from imaginejohnyoko.com
John: Songwriting is like getting the demon out of me. It’s like being possessed. You try to go to sleep, but the song won’t let you. So you have to get up and make it into something, and then you’re allowed to sleep. It’s always in the middle of the bloody night or when you’re half awake or tired, when your critical faculties are switched off.
‘Crippled Inside’ is a social comment. It talks about people having false fronts in society and really underneath there’s something else. Satire. There was one review of that song that said, ‘Oh, that kind of song has been done before…’ but I wasn’t even thinking about it. I was sitting down and this little riff came into me head, like an old Twenties song: ‘One thing you can’t hide is when you’re crippled inside.’ It just came to me, you know, like that, and I just finished it off.
The Evolution Mixes tell the story of each song on a journey from demo to master via instructions, rehearsals, recordings, multitrack exploration and studio chat. The complete set of Evolution Mixes (including the singles and extra tracks) is only available on the BluRay audio disc in the Box Set.
Audio from Imagine – The Ultimate Collection
Klaus Voormann (bass): On ‘Crippled Inside’, John said he wanted an upright bass. I had never played one before, but he said, ‘No, you can play it!’ So John sent me to London with Mal Evans and we rockers went into this classical music store, full of very neat people wearing bow ties! Mal bought a really good, huge, full-size upright bass. John realised he wanted it played like a slap bass, and I couldn’t do it so I played the notes on the bass with my left hand and Alan White played the strings like drums, with his sticks.
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