Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite!

To begin with, “Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite!” is a Beatles’ song from their 1967 Sgt Peppers album. The band created an atmospheric track using circus music as well as adding other sound effects.

Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Album (1967)

Anthology 2 Album (1996)

Love Album (2006)

Written and composed by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” is another Beatles’ song that the BBC banned because they said it had a reference to heroin. Both words in the phrase “Henry the Horse” were slang for the drug but Lennon says the song was all about a poster in his possession.

“The whole song is from a Victorian poster, which I bought in a junk shop. It is so cosmically beautiful. It’s a poster for a fair that must have happened in the 1800s. Everything in the song is from that poster, except the horse wasn’t called Henry. Now, there were all kinds of stories about Henry the Horse being heroin. I had never seen heroin in that period. No, it’s all just from that poster. The song is pure, like a painting, a pure watercolour.”

John Lennon
All We Are Saying, David Sheff

The inspiration for the song was a 19th-century circus poster advertising “Pablo Fanque’s Circus Royal” and it’s appearance at Rochdale, England. He bought the framed poster on the 31st January 1967 in an antique shop close to his hotel in Sevenoaks, Kent, where they were staying while they filmed “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane“.

The 1843 poster proudly announces the circus as “being for the benefit of Mr Kite”. Although there is no mention of “The Hendersons” which Lennon sings about, the poster features “Mr J Henderson The Celebrated Somerset Thrower”. Then at the bottom of the poster, Zanthus the horse gets a mention.

Writing Conflict

While John Lennon claims to be the sole songwriter, Paul McCartney says otherwise:

“Mr Kite! is such a crazy, oddball song that I thought it would freshen up the set. Plus the fact that I’d never done it. None of us in the Beatles ever did that song [at gigs]. And I have great memories of writing it with John. I read, occasionally, people say, ‘Oh, John wrote that one.’ I say, ‘Wait a minute, what was that afternoon I spent with him, then, looking at this poster?'”

McCartney continues his 2013 interview with the Rolling Stone Magazine:

“He happened to have a poster in his living room at home. I was out at his house, and we just got this idea, because the poster said ‘Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite’ – and then we put in, you know, ‘there will be a show tonight,’ and then it was like, ‘of course,’ then it had ‘Henry the Horse dances the waltz.’ You know, whatever. ‘The Hendersons, Pablo Fanques, somersets…’ We said, ‘What was ‘somersets’? It must have been an old-fashioned way of saying somersaults.’ The song just wrote itself. So, yeah, I was happy to kind of reclaim it as partially mine.”

Since the Beatles broke up in 1970, there are just a few examples involving conflicts like this. For example we see a similar conflict with, “In My Life“.

Recording Studio

The Beatles began to record “Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite!” on the 17th February 1967 in Studio Two of the EMI Studios, London, during the 7.00pm-3.00am session. There were 7 takes with the last one being suitable for the master rhythm track with bass, harmonium as well as the drums. Obviously to get an authentic circus music track such as this one, access to various sound effects was necessary. Therefore, three days later George Martin began assembling the various components.

“I knew we needed a backwash, a general mush of sound, like if you go to a fairground, shut your eyes and listen; rifle shots, hurdy-gurdy noises, people shouting and – way in the distance – just a tremendous chaotic sound. So I got hold of old calliope tapes, playing Stars And Stripes Forever and other Sousa marches, chopped the tapes up into small sections and had Geoff Emerick throw them up in the air, re-assembling them at random.

I threw the bits up in the air but, amazingly, they came back together in almost the same order. We all expected it to sound different but it was virtually the same as before! So we switched bits around and turned some upside down.”

George Martin
The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, Mark Lewisohn

Of course, George Martin was a marvellous producer whose experience in this field proved immense.

The Albums

On three further days in late March after more overdubbing the song was complete and ready for the album. On the “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” album, the track sits on the end of side 1, after “She’s Leaving Home“. Meanwhile, on their 1996 album, “Anthology 2”, we get takes one and two from the 17th of February.

In 2006, The Beatles’ “Love” album became available with a mashup mix that includes the song. There it sits after track 9, “Something” (with “Blue Jay Way” transition) and before “Help!“. The mix has, “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!,  I Want You (She’s So Heavy) as well as Helter Skelter“.