National Anthem in a Beatles Song?

The French national anthem famously opens All You Need Is Love. This was recorded at Abbey Road in 1967 for Our World, the first international satellite broadcast.

La Marseillaise is 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, evoking the celebrated scene in Casablanca (1941).