In 1967, The Beatles released “The Fool on the Hill” on their “Magical Mystery Tour” soundtrack. The song was written by Paul McCartney and is considered one of the strongest tracks on the soundtrack, showcasing McCartney’s melodic and lyrical abilities. In this article, we will dive into the story, meaning, and legacy behind The Beatles’ “The Fool on the Hill”.
The Fool
Paul McCartney wrote “The Fool on the Hill” in 1967. At that time, The Beatles fully embraced their role as artistic geniuses and started to implement other art forms to complement their music. Therefore, the band decided to work together with the Dutch design collective The Fool, founded by Simon Posthuma and Marijke Koger (and later joined by Josje Leeger and Barry Finch).
The Fool designed clothing for The Beatles (worn during the 1967 television broadcast of “All You Need Is Love” for instance), painted the mural of The Beatles’ Apple Boutique, and designed the graphics of the Sgt. Pepper’s disc-inner sleeve. The art group derived their name from the Tarot card The Fool, which the group studied.
“She [Marijke] used to read my fortune in Tarot cards,” McCartney reflected in his biography Many Years From Now. “I always steered a bit clear of all that sh*t, but in fact it always used to come out as the Fool. And I used to say, ‘Oh, dear!’ and she used to say, ‘No no no. The Fool’s a very good card. On the surface it looks stupid, the Fool, but in fact it’s one of the best cards, because it’s the innocent, it’s the child, it’s that reading of fool.”
“So I began to like the word ‘fool’, because I began to see through the surface meaning,” McCartney continued. “I wrote ‘The Fool on the Hill’ out of that experience of seeing Tarot cards.”
The Meaning of the Song
“The Fool on the Hill” is a song about a wise man who is misjudged as a fool. The lyrics describe a solitary man who observes the world from a hill but is perceived as a fool by those who don’t understand his perspective.
“I think I was writing about someone like Maharishi (Guru),” McCartney stated. “His detractors called him a fool. Because of his giggle, he wasn’t taken too seriously. It was this idea of a fool on the hill, a guru in a cave, I was attracted to.”
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was a spiritual leader and the founder of transcendental meditation. In February 1968, The Beatles traveled to India to study transcendental meditation under Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Because of his laugh, some referred to him as the ‘giggling guru’.
“I think ‘The Fool on the Hill’ is a very complimentary portrait and represents the Maharishi as having the capacity to keep ‘perfectly still’ in the midst of the hurly-burly,” McCartney wrote in The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present. “He’s admirably self-contained and doesn’t pay much attention to popular opinion.”
John Lennon complimented McCartney on the lyrical content of “The Fool on the Hill”. When asked about the song in an interview, he said: “Now that’s Paul. Another good lyric. Shows he’s capable of writing complete songs.”
The Legacy of The Fool on the Hill
The Beatles released “The Fool on the Hill” on their Magical Mystery Tour soundtrack. The song was also (logically) used in the film Magical Mystery Tour (see clip above).
Over the years, “The Fool on the Hill” became a ‘standard’ and one of McCartney’s most covered songs (a version by Sérgio Mendes & Brasil ’66 reached number 6 on the US Billboard Hot 100). McCartney himself stated the song ranks among his personal favorites.
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