Beatles – Baby You’re A Rich Man

We have here a Stones- Beatles collaboration…a slight one with Mick Jagger is said to be singing backups to this song.The John and Paul returned the favor on the Stones song We Love You.

I first heard this on the Magical Mystery Tour album. I love the bass sound that Paul got on this song.

The cool sounding instrument on this song is the the Clavioline which John plays. It was a forerunner to the synthesizer.

John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote parts of this separately and combined it to make one song… something they would repeat on “A Day In The Life.” At one point, the song was called “One Of The Beautiful People.”

On August 7th, 1967, just three weeks after the single was released in the US, George Harrison and entourage decided to make a brief visit to the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, California, to visit the highly publicized “beautiful people” of the area and played the song on an acoustic after one was produced from a growing crowd. George didn’t stay too long.

Near the end of the song legend has it that John sings “Baby, you’re a rich f*g jew” as a reference to Brian Epstein toward the end of the song. Whether it is…it’s hard to tell. Whatever is in your head when you listen…it can become that. I’ve never read where John admitted it…and if he would have done that…I don’t see him shying away from admitting it.

Eddie Kramer…future producer for the Jimi Hendrix played the vibraphone.

From Songfacts

This song is about how everybody can have the things that matter, and it has nothing to do with material possessions. The Beatles were rich, but they claimed that money was not that important to them.

It was rumored that The Beatles sang “Baby you’re a rich fag Jew” as a slur to their manager, Brian Epstein. He was rich, gay and Jewish, but The Beatles never said this was about him. Epstein died later in that year when he overdosed on sleeping pills.

The Beatles started working on this song with the intention of using it on the Yellow Submarine soundtrack. It was used in the 1968 movie, but didn’t appear on the soundtrack.

Mick Jagger sang backup. McCartney and Lennon returned the favor by singing on The Stones’ “We Love You.”

Brian Jones, the guitarist from The Rolling Stones, played an oboe on this. A few years earlier, Lennon and McCartney gave The Stones a song called “I Wanna Be Your Man,” which was one of their first hits, and helped convince Mick Jagger and Keith Richards that they should write their own songs.

This was released as the B-side of “All You Need Is Love.”

Lennon played clavioline and piano on the song and George Harrison played tambourine. There is actually no guitar on this song at all. Paul played bass and piano as well.

This was released in mono, but in 1971 it was remixed in stereo along with several other tracks for a German version of Magical Mystery Tour. The stereo version is the one that is now the most common. 

The comedy rap trio The Fat Boys performed this song in their 1987 movie Disorderlies.

In 2010, this song was used at the end of the movie The Social Network to punctuate the raging financial success of the guys who invented Facebook. It was one of the few Beatles songs licensed to a movie in its original form, meaning the Beatles version was used. Apple Corp. is very particular about where Beatles songs are used.

At one point in this song, The Beatles ask, “How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people?” The phrase “beautiful people” was used a lot in 1967 as a derisive way to describe the social elite. A popular book by Marilyn Bender was published that year called The Beautiful People: a Candid Examination of a Cultural Phenomenon – the Marriage of Fashion and Society in the ’60s.

Baby You’re A Rich Man

How does it feel to be
One of the beautiful people
Now that you know who you are
What do you want to be
And have you traveled very far?
Far as the eye can see

How does it feel to be
One of the beautiful people
How often have you been there
Often enough to know
What did you see when you were there
Nothing that doesn’t show

Baby you’re a rich man
Baby you’re a rich man
Baby you’re a rich man, too
You keep all your money in a big brown bag
Inside a zoo, what a thing to do
Baby you’re a rich man
Baby you’re a rich man
Baby you’re a rich man, too

How does it feel to be
One of the beautiful people
Tuned to a natural E
Happy to be that way
Now that you’ve found another key
What are you going to play

Baby you’re a rich man
Baby you’re a rich man
Baby you’re a rich man, too
You keep all your money in a big brown bag
Inside a zoo, what a thing to do
Baby, baby, you’re a rich man
Baby you’re a rich man
Baby you’re a rich man, too, oh
Baby you’re a rich man
Baby you’re a rich man (baby)
Baby you’re a rich man, too
Baby you’re a rich man
Baby you’re a rich man
Baby you’re a rich man, too