It was written during that time when reggae started gaining more musical mileage over in Britain. “Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da” is actually an expression used by the Yoruba tribe (west-African ethnic group found mostly in Nigeria) that means “life goes on”. McCartney became familiar with this saying through a Nigerian acquaintance of his, Jimmy Scott, who later sued him for using it. After many takes, it took Lennon, who completely despised the song, enough drugs to get him more stoned than he had ever been in his life in order to hammer out that one-of-a-kind and rather rough intro to the song on the piano. Lennon may have hated the song, but the thought that no matter what happens to you, whether it being great or terrible, life goes on without waiting for you to get over it, sort of makes you look at things in a different light. It’s like… don’t sweat the small stuff, brah.
1 comment:
In grade 5, my whole class sang ob-la-di, ob-la-da in the school open house/spring concert. We had this hippy music teacher who had us singing The Beatles all year long. Needless to say, he never told us the story behind Lennon's piano playing.
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