22 August 1966
The song ‘Happy Birthday To You’ dates from the end of the 19th century. Before that, what did people sing at birthday parties? I ask because with ‘Yellow Submarine’ we’re moving into the realm of Beatles songs that transcend mere pop records and have become as woven into our shared human experience as ‘Happy Birthday To You’. Primary school children learn it. Football fans sing it with their own lyrics en masse. It’s likely that right now, at this very minute, someone somewhere in the world is singing, playing or hearing ‘Yellow Submarine’.
(A quick note on its release. In Ireland ‘Yellow Submarine’ was issued as the A-side of a single with ‘Eleanor Rigby’ as the B-side. The UK single release is a double-A-side with ‘Eleanor Rigby’ taking title precedence as the A-side over ‘Yellow Submarine’ as the AA-side. The US single, kept off the number one spot there by The Supremes’ ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’, was also a double-A-side, but with ‘Yellow Submarine’ as the A-side and ‘Eleanor Rigby’ as the AA-side. In territories outside the US, Revolver featuring both songs was released on the same day, giving us the rare instance of a Beatles single being taken from an album.)
I can do without John’s Goon-ish backing voices in the last verse; I find The Goon Show about as funny as a Paddy Power ad, and it’s ironic that a ’50s pop-culture reference, not some contemporaneous ’60s one, is the only element of ‘Yellow Submarine’ that dates it and almost undermines its innate timelessness. Also on the subject of voices, the witty and likeable Ringo was absolutely the correct person to sing this open, warm-hearted folk ballad about an idyllic, idealistic community, far from the tawdry commercialism of cobbled-together post mortem cash-ins, which would have embraced lonely people such as neighbouring Eleanor Rigby and Father McKenzie. Though he wrote it, Paul would have made it as cloying as ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’. And since Ringo is the coolest Beatle—fact—it’s only right he gets the honour of lead vocals on the Beatles song that, even more than ‘Hey Jude’ and ‘Let It Be’, will probably outlive us all.
