All right, time to move ahead to the next album in search of
unrequited love songs vs. mutual love, positioned within the gifted melodic
phrasing stanzas written by my favorite most influential heroes, John, Paul,
and George. Next up, the rigorous, sometimes contentious, Let It Be motion
picture soundtrack.
Lennon and McCartney shared the same microphone to sing the song, as captured in the Let It Be film. Indeed, the middle sections contain likely references to their relationship, with both acutely aware that their time as members of The Beatles was drawing to a close––You and I have memories
Longer than the road that stretches out ahead.
Two Of Us is also thought to contain a reference to The Beatles' business troubles with Apple, in the line "You and me chasing paper, getting nowhere." The song displays the relief felt by McCartney at being able to leave these troubles behind and enjoy uncomplicated moments with Linda. “As a kid, I loved getting lost. I would say to my father - let's get lost. But you could never seem to be able to get really lost. All signs would eventually lead back to New York or wherever we were staying! Then, when I moved to England to be with Paul, we would put Martha in the back of the car and drive out of London. As soon as we were on the open road I'd say, 'Let's get lost' and we'd keep driving without looking at any signs. Hence the line in the song, 'Two of us going nowhere.' Paul wrote Two Of Us on one of those days out. It's about us. We just pulled off in the woods somewhere and parked the car. I went off walking while Paul sat in the car and started writing. He also mentions the postcards because we used to send a lot of postcards to each other.”
Linda McCartney
A Hard Day's Write, Steve Turner
Track 2 – Dig A Pony. Love enters the tune by John expressing, “All I want is you, everything has got to be the way you want it to.” I tilt this song toward one-sided since we never hear the woman’s input. Dig A Pony contained mostly nonsense lyrics, which Lennon dismissed in 1980 as "another piece of garbage." However, some tantalizing references can be found, including to The Beatles' one-time name Johnny and the Moondogs ("I pick a moondog") and Mick Jagger (I roll a stoney/Well you can imitate everyone you know"). However, like so many of Lennon's songs of the period, the dominant influence is Yoko Ono. Dig A Pony was originally titled All I Want Is You, words which appear in the chorus and which constitute the song's only direct, meaningful sentiment. “I was just having fun with words. It was literally a nonsense song. You just take words, and you stick them together, and you see if they have any meaning. Some of them do, and some of them don't.”
John Lennon, 1972
Track 3 – Across The Universe was John Lennon's first composition to be recorded by The Beatles since I Am The Walrus five months earlier. The words were written before the music and came to Lennon in the early hours one morning at his home in Kenwood. “I was lying next to my first wife in bed,” says John, “you know, and I was irritated. She must have been going on and on about something, and she'd gone to sleep, and I'd kept hearing these words over and over, flowing like an endless stream. I went downstairs, and it turned into sort of a cosmic song rather than an irritated song; rather than a 'Why are you always mouthing off at me?' or whatever, right? ... “But the words stand, luckily, by themselves. They were purely inspirational and were given to me as boom! I don't own it, you know; it came through like that. I don't know where it came from, what meter it's in, and I've sat down and looked at it and said, 'Can I write another one with this meter?' It's so interesting: 'Words are flying [sic] out like [sings] endless rain into a paper cup, they slither while they pass, they slip away across the universe.' Such an extraordinary meter and I can never repeat it! It's not a matter of craftsmanship; it wrote itself. It drove me out of bed. I didn't want to write it, I was just slightly irritable, and I went downstairs, and I couldn't get to sleep until I put it on paper, and then I went to sleep. It's like being possessed; like a psychic or a medium. The thing has to go down. It won't let you sleep, so you have to get up, make it into something, and then you're allowed to sleep. That's always in the middle of the bloody night when you're half-awake or tired, and your critical facilities are switched off.”
John Lennon, 1980
All We Are Saying, David Sheff
Track 4 – I Me Mine. The last song to be recorded by The Beatles, I Me Mine was written by George Harrison about revelations regarding the ego discovered through LSD use. George explains his definition here, “Having LSD was like someone catapulting me out into space. The LSD experience was the biggest experience that I'd had up until that time” ... “Suddenly I looked around, and everything I could see was relative to my ego, like 'that's my piece of paper' and 'that's my flannel' or 'give it to me' or 'I am.' It drove me crackers; I hated everything about my ego, it was a flash of everything false and impermanent, which I disliked. But later, I learned from it, to realize that there is somebody else in here apart from old blabbermouth. Who am 'I' became the order of the day. Anyway, that's what came out of it, I Me Mine. The truth within us has to be realized. When you realize that, everything else that you see and do and touch and smell isn't real, then you may know what reality is, and can answer the question 'Who am I?”
George Harrison
I Me Mine (book), 1980
Track 5 – Dig It. A gobbled die gooked jam session led by John sometimes running as long as twelve plus minutes of playful fun rather than lyrical substance toward a cause.
Track 6 – Let It Be. Paul gives us an eye-opener on how this tune developed, and I quote, “One night during this tense time I had a dream I saw my mum, who'd been dead ten years or so. And it was so great to see her because that's a wonderful thing about dreams: you actually are reunited with that person for a second; there they are, and you appear to both be physically together again. It was so wonderful for me, and she was very reassuring. In the dream, she said, 'It'll be all right.' I'm not sure if she used the words 'Let it be' but that was the gist of her advice, it was, 'Don't worry too much, it will turn out OK.' It was such a sweet dream I woke up thinking, Oh, it was really great to visit with her again. I felt very blessed to have that dream. So that got me writing the song Let It Be. I literally started off 'Mother Mary', which was her name, 'When I find myself in times of trouble,' which I certainly found myself in. The song was based on that dream.”
Paul McCartney
Many Years From Now, Barry Miles
It was perhaps inevitable - even fortuitous for the group - that Let It Be took on religious overtones, with many listeners interpreting it as referring to the Virgin Mary. Again, Paul comments so, “Mother Mary makes it a quasi-religious thing, so you can take it that way. I don't mind. I'm quite happy if people want to use it to shore up their faith. I have no problem with that. I think it's a great thing to have faith of any sort, particularly in the world we live in.”
Paul McCartney
Many Years From Now, Barry Miles
Track 7 – Maggie Mae is a traditional Liverpool folk song about a prostitute who robbed a sailor, Maggie May (as it is more commonly known) dates back from the early 19th century. This musical piece credited all four famous musicians as the arrangers.
Track 8 – I've Got A Feeling combined two half-finished songs that seemed as if they held little hope until joined as one tune. McCartney wrote the section that gave the song its title; Presumably about the optimistic facts Linda had triumphed into the woman Paul had always sought to find. Therefore, I categorize this ditty as a mutual love song.
Lennon's contribution was originally called “Everybody Had A Hard Year,’ and followed along the lines of his current bad luck (Divorce from Cynthia, separated from son Julian, Yoko miscarriage, etc., etc.) John’s contributed section had previously debuted during the White Album sessions.
Remarkably, this tune was the pair's first full and equal collaboration since 1967's Baby You're A Rich Man. The brilliant songwriting team worked on the melody and lyrics together at Cavendish Avenue, London, Paul’s resident just a couple blocks away from Abbey Road.
Track 9 – One after 909, a one-sided love song by John and Paul, based on the lyric portrayal when the singer reminisces, “I begged her not to go, and I begged her on my bended knees.” And, “Don’t be cold as ice.”
One of The Beatles' earliest songs, and originally recorded in March 1963. Paul remembers: “It's the first... one of the first songs we'd ever done. John wrote it when he was about 15.”
The group first recorded One After 909 on the same day as From Me To You in 1963. However, two bootleg versions by The Quarrymen exist, dating from 1960, one of which Apple featured in the Anthology TV series. Two other fascinating live recordings of the song exist, both from a 1962 rehearsal at the Cavern Club.
Click here for the 1962 rehearsal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAxqGcCiSzE
Paul McCartney later explained how One After 909 was an attempt to write an American railroad song in the style of their musical heroes. “It has great memories for me of John and I trying to write a bluesy freight-train song. There were a lot of those songs at the time, like Midnight Special, Freight Train, Rock Island Line, so this was the One After 909; she didn't get the 909, she got the one after it! It was a tribute to British Rail, actually. No, at the time we weren't thinking British, it was much more the Super Chief from Omaha.”
Paul McCartney
Many Years From Now, Barry Miles
Track 10 – The Long And Winding Road started out as a simple McCartney ballad, written in Scotland in 1968 at a time in which the cracks in The Beatles' relationships became ever deeper. A demo was recorded during the White Album sessions but taken no further. Paul recalls, “I was a bit flipped out and tripped out at that time. It's a sad song because it's all about the unattainable; the door you never quite reach. This is the road that you never get to the end of.”
Paul McCartney
Many Years From Now, Barry Miles
The song was written with Ray Charles in mind, although McCartney acknowledged that the similarities are well hidden. Again, Paul shares more, “It doesn't sound like him at all, because it's me singing and I don't sound anything like Ray, but sometimes you get a person in your mind, just for an attitude, just for a place to be, so that your mind is somewhere rather than nowhere, and you place it by thinking, Oh, I love that Ray Charles, and think, Well, what might he do then? So, that was in my mind and would have probably had some bearing on the chord structure of it, which is slightly jazzy. I think I could attribute that to having Ray in my mind when I wrote that one.
Paul McCartney
Many Years From Now, Barry Miles
Track 11 – For You Blue was written by George Harrison dedicated this song to his wife Pattie, a straightforward blues song recorded during the Let It Be sessions. “It's a simple 12-bar song following all the normal 12-bar principles, except that it's happy-go-lucky!”
George Harrison
Because the word love or lovely appears ten times throughout the stanzas, I’m labeling track 11 as a mutual love song.
Track 12 – Get Back. Here ushered in the Beatles' 19th British single, known as, Get Back, and it was the first release by the group from their 1969 'back-to-basics' phase.
Background Fun Facts: Geez, what you're about to read sounds like present day America–– The song began as a satirical and critical look at attitudes towards immigrants in Britain. McCartney intended to parody the negative attitudes that were prevalent among politicians and the press.
Race issues evidently played on McCartney's mind during the Get Back sessions. He led The Beatles through Commonwealth, an unreleased improvised satire loosely based on British politician Enoch Powell's notorious 'Rivers of blood' speech.
The most infamous of the unreleased Get Back versions is known as No Pakistanis and contained the line "Don't dig no Pakistanis taking all the people's jobs." While mostly unfinished, the song did include a mumbled rhyming couplet which paired the words 'Puerto Rican' with 'Mohican.' However, Paul shares some further insight, “When we were doing Let It Be, there were a couple of verses to Get Back which were actually not racist at all - they were anti-racist. There were a lot of stories in the newspapers then about Pakistanis crowding out flats - you know, living 16 to a room or whatever. So, in one of the verses of Get Back, which we were making up on the set of Let It Be, one of the outtakes has something about 'too many Pakistanis living in a council flat' - that's the line. Which to me was actually talking out against overcrowding for Pakistanis... If there was any group that was not racist, it was the Beatles. I mean, all our favorite people were always black. We were kind of the first people to open international eyes, in a way, to Motown.
Paul McCartney
Rolling Stone, 1986
Last but not least, concerning track 12, John believed Jo Jo was a code name for Yoko, (Get back to where you once belong, Yoko), although, it’s clear Paul has stuck to his story that Jo Jo is just a fictional character.
In closing out the Let it Be LP, unrequited love songs scores a single slot and mutual love songs win by a count of three.
Next week takes us through the amazing run of hit singles that soared up the pop charts where I’ll unveil the tracks about love, found listed on one of my favorite releases, the Past Masters Volume 1 CD.
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