Beatles play French Military Marches?
Snatches from two French military marches appear in Beatles songs, both at the suggestion of George Martin.
La Marseillaise
The first unmistakable opening to All You Need Is Love was recorded at Abbey Road in 1967 for Our World, the first international satellite broadcast
La Marseillaise is of course the French national anthem: a homage to the French Revolution’s ideals of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. The original words did not match the Summer of Love vibe:
To arms, citizens!/Form your battalions
Let’s march, let’s march/That their impure blood
Should water our fields.
But to Anglo-American ears, the stirring tune had internationalist associations in evoking the celebrated scene in Casablanca (1941)
Le Rêve Passé (English title: The Soldier's Dream)
There was no hiding La Marseillaise. But on the earlier Revolver (1966), Martin cleverly concealed a lesser-known French military march from 1906.
It was unlikely source material for a psychedelic children's song. More the kind of tune that might feature on Sergeant Pepper's setlist.
Nor was the chosen segment, dusted down from an old recording from the studio vaults, a precise musical fit for its destination. Abbey Road engineers needed to alter the tape speed and pitch before splicing it into the mix.
