On Tuesday, July 20, 1999 at 3:00:00 AM UTC-4, John Stone wrote:
> Isn't there a reference to wife beating in "Its getting better",
> something like "I beat her and kept her away from the things that she
> loved" but then he says "Man I was mean but I'm changing my scene and
> I'm doing the best that I can".
> Maybe the Beatles were a little ahead of their time in that they
> acknowledged that wife beating was bad.

It's well known that John was violent. Admitting it in a song is unusual and maybe brave. His songs had that diary aspect.

On Saturday, November 12, 2022 at 10:17:38 AM UTC-5, RJKe...@yahoo.com wrote:
> On Tuesday, July 20, 1999 at 3:00:00 AM UTC-4, John Stone wrote:
> > Isn't there a reference to wife beating in "Its getting better",
> > something like "I beat her and kept her away from the things that she
> > loved" but then he says "Man I was mean but I'm changing my scene and
> > I'm doing the best that I can".
> > Maybe the Beatles were a little ahead of their time in that they
> > acknowledged that wife beating was bad.
> It's well known that John was violent. Admitting it in a song is unusual and maybe brave. His songs had that diary aspect.

Yes, besides Lou Reed, I can't think of any other songwriter as brutality honest as this.

On Saturday, November 12, 2022 at 7:17:38 AM UTC-8, RJKe...@yahoo.com wrote:
> On Tuesday, July 20, 1999 at 3:00:00 AM UTC-4, John Stone wrote:
> > Isn't there a reference to wife beating in "Its getting better",
> > something like "I beat her and kept her away from the things that she
> > loved" but then he says "Man I was mean but I'm changing my scene and
> > I'm doing the best that I can".
> > Maybe the Beatles were a little ahead of their time in that they
> > acknowledged that wife beating was bad.
> It's well known that John was violent. Admitting it in a song is unusual and maybe brave. His songs had that diary aspect.

I believe it was McCartney who elaborated in an interview that he meant the lyric as 'beating down' his girlfriend at the time actress Jane Asher, over things like career decisions ("...kept her apart from the things that she loved") - adding the word 'down' made it clear this was not physical abuse but another sort of domination. Of course co-writer Lennon had his very real history of physical abuse that he struggled to overcome, as so many have become aware.

The Sgt Pepper project was not focused on introspective personal self-exploration, but was a united presentation as a patchwork-quilt of Faith disguised as Fairy Tales.

The first misconception was that Jimmy Nichol said the title as his catchphrase: Nichol replaced Starr (suffering tonsillitis) for part of a world tour - so a frequent question for him was to report on Ringo's health status, thus his repeatedly promising, "HE'S getting better." This phrasing got transmuted into a summary lyric for Jesus being a Faith Healer, who could make 'Anything Get Better.'

The vocal repetitions of 'Better, Better, Better' have been compared to the verbalizations of the White Queen in Through The Looking Glass as she transforms into a bleating sheep. Yet the way that sequence is articulated has an aural invocation for the Pinocchio story:

'Whittled -'...
'By Ge-'
'PET-to!'

The drone on an Indian instrument that intrudes at one point implies the extending

'NOSE' -

And this is followed by a rhythmic passage suggesting,

'Grew When -
He'd Lie'

The major framework is the Christian story separated into identifiable chunks; the ancillary tangents being potentially formatted appearing in the studio albums emerges with the Zodiac crossover in Rubber Soul (which was a rumor from the 'Seventies, when the full British album was not the official US release).