Rocky Raccoon

It was a difficult song to record, because it had to be all in one take. It would have been very hard to edit, because of the quirkiness of the vocal. But it was fun to do.

Paul McCartney – from “The Beatles” super deluxe book, 2018

From Wikipedia:

“Rocky Raccoon” is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1968 double album The Beatles (also known as the “White Album”). It was primarily written by Paul McCartney, although credited to the Lennon–McCartney partnership. McCartney began writing the song in Rishikesh, India, where the Beatles were studying Transcendental Meditation in the early months of 1968. John Lennon and Scottish singer-songwriter Donovan, who joined the Beatles on their retreat, also made contributions to the song. The Marvel Comics character Rocket Raccoon, created by Bill Mantlo and Keith Giffen, was inspired by the song’s title and some of the lyrics.

Composition

The song, a country ballad, is titled from the character’s name, which was originally “Rocky Sassoon”, but McCartney changed it to “Rocky Raccoon” because he thought “it sounded more like a cowboy”. Former 13th Floor Elevators drummer Danny Thomas claims the name “Rocky” was inspired by Roky Erickson, the American rock band’s then vocalist and guitarist. The Old West-style honky-tonk piano was played by producer George Martin. “Rocky Raccoon” is also the last Beatles song to feature John Lennon’s harmonica playing.

The lyrics describe a conflict over a love triangle, in which Rocky’s girlfriend Lil Magill (known to the public as Nancy) leaves him for a man named Dan, who punches Rocky in the eye. Rocky vows revenge and takes a room at the saloon in the town where Dan and Nancy are staying. He bursts into Dan’s room, armed with a gun, but Dan out-draws and shoots him. A drunken doctor attends to Rocky, the latter insisting that the wound is only a minor one. Stumbling back to his room, Rocky finds a Gideon Bible and takes it as a sign from God.

During take 8 of the song (featured on Anthology 3), McCartney flubbed the line “stinking of gin”, singing “sminking” instead (presumably confusing the words “smelling” and “stinking”). This caused him to laugh, exclaim “Sminking?!” and make up the remaining lines in the song. This take also has a noticeably different spoken-word introduction, with Rocky coming from “a little town in Minnesota”, rather than the album version’s “somewhere in the black mining hills of Dakota”, and McCartney’s faux Western-American accent is more pronounced.[citation needed]

Legacy

In Mojo magazine in October 2008, McCartney acknowledged that the style of the song is a pastiche, saying: “I was basically spoofing the folksinger.” Lennon attributed the song to McCartney, saying: “Couldn’t you guess? Would I have gone to all that trouble about Gideon’s Bible and all that stuff?”

Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of its release, Jacob Stolworthy of The Independent listed “Rocky Raccoon” at number 22 in his ranking of the White Album’s 30 tracks. He called the song “proof of McCartney’s songwriting versatility” and continued that the song is “bolstered by a vibrant honky-tonk piano from the group’s long-time record producer George Martin.” […]

Rocky Raccoon is quirky, very me. I like talking blues so I started off like that, then I did my tongue-in-cheek parody of a western and threw in some amusing lines. I just tried to keep it amusing, really; it’s me writing a play, a little one-act play giving them most of the dialogue. Rocky Raccoon is the main character, then there’s the girl whose real name was Magill, who called herself Lil, but she was known as Nancy. […]

There are some names I use to amuse, Vera, Chuck and Dave or Nancy and Lil, and there are some I mean to be serious, like Eleanor Rigby, which are a little harder because they have to not be joke names. In this case Rocky Raccoon is some bloke in a raccoon hat, like Davy Crockett. The bit I liked about it was him finding Gideon’s Bible and thinking, Some guy called Gideon must have left it for the next guy. I like the idea of Gideon being a character. You get the meaning and at the same time get in a poke at it. All in good fun. And then of course the doctor is drunk.

Paul McCartney – From “Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now” by Barry Miles, 1997

I was sitting on the roof in India with a guitar– John and I were sitting ’round playing guitar, and we were with Donovan. And we were just sitting around enjoying ourselves, and I started playing the chords of ‘Rocky Raccoon,’ you know, just messing around. And, oh, originally it was Rocky Sassoon, and we just started making up the words, you know, the three of us– and started just to write them down. They came very quickly. And eventually I changed it from Sassoon to Raccoon, because it sounded more like a cowboy. So there it is. These kind of things– you can’t really talk about how they come ‘cuz they just come into your head, you know. They really do. And it’s like John writing his books. There’s no… I don’t know how he does it, and he doesn’t know how he does it, but he just writes. It’s like any writer, you know. I think people who actually do create and write… you tend to think, ‘Oh, how did he do that,’ but it actually does flow… just flows from into their head, into their hand, and they write it down, you know. And that’s what happened with this. I don’t know anything about the Appalachian mountains or cowboys and indians or anything. But I just made it up, you know. And the doctor came in stinking of gin and proceeded to lie on the table. So, there you are.

Paul McCartney – From interview with Radio Luxembourg, 1968

When you’re sitting around with an acoustic guitar, often the natural thing to do is to get a bit folky. I was doing a bit of a spoof on records I’d heard, kind of talking blues songs. Bob Dylan was doing that kind of thing, so I just started imagining the Black Hills in South Dakota. I knew of an old song, ‘The Black Hills of Dakota’, which begins, ‘Take me back to the black hills / The black hills of Dakota.’ That was Doris Day in Calamity Jane. So, we were doing this rap, and I just dreamt up a character called ‘Rocky Raccoon’, because of Davy Crockett and his raccoon cap. I’d watched Davy Crockett on telly, starring Fess Parker, when I was a kid. I saw the TV show, but my main thing was the song: ‘Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier’. It was quite a cool song.

I just started imagining this little story, and for me it’s like going on a train ride or something – a train ride of the mind. And because I was doing it sort of tongue-in-cheek, it was quite pleasant to write and sing. There were poems that people – a drunken uncle perhaps? – would recite at parties, like Robert Service’s ‘The Shooting of Dan McGrew’ or Marriott Edgar’s ‘The Lion and Albert’, made famous by Stanley Holloway’s stage recitation, in which the lion eats Albert and the parents complain to the zookeeper. It’s that kind of black humour.

In ‘Rocky Raccoon’, his woman runs off with another guy, and Rocky doesn’t like that. Then he books himself a room, only to find the Gideon Bible. Well, those were in every hotel in America. Probably still are. We’d never seen that in England. So I just thought about that image – checking into a room, looking in the desk, opening the drawer and there’s a Bible. Rocky’s girlfriend’s name was Magill: ‘. . . she called herself Lil / But everyone knew her as Nancy’. And it’s nice that I’ve ended up married to a Nancy.

Paul McCartney – From “The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present“, 2021

Lyrics

Variations

• A Mono version • From "The Beatles (Mono)"
• A2009 2009 mono remaster • From "The Beatles in Mono (2009)"
• A2014 2014 remaster • From "The Beatles In Mono (Vinyl boxset - 2014)"
• B Stereo version • From "The Beatles (Stereo)"
• B2009 2009 stereo remaster • From "The Beatles • The Original Studio Recordings (2009)"
• C Take 8 • From "Anthology 3"
• C2016 Take 8 • From "Anthology 3 (2016 remaster)"
• D 2018 stereo mix • From "The Beatles (50th anniversary boxset)"
• E Esher Demo • From "The Beatles (50th anniversary boxset)"
• F Take 8 • From "The Beatles (50th anniversary boxset)"

Officially appears on

Bootlegs

Live performances

Paul McCartney has never played this song in concert.

Going further

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