ME: in Times Lit Supp

Get backwards

a letter about dirty Beatles lyrics: published January 14, 2022
There is one classic piece of Beatles mythology not mentioned in Carol Rumens’s review of The Lyrics, 1956 to the Present by Paul McCartney, (December 10) and I suspect it is not mentioned in the book either. It is the very last bit of the recording of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band: a little snatch of what sounds like nonsense being repeated. The story soon went around that if you played this backwards you could hear Paul McCartney saying something. So I stopped the turntable and turned it the other way by hand and could hear some almost indistinct words. Now of course, with the use of modern technology, it is much easier to flip the sound, and with the quality of sound systems, the words are a little clearer. And very naughty they are too. Try it.

F. W. Nunneley
Beckley, East Sussex