All You Need Is Love

This is the Gurt Lush arrangement of All You Need Is Love, performed in 2019 at the Holy Nativity Church in Knowle, Bristol. Written by John Lennon and credited to Lennon / McCartney, it was (as if you didn’t know) recorded by them in June 1967.

It was first performed by The Beatles on Our World, the first live global television link, on 25 June 1967. The BBC had commissioned the Beatles to write a song for the United Kingdom’s contribution. They were asked to come up with a song containing a simple message to be understood by all nationalities.

McCartney and Harrison were unsure whether the song was written for the TV show. George Martin (Beatles producer) and Ringo Starr assert it was. However the day before the Our World broadcast, The Beatles decided that the song should be their next single. Released in the UK on 7 July 1967, it went straight to number one and remained there for three weeks.

Because of the worldwide broadcast, the song was given an international feel, opening with the French National anthem La Marseillaise (omitting the first note), and including excerpts of other pieces during the long fade-out, including the two-part invention #8 in F by Bach (transposed to G and played on 2 piccolo trumpets), Greensleeves (a traditional English folk song, played by the strings), Glenn Miller’s In the Mood (played on a saxophone), one of The Beatles’ seminal hits, She Loves you (ad libbed by Lennon and McCartney), the chorus of Sgt.Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band and Jeremiah Clarke’s Prince of Denmark’s March lilting off at the end. Lennon can also be heard scatting what sounds like the title of Yesterday. At the end of each chorus a brass band plays the ratatatata from Chanson d’amour (a popular song written by Wayne Shanklin).