Across The Universe - Remastered 2009

John Lennon wrote this song after having an argument with his wife Cynthia. He said, "I was lying next to me first wife in bed, and I was irritated. She must have been going on and on about something and she'd gone to sleep and I kept hearing these words over and over, flowing like an endless stream. I went downstairs and it turned into sort of a cosmic song rather than an irritated song... it drove me out of bed. I didn't want to write it, but I was slightly irritable and I went downstairs and I couldn't get to sleep until I'd put it on paper."

The refrain "Jai Guru Deva Om" is a mantra intended to lull the mind into a higher consciousness. The words are in Sanskrit, and they mean "I give thanks to Guru Dev," who was the teacher of The Maharishi. The "Om" at the end is the drawn out "oooohm" used in meditation to relate to the natural vibration of the universe. While visiting the Maharishi in Rishikesh, John purchased a set of brass bracelets with the words "Jai Guru Dev" imprinted on them. The bracelets are now in the possession of Julian Lennon and were on display at the "White Feather-The Spirit Of John Lennon" exhibit at the Beatles Story in Liverpool.

This first appeared on No One's Gonna Change Our World, a 1969 charity album for the World Wildlife Fund (they're the ones who sued the World Wrestling Federation and made them stop using "WWF"). Bird noises were dubbed in to this version to create a nature theme. This song is often cited as an example of tensions between Lennon and McCartney over treatment of each other's songs. When The Beatles went to record it in February of 1968, both Lennon and McCartney decided they wanted falsetto harmonies on the song. No matter what he did, John said he was sounding out of tune, so Paul went outside and grabbed two "Apple Scruffs" named Lizzie Bravo and Gaylene Pease to add the background harmonies. John is quoted again about that, saying, "the original track was a real piece of s--t. I was singing out of tune, and instead of getting a decent choir, we got fans from outside. They came in and were singing all off-key. Nobody was interested in doing the tune originally." In another interview, he said, "The Beatles didn't make a good record of it. I think subconsciously sometimes we - I say 'we' although I think Paul did it more than the rest of us - Paul would, sort of subconsciously, try and destroy a great song... meaning we'd play experimental games with my great pieces, like 'Strawberry Fields,' which I always thought was badly recorded." The two young women Paul grabbed off the street to sing backup appear on the World Wildlife recording of the song, but not on the version on Let It Be.