Teddy Boy

“Teddy Boy” is a track from Paul McCartney’s debut solo album, “McCartney“, released in April 1970.

Another song started in India and completed in Scotland and London, gradually. This one was recorded for Get Back film but later not used. Rerecorded partly at home…(guitar, voices and bass)…and finished at Morgan. Linda and I sing the backing harmonies on the chorus and occasional oos.

Paul McCartney, from the press release of “McCartney”, April 1970

From Wikipedia:

“Teddy Boy” is a song by Paul McCartney included on his first solo album McCartney, released in April 1970. According to Ernie Santosuosso of The Boston Globe, it describes the way in which a close relationship between a widow and her grown son is destroyed by her new romantic interest.

Background

Paul McCartney wrote “Teddy Boy” during the Beatles’ 1968 visit to India. In 1970, McCartney described the song as, “Another song I started in India and completed in Scotland, and London gradually. This one was recorded for the Get Back film, but later not used.“

Recording – January 1969

McCartney first played the song to the other Beatles on 9 January 1969. The Beatles did not return to the song until 24 January, recording several takes. This recording includes some instances of guitar feedback. During one rendition of the song, John Lennon is heard calling “do-si-do” and other square-dance steps, something both musicologist Walter Everett and Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn ascribe to Lennon’s boredom with the song. Musicologist and writer Ian MacDonald writes that any attempts at recording the song “were sabotaged by Lennon’s continuous burble of parody“. MacDonald describes “Teddy Boy” as an “annoyingly whimsical ditty – notable solely for its key change from D major to F sharp major“.

The Beatles recorded “Teddy Boy” again on 28 and 29 January.

Recording – December 1969 – February 1970

McCartney recorded the McCartney version of “Teddy Boy” at his home in Cavendish Avenue, St John’s Wood. He began the album around Christmas 1969, recording on a recently delivered Studer four-track tape recorder, without a mixing desk, and therefore with no VU displays as a guide for recording levels. McCartney described his home-recording set-up as “Studer, one mike, and nerve“. He had finished recording the basic track of “Teddy Boy” by 12 February 1970, when he brought his tapes to Morgan Studios. These tapes were transferred from four- to eight-track tape, adding an audible hiss to the recording. At Morgan Studios, McCartney completed the track by overdubbing drums, a bass drum and clapping.

Release and reception – The Beatles

The Beatles asked engineer Glyn Johns to mix an LP from their January 1969 recordings. Johns selected take two of “Teddy Boy” from 24 January for his first mix of Get Back. Authors Doug Sulpy and Ray Schweighardt view this selection as “poor judgement” on the engineer’s part. Johns mixed the track for stereo on 10 March 1969 at Olympic Sound Studios. Bootleg copies of the mix circulated under titles such as Hot as Sun and Kum Back. In October 1969, Ernie Santosuosso obtained a version of Johns’ Get Back and reviewed it for The Boston Globe, writing of “Teddy Boy” that “‘Mama, Don’t Worry, Your Teddy Boy’s Here’ offers a persistent repetition of theme larded with square dance calls and deft guitar chord changes.” As there was no footage of the Beatles playing “Teddy Boy” in the Let It Be film, Johns removed it from his second version of Get Back, replacing it with “Across the Universe” and “I Me Mine“. Lewisohn writes that it is also possible that on 4 January 1970 McCartney told Johns that he was about to re-record the song for his solo album.

Due to the Beatles’ dissatisfaction with Johns’ two attempts, Lennon passed the Get Back tapes onto Phil Spector. Although Johns omitted “Teddy Boy” from the LP, Spector, assisted by engineers Peter Brown and Roger Ferris, made two mixes of the song on 25 March 1970. He kept one at its full length and edited another down from 7:30 to 3:10. This mix, which Sulpy and Schweighardt describe as a “butchered version”, has never been officially released. A later mix included on the 1996 compilation album Anthology 3 comprises three portions of the 28 January take joined to two segments of the 24 January take.

Release and reception – McCartney

In his album review for the Chicago Tribune, Robb Baker wrote that “‘Teddy Boy’ exists only as a bad example of the story song genre that McCartney usually does so well.” Jared Johnson of The Morning Call said that the Beatles’ version as heard on bootlegs had “substance, force and conviction“, while “The finished product, though more refined, is shallow and superficial, threatened with fading away into nothingness.” According to Santosuosso, the song “tells of filial alienation from a widowed mother who falls in love again. The recurring refrain is the guts of this song.” […]

One night, I mixed a bunch of stuff that they didn’t even know I’d recorded half the time – I just whacked the recorder on for a lot of stuff that they did, and gave them an acetate the following morning of what I’d done, as a rough idea of what an album could be like, released as it was. There was one thing that only happened once, a song that Paul played to the others, which I believe he later used on one of his ensuing albums, called “Teddy Boy”, and I have a tape of Paul actually teaching the others this song. I loved it, and I was hoping they’d finish it and do it, because I thought it was really good. But my version does go on a bit, and they’re just going round and round, trying to get the chord sequence right, I suppose, and the best bit is where John Lennon gets bored – he obviously doesn’t want to play it anymore, and starts doing his interjections. They came back and said they didn’t like it, or each individual bloke came in and said he didn’t like it, and that was the end of that.

Glyn Johns – From “And In The End” by Ken McNab

We’ve now put together a version, an edit of one of the takes of us trying it, which sounds interesting. You can hear on it that the band wasn’t very interested in it. I don’t know why. Maybe I hadn’t finished it enough or something. Maybe it was just tension coming in. The bit I’d like to keep actually was John sort of making fun of it. He starts towards the end of it, going, ‘Grab your partners, do-si-do,’ so we’ve kept that on. And while it was, in some way, indicative of friction, it was good-humoured friction.

Paul McCartney – About the version in The Beatles Anthology, 1996

Some of the songs on “McCartney” I had tried with the Beatles and they hadn’t worked out. There was one called Teddy Boy – the unsuccessful Beatles version is on Anthology. The Beatles were breaking up and nobody had any patience, whereas in the earlier days we might have said, ‘Why don’t we try it like this?’ So I thought, ‘Right, I’ll do it on my own album’.

Paul McCartney – From “Wingspan: Paul McCartney’s Band on the Run“, 2002

‘Teddy Boy’ was good. I’d tried to make that with the Beatles but we didn’t have enough patience with each other. It got on the Anthology — there was just enough to make a proper version. No one was having much patience with me, it never got made. So I pulled it over into this.

Paul McCartney – From “Conversations with McCartney” by Paul du Noyer, 2016

My second cousin Ted is the son of my cousin Betty Danher, who was a big influence on me musically. […] She was married to a guy called Mike Robbins. They brought their kids up surrounded by a lot of music.

Ted was their first boy, so that’s partly why I refer to him as ‘Teddy Boy’. It’s an affectionate term, as I’m just over ten years older than him. But the Teddy Boys were also the ruffians of my youth, the guys who wore long frock coats with velvet collars, drainpipe trousers and crepe-soled shoes. […]

So, Ted is the jumping-off point for the song, but as usual, it takes its own cues and puts on its own show. The ‘tales about his soldier dad’ are pure imagination. The lines ‘Teddy boy’s here / Teddy’s gonna see you through’ are what I imagined Teddy saying to his mum when he was trying to support her. […]

Paul McCartney – From “THE LYRICS: 1956 to the Present“, 2021

Lyrics

Variations

• A Stereo version • From "McCartney"
• A1992 1992 remaster • From "McCartney (by DCC Compact Classics)"
• A1993 1993 remaster • From "McCartney (1993)"
• A2011 2011 remaster • From "McCartney - Archive Collection"
• A2020 2020 half-speed mastering • From "McCartney (50th Anniversary)"
• B A combination of two performances of Teddy Boy from the "Get Back" sessions • From "Anthology 3"
• B2016 A combination of two performances of Teddy Boy from the "Get Back" sessions. 2016 remaster • From "Anthology 3 (2016 remaster)"
• C January 24, 1969 version mixed by Glyn Johns • From "Let It Be (50th anniversary boxset)"

Officially appears on

Bootlegs

Live performances

Paul McCartney has never played this song in concert.

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