Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!

"Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!"

Song by the Beatles from the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Released

1 June 1967

Recorded

17 and 20 February and 28, 29, 31 March 1967

Genre

Length

2:37

Music sample
"Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!"

"Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles, from their 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. It was primarily written and composed by John Lennon, although Paul McCartney claims that he also contributed to it. The song is credited to Lennon–McCartney.

The inspiration to write the song was a 19th-century circus poster for Pablo Fanque's Circus Royal appearance at Rochdale, that Lennon purchased in an antique shop on 31 January 1967, while filming the promotional videos for "Penny Lane" and "Strawberry Fields Forever" in Sevenoaks, Kent. Lennon claimed years later to still have the poster in his home. "Everything from the song is from that poster," he explained, "except the horse wasn't called Henry." (The poster identifies the horse as "Zanthus.")

The song is credited to Lennon–McCartney, but Lennon claimed to have written it entirely himself. McCartney disagrees; in a 2013 Rolling Stone interview states: "I read, occasionally, people say, 'Oh, John wrote that one.' I say, 'Wait a minute, what was that afternoon I spent with him, then, looking at this poster?' He happened to have a poster in his living room at home. I was out at his house, and we just got this idea, because the poster said 'Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite' – and then we put in, you know, 'there will be a show tonight,' and then it was like, 'of course,'...The song just wrote itself. So, yeah, I was happy to kind of reclaim it as partially mine.'"

Mr. Kite is believed to be William Kite, who worked for Pablo Fanque from 1843 to 1845.

The full text of the original Pablo Fanque's Circus Royal poster is:

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Wikipedia