BEING FOR THE BENEFIT OF MR. KITE!

"'Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!'" is a song from the 1967 Beatles album ''Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band''. It was composed primarily by John Lennon with input from Paul McCartney^[1] and credited to Lennon/McCartney.

Lennon wrote the song taking inspiration from a nineteenth century circus poster which he purchased in an antique shop in January or February of 1967, while filming the promotional video for the song "Strawberry Fields Forever" in Kent.^[2]

Contents

Recording

Notes

External links

Recording

One of the more musically complex songs on ''Sgt. Pepper'', it was recorded on 17 February 1967 with overdubs on 20 February (organ sound effects), 28 March (harmonica, organ, guitar), 29 March (more organ sound effects), and 31 March.^[3] Lennon wanted the track to have a "carnival atmosphere", and told producer George Martin that he wanted "to smell the sawdust on the floor." In the middle eight bars, multiple recordings of fairground organs and calliope music were spliced together to attempt to produce this request; after a great deal of unsuccessful experimentation, George Martin instructed Geoff Emerick to chop the tape into pieces with scissors, throw them up in the air, and re-assemble them at random.^[4]
On 17 February, before take 1, Lennon sings "For the benefit of Mr. Kite" in a joke accent, just before Emerick announces, "For the Benefit of Mr. Kite!, take 1." Lennon immediately responds, "''Being'' for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!", reinforcing his title preference, a phrase lifted intact from the original poster. The exchange is recorded in ''The Beatles Recording Sessions'' (slightly misquoted) and audible on track 8 of disc 2 of ''Anthology 2''.
Although Lennon once said of the song that he "wasn't proud of that" and "I was just going through the motions,"^[5] in 1980 he described it as "pure, like a painting, a pure watercolour."^[6]
It was one of three songs from the ''Sgt. Pepper'' album that was banned from playing on the BBC, supposedly because the phrase "Henry the Horse" combined two words that were individually known as slang for heroin. Lennon denied that the song had anything to do with heroin.

Notes

1. Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, Barry Miles, , , Henry Holt & Company, 1997,
2. The Beatles Recording Sessions, Mark Lewisohn, , , Harmony Books, 1988,
3. The Beatles Recording Sessions, Mark Lewisohn, , , , 1988,
4. The Beatles Recording Sessions, Mark Lewisohn, , , , 1988,
5. The Beatles Anthology, The Beatles, , , Chronicle Books, 2000,
6. All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, David Sheff, , , St. Martin's Press, 2000,

External links

★ Discussion of the original poster, with images and text