The Beatles gave us a glimpse of their possible future... on their last song

No longer hungry: The Beatles as they appeared during their final photo shoot.

The future we didn't get.

To me, the breakup of The Beatles is no great mystery. It's simple math. When the group started in 1960, its members were about 20 years old and hungry for rock stardom and everything that went with it—women, money, houses, cars, publicity, screaming fans, etc. When the group ended in 1970, these men were about 30 years old and had had plenty of all that stuff. Too much, in fact. At every meal, no matter how delicious, there comes a point when you have to push your chair away from the table and declare that you've had enough. And so, they walked away under their own power while they still could.

I'm reminded of comedian Mitch Hedberg's description of pancakes: "All exciting at first, but then by the end, you're sick of 'em."

Many of The Beatles' contemporaries, like The Rolling Stones and The Who, decided to stay at the banquet for decades, even after the deaths of core members. Even the always-squabbling Kinks managed to outlast them. But the Fab Four remained stubbornly broken up, with each member of the quartet pursuing a solo career. Fans have naturally been curious about what kinds of albums John, Paul, George, and Ringo would have made if they had stayed together through the 1970s and beyond. Some fans have even created compilation albums and playlists with tracks taken from various Beatle solo LPs. 

But in 1970, just as they were disintegrating, The Beatles gave us a humorous glimpse into their own possible future as a band were they to remain together. Yes, I think there's a somewhat obscure Beatles B-side that demonstrates what would have happened to The Beatles if they hadn't broken up. And this song occupies a unique and important place in the group's discography.

The canon stops here.

When we speak of The Beatles' canon, i.e. the body of work by which they should be judged as artists, we are referring only to the official albums and singles they released as a group between 1962 and 1970. Depending on what you choose to count, i.e. multiple versions of the same song, this canon amounts to about 213 to 217 songs. That's about 10-11 hours of music total. You could listen to the entire thing in one longish workday. 

If the canon starts with the single "Love Me Do" in 1962, then it ends with "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)," a B-side to the 1970 single "Let it Be." According to the numerous discographies I consulted for this article, "You Know My Name" is the very last new song The Beatles released during the original run of the group. 

To say the least, it's a strange and unexpected ending to one of the most famous stories in 20th century popular music.  Recorded in pieces over several years, starting in 1967, "You Know My Name" is a featherweight novelty tune that largely exists as an excuse for John Lennon and Paul McCartney to goof around in the studio and do silly voices. It's essentially a musical comedy sketch, rather like the zany Christmas records The Beatles would record each year to send to members of their official fan club. The song's lyrics, if you can call them such, consist largely of the title being repeated over and over. John was reportedly inspired by a phrase he'd seen in a London phone book at Paul's house: "You know their name, look up their number." John was well known to pluck song lyrics from posters, advertisements, and newspaper stories.

In Mark Lewisohn's book The Beatles Recording Sessions (1988), much to the author's bewilderment, Paul describes "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)" as "probably my favorite Beatles track" simply because it was "so insane." He and John clearly had fun recording this, even recruiting their road manager and personal assistant Mal Evans to dig through gravel to create sound effects for the song. Paul was initially skeptical about the song's extremely limited vocabulary, but John explained it was "like a mantra."

Paul and John in 1967.

Perhaps because of its unconventional (and therefore uncommercial) nature, "You Know My Name" took about three years to see official release, the longest of any song in the canon. The Beatles started recording it in May and June 1967, around the time of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), then revisited the track in April 1969, during the sessions for Abbey Road (1969). It didn't see daylight until March 1970, when it was burned off as a B-side. 

That still put it in front of millions of people, since the A-side ("Let it Be") was a hit in over 18 countries, topping the charts in America, Switzerland, France, Hungary, Australia, and Austria. Nevertheless, the song's gestation period was so long that Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones, who had contributed a jazzy sax solo to the recording, did not live to see it reach the public. In the years following The Beatles' breakup, "You Know My Name" was included on Rarities (1980) and Past Masters, Volume Two (1988). An extended version of the song, including a ska-influenced section, was included on Anthology 2 (1996).

Why did The Beatles remain so loyal to this misshapen orphan of a song? The strange track seemed to bring John and Paul together, if only temporarily, during a tense time in the group's history. Lewisohn quotes recording engineer Nick Webb: "John and Paul weren't always getting on that well at this time, but for that song they went onto the studio floor and sang together around one microphone." Another patchwork novelty song from this era, "What's the New, Mary Jane?" never quite found its way into the official canon, despite John's enthusiasm for it. Instead, "Mary Jane" became a staple of Beatles bootleg LPs for decades and ultimately wound up on Anthology 3 (1996).

But why do I say that "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)" was a preview of The Beatles' future if they'd stayed together? Well, what usually happens to groups that stick around for decades? They tend to become living jukeboxes, playing the hits over and over and over until the words lose any semblance of meaning. They might as well be singing the same eight words again and again, as The Beatles do in this song. 

This record finds The Beatles reduced to the level of a lounge act, playing mellow, lightly Latinized muzak for an audience of aging, indifferent drunks. In terms of dignity, they're about a half-step down from the neutered, tuxedo-wearing Murph and the Magic Tones from the movie The Blues Brothers (1980). And that fictional group is supposed to be a worst-case scenario for musicians. Lewisohn describes "You Know My Name" as "conjuring up a seedy night-club atmosphere," and he's right. In addition to singing and playing guitar and maracas on the track, John Lennon also does a bit of acting, portraying the unctuous emcee introducing the band: "Good evening and welcome to Slaggers." He then introduces Paul as "Denis O'Bell," a pseudonym taken from Apple Corps. director Denis O'Dell. (The well-intentioned shoutout brought O'Dell unwanted attention from rabid Beatle fans.)

It's at this point that Paul and John show us the performers they would have become had The Beatles stuck with it. Paul has become a flirtatious crooner, peppering his vocals with a lot of Bing Crosby-esque nonsense syllables. ("Ba ba ba baaaaaaa!") Meanwhile, John has become an old-school, Cockney-accented comedian whose act is punctuated with bad puns, zany sound effects, and a slide whistle. It's as if, in order to get through a lifetime of playing these gigs to diminishing returns, both Paul and John have become cartoons of themselves. As for the strange, wordless vocalizations we hear in the last minute or so of the song, I've always thought of those as the rude noises the people in the audience are making as they drink and smoke and generally ignore the band.

While "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)" is a lot of fun, it also demonstrates why The Beatles were smart to walk away in 1970. If they hadn't, they could have risked becoming parodies of themselves.