Beatles, After the End: More Great Stuff

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[This was a post started in 2009, and never published!  Here it is, warts and all:]

Not only did the Beatles disappoint their many fans by revealing their group to be shockingly mortal, they went on to pursue creative solo careers, almost the first really big rock 'n' roll band to get a posthumous life of this sort.

John Lennon, one of the Senior Beatles, made albums with a couple of backing groups: The Plastic Ono Band, with his most characteristically angst-filled solo album, at a time when he was in counseling.  Imagine was made with a big studio band with many big names among them.  Some time later came Mind Games, and many years later, he made Double Fantasy, shortly before he was killed by a crazed fan.  (BTW, an album I have just been acquainted with this minute is Walls and Bridges.)  For my money, Shaved Fish, a compilation of Lennon's greatest post-Beatles hits, is a winner from first track to last.

Mother, and Working Class Hero are notable tracks on Plastic Ono Band.  On Imagine, apart from the title track, there is Jealous Guy, and Oh Yoko, both well known, but not favorites of mine.  I should mention Give Peace a Chance, and So this is Christmas, and Watching the Wheels. Here are two favorites: Mind Games, and Aisumasen. Another is Whatever gets you through the night, with Elton John.

Paul McCartney, soon after the demise of the Beatles, formed a successful group called Wings, and released a sequence of highly successful albums through the seventies and eighties.  His style now diverged dramatically from the joint Lennon-McCartney style of their Beatles compositions, and most fans would consider that the whole had been far greater than the sum of the parts, certainly as they survived the breakup of the group.

Before Wings, Paul recorded McCartney with his wife, Linda, which contained the songs Junk, and Maybe I'm amazed. Admiral Halsey, Live and Let Die, and other songs from McCartney and Wings were heard all through the seventies, and it was clear that at least 50% of the charm of the Beatles was the disarming whimsy of Paul McCartney, which combined with the anger of John Lennon, which was transformed by his humor (and sometimes directed inward, at himself) together gave the Beatles the magic formula.

Ringo Starr released a couple of albums which contained a few tuneful songs, and was helped enthusiastically by George Harrison.  Ringo himself, despite his frustration with John and Paul, never held back when called upon for a special event, for charity or for the sheer fun of doing something creative. He continued to hold the Beatles banner high, even when it was almost certain that no project could possibly attract the support of all the surviving Beatles, after John's death.

George Harrison, in my estimation, was the one who surprised us all. Heading in a new direction with music which had its roots in country music and southern rock, George wrote a sequence of a half dozen songs that should earn him a place as one of the great songwriters of the century: My Sweet Lord, Give me Love, What is Life, All things must Pass, these songs are almost painfully tuneful, and they deserve to be re-sung and rerecorded for a long time to come. Forgive me for giving a link for Paul's rendition of All things must Pass; I prefer his more rhythmic version to George's slow, philosophical performance. There are tons of other Harrison songs: those written for Concert for Bangladesh, a number of them performed at Concert for George.

McCartney is developing into an even better live performer than he used to be with the Beatles (John was probably the weak link there; in most of the video clips he looks very much under the weather), and some of Paul's live performances of Beatles songs compare well with the original studio versions.  It's heartbreaking, in 2009, to be left with only McCartney and Starr, but we must learn to be thankful for all that recorded treasure of the Beatles in their time.

Archimedes

The End: The Last Three Beatles Albums

The purpose of these posts is to focus on the music, and only secondarily to talk about the musicians themselves, though to some extent their personalities intrude into a discussion of the music.

All three of The Beatles, (the White Album), Abbey Road, and Let It Be were worked on concurrently; if not concurrent, their creation periods overlapped considerably. Abbey Road is more explicitly a valedictory album, consisting of an effort to cooperate in producing one last piece of work together. Let it be --the movie and the album taken together, documents the struggle to stay together, and its failure, while The Beatles (White Album) must have started out being a straightforward album, in the course of which it became clear that things were going horribly awry. I have no documentation of these claims, so you have to take them for what they're worth (which is: not much).

The White Album ("The Beatles") consisted of two discs, and contained a number of gems; I shall mention only a few: Back in the USSR was a satire of California Girls by the Beach Boys,  While my guitar gently weeps practically invented heavy metal, a genre that is hard to define. George Harrison's stature as a composer was now undeniable.  The guitar solos included work by Eric Clapton. Rocky Raccoon is a hilarious spoof on Wild West ballads for children's TV, presumably.  Obladi-Oblada is a song much admired in some quarters.  Blackbird, Why don't we do it in the road, and Julia are three more interesting songs on the first disc.  Blackbird is a lovely piece of guitar work by Paul McCartney, while Julia is an ode to John's late mother, featuring John on guitar.  There are many instances of Paul McCartney reemerging as a serious rocker, e.g. Helter Skelter.

The second disc contains Mother Nature's Son (also recorded by John Denver, of all people), Sexy Sadie, and Revolution.

Abbey Road seems to me what the Beatles wanted to be their farewell album.  There is a song, The End, which has each of the three guitarists playing a guitar solo (I can't remember which segment is by which), and a drum solo (or solos, who knows?).  Most interestingly, the album was created with never more than two Beatles in the studio at the same time, possibly even only one of them at a time.  All the combining of tracks was done at the engineering stage.

Before the heartbreaking last tracks, they managed to squeeze in a pile of terrific songs: Come Together, a Lennon song on the lines of Walrus.  It goes way beyond simple entertainment into a defining experience; Something, by George Harrison, possibly the most effective song he ever wrote, and performed incomparably by the Beatles (despite the obvious dysfunctionality); Maxwell's Silver Hammer (Paul McCartney), silly black humor; Here comes the Sun (Harrison), a startling ode to the Sun in the midst of all the negative 'vibes', a truly sunny song, one of my all time favorites; Because, an eerily beautiful song featuring something like 8 tracks of John, layered.  A little later comes an amazing medley of fve songs: Mean Mr. Mustard, Polythene Pam, She Came in Through the Bathroom Window, Golden Slumbers, Carry That Weight, the first two by Lennon, the last three by McCartney, all seamlessly stitched into an amazing compound song.  It may not be great art, but it is great entertainment, made all the more poignant by the fact of being created piecemeal.

Let it Be: in my mind, this will always be the soundtrack of the movie.  The uncharacteristic production was by Phil Spector, but by now it is so familiar that I don't miss George Martin's hand at the controls.  To mention only the songs that have become extra well known: Don't let me down (the B side of the Get Back single); Across the Universe, by John Lennon, with an Indian flavor, more recently released in a more unplugged recording; Let it Be, by Paul McCartney; One after 909, a song written when they were still in school; The Long and Winding Road, McCartney; and, of course, the famous rooftop performance of Get Back.  (I love this particular clip!  Apparently they performed it 3 times on the rooftop.)

[Added later:] I had to add something more; I felt I had short-changed this album.  Let It Be, though surrounded by tragedy, in that it depicts the four Beatles in an almost constant state of disagreement, does present a completely different Beatles sound.  I, Me, Mine, a strange song sung by John in a peculiar voice, I dig a pony, also a Lennon song; Two of Us, a duet by John and Paul,  One after 909, another duet; all of these seem utterly relaxed, and back away from the heavy metal sound in some of the albums immediately preceding.  Further, the songs in this album, in particular, even ones where John and Paul sing together, manage to present their contrasting characters and personalities simultaneously.  Is it the genius of Phil Spector (the Motown producer and arranger responsible for the sound of Diana Ross and the Supremes, whom Beatles fans loved to malign for having produced Let it Be), or was their sound evolving towards Let it Be all along?  In any case, it seems to me that the Beatles could not have made a whole lot of albums with the Let it Be flavor; it was possible because it was the only one of its kind.

There were other songs: Hey Jude, The Ballad of John and Yoko, not to mention the songs for Yellow Submarine; obviously we're not going to talk about all the Beatles' songs.  What I've presented are my favorite songs, and the ones that were --and are-- heard most often.  For those who want to immerse themselves in the sights and sounds of the Beatles on the eve of the breakup, the four Anthology DVDs are wonderful.  They are presented by Paul, Ringo and George in such a way that one can choose what to believe, and what to disregard based on what one knows of the character of each of them.

Four such talented individuals, with such unique personalities; what were the chances that they would get together, and find that they were compatible?  What were the chances that their different musical instincts could remain convergent for so long?  But it happened, and the result was a hundred amazing songs that influenced popular music for half a century.  They influenced harmonic styles in pop music, lyrics, the sophistication of bass lines and guitar themes, studio recording techniques, their responsibilities towards their fans, the media, the development of the idea of a pop musician as a multi-dimensional person with many interests.  They expanded their middle-class values to embrace many liberal ideals that were developing in society with grace and a fair degree of patience.  They were arrogant as youths, but learned humility in some measure, not an easy thing for such successful individuals.  And their music is worth preserving, and keeping before the public.

Arch

Beatles: Studio Magic

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Beatles fans loved them to go on tour; there were record crowds at their concerts, both in England and abroad.  But, let's face it; their performances on tour were never very good.  They are most definitely not among the great tour bands.  (Perhaps, since they disbanded, road band equipment has improved greatly, and musicians have learned to better manage their sound on tour.)  Inevitably, the touring stopped around late 1965, and the Beatles became primarily a group that recorded in the studio.

Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was an album that broke new ground in many ways.  It was one of the earliest "concept" albums, i.e. an album centered around a unifying idea, in this case, a music-hall variety show.  Almost every song is a winner, though few of them were ever released as singles.  The title track, Sgt Pepper's Lonelyhearts Club Band, is both unremarkable musically, and a familiar landmark of the album! It's declamatory style is very unique, but it isn't a desert island track, by any means.  With A little help from my friends is a brilliant piece of songwriting, sung by Ringo Starr.  It is hard to put a finger on what makes the song so great, but it is an essential piece of Beatle culture. Then comes Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, an amazing song that in retrospect seems clearly inspired by the prevailing drug culture, but still managed to connect at a purely musical level.  (There were at least a few songs of that time that had no connection to drugs at all, either in their performance, or their subject matter, but were sung with a certain edge to them, using a style inspired by artists who really were under the influence.  C'est la vie.) The next few songs are favorites of mine, including Fixing a Hole (with a slightly megaphone-like music-hall sound) and Getting Better.  She's Leaving Home (which used a string ensemble), and When I'm Sixty-Four both attracted both popular and critical attention, and are really good songs, though the former is rarely played these days.  For the benefit of Mr Kite is a circus-poster inspired piece, and Lovely Rita a paean to a meter-maid.  There is a George Harrison song inspired by Indian music, which ends with a horse-laugh:  Within you, without you, and of course the stunning A Day in The Life, with the closing piano chord that was celebrated for many years (the Forever Chord).

The Beatles project for the second half of 1967 was Magical Mystery Tour, which was conceived as a TV special, featuring a tour with the Beatles, which was to be condensed down to a musical variety show and an album.  Some memorable songs did come out of this, though few outside Beatles Fandom found the video footage of much interest.  (I personally was surprised at how graceful all 4 Beatles were, physically.  John Lennon, particularly, was a graceful man.)  The Fool on the Hill is a gorgeous, atmospheric song, and Lennon's I am the Walrus is equally stunning, a song that matched the whimsical, humorous poetry of Lennon with a memorable tune and imaginative instrumentation.  I'm at a loss for words to describe the impact of this song at the time it was released, especially for established Beatles fans, and I can't even imagine what effect it must have had on those just being turned on to the Beatles for the first time.  (I hate to rely on YouTube for musical clips, because the visuals sometimes distract from the impact of the pure sound, but a black screen isn't much of an improvement, either.) Hello Goodbye is a deceptively simple, short song featuring Paul's vocals, and All you need is Love is an offering by John Lennon, a very epigrammatic and enigmatic statement about the philosophical environment they were living in. It is impressive that they embraced the philosophical challenges they faced, rather than sidestepping them.  This stuff is difficult to write about objectively, since we know a great deal about these people, and it is tempting to extrapolate backwards, to guess what seeds these songs revealed that would later grow into major themes, feelings and problems.  Hello goodbye seems to point at communication problems among the Beatles, and between them and their financial and logistical staff, while All you need is Love suggests that Lennon focused on the big picture, possibly ignoring many details, which presumably concerned McCartney more acutely.

Next up: Decline and Fall, the fabulous, tragic last albums by the Beatles

Arch

Beatles, the Fabulous Transition Years: Rubber Soul and Revolver

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Rubber Soul is the hiding-place of such wonderful, timeless Beatle songs as Nowhere Man, Michelle, and In my life.  It's startling that John Lennon would write such a retrospective-seeming song barely in his thirties.  Their cleverness with lyrics simply exploded at this time (possibly driven by external forces, such as George Martin), with both McCartney and Lennon writing lyrics that stand well on their own.  Harrison was still getting started, judging from the songs that managed to get on the Beatles albums, but we now know that many of his songs were simply kept out by Lennon and McCartney.  Only their extreme youth can excuse this.

Then came a release of an amazing single with Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane, which have not really been established in any of the albums, but inserted as an afterthought it seems, in Magical Mystery Tour.  These two songs have been taken into their collective heart by the mainstream music establishment (despite the strong suspicion that drugs were involved in the inspiration of at least Strawberry Fields).  Strawberry Fields is a recollection of an orphanage into whose grounds John Lennon (at least) liked to sneak, while Penny Lane is Paul McCartney's celebration of a street in downtown Liverpool.  Both songs are heavily orchestrated with brass, Penny Lane featuring a "Bach" high trumpet in C, which Paul heard on the radio, and wanted to feature in the song.  John's strange vocals in Strawberry Fields is due to combining two recordings at different pitches, which necessitated slowing one of them down.  This record, in retrospect, seems to me to be a major milestone in the evolution of the recorded sound of the Beatles.

Revolver, with its striking cover art by Klaus Voorman, a friend from the old Hamburg days (and a major Bassist) is the first instance with a serious contribution: Taxman, by George Harrison, as well as the amazing Eleanor Rigby, brilliantly capturing some of the alienation of the time, in this case, that of agism.  Even if Paul McCartney's feelings about the subject might not be as sympathetic as some way wish, there is no doubt that he was able to depict the pathos of aging pretty well.

This album continues the Beatles tradition of referring to little incidents in their lives in the songs.  This became a common occurrence at that time; it probably reflects the isolation of the group from its fans.  They must have some inspiration, why not the little incidents they experience?  They know the fans are hungry for details about them, and every little clue is analyzed in detail, so why not?!  Dr Robert, She Said, For no one, all these have a feel of excerpts from a journal that make sense only to the subject.  Whatever the lyrics meant, the music is superior.

Arch

My Second Favorite Rock Band: The BEATLES!

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What am I thinking?

I should have written a post on these guys a long time ago!

My first exposure to the Beatles, at least visually, was the movie A Hard Day's Night.  We had just won second place in the inter-house drama contest, and were sent out to see any movie of our choice, and we chose A Hard Day's Night.  It was a complete shock; I was immediately a fan.  Soon I was learning to play the guitar, and was learning all the songs from the movie.  A Hard Day's Night probably won for the Beatles their most faithful fans; the album is one of the most creative and tuneful, and harmonically interesting (in a conventional way) of all the pop music available at the time.  (There were probably better albums out there, actually, but these comparisons must take into account the visibility of the albums . . .  Ok, it's meaningless; satisfied?)  The movie had no plot to speak of; it was a fictional and glamorized account of a day in the life of Our Boys From Liverpool, supported by Paul's fictional Grandfather from Ireland, and a fictional Girlfriend for George.  (Not so fictional, really.)  Supposedly, for the first and last time, this Beatles album featured mainly songs whose creative seeds came mainly from John Lennon.

The opening song, the title song of the movie, opens with a huge chord which, having been analyzed carefully recently by someone using fairly simple Fourier analysis, is revealed to have been played on two guitars, the Bass guitar, and backed with a big 13th chord (a sort of dominant seventh with extra notes) played on a piano.  You can Google it.  There are many harmonic innovations that are hardly original, but possibly new to pop music.  The Beatles --at the very least the three who wrote the songs-- were unarguably very musical people (not a requirement for being a major rock group at that time), and the body of their compositions is a very satisfying collection of music.  A Hard Day's Night features an interlude which sounds as though it was played on an Indian sitar, but is actually played on a 12-string guitar.  (Stop press: I recently read that the guitar solo was doubled on the piano.  Whoa!  That George Martin has a lot to answer for!)  Most of the songs are contemplative, musical and romantic.  The driving rock songs on the B Side were written to balance the mellow A Side of the album.

I should have known better is a fun song featuring John Lennon on a harmonica.  This is one of my favorite cool rock songs.

If I fell is a lovely ballad, a duet between John and Paul, and is harmonically interesting (even disregarding the introduction, which is simply a chromatic chord sequence with no relation to the rest of the song).  It is soft and romantic, and the words are just doggerel rhyme, but it works.

And I love her, sung by Paul mcCartney is a lovely serenade, followed by I'm Happy just to Dance sung by George Harrison.  Another big rock number which was on the album, and which dates from around that time is Can't buy me love, which really rocks.  Here's a live performance, which is noisy and unsatisfactory.  A clip from the movie is a little cleaner.

Shortly after this movie, perhaps the lives of the four Beatles developed in a direction that made sappy sentimental songs less attractive to them, who were in their late twenties and fairly well settled with their respective wives and girlfriends.

Their next album was mostly covers (re-recordings of songs written by others), With the Beatles.  An extensive description of this album is available on Wikipedia, but here are my favorite cuts: No reply, a song with a definite samba, or bossa nova beat.  There is a heavy use of seventh chords (which is common in bossa nova songs).  Rock and Roll Music (Chuck Berry) and Kansas City (Jerry Leiber/Mike Stoller) are fun rhythm 'n' blues songs.  Another interesting cut is Every Little Thing, which features the kettledrums, of all things.

Next came Help, a movie, during the filming of which, it is suspected the boys were mostly high on drugs.  Despite that, there were several wonderful songs in the Help album that had little or nothing to do with the movie.  Help, the title track, is well known.  A little-known song, Night Before, is one of my favorites, and comes second in the album, followed by You've got to hide your love away, strongly influenced by Bob Dylan, if not by his poetry, at least by his singing.  A lovely song, sung in 3-part harmony is You're gonna lose that girl.  True 3-part harmony is not uncommon in Beatles songs, but this one is more traditional barbershop than most of the others.  Ticket To Ride is an edgy song with interesting accompaniment and harmony.  It's only love is a contemplative song that out-Dylans Dylan.  Actually, I take that back; the lyrics begin to show a little of the maniacal word play that marked Lennon's literary work; in this case, not punning, but alliteration.  The last two cuts are I've just seen a face, Yesterday, and Dizzy Miss Lizzy, one of the great rock performances, in my humble opinion.  Unfortunately they never played it this well live.

This brings us to the end of the so-called early years.  Already the team of Lennon and McCartney were being inspired by interesting new instruments (and old instruments, e.g. 12-string guitars), and of course they were relentless consumers of the other popular music that was in the air, and much of this found its way into their own music.

[More in the next post.]