The Story Behind “One After 909” By The Beatles

One of Their Earliest Recordings

Primarily written by John Lennon with a little help from Paul McCartney and credited under Lennon-McCartney, it was featured on The Beatles’ album “Let It Be.” It’s the only track taken from the iconic rooftop concert with Lennon including a line from “Danny Boy” towards the end.

Lennon told Playboy magazine in 1980: “That was something I wrote when I was about seventeen. I lived at 9 Newcastle Road. I was born on the ninth of October. It’s just a number that follows me around, but, numerologically, apparently I’m a number six or a three or something, but it’s all part of nine.”

McCartney also said, “It has great memories for me of John and I trying to write a bluesy freight-train song. There were a lot of those songs at the time, like Midnight Special, Freight Train, Rock Island Line, so this was the One After 909; she didn’t get the 909, she got the one after it! It was a tribute to British Rail, actually. No, at the time we weren’t thinking British, it was much more the Super Chief from Omaha.”

Although it was included in their final LP, it’s actually one of their earliest songs – Lennon wrote it when he was just a teen and The Fab Four originally recorded it in five takes and on the same day as “From Me To You” in March 1963. They weren’t happy with what they got which is why “One After 909” was shelved. However, there were two bootleg versions – one from The Quarrymen in 1960 and another from a Cavern Club rehearsal in 1962.