Honey Pie

AUTHORSHIP McCartney (1.00)
McCARTNEY: "Both John and I had a great love for music hall, what the Americans call vaudeville. I'd heard a lot of that kind of music growing up with the Billy Cotton Band Show and all of that on the radio. I was also an admirer of people like Fred Astaire; one of my favourites of his was 'Cheek to Cheek' from a film called Top Hat that I used to have on an old 78. I very much liked that old crooner style, the strange fruity voice that they used, so 'Honey Pie' was me writing one of them to an imaginary woman, across the ocean, on the silver screen, who was called Honey Pie. It's another of my fantasy songs. We put a sound on my voice to make it sound like a scratchy old record. So it's not a parody, it's a nod to the vaudeville tradition that I was raised on." Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now

RECORDED
October 1, 1968, with overdubbing October 2 and 4, at Trident Studios

INSTRUMENTATION
McCARTNEY: piano, vocal
LENNON: lead guitar (Sunburst Epiphone Casino)
HARRISON: bass
STARR: drums
FIFTEEN SESSION MUSICIANS: brass backing
guitar from Guitar (November 1987)

The brass arrangement was scored by George Martin. The Long and Winding Road: An Intimate Guide to the Beatles

HARRISON: "John played a brilliant solo on 'Honey Pie' . . . sounded like Django Reinhardt or something. It was one of them where you just close your eyes and happen to hit all the right notes - sounded like a little jazz solo." Guitar (November 1987)

COMMENTS BY BEATLES
LENNON, when asked about "Honey Pie": (laughing) "I don't even want to think about that." September 1980, All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono