Yellow Submarine

From Yellow Submarine | The Beatles:

Released in Britain on 17th January, 1969 (and a few days earlier in the US), Yellow Submarine was the soundtrack to an animated feature film which had received its UK premiere some six months earlier.

The original LP release contained the Beatles tracks on side one with a newly recorded orchestral score composed and arranged by George Martin occupying side two of the disc. Of the Beatles tracks, four were brand new songs.

The album was never intended as a high profile Beatles release, indeed it was issued when The Beatles was still no. 1. Despite that the album still managed a no. 3 position in Britain and climbed one place higher in the US.

I love cartoons – I love the Disney stuff. So, you know, the first thing when we heard people were going to do a cartoon I just thought, ‘Yeah, this could be the greatest Disney cartoon ever’ – I mean, with our music. But they were going more Pepper direction, so we said, ‘Well why don’t you just take a lot of songs we’ve got already?‘

Paul McCartney – from Yellow Submarine | The Beatles

We had to do some songs that were exclusive to the film. I don’t think we were too keen because we were quite busy recording other things and we probably wanted a bit of time off.

Paul McCartney – From MOJO, October 1999

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