Published Startling Music Recorded 5 June 1968 Label Apple | Released 22 November 1968 Genre Country rock | |
Length 3:46 (mono version)
3:51 (stereo version) | ||
"Don't Pass Me By" is a song by the Beatles from the double album The Beatles (also known as the "White Album"). It was written by Ringo Starr (his first solo composition).
Contents
The song debuted at No. 1 in Denmark in April 1969. It stayed in the Top 10 for a month.
Origin
Starr first played his song for the other Beatles soon after he joined the group in August 1962. Its earliest public mention seems to have been in a BBC chatter session introducing "And I Love Her" on the radio show Top Gear in 1964. In the conversation, Starr was asked if he had written a song and Paul McCartney mocked him soon afterwards, singing the first line "Don't pass me by, don't make me cry, don't make me blue, baby."
Recording
The song was recorded in four separate sessions in 1968: 5 and 6 June, and 5 and 12 July. Despite references to it in 1964 as "Don't Pass Me By", it was called "Ringo's Tune (Untitled)" on 5 June session tape label and "This Is Some Friendly" on 6 June label. By 12 July, the title was restored.
During a lead vocal track recorded on 6 June, Starr audibly counted out eight beats, and it can be heard in the released song starting at 2:30 of the 1987 CD version. The monaural mix is faster than the stereo mix, and features a different arrangement of violin in the fade-out.
George Martin arranged an orchestral interlude as an introduction, but this was rejected. It would eventually be used as an incidental cue for the Beatles' animated film Yellow Submarine. In 1996, the introduction was released as the track "A Beginning" on The Beatles Anthology 3 CD.
The line, "I'm sorry that I doubted you, I was so unfair, You were in a car crash and you lost your hair", is cited by proponents of the "Paul is Dead" urban legend as a clue to McCartney's fate; the line "you lost your hair" is claimed to be a reference to "When I'm Sixty-Four" (which was written by McCartney). However, the expression "to lose one's hair" was a fairly common English idiom, and simply means "to become anxious or upset" (see, for instance, Elizabeth Bowen's novel The Death of the Heart, 1938).
Personnel
The pianos were both recorded into a Leslie 147 speaker.
Personnel per Ian MacDonald and supported by Mark LewisohnCover versions
The song has been covered by alt-country band the Gourds, by the Southern rock band the Georgia Satellites on their 1988 album, Open All Night, and by the Punkles on their 2004 album, Pistol.
The Swedish pop group ABBA made an unofficial parody of this song, but it was not released until their medley "Undeleted" in 1994.