From GoogleImages
NUMBER 68: "Baby You're a Rich Man" (Lennon/McCartney – July
17, 1967)
B-Side of “All You Need is Love” and Magical Mystery Tour – Side 2, Track 4 (3:07)
"Baby, You're a Rich Man" is a song written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and recorded in 1967 by the Beatles. It was released on the B-side of the Beatles' 1967 single "All You Need Is Love". New mixes of the song were made available on the compilation albums Magical Mystery Tour and Yellow Submarine Songtrack.
Composition
Two song fragments were combined to create "Baby, You're a Rich Man". The verses from "One of the Beautiful People" by John Lennon were combined with Paul McCartney's previously unaccompanied "Baby, you're a rich man …" chorus. Two songs were combined in a similar fashion to make "A Day in the Life", and "I've Got a Feeling". Walter Everett writes that the song "asks an unnamed Brian Epstein what it's like to be one of the 'beautiful people.'"
Musical characteristics
The song opens in what appears to be the key of G in Mixolydian mode, a G chord moving to ♭VII/I (Fadd9/G) on "now that you know who you are", all over an G pedal(sustained harmonic tone). Soon, however, the song moves to the key of C major and becomes reminiscent of "Norwegian Wood" with its use of non-Western sounding gamak melodies on theclavioline. Pollack considers a notable feature in the refrain ("Baby you're a rich man") to be the bass move from C to G via a♭III (B♭).
Recording
The song was mixed (in mono) on 11 May 1967 at Olympic Sound Studios. The music featured an unusual oboe-like sound which was created with a clavioline (an early forerunner of the synthesizer being a 3 octave monophonic keyboard) and aspin-echo (feed back delay) effect which was used to fill from the end of one line of the verse to the start of the next.
Personnel
John Lennon – double-tracked lead vocal, clavioline, piano
Paul McCartney – backing vocals, bass, piano
George Harrison – backing vocals, guitar, handclaps
Ringo Starr – drums, tambourine, maracas
Eddie Kramer – vibraphone
Mick Jagger – backing vocals
Brian Jones – oboe
George Martin – producer
Keith Grant – engineer
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