Beatles – And Your Bird Can Sing

This guitar riff is incredibly hard to learn. I’ve learned some difficult riffs before but this one I finally gave up on. It’s doable but not one you can just pick up quickly. How John came up with this unorthodox riff is beyond me. John came up with some great riffs. Daytripper, I Dig a Pony, I Feel Fine, Yer Blues, I Want You (She’s So Heavy), Cold Turkey, and more.

I’ve always remembered the Joe Walsh story about this song…He said he worked for weeks to master this song by himself. Only to find out later that it was two guitars playing the riff, not one… after Ringo told him.

The song was never released as a single. One of the things I like about the Beatles is the songs that they never released as singles would be milestones for other bands. I think it perfectly encapsulates the mid-sixties pop sound. You can also hear early power pop in this song. I always thought this would have fit better on Rubber Soul but I don’t care…great song.

John or Paul never said what the song was about or what inspired it. Some have speculated that the “bird” was Mick Jagger’s then-girlfriend Marianne Faithfull. Others say it was about an interview that Frank Sinatra gave and he kept using the phrase “How’s your bird?” What caught John’s attention was the press release from Sinatra’s PR firm that read: “If you happen to be tired of kid singers wearing mops of hair thick enough to hide a crate of melons… ‘Tell me that you’ve heard every sound there is ‘and your bird can swing.

Sinatra was not a fan of rock music when it came out. He said “Rock and roll smells phoney and false. It is sung, played, and written, for the most part, by goons. It is the most brutal, ugly, desperate, vicious form of expression it has ever been my displeasure to hear.”

Frank did soften up a bit as the sixties went along. He covered “Something” written by George Harrison and said it was the greatest love song written in the last 50 years.

Some songs I have to listen to a few times to like and some the first time. This one was love at first listen. It’s not a Beatle’s masterpiece but if you like catchy guitar riff-driven songs then you can’t go wrong with this one. The song was written primarily by John. The song was released on the UK version of Revolver and the “Yesterday and Today” compilation in America in 1966. The dual guitar solo rates at #69 on the “100 Greatest Guitar Solos” list by Rolling Stone magazine.

George Harrison: “I think it was Paul and me, or maybe John and me, playing in harmony,” it’s “quite a complicated little line that goes through the middle-eight.” 

Paul McCartney: “George and I would work out a melody line, then I would work out the harmony to it. So we’d do it as a piece, ‘And Your Bird Can Sing’ – that’s what that is. That’s me and George both playing electric guitars. It’s just the two of us live. It’s a lot easier to do with two people, believe me. It’s another one of our little tricks!”

And Can Your Bird Can See

You say you’ve got everything you want
And your bird can sing
But you don’t get me
You don’t get me

You say you’ve seen the seven wonders
And you bird is green
But you can’t see me
You can’t see me

When your prized possessions
Start to weigh you down
Look in my direction
I’ll be round, I’ll be round

When your bird is broken
Will it bring you down
You may be awoken
I’ll be round, I’ll be round

You tell me that you’ve heard every sound there is
And your bird can swing
But you can’t hear me
You can’t hear me

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

64 thoughts on “Beatles – And Your Bird Can Sing”

  2. a great song and as you say, it would have been a frontline single for any other band back then. Never gave much thought to the guitar in it but yes, I guess it would be tricky to play!

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    1. Joe Walsh said that he was probably the only person in the world at one time that could play this song by himself but it took him weeks to learn how.
      It would have been a single for anyone else…I mentioned it in another comment…but when you don’t release In My Life as a single…you have a lot of confidence in yourself.

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    1. That was the first thing I heard also…it could have been the combination of the two…or it could have been an acid trip…you just don’t know…I don’t think Paul knows either since John wrote most of it.

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  5. I’ve heard the Walsh story before, but perhaps about another song (maybe one by Les Paul).

    Note that Ringo and Joe are married to sisters (as was/is Jon Lord and Ian Paice).

    Presumably the bird can also see, but in the song it can sing.

    I agree with you about this song (and much other stuff): a perfect 60s song. Of course, many Beatles album cuts are better than other bands’ best singles.

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    1. I heard Walsh interviewed with Ringo somewhere and he talked about it…that is the only reason I remembered it.
      Yes I agree…the songs they didn’t release as singles is incredible….and again…how John came up with this riff I’ll never know. I Dig A Pony is another riff that is off the wall but great.

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      2. Yes George and Paul do the riff and solo but John probably is playing rhythm also and of course singing. I think…Paul and George also do the solo in Nowhere Man together but I could be wrong on that…I’d have to look it up.

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      3. I wonder whether that riff influenced “Friday I’m in Love” by The Cure. (I’m not a Cure fan, but I think that “Friday I’m in Love” and “Just Like Heaven” are two of the best pop songs ever written.

        Which reminds me: Does anyone else here the similarity between Iron Maiden’s “22 Acacia Avenue” and The Easybeats’ “Friday on my Mind” (the latter features George, elder brother of Malcolm and Angus).

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      4. The Cure does have that jangle going on…and in the video…they actually looked happy! Which is something they hardly ever done.

        I see what you mean with the Iron Maiden and Easy Beats song…it has that same thumping on the guitar through out.
        They do have some of same chord structure and breaks I think.

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      6. Yep you are correct…and that is the baby blue Strat that turned into “Rocky” I think…the dayglow guitar that George had.

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      7. You know what is sad? “The guitar solo was performed by both John and George in unison on their identical Sonic Blue Fender Stratocasters.”
        Off of my post I made about the song lol…but I’ll give myself a little credit…it’s been 4 years.

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      8. What about Iron Maiden’s “Holy Smoke” and Genesis’s “Jesus He Knows Me” (which have similar themes?

        Of course, many Deep Purple tunes “borrow” from elsewhere; that is well documented, as are the antics of Led Zeppelin.

        What about this one?

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      12. As is obvious from the comments, some have acccused Guns ’n’ Roses of ripping off Australian Crawl here. I doubt that anyone from the former band had ever heard the latter band’s song. (A similar explanation probably also holds for “Hotel California” being similar to Tull’s “We Used to Know”. While it is true that the Eagles opened for Tull when that song was in the set, “Hotel California” was written by Don Felder, who wasn’t in the Eagles at the time. Could still have been an influence, certainly subconsciously, but has nothing to do with the two bands having been on the same bill.

        When the vocals set in, I am reminded of another song:

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yijqy48mmG4

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      13. I can SEE where that bubblegum song would be absorbed in your mind…it’s something that you would do and wouldn’t even know you are doing it.
        I really like that Tull song.

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    1. This one…should have been released as a single…but they liked to keep that separate…just like In My Life…which still shocks me they didn’t release that.

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  7. The Beatles’ initial niceness and their (and my!) innocence comes through in so many wonderful tunes — as if recent — even half a century later! Even now, if someone is decidedly not a fan of them, that one and I are probably too different to successfully hang out! Thanks for giving us the back stories on it all. Fascinating!

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  9. Great song. It’s funny that there are so many theories on who it is about. I always figured it was one of John’s many songs on the theme of the corruption of consumerism and how he stands above it.

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  10. One of their tunes I didn’t take to. I just didn’t get it. The riff is great but the song itself sounds as if they threw it together, which is likely what happened. They had some great openers, ” I Feel Fine,” “Day Tripper” “Sgt. Pepper” and a few more, and most were hard to play without spending hours listening to the album, over and over and over, which I did, a lot. Gotta put in the punishment to get the good stuff.

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  14. I played this song over and over my freshman year in college. I didn’t know anything about guitar playing, so I didn’t realize the riff is hard to figure out. I just liked it. I’ve heard the Sinatra story and quote somewhere years ago, and it reaffirms that there were probably good reasons why I never liked him and his ilk.

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      1. This song was actually covered very impressively by The Jam.

        Frank Sinatra was actually a master of his own particular craft – like that style of music or not – and surely worthy of a bit more respect? He was of a different generation.

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      2. Oh I respect him….and I love some of his Tony Rome movies! But he did change his tune when he heard songs like Something. He would cover them more and more. Am I a huge fan? No…but I do respect what he did.

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    2. I jus thought the fact that Sinatra didn’t like the Beatles and/or rock ‘n’ roll wasn’t particularly relevant and his contribution to popular music should’t be overlooked or written off. As you know not everyone in the world likes the Beatles! I certainly think of two who don’t (old blues eyes and old Panther) and they, funnily enough, share the same birth date!

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      2. No…like I said…I respect him and Tony Bennett but I was never a fan. I do like Strangers in the Night and some of his popular songs….and the fact he was probably the first “Elvis”

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      3. Oh it wasn’t the Beatles…no it was Chuck Berry and the early rock he didn’t like when it came out.
        He recorded something just for Ringo’s wife in 1969 so he liked them lol.

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