Song of the Day 4/20: The Beatles, “Got to Get You Into My Life”
It wasn’t until 1997 that Paul McCartney revealed that this song wasn’t written about someone but rather something. “It’s actually an ode to pot,” he acknowledged, “like someone else might write an ode to chocolate or a good claret.”
When it debuted on in 1965 on “Revolver,” the Motown-inspired tune, the first Beatles song to use horns, was overshadowed by the the rest of the album’s sonic experiments. The Beatles had no intention of releasing it as a single, so McCartney helped produce a cover of the song by a Brian Epstein-managed British R&B band, Cliff Bennett and the Rabble Rousers. Their single, released within days of “Revolver,” reached No. 6 in the UK.
The song got its greatest exposure in 1978, when Earth, Wind & Fire funked it up for the doomed Sgt. Pepper movie. Their version reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Soul chart and No. 9 on the Hot 100.
The horns, charted on the original by George Martin, gave the song a distinct R&B flavor, but McCartney’s first arrangement for it had more of the psychedelic feel that suffuses the rest of “Revolver.” A demo of it was released as part of the band’s Anthology series in 1996.
