The Beatles briefly and informally returned to Lady Madonna at Abbey Road on 5 September 1968, while working on the arrangement for George Harrison's While My Guitar Gently Weeps. Only available on bootlegs, this off-the-cuff version mainly featured Paul McCartney on organ and vocals, with minimal input from the other Beatles.
The group performed Lady Madonna once more - on 31 January 1969, the final day of recording for the Get Back/Let It Be sessions. It was a somewhat shambolic rendition which contained the improvised lines "Lord and Lady Docker, in your private yacht, all the people wonder why you have such a lot."
Promotional films
The Beatles filmed two promotional sequences for Lady Madonna on 11 February 1968, both for worldwide syndication to television companies. The single was to be released while the group was in Rishikesh, India, so they would be unable to make any personal appearances to promote it, should they have wished to.
Possibly to avoid the Musicians' Union issues with miming which meant the films for Hello, Goodbye went largely unseen in the UK, the Lady Madonna promos merely consisted of shots of The Beatles recording in Abbey Road.
The Beatles made little attempt to perform Lady Madonna during the filming; instead, they used the studio time to record a new song, Hey Bulldog. In 1999 Apple re-edited the footage to create, for the first time, a promo film for Hey Bulldog synced to the group's performance.
I spent a few days coming up with ideas for Lady Madonna, [but] when The Beatles wanted to get on with recording Hey Bulldog, all that went out the window!
Mojo magazine
NEMS Enterprises distributed the two clips to British and US television stations. The BBC broadcast one of the clips on four occasions, in black and white and on BBC. In America the first showing for one of the clips was in colour, on ABC's The Hollywood Palace on 30 March.
Chart success
Lady Madonna was released in the UK on 15 March 1968, with Harrison's The Inner Light as the b-side. It entered the charts at number five on 20 March, and a week later climbed to the top. It remained there for a second week, and spent eight weeks altogether in the chart.
In the US it was released on 18 March. It fared less well, peaking at number four on 23 March.
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Related articles:
- UK single release: Lady Madonna
- Recording, mixing: The Inner Light, Lady Madonna
- Recording: Lady Madonna, Across The Universe
- US single release: Lady Madonna
- Good Day Sunshine
Was it recorded with an Eight-Track recorder?
Lady Madonna was recorded on 4-track, they did not start recording on 8-track until later that year.
Does anone know when - and for that matter why! - Paul started singing "Did you know that money was heaven sent" instead of "Did you think..." in live performances?
Don't forget John Lennon suggested the "See How They Run" Part. The line "see how they run" was included after Lennon's suggestion (and was a theme that had been used in the previous year's "I Am the Walrus").
A Great Paul song with some great Lennon additions ...
Isn't the intro from the Love version the intro from "Why Don't We Do It In The Road"?
This song could'va had a beter guitar part. But still, a beastly wicked awesome song from Les Beatles!
I'm pretty sure it was Joe Meek who produced "Bad Penny Blues"
It was apparently produced by Denis Preston, and engineered by Meek. George Martin was the head of A&R at Parlophone at the time. I've amended the article - thanks for pointing this out.
I love the way they mixed this one (stereo). You can hear Ringo playing snare brush drums on the left and Paul's Piano, and heavy drums on the right with the fuzzy guitars..