JOHN 1980: "I might've given him a couple of lyrics, but it's his song, his lyric." It's a perverse way of saying to Paul, you know, 'Here, have this crumb, this illusion, this stroke, because I'm leaving." The line was put in because I was feeling guilty because I was with Yoko and I was leaving Paul. It could've been the fox terrier is Paul, you know. I threw in the line 'The walrus was Paul' just to confuse everybody a bit more. JOHN 1980: "That's me, just doing a throwaway song, a la 'Walrus' a la everything I've ever written. PAUL circa-1994: "He (John) wrote 'Dear Prudence, won't you come out and play.' and went in and sang it to her, and I think that actually did help." What I didn't know was I was 'already' cosmic." (laughs) That was the competition in Maharishi's camp- who was going to get cosmic first. She'd been locked in for three weeks and was trying to reach God quicker than anybody else. If she'd been in the West, they would have put her away. They selected me and George to try and bring her out because she would trust us.
A song about Mia Farrow's sister, who seemed to go slightly balmy, meditating too long, and couldn't come out of the little hut we were livin' in. If you go down and do it, just bluff right through it, you think, 'What the hell, at least I'm helping.' Then the paranoia comes in- 'But I'm going to show him up!' I was very sensitive to that." It's very weird to know that you can do a thing someone else is having trouble with. PAUL 1986: "I'm sure it pissed Ringo off when he couldn't quite get the drums to 'Back In The USSR,' and I sat in. 'Cuz they like us out there, even though the bosses in the Kremlin may not. I just liked the idea of Georgia girls and talking about places like the Ukraine as if they were California, you know? It was also hands across the water, which I'm still conscious of. And 'Back in the USA' was a Chuck Berry song, so it kinda took off from there. PAUL 1984: "I wrote that as a kind of Beach Boys parody. It concerns the attributes of Russian women." And 'Come here honey,' but with Russian women. But he gets back to the USSR, you know, and he's sort of saying, 'Leave it till tomorrow, honey, to disconnect the phone,' and all that. In my mind it's just about a spy who's been in America a long long time, you know, and he's picked up. And it's a very American sort of thing, I've always thought. And you know- Can't wait to get back to the States. you know, you're serving in the army, and when I get back home I'm gonna kiss the ground.
PAUL 1968: "Chuck Berry once did a song called 'Back In The USA,' which is very American, very Chuck Berry. Hey Jude/Revolution (UK release: 8/30/68) The White Album Originally released in the UK, November 22, 1968 Beatles Songwriting & Recording Database: The White Albumīeatles Ultimate Experience: Songwriting & Recording Database: The White Album