This is a very unusual track and hard to place. Listening to it again I didn’t know what to make of it, and I decided, for a challenge, to write my initial impression before reading the Beatles Bible article or looking it up Wikipedia.
It’s possible these thoughts will have been influenced by some of the many Beatles books I’ve read, so they may not be entirely original…
You Know My Name was the B-side to the Let It Be single. Many bands in the 70s and 80s when I was growing up put inferior, throwaway material, but the Beatles took a generally took different approach and a Beatles B-side is generally to be taken seriously. However, You Know My Name sounds like a novelty or comedy record. It is quite intentional as a record (unlike some of the “outtake” type material Maggie Mae, or half finished fragments like “Wild Honey Pie”).
It has been properly produced and has a complex arrangement with lots of extra instrumentation. Each section of the song takes a different approach, and the verses are sung in comedy voices. The initial bars of the intro with piano, drums and bass really sound like something from the Magical Mystery Tour period (for example Baby You’re A Rich Man) and the opening section sounds a bit like a piano-led Beatles record with extra shouting backing vocals. This then segues into a cabaret themed section with bongos, cocktail bar sounds and a distinctive boomy mock-crooner vocal. The next section is camp reminiscent of the Round The Horne or perhaps the Goon Show.
The song ends with an indecipherable mumbling jazz club verse, introducing vibrophone and sax. The vocal is like a premonition of Reeves and Mortimer crossed with Paul Whitehouse’s “Very, very drunk” character from the Fast Show.
The lyrics, such as they are, sound like a joke, albeit an in-joke. Perhaps that is all it is, or perhaps there is some kind of coded message? This I think would have been one of the Beatles last releases at a time where they were arguing and there were various legal disputes building up, so perhaps it had something to do with that?
George Martin had previously produced comedy records and the Beatles enjoyed things like the Goons and surreal writing, so perhaps it was some kind of tribute to that type of comedy…
I will now see if I can find out more and update the thread…
Here are the Beatles Bible and Wikipedia pages for You Know My Name (Look Up The Number):
The Beatles BibleOne of the strangest songs in The Beatles’ entire canon, ‘You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)’ was originally recorded in 1967, but remained unreleased until the ‘Let It Be’ single three years later.
Continue reading on Beatles Bible →
WikipediaThe Beatles Bible entry is quite interesting reading, and while it doesn’t reveal much in the way of hidden depths – the Beatles had a lot of fun recording it.
The missing piece of the jigsaw is that it was recorded quite a while before Let It Be, in 1967 just after finishing Sgt Pepper. The Beatles were looking for new directions. So that explains the sound which is more Magical Mystery Tour than Let It Be. It seems plausible that it was used as a B-side because the Beatles were not working together and had nothing better or more recent when that single was released around the time of their break up.