Fixing a Hole

The first time you listen to “Fixing a Hole,” what grabs you most is that harpsichord sound that gets tangled up at the beginning, like a loose thread that never quite falls. It’s no minor detail: that instrument, played by George Martin himself, gives the song a vibe that’s somewhere between classical and psychedelic—one that isn’t repeated anywhere else on the album. The lyrics, which Paul McCartney wrote at the height of the 1960s, play with the image of a hole—whether in the road, in one’s mood, or in one’s routine—that lets something through that shouldn’t. But the most curious thing is that, as he confessed years later, the inspiration came to him while under the influence of LSD: a “blue hole” he saw in that state and which, according to him, freed him to compose without filters. It’s not an empty metaphor: the song sounds exactly like that sudden clarity feels, somewhere between the dreamlike and the everyday.

Recorded in two sessions in February 1967, “Fixing a Hole” was born at a time when the Beatles were no longer using Abbey Road due to a lack of space, so they had to turn to Regent Sound Studios in London. On the first day, in just three takes, they laid down the rhythm track, and on the second day, now at EMI Studios, they added the overdubs. What’s striking is that, for the first time in years, McCartney’s vocals were recorded simultaneously with the rhythm track, without any subsequent overdubs. The structure is simple yet effective: verses in F minor that lighten up in the bridges with F major, and that technical detail—the chord change on “hole,” which oscillates between melancholy and hope—is what gives it the tension that makes it memorable. Right up until the end, with that fade-out that seems to vanish like a fleeting thought, you’re left with the feeling that the song slips away just when you think you’ve figured it out.