Реал Лав: История песни Джона Леннона и The Beatles

1979 song by John Lennon

"Real Love" is a song written by the English musician John Lennon, formerly of the Beatles. He recorded six demos of the song in 1979 and 1980 with "Real Life", a different song that merged with "Real Love". In 1988, the sixth take was posthumously released for the documentary soundtrack Imagine: John Lennon. In 1995, his demo was completed by his former Beatles bandmates (Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr) as part of the Beatles Anthology project, along with "Free as a Bird". The song was released as a Beatles single in 1996 in the United Kingdom, United States and many other countries. It respectively reached number 4 and number 11 in the UK and US singles charts, and earned a gold record more quickly than a number of the group's other singles. The song was not included on the BBC Radio 1 playlist, prompting criticism from fans and British Members of Parliament. The track opened the Beatles' Anthology 2 album. "Real Love" was the last new Beatles song released in the lifetime of George Harrison, who died in 2001, and the last single by the group until "Now and Then" in 2023.

According to Beatles biographer John T. Marck, "Real Love" originated as part of an unfinished stage play that Lennon was working on at the time, titled The Ballad of John and Yoko. The song was first recorded in 1977 with a handheld tape recorder on his piano at home. Eventually the work evolved under the title "Real Life", a song which Lennon would record at least six times in 1979 and 1980, and was then abandoned. The song was eventually combined with elements of another Lennon demo, "Baby Make Love to You". Unreliable source: date=April 2010 In June 1978, Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono told the press that they were working on a musical, The Ballad of John and Yoko, which had been planned during the previous year. Songs proposed to be included up to this point were "Real Love" and "Every Man Has a Woman Who Loves Him". Lennon appears to have considered recording "Real Love" for his and Ono's 1980 album Double Fantasy. A handwritten draft of the album's running order places it as the possible opening track on side two. The song remained largely forgotten until 1988, when take 6 of "Real Love" appeared on the Imagine: John Lennon soundtrack album. The song was also released on the Acoustic album in 2004. The demo with just Lennon on piano was issued in 1998 on John Lennon Anthology and then later on Working Class Hero: The Definitive Lennon.

With George Martin declining to produce the new recording, the Beatles brought in Electric Light Orchestra's Jeff Lynne, who had worked extensively with Harrison, including as part of the Traveling Wilburys, and had already co produced "Free as a Bird". As their sound engineer, the Beatles opted for Geoff Emerick, who had not only worked with them to a great extent in the 1960s, but is often credited with many of the Beatles' audio inventions. The assistant engineer was Jon Jacobs, who had worked with McCartney and Emerick since the late 1970s. The attitude in the studio was very relaxed, according to Lynne: "Paul and George would strike up the backing vocals – and all of a sudden it's the Beatles again! I'd be waiting to record and normally I'd say, 'OK, Let's do a take', but I was too busy laughing and smiling at everything they were talking about." Starr said that the lightheartedness was key to ensuring he, Harrison and McCartney could focus on the task: "We just pretended that John had gone on holiday or out for tea and had left us the tape to play with. That was the only way we could deal with it, and get over the hurdle, because [it] was really very emotional. "Unreliable source: date=April 2010

The single's video features shots of the three remaining Beatles recording in Sussex, mixed with shots of the Beatles taken during their career, including a brief clip of Ringo Starr drumming from Paul McCartney's solo film Give My Regards to Broad Street. Geoff Wonfor, who directed the Anthology documentary, filmed the three recording in the studio with a handheld camcorder, as they did not want to be aware of the camera recording. Kevin Godley, who co directed the music video, said that it was meant to be a "fly on the wall thing". The single's chart performance was subsequently hindered by BBC Radio 1's exclusion of "Real Love" from its playlist. Reuters, which described Radio 1 as "the biggest pop music station in Britain", reported that the station had declared: "It's not what our listeners want to hear  We are a contemporary music station." Beatles spokesman Geoff Baker responded by saying that the band's response was "Indignation. Shock and surprise. We carried out research after the Anthology was launched and this revealed that 41% of the buyers were teenagers." The station's actions contrasted strongly with what had occurred at the launch of "Free as a Bird" the year before, when Radio 1 became the first station to play the song on British airwaves. The exclusion of "Real Love" provoked a fierce reaction from fans also, and elicited comment from two members of parliament (MPs). Conservative MP Harry Greenway called the action censorship, and urged the station to reverse what he called a ban. The station's controller, Matthew Bannister, denied that the failure to include "Real Love" was a ban, saying that it merely meant that the song had not been included on the playlist of each week's 60 most regularly featured songs. As an act of goodwill, the station produced a "Golden Hour" dedicated to the group's music as well as music by bands influenced by the Beatles. This "Golden Hour" concluded with a playing of "Real Love". "Real Love" fell out of the British charts in seven weeks, never topping its initial position of number 4. In the US, the single entered the charts on 30 March, and peaked at number 11. After four months, 500,000 copies had been sold in the US. The Beatles' compilation album Anthology 2, which included the song, eventually topped the British and American albums charts. John Lennon's solo versions appear on several Lennon compilations, the film Imagine: John Lennon, and also in a 2007 ad campaign for J. C. Penney. On 6 November 2015, Apple Records released a new deluxe version of the 1 album in different editions and variations (known as 1+). Most of the tracks on 1 have been remixed from the original multi track masters by Giles Martin. Martin and Jeff Lynne also remixed "Real Love" for the DVD and Blu ray releases. The remix of "Real Love" cleans up Lennon's vocal further, and reinstates several deleted elements originally recorded in 1995, such as lead guitar phrases and drum fills, as well as making the harpsichord and harmonium more prominent in the mix.

Regina Spektor recorded a cover version of "Real Love" for Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur, released in June 2007. She performed that cover at Bonnaroo the same month. Adam Sandler performed the song in the 2009 film Funny People. This version is also found on the film's soundtrack. The Last Royals released a cover version of "Real Love" on 1 September 2015. Shakey Graves released a cover version of "Real Love" on Bandcamp, 9 February 2020.