Martin made two reduction mixes (takes three and four) with the latter best. On 20 December, McCartney, Lennon and George Harrison overdubbed backing vocals and Ringo Starr added the sound of bells. McCartney overdubbed his lead vocal onto take two without the other Beatles present on 8 December. Martin produced, supported by engineers Geoff Emerick and Phil McDonald. The Beatles recorded two takes of the song on 6 December 1966, during one of the first sessions for the as-yet-unnamed album that became Sgt. Supporting instruments include the piano, bass, drum set, tubular bells and electric guitar. In the song’s final verse, the clarinet is played in descant with McCartney’s vocal. During the chorus, the clarinets add texture by playing legato quarter notes while the bass clarinet plays staccato quarter notes. The bass clarinet doubles McCartney’s bass for the retransitional arpeggiation of V7 at C–1–2. One clarinet provides an alto countermelody for the third verse. Scored by Martin, he said they were added at McCartney’s request to “get around the lurking schmaltz factor” by using the clarinets “in a classical way”. Pepper, appearing in the refrain (B–2–3), in a tonicization of VI in the bridge (B) and, as musicologist Walter Everett puts it, “ the wide array of jaunty chromatic neighbors and passing tones comparable to those in McCartney’s dad’s ‘Walking in the Park with Eloise'”.Ī clarinet trio (two B♭ clarinets and a bass clarinet) is featured prominently in the song.

The song uses applied dominants more than anywhere else on Sgt. McCartney’s manuscript for the song sold for $55,700 (equivalent to US$102,000 in 2021) at Sotheby’s, London in September 1994. We just stuck a few more words on it like ‘grandchildren on your knee’ and ‘Vera, Chuck and Dave’ … this was just one that was quite a hit with us.” Lennon reiterated his lyrical contribution in 1972, stating “I think I helped Paul with some of the words, like ‘Vera, Chuck and Dave’ and ‘Doing the garden, digging the weeds.’” Lennon’s contribution of the children’s names were likely made in the studio.

In 1967, John Lennon said of the song, “Paul wrote it in the Cavern days. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in December 1966 because his father, Jim McCartney, turned 64 earlier that year. Both George Martin and Lewisohn speculated that McCartney may have thought of the song when recording began for Sgt. It was in the Beatles’ setlist in their early days as a song to perform when their amplifiers broke down or the electricity went off. Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn suggests it was McCartney’s second composition, coming after “Call It Suicide” but before “ I Lost My Little Girl“.

Although the theme is ageing, it was one of the first songs McCartney wrote. The song is sung by a young man to his lover, and is about his plans of their growing old together. When I was fourteen there wasn’t much of a clue that it was going to happen.” In 1987, McCartney recalled, “Rock and roll was about to happen that year, it was about to break, I was still a little bit cabaret minded”, and in 1974, “I wrote a lot of stuff thinking I was going to end up in the cabaret, not realizing that rock and roll was particularly going to happen. Paul McCartney wrote the melody to “When I’m Sixty-Four” around the age of 14, probably at 20 Forthlin Road in April or May 1956. It prominently features a trio of clarinets (two regular clarinets and one bass clarinet) throughout. The song was recorded in a key different from the final recording it was sped up at the request of McCartney to make his voice sound younger. McCartney wrote the song when he was about 14, probably in April or May 1956, and it was one of the first songs he ever wrote. “When I’m Sixty-Four” is a song by the English rock band The Beatles, written by Paul McCartney (credited to Lennon–McCartney) and released on their 1967 album Sgt. Paul McCartney – Interview with Playboy Magazine, 1984 I wrote the tune when I was about 15, I think, on the piano at home, before I moved from Liverpool.

Beatles sixtyfour