Number 22 - Crippled Inside

Beatles Involved:

John and George

Listenability: 3 out of 5

John’s cheerless lyrics contrast with the cheerful sound of Nicky Hopkins playing ragtime piano. George plays along with some nice, but fairly impromptu sounding, slide guitar. A number of Beatle’s authors (such as Bill Harry in ‘The John Lennon Encyclopedia’ and Howard Sounes in ‘Fab An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney’) state that the lyrics are about Paul.  The lyrics seem to be more of a general social commentary from Lennon in which he sends up the hypocrisy of church goers, racists and others.

What They Said About It:

John: 

There is a nice one called ‘Cripple Inside’. I’ll play it you later. [Yoko: “And ‘How’. ‘How’ is...] Yeah, but this is a nice little twist to it. Very corny country and western. It’s just goes like, (sings) ‘You can go to church and sing a hymn, you can judge me by the colour of my skin, you can live a life until you die...One thing you can’t hide, is when you’re crippled inside.' 

John in a conversation with Tariq Ali. Taken from 'Gimme Some Truth DVD'

Other Bits And Pieces

• On the cover of an acetate copy of the Imagine Album John hand wrote a few words about each song. For Crippled Inside he wrote 'George on guitar Nicky Hopkins on piano'. See image below:

• When left wing journalist / activist Tariq Ali visited John during the recording of the Imagine album Ali commented that he liked the lyrics for Imagine and wanted to know what else was on the album. Of all the songs on the album John choose to tell Ali about 'Crippled Inside'. It seems that John regarded the song quite highly, or at least thought it had the sort of lyrics that Ali would like!

• The song's bridge that begins with the lyrics 'Well you know that the cat has nine lives...' has a similar tune to Black Dog Blues which The Beatles played during their Get Back sessions.