Side three
"Birthday"
According to McCartney, the authorship was "50–50 John and me, made up on the spot and recorded all on the same evening". He and Lennon were inspired to write the song after seeing the first UK showing of the rock 'n' roll film The Girl Can't Help It on television, and sang the lead vocal in the style of the film's musical star, Little Richard. After the Beatles taped the track, Ono and Pattie Harrison added backing vocals.
Lennon wrote in India. Despite meditating and the tranquil atmosphere, he still felt unhappy, as reflected in the lyrics. The style was influenced by the British Blues Boom of 1968, which included Fleetwood Mac, Cream, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Jeff Beck and Chicken Shack. The backing track was recorded in a small room next to the Studio 2 control room. Unusually for a Beatles recording, the four-track source tape was edited directly, resulting in an abrupt cut-off at 3'17" into the start of another take (which ran into the fadeout).
McCartney wrote in India, and worked on it in isolation from the other members of the band. He performed the track solo alongside a Martin-scored brass arrangement.
"Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey"
evolved from a jam session and was originally untitled. The final mix was sped up by mixing the tape running at 43 hertz instead of the usual 50. Harrison claimed the title came from one of the Maharishi's sayings (with "and my monkey" added later).
was written as "Maharishi" by Lennon shortly after he decided to leave Rishikesh. In a 1980 interview, Lennon acknowledged that the Maharishi was the inspiration for the song: "I just called him 'Sexy Sadie'."
was written by McCartney and was initially recorded in July as a blues number. The band performed the initial takes live and included long passages during which they jammed on their instruments. Because these takes were too long to practically fit on an LP, the song was shelved until September, when a new, shorter version was made. By all accounts, the session was chaotic, but nobody dared suggest to any of the Beatles that they were out of control. Harrison reportedly ran around the studio holding a flaming ashtray above his head, "doing an Arthur Brown". The stereo version of the LP includes almost a minute more music than the mono, which culminates in Starr famously shouting "I've got blisters on my fingers!"
Cult leader and mass murderer Charles Manson was unaware that the term helter skelter is British English for a spiral slide found on a playground or funfair, and assumed the track had something to do with hell. This was one of the tracks that led Manson to believe the album had coded messages referring to apocalyptic war, and led to his movement of the same name.
part of a chord progression he took from Bob Dylan's "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands". MacDonald describes the song as Harrison's "touching token of exhausted, relieved reconciliation with God" and considered it to be his "finest moment on The Beatles". The recording session for the basic track was one of the longest the Beatles ever undertook, running from the afternoon of 7 October through the night until 7 am the next day. McCartney played Hammond organ on the track, and an "eerie rattling" effect at the end was created by a note causing a wine bottle on top of the organ's Leslie speaker to resonate.
