It's All Too Much

Food and drink ('Birthday cake', 'home for tea') get more attention here than the Beatles usually do in a pop lyric, alongside the motifs of drugs and spirituality, and they had done the same on 'Rock and Roll Music' 3 years earlier. There is hyperbole in the writing ('All the world is birthday cake'), and 1969 is the year they reached for it most. Worth noting, the title turns up in the chorus, and the language is built on a limited vocabulary. The writing draws on the drug culture and eastern philosophy.

In G major at roughly 114 BPM, 'It's All Too Much' is a psychedelic and acid rock song with Indian music influences underneath (drone-based composition). It brings in a woodwind group, and the Beatles had done the same on 'Penny Lane' five months earlier. The tune carries musical quotation, a borrowed phrase (Quotes The Merseys' 'Sorrow'), and 1969 is the year they reached for it most. Also, the record has group vocals. It has a trumpet solo. The harmony reaches for an add9 chord, which turns up on eleven of their records, and McCartney reached for it more than the others, on six of them. On this one, the outro runs on past the song, which is unusual (lengthy fade chant). As a matter of detail, 'I Need You' plays Asus4 → A → D → A and 'Got to Get You into My Life' plays G → G7 → C → G7: the same progression in different keys, which this song and 'The End' also make.

Recorded at De Lane Lea Studios - a rare non-EMI Beatles session - with a four-trumpet overdub arranged by George Martin. On this one Harrison played the Gibson SG, his guitar, something they had already used on 'Paperback Writer' a year earlier. Only three Beatles recordings reach for feedback, and this is one. This was their 139th record, and the 18th of the 25 they began recording in 1967.

Harrison wrote the song and sang it himself, and the record has a role swap on it, him on organ, as on 'Blue Jay Way' and 'Old Brown Shoe'. Four trumpets (quartet), bass clarinet and clarinet play behind them, and the trumpet is four trumpets (quartet). Dave Siddle is credited with a De Lane Lea engineer.

The public first heard it when Yellow Submarine appeared on January 17, 1969. This is the Beatles' 180th record, and the 4th of the 26 they released in 1969.