One year with The Beatles (part 2)

“Close your eyes, and I’ll kiss you.”

•    11/04/63     From Me To You / Thank You Girl (45 rpm)
•    23/08/63     She Loves You / I'll Get You (45 rpm)
•    22/11/63     With the Beatles (LP)
•    29/11/63     I Want To Hold Your Hand / This Boy (45 rpm)

Here is a simple argument: if we took the songs of the 45’s putting them inside the album replacing cover songs, we would get one of the most beautiful and important records of pop’s history. Do we really want to play? Here's the LP if the singles had been part of it, as usually happens:

1.    She Loves You
2.    It Won't Be Long
3.    From Me To You
4.    All I've Got to Do
5.    All My Loving
6.    Hold Me Tight
7.    I Want To Hold Your Hand
8.    This Boy
9.    Little Child
10.  Not a Second Time
11.  Don't Bother Me
12.  Thank You Girl
13.  I Wanna Be Your Man
14.  'll Get You

Now “A Hard Day’s Night”  is not the first all-originals-made album!
Let’s be serious again.

You can think what you want, but between April and August 1963, in the world of pop music, everything has changed, forever. "From Me To You" and "She Loves You" significantly transform the song’ shape, today we listen to music paying less attention to certain changes, but happened with them is now very evident. Let us be clear, they were not the first to write songs, great composers existed before and after them, but in 1963 songs like those just mentioned were intended to disrupt everything.

In this second episode we start to allocate arbitrarily the 45’s to the various LPs. In fact, the single "From Me To You / Thank You Girl" is much closer to Please, Please Me than to With The Beatles ( it came out just a month later!) but for them, and then for us it's like to begin a new era , you finish a job and immediately start thinking about the next. In fact, "From Me To You" is a step forward in terms of composition, the boys grew quickly, and it was real. Beatles are more ... Beatles, if you pass the analogy. George Martin had decided to put pressure on the boys, asking them to produce a #1 single in every three months, the result was the publication of a dozen discs in seven years, plus a lot of 45’s. Just thinking of numbers is already embarrassing!

“From Me To You” has a simple harmonic structure in which several elements are wisely mixed: the song is in C major but with a classic II°/V°/I° (Gm/C7/F) we move to the F chord; D major leads us to G and the G5+ bring us back home. An “out of place” dominant chord is right in the middle, that F7 (on the IV° instead the V°) under the words “Just call on me” gives a “bluesy” sound the four guys really loved, Lennon-McCartney often used that solution (see below).

The power of “She Loves You”, that started from the refrain with the devastating force of three simple words of love shouted to the world and used together with the most common word in ‘900, that “Yeah” that in years took the most different shapes, not only changed cards on the table, it changed game’s rules. The G major harmonic structure is simple, but the C minor that anticipates the D right before George’s guitar riff and the refrain next, is nothing but perfect; not to mention Harrison’s riff, played on the Blues scale while the band is playing everything but a Blues!  Fantastic. Writing a hit song after this one became something different.

Another element to understand how undervalued some of their early compositions are, comes from an example of our times, the beautiful Julie Taymor’s movie, “Across The Universe”: the choice of two Beatles’ songs not really popular as “It Won’t Be Long” and “Hold Me Tight”, sang by Evan Rachel Woodand arranged as modern pop-songs, show how the Fab Four were ahead of their time. The songs have a devastating impact (even because of the right place in the movie) and if they were written today we’d wonder who the hell is the composer.

The first one (opening track for With The Beatles) starts with the refrain, showing how some choices were everything but accidental, the latter has a simple harmony with the F/Bb/G/C all as dominant 7th chords! Lennon’s rhythm is the almost abused r’n’r accompaniment based on a power-chord and the little finger moving from the minor to the major 3rd, but all the chords are dominant 7th as if it was a Blues, while it wasn’t. And by analyzing the harmonic structure, we realize that the B part is anything but obvious: the chord progression F/Ab/F/Bb/Gm/G/C7 is a continuous inside-outside the key, demonstrating how the boys were beginning to play with music.

Only for Laster

If we think that George Harrison was barely in his 20’s his guitar contribution starts to be heard: from the nice “twangy” phrase on “It Won’ Be Long” to the well-known solo on "All My Loving", where he clearly pays his dues to Chet Atkins; the solo is not played with single notes but with a hybrid technique made of a pick and middle and ring finger playing on chord shapes and sixths intervals, pretty hard to play still today. But the song, that we might consider the best composition until that moment, uses the triplet-made rhythm played by John’s guitar, Davide Canazza will go deeper into this in the video.

We’ll write about "Till here Was You" on fingerpicking.net but we can say that "Roll Over Beethoven" shows how George learnt Chuck Berry’s lesson: any player who made an attempt at playing a rock’n’roll solo knows well how difficult it can be, and Beatle George pulls out of trouble himself in an excellent manner, playing single notes and double stops paying his dues to the StLouis born player, author of the song.

The band’s love for the new exciting music was clear, Beatle John said: “If you looked for another name for rock’n’roll, you should call it Chuck Berry”.

"I Wanna Be Your Man" his another proof of how far George was from some patterns, his phrasing was looking for new solutions made him evaluate as an atypical and not too brilliant player, simply because copying his licks wasn’t easy and clear as with those of Eric Clapton or Jimi Hendrix.

The fact remains that what he plays is always fully functional on the song. And we must say that this song is their way to give new impulse to the music they loved, try and imagine what a today band like Green Day could do with this tune!

And what about “I Want To Hold Your Hand” (released just a week after the LP!) if not that it is also based on the pace of r'n'r but coming to our ears in a way so new and fresh? The harmonic analysis highlights the same II°/V°/I° that brings from G (key) to C (modulation) showing something already used on “From Me To You”.
At the conclusion of the speech we can see that many of the songs analyzed in this occasion can be considered rock'n'roll in disguise, "Little Child" is one more example to add to the previous ones.

(read the rest on fingerpicking.net)

Winston's Thoughts

by Davide Canazza

While in the UK With the Beatles was released, on November, 22nd, 1963, America suffered one of the saddest and heaviest facts of their still young history: president John Fitzgerald Kennedy was murdered.

But the young americans would soon pass over that tragic moment and would be invaded by the notes of the four guys from Liverpool, who climbed the Us charts with "I Want To Hold Your Hand."

With the Beatles and the singles released in those days represent a turning point even if the album is considered a transition LP: it's the definitive confirmation of the Beatles in their country and in Europe, and opens the doors of the american market.

In this work the musical power of the four is more evident, they explore and search new sounds, more instruments find their way other than bass, guitars, harp and a standard drum set.

Original songs are more mature, Harrison begins to write and contributes with "Don't Bother Me", a song that would fit Pulp Fiction soundtrack! Even covers, 6 on 14 total tunes, are well chosen and played with taste.

Exclusively for Laster

"All My Loving" is still today one of the songs that Paul McCartney plays and love, but is characterized by one of Lennon's trademarks: rhythm guitar plays, under the verse, a triplet acconpaniment with changing chords in every measure, this gives the song a unique sound.

"Roll Over Beethoven"  sees Lennon playing a Chuck Berry-style acconpaniment (he called it chunka-chunk). IV and V chords change place in the final compared to what usually happens in standard blues and r'n'r.

Berry's rhythm style is partially used on "I Want To Hold Your Hand", a song with a strong rhythmic sense, moving from r'n'r to ballad style.

On "Hold Me Tight" sound experiments start: Lennon uses one of the first fuzz effects (Maestro by Gibson) on his guitar, fact showed by some pictures taken on those recording sessions and from listening to various recording takes. Effect is then used by George on "Money".

John uses his AC30's tremolo effect on "Don't Bother Me" and plays a tambourine. Lennon uses the tremolo on "I Wanna Be Your Man" too and plays the organ on the same tune.

Video analyzes rhythm guitars on "All My Loving".

(read the rest on fingerpicking.net)

“I played with John Lennon”

by Rod Davis

We are lucky enough to share with all of you Rod Davis’ thoughts, he was an original member of The Quarrymen, the first band John Lennon ever played with. Rod is part of the famous picture in which a young Lennon leads the band in which Davis played the banjo. Now the english musician tours the world with the re-formed Quarrymen and takes us back in time, when everything was beginning.

Dear Rod, thank you for your contribution, why don’t you tell us about those days, and how Skiffle evolved in Beat music?
In late 1955 Decca Records issued as a 78rpm single on their Decca Jazz label two tracks by the Lonnie Donegan Skiffle Group, "Rock Island Line" and "John Henry". The group was a sub-unit of the Chris Barber Band, who played New Orleans Jazz, the members of the group were Donegan himself on guitar and vocal (he usually played banjo in the full band), Beryl Bryden on washboard (she was the band's female vocalist) and Chris Barber himself on string bass (he usually played trombone). The two tracks were taken from an LP made in 1954 called "New Orleans Joys" . Decca had issued all the other tracks as singles and the two skiffle tracks were the last to be issued.

Towards the end of 1955 "Rock Island Line" became very popular indeed and went to the top of the UK charts in January 1956. I have a ticket stub for the Liverpool Empire theatre for Sun 1 January 1956 where Lonnie Donegan was appearing with the Chris Barber Band. So quite clearly skiffle was having a huge impact on the youth of Britain at this time. I first remember hearing the track sitting in my father's car outside a record shop in the town of St Helen's near Liverpool and I thought that the sound of it was just fantastic, a tremendous contrast to all the other music which was being played at the time.
 
"Rock Island Line" had the same effect on thousands of youngsters in Britain and they were inspired to start skiffle groups and learn to play the guitar or banjo. According to Chas McDevitt, himself the leader of a famous skiffle group, there were more guitar shops burgled than jewellery shops in 1956 as desperate teenagers tried to obtain guitars.
 
John Lennon, Eric Griffiths and I were amongst those affected. Eric and John acquired two very cheap guitars (this was even before John's Gallotone, which was in fact his second guitar) and they went to a guitar teacher to learn how to play. However they soon realised that the teacher wanted to teach them how to play from music and all they wanted was a few chords. John's mother Julia could play the G banjo and so she suggested that they tune their guitars like banjos and she would teach them a couple of banjo chords, which they did.

I had an uncle who used to play in a band in Wales and a friend of his was selling a guitar and a banjo. By the time I found out about this the guitar had been sold so I ended up with the banjo. The next day I went into Quarry Bank School and saw my friend Eric and told him I had just bought a banjo. He asked me if I wanted to be in a group with John Lennon, Pete Shotton, Eric himself and a lad called Bill Smith on the Tea chest bass. I was delighted and soon learned to play the chords by ear. The others must have been playing for some weeks as they seemed to be able to play quite a few songs.
 
The repertoire was taken from our hero, Lonnie Donegan, and other successful skiffle groups of the time, Chas McDevitt, Bob Cort, etc  It was often difficult to get the words of the songs as we were still schoolboys (I was 14 when the Quarrymen started, John was a year older than me). So we would listen to the radio and try to copy down the words of the songs. This meant several attempts on different days and we were not always successful so John would fill in the gaps with a few appropriate sounding words. 
 
We discovered fairly quickly that the same three chords which worked for skiffle songs also worked for rock 'n' roll and so more of this type of music found its way onto our repertoire. The band lineup changed in late 1956 as Bill Smith left under pressure from his father to concentrate on his schoolwork. He was replaced by Len Garry on tea chest bass, Len happened to come from the same school as Paul McCartney and George Harrison.

We also acquired a drummer, Colin Hanton, who was a couple of years older than the rest of us. Colin was an apprentice upholster and thus from his wages he was able to buy a cheap drumkit on instalments from the famous Frank Hessy's shop in Liverpool. Colin was interested in jazz and that was why he had bought the drums. Although I had known Colin for about ten years it was Eric who discovered he had a drumkit and who invited him to join the band.
 
(end of first part)

Daniele Bazzani