One year with The Beatles (part three)

“I never sleep at night, I call your name.”

At the beginning of April 1964 they have 5 singles topping the Us charts, it is incredible when you consider that England was a land of conquest (musically speaking) for the Americans. The list saw "Can’t Buy Me Love," "Twist and Shout," "She Loves You," "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "Please Please Me" in this order, but their singles in the Top 100 were 12!Our analysis goes on with the following material:

•    20/03/64 Can't Buy Me Love b/w You Can't Do That (45 rpm)
•    19/06/64 Long Tall Sally/I Call Your Name/Slow Down/Matchbox (EP)
•    10/07/64 A Hard Day's Night b/w Things We Said Today (45 rpm)
•    10/07/64 A Hard Day's Night (LP)

Again, the band's history from a song.

"I Call Your Name" is a very important song in the analysis of what happened: it has all the characteristics of a blues, but it’s not, also those of rock'n'roll, without being one, and the stigma of Pop, that they invented in those days.

Blues are the lyrics of the desperate crying of those who lost their woman for a mistake: "Oh I can’t sleep at night, But Just The Same, I never weep at night, I call your name", but as happens in Blues there is not only sadness, the bluesman sings his desolation with a smile, as Lennon does now.

Like in Blues we have a structure with 7^th dominant chords, but it’s made of different elements, with major and minor chords mixed wisely.

Rock’n’roll is the freedom of white kids to “steal” music from the black musicians, ma in their case is less insolent: where Elvis “stole” “That’s Alright Mama” from Arthur Crudup, playing it note-by-note like the original, The Beatles take, alter, transform, make something new from music that already existed.

Pop is all the rest: love lyrics for a girl, the compelling rhythm, the beautiful sounds with George’s 12 string used by many after him, the fresh and new harmonic structure.

To make things more interesting, the song has three (!!!) tempo changes, not just the one between verse and chorus, but a truly remarkable one under the guitar solo, the band goes from a straight time to a shuffle and then goes back, these are things that we do not care enough, it was 1963.

Not to mention "You Can’t Do That", using the dominant 7^th chords and the major and minor ones as they were one thing, with the addition of a 7b/9+ chord below the line "Because I Told You Before ", a chord that Hendrix made his trademark years after, it is performed here with nonchalance, as if thrown there.

The episode could end here, but it won’t. Those just described are not even the most important songs!

What about “Can't Buy Me Love”, with Paul producing one of his legendary performances and many of the previous elements still applicable in this case? A Blues, but it seems everything but that. Even because it starts with Em/Am/Dm/G/C. Not exactly the typical structure of the Devil’s Music.

A Hard Day's Night is the first work entirely made of originals, and again (it’ll happen until 1970) one remarkable piece like that described before stay out of the picture. The title-track opening chord sparked the welter of assumptions about its composition (it’s a G7^th/4^th), and the harmonic structure with the change of key is part of a mechanism that has changed music forever. Go and hear how it ends and we can talk about it.

As modern is the underestimated "When I Get Home", which changes mood 2 or 3 times, from rock'n'roll to pop to the wildest rhythm and blues, all within two minutes. On each chord change we can hear decades of compositions of subsequent authors. "I'll Be Back" goes back and forth all the time from major to minor within a couple of chords, but we do not realize it until we try and play it.

What we notice again is the huge variety of compositions, from the sweet melody of “If I Fell” or “And I Love Her”, to the driving rhythm of “Tell Me Why” and “Can’t Buy Me Love”, on the whole work we notice an always higher composing level, melody is never trite and we already discussed some brilliant examples of harmonic textures.

Lyrics start to be a little more mature, it’s not just about trying to reach young girls with simple words of love: on “Anytime At All” John offers his shoulder to a crying friend, “Can’t Buy Me Love” is clearly addressed to girls who wish “to be bought” with jewels, but Paul is clear in what he sings,  I can give you a diamond ring, but you can’t buy me love.

Only for Laster

We wrote about George’s 12 string, used after him by Byrds’ Roger McGuinn and many others and then typical of a certain 60’s sound. This guitar is heard on many songs analyzed here, offering a new sound that the four don’t miss to use, George uses it even for the solo on "I Call Your Name”.

The whole album is Harrison grappling with the usual finishing work on electric guitar, and some of the most interesting things are played on a nylon string, some passages are analyzed in the acoustic section on Fingerpicking.net.

His solos are still moving mainly on the Pentatonic Blues scale, it’s just a few months away from the latest releases and stylistically they can’t be too far, the pace of work were tight and each of the four Beatles knew exactly what to do, including George. Lennon was always granitic on rhythm guitar  and Harrison precise in his interventions, these are the hallmark of this period.

(read the rest on fingerpicking.net)

Winston's Thoughts

by Davide Canazza

A Hard Day's Night is the first mature album of the Beatles. The road taken by With The Beatles results in an LP that consecrates them simultaneously around the world, thus giving rise to the phenomenon that is now called Beatlemania.

In addition to the new album the Beatles are playing the movie, the first feature film that sees them as actors and performers themselves, struggling with a typical day: transfer by train to the place of a concert and rehearsals for the show. All while trying to escape by hundreds of screaming girls and wild fans. The first seven tracks on the album are the soundtrack of the film.

Their third album is the first masterpiece of the Liverpool quartet, not only for the lyrical and musical content of the thirteen tracks - all signed Lennon-McCartney - but also because the personalities of the two bandleaders start to emerge. Paul is now more independent, his style is maturing. The compositions are always signed by the two of them, but you can already hear what are the parts of either and which ones are still made in pairs.

The step forward was already evident by "Can’t Buy Me Love", recorded in just four Takes in Paris (first and only session outside the British soil). The rest of the disc is however recorded at the return from their first trip to the USA and the historical participation in their first Ed Sullivan Show: breathing the same air of those who were their primary source of inspiration, the giants of the blues, R'n'R and Rhythm and Blues should have affected not just their compositions!

New arrangements peep in the thirteen tracks, along with the presence of new sounds favored by the entry of new instruments: George’s Rickenbacker 360-12, nylon string guitar, percussion and a lot of piano.

Only for Laster

In early 1964 new VOX amplifiers were given to the Beatles, which had become the official endorsers of the company for all official shows (concerts, TV shows). The volume of the AC30s was no longer enough for the live shows, that's why the AC50 were created for them, a single channel head with two EL34 tubes. The first speaker cabinet, the one they used for A Hard Day's Night, were taken from the box dell'AC30 with two 12" speakers and an extra horn.

Even Paul was given a new amp for his bass guitar: the VOC AC100 Bass, 100-watt head with a case with two 15" speakers. George came back from America with the Rickenbacker 360-12, a 12-string hollow body guitar given to him directly by the american company. Even John was given a new Rickenbacker 325: always a 3 / 4 scale guitar but with a thinner body.

This new guitar is used for the rhythm parts of "I'm Happy Just To Dance With You", "Tell Me Why", "When I Get Home", "You Can't Do That " and all the songs on the EP Long Tall Sally. On the remaining tracks Lennon used his acoustic guitar.

Lennon has defined himself as a rhythm guitarist, but this album confirms his debut as a lead guitarist. Actually he played the solo of "You Can't Do That", a song recorded almost entirely live, except for the percussion and choirs overdubs.

Here George plays the twelve-string electric and performs a sort of arpeggiated riff, and then leaves John the burden to play the solo. This track anticipates Lennon's lead guitar style, particularly inspired by the blues.

John plays on the "G" Pentatonic Blues Scale, using several bichords and double-stops, with very pronounced bending, often picking two strings simultaneously. The solo is explained in the related video.

As Daniele mentioned earlier, Harrison makes extensive use of the 12-string Rickenbacker for the solos: the aforementioned "I Call Your Name", "A Hard Day's Night", "I Should Have Known Better" and "Any Time At All" (here doubled by the piano). The same guitar, only for the rhythmic, is also used in "You Can't Do That."

The only solos played by George with the Gretsch Country Gentleman are on "Can't Buy Me Love", "Long Tall Sally" (two solos in the studio version, while live the first of the two solos will always be played by John), "Matchbox" and "Slowdown".

(read the rest on fingerpicking.net)

“I played with John Lennon”

by Rod Davis (second part)

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.

We practised at least once a week in the houses of different members of the band. John was always the lead vocalist and the rest of us would sing the choruses, always in unison, I don't think we understood what harmony was!
On stage there was never more than one microphone which naturally always went to John. We had no electric guitars and no amplifiers, so we thrashed the guitars and banjo as hard as possible to make some volume. No one was capable of playing a guitar solo and it would have been hopeless anyway without amplification. We frequently had to ask our drummer Colin to play more quietly, preferably with brushes rather than sticks, so as not to drown the rest of the group.

I eventually bought a banjo tutor and learned some chord inversions higher up the neck of the banjo but John would never let me use them, he said I had to play the same as everybody else. We had no musical ambitions, we were just a bunch of kids enjoying ourselves, being up on the stage in front of our friends, especially the girls. We played at the Cavern three or four times at least in early 1957, we also played at dances in the interval between a proper dance band. In Liverpool there were many skiffle competitions which we entered but without success.

I drifted out of the Quarrymen around the end of July 1957, just before Paul Mc Cartney came in, in effect he replaced me. I was not interested in rock 'n' roll, in fact I actively disliked it, preferring the more country and folk material which originated from groups like the Carter Family.  From 1957 onwards electric guitars and amplifiers started to become available in Britain, but they were still very expensive. But by this time there were guitarists emerging in Britain who could play solos, George Harrison being a prime example.

Although the majority of skiffle groups became rock 'n' roll groups, others became folk groups or country and western bands. As well as being the source of the rock music boom in Britain, skiffle can also take the credit for the folk music boom which began in the late 1950's.

There was a concert a few years ago at the Albert Hall in London called "Skiffle - the Roots of British Rock" at which people like Adam Faith, The Shadows, Cliff Richard, Tony Sheridan, Screaming Lord Sutch, Wee Willie Harris, Chas and Dave, Joe Brown and many others paid tribute to skiffle, the music which had started them all off on their careers. No doubt about it, without the skiffle craze the rock scene in Britain would never have happened and I personally have Lonnie Donegan to thank for my lifetime interest in music."

You had John Lennon in the band, was that at the time something you noticed? I mean, was there something about his approach to music that made him different?

John was not much good as a guitarist - we all just played three or four chords but he was very charismatic fronting the group as the singer and he could hold the attention of an audience very well. Mind you, if you have the only microphone in a group it's easier for you to be charismatic that for the other poor guys with no microphone!

As I pointed out earlier, John would fill in the words to the songs which we couldn't obtain, one of which was "Come go with me", originally by the DelVikings. We sang lots of songs about trains and jails, so John had us sing:

 "Come, come, come, come, come go with me
Down, down, down, down, to the penitentiary".

No "Penitentiary" was mentioned in the original song but it sounded good and it scanned well. Paul McCartney when he first set eyes on the Quarrymen at St Peter's Church Fete claims that we were performing this song, and he was very impressed by the way that John was improvising the lyrics as he thought, however we always sang it that way!

I'm afraid that I didn't recognize any major musical talent in John at the time, a shiver never went down my spine when he sang……..although listening to a scrap of the recording of "Putting on the Style" which was made at St Peter's in 1957, his voice does now seem to be quite remarkable. We were just one of the hundreds of skiffle groups in Liverpool.

His major evident talent at the time was his drawing, he was a brilliant and savage cartoonist which was immediately apparent to anyone who saw his drawings."

Daniele Bazzani