The song was largely written during a recording session at EMI Studios on 18 September 1968 by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. McCartney: "We thought, 'Why not make something up?' So we got a riff going and arranged it around this riff. So that is 50–50 John and me, made up on the spot and recorded all in the same evening."[4] During the session, the Beatles and the recording crew made a short trip around the corner to McCartney's house to watch the 1956 rock & roll movie The Girl Can't Help It which was being shown for the first time on British television.[5] After the movie they returned to record "Birthday".
George Martin was away so his assistant Chris Thomas produced the session. His memory is that the song was mostly McCartney's: "Paul was the first one in, and he was playing the 'Birthday' riff. Eventually the others arrived, by which time Paul had literally written the song, right there in the studio." Everyone in the studio sang in the chorus and it was 5 am by the time the final mono mix was completed.[6]
Lennon said in his Playboy interview in 1980: "'Birthday' was written in the studio. Just made up on the spot. I think Paul wanted to write a song like 'Happy Birthday Baby', the old fifties hit. But it was sort of made up in the studio. It was a piece of garbage."[7]
"Birthday" begins with an intro drum fill, then moves directly into a blues progression in A (in the form of a guitar riff doubled by the bass) with McCartney singing at the top of his chest voice with Lennon on a lower harmony. After this section, a drum break lasting eight measures brings the song into the middle section, which rests entirely on the dominant. A repeat of the blues progression/guitar riff instrumental section, augmented by piano brings the song into a bridge before returning to a repeat of the first vocal section, this time with the piano accompaniment.
Legacy
Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of its release, Jacob Stolworthy of The Independent listed "Birthday" at number 17 in his ranking of the White Album's 30 tracks. He wrote of the song: "The opening to the second-half [of the album] treads familiar Beatles ground with an improvised riff that could be the record's biggest earworm. Hilariously, Lennon would go on to call [the song] 'garbage'."[8]
Personnel
According to the book accompanying the 2018 box set The Beatles: Super Deluxe Version, the annotation on the tape box from the session offers an alternative line-up that "explodes some myths of who played what":[9]
Paul Weller covered the song for McCartney's 70th birthday. This version was available for download on 18 June 2012 for one day only.[21] Even with this limited mode of distribution, the track reached number 64 on the UK Singles Chart.
^Sound & Vision, Volume 67, Issues 2–5. Michigan: Hachette Filipacchi Magazines. 2001. Archived from the original on 29 October 2013. Retrieved 28 October 2013. Go forward to 1968 and The Beatles (a.k.a. The White Album) and you get a veritable hard-rock clinic on what used to be, in the days of vinyl. Side 3: "Birthday," "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey," "Helter Skelter"
^Miles, Barry; Badman, Keith, eds. (2001). The Beatles Diary After the Break-Up: 1970–2001 (reprint ed.). London: Music Sales Group. ISBN978-0-7119-8307-6.