Mean Mr. Mustard

Here is yet another song that was written during the fertile creative period in Rishikesh, India, in the spring of 1968.  Lennon felt confident enough about it to include it in the batch of demos recorded at George Harrison's house at the end of May before work began on the sprawling double album The Beatles, yet it never again materialized throughout the five month long sessions for that project.  

Like so many other songs, however, it did surface at the Get Back sessions in January of '69.  The band rehearsed it on four different days, but once again, it was not a strong contender for the project at hand.  Lennon even ad libbed a third verse on one of these days, but it had nothing to do with the portrait of Mr. Mustard he had developed in the rest of the song and was subsequently dropped.  

The number finally found a home when McCartney and producer George Martin came up with the idea of a long medley of unfinished songs for the album Abbey Road.  Lennon linked the song with another of his compositions known at the time as Here Comes the Sun-King, and these were played straight through as one continuous piece.  On July 24th, the group recorded the basic track with everyone playing their usual instruments.  During take 7, they launched into several Gene Vincent numbers.  Anthology 3 gives us Ain't She Sweet, Vincent's mellow version of this old standard being quite different from the march-like recording made by the Beatles in Hamburg in 1961.

Returning to the task at hand, it took until take 35 before they hit upon the best performance.  Part of the reason for this may have been due to the fact that Paul had to switch on his fuzz box for his bass and Ringo had to quickly change drumsticks between the Sun King and Mr. Mustard sections of the arrangement.  Nevertheless, this lengthy session was reportedly very relaxed in contrast to some of the other sessions around this time.

On the following day, John and Paul recorded the lead and harmony vocals.  It was around this time that the name of Mr. Mustard's sister changed to Pam - she had always been Shirley - to give the story a loose connection to that of the song Polythene Pam, which they began recording later on this date.  John also overdubbed a bit of piano onto the track.  The song was completed four days later, on July 29th, with John and Paul double-tracking their vocals, and Ringo adding tambourine.

A rough mix of the entire medley was prepared the next night.  At this time, the song Her Majesty came immediately after Mean Mr. Mustard in the running order, but upon hearing it, Paul realized that his little ditty to the Queen interrupted the flow, so he ordered that it be cut out.  Engineer John Kurlander made a slight error, accidentally cutting out the final crashing chord of Mean Mr. Mustard, though this actually made the new transition into Polythene Pam smoother than it would have been.  Of course, that crashing chord can still be heard at the end of the album, still tacked on to the beginning of Her Majesty.

For those who want to hear the demo of the song from May of 1968, it is available on both Anthology 3 and the 50th anniversary deluxe editions of Abbey Road.  It contains some delightful gibberish from John in places, as well as a bridge that did not make it into the finished version almost a year and a half later.