Rocky Raccoon

Rocky Racoon is a song by The Beatles. It was included on The White Album. It was written primarily by Paul McCartney and credited to Lennon/McCartney.

Composition
The song was written whilst the Beatles were on retreat (in Maharishi's camp in India, the Beatles went there in 1968 to study transcendental meditation) by Paul McCartney. The song is in the key of C Major, with an 8-bar chord progression, (AM7, D7sus4, D7, G7, C and C/B) which runs throughout.

McCartney told Mojo about the song: "Rocky was me writing (speaks-sings in a baccy-chewing old prospector voice), 'It was way back in the hills of Dakota-or Arkansas-in the mining days. And it was tough, picking shovels, and we were underground 24 hours a day…' I could have taken this serious route, researched it- Take This Hammer (a prison work song recorded by British skiffle star Lonnie Donegan in 1959), stuff I'd been brought up on. But at that point I was a little tongue-in cheek. So I crossed it with a (British singer and banjo player popular in the 1940s) George Formby sensibility, where John and I would go (sings a bit of doggerel in a choppy rhythm)- Stanley Holloway, Albert in The Lion's Den (the comic poem The Lion and Albert, written by Holloway's creative partner Marriott Edgar in 1932). We were very versed in all that stuff (sings opening lines of Rocky Raccoon in the same choppy way). The scanning of the poetical stanza always interested me. Somehow this little story unfolded itself. I was basically spoofing 'the folk-singer.' And it included Gideon's Bible, which I've seen in every hotel I've ever been in. You open the drawer and there it is! Who's this guy Gideon! I still don't know to this day who the heck he is. I'm sure he's a very well-meaning guy. Rocky Raccoon was a freewheeling thing, the fun of mixing a folky ramble with Albert In The Lion's Den with its orse's 'ead 'andle,' ha ha."

Credits

 * Paul McCartney — lead vocals, acoustic guitar (1964 Epiphone Texan) and bass guitar (1964 Rickenbacker 4001S)
 * John Lennon — backing vocals, harmonica, six-string bass guitar (1968 Fender Bass VI) and harmonium
 * George Harrison — backing vocals, bassline on guitar (1961 Fender Stratocaster)
 * Ringo Starr — drums
 * George Martin — honky-tonk piano (1964 Challen “Jangle Box” upright)