ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE

"All You Need is Love/Baby You're A Rich Man" is a single release by British pop/rock act The Beatles. The single was released through Parlophone Records (EMI) in July 1967. The A-side was first performed by The Beatles on Our World (the first live, international, satellite television production, which also featured performances by artists like Maria Callas and Pablo Picasso).

As opposed to the "Strawberry Fields Forever/Penny Lane (1967)" single, which was released in february the same year, featuring two A-sides (something they had already done with their previous single, "Yellow Submarine/Eleanor Rigby (1966)"), "All You Need is Love/Baby You're A Rich Man" only had one A-side. The B-side to the single is the song "Baby You're A Rich Man", which is a track where John Lennon and Paul McCartney each came in with their own written parts, which were then spliced together to form the track. Both tracks are pretty great quality compositions and the A-side is undeniably a classic. Both tracks would appear on Side 2 of the US/Canada "Magical Mystery Tour" album release which was released later in 1967.

To my ears both of the preceeding singles were more interesting, but it´s hard to come down on classic material like this. And even though the whole "All You Need is Love" message might appear a bit cheesy to some listeners, there is a sincerity to the delivery that´s greatly charming. A 3.5 star (70%) rating is fair.

Mark Lewisohn in his book "The Beatles: Recording Sessions" (1988) says that "All You Need is Love" was a song originally composed by John Lennon for the first satellite TV broadcast special programme called "Our World" done in the 25th of June of 1967. The Beatles were selected to represent the U.K. in this TV programme which was broadcasted to a lot of countries (I remember very vaguely watching it on TV on that day with my family). The recording of the song was a complicated task, because they used a pre-recorded part (which included the harpsichord part and others) and they also played and sang live during the broadcast also using an orchestra. It was a very precise task done in collaboration with producer George Martin and recording engineer Geoff Emerick. The original full broadcast of this song can be watched in youtube, and it is very interesting. For this very special event (done in the case of The Beatles in the Abbey Road Studios) the band were joined as guests by several friends like Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Keith Moon, Graham Nash and other famous musicians from the sixties, who saw how the band recorded this song live during the broadcast. There are some differences between the original broadcast of the song and the version which was released as a single some weeks later: Lennon re-recorded his lead vocals and Ringo Starr recorded an introductory snare drum roll. But that was all they did to the song after the broadcast. The band still was in their psychedelic period (as other bands were in 1967 too) and this song still has some meaning related to it.

"Baby You`re a Rich Man" was destined to the B-side of the single, with Lennon playing a melody in a Clavioline (a keyboard related to the Mellotron, I think), and with Paul McCartney playing a very good bass guitar part. Apparently, Mick Jagger sang backing vocals in this song, but it is not very clear if this happened or not.