“Oh, I Need You”: A Deep Dive into Beatles Lostwave
In the last several years there has been a piqued online interest in investigating mysterious songs that are of unknown origin. Snippets or entire songs found on old cassettes or CD’s with no identifiable artist associated with them have become collectively known as “lostwave”.
Although “lostwave” songs did not begin trending on the internet until relatively recently through social media platforms such as TikTok, music from mysterious sources has been a topic of interest on the internet for nearly two decades. Perhaps the most famous of these mysterious tracks is a song that was first taped off of German radio in the ’80s and has since come to be called by the internet as “Like the Wind”, yet the original artist is still unknown, even after 17 years of collaborative searching. Another lost song which has perhaps become the “anthem” of lostwave culture is “Ulterior Motives”, a snippet of an ‘80s-sounding song by an unidentified artist that is commonly associated with a low-resolution photo of a hot pink plastic boom-box.
Despite lostwave’s association with unknown artists, there are in fact supposedly “lost” songs that are associated with perhaps the best known artist in the world: The Beatles. In the past sixty years, the Beatles have perhaps become one of the most studied groups of all time, yet there are still many unsolved mysteries that are tied to them. Perhaps the most well-known of “lost” Beatles songs is “Carnival of Light”, a 14-minute avant-garde sound collage first recorded by the group in 1967. Largely the brainchild of Paul McCartney, “Carnival of Light” has never been released to the public. Whether or not the recording can actually be considered “lost” is up to debate; a copy of the piece still exists in the Abbey Road archives, though has seldom been played back.
But on the subject of lostwave, there are a few tracks that have been attributed to the Beatles, but their true origin is undetermined. Originating from an unknown source in the early 1970s and circulated as Beatles bootlegs, or “beatlegs”, these may be the earliest known predecessors to lostwave, coming from a time long before the term was coined, and long before the internet even existed. These elusive songs, often speculated to be demos or unfinished studio tracks, are highly obscure and known only in the most tight-knit Beatles circles.
Perhaps one of the most well-known of these purported lost Beatles songs is “Peace of Mind”, a mysterious demo tape that first surfaced on Beatles bootleg records in the early ’70s. Allegedly found in an Apple Corps dustbin, it was believed that this song was an authentic Beatles demo from 1967. Harry Castleman in his 1975 book All Together Now, states with near-absolute certainty that the song was recorded by the Beatles during the sessions for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. However, claims of “Peace of Mind” to be a Beatles original later came to be disputed when famed Beatles scholar Mark Lewisohn’s 1987 book The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions — perhaps the most accurate and authoritative account of the group’s studio career to date — made no mention of the song. As a result, other possible explanations for its origins would soon be made, with some claiming that it was a demo by the group the Pretty Things, while others believed it to be a song by Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett.
Nonetheless, the debate surrounding this recording would eventually be settled. In 2011, a theatre professor named Walton Jones claimed to have written and recorded the song onto a Wollensak tape deck at the beginning of the ’70s. This claim, too, was initially met with doubt, as Jones had little evidence to back up his claim. At around the same time, however, a man named John Roberts said that he recalled the song being played on South Florida radio stations in late 1969, and had even recorded one such airing. Despite these two breakthroughs in the investigation, however, because of the relative obscurity of “Peace of Mind”, the claims did not gain much attention.
However, the mystery would finally be solved a decade later when a man named David Hunter, who had been a radio DJ at South Florida State University in the late 1960s, finally confessed. He stated that he and Walton Jones had recorded the song “Peace of Mind” in 1969 as a prank, and that he had played the song on his radio show, passing it off as a Beatles outtake. He went further to state that the audio quality of the song was made intentionally poor to sound elusive and haunting. Shortly after Hunter’s confession, a recording of the original radio broadcast of “Peace of Mind” surfaced on Soundcloud, thus finally bringing conclusion to a nearly 50-year-old music mystery.
However, “Peace of Mind” isn’t the only work of Beatles-influenced lostwave. Another song of unknown origin that has long been tied to the Beatles has been “Oh, I Need You”, a song that was originally passed off as being a song recorded towards the end of the sessions for the Fab Four’s penultimate studio album and arguable magnum-opus, Abbey Road. And, unlike “Peace of Mind”, this bootleg’s origins are still shrouded in mystery.
The song itself is less than two minutes, which gives merit to the explanation that it was merely a demo of an unfinished song. It is reminiscent of the Beatles’ slow piano ballads that were written by McCartney during the group’s waning years at Apple, such as “Hey Jude”, “Let It Be”, and “The Long and Winding Road”. The singer of the song even bears a vocal resemblance to McCartney. The lyrics too have a notable Beatles influence. Give it a listen:
According to earwitnesses, “Oh, I Need You” first appeared on a 1979 bootleg vinyl that also featured an early take of “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” that featured McCartney singing lead vocals instead of Lennon. The few times that “Oh, I Need You” is mentioned, a group known as “Mortimer” is usually brought up. Little is known about this band, other than that it was an American band that had signed to Apple at the end of the ’60s and began work on an album, but was never completed as the group’s contract was canceled during the legal fallout at Apple that resulted from the Beatles’ break-up.
Other bands that have been tied to this mysterious Beatlesque lostwave track include the bands Badfinger and White Trash, both of which also recorded for Apple in the late ’60s. Interestingly, the latter band was also a supposed lead for the artist behind “Peace of Mind”, based off of the (fake) claim that said song had been found in the “Apple Trash”.
Another supposed explanation behind the origins of “Oh, I Need You” is that it was a demo by the band the Scaffolds, which actually featured none other than Mike McCartney, Paul’s own brother. Despite all these potential explanations given, the source of this song, sadly, remains unknown, as its obscurity among Beatles fans and lost media aficionados has ensured that no serious investigations into its origins have taken place. Nonetheless, it is the beauty of the song — as well as its indiscernible origins — that makes “Oh, I Need You” an overlooked lostwave classic.
As the topic of obscure, lost songs has gained traction on the internet, “lostwave” has emerged as a curious phenomenon in modern online music culture. However, this fascination with songs recorded by unidentified artists is nothing new, and has been a topic of interest for many, many, decades. And even though these songs are notorious for the sheer difficulty of tracking down the original performers or those associated with them, some still remain of uncertain origin even when attributed to some of the greatest and most well-known acts in the history of music.
