The ballad that got binned

Loved and revered like perhaps no other, the Beatles were never a band prone to self-satisfaction. If anything, the harshest critic was often John Lennon, always ready to take down a peg even the songs deemed untouchable by critics and fans alike. After the band's split, in particular, he spared no criticism for the songs written by Paul McCartney nor for his own, often showing an almost brutal attitude towards what he himself had helped create. Looking back on the band's early days, as Far Out recalls, Lennon admitted more than once that he didn't feel truly invested in the first Beatles songs, which he saw as products written "for the meat market". The turning point came with songs like "Help!", when he began using songwriting as a tool for self-analysis too. From that point on, many of his compositions became a direct extension of his personality, paving the way for increasingly bold experimentation.

And yet, even a cornerstone of the Fab Four's catalogue like "Strawberry Fields Forever" was, in his eyes, among the songs that should be redone from scratch. Producer George Martin told Robert Sandall a telling anecdote: during a casual conversation, Lennon said he'd have liked to re-record the Beatles' entire catalogue. When Martin asked him if he really thought they'd never done anything right, Lennon replied without hesitation: "Most of what we did was rubbish". And pressed further on "Strawberry Fields Forever", he added: "Especially 'Strawberry Fields'". Exaggerations, of course, but ones that captured the real dissatisfaction the Liverpool musician felt towards some of the songs the Beatles had made.

After Lennon's murder in 1980, with the "Anthology" project, the surviving Beatles came back together to work as a group again, releasing two previously unreleased songs and opening up the archives to alternate versions, demos and discarded tracks. Among them was "That Means A Lot", written during the period of the film "Help!". A ballad that, at least on paper, fit perfectly within the band's wheelhouse. And yet Lennon himself considered it an example of a song "ruined" by the Beatles themselves.

Despite the decision to shelve it, the band worked on the track at length in the studio, recording more than twenty takes and even going so far as to consider a version with country inflections.

The track was recorded across two separate sessions, on 20 February and 30 March 1965. On the first occasion the band ran through four attempts, then recorded the rhythm track: Paul on vocals and piano, George Harrison and Lennon himself on backing vocals and guitars, lead and rhythm respectively, with Ringo Starr on drums. Guitar overdubs and the doubled vocal were added at a later stage.

On 30 March four new takes were recorded. The first two departed sharply from the earlier versions: they were no longer in the key of E major but of G, and had a distinctly country rock feel. The last two, on the other hand, followed the approach of the February recordings. This remake was never completed and has only ever circulated on bootlegs. The version released on "Anthology 2" corresponds instead to the first take from 20 February.

In an interview, Lennon explained: “It's a ballad that Paul and I wrote for the film, but we realised we just couldn't sing it. We made a mess of it, so we thought it was better to give it to someone who could really do it justice.” In 1965 the song was handed over to P.J. Proby, an artist managed by the same man who managed the Beatles, Brian Epstein. Proby's version was released as a single and reached No. 30 on the British charts.

“Normally I would have tried to bin these songs and never release them, but there was so much pressure on us: they'd say, 'Have you got anything?' And I'd say, 'Yes, I do, but you really wouldn't want to hear it.' And they'd say, 'Oh yes we would! Trust me, I think I can do a good job with it, and having your name on it would add real value.' So PJ Proby, a friend of ours we'd met during Jack Good's TV show that we took part in, Round The Beatles, wanted to do it, and we gave it to him. He even had a little hit with it,” recalls Paul McCartney, who in a 1988 interview reiterated that there were songs the four of them weren't too convinced by, and that "That Means A Lot" was one of them.

And yet, listened to today, "That Means A Lot" remains a more than dignified ballad, poised between the roughness and vibrato of "Ticket To Ride" and the softer, more melodic side of McCartney's songwriting. A classic outtake that perhaps deserved a kinder fate.

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23/03/2026