Because

Song facts

With the Beatles, we started off years ago doing harmonies, and I think, just as we went on, we got better and better. And for something like “Because”, which I think was like the epitome of it, we worked at it, we did it a few times till we got it right.

Paul McCartney – From “You Gave Me The Answer” interview, August 2018

From Wikipedia:

“Because” is a song written by John Lennon (credited to Lennon–McCartney) and recorded by the English rock band the Beatles. It was released on their 1969 album Abbey Road, immediately preceding the extended medley on side two of the record. It features a prominent three-part vocal harmony by Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison, recorded three times to make nine voices in all.

Composition

The song begins with a distinctive electric harpsichord intro played by producer George Martin. The harpsichord is joined by Lennon’s guitar (mimicking the harpsichord line) played through a Leslie speaker. Then vocals and bass guitar enter.

“Because” was one of few Beatles recordings to feature a Moog synthesiser, played by George Harrison. It appears in what Alan Pollack refers to as the “mini-bridge”, and then again at the end of the song.

According to Lennon, the song’s close musical resemblance to the first movement of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata was no coincidence: “Yoko was playing Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’ on the piano … I said, ‘Can you play those chords backwards?’, and wrote ‘Because’ around them. The lyrics speak for themselves … No imagery, no obscure references.”

Musical structure

With regard to citing Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata”, musicologist Walter Everett notes that “both arpeggiate triads and seventh chords in C♯ minor in the baritone range of a keyboard instrument at a slow tempo, move through the submediant to ♭II and approach vii dim7/IV via a common tone.” But while acknowledging the unusual shared harmonies, Dominic Pedler notes that the relationship is not the result of reversing the order of the chords as Lennon suggested.

“Because” concludes with a vocal fade-out on Ddim, which keeps listeners in suspense as they wait for the return to the home key of C♯ minor. Mellers states that: “causality is released and there is no before and no after: because that flat supertonic is a moment of revelation, it needs no resolution.” The Ddim chord (and its accompanying melodic F♮) lingers until they resolve into the opening Am7 chord of “You Never Give Me Your Money“.

Recording

George Martin notes that on “Because”: “Between us, we also created a backing track with John playing a riff on guitar, me duplicating every note on an electronic harpsichord, and Paul playing bass. Each note between the guitar and harpsichord had to be exactly together, and as I’m not the world’s greatest player in terms of timing, I would make more mistakes than John did, so we had Ringo playing a regular beat on hi-hat to us through our headphones.”

The main recording session for “Because” was on 1 August 1969, with vocal overdubs on 4 August, and a double-tracked Moog synthesiser overdub by Harrison on 5 August. As a result, this was the last song on the album to be committed to tape, although there were still overdubs for other incomplete songs. This approach took extensive rehearsal, and more than five hours of extremely focused recording, to capture correctly. McCartney and Harrison both said it was their favourite track on Abbey Road. “They knew they were doing something special,” said engineer Geoff Emerick, “and they were determined to get it right.”

A remixed version of the song, with the instrumentation removed so as to highlight the three-part harmony by Lennon, McCartney and Harrison, was released on 1996’s Anthology 3 and, in a different remix, on 2006’s Love. In 2016, the Anthology 3 mix became the first recording by the Beatles to appear in a film trailer when it was featured in the trailer for Luc Besson’s film Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. […]

On Because, for example, very much a John song, it needed the combined singing of the three men. So obviously it became a joint effort…

That particular track started off with John having the idea, the sort of riff on the guitar, which he played to me, and the basic song which he sang to me. And what we did then, we created a backing with him still playing the guitar, that riff, and I duplicated exactly every note that he played on the guitar, on an electric harpsichord, and Paul played bass.

And there was nothing for Ringo to do, because we’d not got drums in. But in fact there was something for him to do. Because it was so slow, and meticulously, the question of ensemble between the guitar and the harpsichord, each note had to be exactly together. And I’m not the world’s greatest player in time, and I would make more mistakes than John did. So we had Ringo beating a hi-hat all the time, to us in headphones, so we had a regular beat. We didn’t have drum machines in those days. So Ringo was our drum machine, and that was the way we did the track.

George Martin – Interview with Richard Buskin, 3 March 1987

And anyway, who we are is up to ourselves personally. Music is what’s important. As far as that’s concerned in my case, Yoko and I stimulate each other like crazy. For instance, did you know she’d trained as a classical musician? I didn’t know that until this morning. In college, she majored in classical composition. I’ve just written a song called “Because”. Yoko was playing some classical bit, and I said, “Play that backwards”, and we had a tune. We’ll probably write a lot more in the future.

John Lennon – From “And In The End” by Ken McNab

In 2016, film director Luc Besson asked Paul McCartney to get the rights to use “Because“ in his film “Valerian“:

I just asked! We reached out to Paul McCartney, and he asked, ‘What is the film?’ and then he said yes! I never met him – I wish I could, to thank him. From what I heard, he’s seen a couple of my films — and because he’s from U.K. and I’m from France, we’re both from Europe, so maybe a little closer. And Cara [Delevingne] is U.K. also. So there is a vibe that I think, from what I heard, made him say, ‘For this one, because it’s at least new and fresh.’ So I think that he likes that. He likes to be part of something new.

Luc Besson

From The Usenet Guide to Beatles Recording Variations:

[a] stereo 12 Aug 1969.
UK: Apple PCS 7088 Abbey Road 1969.
US: Apple SO-383 Abbey Road 1969.
CD: EMI CDP 7 46446 2 Abbey Road 1987.

[b] stereo 1996.
CD: Apple CDP 8 34451 2 Anthology 3 1996.

The deliberately different Anthology version has just the vocals plus new reverb added in 1996.

Last updated on January 15, 2022

Lyrics

Variations