A song like this probably wouldn’t fly in the era of #MeToo and #TimesUp.
Just two days after what would have been the late music legend’s 79th birthday on Oct. 9, an unearthed Rolling Stone interview from 1970 has revealed John Lennon’s least favorite Beatles tune.
His pick: “Run for Your Life,” the final track on 1965’s “Rubber Soul,” is an overtly homicidal song about murdering an adulterous lover.
The domestic violence-driven track, said Lennon, had “a very vague connection” to the Elvis song “Baby Let’s Play House,” which also references revenge on an unfaithful girlfriend.
Of the more than 100 songs written by The Beatles’ members, this one has long been a source of debate among fans, according to Metro.
In the vintage RS interview, Lennon said, “‘Run for Your Life’ I always hated, you know. I never liked [it] because it was a song I just knocked off.”
He continued, “There was a line on it — I used to like specific lines from songs — ‘I’d rather see you dead, little girl, than to be with another man,’ so I wrote it around that, but I didn’t think it was that important.”
The “Imagine” singer, who was assassinated at age 40 in 1980, added that his bandmates had different opinions about the disturbing ditty that he dubbed a “throwaway song.”
“It was always a favorite of George [Harrison]’s,” Lennon told the iconic rock mag. Paul McCartney, he added, even dubbed it a “bit of a macho song.”
McCartney and Ringo Starr recently met to record a tribute to their bandmate, a tweaked cover of Lennon’s song “Grow Old With Me.”
“I sang it the best that I could,” the Beatles drummer told Rolling Stone last month. “I do well-up when I think of John this deeply. And I’ve done my best. We’ve done our best.”
Starr said it’s almost like having the whole band back together.
“Paul came over and he played bass and sings a little bit on this with me. So John’s on it in a way. I’m on it and Paul’s on it.”
He also added a line from “Here Comes the Sun,” written by Harrison: “So in a way, it’s the four of us.”
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