"Baby, You're a Rich Man" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles that was released as the B-side of their "All You Need Is Love" single in July 1967. It originated from an unfinished song by John Lennon, titled "One of the Beautiful People", to which Paul McCartney added a chorus. It is one of the best-known pop songs to make use of a clavioline, a monophonic keyboard instrument that was a forerunner to the synthesizer. Lennon played the clavioline on its oboe setting, creating a sound that suggests an Indian shehnai. The song was recorded and mixed at Olympic Sound Studios in London, making it the first of the Beatles' EMI recordings to be entirely created outside EMI Studios.
Lennon wrote his portion of the song after attending the 14 Hour Technicolor Dream, an all-night festival held at London's Alexandra Palace that served as a key event in the emergence of the counterculture in the UK. His lyrics address the "beautiful people" of the 1960s hippie movement and combine with the chorus to present a statement on the universality of non-material wealth. The lyrics have also invited interpretation as a message to the Beatles' manager, Brian Epstein, and alternatively as a comment on fame. George Harrison performed the song during his visit to San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district in August 1967, at the height of the Summer of Love. The track later appeared on the US Magical Mystery Tour album. Parts of it were used in their 1968 animated film Yellow Submarine.
"Baby, You're a Rich Man" peaked at number 34 on America's Billboard Hot 100 chart. Among reviewers' varied comments on the song, Billboard admired it as "an Eastern-flavored rocker with an infectious beat and an intricate lyric", while Pitchfork has dismissed it as "a second-rate take on John Lennon's money-isn't-everything theme". In 2010, Rolling Stone ranked "Baby, You're a Rich Man" at number 68 on its list of the "100 Greatest Beatles Songs". The Fat Boys, Marilyn Manson (band), Kula Shaker and the Presidents of the United States of America are among the artists who have covered the song. The Beatles recording was used at the end of the 2010 film The Social Network, about the rise of Facebook.
Background
"Baby, You're a Rich Man" was the result of combining two unfinished songs written by Lennon and McCartney, in a similar fashion to "A Day in the Life" and "I've Got a Feeling". The working title, based on Lennon's verses, was "One of the Beautiful People", to which McCartney added the "Baby, you're a rich man" chorus. In a 1980 interview, Lennon described it as "two separate pieces ... forced into one song". The two songwriters worked on the composition at McCartney's London home, on Cavendish Avenue in St John's Wood.
During the 1960s, "beautiful people" was the term adopted by Californian hippies to refer to themselves. According to author Barry Miles, who was among the leading figures in the UK underground in 1967, Lennon drew inspiration for the song from newspaper articles on the emerging hippie phenomenon. It is thought that McCartney wrote his section about the band's manager, Brian Epstein. Lennon's lyrics are in the form of a question-and-answer exchange, similar to that used by him and McCartney in "With a Little Help from My Friends". Musicologist Walter Everett writes that the song "asks an unnamed Brian Epstein what it's like to be one of the 'beautiful people; Everett adds: "This appellation was used of both communal hippies and those who mingle with the most celebrated entertainers." Lennon claimed that the meaning of the song was that everybody is a rich man, saying, "The point was stop moaning. You're a rich man and we're all rich men." George Harrison said the message was that all individuals are wealthy within themselves, regardless of material concerns.
According to author and critic Ian MacDonald, Lennon was most likely inspired to write the verses after attending the 14 Hour Technicolor Dream, an all-night festival held at Alexandra Palace in north London on 29 April 1967. Attended by 10,000 people,Cushley, Joe. "Dream On!". In: . this musical and performance art event was a fundraiser for the proprietors of the underground newspaper International Times, after a police raid had forced the closure of their offices; in MacDonald's description, it marked the first large-scale coming together of Britain's "beautiful people". Writing in 1981 on the musical and societal developments of 1967, sociomusicologist Simon Frith said that this event was one of the "multi-media happenings" that reflected the new aesthetic represented by English psychedelia, whereby "Dancing became less important than listening" and fashion embraced vivid colours while retaining "the mod concern for looking smart". Frith added: "Psychedelia was essentially elitist but the joy of psychedelic pop was that it made everyone part of the elite." Available at Rock's Backpages (subscription required).
Composition The song's principal key is G major in mixolydian mode, and the time signature throughout is . Its structure comprises an intro, two verses and a chorus, followed by a third verse and repeated choruses. From its opening chord of G major, the verses introduce a VII/I (Fadd9/G), a chord change that constitutes a pedal point on G (sustained harmonic tone) and so recalls some of the Beatles' Indian-inspired melodies from Revolver. Among musicologists, Everett says that from the seventh bar of the verse, C major is revealed as the true key, whereas Alan Pollack writes that the emphasis given to C major at the end of the musical phrases instead suggests "a perilously high center of gravity with respect to G being the home key". The Indian influence is heightened on the band's recording of the song through the use of gamak melodies in the accompaniment. Pollack considers a notable aspect of the chorus to be the bass move from C to G via a III (B). According to MacDonald, the song's loose, swinging rhythm, which he describes as "chugging pseudo-march", suggests the influence of the Four Tops' 1966 hit single "Reach Out I'll Be There".
Author and critic Kenneth Womack comments that the lyrics appear to "address issues of wealth and celebrity" for listeners unfamiliar with the countercultural concept of "beautiful people". The song reflects the Beatles' disdain for consumerism and materialism, a theme that, inspired by the band members' use of the hallucinogenic drug LSD, they introduced in the lyrics to Revolver tracks such as "And Your Bird Can Sing". Authors Russell Reising and Jim LeBlanc highlight the lines "You keep all your money in a big brown bag inside a zoo / What a thing to do" as particularly dismissive of the acquisition and hoarding of material wealth. The same authors recognise an element of ridicule towards some of the "beautiful people", specifically those that, in Lennon's words, travel no further than "As far as the eye can see" and, even then, see "Nothing that doesn't show". Music critic Tim Riley identifies a droll quality in the answers that Lennon provides to his own questions. With regard to the song's message, he writes: "It's clear that they understand their position: if the Beatles are beautiful people, by extension their listeners become beautiful people ('Baby, you're a rich man, too')."
Recording
The recording of "Baby, You're a Rich Man" took place during a period when, free of deadlines following the completion of their album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in April 1967, the Beatles worked on songs for the United Artists animated film Yellow Submarine and for what became the band's television film Magical Mystery Tour. They recorded "Baby, You're a Rich Man" in a six-hour session, starting at 9 pm on 11 May, at Olympic Sound Studios in Barnes, south-west London. The session marked a rare example of the Beatles recording outside of EMI's facility at Abbey Road, after the band had briefly used Regent Sound in central London during the sessions for Sgt. Pepper. The engineers assisting George Martin, the Beatles' producer, were Olympic manager Keith Grant and Eddie Kramer. Mick Jagger, whose band the Rolling Stones regularly used the same studio, also attended the session.
The song was mixed, in mono only, that same day. The music features an unusual oboe-like sound reminiscent of an Indian shehnai, which was created with a clavioline, an early, three-octave forerunner of the synthesizer. Being a monophonic keyboard, it was capable of sounding only one note at a time; according to music journalist Gordon Reid, citing a report from the session, Lennon created the trill sound "by rolling an orange up and down the keyboard" of the clavioline. Musicologist William Echard cites the clavioline part as an example of a psychedelic feature he calls a "garble line" – a musical part that "often meanders widely through pitch space, following a rhythmic profile that does not adhere strongly to the prevailing harmonic or melodic logic" – with "Orientalist connotations". A feedback delay effect known as spin-echo was used to fill from the end of one line of the verse to the start of the next. After Lennon had played piano on the basic track, McCartney overdubbed a second part, which enters at 1:45 and is heard in reverse over the third verse. In its doubling of the vocal line, Harrison's lead guitar mirrors the role of a sarangi in an Indian khyal vocal piece, an effect that Harrison first used on Lennon's song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds".
Following the completion of Sgt. Pepper in late April 1967, the Beatles' recording sessions for the remainder of that year have been dismissed as uninspired by the majority of commentators. Kramer contests this view, however; he says of the Beatles' collaboration on "Baby, You're a Rich Man": "The energy level was so intense … that you were riding wave upon wave of amazing creativity. It was like watching a well-oiled machine. Just incredible." According to another Olympic staff engineer, Grant and Kramer were highly complimentary of Lennon as a vocalist and "couldn't believe anyone could sing that well". Aside from the clavioline part, overdubs on the track included maracas and tambourine, and vibraphone played by Kramer. Only a single note of the vibraphone is clearly audible throughout the track, at the 0:53 mark. McCartney recalled the six-hour session as an energetic one and "rather exciting", adding: "Keith Grant mixed it, instantly, right there. He stood up at the console as he mixed it, so it was a very exciting mix, we were really quite buzzed."
During the session, it has been written that Lennon changed a line in one repeat of the chorus to "Baby, you're a rich fag Jew". According to author Bob Spitz, this was either a joke at the expense of Epstein or a provocation in reaction to the band's former moptop image. However, there has been no evidence brought forth of this actually being in the song during a session or as released. Spitz writes that the session tapes also reveal Lennon improvising similarly "wicked" remarks about McCartney, Ringo Starr and Jagger. Partly as a result of these kinds of disruptions, the Beatles required twelve takes before they achieved a satisfactory rhythm track. The group enjoyed working at Olympic Sound, which was an independent facility, free of record company control. They returned to Barnes on 14 June to record the basic track for "All You Need Is Love".
Release