Plan Zeta_. One of the big successes of the previous year. The American public had no clue who the Beatles were, but they knew the magic of Sgt. Pepper and loved it. "Hello. How's things?" asks Lennon. "Oh, you know...the usual. You know—we've got this huge hit single, and no one's got any idea who it is." They chat about the number of fans who can't recognize them—and one girl who, as a little girl, thought Ringo was the bee-yotch of her mother's affections. They run through the business plans for their next album—and try to remember which song was next, until they realize it doesn't matter. The call is over. And, as I know perfectly well, Lennon doesn't answer the next time I call either. But now he can. Now he's free from the shackles of an album he never much cared for—the Beatles had been having an ongoing argument about it, which only makes it worse—and he can begin planning the greatest pop album of all time. It's going to be called _Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band_. He will call it "The Beatles' Lonely Hearts Club Band." As they had recorded and mixed "Strawberry Fields Forever," the rest of the band had been working hard on its own songs. Ringo had written an old folk tune, "Don't Pass Me By." George had written "Because," in his typical romantic—and frequently whimsical—style. John's "In My Life" started as a slow, contemplative piano piece called "Hello, Goodbye," which he liked so much that he wrote a poem about it, about the idea of someone being able to tell time by hearing a clock ticking. Then John and Paul began writing more songs together, which is something they had never done before—and often didn't in the future. "I Got a Feeling" was inspired by a song John had heard by the Mamas and the Papas, "Monday Monday," and began as a song about leaving home for a place where you never knew what would happen next. Then Paul played it back to John and said, "Oh, this sounds like a dance song," and that started them on a wild ride of ideas and turns and twists. The first verse is, " _Feel_ , I get a feeling that I get a feeling that I get a feeling that I get... _feeling_...," and it then changes into " _Feeling_ , I get a feeling that I get a feeling that I get..." and in the refrain, " _Feel_ ing I get a feelin' that I get a feelin' that I..." and then it becomes " _Feel_ ing," and finally it stops. You need only one of those changes to ruin a song—or a revolution. The best part of "Feeling," for Paul and John, was "She Said She Said," which took them all of three hours to write. They did it sitting around the piano, and there was no one else in the room. No music—just the three of them, and these two amazing sounds from the four of them playing with each other. The song is a conversation in music—the dialogue between John and Paul. "She said to me, 'What do you think about me?'" Paul sings. "I said to her, 'Well, what do you think about me?'" John echoes the question back to him. "I say, 'Oh yes.'" Paul plays the answer—they do it three times, two times, once. Then the chorus kicks in. John has two voices going on—the _idea_ of two voices, which allows the listener to imagine it is a conversation in which he and Paul are each talking in a normal voice, but at the same time they are singing in a high register that John has been using since "I'm Looking Through You," but here it makes the song somehow more daring. It makes the lyrics seem that much more daring. _She said she said to me, she said she said to me, she said she said to me, what do you think about me?_ _She said to me, she said she said to me, she said she said to me, she said she said to me, she said she said to me_. They do it four times. "I'm not saying anything _against_ this song," John once said about "In My Life," "I'm just saying _that_ I've never met anybody in my life who hasn't felt it." "I got a feeling that I got a feeling that I got a feeling..." " _Feel_ ing, I get a feelin'..." " _Feeling_ , I get a feelin'..." " _Feel_ ing..." " _Feeling_..." " _Feeling_..." At first, he thought it might be "Lovely Rita," a popular song that would sell a million copies, and they liked it. Then he changed his mind, because he thought the song was too upbeat and catchy—the thing it was about didn't have any real "meaning." The song ended up sounding like "I'm in Love with My Car," a hit record by the 1910 Fruitgum Company. Paul, a great lyricist who was constantly playing around with words, thought the song sounded boring and made it sound more like a love song and less like a confession, which is the most important thing in pop music. And "She Said She Said," and "I'm in Love with My Car," took them both out of the funk they had been in for so long. "Sitting in the sunshine on the roof..." "I'll get you into the party, don't stop..." "The people there are stepping out therain..." "She's reading a magazine..." "And you will wonder..." "There's a boy who's taken his own life..." And when John came to write his lyrics for "I'm Only Sleeping," he saw them working on "I Got a Feeling," which is one of his favorite songs. They looked at each other and thought, We _have_ to do something with this. He went off and wrote a song that was "the most personal, the most intimate thing I've done, and probably ever will do." He spent hours sitting on a beach, going over the lyrics, sometimes thinking about things that hadn't happened to him. "I've got a pain that I feel—my heart is cracking, oh Lord..." " _She said she said to me, she said she said to me, she said she said to me_..." " _She said she said to me, she said she said to me, she said she said to me_..." And when I hear that tape of the album, it's because I'd read that Paul and John were playing around with LSD and had been thinking of each other as Paul and Julia and John and Jasper. They had even set up a scene in their home on Abbey Road for "The Void." John played Paul and Paul played John, and they played off each other, each taking a different perspective. They thought it was a hilarious idea, one that would be very dramatic when he took a trip to India with Yoko. And all those songs are great. But none of them comes close to "She Said She Said." John had heard a song on a record by the Marvelettes called "Playboy," and he wondered what it would be like if it were done in the style of the Rolling Stones, all rock and roll. But it ended up not being a Rolling Stones song, with all its verses and the refrain, which were great. " _She said she said to me_..." is John on the first part of the chorus, and Paul is on the second part. That's all it needed—a rhythm like that was missing from their songs. John said it was a groove. And Paul just loved it—it made the song come alive, and he always loved it that John was really pushing himself to be more daring, even if it came from within. At the end of the verse, he says to John, "I said I said I said." He's letting him know that there's another level coming, a part of the song, and what is about to happen. Paul is actually singing to John at that moment. " _This is it_ ," says John. "The whole _thing_ , really, is that one shot of John saying, 'I said I said I said,' which comes out, first, as 'I say I said.' Then, when he realizes that there's another whole section of the song beginning, he adds, 'I said I...' and then he's going to say it again, but he's still caught up in the moment and he doesn't know it." John was very serious about the song and the music—and, because of that, it became even more popular than they expected it to be. It became one of the greatest pop singles of all time. On the tapes of the sessions that were released in 2007, it sounds like they did "She Said She