Despite what the media said about it (for better or worse), the Beatles weren’t exactly the soothsayers or cultural gurus-slash-corrupters they were often painted to be—in fact, John Lennon was the first to admit that he didn’t truly understand what he was singing about in one of the Fab Four’s most iconic anthems that seemingly wrapped up the band’s ethos in five short words.
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“All you need is love,” the Beatles repeated emphatically in their 1967 non-album single. The song became the foundation for the flower power, “peace and love” movement of the late 1960s. But it wasn’t until 1969 that Lennon realized he actually had no idea what he had been talking about. Yet.
John Lennon Said He Didn’t Truly Understand This Beatles Song At First
The Beatles released “All You Need Is Love” as the A-side to “Baby, You’re a Rich Man” in 1967. The song was part of a massive global television link and served as an affable contribution to the multi-satellite production. How could one argue with the song? All you need is love, love, love is all you need. Songwriting credit went to both John Lennon and Paul McCartney. But years later, Lennon would admit that, in hindsight, he realized he didn’t actually know what he was talking about in 1967.
“When I was singing about all you need is love, I was talking about something I hadn’t experienced,” Lennon said in a 1969 interview with Howard Smith. “I had experienced love for people in gusts and love for things and trees and things like that. But I hadn’t experienced what I was singing about. It’s like anything. You sing about it first or write about it first and find out what you were talking about after.”
Lennon did his 1969 interview with his second wife, Yoko Ono, which allowed the two to talk about the power of their love simultaneously. When Smith asked Lennon what his secret to getting along with Ono was, Lennon simply replied, “It’s called love. There’s nothing that splits that up. You got to work on it. It’s a plant, and you’ve got to look after it and water it. You can’t just sit on your backside and think, ‘Oh, well, we’re in love, so that’s alright.’ But that’s the secret. It’s all true folks. All you need is love.”
From A Well-Intentioned But Naive Anthem To A Real-Life Ballad
John Lennon might not have truly understood what he was talking about when he helped write the Beatles anthem, “All You Need Is Love,” but it only took him a couple of years to figure it out. As is often the case with songwriters, when he figured it out, he wrote another song about it. Except instead of writing a generational anthem, Lennon opted for a folk ballad recounting his transition from a cynical divorcé to a giddy romantic embarking on his second marriage.
In the same interview with Howard Smith in 1969, Lennon said that he and Yoko Ono decided to have a traditional marriage “because we turned out to be romantics. I mean, we went through the whole intellectual bit about marriage, where it’s a bit of paper and some guy gives it to you. And that’s all true. But when he gave it to us, it was very emotional, and it wasn’t even a…we couldn’t even get a nice vicar or a bishop to do it. It’s completely against what we thought, what I thought intellectually. I thought, ‘Well, it’s never again, forget about this one.’”
“The next minute, I’m standing there, and she’s crying, and it’s like we’re soft kids. So, we’re romantic, and it made a difference.” Lennon would recount the tale of their tumultuous but sentimental marriage in the 1969 single, “Ballad of John and Yoko.” The song is a little less idealistic than “All You Need Is Love,” but it’s also less naive and more grounded in what true, real-life love actually looks like.
Photo by Michael Putland/Getty Images
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