Скачать или смотреть When I’m Sixty-Four is a Beatles song I've waited a long time to learn - first heard it at age 5...

Monday evening session with Deb, Chris, and Forrest. I'm grateful for y'all teaching me this song. Everyone knows i love the Beatles, and this song is particularly poignant for me this year! Now, here's some history of this classic, according to Wiki:

"When I'm Sixty-Four" is a song by the English rock band The Beatles, written by Paul McCartney[5][6] (credited to Lennon–McCartney) and released on the 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. It was one of the first songs McCartney wrote; he was about 14, probably in April or May 1956.[7][8] The song was recorded in a different key from the final version; it was sped up at McCartney's request to make his voice sound younger. It prominently features a trio of clarinets (two B♭ clarinets and one bass clarinet).

Composition

Paul McCartney wrote the melody to "When I'm Sixty-Four" when he was about 14,[7] probably at 20 Forthlin Road in April or May 1956.[8] In 1987, McCartney recalled, "Rock and roll was about to happen that year, it was about to break, [so] I was still a little bit cabaret minded",[8] and in 1974, "I wrote a lot of stuff thinking I was going to end up in the cabaret, not realising that rock and roll was particularly going to happen. When I was fourteen there wasn't much of a clue that it was going to happen."[8]

The song is sung by a young man to his lover, and is about his plans of their growing old together. Although the theme is ageing, it was one of the first songs McCartney wrote.[5] Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn suggests it was McCartney's second composition, after "Call It Suicide" but before "I Lost My Little Girl".[9] 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.[10][11] Lewisohn and George Martin speculated that McCartney may have thought of the song when recording began for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in December 1966 because his father, Jim McCartney, had turned 64 earlier that year.[10][11]

In 1967, John Lennon said of the song, "Paul wrote it in the Cavern days. 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."[12] In 1972, Lennon said, "I think I helped Paul with some of the words, like 'Vera, Chuck and Dave' and 'Doing the garden, digging the weeds'".[13] Lennon's contribution of the children's names were likely made in the studio.[14] McCartney's manuscript for the song sold for $55,700 (equivalent to US$118,000 in 2024) at Sotheby's, London in September 1994.[15]

The song uses applied dominants more than the rest of Sgt. Pepper, in the refrain (B–2–3), in a tonicization of VI in the bridge (B) and, as musicologist Walter Everett puts it, in "the wide array of jaunty chromatic neighbors and passing tones comparable to those in McCartney's dad's 'Walking in the Park with Eloise'".[16]

Instrumentation

A clarinet trio (two B♭ clarinets and a bass clarinet) features prominently in the song. Martin said they were added at McCartney's request to "get around the lurking schmaltz factor" by using them "in a classical way".[11] One clarinet provides an alto countermelody in the third verse. The bass clarinet doubles McCartney's bass for the retransitional arpeggiation of V7 at C–1–2.[16] During the chorus, the clarinets add texture by playing legato quarter notes while the bass clarinet plays staccato quarter notes.[17] In the song's final verse, the clarinet is played in descant with McCartney's vocal.[citation needed] Supporting instruments include piano, bass, drum set, tubular bells and electric guitar.[18]

Release

The song was nearly released on a single as the B-side of either "Strawberry Fields Forever" or "Penny Lane". It was instead held over to be included as an album track.[28] Everett said the protagonist of "When I'm Sixty-Four" is sometimes associated with the Lonely Hearts Club Band concept, but that he believes the song is thematically unconnected to the rest of the album.[16]

According to author George Case, contemporary listeners perceived all the songs on Sgt. Pepper as drug-inspired, with 1967 marking the pinnacle of LSD's influence on pop music.[29] Some fans viewed the lyric "digging the weeds" from "When I'm Sixty-Four" as a possible drug allusion.[30] In August 1967, The Beatles Book published an article discussing whether the album was "too advanced for the average pop fan". One reader complained that all the songs except "Sgt. Pepper" and "When I'm Sixty-Four" were "over our heads", adding, "The Beatles ought to stop being so clever and give us tunes we can enjoy."[31]

"When I'm Sixty-Four" was included in the Beatles' 1968 animated film Yellow Submarine. It was also used over the opening credits of the 1982 film The World According to Garp.[32]