Although they reshaped music as we know it, the Beatles never shied away from their influences. Their earliest albums included covers of songs by some of their favorite American artists, including Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Carl Perkins and groups from the Motown stable.
Those influences were rooted deep in their music sensibilities. George Harrison’s eye-catching Futurama guitar was bought so he could mimic his hero Holly at a time when Fender Stratocasters hadn’t yet made it to the U.K. Paul McCartney often doffed his hat to his forebearers, whether by channeling Little Richard's singing style or drawing Motown stylings into “Got to Get You into My Life.”
But perhaps the most obvious tribute to a fellow group was "Back in the U.S.S.R.," a McCartney composition from the 1968 White Album that was recorded with all the trimmings of a classic Beach Boys tune. And indeed, the Beatles were Beach Boys fans. John Lennon and McCartney were both heavily influenced by Brian Wilson's songs, arrangements and recordings on Pet Sounds, and they considered the group's multilayered harmonies as good as their own.
So how did "Back in the U.S.S.R." become a Beach Boys tribute? It got some help from a Beach Boy: Mike Love.
The Beatles met Love in February 1968, when they all went to study Transcendental Meditation in Rishikesh, India, with guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Lennon, McCartney and Harrison wrote a huge portion of the White Album while there, including "Back in the U.S.S.R."
The song had begun life in England as "I'm Backing the U.K.," a parody on the name of an early 1968 patriotic campaign called "I'm Backing Britain," aimed at boosting the country's economy.
Once in India, McCartney changed its title to "Back in the U.S.S.R." as a send-up of Chuck Berry’s “Back in the U.S.A.” The fact that the U.S.S.R. and U.S. were in the depths of the Cold War was part of the joke.
But the Beatles had plenty of fans behind the Iron Curtain as well, and McCartney's wry rewrite was a chance to pay homage with the tale of a Soviet traveler who's eager to escape America and return to his life in Russia.
“It’s tongue in cheek,” he said in Barry Miles 1997 biography, Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now. "This is a traveling Russkie who has just flown in from Miami Beach. He’s come the other way. He can’t wait to get back to the Georgian mountains: ‘Georgia’s always on my mind’; there’s all sorts of little jokes in it."
Having some distance from the Cold War made that sort of humor possible. As McCartney told Forbes in 2023, "We were in the U.K., so I could poke fun at it in my own way.”
For that, some credit must go to Mike Love, particularly in the song's bridge, where the Beatles mimic the Beach Boys' early surfing songs, whose lyrics focused on the West Coast's beautiful girls.
“I was sitting at the breakfast table, and McCartney came down with his acoustic guitar, and he was playing ‘Back In the U.S.S.R.’," Love has stated. "I told him that what you ought to do is talk about the girls all around Russia, Ukraine and Georgia.
"He was plenty creative not to need any lyrical help from me, but I gave him the idea for that little section. I think it was light-hearted and humorous of them to do a take on the Beach Boys."
For his part, McCartney told Playboy in 1984, "I just liked the idea of Georgia girls and talking about places like the Ukraine as if they were California, you know? It was also 'hands across the water,' which I'm still conscious of. 'Cause they like us out there, even though the bosses in the Kremlin may not."
As Beatles songs go, "Back in the U.S.S.R." is the track that saw the group return to the simple guitar rock and roll of their youth. It was a remarkable change of style considering that just one year earlier the group had released some of its most ambitious recordings with the psychedelic-tinged Sgt.Peppers' Lonely Hearts Club Band and Magical Mystery Tour releases.
Still, "Back in the U.S.S.R." is far from simple where its personnel is concered. The recording features guitar contributions from Lennon (rhythm), McCartney (rhythm and lead) and Harrison (rhythm and solo), and all three play bass guitar. As Ringo Starr had temporarily quit the Beatles just before recording began — the fractious White Album sessions had left him feeling like an outsider — McCartney played the drums, but both Lennon and Harrison contributed to the drum track as well, likely in overdubs.
When released, "Back in the U.S.S.R." had a prime spot as the White Album's opening track. It made a humorous and approachable introduction to an album whose songs became increasingly varied, challenging and avant garde over its four sides.
But for all McCartney's intended "tongue-in-cheek" approach, the song earned the group enemies on both side of the political divide. The right-wing John Birch Society saw it as proof the Fab Four were pushing a pro-Soviet agenda.
The left, meanwhile, found much to dislike, given that three months before the song's release, the Soviets had invaded Czechoslovakia, crushing the country's move toward democratic reforms. Coincidentally, the Beatles recorded the song on August 22 and 23, just days after the Soviet invasion on August 20.
Since the Beatles were banned in the U.S.S.R. at the time of the White Album's release, the Soviets would have only heard the track through bootlegged copies of the record and cassette transfers. The ban was lifted in the 1980s, paving the way for the group's records to find a new audience behind the Iron Curtain.
"Back in the U.S.S.R." had what may have been its premiere performance in the U.S.S.R. when Elton John covered it during a Soviet tour. Fans reportedly loved it, but the Russian authorities were far less pleased. Perhaps they felt mocked. Whatever the case, McCartney was banned from performing there in the 1980s.
It was likely a sore spot with him.
"Probably my single most important reason for going to Russia would be to play ['Back in the U.S.S.R']," he told biographer Barry Miles in his 1997 book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now.
He finally got his wish in May 2003, when he performed "Back in the U.S.S.R." in Moscow's Red Square. In an interview before the show, he admitted he'd known little of his subject when he wrote the tune.
"It was a mystical land then," he said. "It's nice to see the reality. I always suspected that people had big hearts. Now I know that's true."
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