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I’ll Follow the Sun: The Beatles

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This entry was posted on September 17, 2011 at 11:46 am and is filed under Music. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

7 Comments on “I’ll Follow the Sun: The Beatles”

  2. morpfy's avatar morpfy Says:

    September 17, 2011 at 5:02 pm

    Didn”t Gerry & the Pcemkers also do this song?

  3. Rick Oztown's avatar Rick Oztown Says:

    September 19, 2011 at 1:29 am

    Lennon/McCartney wrote it.

  4. sblake's avatar sblake Says:

    September 19, 2011 at 3:38 am

    One of Lennon and McCartney’s earliest songs, I’ll Follow The Sun was written in 1959 at McCartney’s family home in Allerton, Liverpool.:
    ” I wrote that in my front parlour in Forthlin Road. I was about 16. I’ll Follow The Sun was one of those very early ones. I seem to remember writing it just after I’d had the flu and I had that cigarette – I smoked when I was 16 – the cigarette that’s the ‘cotton wool’ one. You don’t smoke while you’re ill but after you get better you have a cigarette and it’s terrible, it tastes like cotton wool, horrible. I remember standing in the parlour, with my guitar, looking out through the lace curtains of the window, and writing that one.”
    Paul McCartney
    A rough home recording of the song exists on bootleg, believed to date from spring 1960. Lasting 1’49”, it was performed by McCartney, Lennon and Harrison on acoustic guitars, with Stuart Sutcliffe on bass, without the delicate arrangement of the final version.

    McCartney told Peter Hodgson, from whom he bought the tape in 1995, that it was recorded in the bathroom of his home during a school holiday in April 1960. Intriguingly, it featured different lyrics and music, plus a brief guitar break by Harrison, in place of the section which eventually began ‘And now the time has come, and so my love I must go’. The lyrics are hard to decipher, but appear to be:

    Well don’t leave me alone, my dear
    I’ll hurry, and call on me my sweet

    While never a core part of The Beatles’ live repertoire, Pete Best recalled I’ll Follow The Sun being played on a piano by McCartney between sets at Hamburg’s Kaiserkeller.:

    “It wouldn’t have been considered good enough [to be performed by the group]. I wouldn’t have put it up. As I said before, we had this R&B image in Liverpool, a rock ‘n’ roll, R&B, hardish image with the leather. So I think that songs like I’ll Follow The Sun, ballads like that, got pushed back to later.”

    The song was revived during the hurried sessions for Beatles For Sale at the end of 1964, when the group were struggling to find enough songs to fill the album. It was first released in the US on the Beatles ’65 collection.:

    “That’s Paul again. Can’t you tell? I mean, ‘Tomorrow may rain so I’ll follow the sun.’ That’s another early McCartney. You kow, written almost before The Beatles, I think. He had a lot of stuff…

    John Lennon, 1980

    • katry's avatar katry Says:

      September 19, 2011 at 9:50 am

      sblake,
      First-I was taken aback by the year the song was written. I never realized it was so early, and he was so young. To think they didn’t believe it good enough to release until they had run out of enough music for an album!


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