Release
Although eventually released as a Beatles song, "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)" was nearly released as the A-side of a Plastic Ono Band single. Lennon was determined to have this song and "What's the New Mary Jane" (a Beatles outtake from the White Album recorded by Lennon and Yoko Ono with George Harrison) released, and he arranged for Apple to issue both unorthodox songs on a Plastic Ono Band single. On 26 November 1969, four months after Jones drowned in his swimming pool, Lennon edited "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)", reducing the length from 6:08 to 4:19, a more suitable length for a single. The Plastic Ono Band single was given an Apple catalogue number (Apples 1002) and British release date (5 December 1969).
Apple issued a press release, describing the record as Lennon and Yoko Ono singing and backed by "many of the greatest show business names of today" which the press believed was a thinly disguised reference to the Beatles. The record was cancelled before it was issued.
Three months later, the song was released as the B-side to The Beatles' single, "Let It Be." The original Plastic Ono Band single catalogue number is visible, though scratched out, in the runout groove of the original British pressings of the "Let It Be" single.
"What's the New Mary Jane" was not officially issued by The Beatles until the release of Anthology 3 in 1996, although the song did appear on bootleg records.
"You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)" was the last Beatles song from the group's official canon to be included on an album, issued on an LP for the first time on Rarities (which had been included as a bonus disc in the British and American boxed set, The Beatles Collection in 1978, and released separately as an album in the United Kingdom in 1979). The first stand-alone American album to feature "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)" was the US Rarities, which was released in 1980.
The first CD version was issued in 1988 on the Past Masters, Volume Two compilation.
"You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)" was available only in mono until 1996, when an extended stereo mix was finally issued on Anthology 2. However, while this mix restores portions of the song, it omits others that were released on the mono single, causing considerable differences between the mono and stereo versions of the track. For example, the ending of the stereo version has the talking portion fade out, whereas the mono version does not.
A stereo version featuring all five sections uncut has never been released or appeared on bootlegs.
On the US pressings of the original 7" single and the Rarities album, the song was erroneously titled "You Know My Name (Look Up My Number)".
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—Margaret Mead (1901–1978)
“We read poetry because the poets, like ourselves, have been haunted by the inescapable tyranny of time and death; have suffered the pain of loss, and the more wearing, continuous pain of frustration and failure; and have had moods of unlooked-for release and peace. They have known and watched in themselves and others.”
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“The steel decks rock with the lightning shock, and shake with the
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