Carlos Mendes

An enigmatic Portuguese singer named Carlos Mendes received the unreleased Paul McCartney composition “Penina” for a little-known 1969 single. This track ranks as probably the most obscure song written by a Beatle, recorded and issued by another performer rather than the Beatles themselves during the group’s active period. The number itself came across as an unadorned, even clichéd keyboard ballad better suited to easy listening tastes than to rock.

Sparse information exists about Mendes beyond his identity as a vocalist from Portugal who obtained the piece from McCartney during the Beatle’s vacation in Portugal in late 1968. Reflecting on the episode in a 1994 Club Sandwich article, McCartney recalled, “I went to Portugal on holiday and returned to the hotel one night slightly the worse for a few drinks. There was a band playing and I ended up on the drums. The hotel was called Penina, I made up a song with that name, someone made inquiries about it and I gave it to them.” The Beatles understandably passed on committing this trifle to tape, although they briefly toyed with it during the January 1969 Get Back sessions; that fragment later appeared on bootlegs.

Mendes’ “Penina” single achieved no commercial success and has remained difficult to locate ever since. The most accessible source is the EMI compilation LP The Songs Lennon and McCartney Gave Away, which gathers twenty tracks—nineteen of them from the 1960s—that John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote but that the Beatles never recorded for official release.