Over the past few weeks I’ve been reading Ian McDonald’s “Revolution in the head” which famously takes a track-by-track look at the entire recorded Beatles output. I paid only a couple of quid for the weighty tome and when last year, glancing at the occasional entry I found McDonald’s tone to be a little too withering and weary, I gave it up for an exercise weighted-down by it’s own conceptual conceit. It was only this April when I picked it up again, its tiny units ideal for snacking at reading, that I became ensnared. As a result of the way I picked the book up, reading it in its entirety was like assembling patchwork. I read the later chapters first, then the book’s middle section, then the introduction through to the middle and then the conclusion.
It fair bowled me over I’ll have to admit. Most immediately remarkable is Ian McDonald’s astonishingly clear grasp of musical terminology. Just plucking a section randomly from its pages, here he is on George Harrison’s “I want to tell you”:
“Thus his eleven-bar sequence aspires upwards from A major to B Major only to proceed from there in two directions at once, creating a frustrated bitonal dissonance (G sharp 7 diminished against E7, or E7 flat 9) before falling back on the home triad. Similarly, the restlessly irregular phrases of the middle eight (doggedly pressing on with the syncopated crotchets of [66] IF I NEEDED SOMEONE) revolve dejectedly around B minor until inner-light dawns and resolve returns with an ascent to a suspended fourth on A major, fiercely reinforced by Starr’s battering drums”
Well if that doesn’t impress you I don’t know what would. I suppose this kind of knotty dissection of the substance of music is common in Classical music. Within the entire Pop/Rock continuum I can only think of Kyle Gann (when he’s on the subject of the Avant-Garde Minimalists) who brings such knowledge of music “proper” to a critique. I suppose it’s unsurprising that we should find this kind of discourse at that intersection given the kinship La Monte Young has to Pop/Rock. But making it all the more unusual McDonald, even though he was a songwriter himself (songs performed by Phil Manzanera) and wrote one of the most keenly praised books on Shostakovich, had a critical background as lowly as the NME. I mean have you ever read writing like that in The Wire? It’s almost surprising that one hasn’t. The meta-critical point being made here is that only The Beatles are worthy of this kind of attention. On the other hand it would take an entirely different kind of vocabulary to talk about the nuances of production in the digital era; much of McDonald’s writing seems tooled to dissect the playing of instruments and of singing, less Post-Eno timbral innovation (though to be fair he is also excellent on varispeed and compression at Abbey Road)
Isn’t it a bit dry? Well, no. Actually I found it quite gripping. I couldn't claim to understand it all, but I got the general drift. Given that I’ve been rooting around for techniques to justify my kinda casually adopted adherence to the discipline of music criticism (recently also rocking out on Barney Hoskyns richly historical bent) to come across an approach with such integrity of purpose was fascinating, if a route practically impossible to follow to the non-musical critic (ha!). In other areas however McDonald is less clear and subsequently less strong. I was talking about the book to Mark Sinker the other day (second time I’ve mentioned this visit now…) and he rightly focussed on McDonald’s uncertainty about the ramifications of the 1960s. Was it the start of our descent into a fetishisation of consumer electronics, the point at which marriage disintegrated as an institution or the divine site of inspiration and constructive transgression? Short of vaguely intimating that this was the era when the idea of the death of god finally washed up on the shore it’s not really explored, or resolved satisfactorily. In truth it seems the grand narrative confuses McDonald, though telescoping out to it from the material of the songs is undoubtedly ambitious.
What the book did foster in me was a desire to dig a little deeper into The Beatles oeuvre. I suppose it’s fair to say that people these days are generally better acquainted with the later Beatles. Since a teenager I’ve been thoroughly intimate with the LPs Sergeant Peppers, The White Album, Abbey Road and their clutch of later singles (Penny Lane, Strawberry Fields Forever etc). But beyond that people my age (35) grew up with Beatles music as the very fabric of their musical existence. I sung “Yellow Submarine” at school with my house, my uncle made me a tape with “Flying” on it, my friend Alexander’s father played us “Fool on the Hill”, my Mum’s only record was a copy of “A Hard Day’s Night”. I’d be surprised if The Beatles figured very much in the lives of today’s children (I don’t really care, but I’m curious…). I also wonder if many of my generation actually know The Beatles earlier LPs?
There is a strange mantra that circulates these days amongst hipsters, hipsters like the friendly hairy young dude who works upstairs at the Music Video Exchange. The mantra goes: “I’m not really mad about The Beatles. The best Beatles LPs are Revolver and Rubber Soul. I’m not so fond of Sergeant Peppers and The White Album” Yeah I know it’s just critical shorthand, just like my pal Jon Dale’s strap-line; “The Kinks and The Byrds, not the Beatles and the Stones”. I suppose they both amount to a comfortably reserved, coolly detached perspective on the sixties and “that band”. I reckon that’s because digesting any music after The Beatles is tricky, rather like settling for, and acquiring a taste for the “interesting texture” of pig’s trotters in lieu of filet steak. It just confuses the hell out of one, and resistance seems to be the only tenable path to take. But you know what I say? I say, submit! Submit to the rays of the sun people! There’s absolutely no getting around it, The Beatles are the glowing orb in our firmament.
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“I should have known better” (from A Hard Day’s Night 1964)
I mentioned earlier that I suspect people don’t know the ins-and-outs of the early Beatles stuff, and that’s where I started. In fact their very early stuff doesn’t really do it for me. Quite easily the best thing on the “Please Please Me” LP is “Twist and Shout”, and everyone is familiar with that. The “With The Beatles” LP (the one The Residents parodied the cover of…) is stronger, but again the most powerful track is the last one on the LP, another cover version of American Rock’n’Roll, “Money”. When I start to get excited is “A Hard Day’s Night”. The track you need to hear is “I should have known better”. This is electrifying, sublime stuff.
McDonald characterises Lennon’s song writing style as horizontal, he likes to drill these lateral melodic lines, holding a core note with his nasally drone of a voice swerving up a note or down a note to devastating effect. You know how it is when you’re in the shower and you search around for that note at which frequency the entire room vibrates? Well, that’s what Lennon does with your head. McCartney on the other is a ravishing harmonicist, always leaping up and down octaves, in one sense rupturing the trance-like states Lennon liked to foster. Dazzling in his own right too, of course. This track is perhaps the first example of Lennon’s mature approach to song. He holds the “I” at the start of the song and you can literally count to eight, boring (in every sense) into your mind, like a ray gun.
Footnote: It’s fascinating to investigate the micro-history of this Ur-vocal-drone. The Beatles were mad about The Every Brothers, as was La Monte Young who loved their intonation and their intense sine-wave vocals. Who’s working with La Monte in New York, years before Lennon had heard of her? Yoko Ono.
“No reply” (from Beatles for Sale 1964)
Straight away it ought be categorically stated that “Beatles for Sale” is unbelievably brilliant. Less fragmented than “Revolver” and “Rubber Soul”, less knowing than “Sergeant Peppers” and just plain superior to “Abbey Road” (obv). After “The White Album” it’s my clear second favourite Beatles LP. Why did it take me so long to discover it? Widely regarded as their miserable record, The Beatles apparently struggled to shake of its existential gloom over the next few years, clearly afraid that being moody beaus wasn’t going to secure their pop future. Hence the comedy songs mooted by John and Paul as their next phase in interviews in the press at the time materialising in the form of “Day Tripper”, “Paperback Writer”, “Yellow Submarine” etc and also tunes like McCartney’s “I’m down”, widely recognised as taking the piss out of misery-guts Lennon. I suppose their Art School background and the influence of the German “Exis” (abstract-expressionist-hued beatniks) came to bear here. McDonald believes “No Reply” is influenced by Dylan (another conduit for black leather misery) but, scratches head, I’m not convinced. Starting out on what sounds like a clockwork riff, after Lennon’s half-spoken half-sung entry, underpinned by giant grand piano chord, the band explode in full harmony: “I saw the light” the effect is one of sheer “luft” like watching a sail suddenly billow full of wind. The same effect, this magical inflation, is used on the lines: “I nearly died”, the death/light dual sonic image overwhelming in its context.
“I’m a loser” (from Beatles for Sale 1964)
One of the shiver-down-one’s-spine moments in “Revolution in the head” comes when McDonald relates:
“That The Beatles represented something transmitting at a higher creative frequency was clear even to many outside the pop audience. The poet Allen Ginsberg, for example, amazed his intellectual confreres by getting up and dancing delightedly to “I want to hold your hand” when he first heard it in a New York night club.”
It’s precisely that twin sense of enlightenment and excitement I get listening to The Beatles. It’s a superficial observation but just this week I’ve given myself a quasi-narcotic high (compounded by exhaustion and sleep deprivation) just by listening to their music repeatedly. I’ll probably have to check in with some dirge for a week or two just to stop radiating.
“I’m a loser”, like the other stunning tunes on “Beatles For Sale” has this sense of immanent infinity contained within the almost dumb structure of girl/boy love-song. The chorus, like the blossoming of “No Reply” is almost too tonally oversaturated to be possible, as though it’s emitting the sonic equivalent of gamma rays. McDonald is unsure whether to be sharply critical of the crass themes to The Beatles music of this era. He reasonably explains it away as though, in truth, Lennon and McCartney simply saw lyrics as a vehicle for sound, and at this stage that they were unconcerned as to their substance. However this would suggest that there was some miraculous improvement in their poetry in later years. Sure their lyrics became more adult, more serious, more complex, more polemical, but they never really improved! Actually the lustrous sonic context (those piercing voices, those chiming diving guitars) lends an iconic gravitas to lyrics like Lennon’s here: “My tears are falling like rain from the sky”, which in any other context would be drivel. McDonald makes a similar remark about "Rain" himself (see bottom of page).
“Baby’s in Black” (from Beatles for Sale 1964)
What you have to watch for here again is the chorus, which is a swoon on wax. It’s fairly well known that Kevin Shields has a sweet tooth when it comes to The Beatles, collecting even their rarest off-cuts and bootlegs (Does that make the non-believers any less sceptical?) and when you hear the heart-crushing swerve of these voices, well it makes perfect sense. This track is almost well known isn’t it?
“I don’t want to spoil the party” (from Beatles for Sale 1964)
Lennon deploying his mono-chordal thing to full effect on the chorus:
“I_______Still_______Love_______Her_______”
“What you’re doing” (from Beatles for Sale 1964)
Being the fifth and final selection from this most excellent long-player. One of a legion of songs Paul wrote about his increasingly troubled fling with 1980s cake impresario Jane Asher. In “Revolution In the Head” the persistence of this motif of their relationship is one of the almost tedious bits of the book. I don’t blame McDonald, it’s obviously an historical truth, it just keeps coming round and round again. I’d like to stop here for a second and think of poor beleaguered Mr McCartney. Yes I rank amongst his most persistent stalkers, unwittingly at times (!) but it’s only because there’s something nakedly unguarded about him that is very easy to identify with, is very human. The way the press leapt to arms and trampled all over Heather McCartney, ostensibly in defence of ol’ puppy face (eventually requiring him to intervene in her protection, ha!) is symptomatic of the way people cherish him. I’m not alone in other words. News of the World, read all about it here, innit.
Anyway, combing through his back catalogue and there are so many songs which have a kind of resonance to the politics of romance. Until he found Linda he was obviously at sea in relationships. This plaintive little number, another super tune, is all the evidence you need.
“She’s a woman” (b-side to “I feel fine” 1964)
Vis a vis Kevin Shields, there’s another connection to kitchen-sink British music with this classic McCartney number, the b-side to "I feel fine" which came out at the same time as "Beatles for Sale". This was covered by none other than Scritti Politti. Green went for the jugular of the tune's blue-eyed reggae inflections and got Maxi Priest to cajole Shabba Ranks into doing the toast. I have Green's record somewhere. Suffice to say the original is about a million times better, is literally stunning. The bassiest of all The Beatles productions, with a mad-crazy tightness to the playing, McCartney’s vocals are a little ridiculous in their soul-man posturing but still convincing.
“The night before” (from Help! 1965)
Help! was when people started to really marvel at The Beatles, when they started to acquire the aura that they sustained until Sgt. Pepper and eventually traded on. Hiding “Yesterday” away on the b-side was generally seen as an act of preposterous over-abundance of talent. Help! was also when McDonald identifies the shift between Pop and Rock in their work, especially manifest in the slowed-down beat and nihilism of “Ticket to Ride”. For him Rock is simply heavy textural music, as opposed to Pop which is succinct and breezy. With regards to The Beatles that makes perfect sense descriptively, though the idea that they somehow changed their identity fundamentally I’m less comfortable with. I mean, when they were making “Pop” so was everyone else, their “Pop” was no less rocky than the first wave of 1950s Rock’n’Roll (the likes of Little Richard and Chuck Berry) was? What gives?
Help! isn’t nearly as strong a record qua LP as “Beatles For Sale”, OK it has three big hits (“Help!”, “You’ve got to hide your love away” and “Ticket to Ride”) as well as “Yesterday” (eugh!) but beyond that it’s a bit of a desert. What it is worth remembering is that music industry regulations made it illegal for singles to be included on LPs if they were released separately. So tracks like “Drive My Car” and “Day Tripper” and “We Can work it out” which all came out as singles in the Help! period couldn’t be included on the LP. Which seems crazy to us. Famously Sergeant Pepper should have contained “Penny Lane” and “Strawberry Fields Forever”, their release as a single outwith that LP being George Martin’s greatest regret in his career. It would have made perfect sense wouldn’t it? Jostle your playlists.
McDonald is scathing about this track:
“Nothing surprising happens in the harmony, the lyrics are weak, and the track as a whole is only fair mainstream pop of its period.”
But I just love it to pieces and can’t get my head round why he detests it. Ian, yield.
“I’m looking through you” (from “Rubber Soul” 1966)
Another of Paul’s numbers inspired by Jane Asher. Probably the most well known of all of these selections by merit of the fact that literally everyone in the world has heard “Rubber Soul”. Still I slipped it in my number ten because I like it better than the other tracks on the LP. I love it, in fact.
Footnote: I have the American edition of “Rubber Soul” which is a complete botch job by Capitol, who released their stuff in the states. It’s missing “Nowhere Man” and “Drive My Car” as well as “What goes on”. It also features an alternative cut to this tune with a false start. So now you know.
“Rain” (b-side to “Paperback Writer” 1966)
This is pure Lennon this and The Beatles most presciently psychedelic track, pointing as it does to the mood and tenor of Revolver and the LPs after it, records I've been familiar with for a long time. Ian McDonald is dazzling on the subject of "Rain":
“Generally agreed to be The Beatles finest b-side, Lennon’s “Rain” expresses the vibrancy lucidity of a benign LSD experience. However, the weather imagery would be banal were it solely metaphorical. What alters this is the track’s sheer sonic presence- an attempt to convey the lustrous weight of the world as it can appear to those under the drug’s influence. Lennon’s ‘rain’ and ‘sun’ are physical phenomena experienced in a condition of heightened consciousness, the record portraying a state of mind in which one is peacefully at home in an integrated universe.”
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I’m particularly interested in The Beatles at the moment as because of this fascinating and iconic battle which has been staged (again) between Apple and Apple. This time round it’s a battle foundering on the issue of whether Steve Jobs has instituted a record company (he’s successfully and convincingly argued he’s running a kind of record shop) but I’m perhaps imaginatively construing it to be a cosmic struggle between two ideas of what music is. I’m obviously on The Beatles side, and what they and (coughs) I are saying is that music matters. We’re letting it loose like a cougar. We’re celebrating its transformative powers. We’re saying it deserves to have a physical presence, to be embodied amongst us. We’re the good guys. What Steve Jobs is saying is that music needs to know its place. He’s saying: “Feel the pleasure you get when you tame this wild animal.” He’s actually capitalising on all the energising work me and The Beatles have done saying, kinda slyly, “Doesn’t that feel nice”. Did you notice the evil way Apple pretended to extend the olive branch; offering to sell The Beatles's tracks at the iStore having crushed Macca in the lawsuit? Jobs is damping the whole thing down. I think if we’re ever going to stop the rot that’s eating away at music, we need to go back and have another look at The Beatles. Which, in my own likkle way, is what I did.
