The Beatles | Penny Lane | Parlophone | 1967

The Beatles – “Penny Lane” / “Strawberry Fields Forever” (Parlophone R 5570) February 1967

I woke up with a tune on my mind and it was ‘Penny Lane’ —says MANFRED MANN

HERE it is! The Beatles new single! At the height of Monkeemania among fans and with the Stones’ every move hinged on controversy, once again John, Paul, George and Ringo look set to come crashing back to retrieve their pop crown. “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane” — two new Lennon-McCartney compositions originally scheduled for the group’s next album, make up the double-sided single out next Friday (February 17).

It is their fourteenth release since the days of “Love Me Do” in October 1962. Their last record, “Eleanor Rigby”/ “Yellow Submarine,” which seems to have set the pattern for double A-side singles, held the top spot for a month. The question now, with so many new things happening in the chart, is whether they can do it again. One person who thinks they can is MANFRED MANN, who reviewed the single for Disc and Music Echo at his Blackheath, London, home last weekend.

Says Manfred: I’m glad I had the opportunity of hearing it more than once. In fact, Klaus had a copy soon after it was recorded and brought it round for me to hear. The first time I heard “Penny Lane” I thought it was fairly pleasant—but it left me rather cold. Then I would find myself waking up in the middle of the night with a tune on my mind and realise it was “Penny Lane.”

It’s an excellent record. It has an obvious, more immediate appeal than the other side. It must be a success. Must be number one. The lyrics arc good.

“Strawberry Fields” struck me at first as being manufactured and over-clever. Initially, I thought here are four guys trying to show they are not being left behind.

On second hearing the song seems to hang together a bit more. It’s very good. Basically a good melody. The way they record is brilliant. Everything here is so well thought out. (Disc & Music Echo, 11/02/67)

The Beatles | Penny Lane | Parlophone | 1967

THE BEATLES: “Strawberry Fields Forever” / “Penny Lane” (Parlophone R 5570)

One really needs a couple of pages to fully describe Beatle discs these days. Take “Strawberry Field” . . . how do you get across this slightly dirgy, depressing, rolling, oddly-backed, harmonium-pumped atmosphere?

Mostly it’s John, with odd vocal bits from Paul. It’s advanced, a bit technical but massively compelling.

But then how do you deal with, properly and briefly, with “Penny Lane”, which is mostly Paul with bits of John. This is perkier, with excellent lyrics and a poetic quality, with brass, with atmosphere, a trumpet obligato, sturdy beat. What you do say is: play it, both sides, buy, then study this well-constructed pop music. (Record Mirror, 11/02/67)

BEATLES’ new disc under fire

FIRST time I heard the Beatles‘ “Penny Lane” I thought here is something that could revolutionise the whole pop scene again. It’s absolutely fantastic and is such a catchy tune, that I wake up singing it.—MRS. EILEEN READ, 15 Fieldmore Road, Hardway, Gosport, Hants.

Angela Rae (Pop Post 17.2.67) doesn’t sound like a “loyal Beatles fan” to me. She denounced their new single before it was even released. I was never a Beatle fan, but “Penny Lane” has won me over completely—a quality performance with well thought-out words that draw word pictures and a very catchy tune.—NORMAN CAMPBELL, Edinburgh.

The Beatles are finished! They come up with weirder and weirder music. Their latest offering is rubbish. Why don’t they accept the fact that they were once pop heroes but now are just an ordinary group.—ALASDAIR WHAM. 22 Wilner Road, Jordanhill, Glasgow W3.

If the Beatles’ new record fails to make No.1 it will be a reversal of pop music trends. Out will be progressiveness and originality and in mediocrity.— RON TURNBULL, 57 Paisley Drive. Edinburgh, 8.

I’m not a Beatle fan, but credit where credit is due. This record is beautiful, in the sense that the Beatles have tried to convey to us, in words, the sights of our everyday world, and to me this is pure beauty. I wish more artists would try this type of song, then we would see the weeding-out of the good from the bad, the sincere from the insincere, and the intelligent from the unintelligent. — ANTHEA JOHN-SON-SMITH. 14 High Street, Wollaston, Stourbridge, Worcs.

So the Beatles have been voted the World’s Top Group by your readers. If they record any more songs like “Strawberry Fields Forever,” then they won’t stand much chance next year.—MICHAEL ROBINSON, 45 Peel Road, Wolverton, Bucks.

“Strawberry Fields Forever” is not, as so many people have said, terrible, meaningless and a load of rubbish. When I first heard it, I admit I didn’t care for it. Now I’ve bought it and discovered that It is really good.—DAVE SANDERSON, 26 Gilbert Road, Romford, Essex. (Disc & Music Echo, 18/02/67)

The Beatles have elevated the pop song

The excellence of the Beatles’ latest single demonstrates their increasing ability to elevate the pop song to a more aesthetic and meaningful level, and yet retain its commercial essence.

Aided by inspired musicians and arrangers the Beatles are generating “the new situation” on the pop scene, which far from diminishing their popularity will, I feel, widen and perpetuate it.—IAN CLAYTON, Jazz Pianist, Romford, Essex. (Melody Maker, 04/03/67)

Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields Forever

Parlophone R 5570 | Released: 17 February 1967 | Highest UK Chart Position: 2

Of course, it’s practically impossible at this late stage of the game to be objective about a record that is so deeply ingrained in the psyche that it’s difficult to remember a time when it wasn’t actually out there (and not much is more out there’ than Strawberry Fields Forever).

So just a couple of points in passing: as the two earliest recordings in the body of new material that was to become Sgt Pepper, Lennon’s Mellotron-saturated ode to a girls’ reform school near his childhood home in Wootton was initially intended to be a double A-side with McCartney’s unthreatening vaudevillian shuffle When I’m Sixty Four. But the subsequent arrival of Penny Lane (more traditionally structured, but still decidedly odd in terms of its lyrical imagery) provided a perfect ‘blurred snapshots of a Liverpool childhood’ doubleheader.

Certainly the pairing was a far more complementary one than the original suggestion, which would surely not have gone on to enjoy a comparable reputation as the ultimate seven-inch studio document of the English psychedelic scene.

“I think we wrote them around the same time”, Paul claimed in the Miles-assisted biography Many Years From Now. —We were often answering each other’s songs… When I came to write Penny Lane, John came over and helped me with the third verse, as often was the case. We were writing childhood memories; recent faded memories from eight or ten years before, so it was a recent nostalgia, pleasant memories for both of us.”

While it’s widely acknowledged as one of the greatest singles of all time, it’s perhaps worth noting that, as with The Yardbirds’ fall from commercial grace after embracing the nascent genre, this double-sided classic was the first Beatles single since Please Please Me not to reach the top of the British singles chart.

Fuelled by scare-mongering articles in both the national and music press, the more conservative elements of the record-buying public viewed psychedelia with suspicion and alarm: for every flower child who thought that Lennon had found the Meaning Of Life, there were a dozen non-believers who were convinced that, instead of having his senses heightened, he’d merely taken leave of them. (Record Collector)