Dear Boy | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

A couple of quotes from Paul about the recording of the track.

On ‘Dear Boy ’ there is some nice counterpoint going on. When you are recording your music, do you build up the vocal-harmonies intuitively, or do you arrange and write them down first?”

“Thank you for your question, René. I wrote the song without counterpoint before the studio. And then in the studio, I came up with the harmony parts. So the answer is that it’s a combination of both!”

(You Gave Me The Answer – April 2016)

“What I liked about Linda’s singing was the tone of her voice – I’d never worked singing with a woman before, so I liked this idea of her range. I first found out she could sing and could sing well in the studio when we were finishing off my track ‘Let It Be ’ with The Beatles. She and I were living near the studios and I went in one night to put some harmonies on it, and there was one high harmony I wanted to do, but it was just about out of my range. I said, ‘Do you want to try it?’ and I told her the line, and she tried it. It worked really well, you know. If you listen to it now – the high harmony on The Beatles’ ‘Let It Be ’ – that’s Linda doing it. So I knew it could work.

“On something like ‘Dear Boy ’, which was more complex – on ‘Let It Be ’ it was basically one high note – on this there were more melodic lines so it was quite complex to do, but I could see that she could do it. So we just took the time. I put my part on, and then encouraged Linda to just take it easy, relax, put a good performance in, which she did. And years later, some of my really cool, professional friends who knew what was good and what wasn’t, would listen to those harmonies and point them out and say, ‘Those are really great harmonies’. I remember Elton John commenting on that, and I remember Michael Jackson commenting on that.”

(Sticking Out Of My Back Pocket: ‘Dear Boy’)