#music, A Golden Oldie for a Saturday…

«Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite»

Well, it is a song from the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album, (1967), one of the best, if not THE best album in rock/pop history. Sgt. Pepper ended an era and started another one. And of course, it is The Beatles, who did it all in popular music. They studied all the sounds, melodies, styles and played them all, grouped them all together put them in a helium balloon and let them float throughout the universe and we are still fascinated.

«Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite» may not be the best song from the album, but it is an intriguing one with a bit of interesting history. First it is a song with «found lyrics». In other words, John Lennon took the idea from a poster that he saw and created the song around what the poster said. He did this several more times, especially in the «White Album» (Actually titled The Beatles).

Well, it seems like almost everybody participated in the recording of the track. You have John on vocals, organ, and bass harmonica; George on tambourine, backing vocals, and bass harmonica; Paul on bass, lead guitar, piano and backing vocals; Ringo on drums; George Martin on harmonium, organ, mellotron and glockenspiel; Mal Evans on harmonica and organ and finally Neil Aspinall on bass harmonica.

The poster, that served as inspiration for John’s lyrics was actually a Victorian circus poster for Pablo Fanque’s Circus Royal from 1843 that John found strolling through an antique shop in Kent while The Beatles were filming the video for «Strawberry Fields Forever«.

(Daily Mirror/Mirrorpix/Mirrorpix via Getty Images)

Another fun fact, that speaks of censorship for stupid reasons, was that it was one of three songs from Sgt. Pepper’s that was banned from playing on the BBC because of the line «Henry the Horse».

The poster is in John’s home at the Dakota building in Manhattan, now Yoko’s residence.

And finally, it is said that this was one of the most difficult songs to recorded, being that the arrangements were rather complicated. But done majestically by The Beatles and their phenomenal studio team.

Enjoy! And then tell me what you think of this song.