Paul McCartney and Jane Asher on holiday in Switzerland

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On March 3, 1966, Paul McCartney and his girlfriend Jane Asher embarked on a two-week holiday to Switzerland. Their journey took them to Germany, where they spent a night at the Hotel Storchen in Rheinfelden, situated near the German-Swiss border. Moni Egloff, daughter of the hotel’s then-owners, Alex and Margret Huviler, vividly recalls their stay, which is documented in the hotel’s guestbook. According to Egloff, the couple arrived in an Aston Martin belonging to Paul.

Following their overnight stay, Paul and Jane ventured across the border and settled into a chalet nestled in the mountains, approximately half a mile from the picturesque town of Klosters.

During their stay, Paul started thinking about the new Beatles album and wrote the song “For No One“.

Paul and Jane travelled back to England on March 20, 1966.

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I wrote [For No One] on a skiing holiday in Switzerland. In a hired chalet amongst the snow.

Paul McCartney – Interview with Playboy Magazine, 1984

I can remember more about writing Revolver than recording it. I was in Switzerland on my first skiing holiday. I’d done a bit of skiing in Help! and quite liked it, so I went back and ended up in a little bathroom in a Swiss chalet writing ‘For No One.’ I remember the character in the song – the girl putting on her make-up.

Paul McCartney – From “The Beatles Anthology” book, 2000

[…] Two days later Paul and Jane crossed the English Channel and drove to the small Swiss ski resort of Klosters, near Davos, for a two-week vacation. The Beatles had spent three days in Obertauern, Austria, the previous year filming skiing sequences for Help!, and this introduction to the sport had given Paul the appetite to learn to ski properly.

The couple rented La Casa Rosemarie, a chalet on the road to Davos overlooking the town and the Alps beyond and built by local restaurant owner Tino Meisser for his daughter. In the bathroom of the chalet Paul began writing his song “For No One,” at first with the title “Why Did It Die?” He already had a portion of “Got to Get You Into My Life” written, based on his December LSD experience, and had “Eleanor Rigby” in good enough shape to play it on a piano in a private room at Gasthaus Casanna (a hotel also run by Meisser) for three or four guests, so this meant that half of his eventual contributions to the next LP were already at least started.

From “Beatles ’66: The Revolutionary Year” by Steve Turner

Every day in Klosters Paul and Jane started at 9:00 a.m. with their twenty-two-year-old ski instructor, John Christoffel, and were taught until 4:00 p.m. Their visit wasn’t announced, and so no journalists or photographers trailed them. Even Christoffel wasn’t told the identity of his new students and didn’t discover it until he casually asked Paul what he did for a living. At the time Paul was driving his Aston Martin to the ski lift, and he just put on a record and said, “This is what I do.” The record was “Michelle.”

From “Beatles ’66: The Revolutionary Year” by Steve Turner

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Last updated on November 29, 2023