Decima puntata della rubrica che vede Daniele Bazzani e Giovanni Onofri parlare delle...
“But tomorrow may rain so, I’ll follow the sun”.
Beatles For Sale was released only five (!!!) months after A Hard Days’ Night and less than two years after the first album, Please, Please Me, two years in which everything was changed. The four guys from Liverpool shook everything was possible to shake, they were on top of the charts all over the world and already changed Pop’s history with a bunch of songs that, putting them together today, are really hard to face for the most part of those call themselves “composers”. They were at the time between 21 and 24 years old and took part to weird press conferences during which they faced any kind of journalists.
We believe (as history showed) that a slight flexion was unavoidable. You cannot keep those rhythms, especially if you spend most of your time going from one place to another, places sometimes divided by an ocean. They never had the time to write, records were finished in a few hours, first take of a song was often the good one, it happened more than once on this record.
In spite of all that, if we go on with the game we started and we put in the track list the amazing single that launched the album, we invite we invite you to define “poor” Beatles For Sale.
I Feel Fine (Lennon - McCartney)Fourteen tracks infused with Rock’n Roll with pretty high peaks of writing, from “I Feel Fine” to “I’ll Follow The Sun”, from “Eight Days A Week” to “She’s A Woman”, we can say everything but quality is missing.
There is a downturn, and we would like to see.
John and Paul’s vocal performances on "Rock and Roll Music" and "Kansas City" are extraordinary, the choice of cover songs always excellent, and "I Feel Fine" has a foot in the future. By memory, no one had ever started a song with a guitar’s feedback, this is what people call to be ahead! And no one ever used a fade in to start a song, rather than a fade out to close it, as it happens on "Eight Days A Week".
Always remembering that we speak of a record which is often considered bad. And if we take out a couple of covers there are still twelve songs left, in the most part originals, only five months away from A Hard Day's Night, which is still an essential record of the ‘900. Crazy.
Only for Laster
The disc is suitable, inevitably, to a fast and easy reading: the opening riff of "I Feel Fine" is history, the composition itself is now far from the "silly songs" that the four - of the first period - are too easily associated with; the refrain is pure Pop even if the matrix of the song is more Rock'n'Roll, a mixture they taught us to appreciate on several previous occasions.
And the B-side "She's A Woman" follows the same line, a blues tune that suddenly opens up to chord changes typical of other styles, with McCartney singing as the greats of Soul, but in its way, a warm and shrewd voice to drive people crazy, for a 22 years old white guy.
"No Reply" in its apparent simplicity has F and G Major sixths chords, with a change of key going to A Major in the space of two measures, remarkable.
On "I'm A Loser" we find a shiny Lennon dealing with its song-forms between country and who-knows-what, and if you listen to Paul’s walking-bass part on the chorus you’ll find it interesting. George‘ solo is one of its best moments in the Chet Atkins fingerpicking style, his solutions are always different and interesting.
Same guitar style that we find on "Words of Love" by Buddy Holly, perfect for George’s guitar when he was inspired by his native of Luttrell, Tennessee, guitar master. Yes, that "Luttrell" played by Tommy Emmanuel on his Only solo album, but this is a different story.
As for the other guitar’ solos on the album, George never repeates himself and avoids banality and common places in his short interventions. “Baby’s In Black” is a John and Paul ¾ song and it was the first to be written on the new album, the bluesy feel is here evident, as the beautiful two-voice line, the chords and melody on the words “Oh, how long will it take” recall for harmony and voice mix that “You Won’t See Me” we’ll find in a few episodes.
The amazing “I’ll Follow The Sun” was written before 1960 and used here because they needed more originals, lucky us!
George’s 12-string guitar on “Every Little Thing” is still played in the Atkins’ style and set a standard for many records produced in the ‘60s, listen to The Byrds to understand what we say. Again in this case harmonic changes are various and interesting, with sudden key changes.
(read the rest on fingerpicking.net)
Winston's Thoughts
by Davide Canazza
A Hard Day's Night was released July 10 of '64 and one month later, exactly on July 11, the Beatles were already in the studio to record the the first song of the next album. In fact on June 3 a demo of "No Reply" was recorded, most likely with the George on drums, because Ringo was in the hospital for surgery to tonsils.
We'd like to talk now about the sources that allow us to know all these things. Leaving aside the many issues and biographies available, often unreliable or inaccurate, designed more to look for a journalistic scoop rather a philological reconstruction, the most reliable sources in order to write a musical history of the Liverpool quartet are Marc Lewisohn's chronicles ("Eight years at Abbey Road" and "The history of the Beatles") and the three double album The Beatles Anthology.
A fundamental role is even played by hundreds of bootlegs and outtakes from the sessions at Abbey Road from 1962 to 1969. The outtakes concerning Beatles For Sale recording sessions reveal some surprises and say a lot about the recording methods adopted by the Quartet: John, Paul, George and Ringo began to discover the benefits of overdubs.
The first tracks, recorded between August and early October saw them still face the song together, in direct as it was a live, trying the song until it was perfect and then adding any further instrument: for this reason they used to record all the takes of each track.
From October 6 they tested a new technique, during "She's A Woman" recording sessions: the song was recorded starting from the basic rhythm track (drums, bass and guitar), without the voices, and when the final version of the base was reached, then they could add the guitar solo, the vocals, other instruments.
Only for Laster
Beatles For Sale photo sessions show Abbey Road studio 2 with all the gear The Beatles used for the songs from this album. George plays the Gretsch 6119 Tenessean (Tennessee rose) and his Rickenbacker 360/12, Paul the inseparable Hofner violin bass, John the acoustic-electrified Gibson J160E and two Rickenbacker 325: the new "Miami" and a 12-string.
In particular, we see him pick up on this new 12-string in a picture shot on September 30. A comparison with the outtakes we can deduce that this guitar was used in the first version of "What You're Doing", a discarded recording when the song was remade on 26 October.
On October 8, was recorded "She's A Woman" following a new recording method. The first take sees a rhythm guitar played by John in a Chuck Berry's "Memphis Tennessee" style. Paul is on bass and vocals, Ringo on drums. At the sixth attempt, the rhythm base of the song is ready, and already includes Paul's final voice, then George's solo and a piano played by Paul are added.
The same policy is followed ten days later to record "I Feel Fine". The first take is in A key and the initial feedback is already present, this explains the fact that bass note and the initial feedback of the guitar is in A, even if the final song will be in G.
The riff in the intro is played by John with his acoustic Gibson amplified via pick-up (a P90). The first version is sung by its author while playing guitar and presents a difficulty: the key is too high. The second take is in G, and the song is sung for rehearsal.
The next six following takes are only instrumental: acoustic rhythm guitar (John), electric guitar playing the main riff (George), bass and drums. Perfection is reached on the eighth attempt. Then is added a solo played by George, the lead vocals and choruses.
If in more complex songs like the two previously analyzed the Beatles have to resort to new recording methods, for their favorite piece it takes them only one or two attempts: "Rock'n'Roll music", "Kansas City" and "Everybody's Trying To Be My Baby" are three "right first time", "Words Of Love" requires just three attempts.
(read the rest on fingerpicking.net)
“It was only Rock'nRoll”
by Fabio Maccheroni
This episode is enriched by Fabio Maccheroni’s contribution, he’s a journalist and huge Beatles’ fan.
We often hear about the rivality between Beatles and Rolling Stones as if it was a sport thing like Clay-Foreman or Coppi-Bartali. Truth is that it was a made-up competition, born on the audience’s emotion and that, obviously, involved the two band’s entourage, more than the players.
No coincidence that the record companies were trying not to publish the new songs at the same time. In this "face to face" the audience fell into a misunderstanding enhanced by the "No No No" shouted by Jagger in "Satisfaction ". It found an easy opposition in the Fab Four’s "Yeah Yeah Yeah", and it was easy to compare the shampooed hair against the rebel look of the Stones.
Especially looking at the phenomenon from a distance, with a few less gray hair than we had if we lived through Beatlemania, it would seem obvious. But it’s “No, no no”, instead.
The Beatles were a rock’n’roll band before the Stones and they are the true expression of the working class of a nation that struggled to rebound after years of bombing.
They breathed the America of Chuck Berry and Carl Perkins in the pubs of Liverpool besieged by sailors and they climbed the Mountain-of-the-Unknowns with the hunger and stubbornness that you could get in a time of great ferment and great poverty.
Their success smells like sea because there was Hamburg, other than Liverpool.
There’s the legendary phrase: “These Germans speak english very well”, said by who saw them coming back from Germany in 1961/62, before Brian Epstein could clean them up to let them in the main system from the backdoor.
John Lennon used to say that “Unfortunately no one ever saw the real Beatles”. He meant that good old times rock’n’roll was gone forever, between pills to resist to hours and hours of histerical show, to sailors, whores and drunkards that used to crowd the slums’ Hamburg clubs and then the Livorpool’s Cavern Club, the Jazz temple desecrated by those four priests of the years that everyone will remember as the Fabulous Sixties.
The great strength of the Beatles was to not be satisfied with rock'n'roll, to experience, to impose a talent on which they had staked their lifes. Next to this fury, a stroke of luck: George Martin. Emi’s big man was struck by the talent, fascinated by the arrogance of Harrison as a nineteen year old: when he asked "Is there something wrong, boys?" George replied, "Yes, your tie. " Martin had the humility to lend his talent in the production, agreeing to work behind the scenes.
While the Beatles exploded, the Stones would perform at the Marquee in London, little place behind their houses. There they met the Beatles and George Harrison proposed them to the same guy who rejected the Beatles at Decca. Then Lennon and McCartney, attending one of their recordings (in the period in which even the Stones had good-guys hairstyles and jackets), composed for them "I Wanna Be Your Man ".
The dualism legend went on until Let It Be, until the end of the Beatles’ dream: “Dream is over”, sang John on his first solo album, released while the band was breaking up.
The Stones, though suffering a harder stroke with the loss of Brian Jones (replaced with Mick Taylor right before being found dead in his swimming pool), continued their extraordinary legend. With great difficulty: recording as they could, passing over the tense relationship between Jagger and Richards, moving to France for the problems with the English treasury. In doing so remaining Stones.
Not The Beatles.
They couldn’t stand anymore not having a life, buying clothes at night in shops opened only for them, having fans in front of their homes, sat on trees to observe them even in the bathroom, they could no longer be "Fabulous. " As Abbey Road was released, designed after the disastrous sessions for Let It Be (but the album is not to be discussed) to leave behind them a work worth their legend, every one of them wrote songs. Four albums were released at the same time, George Harrison even produced even an excellent triple LP (All Things Must Pass).
It was not only the group to explod, a tight, frustrated creativity exploded. Genius continued to pump air into the physiological Beatles‘ sphere making the explosion unavoidable. And that talent has continued to vibrate in the air, playing old hits and new flashes of genius, today as tomorrow, as the great classics, like Robert Johnson or Mozart.
Meanwhile, other comparisons have been added to the one with the Stones. All Beatles’ children, legitimate or not. The introduction of orchestras in rock music, the psychedelic sound, any kind of experimentation we have seen over the next forty years was already in The Beatles’ production. A production that bored the Beatles after less than eight years, while the world still buy them on vinyl, CD, DVD, analog or digital, and someone, who hasn’t white hair, still wonders: "Is it true that McCartney died in the sixties? ".
No, only a dream died.
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