Yellow Submarine

When Paul McCartney got the initial idea for this song in early 1966, he immediately knew that it would serve as an excellent vehicle for Ringo.  Lennon agreed and helped him to finish it off.  Paul even swung by Donovan Leitch's apartment with the new tune, where the singer-songwriter contributed the line "Sky of blue, sea of green."

The Beatles met at Abbey Road Studios on May 26th, 1966 to begin work on the track.  Producer George Martin was not present, as he was feeling ill, although his soon-to-be wife Judy took his place in the control room.  According to engineer Geoff Emerick, her presence did not deter the boys from goofing about more than usual, but they still managed to get down to business eventually.  They recorded four takes with John on acoustic guitar, Paul on bass, Ringo on drums and George simply banging away on a tambourine.  They then overdubbed Ringo's lead vocal and the others' backing vocals onto take four.

Almost a full week passed before sessions resumed on June 1st.  Even with Martin back at the helm, this session was much looser than normal, thanks in large part to the playful nature of the song.  The afternoon was entirely devoted to a spoken word introduction from Ringo, inspired by an actual event concerning a charity walk from one end of England to the other.  John, Paul and George also chimed in, as Emerick revived the old radio sound effect of sliding coal in a cardboard box to simulate marching feet.

After a dinner break, the session resumed with the participation of Pattie Harrison, Marianne Faithfull, Mick Jagger and Brian Jones to help create a party atmosphere and add sound effects to the track.  A few Abbey Road staff members were also recruited to swirl chains around in a metal tub of water to simulate the sound of waves.  And even Martin and Emerick joined in when assistant Mal Evans strapped on a big bass drum and marched around the studio as everyone sang the final chorus over and over again.

Paul and John shouted off the cuff nautical phrases throughout, and John's enthusiasm spilled over to such an extent that he added what he later referred to as his "blunderbuss" bit, repeating Ringo's lines in the final verse.

In The Beatles: Recording Sessions, Mark Lewisohn states that session musicians were brought in at this session to play the brief brass band section in the song, but Emerick, in his book Here, There and Everywhere, says that this was achieved in much the same way as was done a year later for the calliope piece at the end of Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite, with an old brass band tape cut into pieces and put back together at random. 

Yellow Submarine was considered to be an album track, but manager Brian Epstein wanted it to be released as a single, noting that other bands in recent years had taken to quickly recording new songs by the Beatles and getting hit singles out of them.  And so it was that this song was released in August of 1966 on a double A-sided single along with Eleanor Rigby on the same day as the album Revolver, even though both songs also appeared on the album.  This did not hurt sales in the UK, with the single hitting number one.  In the US, however, Yellow Submarine peaked at number two on the Billboard chart.

For the first time during their career, the Beatles did not have an album ready for the holiday season at the end of 1966, so the Parlophone label in the UK issued A Collection of Beatles Oldies in December.  Both sides of the August single were duly included.  And, in short order, somebody came up with the idea of an animated feature film based on the song Yellow Submarine.  The film premiered in the summer of 1968, but the soundtrack album did not appear until January of 1969, with the song naturally leading off side one as the title track.

  

The first post career collection from 1973, the Red Album, closes with Yellow Submarine.  The song also appears on Reel Music, the UK version of 20 Greatest Hits, the 1999 Yellow Submarine Songtrack, and the 2000 collection 1.  For the video compilation 1+, a montage of images from the original film was assembled in 2015.  A great alternate take of the song appears on the EP Real Love, which was released as part of the Anthology series in 1996.  This includes the spoken introduction from Ringo, as well as many additional sound effects not used on the official track.

The song is as synonymous with Ringo as his other signature tune With a Little Help from My Friends.  Proof of this could be heard at The Concert for Bangladesh in 1971 when George introduced each member of the band.  At the mention of Ringo's name, the Madison Square Garden crowd cheered wildly as someone in the band felt inspired to briefly play the chorus of Yellow Submarine.