The Beatles song with vocals from all four members

This approach proved effective over a long period of time. Lennon and McCartney’s leadership shaped almost their entire career, with the other members stepping in when needed. This explains why few songs are credited to all four members as writer, composer or singer. When such collaboration did occur, it was often not for the reasons one would expect.

‘Flying’ first appeared on the band’s 1967 album Magical Mystery Tourtheir first instrumental track since 1965’s ’12 Bar Instrumental’. This time, however, the group wanted to make a track as a soundtrack to a montage of scenes from Iceland shot from an airplane, which incidentally were unused footage from Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove.

Knowing that they had to create something relatively simple to accompany the scenes, each band member participated in composing the most suitable instrumental piece. “‘Flying’ was an instrumental piece that we needed for Magical Mystery Tour so one night in the studio I suggested to the guys that we think of something,” McCartney revealed in In many years“I said, ‘We can keep it really, really simple, we can make it a twelve-bar blues.'”

After writing the melody, McCartney asked the other members to contribute “a bit of background music.” He said, “I wrote the melody. The only thing that justifies it as a song is basically the melody. Otherwise it’s just a nice twelve-bar background music.”

Macca concluded: “It’s played on the Mellotron, in trombone tuning. It’s attributed to all four, just as you would attribute a non-song.”

Although a handful of songs were credited to all four members in the years that followed, including the 1967 record “Christmas Time (Is Here Again)” and “Dig It” from Let It Be, “Flying” marked the first time that composer credit was shared among the entire group. It was also one of the few Beatles songs on which Lennon played the Mellotron.

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