When Paul McCartney thought he could patao Queen Elizabeth
The Beatles were rock and roll royalty. They had the world at their feet. Nothing or no one was out of their reach. Perhaps that’s why Paul McCartney thought that he had a shot with Queen Elizabeth while writing songs for Abbey Road.
Yup, that’s true! He wrote Her Majesty where he sang ‘Her Majesty’s a pretty nice girl/Someday I’m gonna make her mine, oh yeah.’ Keep in mind Queen Elizabeth was around 43 years old then and not the senior citizen that today’s world remembers her as.
After recording it, he decided it wasn’t good enough for Abbey Road. And so, he instructed the engineers to cut it from the final recordings. Then a teenager came in to change music history forever.
John Kurlander, the tape assistant who was supposed to carry out McCartney’s instructions was just 18 (he’s a Grammy award-winning movie soundtrack engineer now who worked on the amazing Lord of the Rings trilogy) and couldn’t figure out how to leave it out.
So, he just left it on the album, 20 seconds from the end. If you own a copy of Abbey Road, you are familiar with the roughly 16-minute short song medley from You Never Give Me Your Money to The End. And then that’s it. The album ends.
Except it doesn’t. If you let the album continue running, you’ll be surprised by the 23-second Her Majesty. And that is how the first hidden track in music came into existence.
As a listener, you can hear the hum of the tape as you wait for it to run out. More often than not, you get up and rewind it or switch sides. You don’t wait for the tape to run out. Why would you? What’s so special about a hum?
A lot. Especially if you are listening to classic rock bands that have a tendency to play mind games with their fans. This includes Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, Pearl Jam, Jarvis Cocker, Janet Jackson, The Ramones and even Weird Al Yankovic. It became a game to see if listeners would actually listen to the whole album.
We all love the little naked baby in the water. But Nirvana hid another baby at the end of the album.
2. The Ramones: Spiderman theme on ¡Adios Amigos!
This was their final album but they hid an homage to the webslinger after Born to Die in Berlin.
3. Janet Jackson: Whoops Now on Janet
If you’ve heard Sweet Dreams on her 1995 album Janet and shut down the album, you have missed out on Whoops Now.
4. Jarvis Cocker: Running the World on Jarvis
Have you watched the dystopian movie Children of Men starring Clive Owen? You’ve heard this song on the closing credits. It was originally buried 30 minutes on from the end of the track Quantum Theory in his solo album Jarvis.
5. Pearl Jam: Hummus on Yield
Who would have thought that Eddie Vedder and co. are such huge fans of this dish that they would hide in on Yield after their last song All Those Yesterdays.
6. Eels: Mr. E’s Beautiful Blues on Daisies of the Galaxy
This song is one of the most popular songs by this hauntingly beautiful band but you wouldn’t find it on the first releases of the album on account of it being a hidden track.
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So long, and see you next Wednesday.
