“Baby You're A Rich Man” by The Beatles

"Baby, You're a Rich Man" slipped out in July 1967 on the flip side of "All You Need Is Love", stitched together from an unfinished John Lennon song called "One of the Beautiful People" and a chorus Paul McCartney tacked on. Lennon wrote his half after the 14 Hour Technicolor Dream, the all-night happening at Alexandra Palace, and the verses size up the beautiful people of the hippie scene while the chorus turns it into a meditation on wealth you can't bank.

The sound is the hook: Lennon's clavioline, an early one-note-at-a-time keyboard, set to oboe so it wails like an Indian shehnai, with Eddie Kramer on vibraphone and Ringo Starr shaking maracas and tambourine. George Martin produced it at Olympic Sound Studios in London, the first Beatles recording for EMI made entirely away from EMI Studios.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.