Flaming Pie

Flaming Pie

Paul McCartney

The Flaming Pie album came on the heels of the Beatles Anthology project, and the period of Fab Four reminiscing directly inspired the title song. As McCartney put it:

When we had started off as The Beatles in Liverpool there was this local music paper called Mersey Beat. John was asked to do a little explanation of where we were at at the time. He did this typical Lennonese thing and said, ‘It came in a vision — a man appeared on a flaming pie and said unto them, from this day on you are Beatles with an A.’ And so it was. That was always the explanation when people asked us, ‘Well why are you called The Beatles?‘.

And so I just thought, I’m the man on the flaming pie! I’ll write a song about that. It’s a little bit tongue in cheek. The character who is the man on the flaming pie, he’s quite cool. He’s quite mad. Anyone I mentioned it to just smiled.