Rocky Raccoon

Rocky Raccoon was conceived during some of the many hours of leisure in Rishikesh, India, in early 1968 while Paul, John and Donovan sat around with their acoustic guitars as pictured above.  Paul began playing the chord sequence and the three of them started making up some lyrics, though the title character was then named Rocky Sassoon. 

By the time that the Beatles gathered at George's house to record demos in May, Paul had most of the body of the song sketched out, including his scat melody for the instrumental break.  On this demo, George plays some nice, twangy guitar phrases that unfortunately did not make it onto the official recording.

August 15th was the one and only date necessary to capture this relatively simple song.  George did not even play an instrument on the backing track, sitting up in the control room instead, as producer George Martin sat at a piano in the studio.  The rest of the backing consisted of Paul on acoustic guitar, John on bass and Ringo on drums.  While most of the song was set, the spoken intro and the verse about the doctor were improvised with every take.

After take five, it was decided that Martin would overdub the piano later, and he moved to the control room.  Take eight is available on Anthology 3, allowing us to hear that John was now switching back and forth between his harmonica and the bass, and Paul was still experimenting with the introduction and the extra verse.  The deluxe 50th anniversary edition of the "White Album" presents the same take and then keeps going as Paul continues improvising a spoken coda in the form of the intro.

The very next take, take nine, was the master, with Paul finally finding just the right words for the intro and the doctor's verse.  Martin then overdubbed the honky-tonk piano, using his old trick of recording it at half speed, then inserting his contribution at the correct tempo.  In addition to playing the harmonica for the final time as a member of the Beatles, John added a bit of accordion.  And George came down from the control room to join the proceedings for the brief backing vocals with John and Paul.

The song sits in the middle of side two on the double album, immediately following Blackbird and Piggies, the other two tracks with animals in their titles.  It is an enjoyable, but lightweight few minutes.  Its loose nature has probably kept it from appearing on any compilations other than as an outtake on the collections mentioned above.