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The Quite Mature Beatles Lyric That Paul McCartney Wrote as a Teenager
Paul McCartney wrote the lovely, wistful "I'll Follow the Sun" when he was still just a teenager. The song later turned up as one of the finest numbers on The Beatles' 1964 album Beatles for Sale.
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Would the individual members of The Beatles have achieved musical success had they not found each other and formed the group? Itâs an interesting hypothetical thatâs ultimately impossible to know. After all, had The Beatles not arrived, the music landscape would have been a vastly different landscape for artists to navigate.
But one factor in their favor is they were already showing talent on their own before the band had gained much momentum. For example, Paul McCartney wrote the lovely, wistful âIâll Follow the Sunâ when he was still just a teenager. The song later turned up as one of the finest numbers on The Beatlesâ 1964 album Beatles for Sale.
Considering so many of the ballads they wrote and recorded are now among the most beloved in popular music, itâs odd to think The Beatles once were reluctant to record such songs. There was a bit of a stigma about beat bands doing softer material, which explains why their first few records contained very few slow ones.
By the time they reached their fourth British LP, which was entitled Beatles for Sale and was released in 1964, they had largely left behind those concerns. Part of that was due to the demand for new material from songwriters John Lennon and Paul McCartney being so great they couldnât afford to be picky.
That was especially the case on Beatles for Sale, as it was recorded at a time of intense activity by the band. To help fill out the running order, Paul McCartney reached back to a song he had first written as a teenager, as he explained in the book The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions:
âI wrote that in my front parlour in Forthlin Road. I was about 16. âIâll Follow The Sunâ was one of those very early ones. I seem to remember writing it just after Iâd had the flu and I had that cigaretteâI smoked when I was 16âthe cigarette thatâs the âcotton woolâ one. You donât smoke while youâre ill but after you get better you have a cigarette and itâs terrible, it tastes like cotton wool, horrible. I remember standing in the parlour, with my guitar, looking out through the lace curtains of the window, and writing that one.â
If McCartneyâs estimates are correct and he wrote it at 16, that would put the date of its creation around 1958. That means it sat around for six years before The Beatles decided to give it a spin. And when they did, fans hearing those introspective lyrics would never have guessed they were written by a lad of tender years.
âIâll Follow the Sunâ is one of several songs written by McCartney as a youth that suggests he was an old-soul type. (âWhen Iâm Sixty-Four,â another of those pre-fame compositions, goes even farther down that road, as Macca imagines himself in his autumn years trying to sustain a relationship).
In âIâll Follow the Sunâ, the narrator feels he must end a love affair for fear of missing out on some other opportunity in his life. For tomorrow may rain, so Iâll follow the sun, he insists. Heartbreak is sometimes the price that must be paid for personal growth: One day youâll look to see Iâve gone, McCartney sings.
Thereâs also a sense the girl might not have appreciated his affection while they were together: One day youâll know I was the one. In the middle eights, he reassures her that this parting is nothing that could have been avoided: And now the time has come and so my love I must go / And though I lose a friend, in the end you will know.
Thatâs quite the mature perspective for someone who, at the time he wrote it, likely hadnât endured too many profound romantic relationships. âIâll Follow the Sunâ might have been written by a young man, but its observations and insight make it sound like the work of a guy whoâs been around the block a time or two.
Photo by G Greenwell and A MacDonald /Daily Mirror/Mirrorpix via Getty Images
