In a 1968 interview, McCartney said that the song was "about the hole in the road where the rain gets in, a good old analogy – the hole in your make-up which lets the rain in and stops your mind from going where it will." He went on to say that the following lines were about fans who hung around outside his home day and night, and whose actions he found off-putting: "See the people standing there / Who disagree, and never win / And wonder why they don't get in my door." Years later, McCartney said that the song was an "ode to pot".
Recording
The first of two recording sessions for "Fixing a Hole" was at Regent Sound Studios in London on 9 February 1967, in three takes. Regent Sound was used because all three studios at EMI's Abbey Road Studios were unavailable that night, so this was the first time that the Beatles used a British studio other than Abbey Road for an EMI recording. Also present at the session was a man who had arrived at McCartney's house in St John's Wood, shortly before McCartney was due to depart for the studio, and introduced himself as Jesus Christ. McCartney later recalled: The lead vocal was recorded at the same time as the rhythm track, a change from the Beatles' post-1964 approach of overdubbing the vocal. Overdubs were added to this recording on 21 February 1967 at EMI Studios.
Musical structure
The song alternates between the key of F minor and F major in basically 4/4 time. The composition is structured as follows: intro, verse, verse, bridge, verse, verse, bridge, verse, and outro. The recording opens with a harpsichord playing a descending chromatic line in a staccato-like pattern in 4/4 time. Ringo Starr's hi-hat in the final measure of this introduction introduces a swing beat that stays for the remainder of the song. The first eight-measure verse begins with McCartney singing "I'm fixing a hole where the rain gets in". The word "fixing" here is sung to a piano F major chord but on "hole" to a C augmented chord pivoting towards the Fm pentatonic minor scale on the more negative mood of "rain gets in". The Fm key melody in the verse is tinged both by blues flat 7th, and Dorian mode raised 6th notes. The harpsichord repeats the descending chromatic line in the F minor key in swing beat. In the second half of the verse, McCartney's bass begins a syncopated three-note pattern that leaves the downbeat empty, meanwhile his vocal is dropping to F an octave below, climbing back to C then sailing free of the song's established octave to a high falsetto A flat on "where it will go". George Harrison enters in the seventh and eighth measure with a syncopated distorted Stratocaster with gain, treble and bass all turned up high, providing a distinctive countermelody, double-tracked phrase descending from McCartney's high A vocal note through what author Jonathan Gould terms a "series of biting inversions on the tonic chord". Harrison later plays an eight-bar solo that culminates in a two-octave descent. McCartney, Lennon and Harrison sing backing vocals over the bridge. The song's shift between minor and major is also seen in "Norwegian Wood " ; "Michelle" ; "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", "I Me Mine", "The Fool on the Hill" and "Penny Lane".
Personnel
Paul McCartney – double-tracked lead vocals, harpsichord, bass guitar
John Lennon – backing vocals, bass
George Harrison – backing vocals, double-tracked lead guitar, maracas
