The Beatles Song That Was Heavily Inspired By Country Music

The Beatles were never afraid to experiment with new sounds. They introduced Eastern beliefs and values to Western culture by putting Indian influences into their music. They’ve also started the era of making psychedelic and experimental tunes in the mainstream and even if they are known as one of the most iconic rock bands, the Fab Four has a song that was very much inspired by country music.

Released in 1964’s Beatles for Sale, “I Don’t Want To Spoil The Party,” Paul McCartney said in a 1964 interview with Disc:

“We went after a real country and Western flavour when we wrote this one.

“John and I do the singing in that style, and George takes a real country solo on guitar.”

McCartney talked about how the song was written by him and John Lennon in Barry Miles’ 1997 biography Many Years From Now. He shared that they would spend hours in Lennon’s bedroom, at his aunt Mimi Smith’s house, listening to classic rock ‘n’ roll records from the likes of Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, and Jerry Lee Lewis. Although Ringo Starr didn’t sing on the final recording of the track, Macca noted:

“Ringo had a great style and great delivery.

“He had a lot of fans, so we liked to write something for him on each album. ‘I Don’t Want To Spoil The Party’ is quite a nice little song, co-written by John and I. It sounds more like John than me, so 80-20 to him, sitting down doing a job. Certain songs were inspirational and certain songs were work, it didn’t mean they were any less fun to write, it was just a craft, and this was a job to order really, which Ringo did a good job on.”

Talking about the song, Lennon admitted that it was his proudest contribution to their album saying:

“That was a very personal one of mine. In the early days, I wrote less material than Paul because he was more competent on guitar than I. He taught me quite a lot of guitar, really.”