass, G#, G, F#, F, E, going down by one step at a time, semitone by semitone, like this.
{audio of guitar playing those notes}
That sequence of notes is included in the chords that John plays
{extract of John’s playing in the middle eight}
and it’s in amongst the bass notes that Paul plays.
{extract of Bass from the middle eight}
Then it returns to E and F#m, before finishing with B7 – which is a version of the fifth chord in the key of E – and that transitions nicely back into the opening E chord of the next verse or solo.
The song features strong vocals from John, complemented by Paul and George pitching in, creating three-part harmonies to emphasise parts of the verses.
{extract of the vocals singing the first line of verse 2}
The first line of the third verse,
{extract “You tell me that you’ve heard every sound there is”}
is different from first line in the other two verses in that it has three-part harmonies right through it. The Beatles often threw in little unexpected changes like this or deviations from what you would expect, to provide some musical spice for the listener. Our musical brain sits up and takes notice when it hears something that isn’t exactly what it expects to hear. I believe that frequent but tasteful and discerning use of this strategy is part of what gives The Beatles’ music its magic.
A recent online mix created using AI or machine learning shows John and George’s vocals but omits Paul’s. This mostly shows George doing the middle harmony above John and below Paul, as he usually did, but surprisingly, the highest harmony in that line we just heard seems to be George singing in falsetto.
{extract from verse 3 with John and George vocals}
It’s interesting that George’s slight pitch flaws that we can hear in that extract aren’t apparent in the final mix.
As you heard earlier, John plays the rhythm guitar in a slightly unusual way, mostly playing down strokes and letting them chime out for a full beat.
{extract of John’s rhythm guitar from verse}
More commonly, in a song of this tempo, a rhythm guitarist would play two strokes per beat, either down and up, or two down strokes.
Ringo’s drums are solid with not much in the way of embellishments and fills.
{Extract of Ringo’s drums}
Paul’s bass is creative as usual, including some James Jamerson-like improvisation. In one part it is reminiscent of the bass in “Taxman”, which they had recorded just five days earlier.
{extract of Paul’s bass}
I particularly like the way Paul plays a descending bass line in the first line of verse 3, even though the guitar chord is unchanged on E.
{extract of whole band playing “You tell me that you’ve heard every sound there is”}
The bass follows a descending vocal line in the three-part harmonies to make that line completely unique in the song.
Lyrics
There is a hand-written page of the lyrics for the song shown in the book that comes with the Revolver Super Deluxe Edition. This page is in the Music Library of Northwestern University in Illinois. According to Hunter Davies (2014), most of it is written in John’s hand-wroter but the first middle eight is written in Paul’s hand, consistent with Paul’s recollection that he had worked on the middle eight with John. The lyric is complete, though sequenced slightly differently from the final version, with the second middle eight placed after the third verse instead of before it. The biggest difference is the title. At the top of the page in capitals it says, “You Don’t Get Me”, which occurs in the song one line after the title they ended up using. The title on the EMI tape box is “And Your Bird Can Sing”, so they must have changed it before the recording session (Lambley 2019).
There is no chorus in the song, as I said, and little repetition of lyrics in either the verses or the middle eights, so for the song’s title, John resorted to grabbing one of the lines, seemingly at random. The fact that the title starts with “And” creates a sense that it’s a phrase taken out of something larger.
The lyrics are a bit obscure, which has led to various theories of what and who it could be about. I’ll go through those theories once we’ve been through the lyrics. Some writers emphasise how the lyrics are puzzling (e.g., Turner 2016) and difficult to interpret (e.g., Rybaczewski undated). Even Paul said that he thought John was doing his “Jabberwocky thing” (Turner 2016), meaning that the lyrics were nonsense and not amenable to rational interpretation. Despite that, I think they are pretty clear. Here are the first two verses
You tell me that you’ve got everything you want
And your bird can sing
But you don’t get me, you don’t get me
You say you've seen seven wonders
And your bird is green
But you can't see me, you can't see me
John’s clearly addressing someone who’s been boasting about their possessions, their experiences, and their bird, but they aren’t impressing John. They might have all that good stuff, but they don’t understand or appreciate John. They’re not hip. The inclusion of the bird seems a bit random at this stage, but even if we don’t understand what the bird represents, it helps to convey that the person is boasting about everything, even their damn bird!
John had previously used green to indicate envy in “You Can’t Do That”, but the other person saying that their bird is green seems like it’s meant to be another boast. Why being green is worth boasting about is not clear.
The third verse has exactly the same message.
You tell me that you've heard every sound there is
And your bird can swing
But you can't hear me, you can't hear me
There’s a good name for a podcast in there somewhere. Again, John is addressing someone boastful and telling them he’s not impressed.
In between the second and third verses there are a couple of middle eights.
When your prized possessions
Start to weigh you down
Look in my direction
I'll be 'round, I'll be 'round
When your bird is broken
Will it bring you down?
You may be awoken
I'll be 'round, I'll be 'round
The lyrics in the verses seem quite critical of the person, perhaps even disdainful, but the middle eights can be read as being more friendly. They might be saying, if things go badly for you, you can look to me for help – I’ll be here for you. You could take that message from “I’ll be ‘round”. On the other hand, the second middle eight in particular, “When your bird is broken, will it bring you down?”, could be read as predicting the other person’s fall from grace, and the “I’ll be ‘round’” seen as John saying that his success would outlast the other person’s. The first interpretation, of being ready to offer help, seems to me to line up better with the wording of the first middle eight, but the second interpretation, predicting that John will be successful for longer, seems more consistent with the sentiment of the verses.
If the helpful interpretation is the correct one, this could be an example of Paul introducing a different perspective or attitude into a John song. John did that himself by including ideas that contrasted with Paul’s lyrics in songs like “We Can Work It Out” and “Getting Better”, and here’s Paul probably doing the same thing for John. That theory is most convincing for the first middle eight, which is in Paul’s handwriting on the lyric sheet we can see. We don’t know how much input he had to the second middle eight.
Hopefully you can see why I say the lyrics seem clear enough, even though they are somewhat oblique. John had started moving away from simple and straightforward expression in his lyrics coinciding with The Beatles’ move away from love and relationships as their dominant theme. The Beatles Bible web site speculates that the oblique lyrics in this song were an attempt to adopt a style similar to Bob Dylan’s, and given John’s admiration for Dylan this seems quite plausible. Dylan’s song “Positively 4th Street” from 1965 was one of John’s favourites (Rodriguez 2012) and he may been influenced by that to do his own put-down song.
{extract from “Positively 4th Street”}
John’s wife Cynthia claimed that the bird in the song was inspired by a gift she gave him: a clockwork bird in a cage that would sing when wound up. It seems possible that this may have put a singing bird into his thoughts, but it doesn’t explain the main point of the song – to criticise someone who has it all and boasts about it but isn’t hip in John’s eyes.
There have been different theories about who the person being addressed in the song could be. One proposal is that it was about Mick Jagger and that the bird in question was his girlfriend Marianne Faithfull. The main evidence in favour of this theory is that Marianne Faithfull could indeed sing. However, Steve Turner (2016) pointed out that her relationship with Mick didn’t start until later in 1966, well after the song was written. Also, The Beatles and the Stones had a generally friendly relationship and it seems unlikely that John would want to devote a song to badmouthing Mick.
Another suggestion is that it was about Paul. Under this theory, the line about seeing seven wonders could be a reference to Paul’s famous insight when The Beatles first smoked marijuana with Bob Dylan: “There are seven levels” (Rolling Stone 2010). However, the song was from a time when the Lennon-McCartney collaborative partnership was still flourishing and very friendly, including on this song! It beggars belief to suggest that John would invite Paul in to contribute lyrics to a song that was essentially an attack on Paul.
Tim Riley interprets the lyrics as being about a girl, and it is possible to read them that way. John would have met all sorts of girls, including arrogant, wealthy, boastful ones, so it’s not out of the question. I particularly like Riley’s comment that, given the disdainful tone of the lyrics, the twin lead guitar solo “glitters with supremacy” (Rily 2002, p.193). Ian Leslie, in his 2025 book John and Paul: A Love Story in Songs also implies that it’s about a girl. He says it’s one of several songs about “someone glamorous and emotionally distant, tantalisingly out of reach.”
But the idea that seems most plausible to me is that the target was Frank Sinatra. That probably seems far-fetched, but there are good reasons for thinking it could be true. According to Jonathan Gould (2007), in his book Can’t Buy Me Love, the inspiration was an article in Esquire magazine, called “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold” (https://www.randomhouse.com/kvpa/talese/essays/sinatra.html). It’s a long article that highlights Sinatra’s power, prestige and wealth. It cites a press release saying, “If you happen to be tired of kid singers wearing mops of hair thick enough to hide a crate of melons ... it should be refreshing to consider the entertainment value of a video special titled Sinatra—A Man and His Music”. If John read the article, comments like this could easily have provoked a response in song. The clincher for me is that the article emphasises Sinatra’s love for, and frequent use of, the word “bird” as a euphemism for a part of the male anatomy. “And your bird can swing”, indeed. “Swing” is probably also a reference to Sinatra, as it’s another word he used a lot. By 1966 he had released 27 LPs or EPs with “Swing” or “Swingin’” in the title. And perhaps the green bird is envious after all, in response to The Beatles’ success eclipsing Frank’s.
The cover date for the magazine was April 1966, so the timing was perfect for it to be the trigger for the song. The fact that Sinatra had recently picked up Grammy awards for Male Vocal of the Year, and Album of the Year while The Beatles had won nothing despite being nominated in 10 categories would probably have provided an additional motivation. The Grammys were announced just a week before the first recording session for “And Your Bird Can Sing”, so the song may have been a very rapid response to that disappointment.
The more I’ve thought about this, the more likely it seems to me that the Sinatra interpretation is correct. The reference to a bird singing or swinging is not mysterious random nonsense – it’s a direct message to Frank Sinatra that he would get immediately if he listened to the song. Isn’t that remarkable, and actually quite funny? A whole song about Frank and his “bird”! I’m reminded of the fact that in their early visits to Hamburg, some Germans were amused by The Beatles name because it sounded close to “piedels”, a German slang equivalent of Frank’s “bird”. John even referred to “Beatle piedels” on their second Christmas record.
Recording process
On April 20, 1966, The Beatles recorded two takes of “And Your Bird Can Sing”, choosing take 2 as the best and recording overdubs on it (Lewisohn 1988). We can hear this version on the Revolver Super Deluxe Edition.
{extract from take 2}
The basic rhythm track had drums by Ringo and two guitars by George and John. George is playing a 12-string Rickenbacker guitar, and his part sounds like a close imitation of Jim McGuinn from The Byrds. That, combined with the high harmonies, gives the track a very strong Byrds vibe.
As with many tracks from this era, Paul’s bass was overdubbed later, giving him the opportunity to craft a bass line that worked as well as possible with the other instruments. The bass line he came up with is completely different from the final version. It is closely integrated with what George plays on the 12-string Rickenbacker, and it is busier and more fluid. It serves this version of the song extremely well.
Also overdubbed were John’s doubled vocals for the middle eights, a tambourine, and the harmonising twin lead guitars by George and Paul. The twin lead guitars are confined to two places in the song – the solos in the middle and the ending – rather than popping up all over the song like they do in the final version. The solo is less well-played and less fully developed than the final version.
As well as sounding different, thanks to George channelling Jim McGuinn, this version has a different structure compared to the final version. The third verse, the one that starts, “You tell me that you've heard every sound there is”, is moved to sit just before the main twin lead guitar break in the middle rather than at the end, and the verse at the end is instead a repeat of the first verse. As a result, this version has an extra verse compared with the final version.
At the end of the take, John says, “That was it, wasn’t it?” and it does seem close to being a releasable version. I wonder whether the reason for not releasing it was that they felt it sounded too much like The Byrds. It certainly was an obvious tribute, and The Beatles always strove to be ahead of the game, not mere copyists.
Before they abandoned this version, they attempted to double track the vocals. Whether they completed this task is not clear, but we have a copy of one of their attempts that failed spectacularly because they couldn’t stop laughing. One source claims that the laughing was triggered by George eating potato crisps while singing (Wild 2019).
{extract of giggling version}
I’m glad they have now released the version without the giggling, because it’s much more listenable.
Six days later, on 26 April 1966 they returned to the song (Lewisohn 1988) to record a new arrangement that sounds less like The Byrds as it lacks the 12-string guitar picking by George and has dropped Paul’s high harmonies from parts of the verses. On this version they raised the key from D major to E major, which is a bit surprising as Paul’s harmony vocals were already pretty high, but he does them even higher perfectly well. The higher key seemed to help John provide a more forceful vocal delivery.
They recorded takes 3 to 13 with the new arrangement. John introduced the first of these saying in an official sounding voice, “Quite brisk, er, moderato, foxtrot”. It’s just one of John’s steady stream of jokey comments in the studio.
To start with, all four played their standard instruments on the basic rhythm track: guitar, guitar, bass and drums. We can hear take 5 on the Super Deluxe reissue of Revolver. For a while this was nominated as “best” and overdubs were applied. It’s reasonably similar to the final released version but has a somewhat heavier sound and more of a ponderous feel, supported by yet another completely different bass line from Paul. It’s more straightforward timing wise, similar to a walking bass in places.
{extract of start of take 5}
One difference in the arrangement is that they sing three-part vocal “Aaaaaahs” over the guitar solos in the middle and at the end. These are very loud in the released mix, to the extent that they almost overwhelm the twin guitars. I’m sure they would not have been that loud if they had been retained in the final arrangement.
{extract of “aaahs” from take 5}
Another difference from the final version is the ending. In take 5, they repeated the entire twin guitar break twice at the end of the song, obviously intending to fade it out during the second one. As we’ve seen, the final version has a clean finish rather than a fade out.
Despite the work they had done applying overdubs to take 5, the band decided to continue with further takes, illustrating their determination to get the best possible recording. They ended up choosing take 10 as “best”.
By this stage they had changed the instrumentation of the basic rhythm track. It was still Ringo and John, but Paul was no longer playing bass. Instead, Kevin Howlett (2022) says, George and Paul played twin lead guitars live on the basic track, and they pulled it off perfectly. Jerry Hammack (2023) in his BeatlesRecording Reference Manual says that the lead guitars were overdubbed, not played live with Ringo and John. That does seem possible, since it would allow them to focus on what is quite a tricky solo, and to make mistakes without requiring Ringo and John to play it again. But I don’t know which is correct.
After that, they overdubbed the vocals, the bass, handclaps, a tambourine and a small drum part with just a cymbal and hi-hat.
The recording still wasn’t quite complete. They decided they liked the ending of take 6 better than take 10. They liked the bit at the very end where you can hear Paul playing E notes high on the bass, over the A chord. The edit they brought across from take 6 to take 10 was longer than just those bass notes. To ensure that the edit piece had a consistent sound with what was now included on take 10, they had to apply a set of overdubs onto that part of take 6, including guitars, bass, tambourine, cymbal and hi-hat. Having done that, they called it a night.
You can hear the isolated instruments in a video on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSn2wq_2kgo
And you can also see a demonstration of how the guitar parts were probably played on Sam Popkins YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=af-umQ7oiK0
Instruments
In the first recorded version, the one that sounds like The Byrds, George was playing one of his two Rickenbacker 360-12s (Hammack 2023). He had been given the first one by a radio station during their first US visit (Babiuk 2015), and he used it for A Hard Day’s Night and in concerts that year. The second one was given to him by a Minneapolis music store during their tour in August 1965. The two would have sounded similar, but the second one had rounded edges rather than square ones.
Sam Popkins’ video shows all three guitars on the final track being Epiphone Casinos. While that’s possibly true, Jerry Hammack (2023) doesn’t rule out John playing his Stratocaster and he says that George could have been playing any of several guitars. But he does say that Paul was playing a Casino. Unlike Paul’s basses, a number of Paul’s guitars in the 1960s were right-handed models, restrung and played upside down. That’s what his Casino was. Given that Paul was playing his Casino, and given that the two of them were playing twin guitars, it seems likely that George would have been playing his Casino too.
Paul’s bass was a 1964 Rickenbacker 4001S – the same one he would play for the Wings tours of the 1970s. (https://uniqueguitar.blogspot.com/2011/01/mccartneys-rickenbacker-4001s-lh-bass.html) He was also given this bass during The Beatles’ 1965 tour of the US, when they were staying in the rented house in the Hollywood Hills where Jim McGuinn and David Crosby visited them. This time the giver was Rickenbacker itself. The Beatles were often being given instruments and equipment by their makers, in the hope that this would stimulate sales to musicians, many of whom paid close attention to what The Beatles were using. In 1966 the Rickenbacker bass was still in its original colour scheme, called Fireglo – sort of a red sunburst. In 1967 it was given a more psychedelic paint job, as seen in the “All You Need is Love” video and the Magical Mystery Tour movie. In late 1968 or early 1969 he had all the paint stripped off, and it remained in that state through the 1970s (Babiuk 2015).
Versions and mixes
The Beatles loved sounds. They sought out novel sounds for their recordings and they commented on how they loved the overall sound of certain favourite records. They aimed to make records that also sounded great. The overall sound of a recording depends on a long list of factors, many of which I’ve talked about already, but a key one is the mix. I will be describing the available mixes for each song. The different mixes can be interesting in their own right, but they can also be revealing about what makes a song tick. As this is the first episode, I’ll start with some comments about mixing in general.
Mixing involves setting the volume of each part in the recording, making further adjustments to tone or EQ, applying additional sound effects, and placing each recorded sound in the stereo pan, if it’s a stereo mix. In The Beatles’ case, it sometime also involved adjusting the playback speed of the recording, but not for “And Your Bird Can Sing”.
Mixing is a combination of skill and art. During The Beatles’ time, mixes were done live. The recorded tracks were played back on one tape deck, the sounds were manipulated on a mixing desk as it played, and the result was recorded on another tape deck. If there were a lot of changes being applied as the song progressed, you would need multiple people to help with manipulating the knobs and dials. Once The Beatles got engaged with the mixing process, starting in 1966, they would sometimes move the knobs and dials alongside the mixing engineer. It actually became part of their creative process. We don’t know if they were involved in mixing “And Your Bird Can Sing”.
Ahead of the release of Revolver, a mono mix of “And Your Bird Can Sing” was made on May 20, 1966 and sent to the US for inclusion on Yesterday and Today, which was released on June 15. It seems like George Martin was unable to resist the pressure from Capitol to facilitate its appalling strategy of chopping, mangling and mixing up the Beatles’ albums for US release. But, it does seem odd that when he chose which three songs to send, all three of them were John songs, leaving John seriously under-represented on the American version of Revolver, which came out later. He had just one song on each side. It didn’t have to be that way. By that stage in the recording process for Revolver, there were various Paul songs and George songs that were finished or almost finished.
Capitol released a stereo version of the Yesterday and Today album using a fake stereo “duophonic” mix. This involved taking the mono mix and separating low and high frequencies into different channels in the stereo mix. It’s an extremely unsatisfactory way to get a stereo mix, and the fact that they did it just emphasises Capitol’s deep lack of concern about the quality of Beatles products they put out. Their contempt for US fans is further highlighted by the fact that a proper stereo mix of all three of the Revolver songs had been made in London on May 20, and the stereo version of Yesterday and Today wasn’t released in the US until August 8. There was plenty of time to get the proper stereo mixes, but they didn’t bother. The true stereo mixes were included on some later US pressings of Yesterday and Today, but not all of them.
The mono mix for UK release was made on June 8. These various mixes are not strikingly different in terms of volumes for the different instruments and vocals. The US mono and the US fake stereo mixes had louder hand claps than the UK versions, and the twin guitars drop a little more in volume during the middle eights in the UK versions (Brennan and Daniels 2022).
The original stereo mix is one of those 1960s mixes where some things are positioned in places that sound a little unusual from a 21st century perspective. The drum kit and John’s rhythm guitar are panned somewhat to the left, the vocals, tambourine and handclaps are panned partly right, and the centre contains the lead guitars and the bass. The vocal track is treated with Automatic Double Tracking, or ADT, a process invented by Beatles engineer Ken Townsend that was originally intended to obviate the need for tedious overdubbing when they wanted to double track vocals, particularly John’s vocals. It doesn’t actually replicate true double tracking, but it creates a pleasing fuzziness that The Beatles clearly liked, because they used it a lot.
The new stereo mix from 2022 brings most of the instruments and vocals that were panned left or right closer to the centre of the stereo field. The drums are still a little left, but less so, and the rhythm guitar is now slightly right while the lead guitars are slightly left. The vocals are centred, and the ADT effect sounds a little stronger.
For comparison, here’s the original stereo mix.
{extract of 1966 stereo mix}
And here’s the new mix.
{extract of 2022 stereo mix}
Without headphones the new one sounds much like the original, but with headphones it’s my preferred mix.
Finally, there is the surround version available for streaming on Apple Music. There was consternation among many fans, including me, that the surround mixes were not included on a Blu-Ray disk in the Revolver box set, as they had been in previous Beatles boxes. I’m sure I paid enough to cover the cost of a Blu-Ray. The surround mix sounds similar to the 2022 stereo mix, with the exception that the vocals are centred front-to-back while the main instruments are at the front.
Live performances
The song was never performed live by The Beatles. They only did one tour after the release of Revolver, the 1966 US tour in the second half of August, and they didn’t perform any songs from the album. Given the technology of the time, it would have been too difficult to reproduce most of the songs on stage. “And Your Bird Can Sing” might have been one of the few that could have worked, although they would have had to omit Paul’s harmony guitar. But they must have thought, there was little point. The fans wouldn’t have enjoyed it any more than the setlist they did play, which was dominated by songs from 1964 and 1965.
The song has never been performed live by a solo Beatle either. It’s such a John song that the others would never do it, and given John’s stated lack of enthusiasm for it, he would not have done it either, even if he had toured and done Beatles songs.
TV, radio and movie performances
The Beatles didn’t perform the song on TV, radio or a movie, and they didn’t create a video for it. The nearest to that was The Beatles’ US cartoon series. “And Your Bird Can Sing” was the theme song during its third season, plus it was performed in full by the cartoon Beatles in one episode.
{extract from cartoon series 3}
As Kevin Howlett observes in the Revolver Deluxe Edition book, the cartoon performance “is a good illustration of how far the group’s cartoon image had become disconnected from the reality of The Beatles world”. That disconnection reached even more startling heights in the cartoon episodes that included “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Tomorrow Never Knows”, but we’ll come to them in future episodes.
Cover versions
There are far too many cover versions of most Beatles songs for it to make sense to even try to mention them all. Most of the covers listed on the internet are by bands you’ve never heard of, many of them Beatles tribute bands. What I will do is touch on the covers that are significant in some way, perhaps because they have a Beatles connection, or perhaps because the artist is well known, or perhaps because I consider the cover to be a particularly good one.
I should admit that I generally don’t seek out and listen to Beatles covers. They are never as good as the originals, so why bother? But the huge number of Beatles covers is part of the Beatles phenomenon, so it seems appropriate to point out some of the main ones. Besides, some of them are interesting, or even good!
I found two or three covers of “And Your Bird Can Sing” that have Beatles connections. Their producer George Martin did an easy-listening instrumental version on his album “George Martin Instrumentally Salutes the Beatle Girls”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kP237OjcAiI It has all the horns and strings you could want from a 1960s easy listening track plus the album sleeve art is worth seeking out. It is truly something to behold, and I wonder how long it took before George Martin regretted agreeing to it. It looks like he was already regretting it as the photo was being taken.
Another cover with a Beatles connection is by Laurence Juber, the last lead guitarist in Wings. He has released a bundle of solo acoustic guitar albums of Beatles covers, including LJ Plays the Beatles (2000), LJ Plays the Beatles, Vol. 2 (2010), and LJ Can't Stop Playing the Beatles! (2017). On the last of those he does an excellent cover of “And You’re your Bird Can Sing”. It’s beautifully arranged and brilliantly played. Highly recommended. https://laurencejuber.bandcamp.com/album/lj-cant-stop-playing-the-beatles
Elvis Costello has a slight Beatles connection, given his work in the 80s with Paul. Elvis did multiple performances of a fairly straight live version with his band The Imposters in 2011 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCmaXiuvFVI), but he also contributed a beautiful and very different studio version to a 20-LP box set called For The Birds: The Birdsong Project. The proceeds from this went to an American environmental organisation, the National Audubon Society. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q1bP-hLRgI&list=RD-q1bP-hLRgI I’m guessing that they didn’t know about the theory that the bird in the song was actually Frank Sinatra’s favourite euphemism, rather than a feathered animal.
Then there are some covers by other well-known acts. Matthew Sweet and Suzanna Hoffs, shared the lead vocals when they covered it on their album Under the Covers, Volume 1 (2006). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=148BZKiVaBg It’s a lovely sounding recording that is quite true to the original but with extra backing vocals in the second middle eight.
There is a version by The Jam, whose leader Paul Weller is obviously a Beatles fan. This was released as a single B side and labelled as a demo, although it sounds better than that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMyZHsP2YA8
Wilco did an all-covers show in 2013, with the set list determined by fan requests. Their cover is note-perfect and obviously done with great affection. In fact, they played it twice in a row. After they had done it once, their singer Jeff Tweedy said,
{extract of Jeff Tweedy, “I think we should do that one again. It was pretty good but it’s so much fun and it’s so much work for two minutes.”}
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2pKZX6LEA4
Finally, there have been plenty of cases of the song being played live by various acts, as listed on setlist.fm. Of these, the acts that stand out to me are Robyn Hitchcock, Richard Thompson, Adrian Belew, and the Gene Simmons Band.
Other observations
Finally, a report on The Beatles’ facial hair at the time they recorded this song. There wasn’t any! They were in the latter days of their mop-top era, when they all had similar haircuts and were clean shaven. Starting the following year, 1967, various forms of facial hair came and went on each of the Beatles for the rest of their time together, and I’ll check on that briefly for each of the songs released after 1966.
Conclusion
There are several distinctive things about “And Your Bird Can Sing”, most obviously the wonderful twin lead guitar lines played by Paul and George. These provide the dominant sonic texture for the song, and they created a template that many others later followed, including acts like Thin Lizzy, the Allman Brothers Band, and Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Its lyrics at first seem obscure, but on close reading it’s obviously a rather scathing put-down song, probably directed at Frank Sinatra. It was made twice in quite different versions a week apart. The first version sounded so much like The Byrds that The Beatles probably worried about coming across as copyists rather than leaders. The making of the second version was a bit complex, with overdubs first being applied to take 5, then to take 10, and then to part of take 6 to be edited into take 10.
John was dismissive of “And Your Bird Can Sing”. In 1971 he described it as “another horror” (Howlett 2022) and he later said it was “another of my throwaways” (Sheff 2020, p. 206). Hertsgaard (1995) called this “ridiculous self-flagellation”. When making these sorts of comments, my feeling is that John was often focussing on the lyrics, rather than the music. His main criterion for liking one of his own songs seemed to be whether the lyrics remained meaningful and important to him, because they dealt with his insecurities. In that light, perhaps it’s not surprising that he didn’t continue to hold a flame for a put-down song about someone he probably didn’t care about either way. Even so, calling it a “horror” or a “throwaway” does a massive disservice to a very good song. The lyrics are actually intriguing and well-constructed, and the music is wonderful.
Others certainly thought so. For example, Slash, the guitarist from Guns N’ Roses, once said “My ultimate favourite is ‘And Your Bird Can Sing’. The dual guitars they are playing sound like they are from heaven to me” (Howlett 2022).
That’s it for this episode. Let me know what you think in the comments on everysoundthereis.net, where you can also find the transcript.
Before wrapping up, I want to say how much I appreciate the help of the amazing Editorial Board that has been backing me up as I worked to get this podcast established. Thanks go to Stefan Koch, Marcus Phelan, Greg Armstrong, Garry Stanton and Steven Cockcroft. They are all great Beatles experts, in different ways, and they’ve been wonderfully generous and supportive. You can read more about them on the podcast’s web page.
Thanks for listening, and I hope you’ll join me next time on Every Sound There Is for another detailed exploration of a Beatles song.
Theme music by Marcus Phelan with Stefan Koch. Music in the section announcements by Stefan Koch, David Pannell, Marcus Phelan; and from the Gimme Some Truth podcast, Obadiah Jones and his mixing engineer Liam Narrie. Voice-overs by Michael Burton.
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David Pannell
7 July 2026