| "Wild Honey Pie" | |
|---|---|
 Label from the 1972 Venezuela single, with "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" as theA-side | |
| Song bythe Beatles | |
| from the albumThe Beatles | |
| Released | 22 November 1968 (UK) |
| Recorded | 20 August 1968 |
| Studio | EMI, London |
| Genre | |
| Length | 0:53 |
| Label | Apple |
| Songwriters | Paul McCartney, credited toLennon–McCartney |
| Producer | George Martin |
| Official audio | |
| "Wild Honey Pie" onYouTube | |
"Wild Honey Pie" is a song by the Englishrock bandthe Beatles from their 1968 albumThe Beatles (theWhite Album).Paul McCartney conceived the song in February 1968 whilethe band was in Rishikesh, India, and recorded it six months later without his bandmates. He later recalled that they were "in an experimental mode" at the time. Less than a minute long, the song consists of the words "honey pie" shrieked repeatedly over aharpsichord,bass drum, and contortedacoustic guitar notes. It is unrelated to "Honey Pie" despite the similar title. In McCartney's telling, the fate of "Wild Honey Pie" was undecided at first, butPattie Boyd,George Harrison's wife, liked it, and so it was included on theWhite Album.
The musicologistAlan W. Pollack thought that "[there's] not much of either here" when discussing the song'sharmony andmelody. As for its style, genres ranging frompsychedelic folk toblues to "miscellaneous" have been attributed to it.
Music critics generally consider "Wild Honey Pie" an odd, strident, and frivolous song,[a] and some such asMark Beaumont have ranked it as one of the Beatles' worst. Within the context of theWhite Album, however, the song has drawn some support for suiting its unusual aesthetic. The Americanalternative rock bandPixies often performed "Wild Honey Pie" in their early shows; a live cover was included on their albumPixies at the BBC.
In February 1968,the Beatles travelled to Rishikesh, India, to stay at theMaharashi Mahesh Yogi's meditation centre.[1]Paul McCartney improvised "Wild Honey Pie" there during a spontaneous group singalong.[2][b] The band's time in India, spanning a few weeks,[4] saw the birth of much of the tracks that would comprise theWhite Album.[5] It was to be adouble album,[6] a work that the criticAllan Kozinn describes as a "fascinating compendium of compositional and performance styles that shows how wide-ranging the Beatles' musical imaginations were."[7] While working on the album, however, the Beatles began growing further apart and collaborating less and less.[8]George Harrison remarks, "There was a lot more individual stuff and, for the first time, people were accepting that itwas individual. … There was a lot of ego in the band, and there were a lot of songs that maybe should have been elbowed."[9]
"Wild Honey Pie" was recorded on 20 August 1968 atEMI Studio Two, with McCartney the sole Beatle present.[10]John Lennon andRingo Starr were working on otherWhite Album songs, and Harrison was on holiday in Greece.[11] That same day, McCartney had finished recording "Mother Nature's Son".[12] He says on recording "Wild Honey Pie", "We were in an experimental mode, and so I said, 'Can I just make something up?' I started off with the guitar and did amultitracking experiment in the control room or maybe in the little room next door. It was very home-made; it wasn't a big production at all."[13] The musicologistWalter Everett suggests that McCartney recorded it in response to Lennon's "What's the New Mary Jane",[14] another experimentalpastiche.[15] The session sheet first indicated "Wild Honey Pie" asAd-Lib.[16]
In his recording, which took just one take, McCartney shrills the wordshoney pie while playingacoustic guitar.[17] He additionally recorded a poundingbass drum anddoubletracked.[18] The drum layout, set in a corridor, was the same one used for "Mother Nature's Son".[3] Duringmixing, McCartney's vocal and guitar take was multiplied three times over, one of which wasflanged "to give it a heavy wobble," in the author John C. Winn's words.[19] Variousoverdubs were added to the vocal track.[20] According to the writers Jean-Michel Guesdon and Philippe Margotin, "Paul built [the song] himself by superimposing harmonies over harmonies," overlaying a guitar whose strings were pulled "madly" woven withpercussion that included a bass drum "buried in"reverberation.[21] Aharpsichord also features.[22] McCartney's recording was later mixed forstereo on 13 October 1968.[23]George Martin produced the song, andKen Scott and John Smith engineered it.[24] Its name refers to another McCartney work, "Honey Pie",[21] which appears later on theWhite Album,[25] but it itself is unrelated to "Honey Pie".[26]
According to McCartney, the band vacillated on the song at first, but Harrison's wifePattie Boyd "liked it very much so we decided to leave it on the album."[27] The music journalistHunter Davies considers "Wild Honey Pie" "[another] example of Paul being self-indulgent – or self-reflecting. Or perhaps they were struggling to fulfil the contract they had agreed to create 30 or more new songs for the double album."[25] The Beatles historianIan MacDonald parallels it with the snippets of songs McCartney recorded between takes during theWhite Album sessions.[28]
"Wild Honey Pie" is an experimental work,[29] one that, writes the music criticKevin Courrier, "deliberately [mocks] the smooth and harmonious pop stylings of the Beatles".[30] Music writers and scholars have assigned numerous genres to the song. Walter Everett describes it as a "whimsical Indianblues singalong",[14] Mark Athitakis considers itpsychedelic folk,[31] and Courrier deems it "twistedbaroquedoo-wop"[32] andexperimental pop,[30] while Ian Inglis, in his classification of theWhite Album tracks by musical influence, groups it under "miscellaneous".[33] Courrier also calls "Wild Honey Pie" simply a "deliberate piece of gibberish".[34] Its abstract, experimental nature, he notes, resembles that of some McCartney's compositions on his debut solo album,McCartney.[30]
Regarding structure, Pollack views the song as a "complete miniature", a consolidated whole, rather an "offhanded fragment", with the same applying to "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?".[20] As part of theWhite Album, he adds, it serves as anentr'acte to divert the listener's attention during the transition from "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" to "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill".[20] McCartney's track is the shortest one on the album, at 53 seconds.[35] Moreover, in the writerSteve Turner's view, its lyric is the "shortest and most repetitive of any Beatles lyric".[36]
"Wild Honey Pie" is in thekey ofG major and is incommon time. It comprises an openingbreak andrefrain, both repeated thrice, followed by an outro.[20] Although he says of the song'smelody andharmony, "There's not much of either here …",[20] Pollack evaluates them thus,
The harmonic vocabulary essentially is no more than a semi-chromatic chord stream ofdominant seventh chords, withjust enough root movement included to establish a verybluesy kind of G Major as the home key. The blues are conjured here by the appearance of I with its dominant seventh, and the impliedMajor/minor cross-relation on I that is most pronounced at the very end of the song.[20]
Made of sevenbars, the break exclusively contains dominant seventh chords, starting with a I chord and ending with a V chord. The refrain then resolves the V chord by returning to a I chord. The outro is an appendage of the refrain and employs a variation of the V chord for the finalcadence. Throughout the final measures, thebassline shifts back and forth from G to F.[20] "Wild Honey Pie" ends with a I–♭VII–I alteration, which the musicologist Dominic Pedler notes features in "Help!" and in many of the band's "mantra-like,modal excursions" onRevolver andSgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.[37]
Everett observestonal similarities between McCartney's piece and other tracks on theWhite Album, namely, "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", with both having a I–♭VII–♭VI–V structure, and "Glass Onion", sharing thetritones within major-minor chords in the guitarvoicings in the latter'scoda.[14] According to Courrier, the harpsichord melody quotesThe Addams Family's theme tune.[30]
"Wild Honey Pie" was sequenced between "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" and "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill", on side one of theWhite Album.[38]Apple Records released it as part of theWhite Album on 22 November 1968 in the UK and on 25 November in the US.[39] Amono mix later surfaced, in 1990, on theCDUnsurpassed Masters, Volume 4. Three years later, it was issued onThe Peter Sellers Tape, combined with a foot-tap count in and some additional comments.[19]
In the second edition of hisRevolution in the Head, MacDonald writes one sentence on "Wild Honey Pie", simply identifying it as a "throwaway based on a Rishikesh singalong …"[3]Jann Wenner ofRolling Stone, in his contemporaryWhite Album review, also devotes one sole line to the song: "'Wild Honey Pie' makes a nice tribute topsychedelic music and allied forms".[40] The scholar Ed Whitley describes it as "one of the most bizarre tracks the Beatles ever recorded".[41]
Some critics comment on the role of "Wild Honey Pie" in theWhite Album. Referring to Lennon's distate for "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da", the journalistMark Hertsgaard states, "But at least 'Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da' had a real melody. 'Wild Honey Pie,' which followed it, simply assaulted the ear; it sounded like someone had taken a hammer to a giant pocket watch until the springs inside collapsed in heavy, discordant agony". He adds that it was "perhaps the most extreme case of self-indulgence on the album".[42] On a different note, the music criticTim Riley believes that "Wild Honey Pie" "flaunts the band's wealth of material" onThe Beatles.[43]
While judging McCartney's piece to be "bizarre", Chris Gerard argues that it "somehow works in the context of the album's vast strangeness".[6] Pollack likewise links it to the album's stylistic variety.[20] Ewan Gleadow ofCult Following concedes that the track is "short and sloppy" but, at the same time, thinks it acts as a "necessary break" before "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill" and the passional duo of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and "Happiness Is a Warm Gun".[44] Reflecting on theWhite Album's perceived raggedness, the critic Keith Mulopo notes "cuts such as 'Wild Honey Pie' (and 'Honey Pie') [and] 'Why Don't We Do It in the Road' that show McCartney's tendency to be too goofy for his own good".[45] Whitley considers "Wild Honey Pie" within the perspective of the album as apostmodern work: a fragmented, disjointed work incapable of being explained or interpreted as a whole.[46] He writes, "Not only does theWhite Album have an overall sense of fragmentation, but there are also individual songs like 'Happiness Is a Warm Gun' which areinternally fragmented and songs like 'Wild Honey Pie' that are nothingbut song fragments".[41]
In Riley's view, if theWhite Album were trimmed to a single album instead of a double album, "Wild Honey Pie" would "certainly" be excluded.[47][c] The music criticDavid Quantick also states that it is often omitted from listeners' single-album versions ofThe Beatles.[48] By contrast, aStylus Magazine piece in which the author creates their own version of the track listing includes the song as the album's opening track instead of "Back in the U.S.S.R.": "It's meant here to let the listener know that this is going to be like no Beatles album they've ever heard".[49]
… an interlude that approximates the sound of a pocket-watch suffering a heart attack.
"Wild Honey Pie" commonly appears near or at the bottom of Beatles songs rankings. Jacob Stolworthy ofThe Independent regards it as the worst of theWhite Album's 30 tracks,[51] and the music journalist Michael Gallucci, in his 2014 list of the worst Beatles songs, places it at number 3.[52] In 2023, Gallucci, Bill Wyman ofVulture, and fellow music writerMark Beaumont ranked every Beatles song to coincide with the release of "Now and Then":[d] Gallucci lists "Wild Honey Pie" at number 214 out of 229, rendering it "[fifty]-two seconds of McCartney nonsense",[53] Wyman places it in the bottom quartile, deeming it incoherent,[54] and Beaumont ranks it at the very bottom.[55] Twenty years earlier, the critic Andrew Unterberger ranked McCartney's composition at number 1 on his list of the "Top Ten Filler Tracks". He finds the song "[one] of the most famous half-songs in history" and deems it the best example of groups resorting to "filler to pad their albums, using half-baked ideas and songs that well, must've sounded good at the time instead of just lesser recreations of the good songs on the album".[56] However, "Wild Honey Pie" does make anNME list of the 100 greatest Beatles songs as chosen by popular musicians and critics, with the Americanalternative rock bandPixies nominating it.[57]
The Pixies frequently performed "Wild Honey Pie" in their early shows.[57] A reimagined version was released on their 1998 live albumPixies at the BBC,[58] which the music writer Emily Barker praises for "taking something that barely qualifies as a song and turning it into something ferocious".[57]
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