Never mind telling me who he is, Sir Paul McCartney may have thought.
Tell me when I wrote it.
A song written by him has been discovered in his archive by the British Library leaving the ex-Beatle bemused as to when he wrote it.
Tell Me Who He Is was “probably” written in the early 1960s, McCartney has said. More likely the late 1950s, the British Library has ruled after discovering it in one of his notebooks.
The song, which has never been recorded, has been put on display for the library’s free exhibition Paul McCartney: The Lyrics after its curators were granted freedom to delve through the musician’s personal archive.
Advertisement
Andy Linehan, the library’s curator of popular music, said of the lyrics: “It is almost as much a mystery to him as it to us. It would be great if he could revisit it and record it.
“It is not just one or two lines that you could throw away. I guess he had written it for something to work on and then forgot about it.”
In his recently published book The Lyrics McCartney, 79, referred to the song and said: “It may have started with me coming to John [Lennon] with an idea for a lyric. It’s as if there are only a certain set of subjects. Love is one of them. Desire. Breakups. Revenge.”
He said he would have sat down with the “idea of a girl having been unfaithful,” adding: “It’s terrifically fertile ground.”
Linehan said the unrecorded song was “intriguing” given how well maintained McCartney’s archive was.
Advertisement
“It is great to see something like that that nobody knew about,” he said. “It is remarkable. He is happy [it has been found] but he genuinely can’t remember.”
• The Lyrics by Paul McCartney review — the Beatles, John Lennon and his mother Mary
He said it was possible there were “other bits and pieces,” adding that it was a “curatorial dream” for McCartney to record the newly discovered song which he described as having been found “right at the bottom” of the archive.
The exhibition at the library puts on public display for the first time many of McCartney’s handwritten lyrics including for Hey Jude, Pipes of Peace and Jenny Wren.
His handwritten lyrics for Mull of Kintyre, which was released by Wings in 1977, also capture his creative process with the original line “Sheep in the meadow, deer in the glen” being changed to “Sweep through the heather like deer in the glen”.
Advertisement
There are also family photographs of the McCartney family taken by members including his late wife, Linda, brother Mike and daughter Mary.
Linehan said McCartney would write his lyrics on whatever materials were at hand, with A Hard Day’s Night being written on the back of a birthday card and Michelle, which featured on the Beatles’ 1965 album Rubber Soul, being sketched on the back of an envelope.
McCartney’s songwriting partnership with Lennon remains the most successful and arguably best-known in the world with about 180 songs having been created by the pair. Often one or the other would do the majority of work on a composition but, by prior arrangement, receive joint billing.
In his new book McCartney says fellow Beatle George Harrison would be mystified as to how they could write songs that were not based on real events or feelings.
“He could only write (or at least he said he could only write) from his personal experience,” McCartney wrote. “Something had happened to him and he felt lousy and then things got better, and then he would write: Here Comes the Sun or Something.”
Advertisement
Still, Harrison could have legitimately said, at least he remembered the songs he did write.
Tell Me Who He Is lyrics
Tell me that you’re mine not his
He says he loves you more than I do
Tell me who he is
Tell him where to go
Tell him that I love you so
He couldn’t love you more than I do
Tell me who he is
