The Fool on the Hill

• Date: 1967
• Composer: John Lennon & Paul McCartney
• Period: Modern (1910-1949)

Review

Paul McCartney wrote "The Fool on the Hill" in March 1967, but the Beatles did not record it until September of that year. While walking over a hill, McCartney and a friend encountered a strange man in a rain coat who exhorted them to attend the view. They did, but when they turned back, he had vanished. The song itself is a ballad with mysterious lyrics and a harmonic structure that moves from D major to D minor and back again. The verse opens with a cheerful melody rising from the third to the fifth to the sixth and back down to the fifth over an alternating D major chord with added sixth and E minor seventh chords above a tonic pedal. The verse continues with a resigned melody over a pair of standard supertonic minor, dominant seventh, tonic, submediant minor chord progressions, but it changes after the second progression from the tonic major to the tonic minor and the song slips into a harmonically enigmatic chorus in the minor that returns to the tonic major only with the return of the verse. The original recorded version of "The Fool on the Hill" had Lennon and Harrison playing McCartney's melody on harmonicas in the third verse, but this was later replaced by three flutists for the released version. "The Fool on the Hill" was the first song on the second Magical Mystery Tour EP released in early December 1967. ~ All Music Guide

Albums with Complete Performances of the Work

Title	Date
Arthur Fielder and the Boston Pops Play The Beatles	2000
Beatles Baroque	2000
Beatles Symphony
By Request	1998
Cello Submarine	1995
Classical Beatles [B&N Exclusive]	2008
Classical Beatles [B&N Exclusive]	2008
De Bach a los Beatles	1995
Folios Guitar Duo	1994
Hyper Beatles	1990
Hyper Beatles	1990
Leo Brouwer: La obra guitarrística (Box Set)
Let It Be...J.S. Bach	1992
Live Recordings of the Seventies	1999
Live in Japan	2002
Manuel Barrueco plays Lennon & McCartney	1994
Norwegian Wood	1995
Portrait of John Williams	1982
Re-creaciones	2000
Tango Suite!	1991
The Beatles' Greatest Hits	1991
The HMV Classics Collection
The Ultimate Collection
The Wihan Quartet Plays the Beatles