Hi everyone,
Let’s answer a question about “Little Lamb Dragonfly” this week.
A listener wrote in relative to this passage in the Playlist Commentary Rabbit Hole—
“In 1973, when “Little Lamb Dragonfly” is written, Paul is married to and living with Linda in England, while John is in New York. They’ve not yet reconciled and are still speaking only through song.”
The question is about the 1973 date, given that “Little Lamb Dragonfly” was first recorded in 1970 as part of the sessions for RAM. Originally intended for the Rupert the Bear animation project, the song was instead released on the 1973 album Red Rose Speedway.
While “Little Lamb Dragonfly” was started in 1970, it's a little tricky to determine when the lyrics were written. And it’s the lyrics that matter for our purposes relative to Beautiful Possibility.
The only extant recording that we have of “Little Lamb Dragonfly” prior to its official release is a 1970 “early mix” included on the 2018 Archive release of Red Rose Speedway. In this early version of the song, the music is (minus overdubs) complete, but there are virtually no lyrics. There’s only the repetition throughout the song of two phrases — “fly by my window” and “you and I have a ways to go” — placeholders for the full lyrics presumably yet to be written.1
Paul didn’t include “Little Lamb Dragonfly” in his 2022 memoir The Lyrics, nor do there seem to be any extant in-progress lyrics drafts available elsewhere. So while the “early mix” recording tells us that the music was mostly written during or prior to 1970, we don’t know when the lyrics were written. All we know for sure is that it was sometime between that 1970 recording and the 1973 Red Rose Speedway sessions.
It’s possible Paul finished the lyrics sometime during the RAM sessions after the “early mix” recording. It’s also possible that lyrics that were written during the RAM sessions were subsequently rewritten when the song became part of Red Rose Speedway rather than the Rupert the Bear project.
But it seems most likely that, having rejected the song for the Rupert the Bear project, “Little Lamb Dragonfly” sat unfinished until Paul returned to it in 1973 for Red Rose Speedway, when the song was brought back into the studio. Here’s why—
As we already talked about in the Playlist Commentary, Paul and John’s songs tend to follow the emotional arc of their relationship with each other, and that in turn makes it likely that “Little Lamb Dragonfly” was written for and to John — which is, of course, why we’re talking about it in the first place. I’m hard-pressed to think of anyone else — in 1970 or ever, really — that Paul would be referring to when he sings “you and I still have a ways to go” as he does on the “early mix,” especially given the plaintive quality of the melody and his vocal line.
Assuming that the song is for John, the part of the lyric to pay attention to relative to date of composition is the verses referring to the absent lover having “been away too long” and the plea to “come on home and make it right” —
Dragonfly you've been away too long
How did two rights make a wrong
Since you've gone I never know
I go on but I miss you so
In my heart I feel the pain
Keeps coming back again
and
Dragonfly the years ahead will show
How little we really know
Since you've gone it's never right
They go on, the lonely nights
Come on home and make it right
Everything about “Little Lamb Dragonfly,” including Paul’s obvious pain and longing as he sings it, makes it abundantly clear that he’s writing autobiographically, about a specific person. This isn’t a generic “heartbreak” song. And as we also talked about in the Playlist Commentary, while the song may have been inspired by the baby lamb of the title, as Paul claims, nothing else about the lyric has anything to do with any kind of farm animal. So, again, as we talked about at length in the Playlist Commentary, it’s hard to see who else lyrics like “how did two rights make a wrong” and “come on home and make it right” would be referring to, other than John.
The question is, then, when were these verses written?
John was still living in England during the RAM sessions in 1970. If Paul finished the lyrics to “Little Lamb Dragonfly” during that time period, and if the song is written for John, then the reference to having been “away for too long” and the “come on home and make it right” are metaphorical — Paul calling John back to him not so much geographically, but rather personally, possibly romantically, and certainly creatively.
But if — again, assuming the song is for John — Paul finished the lyrics to “Little Lamb Dragonfly” after John moved to New York in September 1971, then the theme of separation by distance caused by estrangement and the call to come home become literal as well as metaphorical. And this more literal meaning beneath the more metaphorical meaning suggests that the full lyric was likely written after John’s move to New York, when John and Paul are an ocean apart (and still, according to Paul, not speaking outside of song). So it’s likely that Paul would have finished the song in 1973, during the Red Rose Speedway sessions.
This timing is supported by a 2001 recollection from Wings drummer Denny Seiwell, who played on the Red Rose Speedway sessions —
“We had recorded [“Little Lamb Dragonfly”] during RAM, and it wasn’t finished. One day we were over at Trident Studios, Paul was sitting at the piano, and he was saying, ‘I never really finished this.’ and I helped him finish a little bit, but I wouldn't call it co-writing... (sic) but I wrote some background harmonies.” 2
Denny Siewell played on RAM, Wild Life and Red Rose Speedway. Of the three, only Red Rose Speedway was (partially) recorded at Trident Studios. So Siewell’s memory here is almost certainly of the Red Rose Speedway sessions.
All of which is why, while we can’t know for sure based on the information available, it seems likely that the lyrics for “Little Lamb Dragonfly” were written in 1973.
We might get more information on the creation of “Little Lamb Dragonfly” in November, when the 500+ page “Wings” book is released. For now, what I should have written in the Playlist Commentary Rabbit Hole is that the lyric, rather than the song as a whole, was likely written in 1973. I’ve made that small change in the text of the episode, but I haven’t edited, as per usual, the audio version.
So thank you, listener, for the question and the opportunity to clarify, and also the opportunity to revisit one of the most beautiful and poignant of all Paul’s (possible) ‘John songs.’ Given their reconciliation not long after, it’s possible “Little Lamb Dragonfly” helped make that reconciliation happen.
Before we wrap up this week, one more quick answer to another question—
One of Beautiful Possibility’s much-appreciated volunteer researchers asked why I don’t include page numbers in citations in footnotes. The answer is that page numbers in modern research are tricky. Different re-issues of books have different page numbers, and there is often a difference between a UK and a US version. And if the source is a digital book or article, that makes it even harder because digital sources usually have no page numbers at all, or page numbers that are format-dependent. So a page number in a footnote is, more often than not, useless, especially in light of the ability to digitally search for a character string.
As always, you can email questions about Beautiful Possibility to my fab research assistant Robyn. I’m behind in answering those questions, my apologies — but I’ll continue to work my way through them in weekly updates here as I research and outline Part Two.
Until next week, when we might talk about AMM.
Peace, love and strawberry fields,
Faith ❤️
This is something songwriters tend to do while they're working on the music for the song and haven’t finished the lyrics yet. Paul did this most famously with “scrambled eggs, ooh baby, I love your legs” as a placeholder for the final lyrics of “Yesterday.” John did the same — an example is the “Yellow Submarine” songwriter’s worktape on the Super Deluxe release of Revolver, where he sings, “in the town where I was born, no one cared, no one cared” over and over as a placeholder for the lyrics still to be written.
Andrew Croft, Interview with Denny Seiwell, Beatlelogy, vol 3, no 5, 2001.
NOTE: Denny Laine, as per usual, also says he contributed lyrics—
“[Paul] plays us a song and as he plays I’m into something already. He picks up on that and advises me as to what he sees in it. It’s even getting into that way songwriting now. I helped him with the words on Little Lamb Dragonfly and we will probably write a lot more songs together in the future.” (Denny Laine — A Special Musical Gift, Record Mirror, August 11, 1973.)
Since, also as per usual, Denny’s claims about what parts of the lyrics he “helped with” are vague and since we don’t have anything more tangible to go on and since Paul has not mentioned any co-writing with Denny on this song, and given the obviously personal and John-themed nature of the lyrics relative to Paul’s situation at the time, I think we’d be wise to take Denny’s claim here as the same level of vague exaggeration as his claim to have written “No Words” (discussed in detail in episode 1:5 (He Said He Said Part One).