Your Mother Should Know

"Your Mother Should Know" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles, from their 1967 EP and LP, ''Magical Mystery Tour''. It was written by Paul McCartney and credited to Lennon–McCartney. Titled after a line in the 1961 film '' A Taste of Honey'', its lyrical premise centres on the history of hit songs across generations. McCartney said he wrote it as a plea for generational understanding and respect for a mother's life experience. In the ''Magical Mystery Tour'' television film, the song serves as a big production number in the style of a 1930s Hollywood musical. Some commentators view the sequence as cultural satire, as the Beatles are seen dancing and dressed in white evening tails.

"Your Mother Should Know" is written in the music hall style, as was McCartney's earlier composition, "When I'm Sixty-Four". He first offered it as the Beatles' contribution to the '' Our World'' satellite broadcast in June 1967, but the band favoured John Lennon's "All You Need Is Love" for its social significance. The initial sessions for "Your Mother Should Know" took place at Chappell Recording Studios in London, towards the end of August. The group were visited there by their manager, Brian Epstein, the last time he joined them in the studio before his death on 27 August.

Background and inspiration

Paul McCartney began writing "Your Mother Should Know" on a harmonium at his house in St John's Wood, London, in the company of his Aunty Jin and Uncle Harry, and drew on his father's love of music hall. The conversation he had with his family members that day inspired the subject matter of the song. Its lyrical premise centres on the history of hit songs across generations. McCartney took the title from a line in the 1961 film '' A Taste of Honey'', which tells of a white teenage girl who falls pregnant with a black man's child and withholds news of the pregnancy from her domineering mother.

Discussing "Your Mother Should Know" in his 1997 authorised biography, ''Many Years from Now'', McCartney said he sought to address the issue of generation barriers. He lamented how an argument between a mother and her child could have enduring consequences for their relationship, and added: "So I was advocating peace between the generations ... I was basically trying to say, your mother might know more than you think she does. Give her credit."

McCartney said he envisaged the song as a "production number" while planning the Beatles' 1967 television film ''Magical Mystery Tour''. After the band finished recording the film's title song in May that year, the project lay dormant because John Lennon and George Harrison had little enthusiasm for it. McCartney first offered "Your Mother Should Know" as the Beatles' contribution to the '' Our World'' satellite broadcast in June, but the band favoured Lennon's "All You Need Is Love" for its social significance.

Composition

On the Beatles' recording, "Your Mother Should Know" is performed in the key of A minor and its time signature is 4/4. The use of piano crotchet chords is typical of McCartney's compositions of the time, starting with "Got to Get You into My Life" in 1966. The song's rhythm suggests a foxtrot, a quality it shares with "Catcall" (formerly titled "Catwalk"), a McCartney-written instrumental recorded by Chris Barber's trad jazz band in July 1967. Musicologist Walter Everett comments that the two pieces also share a "syncopated ascending octave-arpeggiation of a minor triad". The composition consists of verse-chorus sections contrasted with instrumental bridges. One of the verse-choruses includes vocalised "da-da-da"s in place of lyrics, representing the singalong tradition of music hall.

According to music historian Joe Harrington, the song is an example of rock music's embrace of vaudeville in the late 1960s, which was part of the genre's development away from its rock 'n' roll roots in favour of eclecticism and a more artistic aesthetic. The song's music hall aspect recalls McCartney's "When I'm Sixty-Four" from the Beatles' '' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'' album. Its lyrical theme repeats the sympathetic portrayal of a parent offered in "She's Leaving Home" from the same album. In author Doyle Greene's view, whereas "She's Leaving Home" conveys sympathy for a teenage runaway and her parents, the generational understanding espoused in "Your Mother Should Know" is more one-sided and suggests "maternal authority and youth compliance".

Recording

The Beatles began recording "Your Mother Should Know" on 22 August 1967, their first session in close to two months. The recording took place at Chappell Recording Studios in central London because EMI Studios was unavailable at short notice. Although the Beatles had never worked at Chappell before, McCartney had participated in the session there for "Catcall" the previous month.

Recording continued at Chappell on 23 August. The overdubs included backing vocals by Lennon, McCartney and Harrison, which, according to music critic Tim Riley, give the performance a "parodic irreverence". That session was the last time that Brian Epstein, the group's manager, visited them in a recording studio. Following Epstein's death on 27 August, the Beatles committed to making ''Magical Mystery Tour'' because as McCartney insisted the band needed to focus on a new creative project.

The Beatles devoted a 16 September session at EMI Studios to remaking "Your Mother Should Know" because McCartney was dissatisfied with the earlier version. The remake was discarded, however, because he and Lennon completed overdubs on the Chappell recording on 29 September. McCartney added bass guitar while Lennon overdubbed Hammond organ, the latter filling out the song's vocal-less bridge sections. Mixing was completed on 7 November, with panning variation applied to the vocals in the stereo mix.

Sequence in ''Magical Mystery Tour''

In the ''Magical Mystery Tour'' film, the song supports an old-fashioned dance segment that McCartney called "the Busby Berkeley ending". It was filmed on 24 September, at the end of a six-day shoot at RAF West Malling base in Kent. McCartney had intended to shoot the scene at Shepperton Studios, outside London, but the Beatles failed to appreciate that film studios needed to be booked in advance. Tony Bramwell, the film's production manager, recalled having a staircase for the sequence assembled on scaffolding inside a disused aircraft hangar, which was the most elaborate set piece in the film. Around 160 dancers from Peggy Spencer's formation dancing team, and 24 female RAF cadets, were hired as extras. The formation dancers were regulars on the TV show ''Come Dancing'', and were brought in by bus from Birmingham, Cardiff and Newcastle for the shoot. According to Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees, McCartney got the idea for the Beatles' costumes from seeing him perform in concert with the Bee Gees, dressed all in white. The band rehearsed their dance routine for most of the day but the generators failed just as filming got underway. Gavrik Losey, a production assistant on the film, said that, while the generators were repaired, the dancers were "bribed" into staying late with Beatles autographs.

The sequence starts with the Beatles coming down a grand staircase in white evening tails. After they descend, a line of female RAF cadets march through the shot and the band continue to mime to the song, surrounded by a crowd of ballroom dancers. Lennon, Harrison and Ringo Starr are wearing red carnations, while McCartney's is black. The carnation difference later contributed to the "Paul is dead" urban legend. Towards the end of the sequence, McCartney steps forward from his bandmates and indulges in a dance of his own while the others continue the basic routine. Greene writes that, in contrast to McCartney's obvious enjoyment, Lennon and Harrison's facial expressions suggest "they'd rather be anywhere else" than filming the scene.

According to film studies academic Bob Neaverson, the sequence is a pastiche of 1930s Hollywood musicals, particularly Berkeley's ''Gold Diggers'' series of films. In Greene's view, the sequence masks the sense of old-fashioned compliance in "Your Mother Should Know". He cites the entrance of the young RAF cadets, amid the throng of formally dressed dancers, as an example of the scene having "a satirical undercurrent and ddressingthe fissures of late 1960s politics". Film-maker Anthony Wall, commenting on the 2012 DVD reissue of ''Magical Mystery Tour'', also recognised the sequence as a subtle satire of British culture. He said of the Beatles: "All this ''Come Dancing'' stuff, the girls in uniforms, and coming down a staircase in white suits is kind of ridiculous, but they're also revelling in the peculiarity of it."

Release

"Your Mother Should Know", and the five other songs from the film, were compiled for release on the ''Magical Mystery Tour'' double EP, except in the United States. There, Capitol Records chose to create an LP by augmenting those songs with the Beatles' non-album single tracks from 1967. The Capitol release took place on 27 November 1967, while Parlophone issued the EP on 8 December. Already familiar to fans before the film's debut, the soundtrack record was a commercial success.

The BBC
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