The Ballad Of John And Yoko / Old Brown Shoe

“The Ballad Of John And Yoko / Old Brown Shoe” was the twentieth UK single from The Beatles. 

From Wikipedia:

[…] Although Lennon was impatient to issue the single, its release was delayed to allow for the Beatles’ April 1969 single, “Get Back“. Backed with Harrison’s “Old Brown Shoe“, the single was issued in the United Kingdom on 30 May 1969. Lennon and Ono were performing a second bed-in at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal at the time. The United States release followed on 4 June.

In the UK and Europe, “The Ballad of John and Yoko” was the first Beatles single to be issued in stereo. It was therefore their first release not given a mono mix. Lennon advised Tony Bramwell, Apple Records’ promotions manager, to limit pre-release previews of the record and not to give it any advance publicity, especially with regard to “the Christ! bit”. In his NME interview at this time, Lennon said that although the story had already emerged that Harrison and Starr did not play on the song, he would not have chosen to publicise this, adding, “It doesn’t mean anything, it just so happened that there were only us two there.”

In the US, Apple issued the record in a picture sleeve containing two photos of the Beatles and Ono in the garden of McCartney’s London home, taken by Linda McCartney. The front of the sleeve shows Lennon and Ono seated, and Harrison, McCartney and Starr standing behind them. According to author Bruce Spizer, Lennon’s bandmates appear uncomfortable ceding the spotlight to Ono and in better humour in the shot used for “Old Brown Shoe”, on the reverse of the sleeve.

The single was accompanied by two promotional clips assembled from footage of some of Lennon and Ono’s public activities – all of which the couple routinely filmed – between July 1968 and April 1969. The first clip was broadcast three times on Top of the Pops and contains footage from four events. When shown on the Australian TV show Rage long afterwards, in black and white, this version had the word “Christ” bleeped out in the choruses with an on-screen starburst effect. In the second film, broadcast on the US show The Music Scene, a traffic sign containing an exclamation mark appears each time the word is heard. This film is made up of footage from considerably more events, showing Lennon and Ono in London, Paris, Amsterdam and Vienna, among other locations; for this reason, according to author John Winn, it “illustrates the lyrics much more effectively” than the first clip. […]

Reception

In his review of the single in the NME, John Wells said he found “The Ballad of John and Yoko” profoundly moving as an account of people’s attitude towards Lennon and Ono, and only the “raw, earthy rock” backing stopped him succumbing to tears. He described it as a “stormer” but predicted that the record’s sales would be affected by “Get Back”‘s ongoing chart success.

The single became the Beatles’ 17th and final UK number 1. In the US, it peaked at number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100. On the other national charts there, it reached number 10 in Cash Box and number 7 in Record World. Several US radio stations declined to broadcast the song because of the use of the words “Christ” and “crucify” in the chorus:

Christ you know it ain’t easy
You know how hard it can be
The way things are going
They’re gonna crucify me.

“The Ballad of John and Yoko” never appeared on the surveys of WLS in Chicago or WABC in New York, two of the largest Top 40 stations in the US. The word “Christ” was censored (by being “bleeped out”) for radio airplay in Australia.[citation needed] The Spanish government under Franco objected to the song because of the phrase “Gibraltar near Spain”. The status of Gibraltar is a long-running subject of debate between Spain and the United Kingdom. […]

The single

Related singles

Related songs

Related film

Related people

Related sessions