Free As A Bird - John Lennon (1977) / The Beatles (1995) "Free as a Bird" is a song performed by The Beatles. The single was released on 4 December 1995, as part of the promotion for the release of The Beatles Anthology video documentary and the band's Anthology 1 compilation album. The song had been written and recorded as a demo by John Lennon in 1977. Paul McCartney asked Lennon's widow Yoko Ono for any unreleased material by Lennon, and "Free as a Bird" was chosen as being the song all three remaining Beatles could be involved in, as they could finish the arrangement and write extra lyrics. In an interview, McCartney remarked: "Yoko said 'I've got a couple of tracks I'll play you, you might be interested'. I'd never heard them before but she explained that they're quite well known to Lennon fans as bootlegs. I said to Yoko, 'Don't impose too many conditions on us, it's really difficult to do this, spiritually. We don't know, we may hate each other after two hours in the studio and just walk out. So don't put any conditions, it's tough enough. If it doesn't work out, you can veto it.' When I told George and Ringo I'd agreed to that they were going, 'What? What if we love it?' It didn't come to that, luckily."[10] McCartney was later surprised to learn that Lennon's demo song of "Free as a Bird" had already been released on the Internet by fans, and was widely available.[6][11] Starr admitted that when he first listened to the recording he found it very emotional. The original tape of Lennon singing the song was on a cassette, with vocals and piano on the same track.[14] They were impossible to separate, so Lynne had to produce the track with voice and piano together, but commented that it was good for the integrity of the project, as Lennon was not only singing occasional lines, but also playing on the song.[15] Starr said that as Lennon was not in the studio, the three remaining Beatles agreed they would pretend that Lennon had "gone for lunch", or had gone for a "cup of tea".[16] The remaining Beatles recorded a track around Lennon's basic song idea, but which had gaps they had to fill in musically.[17] Some chords were changed, and the arrangement was expanded to include breaks for McCartney and Harrison to sing extra lines. Harrison played slide guitar in the solo.