“A Day In The Life” / The Beatles
Okay, I’ll admit it: I’m scared to write about this song. Not scared the way I used to be, pulling the covers over my head when I’d listen late at night. No, scared because it’s too big a song to tackle in 500 words or less. I don’t know where to begin.
Yet the song starts out so softly, unassumingly, with an acoustic guitar and a piano, a gentle encore after the hard-rocking reprise of Sgt. Pepper’s band has rung down the curtain. We picture John Lennon, a detached observer (I see him sitting in an English garden, waiting for the sun), reading the paper: “I read the news today oh boy.” But that melody’s so wistful, so yearning, so impregnated with sorrow, we just know the news won’t be good.
And it isn’t. A man dies in a car crash and the onlookers only care whether he’s a celebrity; the same fickle crowd gives a thumb’s down review to a war movie (remember John Lennon's absurdist flop How I Won the War?); and then of course there’s that baffling feature in verse three: “Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire” – I picture land-mine craters, a scene of grim devastation, though the real news item Lennon saw was about potholes (and he would have known Blackburn, not that far north of Liverpool). But why take the holes to fill the Albert Hall down in London? It makes no sense whatsoever, and therefore it’s the verse EVERYBODY remembers most from this song.
John sits apart, like a Fool on the Hill, musing on these events (the double-tracked vocals add that sense of distance). But in the bridge, Paul tap-dances in with a blithe ditty about waking up (hear the alarm clock?) and going to work. It’s territory the album’s already covered in “Good Morning Good Morning,” but here Paul seems like an eager go-getter -- maybe because he knows that at the office he have that nice little smoke, that’ll send him into his nice little dream…
Which is the dream and which is the reality? That’s just the sort of mirror-within-mirror question this song raises that you could debate for hours. (We haven’t even begun to get into the Paul Is Dead references.) Why is the man in the car crash “lucky”? How did he blow his mind out? Was he in the House of Lords? What’s this book John read? Who are the “they” who have to count the holes?
The arrangement telegraphs to us that this is An Important Statement Song. Behind Lennon’s plaintive vocal, the insistent piano chords and big-build-up drums announce something apocalyptic. The swelling orchestral interlude before and after the bridge, and again at the end – it’s like all hell breaking loose. You can’t just shrug off this song -- and so you work at solving the riddles. Which you can’t.
In the end, we’re driven to that seductive refrain, sung in such a beckoning quaver – “I’d love to turn you on.” There just isn’t any other explanation for that line: It’s an Unabashed Drug Reference. John Lennon believed in the mind-expanding power of drugs, and he’d like us to try it out too. And given the grandeur of this closing track, the powerful finale to this great album – well, it seemed an imperative at the time.
In that respect, it’s a cheap ending. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band isn’t just an advertisement for illicit drugs; it’s about looking for truth, and pushing the boundaries of music, and uniting a generation on one common wavelength.
But just so we don’t think it’s the final word, there’s that last strange babble of aural snippets afterward – which you only heard on the vinyl LP if you didn’t have an automatic tone-arm return. (It wasn’t until college that I heard this bonus bit.) Maybe they’re just thumbing their noses at us; maybe it really does make sense if you play it backward. Who knows?
Maybe the riddle IS the answer.
Showing posts with label sgt peppers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sgt peppers. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Monday, June 11, 2007
“Good Morning Good Morning” / The Beatles
Sgt. Pepper’s short on John songs, but here’s one – and a real doozy. Listen to this song and you’ll understand why John didn’t contribute much else to this album.
It begins with a crowing rooster (whether or not John pictured the rooster on a box of Kellogg’s Cornflakes, I always do – “the best to you each morning”). For a morning song, though, this is weighed down with restless chord shifts, harsh chugging guitar, braying horns, and a dark outlook – “Nothing to do to save his life / Call his wife in / Nothing to say but what a day / How’s your boy been.” I think of John Lennon trapped in his deteriorating marriage to Cynthia, with little Julian at the doorway; I hear his pain. “I’ve got nothing to say but it’s OK,” he mutters glumly, and those obnoxious backup singers nag, “Good morning good morning good morning-gah.” Nails in the coffin.
“Going to work, don’t want to go / Feeling low down,” he continues. Yeah, most of us feel this way, heading for our boring office jobs – but he was John Lennon, heading to work at Abbey Road studios, to make a rock ‘n’ roll album. When that sort of dream job just feels like work, it’s sad indeed. And when he’s put in his nine-to-five, he can’t bring himself to return to the old trouble-and-strife – “Heading for home you start to roam / Then you’re in town.” In his depression everything seems deserted, everyone looks half asleep.
Still, being on his own gives some sort of release. “After a while you start to smile / Now you feel cool.” Well, that’s good. It doesn’t change anything – taking a walk past his old school (echoing “I used to get mad at my school” from “Getting Better”) – but at least he’s coping. Time for an instrumental break, with George ripping into a fierce guitar solo -- code, I assume, for whatever substance our narrator imbibes in the interim, because it's followed by a much bouncier bridge. Downtown is now populated and bright and busy; “Everyone you see is full of life / It’s time for tea and meet the wife.” The guitar climbs to a screech on that thought -- a real buzz killer.
So he doesn’t go home. As a special keeper of the truth (“somebody needs to know the time / glad that I’m here”), in the last verse he stays where the action is. “Watching the skirts you start to flirt / Now you’re in gear” -- this is the story of every philandering husband, hoisting up the flag one more time to prove that he’s still alive. But the melody hasn’t changed; the intervals are still minor-key, the rhythms stiff and jerky. Casual sexual encounters (remember “Lovely Rita”?) and reality-blocking drugs (“Lucy in the Sky” and “Fixing A Hole”?) offer temporary release, but they can’t really solve what ails him. This guy wants an answer that won’t ring hollow, a new truth that will work for him. But the ending degenerates into a brutish cacophony of barking dogs, snuffling pigs, rattling chains, thunder, a train whistle. Chaos.
If you felt like this, would you want to write bouncy pop songs and pretend to be a member of an old-timey brass band? Paul could write fictional songs about runaway girls and old couples in a cottage and blokes chatting up traffic wardens – John wrote about his own inner state, and his inner state was hell. There was absolutely no “good” in John’s “good morning” right then. This song breaks my heart.
Sgt. Pepper’s short on John songs, but here’s one – and a real doozy. Listen to this song and you’ll understand why John didn’t contribute much else to this album.
It begins with a crowing rooster (whether or not John pictured the rooster on a box of Kellogg’s Cornflakes, I always do – “the best to you each morning”). For a morning song, though, this is weighed down with restless chord shifts, harsh chugging guitar, braying horns, and a dark outlook – “Nothing to do to save his life / Call his wife in / Nothing to say but what a day / How’s your boy been.” I think of John Lennon trapped in his deteriorating marriage to Cynthia, with little Julian at the doorway; I hear his pain. “I’ve got nothing to say but it’s OK,” he mutters glumly, and those obnoxious backup singers nag, “Good morning good morning good morning-gah.” Nails in the coffin.
“Going to work, don’t want to go / Feeling low down,” he continues. Yeah, most of us feel this way, heading for our boring office jobs – but he was John Lennon, heading to work at Abbey Road studios, to make a rock ‘n’ roll album. When that sort of dream job just feels like work, it’s sad indeed. And when he’s put in his nine-to-five, he can’t bring himself to return to the old trouble-and-strife – “Heading for home you start to roam / Then you’re in town.” In his depression everything seems deserted, everyone looks half asleep.
Still, being on his own gives some sort of release. “After a while you start to smile / Now you feel cool.” Well, that’s good. It doesn’t change anything – taking a walk past his old school (echoing “I used to get mad at my school” from “Getting Better”) – but at least he’s coping. Time for an instrumental break, with George ripping into a fierce guitar solo -- code, I assume, for whatever substance our narrator imbibes in the interim, because it's followed by a much bouncier bridge. Downtown is now populated and bright and busy; “Everyone you see is full of life / It’s time for tea and meet the wife.” The guitar climbs to a screech on that thought -- a real buzz killer.
So he doesn’t go home. As a special keeper of the truth (“somebody needs to know the time / glad that I’m here”), in the last verse he stays where the action is. “Watching the skirts you start to flirt / Now you’re in gear” -- this is the story of every philandering husband, hoisting up the flag one more time to prove that he’s still alive. But the melody hasn’t changed; the intervals are still minor-key, the rhythms stiff and jerky. Casual sexual encounters (remember “Lovely Rita”?) and reality-blocking drugs (“Lucy in the Sky” and “Fixing A Hole”?) offer temporary release, but they can’t really solve what ails him. This guy wants an answer that won’t ring hollow, a new truth that will work for him. But the ending degenerates into a brutish cacophony of barking dogs, snuffling pigs, rattling chains, thunder, a train whistle. Chaos.
If you felt like this, would you want to write bouncy pop songs and pretend to be a member of an old-timey brass band? Paul could write fictional songs about runaway girls and old couples in a cottage and blokes chatting up traffic wardens – John wrote about his own inner state, and his inner state was hell. There was absolutely no “good” in John’s “good morning” right then. This song breaks my heart.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
“Lovely Rita” / The Beatles
After the sweet devotion of “When I’m Sixty-Four,” time for a little bawdiness, with a rock ‘n’ roll beat. “Lovely Rita” is a happy-go-lucky song about a guy trying to pick up a cute traffic officer – just another McCartney novel-in-song. But as usual, plenty of unsettling things lie under that deceptively simple surface.
The intro has a psychedelic texture, like “Fixing A Hole” – that dreamy sliding “ah-ahhh-aahh” (listen for it again on “A Day In the Life”) followed by woozy double-tracked backing vocals chanting “Lovely Rita meter maid.” But when Paul’s lead vocal bursts in, it’s a good-time rock shuffle, pure and simple. Or is it? Listen to all the odd sounds tucked in – the sarcastic zing after “Nothing can come between us” (George did that on slide guitar), the snide scrap of military march after “Made her look a little like a military man” (a little comb-and-paper orchestra John set up), the honky-tonk piano in the break. And at the end, the pounding piano is overlaid with heavy breathing, as if moving towards orgasm; the chords keep modulating uncertainly – they nearly make it – then John snaps “I’m leaving” and a door slams. In a way, this song is Paul’s version of “Norwegian Wood” – an affair with a surreal anticlimax.
In 1967 it was startling to see a woman in a traditional man’s job – and no way is Rita feminine, not with that military-style shoulder bag. She’s a brash New Woman. He asks her to tea and she promptly makes it dinner instead, then she pays the bill. (That didn’t happen often in 1967.) He requests a second date; she cuts to the chase and takes him straight home. Good deal for him, right?
But then things take a weird turn – when he gets to her place, anticipating some boisterous sex, he finds himself “sitting on the sofa with a sister or two.” (I love all those staccato words crammed into this line). At first I thought her family was intruding, but soon I guessed she was a feminist with equally liberated roommates – women’s lib was a big topic in 1967, as much so as the generation gap of “She’s Leaving Home.” And from there I began to assume she was a lesbian or even a transvestite (that mannish uniform, the braying laugh at dinner) – or have I been listening too much to the Kinks’ “Lola”? Believe me, I wanted every song Paul McCartney ever sang to be about me, but I never identified with this Rita chick.
I may be over-analyzing, but all these details baffled me when I was a kid. There’s something so compelling about this little scenario, you want to get inside and figure out what’s going on. And for all his declarations – “nothing can come between us,” “where would I be without you,” and the sublimely silly “when it gets dark I tow your heart away” – I don’t hear this as a sincere Paul love song. I hear normal healthy lust, and a guy getting in over his head, in a world where nothing is as it seems. Which makes it a perfect fit for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
After the sweet devotion of “When I’m Sixty-Four,” time for a little bawdiness, with a rock ‘n’ roll beat. “Lovely Rita” is a happy-go-lucky song about a guy trying to pick up a cute traffic officer – just another McCartney novel-in-song. But as usual, plenty of unsettling things lie under that deceptively simple surface.
The intro has a psychedelic texture, like “Fixing A Hole” – that dreamy sliding “ah-ahhh-aahh” (listen for it again on “A Day In the Life”) followed by woozy double-tracked backing vocals chanting “Lovely Rita meter maid.” But when Paul’s lead vocal bursts in, it’s a good-time rock shuffle, pure and simple. Or is it? Listen to all the odd sounds tucked in – the sarcastic zing after “Nothing can come between us” (George did that on slide guitar), the snide scrap of military march after “Made her look a little like a military man” (a little comb-and-paper orchestra John set up), the honky-tonk piano in the break. And at the end, the pounding piano is overlaid with heavy breathing, as if moving towards orgasm; the chords keep modulating uncertainly – they nearly make it – then John snaps “I’m leaving” and a door slams. In a way, this song is Paul’s version of “Norwegian Wood” – an affair with a surreal anticlimax.
In 1967 it was startling to see a woman in a traditional man’s job – and no way is Rita feminine, not with that military-style shoulder bag. She’s a brash New Woman. He asks her to tea and she promptly makes it dinner instead, then she pays the bill. (That didn’t happen often in 1967.) He requests a second date; she cuts to the chase and takes him straight home. Good deal for him, right?
But then things take a weird turn – when he gets to her place, anticipating some boisterous sex, he finds himself “sitting on the sofa with a sister or two.” (I love all those staccato words crammed into this line). At first I thought her family was intruding, but soon I guessed she was a feminist with equally liberated roommates – women’s lib was a big topic in 1967, as much so as the generation gap of “She’s Leaving Home.” And from there I began to assume she was a lesbian or even a transvestite (that mannish uniform, the braying laugh at dinner) – or have I been listening too much to the Kinks’ “Lola”? Believe me, I wanted every song Paul McCartney ever sang to be about me, but I never identified with this Rita chick.
I may be over-analyzing, but all these details baffled me when I was a kid. There’s something so compelling about this little scenario, you want to get inside and figure out what’s going on. And for all his declarations – “nothing can come between us,” “where would I be without you,” and the sublimely silly “when it gets dark I tow your heart away” – I don’t hear this as a sincere Paul love song. I hear normal healthy lust, and a guy getting in over his head, in a world where nothing is as it seems. Which makes it a perfect fit for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Saturday, June 09, 2007
“When I’m Sixty-Four” / The Beatles
With the other-worldly “Within You Without You” still echoing in our ears, it comes like a splash of ice water -- a natty trio of clarinets burbling a music-hall tune, right back on Sgt. Pepper’s home turf. That bass line oom-pahs like a tuba; corny chimes ting-a-ling in the bridge. I always imagine this song pouring out of an old thirties-era radio. It’s WAY out of the rock vernacular. So what?
You can pretty much divide Beatle fans in two groups: those who love “When I’m Sixty-Four” and those who are embarrassed by it. This was one of the few Beatles songs my parents “got”; that should have made me hate it -- but how could I? I refuse to be a rock snob about it. McCartney’s enormous musicality lets him write credibly in any genre, and if you've ever doubted his skills as a lyricist, look at how these phrases have lodged permanently in our brains. Where is their cottage? You know it’s on the Isle of Wight. What are their grandchildren’s names? Vera, Chuck, and Dave. How should she sign her postcard? "Yours sincerely, wasting away." Specific details, married to that toe-tapping rhythm, that can’t-get-it-out-of-your-head melody -- after all is said and done, those are the hallmarks of a great pop song.
One thing we often forget: this song’s not sung by a pair of old fogeys. The narrator could be 22; he’s just projecting into his old age. In fact, McCartney wrote this tune as a teenager, though the words came much later (Lennon encouraged him to dredge it up for Sgt. Pepper, knowing it had the feel they wanted.). Thousands of pop songs have declared “I’ll spend my life with you” or some variation thereof; but trust Paul McCartney to flesh it out so vividly – and to sound so ready for it. He could have camped it up, but he didn’t; no cheap ironic distance here. The track was actually sped up to make his voice sound younger and more sincere.
The tone is completely self-effacing -- “When I get older losing my hair” (Paul still hasn’t lost his, I’ve noticed) – and down-to-earth, juxtaposing the romantic Valentine with the prosaic reality of staggering home drunk at three a.m. There may not be much money (love those lush harmonies on “we shall scrimp and sa-a-a-a-a-a-ave”) but they’ll eke out special treats, like that summer cottage. “Send me a postcard, drop me a line / Stating point of view” he requests, with old-fashioned courtliness. I get the idea this guy is ready for all the give-and-take of marriage. Images of domesticity flit past – “I could be handy, mending a fuse, / When your lights have gone / You could knit a sweater by the fireside / Sunday morning go for a ride / Doing the garden, digging the weeds / Who could ask for more?” We generally do ask for more – eternal passion and intense drama, the usual stuff of pop songs. Not here.
And of course, there’s that famous refrain – “Will you still need me, will you still feed me?” – a cheap rhyme? I don’t think so. “Need” is an overused pop-song verb, but “feed”? That’s the reality of a relationship; you can’t have one without the other. I picture years’ worth of evening meals, the patient woman cooking them – and a grateful husband who knows that domestic contentment is what he married her for. I don’t know about you, but I’d accept this proposal in a heartbeat.
With the other-worldly “Within You Without You” still echoing in our ears, it comes like a splash of ice water -- a natty trio of clarinets burbling a music-hall tune, right back on Sgt. Pepper’s home turf. That bass line oom-pahs like a tuba; corny chimes ting-a-ling in the bridge. I always imagine this song pouring out of an old thirties-era radio. It’s WAY out of the rock vernacular. So what?
You can pretty much divide Beatle fans in two groups: those who love “When I’m Sixty-Four” and those who are embarrassed by it. This was one of the few Beatles songs my parents “got”; that should have made me hate it -- but how could I? I refuse to be a rock snob about it. McCartney’s enormous musicality lets him write credibly in any genre, and if you've ever doubted his skills as a lyricist, look at how these phrases have lodged permanently in our brains. Where is their cottage? You know it’s on the Isle of Wight. What are their grandchildren’s names? Vera, Chuck, and Dave. How should she sign her postcard? "Yours sincerely, wasting away." Specific details, married to that toe-tapping rhythm, that can’t-get-it-out-of-your-head melody -- after all is said and done, those are the hallmarks of a great pop song.
One thing we often forget: this song’s not sung by a pair of old fogeys. The narrator could be 22; he’s just projecting into his old age. In fact, McCartney wrote this tune as a teenager, though the words came much later (Lennon encouraged him to dredge it up for Sgt. Pepper, knowing it had the feel they wanted.). Thousands of pop songs have declared “I’ll spend my life with you” or some variation thereof; but trust Paul McCartney to flesh it out so vividly – and to sound so ready for it. He could have camped it up, but he didn’t; no cheap ironic distance here. The track was actually sped up to make his voice sound younger and more sincere.
The tone is completely self-effacing -- “When I get older losing my hair” (Paul still hasn’t lost his, I’ve noticed) – and down-to-earth, juxtaposing the romantic Valentine with the prosaic reality of staggering home drunk at three a.m. There may not be much money (love those lush harmonies on “we shall scrimp and sa-a-a-a-a-a-ave”) but they’ll eke out special treats, like that summer cottage. “Send me a postcard, drop me a line / Stating point of view” he requests, with old-fashioned courtliness. I get the idea this guy is ready for all the give-and-take of marriage. Images of domesticity flit past – “I could be handy, mending a fuse, / When your lights have gone / You could knit a sweater by the fireside / Sunday morning go for a ride / Doing the garden, digging the weeds / Who could ask for more?” We generally do ask for more – eternal passion and intense drama, the usual stuff of pop songs. Not here.
And of course, there’s that famous refrain – “Will you still need me, will you still feed me?” – a cheap rhyme? I don’t think so. “Need” is an overused pop-song verb, but “feed”? That’s the reality of a relationship; you can’t have one without the other. I picture years’ worth of evening meals, the patient woman cooking them – and a grateful husband who knows that domestic contentment is what he married her for. I don’t know about you, but I’d accept this proposal in a heartbeat.
Friday, June 08, 2007
“Within You Without You” / The Beatles
So you turn over the album and set down the needle on Side 2 – and you get hit straight away with the most far-out sound of all. It’s hard for us now to fully recapture how fresh this song sounded in 1967, before rock ragas were done to death. (George Harrison himself would overwork the vein as much as anybody.) We’d heard the sound already on Revolver, in “Love You To”-- the sitar, the tabla, the alien harmonic intervals. But this mesmerizing track was even lusher and denser, its earnest lyrics even more indebted to Hindu mysticism – “the space between us all,” “the wall of illusion,” “to see you’re really only very small,” “when you’ve seen beyond yourself” . . . it was mind-blowing, man.
This was where George Harrison’s heart was in 1967. He sure wasn’t interested in being a Beatle anymore. Now that they had sworn off live touring, Harrison seemed content just to execute a few guitar licks and exit the studio. Over the past year, he’d been on a spiritual quest, one that began when he first heard Indian music on the set of Help! He’d gone to India to study sitar with Ravi Shankar; he’d plunged into yoga, meditation, and Eastern philosophy. Sgt. Pepper just got in the way. Still, it was expected that there’d be at least one Harrison composition on every album. If he had to do one, at least he’d do it his way.
In the tapestry of varied musical styles that was Sgt Pepper’s, nothing was further from standard rock ‘n’ roll than this number, with its exotic keening and thrumming instruments. None of the other Beatles even played on this track, but an uncredited crew of Indian musicians, fleshed out with a George Martin-arranged string section. This music sounded new and strange – and yet somehow ageless, hinting at ancient mysteries and an entirely different concept of time. (At over five minutes playing time, it’s the album’s second-longest track, after “A Day In the Life” – I have to admit, sometimes it feels longer to me.)
Amidst the theatricalities of the album, “Within You Without You” stands apart as completely sincere. There’s no characters, no incidents, no scene-setting beyond the vague “we were talking.” It doesn’t rhyme; Western song structure goes out the window; lines meander along with as many syllables as they need. It doesn’t have a bit of irony or sarcasm or double-entendre, those old Beatles staples. What is it doing here?
Yet, almost by accident, Harrison’s personal search for Truth fits perfectly into the album’s collection of lost souls yearning for answers. Besides, something numb and narcotized about its hypnotic rhythms and spacey tonal qualities made us certain that this song, too, had to do with drugs. Somehow it melts into the album and BELONGS.
This has never been my favorite Sgt. Pepper track; as rock ragas go, I prefer “Blue Jay Way” from Magical Mystery Tour. But it’s an essential track, the apogee of the album's musical orbit, which will begin to swing homewards from here on out. More than once, I’ve heard this late at night and gotten lost in its mesmeric pulsations, thinking to myself, “Yes, yes -- with our love we could save the world! Life does flow on within you and without you!” For a moment I seem to grasp the secret of all things. It’s a fleeting insight, but . . . well, such is life.
So you turn over the album and set down the needle on Side 2 – and you get hit straight away with the most far-out sound of all. It’s hard for us now to fully recapture how fresh this song sounded in 1967, before rock ragas were done to death. (George Harrison himself would overwork the vein as much as anybody.) We’d heard the sound already on Revolver, in “Love You To”-- the sitar, the tabla, the alien harmonic intervals. But this mesmerizing track was even lusher and denser, its earnest lyrics even more indebted to Hindu mysticism – “the space between us all,” “the wall of illusion,” “to see you’re really only very small,” “when you’ve seen beyond yourself” . . . it was mind-blowing, man.
This was where George Harrison’s heart was in 1967. He sure wasn’t interested in being a Beatle anymore. Now that they had sworn off live touring, Harrison seemed content just to execute a few guitar licks and exit the studio. Over the past year, he’d been on a spiritual quest, one that began when he first heard Indian music on the set of Help! He’d gone to India to study sitar with Ravi Shankar; he’d plunged into yoga, meditation, and Eastern philosophy. Sgt. Pepper just got in the way. Still, it was expected that there’d be at least one Harrison composition on every album. If he had to do one, at least he’d do it his way.
In the tapestry of varied musical styles that was Sgt Pepper’s, nothing was further from standard rock ‘n’ roll than this number, with its exotic keening and thrumming instruments. None of the other Beatles even played on this track, but an uncredited crew of Indian musicians, fleshed out with a George Martin-arranged string section. This music sounded new and strange – and yet somehow ageless, hinting at ancient mysteries and an entirely different concept of time. (At over five minutes playing time, it’s the album’s second-longest track, after “A Day In the Life” – I have to admit, sometimes it feels longer to me.)
Amidst the theatricalities of the album, “Within You Without You” stands apart as completely sincere. There’s no characters, no incidents, no scene-setting beyond the vague “we were talking.” It doesn’t rhyme; Western song structure goes out the window; lines meander along with as many syllables as they need. It doesn’t have a bit of irony or sarcasm or double-entendre, those old Beatles staples. What is it doing here?
Yet, almost by accident, Harrison’s personal search for Truth fits perfectly into the album’s collection of lost souls yearning for answers. Besides, something numb and narcotized about its hypnotic rhythms and spacey tonal qualities made us certain that this song, too, had to do with drugs. Somehow it melts into the album and BELONGS.
This has never been my favorite Sgt. Pepper track; as rock ragas go, I prefer “Blue Jay Way” from Magical Mystery Tour. But it’s an essential track, the apogee of the album's musical orbit, which will begin to swing homewards from here on out. More than once, I’ve heard this late at night and gotten lost in its mesmeric pulsations, thinking to myself, “Yes, yes -- with our love we could save the world! Life does flow on within you and without you!” For a moment I seem to grasp the secret of all things. It’s a fleeting insight, but . . . well, such is life.
Thursday, June 07, 2007
“Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” / The Beatles
I didn’t know what to make of this song in 1967; it weirded me out a whole lot more than the psychedelic images of “Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds,” or even the apocalyptic sorrow of “A Day In the Life.” I’m not sure I know what to make of it even now . . . but lately it’s become my favorite song on this album.
I have read that John Lennon transcribed this song almost word for word from an old circus poster, with just a few tweaks to make things rhyme. That info makes this song at least a bit more comprehensible to me. The bios I’ve read also say that John was in hell during the making of Sgt. Pepper – trapped in a constraining marriage, obsessed with LSD, estranged even from his soul-brother Paul – he simply didn’t have the creative juices necessary to contribute substantially. (Whereas Paul was ready to pick up all the slack, and make this practically a McCartney solo album.) But when Lennon does deliver, he delivers in spades.
Veering in and out of minor keys, with those sinister sound effects, Lennon weaves a nightmare experience. The strange phrases filched from the poster only add to the creepy carnival atmosphere – the hogshead of real fire, Henry the Horse dancing the waltz, Mr. Henderson demonstrating ten somersaults on solid ground, it’s all surreal and discombobulated. Whatever the lyrics tell you, the music is telling you that this is dangerous territory – something akin to Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes, about an evil traveling show blowing into a small town. Mr. Kite could very well be Satan (Mr. K will challenge the world! Mr. K performs his tricks without a sound! And tonight Mr K is topping the bill!). No wonder it freaked me out when I was 13.
But the less sense it made, the more evocative it seemed. That Pablo Fanques Fair where the Hendersons used to perform sounds so exotic. And the great feat that Mr. K will attempt at Bishopsgate – I don’t know the venue, but I dimly feel I should. I’m disoriented, scrambling, faking it just to keep up.
Behind the curtain of sound effects, the instrumentation is mostly just relentless lockstep drums and a stealthy creeping bass line – except when that whirligig organ sets in between verses. Did George Harrison even have to show up for this one? I don’t suppose it matters; the Beatles were well beyond the point where they ever expected to perform this stuff live.
I assume that this tacky showbiz outfit has some parallel to the Beatles themselves, thrust into the spotlight and expected to perform like capering monkeys. Maybe John Lennon wasn't specifically thinking of the insane circus that surrounded the Beatles – but something in this freakish daredevil act obviously spoke to him. Musically it connects to the Sgt. Pepper conceit a lot better than other songs on the album, but thematically, its surreal setting relates to nothing else except “Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds.” It’s just John Lennon tapping into his subconscious – and turning up some very scary images there.
I didn’t know what to make of this song in 1967; it weirded me out a whole lot more than the psychedelic images of “Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds,” or even the apocalyptic sorrow of “A Day In the Life.” I’m not sure I know what to make of it even now . . . but lately it’s become my favorite song on this album.
I have read that John Lennon transcribed this song almost word for word from an old circus poster, with just a few tweaks to make things rhyme. That info makes this song at least a bit more comprehensible to me. The bios I’ve read also say that John was in hell during the making of Sgt. Pepper – trapped in a constraining marriage, obsessed with LSD, estranged even from his soul-brother Paul – he simply didn’t have the creative juices necessary to contribute substantially. (Whereas Paul was ready to pick up all the slack, and make this practically a McCartney solo album.) But when Lennon does deliver, he delivers in spades.
Veering in and out of minor keys, with those sinister sound effects, Lennon weaves a nightmare experience. The strange phrases filched from the poster only add to the creepy carnival atmosphere – the hogshead of real fire, Henry the Horse dancing the waltz, Mr. Henderson demonstrating ten somersaults on solid ground, it’s all surreal and discombobulated. Whatever the lyrics tell you, the music is telling you that this is dangerous territory – something akin to Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes, about an evil traveling show blowing into a small town. Mr. Kite could very well be Satan (Mr. K will challenge the world! Mr. K performs his tricks without a sound! And tonight Mr K is topping the bill!). No wonder it freaked me out when I was 13.
But the less sense it made, the more evocative it seemed. That Pablo Fanques Fair where the Hendersons used to perform sounds so exotic. And the great feat that Mr. K will attempt at Bishopsgate – I don’t know the venue, but I dimly feel I should. I’m disoriented, scrambling, faking it just to keep up.
Behind the curtain of sound effects, the instrumentation is mostly just relentless lockstep drums and a stealthy creeping bass line – except when that whirligig organ sets in between verses. Did George Harrison even have to show up for this one? I don’t suppose it matters; the Beatles were well beyond the point where they ever expected to perform this stuff live.
I assume that this tacky showbiz outfit has some parallel to the Beatles themselves, thrust into the spotlight and expected to perform like capering monkeys. Maybe John Lennon wasn't specifically thinking of the insane circus that surrounded the Beatles – but something in this freakish daredevil act obviously spoke to him. Musically it connects to the Sgt. Pepper conceit a lot better than other songs on the album, but thematically, its surreal setting relates to nothing else except “Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds.” It’s just John Lennon tapping into his subconscious – and turning up some very scary images there.
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
“She’s Leaving Home” / The Beatles
When Sgt Pepper’s first came out, I knew what “She’s Leaving Home” was all about -- an oppressed young woman’s courageous bid for freedom. Now I’ve got teenage kids of my own, and I’m not so sure that’s the whole story.
Really, it’s amazing that the Beatles – icons of youthful rebellion – saw the parents’ side of the story at all. The Who certainly didn’t back in 1965 with “My Generation”; in 1966, the Kinks’ “Rosie Won’t You Please Come Home” took the perspective of the deserted family, but that song’s more about class confusion. “She’s Leaving Home” is the classic expression of the generation gap, a term coined only in 1966. Parents and children have always fought, but it WAS worse in the 60s, with youth culture gaining in power. (Today we have nothing but youth culture.) It was a hot topic; no wonder the Beatles were drawn to it.
For a change, Paul takes a third-person, novelistic approach. “Wednesday morning at five o’clock as the day begins,” he begins, singing tremulously over a string quartet that I should find schmaltzy, but can’t. It unfolds like a film: the nameless girl laying down an ominous letter, shutting her bedroom door, creeping stealthily down the stairs, sneaking out the back door. (Love the anxious detail of her “clutching her handkerchief”). I picture a long narrow walled suburban garden, dew-soaked and shadowy, and hear the latch click as she slips out the back gate. The melody is legato and delicate, furtive and suspenseful – perfect.
Then, in the chorus, counterpoint sets in – the soaring sustained notes of “She’s leaving home” juxtaposed with Lennon’s depressed voice intoning the parents’ protests (“We gave her most of our lives” blah blah blah). Cliches they may be, but they ring home. As the two melodies dovetail, it pours into the final irony: “She’s leaving home / After living alone / For so many years.” Sound familiar? Of course: Paul's borrowing the melody and arrangement from his own “Eleanor Rigby” (“all the lonely people”). But there’s something self-conciously literary about “Eleanor Rigby” that’s more authentic here. If “Rigby” was inspired by Dickens, this one’s straight out of Alan Sillitoe. This was a real scenario, played out night after night all over the world. After so many songs proclaiming progress and revolution, the poignance of this song about breaking free stops us in our tracks.
Sure, as we focus on the old folks in verse two, we see that they are self-centered hypocrites (”Why would she treat us so thoughtlessly / How could she do this to me?”). But simply by giving them the most plaintive, downward swooping part of the song, McCartney betrays his secret sympathy. Paul McCartney has always been a family man at heart -- remember, Paul and John first bonded over losing their mothers. How could they sing about an abandoned mother without at least a little grief leaking out?
Verse three moves forward in time -- “Friday morning at nine o’clock she is far away” – though we only get one cryptic detail about the girl’s new life: “Waiting to keep the appointment she made / Meeting a man from the motor trade.” A second-hand car spiv, eh? Doesn’t sound too savoury -- although I’ve also heard that this was code for a back-alley abortionist. Either way, it’s hardly a joyful new beginning. Even though Paul wraps it up with the comment that “she is having fun / [Fun is the one thing that money can’t buy],” I don’t feel like she’s having fun, do you?
This song haunted me when I was a kid. It wasn’t a simple call to rebellion, it saw the heartbreak lying under the rebellion. It kept a lot of us from leaving home, whether we knew it or not.
When Sgt Pepper’s first came out, I knew what “She’s Leaving Home” was all about -- an oppressed young woman’s courageous bid for freedom. Now I’ve got teenage kids of my own, and I’m not so sure that’s the whole story.
Really, it’s amazing that the Beatles – icons of youthful rebellion – saw the parents’ side of the story at all. The Who certainly didn’t back in 1965 with “My Generation”; in 1966, the Kinks’ “Rosie Won’t You Please Come Home” took the perspective of the deserted family, but that song’s more about class confusion. “She’s Leaving Home” is the classic expression of the generation gap, a term coined only in 1966. Parents and children have always fought, but it WAS worse in the 60s, with youth culture gaining in power. (Today we have nothing but youth culture.) It was a hot topic; no wonder the Beatles were drawn to it.
For a change, Paul takes a third-person, novelistic approach. “Wednesday morning at five o’clock as the day begins,” he begins, singing tremulously over a string quartet that I should find schmaltzy, but can’t. It unfolds like a film: the nameless girl laying down an ominous letter, shutting her bedroom door, creeping stealthily down the stairs, sneaking out the back door. (Love the anxious detail of her “clutching her handkerchief”). I picture a long narrow walled suburban garden, dew-soaked and shadowy, and hear the latch click as she slips out the back gate. The melody is legato and delicate, furtive and suspenseful – perfect.
Then, in the chorus, counterpoint sets in – the soaring sustained notes of “She’s leaving home” juxtaposed with Lennon’s depressed voice intoning the parents’ protests (“We gave her most of our lives” blah blah blah). Cliches they may be, but they ring home. As the two melodies dovetail, it pours into the final irony: “She’s leaving home / After living alone / For so many years.” Sound familiar? Of course: Paul's borrowing the melody and arrangement from his own “Eleanor Rigby” (“all the lonely people”). But there’s something self-conciously literary about “Eleanor Rigby” that’s more authentic here. If “Rigby” was inspired by Dickens, this one’s straight out of Alan Sillitoe. This was a real scenario, played out night after night all over the world. After so many songs proclaiming progress and revolution, the poignance of this song about breaking free stops us in our tracks.
Sure, as we focus on the old folks in verse two, we see that they are self-centered hypocrites (”Why would she treat us so thoughtlessly / How could she do this to me?”). But simply by giving them the most plaintive, downward swooping part of the song, McCartney betrays his secret sympathy. Paul McCartney has always been a family man at heart -- remember, Paul and John first bonded over losing their mothers. How could they sing about an abandoned mother without at least a little grief leaking out?
Verse three moves forward in time -- “Friday morning at nine o’clock she is far away” – though we only get one cryptic detail about the girl’s new life: “Waiting to keep the appointment she made / Meeting a man from the motor trade.” A second-hand car spiv, eh? Doesn’t sound too savoury -- although I’ve also heard that this was code for a back-alley abortionist. Either way, it’s hardly a joyful new beginning. Even though Paul wraps it up with the comment that “she is having fun / [Fun is the one thing that money can’t buy],” I don’t feel like she’s having fun, do you?
This song haunted me when I was a kid. It wasn’t a simple call to rebellion, it saw the heartbreak lying under the rebellion. It kept a lot of us from leaving home, whether we knew it or not.
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
“Fixing A Hole” / The Beatles
If "Getting Better” shares the same good-time bounce as “A Little Help From My Friends,” our next track, “Fixing a Hole,” is close cousin to “Being For The Benefit of Mr. Kite” (which in fact they’d recorded just a couple days earlier). It has the same sort of spooky carnival sound, full of minor chords and double-tracked echoes and wheezy organ, though with a jazzier tempo that makes it less sinister. Not as trippy as “Lucy In The Sky,” it still sounds half-stoned – hear how the rhythm lazes behind the beat, how Harrison’s guitar oozes and slides around, how vague the language is. Paul McCartney is perfectly capable of precise images – we know that from "Penny Lane" and "When I’m Sixty-Four" -- but this is definitely not the place for neat poetry.
“Fixing A Hole” sounds, on the face of it, like an episode of Home Improvement. I can just read the TV Guide synopsis: “Industrious homeowner Paul McCartney tackles a number of D.I.Y. projects – fixing a hole in his roof, spackling some cracks in his door, painting his room.” Scintillating.
But wait -- he’s got a special agenda. Absolutely every one of these repairs is intended to help his mind to go “wandering / Where it will go.” And the way his voice floats off into space on “where it will go,” it’s not too hard to get the psychedelic subtext. He’s not just painting, he’s “painting my room in the colourful way.” Coming out of the austere gray 1950s, I remember the Sixties as a sudden burst of Technicolor – A Hard Day’s Night evolving into Help! The satin uniforms of Sgt. Pepper’s were just the latest flowering of the Mod fashion revolution, and Swinging London was saturated with colour; already the gaudiness was spreading west, to run riot in San Francisco for the Summer of Love. Even more specifically, of course, color was code for the altered reality of mind-expanding drugs.
Paul’s now in a world where logic doesn’t rule. Why would he want to fix that hole? Don't you want that hole in your roof, to let your mind out and go free? Of course, "fixing" has a double meaning -- it can also mean "setting in place," rather than "repairing" -- but he's not about to solve the ambiguity.
In that punchy chorus, Paul defiantly declares: “And it really doesn’t matter / If I’m wrong, I’m right / Where I belong I’m right / Where I belong.” (A little pig-headed, maybe, though McCartney the compulsive charmer softens it with his flippant vocals.) Notice how the line breaks make the words seem like Zen koans, scrambling his prosaic declaration "And it really doesn't matter if I'm wrong / I'm right where I belong / I'm right where I belong." Then he draws his line in the sand: “See the people standing there / Who disagree / And never win / And wonder why they don’t get in my door.” Erm . . . excuse me? I don’t know about you, but I want to get in Paul McCartney’s door. (And didn’t he say, back on the album’s title track, that he’d love to take me home with him? I remember that distinctly.) So the last thing I’m going to do is to disagree. I want to join the Beatles’ club, whether it a lonely-hearts society or whatever.
“I’m taking the time for a number of things / That weren’t important yesterday,” Paul announces in the last verse. In 1967, we knew what these new priorities were – drugs, and sex, and peace and love and a whole lot of other non-Tory ideals. Dogs and cats living together, that sort of thing. Clearly the Beatles had signed on to the social revolution – now it was up to us to follow.
If "Getting Better” shares the same good-time bounce as “A Little Help From My Friends,” our next track, “Fixing a Hole,” is close cousin to “Being For The Benefit of Mr. Kite” (which in fact they’d recorded just a couple days earlier). It has the same sort of spooky carnival sound, full of minor chords and double-tracked echoes and wheezy organ, though with a jazzier tempo that makes it less sinister. Not as trippy as “Lucy In The Sky,” it still sounds half-stoned – hear how the rhythm lazes behind the beat, how Harrison’s guitar oozes and slides around, how vague the language is. Paul McCartney is perfectly capable of precise images – we know that from "Penny Lane" and "When I’m Sixty-Four" -- but this is definitely not the place for neat poetry.
“Fixing A Hole” sounds, on the face of it, like an episode of Home Improvement. I can just read the TV Guide synopsis: “Industrious homeowner Paul McCartney tackles a number of D.I.Y. projects – fixing a hole in his roof, spackling some cracks in his door, painting his room.” Scintillating.
But wait -- he’s got a special agenda. Absolutely every one of these repairs is intended to help his mind to go “wandering / Where it will go.” And the way his voice floats off into space on “where it will go,” it’s not too hard to get the psychedelic subtext. He’s not just painting, he’s “painting my room in the colourful way.” Coming out of the austere gray 1950s, I remember the Sixties as a sudden burst of Technicolor – A Hard Day’s Night evolving into Help! The satin uniforms of Sgt. Pepper’s were just the latest flowering of the Mod fashion revolution, and Swinging London was saturated with colour; already the gaudiness was spreading west, to run riot in San Francisco for the Summer of Love. Even more specifically, of course, color was code for the altered reality of mind-expanding drugs.
Paul’s now in a world where logic doesn’t rule. Why would he want to fix that hole? Don't you want that hole in your roof, to let your mind out and go free? Of course, "fixing" has a double meaning -- it can also mean "setting in place," rather than "repairing" -- but he's not about to solve the ambiguity.
In that punchy chorus, Paul defiantly declares: “And it really doesn’t matter / If I’m wrong, I’m right / Where I belong I’m right / Where I belong.” (A little pig-headed, maybe, though McCartney the compulsive charmer softens it with his flippant vocals.) Notice how the line breaks make the words seem like Zen koans, scrambling his prosaic declaration "And it really doesn't matter if I'm wrong / I'm right where I belong / I'm right where I belong." Then he draws his line in the sand: “See the people standing there / Who disagree / And never win / And wonder why they don’t get in my door.” Erm . . . excuse me? I don’t know about you, but I want to get in Paul McCartney’s door. (And didn’t he say, back on the album’s title track, that he’d love to take me home with him? I remember that distinctly.) So the last thing I’m going to do is to disagree. I want to join the Beatles’ club, whether it a lonely-hearts society or whatever.
“I’m taking the time for a number of things / That weren’t important yesterday,” Paul announces in the last verse. In 1967, we knew what these new priorities were – drugs, and sex, and peace and love and a whole lot of other non-Tory ideals. Dogs and cats living together, that sort of thing. Clearly the Beatles had signed on to the social revolution – now it was up to us to follow.
Monday, June 04, 2007
“Getting Better” / The Beatles
In the shifting search for Truth that is Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, “Getting Better” is a ray of hope. The narrator (Paul’s singing) buoyantly declares he’s happy now, since “you’ve been mine.” I naturally assume he’s talking about a girlfriend – didn’t Ringo just tell us we all need someone to love? But if it is a girl, Paul never bothers to tell us a thing about her. (It’s possible the “you” that changed his life could be drugs, or maybe wealth and success – both sure transformed the Beatles’ lives.) It doesn’t really matter, because the song is really all about him. It’s complete navel-gazing – either that or charming self-expression, take your pick.
Each verse is a snapshot of him at some disagreeable stage of his life. “I used to get mad at my school,” “Me used to be angry young man,” and, most disturbing of all, “I used to be cruel to my woman, I beat her / And kept her apart from the things that she loved.” (Flashback to an earlier song, this one by John Lennon: “You’d better run for your life if you can, little girl / Hide your head in the sand, little girl / Catch you with another man, that’s the end-a, little girl.”) There’s plenty of self-knowledge here, but he’s not going to beat himself up; he’s on the right path, and that’s good enough for now. “It’s getting better / A little better all the time,” he says gamely; “I’m doing the best that I can.” Rome wasn’t built in a day, man.
Set to a different tune, with a different arrangement, these lyrics might have been repellent – but instead, McCartney’s pulled off a positive, bright-hearted track I can’t help but love. I think it’s because of that jazzy rhythm, that skip in his step that is second-nature for a bassist like Paul (think “Got To Get You Into My Life”). Even though the melody in the verse keeps slip-sliding down to murkier chords, that chorus perks right back up.
This is not a track built on guitar virtuosity; every instrument feeds into the percussive bounce. Those clanging repeated guitar chords, later picked up by an electric piano, pulse and vibrate like a radio signal; cymbals and handclaps fill in for drums most of the time. There’s no horn section, but the back-up vocals play just like a pack of horns -- listen to their opening fanfare: “It’s getting better all the ti-i-ime.” The backing vocals are one of my favorite things about this song. “I used to get mad at my school / [Now I can’t complain] / The teachers who taught me weren’t cool / [Now I can’t complain] / You’re holding me down [ah-ah] / Turning me round [oh] / Filling me up with your rules [ooh].” Best of all: “I’ve got to admit it’s getting better [better] / A little better all the time [It can’t get no worse]”. It’s a clever way to keep up the brass-band motif while still rocking out.
I know some people hate McCartney’s toe-tapping cheeriness -- but why wouldn’t Paul McCartney have an optimistic view of life? Anytime he ever wanted anything, all he had to do was bat those eyelashes and he’d get his way. That doesn’t mean he couldn’t have a nasty side as well; this song is full of it. But the ultimate message? Love sees all, knows all, and changes everything. Dig it.
In the shifting search for Truth that is Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, “Getting Better” is a ray of hope. The narrator (Paul’s singing) buoyantly declares he’s happy now, since “you’ve been mine.” I naturally assume he’s talking about a girlfriend – didn’t Ringo just tell us we all need someone to love? But if it is a girl, Paul never bothers to tell us a thing about her. (It’s possible the “you” that changed his life could be drugs, or maybe wealth and success – both sure transformed the Beatles’ lives.) It doesn’t really matter, because the song is really all about him. It’s complete navel-gazing – either that or charming self-expression, take your pick.
Each verse is a snapshot of him at some disagreeable stage of his life. “I used to get mad at my school,” “Me used to be angry young man,” and, most disturbing of all, “I used to be cruel to my woman, I beat her / And kept her apart from the things that she loved.” (Flashback to an earlier song, this one by John Lennon: “You’d better run for your life if you can, little girl / Hide your head in the sand, little girl / Catch you with another man, that’s the end-a, little girl.”) There’s plenty of self-knowledge here, but he’s not going to beat himself up; he’s on the right path, and that’s good enough for now. “It’s getting better / A little better all the time,” he says gamely; “I’m doing the best that I can.” Rome wasn’t built in a day, man.
Set to a different tune, with a different arrangement, these lyrics might have been repellent – but instead, McCartney’s pulled off a positive, bright-hearted track I can’t help but love. I think it’s because of that jazzy rhythm, that skip in his step that is second-nature for a bassist like Paul (think “Got To Get You Into My Life”). Even though the melody in the verse keeps slip-sliding down to murkier chords, that chorus perks right back up.
This is not a track built on guitar virtuosity; every instrument feeds into the percussive bounce. Those clanging repeated guitar chords, later picked up by an electric piano, pulse and vibrate like a radio signal; cymbals and handclaps fill in for drums most of the time. There’s no horn section, but the back-up vocals play just like a pack of horns -- listen to their opening fanfare: “It’s getting better all the ti-i-ime.” The backing vocals are one of my favorite things about this song. “I used to get mad at my school / [Now I can’t complain] / The teachers who taught me weren’t cool / [Now I can’t complain] / You’re holding me down [ah-ah] / Turning me round [oh] / Filling me up with your rules [ooh].” Best of all: “I’ve got to admit it’s getting better [better] / A little better all the time [It can’t get no worse]”. It’s a clever way to keep up the brass-band motif while still rocking out.
I know some people hate McCartney’s toe-tapping cheeriness -- but why wouldn’t Paul McCartney have an optimistic view of life? Anytime he ever wanted anything, all he had to do was bat those eyelashes and he’d get his way. That doesn’t mean he couldn’t have a nasty side as well; this song is full of it. But the ultimate message? Love sees all, knows all, and changes everything. Dig it.
Sunday, June 03, 2007
"Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds" / The Beatles
The happy last harmonies of “With A Little Help From My Friends” have barely faded away before we’re plucked out of our boozy contentment, borne away on a series of shivery synthesized arpeggios – “Picture yourself in a boat on a river…”
Yes, we have now entered the world of “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.” Hearing it for the first time in 1967 was extremely disturbing . . . and exciting. There had been touches of psychedelia on other rock songs before this, but this was a full-fledged assault on our senses. It works on every level – the dense production values, the hypnotic looping melody, the dreamy waltz tempo, the lush surreal imagery of the lyrics. If John Lennon and Paul McCartney weren’t tripping when they wrote this, they were certainly recalling what a trip felt like -- and passing it on to us.
The unstoppered flow of language boggles the mind. It begins with a palette of colors worthy of Peter Max: tangerine trees, marmalade skies, cellophane flowers of yellow and green, and of course the “girl with kaleidoscope eyes.” (All those three-syllable words, perfectly matched to the waltz tempo.) In verse two the ex-art student in John Lennon really begins to romp: “rocking horse people eat marshmallow pies” and “newspaper taxis appear on the shore.” It’s as if we’re in a Dadaist film, as our magical boat glides in slow motion past bridge and fountain and giant flowers to that far-off (far-out?) shore. By verse three, even the everyday setting of a train station looks distorted, with its “plasticine porters with looking-glass ties”). Hmmm … could it be our minds that are altered, and not the landscape at all?
The melody, too, seems in a state of suspended animation – I love how it drifts along on one repeated note, veering only a couple tones in either direction from time to time. The key shifts, but only to find a new note to hang upon. Lennon heaves with enervated langour from note to note, slurring the intervals into chromatic scales. I hear very little guitar here, though the bass does a ghostly stilt-walk through the second half of each verse. A guitar would sound too earthy, I guess -- it would break the spell.
On the verses, John’s double-tracked vocals are sung with ethereal delicacy, and held back in the mix to sound frail and distant; in contrast, the hearty group harmonies of the chorus sound near at hand. All it takes is the repeated cue -- “gone” -- for a robust drumbeat to kick in. The singers punch out the words “Lu-cy in the sky” all on one note, then fall behind the beat and slide downscale for “with di-i-amonds” (skittering into triplets on “diamonds”, as if refracting light). Winding up on an ever-so-slightly dissonant “Aaahhhhhhhh,” they modulate but never resolve that tantalizing chord.
As for the initials – Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds – John Lennon always denied that it stood for LSD, insisting that it came from a drawing his son Julian brought home depicting his school friend Lucy. Pish-tosh. This song was about drugs, that much was clear to EVERYBODY from day one. Yet as the narrator floats downstream, it’s unsettling – searching for Truth, all he finds is an alternate reality. Mutant flowers, pie-devouring rocking-horses, a cloud-filled taxi, robot train porters – it’s practically a Twilight Zone episode. “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” scared me away from drugs.
Anyway, who needs real drugs when you can just listen to this song and get high for free?
The happy last harmonies of “With A Little Help From My Friends” have barely faded away before we’re plucked out of our boozy contentment, borne away on a series of shivery synthesized arpeggios – “Picture yourself in a boat on a river…”
Yes, we have now entered the world of “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.” Hearing it for the first time in 1967 was extremely disturbing . . . and exciting. There had been touches of psychedelia on other rock songs before this, but this was a full-fledged assault on our senses. It works on every level – the dense production values, the hypnotic looping melody, the dreamy waltz tempo, the lush surreal imagery of the lyrics. If John Lennon and Paul McCartney weren’t tripping when they wrote this, they were certainly recalling what a trip felt like -- and passing it on to us.
The unstoppered flow of language boggles the mind. It begins with a palette of colors worthy of Peter Max: tangerine trees, marmalade skies, cellophane flowers of yellow and green, and of course the “girl with kaleidoscope eyes.” (All those three-syllable words, perfectly matched to the waltz tempo.) In verse two the ex-art student in John Lennon really begins to romp: “rocking horse people eat marshmallow pies” and “newspaper taxis appear on the shore.” It’s as if we’re in a Dadaist film, as our magical boat glides in slow motion past bridge and fountain and giant flowers to that far-off (far-out?) shore. By verse three, even the everyday setting of a train station looks distorted, with its “plasticine porters with looking-glass ties”). Hmmm … could it be our minds that are altered, and not the landscape at all?
The melody, too, seems in a state of suspended animation – I love how it drifts along on one repeated note, veering only a couple tones in either direction from time to time. The key shifts, but only to find a new note to hang upon. Lennon heaves with enervated langour from note to note, slurring the intervals into chromatic scales. I hear very little guitar here, though the bass does a ghostly stilt-walk through the second half of each verse. A guitar would sound too earthy, I guess -- it would break the spell.
On the verses, John’s double-tracked vocals are sung with ethereal delicacy, and held back in the mix to sound frail and distant; in contrast, the hearty group harmonies of the chorus sound near at hand. All it takes is the repeated cue -- “gone” -- for a robust drumbeat to kick in. The singers punch out the words “Lu-cy in the sky” all on one note, then fall behind the beat and slide downscale for “with di-i-amonds” (skittering into triplets on “diamonds”, as if refracting light). Winding up on an ever-so-slightly dissonant “Aaahhhhhhhh,” they modulate but never resolve that tantalizing chord.
As for the initials – Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds – John Lennon always denied that it stood for LSD, insisting that it came from a drawing his son Julian brought home depicting his school friend Lucy. Pish-tosh. This song was about drugs, that much was clear to EVERYBODY from day one. Yet as the narrator floats downstream, it’s unsettling – searching for Truth, all he finds is an alternate reality. Mutant flowers, pie-devouring rocking-horses, a cloud-filled taxi, robot train porters – it’s practically a Twilight Zone episode. “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” scared me away from drugs.
Anyway, who needs real drugs when you can just listen to this song and get high for free?
Saturday, June 02, 2007
“With A Little Help From My Friends” / The Beatles
On Sgt. Pepper’s opening track, Paul gives us fair warning: “the singer’s going to sing a song / And he’d like you all to sing along.” But even after all these years, I still feel surprised that Billy Shears turns out to be…Ringo.
Far from the star vocalist we’ve been promised, it’s Ringo’s artless singing voice -- nasal, limited in range, slightly off-pitch – that launches into “With A Little Help From My Friends,” a cheery pub singalong that slots right into the album’s nostalgia gimmick (better than most of the other tracks in that respect). All those lyrics about not singing out of key, and Ringo’s just barely hitting his notes. It’s one of the most disarming tracks ever.
I always love the Ringo songs. I suspect that whenever John and Paul sat down to write for their drummer, they tapped into huge reservoirs of affection for him. No wonder this song is all about your friends supporting you – at this stage in the Beatles’ career, Ringo was probably the only Beatle who was still truly friends with all of his bandmates.
Not that they’re going to make Ringo do all the heavy lifting – no, indeed. After the first verse, it’s all traded-off questions and answers: “What do I do when my love is away?” Ringo wonders, baffled, and his friends respond sympathetically, “Does it worry you to be alone?” In the third verse, they’re asking him the questions: “Would you believe in a love at first sight?” and he declares, with dogged faith, “Yes I’m certain that it happens all the time.” How perfect to have good-hearted Ringo singing this – can you imagine this lyric coming out of John Lennon’s lips?
Ringo is the go-to guy for a song this unpretentious, that’s for sure. He’s looking for love, like anybody else, but he’s not picky. He’s not a yearning romantic, like Paul; he’s not tripped up by mistrust and jealousy and hostility like John. “Could it be anybody?” his friends ask, in lovely high harmonies. I can almost see Ringo shrug as he answers, “I want somebody to love.” It IS that simple. When all’s said and done, isn’t that what we all want?
The drug subtext is there too, of course (you can never go wrong assuming a coded drug message on Sgt. Pepper). The first chorus sets it up, “I get by / With a little help from my friends / I get high / With a little help from my friends / Going to try / With a little help from my friends.” He doesn’t repeat this again in the song, but nevertheless, it’s the line most people remember. Sure, the male voices chiming in are his friends – but that single “I get high” line also suggests that the “friends” are pills or joints, or maybe the pusher who provides them. Wink, wink.
The best line in this song, though, has to be: “What do you see when you turn out the light? / I can’t tell you but I know it’s mine.” We could all let our dirty minds run wild on that line. (See Ray Davies, “When I Turn Off the Living Room Light”). But when you’re done snickering, remember: whatever Ringo’s handling there in the dark, it BELONGS to him. Who needs fancy explanations when you're that connected?
There’s just something so damn grounded about Ringo. On this album full of dreamers and searchers, he may be the only character who’s got life figured out.
On Sgt. Pepper’s opening track, Paul gives us fair warning: “the singer’s going to sing a song / And he’d like you all to sing along.” But even after all these years, I still feel surprised that Billy Shears turns out to be…Ringo.
Far from the star vocalist we’ve been promised, it’s Ringo’s artless singing voice -- nasal, limited in range, slightly off-pitch – that launches into “With A Little Help From My Friends,” a cheery pub singalong that slots right into the album’s nostalgia gimmick (better than most of the other tracks in that respect). All those lyrics about not singing out of key, and Ringo’s just barely hitting his notes. It’s one of the most disarming tracks ever.
I always love the Ringo songs. I suspect that whenever John and Paul sat down to write for their drummer, they tapped into huge reservoirs of affection for him. No wonder this song is all about your friends supporting you – at this stage in the Beatles’ career, Ringo was probably the only Beatle who was still truly friends with all of his bandmates.
Not that they’re going to make Ringo do all the heavy lifting – no, indeed. After the first verse, it’s all traded-off questions and answers: “What do I do when my love is away?” Ringo wonders, baffled, and his friends respond sympathetically, “Does it worry you to be alone?” In the third verse, they’re asking him the questions: “Would you believe in a love at first sight?” and he declares, with dogged faith, “Yes I’m certain that it happens all the time.” How perfect to have good-hearted Ringo singing this – can you imagine this lyric coming out of John Lennon’s lips?
Ringo is the go-to guy for a song this unpretentious, that’s for sure. He’s looking for love, like anybody else, but he’s not picky. He’s not a yearning romantic, like Paul; he’s not tripped up by mistrust and jealousy and hostility like John. “Could it be anybody?” his friends ask, in lovely high harmonies. I can almost see Ringo shrug as he answers, “I want somebody to love.” It IS that simple. When all’s said and done, isn’t that what we all want?
The drug subtext is there too, of course (you can never go wrong assuming a coded drug message on Sgt. Pepper). The first chorus sets it up, “I get by / With a little help from my friends / I get high / With a little help from my friends / Going to try / With a little help from my friends.” He doesn’t repeat this again in the song, but nevertheless, it’s the line most people remember. Sure, the male voices chiming in are his friends – but that single “I get high” line also suggests that the “friends” are pills or joints, or maybe the pusher who provides them. Wink, wink.
The best line in this song, though, has to be: “What do you see when you turn out the light? / I can’t tell you but I know it’s mine.” We could all let our dirty minds run wild on that line. (See Ray Davies, “When I Turn Off the Living Room Light”). But when you’re done snickering, remember: whatever Ringo’s handling there in the dark, it BELONGS to him. Who needs fancy explanations when you're that connected?
There’s just something so damn grounded about Ringo. On this album full of dreamers and searchers, he may be the only character who’s got life figured out.
Friday, June 01, 2007
"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" / The Beatles
The British Invasion began with the Beatles’ Ed Sullivan appearance in February 1964; it ended in June 1967 when the Beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Not twenty years ago today, but twice that – forty years ago today. After that, there was no dividing music into British vs American – there was just the Beatles on one hand and everyone else on the other.
By now endless amounts have been written about this iconic album, but here the deal is one song at a time. And as it happens, that may be the best way to look at it. Sgt. Pepper is more than the sum of its parts, but the parts are pretty damn fine on their own.
Actually, I’m starting with two songs: “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and its reprise, nearly at the end of Side 2. (That “nearly” will become important.) The first one kicks off the contrived conceit of this album – that it’s not by the Beatles, but by a mustachioed military brass band in braided satin uniforms. (Did anybody believe that?) So we start with the audience’s pre-concert mutterings, instruments tuning up, abruptly cut off by a thumping drumbeat and some crunchy guitars. I always think of this as an oom-pah song – that tuba in the bridge is so memorable -- but in fact this intro is straight on rock music. We don’t get the brass going until the middle eight, along with some obviously canned crowd laughter.
What we do get is Paul, in his R&B testifying mode, delivering a pack of statements that clearly could NOT apply to the Beatles – that the band was founded “twenty years ago today”, that “they’ve been going in and out of style,” that the singer’s name is Billy Shears. With the Beatles at the peak of their unprecedented fame, self-effacing remarks like “they’re guaranteed to raise a smile” and “we hope you will enjoy the show” come with a very broad wink – and, considering how the Beatles had to constantly try to escape their fans, you gotta smile at the ingenuous “You’re such a lovely audience / We’d like to take you home with us.” But that invitation -- the offer to be part of the Beatles’ inner circle -- is a constant motif throughout the album, winding up on the last track with John’s offer “I’d love to turn you on”.
Skip now to the reprise, where the drumbeat is much more frenetic, all high-hat and cymbals, the guitars ripping off fuzzy licks unheard-of in the first go-round. The reprise only lasts a minute or so – it’s just there to close the bracket, to complete this framing device. I’ve always been struck, though, by how often they repeat the line “Sergeant Pepper’s lonely,” powering it through a key shift and rise in volume. In the first version, that same line was just a stutter leading into the complete band name; here I picture Sergeant Pepper anxiously scanning the crowd for someone to warm his bed. By now we’ve had ten other tracks about people struggling to connect with others – that loneliness of Sergeant Pepper brings the humanity of the band (and the Beatles) into sharp relief.
As all good concert-goers know, there’s always an encore -- in this case, “A Day In The Life,” perhaps the album’s most disturbing and beautiful number. I’ll get to that in a few days, but it’s worth wondering now -- WHO is supposed to be singing this song? Billy Shears? Lonely Sergeant Pepper? Or is it the Beatles themselves, back in their street clothes, having shooed away the fake band? Something to ponder…the Beatles always gave us something to ponder.
The British Invasion began with the Beatles’ Ed Sullivan appearance in February 1964; it ended in June 1967 when the Beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Not twenty years ago today, but twice that – forty years ago today. After that, there was no dividing music into British vs American – there was just the Beatles on one hand and everyone else on the other.
By now endless amounts have been written about this iconic album, but here the deal is one song at a time. And as it happens, that may be the best way to look at it. Sgt. Pepper is more than the sum of its parts, but the parts are pretty damn fine on their own.
Actually, I’m starting with two songs: “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and its reprise, nearly at the end of Side 2. (That “nearly” will become important.) The first one kicks off the contrived conceit of this album – that it’s not by the Beatles, but by a mustachioed military brass band in braided satin uniforms. (Did anybody believe that?) So we start with the audience’s pre-concert mutterings, instruments tuning up, abruptly cut off by a thumping drumbeat and some crunchy guitars. I always think of this as an oom-pah song – that tuba in the bridge is so memorable -- but in fact this intro is straight on rock music. We don’t get the brass going until the middle eight, along with some obviously canned crowd laughter.
What we do get is Paul, in his R&B testifying mode, delivering a pack of statements that clearly could NOT apply to the Beatles – that the band was founded “twenty years ago today”, that “they’ve been going in and out of style,” that the singer’s name is Billy Shears. With the Beatles at the peak of their unprecedented fame, self-effacing remarks like “they’re guaranteed to raise a smile” and “we hope you will enjoy the show” come with a very broad wink – and, considering how the Beatles had to constantly try to escape their fans, you gotta smile at the ingenuous “You’re such a lovely audience / We’d like to take you home with us.” But that invitation -- the offer to be part of the Beatles’ inner circle -- is a constant motif throughout the album, winding up on the last track with John’s offer “I’d love to turn you on”.
Skip now to the reprise, where the drumbeat is much more frenetic, all high-hat and cymbals, the guitars ripping off fuzzy licks unheard-of in the first go-round. The reprise only lasts a minute or so – it’s just there to close the bracket, to complete this framing device. I’ve always been struck, though, by how often they repeat the line “Sergeant Pepper’s lonely,” powering it through a key shift and rise in volume. In the first version, that same line was just a stutter leading into the complete band name; here I picture Sergeant Pepper anxiously scanning the crowd for someone to warm his bed. By now we’ve had ten other tracks about people struggling to connect with others – that loneliness of Sergeant Pepper brings the humanity of the band (and the Beatles) into sharp relief.
As all good concert-goers know, there’s always an encore -- in this case, “A Day In The Life,” perhaps the album’s most disturbing and beautiful number. I’ll get to that in a few days, but it’s worth wondering now -- WHO is supposed to be singing this song? Billy Shears? Lonely Sergeant Pepper? Or is it the Beatles themselves, back in their street clothes, having shooed away the fake band? Something to ponder…the Beatles always gave us something to ponder.
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