Paul McCartney: Billy Shears...sounds like a school mate but isn't... Ringo's Billy Shears. Definitely. That was just in the production of "Sgt. Pepper". It just happened to turn out that we dreamed up Billy Shears. It was a rhyme for "years"..."band you've known for all these years... and here is is, the one and only Billy Shears." We thought, that's a great little name, it's an Eleanor-Rigby-type name, a nice atmospheric name, and it was leading into Ringo's track. So as far as we were concerned it was purely and simply a device to get the next song in.
John Lennon (in 1980) - "That's Paul, with a little help from me. 'What do you see when you turn out the light/ I can't tell you but I know it's mine' is mine."
Paul McCartney (in 1994) - "This was written out at John's house in Weybridge for Ringo... I think that was probably the best of our songs that we wrote for Ringo actually. I remember giggling with John as we wrote the lines, 'What do you see when you turn out the light/ I can't tell you but I know it's mine.' It could have been him playing with his willie under the covers, or it could have been taken on a deeper level. This is what it meant but it was a nice way to say it-- a very non-specific way to say it. I always liked that."
