John Lennon and Paul McCartney Insisted on Playing an Unpopular Beatles Song at Every Concert 

In The Beatles’ concerts between 1964 and their final show in 1966, John Lennon and Paul McCartney insisted on playing one song. “Baby’s in Black” was a relatively unpopular song from their album Beatles for Sale that Lennon and McCartney wrote together. They had to introduce the song as something “different,” but they continued to insist on playing it.

The Beatles always played a relatively unpopular song in concert

McCartney and Lennon wrote “Baby’s in Black” in 1964 and recorded it together, singing cheek to cheek into the same microphone. They performed it live in very much the same way. Because the song wasn’t very popular, even amongst fans, McCartney said they had to introduce it to fans as “something different.”

“We used to put that in there, and think, ‘Well, they won’t know quite what to make of this, but it’s cool,’” he said, per the book Paul McCartney: A Life by Peter Ames Carlin.

The song was a fixture on their setlists until their final show in 1966.

Paul McCartney shared why he and John Lennon liked the song

By 1964, The Beatles were massively popular, which gave them more room to do what they wanted with their music.

“We got more and more free to get into ourselves,” McCartney said in The Beatles Anthology. “Our student selves rather than ‘we must please the girls and make money,’ which is all that ‘From Me To You,’ ‘Thank You Girl,’ P.S. I Love You’ is about.”

He said they wrote “Baby’s in Black” because they wanted to write in that time signature.

‘Baby’s In Black’ we did because we liked waltz-time — we’d used to do ‘If You Gotta Make A Fool Of Somebody’, a cool three-four blues thing,” McCartney said. “And other bands would notice that and say, ‘S*** man, you’re doing something in three-four.’ So we’d got known for that.”

The song also felt like a departure from their early years as a band, which may explain why they liked to perform it live.

“I think also John and I wanted to do something bluesy, a bit darker, more grown-up, rather than just straight pop,” he explained. “It was more ‘baby’s in black’ as in mourning. Our favourite colour was black, as well.”

Paul McCartney shared what he liked about writing with John Lennon

McCartney and Lennon eventually drifted apart as writers, but they wrote songs like “Baby’s in Black” together. McCartney said he and Lennon were better because of it.

“We could suggest the way out of the maze to each other, which was a very handy thing to have,” McCartney wrote in The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present. “We inspired each other.”

Their combined creative efforts brought them places that wouldn’t have been possible on their own.

“[My mind] would be doing this, his would be doing that, and the interplay was just miraculous,” Paul wrote. “And that’s why people are still listening to the songs we wrote. They didn’t just go away like your average pop song. The climate that the two of us created in writing wasn’t a soppy pop song climate. We created an environment in which we might grow, try new things, maybe even learn a thing or two.”