"Get back" is about John and Yoko?

I was wondering this last night.

I heard somewhere that Get Back is about John & Yoko. Paul was upset with Yoko so he wrote Get Back to tell her to Get Back where she belonged. I also heard when Paul sings Get Back in the film he looks in Yoko's direction when he sings Get Back Loretta. Get Back is also telling John to Get Back; that he has lost his way.

My little voice inside agrees that this song is about them...but it can be only "paranoia"...

What do you think?

I've heard that also...I think John mentions it in the famous Rolling Stone interviews from '80. It could very well be so. I never would've thought about it had I not heard that, but when I think about it, it makes since. Paul might've felt that he could no longer talk to John so he decided to write the song and hope he got the message.

Yeah, I think that it's very likely that it is about John/Yoko. Not only in that Yoko needs to get back to where she once belonged, but John too. It's like, (this could just be my paranoia lol) they want him to 'come back' to the group, but they're not sure that he's really 'one of them.' hence, "go back to where you ONCE belonged." But that could just be me. ::shrug::

That was Johns opinion anyway, the song originally started as a joke about british laws on immigrants, and aimed at attitudes of politicians towards immigrants with lines like"Dont Dig no pakistanis taking all the peoples jobs". It wasn't Pauls attitude, but a political comment.It just evolved from there
Paul said "We were sitting in the studio and we made it up out of thin air,we started to write words then and there..when we finisished it, we recorded it at apple studios and made it a song to rollercoast by"

interesting interpitaion i find this very possible and i think pauls gemini is able to sing a song that could mean two different things but then again it could mean four diferent things but, yes makes me think was he saying "get back " to yoko or was he saying "get back to where you once belong" to the beatles? that is one thing of many i love about the music it can mean everything and nothing

I think it's a good possibility that Paul 'borrowed' the title from George's song 'Sour Milk Sea' which ends with the phrase 'Get back, get back, get back to where you should be' being repeated over and over.

I actually never thought of that before but it really does seem to make sense...

"Get Back" was a political satire on the opinion of racist British politicians in the late sixties, when a lot of immigrants were arriving in the UK from the Commonwealth. Paul didn't go through with that angle because he didn't think the audience would realise that he was being ironic and satirical - and that was proved when the original lyrics were published in the eighties (I think) and The Beatles were accused of being racist. It could be interpreted as a swipe at John and Yoko but I think that's just John playing the martyr.

That's what I have always heard- it's a political satire. It was even sung in French and German. It was called the Commonwealth song.

But.

The original idea of it being a political satire was lost when Paul added a few "characters" and dropped the "No Pakastanis" part.

Some people says that it was like an "indirect" message for John and Yoko from Paul when things were getting worse Maybe it can be, maybe not, but sometimes I am sure that it was what happened

When I was little, and my dad was always playing Beatles songs, I loved to bug him and say "Daddy which beatle wrote this one?????", and on one such occasion he said that Get back was probably about John and Yoko.

It does make sense I guess. And with Paul looking at Yoko everytime he sang it doesn't exactly make it subtle. Heck he would have been more subtle to block his face from her with his hands, and hiss while backing into a corner like in those horror movies.

The song was originally more direct satire on discriminating attitudes about immigrants but it was then softened to what it later became. I don't believe in that psychoanalytic theory that it was even subconsciously about Yoko.

"Get back" phrase may even refer to the whole origins of the Beatles - to the Quarrymen - which was the idea behind the whole Get Back project that failed and became nothing more than a rooftop concert. That the band intended to perfect and play all the songs as studio-live versions looks to me as if they were being The Quarrymen (or Beatals) again. They even played some of their ancient compositions during the sessions.

Yeah, I'm not sure I can really follow Lennon on this.He said it was about Yoko.He also said Hey Jude was about him, when we know it was about Julian!
I believe the Jojo in the song was actually Linda's ex-husband!
At this time Paul's songs were sometimes about him and Linda.(Two Of Us for example,which I used to think was about him and John but is actually about Paul and Linda getting lost and having a good time together).

Originally Posted by zipp

Yeah, I'm not sure I can really follow Lennon on this.He said it was about Yoko.He also said Hey Jude was about him, when we know it was about Julian!
I believe the Jojo in the song was actually Linda's ex-husband!
At this time Paul's songs were sometimes about him and Linda.(Two Of Us for example,which I used to think was about him and John but is actually about Paul and Linda getting lost and having a good time together).

By the time it was recorded, it was a song about Jojo from Tuscon, Arizona (Linda lived for a while inTuscon)

Turner

Paul nicked a little line ("Get back to where you once belonged") from George's "Sour Milk Sea" (Where he sings "Get back to where you should be") which had just been given to Jackie Lomax. (Paul acknowledges this lift by shouting out "C'mon Jackie!" during the second verse.) Two days later Paul inserted some words from Enoch Powell's "Rivers of blood" speech, and started off one of the great Beatle rumors....

Powell had recently caused an uproar in the press by claiming that Brittain would soon be running in a "river of blood" if the current immigration levels were allowed to continue. This promptly got him demoted from his post, and booted out the Tory Shadow Cabinet. There's a notorious bootleg going round called 'Commonwealth song' with a take from this day, where Paul sings:'If you dont want trouble then you better go home' and urging them to 'get back' to were they came from. A take from the following day became known as 'no pakistanis' and contained references to 'pakistanis taking all the people's jobs''. 'commonwealth song' doesn't actually sound like 'get back' at all, but its important cause it leads into 'no pakistanis'-which does. If he left the lyrics the way it was, then he would have easily topped johns 'revolution' for polytical shit-stirring. But he became so worried that his satire would be taken the wrong way he toned it down so the only words to make the master were the ones in the chorus.

Cross

lyric of it-apparently concearning dope-smokers and transsexuals-evolved from random exchanges between mccartney and the others (rolling stone, 17 may 69) album version begins with paul murmurring 'rosetta....sweet rosetta martin' instead of 'lauretta'. he may have been thinking of earl hines' 'rosetta', a version of which he had produced and played piano on for fellow liverpudlians the fourmost in sept 68. the 'jo jo' of the song was probably suggested by jo jo laine , wife of singer-songwriter danny laine of the moody blues who later joined him in wings. tuscon, arizona, was where linda studied at the state university followingthe breakup of her 1stmarriage in 65

ian

It just goes to show you that you can't dodge that Harrison influence!