Although John Lennon played a pivotal role in changing the world and promoting countercultural, progressive values, he wasn’t the only member of The Beatles adept at delivering profound socio-political messages. While Lennon, the bespectacled frontman, became the band’s figurehead and the embodiment of their innovation and ideals, his songwriting partner, Paul McCartney, was equally skilled at reflecting on and commenting on the state of the world.
Yet, just as Lennon became a master of writing about highly personal matters in the vein of his hero, Bob Dylan, McCartney was a supremo at surrealism, subtly, and abstraction, wherein his point would be buried beneath layers of red herrings, possibilities and continued fan postulation. That’s not to say that Lennon wasn’t either, as the psychedelic chapter of the band confirms. Still, there were moments when McCartney could be incredibly poetic but brilliantly, underneath the exquisite imagery, discuss a topic far removed from it.
Take ‘Blackbird’ from 1968’s sprawling White Album, for instance. Though the track is most famous for its picking pattern that nearly every guitarist in the land learns when honing their skills, which, in true Beatles style, was inspired by another song, Johann Sebastian Bach’s famous lute piece, Bourrée in E minor, there’s much more substance to it than purely McCartney’s touching coupling of bass notes and melody.
The song’s opening verse is iconic, with McCartney expressing the natural tenderness and compassion that fuelled other classic moments such as ‘Yesterday’ and ‘Hey Jude’. He sings: “Blackbird singing in the dead of night / Take these broken wings and learn to fly / All your life / You were only waiting for this moment to arise”.
In typical fashion, McCartney has offered various explanations over the years about the inspiration behind the tender ditty. He once claimed it was inspired by hearing the distinct call of the eponymous blackbird one morning while the Fab Four were in Rishikesh, India, studying transcendental meditation. Adding another layer to the story, McCartney’s stepmother, Angie McCartney, provided a different account, suggesting the young Paul wrote it for her elderly mother, who was recovering from an illness at their home. She recalled that one day, McCartney visited and sat by her mother’s bedside, where she mentioned how she would listen to a blackbird singing at night.
That might well have happened, but according to the songwriter himself, the track is heavily weighted upon the struggle of Black people and the civil rights movement, both of which were near constants in the news at the time. Of course, the battle is still ongoing, but back then, there were still many overt systemic, institutional and violent obstacles people of colour had to overcome.
For instance, the last of the Jim Crow laws were only overturned in 1965, the 1957 Little Rock Nine incident was still fresh in the memory – which McCartney also claimed he was inspired by when writing ‘Blackbird’ – and perhaps most indicative of the nature of the struggle, civil rights figurehead Martin Luther King Jr, was assassinated by a racist, James Earl Ray, just months before the song and album arrived.
In 2002, McCartney explained to KCRW’s Chris Douridas why he wrote ‘Blackbird’: “I was in Scotland playing on my guitar, and I remembered this whole idea of ‘you were only waiting for this moment to arise’ was about, you know, the black people’s struggle in the southern states, and I was using the symbolism of a blackbird. It’s not really about a blackbird whose wings are broken, you know, it’s a bit more symbolic.”
Years later, in 2018, McCartney expanded on the song’s meaning, revealing that “blackbird” actually meant “black girl”, referring to the civil rights struggles of women in the 1960s and before.
Following this disclosure, the whole song takes a different light. McCartney’s nuanced poetry is actually a form of astute social commentary, with it and the stripped-back instrumentation – the acoustic guitar and the light, metronomic pulse of his foot tapping – creating one of his most thought-provoking and meditative efforts for The Beatles. While it might have been released 56 years ago, the profundity of his words has only crystallised over time and can be used as a prism through which to see the complexities of our own world. That’s the sign of a number that’s much more than plainly a standard composition.
People often discuss Lennon as the revolutionary, but it was McCartney who first met Bertrand Russell and brought an enlightened, worldly perspective back to the band, and their focus switched within an instant. He was also always most closely aligned with the philosopher’s view, manifesting personally and musically, as ‘Blackbird’ attests.
