Beatles – "Penny Lane" (1967)

He likes to keep his fire engine clean

It’s a clean machine

Sir James Paul McCartney turned 80 years old on June 18.  (Other British musicians of McCartney’s generation who have been knighted include Sir Mick Jagger, Sir Elton John, Sir Rod Stewart, Sir Van Morrison, Sir Ray Davies, and Sir Richard Starkey – a/k/a/ Ringo Starr.)

(Sir Paul is NOT dead!)

Two days before his birthday, McCartney completed his 13-city “Got Back” U.S. tour with a concert at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ – where he was joined on stage by Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi.

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The 36-song “Got Back” setlist did not include “Penny Lane,” which was released in February 1967 along with “Strawberry Fields Forever” as a double A-side single. 

Penny Lane was a street in suburban Liverpool where a major bus terminus was located.  McCartney, John Lennon, and George Harrison frequently changed buses at the Penny Lane terminal when they were students.

The subject matter of “Penny Lane” has been described in one book about the Beatles as “Liverpool-on-a-sunny-hallucinogenic-afternoon.”  (McCartney had first taken LSD a short time before “Penny Lane” was recorded.)

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“Penny Lane” is a charming little record.  But like most Paul McCartney-penned songs, the lyrics leave something to be desired.

(Asking for a friend)

The recording engineer who worked on “Penny Lane” has said that McCartney was playing the Pet Sounds album constantly during recording session breaks.  The arrangement that McCartney eventually came up with for “Penny Lane” falls a little short of what Brian Wilson was doing in those days, but it’s still quite interesting.  (The piccolo trumpet solo is particularly noteworthy.)

McCartney’s lyrics are frequently rather slapdash.  The lines quoted at the beginning of this post – He likes to keep his fire engine clean/It’s a clean machine – are about as lazy as anything Sir Paul ever wrote.  (It’s like he completely lost interest after coming up with the first line.)

And all the people that come and go/Stop and say “Hello” is almost as bad.

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Click here to watch the promotional film the Beatles made for “Penny Lane.”

Click on the link below to buy the record from Amazon: