Published Northern Songs Genre Hard rock Label Apple | Released 22 November 1968 Length 2:24 | |
Recorded 27 June and 1 July 1968 | ||
"Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey" is a song by the English rock group The Beatles from their 1968 album The Beatles (also known as "the White Album"). The song was written by John Lennon and credited to Lennon–McCartney. Its title is the longest of any song released by the group.
Contents
Background
"Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey" was written about Lennon's future wife, Yoko Ono. Lennon said of the song:
That was just a sort of nice line that I made into a song. It was about me and Yoko. Everybody seemed to be paranoid except for us two, who were in the glow of love. Everything is clear and open when you're in love. Everybody was sort of tense around us: you know, 'What is she doing here at the session? Why is she with him?' All this sort of madness is going on around us because we just happened to want to be together all the time.
Many listeners, including Paul McCartney, believed that the song was about heroin, as the term "monkey" is often associated with the drug. Although Lennon and Ono used the drug, McCartney, Harrison and Starr did not, with McCartney later saying, "It was a harder terminology, which the rest of us weren't into."
Recording
Lennon's working title for the composition was "Come on, Come on". An unreleased demo of the song, recorded in George Harrison's Esher home in May 1968, features all-acoustic instrumentation, and a vocal sung in a more Bob Dylan-like spoken word style than the released version.
The released version of the song was recorded at EMI's Abbey Road Studios on 27 June 1968, and an overdub session on 1 July. Final stereo mixing was completed on 12 October.