I don't feel I have to apologise for bumping a thread that discusses
Waterloo Sunset,
Solid Air and
The Ballad of Curtis Lowe, and so far this thread has only scratched the surface of a great topic. So I'd like to honour Right-Track's original intention by talking about one specific story song.
A pretty obvious choice is
The Ballad of John and Yoko. In many ways, this must surely have the best pedigree of any story song, because the singer is the protagonist of the song, and in fact wrote the song while he was living the events, which were front-page news at the time:-
Here are some bits of info from Wikipedia:-
Spoiler for background info:
Quote:
The Ballad of John and Yoko is a song written by John Lennon and released by the Beatles as a single in May 1969. The song, chronicling the events surrounding Lennon’s marriage to Yoko Ono, was the Beatles’ 17th and final UK number one single.
Authored by Lennon while on his honeymoon in Paris, it tells of the events of his marriage, in March 1969, to Ono, and their publicly held honeymoon activities, including their "Bed-In" at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel and their demonstration of "bagism".
Lennon brought the song to McCartney’s home on 14 April 1969, before recording it that evening. "Paul knew that people were being nasty to John, and he just wanted to make it well for him," said Ono. "Paul has a very brotherly side to him."
Personnel:
John Lennon – lead vocal, lead guitars, acoustic guitar, percussion
Paul McCartney – harmony vocal, bass, drums, piano, maracas
The song was recorded without George Harrison (who was on holiday) and Ringo Starr (who was filming The Magic Christian).
Release:
Backed with Harrison’s "Old Brown Shoe", the single was released in the United Kingdom on 30 May 1969; Lennon and Ono were performing a second Bed-In at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal at the time. The United States release followed a few days later on 4 June.
Reception:
Several US radio stations declined to broadcast the song because of what they saw as sacrilegious use of the words Christ and crucify in the chorus.
The Spanish government under Franco objected to the song because of its statement, "Peter Brown called to say, 'You can make it OK, you can get married in Gibraltar near Spain.'" The status of Gibraltar is a long-running subject of debate between Spain and the United Kingdom.
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Like most celebrities, Lennon had an uneasy relationship with the press, especially after the scandal of his "more popular than Jesus" comment. Given that the press and public were losing patience with his waywardness, it was quite brave of him to release this taunting song with its provocative chorus. Also contentious in a milder way was the US picture sleeve. Who, after all, is that fifth Beatle?
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