A track on the White album fits into a very unique category; a song that was written instantaneously in the studio the day it was recorded. (most of the White Album was filled with songs written in India)

The Beatles had always entered the recording studio with at least a partially written if not completely written song. A usual habit may have been to finish some lyrics during the recording process or alter a chord pattern or melody line here or there, as well as define what arrangement would be used on a particular song.

But to enter into the studio and write a song from scratch and record it that very day while it was being written was unheard of for The Beatles up to that point. 

A SINGLE day spent recording a new song created out of thin air!

September 18th, 1968, Paul arrived early at EMI Studio Two for a recording session, at 5 pm, and decided to sit down at the upright piano and begin to formulate a new song to bide his time.

Since there were a good amount of newly written songs that The Beatles demo-ed at George's 'Kinfauns' home that they hadn't officially recorded yet for their album, they probably had one of those songs in mind to be recorded on this day. But with Paul's new song inspiration on this day, a decision was made toforego their original plan for the day and develop this song instead.

Why was the recording session bumped up to 5 o'clock instead of the usual 7 o'clock?

Chris Thomas, the producer on this session filling in for the vacationing George Martin, explains: "I had mentioned to Paul a couple of days earlier about 'The Girl Can't Help It' being on television during this evening." The classic 1956 musical comedy "The Girl Can't Help It" was seen by The Beatles individually during it's original seven week screening at the Scala Cinema in Liverpool in March and April, 1957. This film was highly influential for the young future Beatles especially because of it's inclusion of various performances by their rock 'n' roll heroes, many of which they've never seen in the flesh before. September 18th, 1968, was the first time this movie was shown on British television, being broadcast on BBC2 between 9:05 and 10:40 pm in the series called "The Hollywood Musical."

"The idea was to start the session earlier than usual, about five o'clock in the afternoon, and then all nip around the corner to Paul's house in Cavendish Avenue, watch the film and go back to work. So on the day Paul was the first one in, and he was playing the 'Birthday' riff. Eventually the others arrived, by which time Paul had literally written the song, right there in the studio. We had the backing track down by about 8:30, popped around to watch the film as arranged and then came back and actually finished the whole song. It was all done in a day!"

Eddie Cochran ~ Cochran died at age 21 after a road accident. While travelling in a taxi in Chippenham, Wiltshire, during his British tour in April 1960 the speeding taxi blew a tire, the driver lost control, and the vehicle crashed into a lamppost . Cochran, who was seated in the centre of the back seat, threw himself over his fiancée (songwriter  Sharon Sheeley) to shield her and was thrown out of the car when the door flew open. Gene Vincent survived the crash.

Paul explained in 1968. "The film 'The Girl Can't Help It' was on television, an old rock film." "Fats Domino, Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran were in it, and we wanted to see it, so we started at 5 o'clock and just did a backing track, a very simple 12-bar blues thing with a few bits here and there. We had no idea what it was going to be. We'd just say, '12 bars in A,' and then we'd change to D, then we'd do a few beats in C. Just like that. Then we went back to my house, watched the film and then went back to the studio and made up some words to go with it all. This song was just made up in an evening. We hadn't ever thought of it before then. It's one of my favourites, because it was instantaneous. Also, it's a good one to dance to. As for the big long drum break, normally we might have four bars of drums, but, with this, we thought, 'No, let's keep it going,' We all like to hear drums plodding on."

In his book "Many Years From Now," Paul elaborates further: "We thought, 'Why not make something up?' So we got a riff going and arranged it around this riff. We said, 'We'll go to there for a few bars, then we'll do this for a few bars.' We added some lyrics, then we got the friends who were there to join in on the chorus. So that is 50-50 John and me, made up on the spot and recorded all on the same evening. I don't recall it being anybody's birthday in particular but it might have been, but the other reason for doing it is that, if you have a song that refers to Christmas or a birthday, it adds to the life of the song, if it's a good song, because people will pull it out on birthday shows, so I think there was a little bit of that at the back of our minds."

This was one of the last songs John and Paul collaborated on.

Paul went on to tell Mojo magazine in October 2008 "With 'Birthday' we had a few friends around and it was one of our party's birthday, can't remember who. Pattie Boyd was there, Terry Dolan, just a few mates. Normally we didn't have friends around to sessions so it was very unusual. We didn't know what song to do so we decided to make one up. We did what Roy Orbison had done with 'Pretty Woman' and Little Richard had started with 'Lucille,' do-do do-do do-do do-do; Roy Orbison goes, do-do do-do DO-DO DO-DO- he just changes the end a little bit. We changed basically the same riff of Lucille and Pretty Woman into Birthday- do-do do-do do-do do-do...'You say it's your birthday.'"

In John Lennon's 1972 Hit Parader magazine interview, he concurs that "Birthday" was written by "both of us." He disclaims this somewhat in his 1980 Playboy magazine interview, in which he states "Paul wanted to write a song about birthdays, so he did that one."

Playboy Magazine - Johns Article and look who's the cover girl!!

Interestingly, John's quote as appearing in the actual Playboy magazine says that the song was written in India right along with all the other "White Album" compositions, explaining the details of their visit in the process: "Once we had our mantra, we sat in the mountains eating lousy vegetarian food with a lot of time to write all those songs. Paul wanted to write a song about birthdays." Elsewhere, though, the following quote is credited to John about the song during this same interview session: "'Birthday' was written in the studio. Just made up on the spot. I think Paul wanted to write a song like 'Happy Birthday Baby,' the old fifties hit. But it was, sort of, made up in the studio." However, John's opinion of the song was made clear: "It was a piece of garbage." Most Beatles fans would disagree.

John Lennon with his Epiphone Casino  Dec 68, on the set of "Rock 'n' Roll Circus."

At approximately 6 pm, the first of 20 takes of the rhythm track began to be recorded.

Apparently consisting of:

Paul on lead guitar (Epiphone Casino) playing the guitar riff in the lower octave.

John on lead guitar (Epiphone Casino) playing the guitar riff in the higher octave to thicken the sound.

George on bass guitar (Fender VI) also playing this iconic guitar riff

George~ photo taken by Tony Bramwell

And Ringo, of course, on drums.  The track kicks off with a quick left-handed drum roll from Ringo notunlike what he performed as the introduction to "She Loves You" five yearsearlier.

The 20th take was deemed the best, this take featuring Paul shouting a countdown from one to eight off mike during the drum break after the second verse, this being needed to count out eight measures until the other instruments were to come back in. At around 8:30, after they were all satisfied with this rhythm track, all in attendance, producer Chris Thomas and Pattie Harrison (Boyd) included, went around to Paul's house just in time for the start of the movie.

After the movie was over, they all filed back into EMI Studio Two formore work on "Birthday," having been inspired by the film to create the best"rocker" they could muster. The rhythm track was recorded on a four-trackmachine so, in order to add overdubs, a tape copy needed to be done to transferthe rhythm track to their eight-track machine in order to open up more tracks.Two attempts were made, the second ("take 22") being used for the overdubbing.

The overdubs included Paul's "Long Tall Sally"-like lead vocal.

John's lead and backing vocal.

Handclaps by John, Paul, George, Ringo, Yoko Ono, Pattie Harrison and Mal Evans.

Paul played an upright piano that was rigged to sound like a harpsichord. Cleverly miked and fed into a Vox Defiant, a solid state amp, which featured a unique mid-range booster.

Also overdubbed was, according to Mal Evans review in the 1968 editionof "The Beatles Monthly," "George playing tambourine with agloved hand to avoid getting more blisters."

Two backing vocalists particularly heard on the recording is Yoko and Pattie singing "Birthday" three times by themselves during each of the two bridges in the song.

Yoko and Pattie (and many suspect, Paul and John in falsetto) sing "Birthday" in measures one, three and five. Paul and John harmonize lead vocals once again to fill in the gap whenever the girls aren't singing, begging them to "dance" and to "take a cha-cha-cha-chance." Paul then voices his enthusiasm with a long winded exclamation of "Daaaaaaaaance, yeah" which transcend the final three measures of the bridge.

Pattie

Yoko

Piano Tricks

There is one overdub that is quite unique and is explained differently by different sources.

"The Beatles On Apple Records" describes it as "Paul's piano through a Leslie speaker."

John described it in his Playboy interview as "one interesting sound...We put the piano through a guitar amplifier and put the tremolo in, which may have been the first time that happened."

"Revolution In The Head" described it as a "heavily filtered and flanged piano."

Mal Evans described it at the time in "The Beatles Monthly" magazine as a "curious sound, a carefully prepared upright piano played by Paul – 'prepared' to give it a very special sound with reverberation, wow-wow and technical things like that."

"Beatles Gear" said that it "was more likely produced by the three settings of the MRB (mid-range boost) control fitted to some Vox amplifiers of the period."

However it was really done, it can be heard especially during theinstrumental section (after the first bridge) and as the final chord rings outduring the song's conclusion.

MonoMix

Ken Scott

By 4:30 a.m. the following morning, this fun song was complete and, between 4:30 and 5 am, the mono mix was created in the control room of EMI Studio Two by Chris Thomas and engineers Ken Scott and Mike Sheady.

After this one and only attempt at the mono mix had been done, everyone had by then filed out of the studio, this being a very productive day indeed!

StereoMix

The stereo mix wasn't created until October 14th, 1968, this being done by the returning George Martin along with Ken Scott and John Smith in the control room of EMI Studio Two, only one attempt being needed. The only noticeable difference between the two is toward the end of the song when Paul screams out "daaaaance" just before the final verse. On the stereo mix, it is heard twice, possibly because of a faulty edit, but in the mono version, one of them is covered over by other elements of the recording.

https://youtu.be/E3_e4kEpI_w

American Releases

November 25th, 1968, was the U.S. release date for their double-albumentitled "The Beatles" better known as the "." "Birthday" was the first track on side three, the perfectopening track for the second disc of this double set, this side featuring agood many high-energy songs. America was only treated to the stereo mixof the album when initially released, the mono vinyl set not being releaseduntil September 9th, 2014.

Sometime in 1969, Capitol released four of the "White Album" tracks, including "Birthday," on a "Playtape" entitled "The Beatles Vol. IV." "Playtapes" were a short-lived format used for unique portable tape players as well as standard equipment in some Volkswagen models during the late 60's. They could only contain a small amount of material so Capitol released five volumes to encompass as many songs from the new Beatles album as possible. By the end of the decade, the entire format ceased to exist anymore.

June 7th, 1976, Capitol put out a double-compilation album entitled "Rock'n' Roll Music" which was meant to be a companion piece to the official"Red Album" and "Blue Album" compilation sets released back in 1973. Thefocus of this album was The Beatles "rockers," "Birthday" definitely fittingthe bill. Then in October of 1980, Capitol separated the albums in thisset and re-released them individually, "Rock 'n' Roll Music: Volume 2"containing "Birthday."

January 1994, Capitol thought to issue "Birthday" as a single ontheir Cema "For Jukeboxes Only" series, allowing jukebox listeners toplay this specific song in tribute to a friend who was present who happened tobe celebrating a birthday that day (or whoever just liked the song). Itwas printed on both black and green vinyl.

Live

Unfortunately this was never played live except by Paul. The recording was first released as a cassette single on October 16th, 1990 in celebration of what would be John Lennon's 50th birthday.

And In the End....

At this point in their career it is said The Beatles were being uncooperative and falling apart as a group. Listening to and examining this track seeing how it was created and recorded it really looks like it was enjoyed, John included.

Enthusiasm was running high, camaraderie was intact, and everyone put away the beefs they had with each other and let it rip, creating "Heavy Metal Beatles"!

'Birthday'

You say it's your birthday
It's my birthday too, yeah
They say it's your birthday
We're gonna have a good time
I'm glad it's your birthday
Happy birthday to youYes we're going to a party party
Yes we're going to a party party
Yes we're going to a party partyI would like you to dance, birthday
Take a cha-cha-cha-chance, birthday
I would like you to dance, birthday
DanceI would like you to dance, birthday
Take a cha-cha-cha-chance, birthday
I would like you to dance, birthday
DanceYou say it's your birthday
Well it's my birthday too, yeah
You say it's your birthday
We're gonna have a good time
I'm glad it's your birthday
Happy birthday to you