Significance of song placement and order

I wouldn't want to fetishize the notion of the Beatles' immense contribution to pop music and cast everything genius and ingenious about them as proof-positive of their sui generis status. But it's hard to resist the temptation at times.

Consider something as seemingly commonplace and rote as song order. In pop's early years, when most artists (or their handlers anyway) viewed albums as little more than vehicles for potential hit singles, there wasn't much of a focus on arriving at a balanced distribution of quality or a nimble song-to-song flow over the space of a 12 or 14 track record. The strongest and most bankable material was to occupy the lead positions on each side while many of the remaining songs simply served as filler. It was the practice of the day.

Not so for the Beatles, even on their debut in 1963. Please Please Me contains 14 songs, thus 7 to a side. But on the final spot of the A-side (hardly a flattering placement by the standards of the time) is the rousing title track which, possibly outside of "I Saw Her Standing There" and "Twist and Shout," is the album's most insistently catchy and radio-ready entry. I should also point out that the other two songs I mention actually bookend Please Please Me, translating into a further dispersion of the highlights.

The Beatles then were of the view that an album could and, perhaps, should function as a unit of front-to-back strength and quality. This was their aim even if it was far from easily achievable.

P.S. Commentary on "Please Please Me" will arrive soon.

Clarification on "Ask Me Why"

In my previous post, I discussed the superb bridge on "Ask Me Why" and noted that, on the first section of each couplet, it seemed that either John's vocal was doubled or Paul's unison part blended in almost without a trace. On a separate website that runs these commentaries, one person took up this specific point and commented that "A Taste Of Honey" is the only entry on Please Please Me that features a "'trick duet.'" This term denotes a vocal that was recorded twice by the same person, but sounds as if two voices were at work. Thus, John and Paul were in fact singing in flawless unison on the part mentioned above.

It wasn't until 1967 that the more advanced and convenient technique for doubling, ADT (Automatic Double Tracking), was available to the Beatles. Here's an excerpt from the Revolver page on Wikipedia which explains the matter further:

“A key production technique used for the first time on this album was automatic double tracking (ADT), invented by EMI engineer Ken Townsend on 6 April 1966. This technique used two linked tape recorders to automatically create a doubled vocal track. The standard method was to double the vocal by singing the same piece twice onto a multitrack tape, a task Lennon particularly disliked. The Beatles were reportedly delighted with the invention, and used it extensively on Revolver. ADT quickly became a standard pop production technique, and led to related developments, including the artificial chorus effect.”

"Ask Me Why"

“Ask Me Why” was one of four songs that the Beatles played at Abbey Road Studios during their first recording session on June 6, 1962. Afterward, George Martin judged that this abundantly tender song wasn’t best suited for the Beatles’ debut single. That distinction would fall on “Love Me Do”, which is more instantly appealing and pop-wise than “Ask Me Why”. Conversely, the latter is a contained and low-impact affair that draws strength from the intricacy of its vocal arrangements.

On first contact, “Ask Me Why” comes off as little more than an earnest and submissive proclamation of love. Backed by an unassuming interaction of light guitar jangles, ticking percussion, and a lead guitar part lifted from a Miracles song, John Lennon, on vocals, anxiously plays the fool for his dearest: “Now you’re mine/ My happiness still makes me cry”. Why the tears, John? “It’s not because I’m sad/ But you’re the only love that I’ve ever had”. Evidently, he’s fallen hard for this girl. The one line that doesn’t seem vividly in sync with the lyric’s feverish tone is the opener – “I love you/ ‘Cause you tell me things I want to know” – which, far from being an indifferent sentiment, is just clumsily romantic. Otherwise, it’s all over-the-moon devotion. As if to reinforce the song’s intent, John and Paul even wrote its second half as a mere reprise of the first, only without one of the verses and plus an additional chorus.

What elevates the lyric above maudlin fluff is the vibrancy of its actual expression, mainly undertaken by John and Paul. Indeed, the technical prowess and invention of its vocal patterns, which also borrowed from the work of Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, keep “Ask Me Why” crisp and pleasantly buoyant.

It breaks down this way. The opening verse begins (I believe) with John, Paul, and George all in unison: “I love youuuu”. I’m not sure who sings exactly what, but at the end of “you”, both a straight “uuuu” and a “wu-wu-wu” are held out concurrently. Then, after John performs the verse’s next line by himself and a similar unison part follows, he does a different and longer section (“That I-I-I-I….”), flanked by “oooos” from Paul and George. Within just that half-minute, the vocals have already nimbly shifted here and there. Next comes another verse, succeeded by an exquisitely subtle bridge. On the first line – “I can’t believe” –, John’s part is either doubled or Paul sings unison and blends in seamlessly. From there to the end of the bridge, the pair fade in and out of harmony, with Paul performing a series of “spot” harmonies: first on “it’s happened to me”, then on “of anymore”, and finally on “misery” (the latter two are in succession but Paul seems to alter his vocal between them, which makes for distinct parts). The “spot” harmony was, in fact, one of the significant innovations that the Beatles brought to pop music. Lastly, the chorus features a unison vocal on “Ask me why” and, again, a couple of lines from John paired with backup “oooos.”

Beyond the draw of its changing patterns, what’s so rewarding and almost endearing about the vocal proficiency of “Ask Me Why” is how it exists in such small moments. Looking at the bigger picture, isn’t it remarkable to consider that part of the Beatles’ historic stamp on the pop world could unveil itself in the singing of just one word, like “misery”?



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Ringo, you can drive your car.

A momentous anniversary is upon us. On Oct. 8 1964, a bit more than 24 years after he was born and on the same month and day that would later witness the capture of "Che" Guevara in Bolivia and the birth of Matt Damon, the great Ringo Starr, whose ingenuity as a percussionist would too often play second or third banana to the skills of the other Beatles and who has seemed to navigate the pitfalls of celebrity so sanely and in good humor, yes that Ringo Starr on this day 44 years ago passed! his! driving! test! Congrats, brother.

Inspired by The Beatles

I'm going to start doing occasional posts focused on songs that strongly bear the Beatles' influence. They're great in number and many are superb tunes in their own right. They don't need to be directly linked to one specific song (like the Vines' "Factory" which strongly smacks of "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" by way of Nirvana on a mediocre day). Some might be more traceable to an era of the Beatles or a certain album. "White Album pop" isn't an atypical phrase to come across in a music review (though one must ask how it's possible to isolate the essence of that wild madhouse of a record). Others might seem inspired by one of the Beatles in particular (Paul with his whimsical and often precious style that John derided as "granny-music" or George with his Eastern-influenced work, etc, etc). As is obvious, the Beatles cast an immensely large shadow over all of pop music.

The first entry is Franz Ferdinand's "Eleanor Put Your Boots On" from their excellent 2005 album You Could Have It So Much Better. It's a lilting, winsome, and lightly melancholic ballad that is Paul McCartney through and through. And I promise that the connection is not so spurious as to be based solely on the fact that Macca wrote "Eleanor Rigby."

Enjoy Franz. They rule.



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"Boys"

Paul McCartney has fondly remarked on the innocence of the Beatles’ early years, a time when they could perform a song that seemed keen on members of the male sex and not, as a result, inspire widespread idle chatter. The song, “Boys”, was in fact a noted crowd-pleaser and, judging by the glow of joy that their recorded version emits, also a favorite of the Beatles themselves.

Written by Luther Dixon and Wes Farrell, “Boys” is a busy and rhythmically perky rock tune that features Ringo’s debut as a lead vocalist. Ringo isn’t a natural, polished singer but neither is he entirely dismissible. His technical limitations can serve the purposes of the right material, like on self-mocking songs such as “Act Naturally” and “With a Little Help from My Friends”. On “Boys”, his shouty vocal style brings a spark to the already jaunty song while the accompanying screams, “bop-shuops”, and “yeah yeah boys” from John, Paul, and George make for a boisterous back-up section. The call-and-response dynamic is infectiously spirited. Ringo even delivers a shout-out to a fellow Beatle – “Alright, George” – before the latter proceeds into a guitar solo (which, like his composition on “I Saw Her Standing There”, is strangely patchy and untuneful. I have negligible knowledge of the early history of pop guitar solos. I can’t comment with authority on why George’s guitar-work, circa 1962-1963, might be the way it is beyond the fact of his very unfinished maturation as a musician. Even so, I don’t feel I’m terribly amiss in regarding those two solos as mis-hits).

In adapting the lyric from a female group (the Shirelles, of whom John was a big fan), to four males, the Beatles changed the verses so that, when Ringo alludes to intimacy with his significant other, he sings of kissing “her lips”. Within those lines, a girl is clearly the object of his affection. But the chorus remains unaltered (based on what I’ve read; I couldn’t find the original lyrics), meaning that what follows the claim of a heterosexual relationship are apparent exclamations to the contrary – “Well I talk about boys/Don’t you know I mean boys…/What a bundle of joy”. The effect, from the perspective of a listener, is a confusion of orientations. First Ringo mentions his girl but later he’s convincingly enthusiastic about the subject of boys. Even the song’s opening line is curious in a way. Ringo sings, “I been told when a boy kiss a girl/Take a trip around the world”, almost suggesting that he himself wasn’t practiced at kissing a woman. Perhaps he didn’t want to be. Thus, Ringo had to learn the ins and outs through someone else’s expertise.

It’s hard to resist this sort of line-by-line, innuendo-seeking analysis even when it’s obviously overkill. According to their testimonies, the Beatles didn’t harbor any scandalous intentions with “Boys”. The gay connotations of their cover were just incidental to the song’s addictively exuberant quality that attracted them in the first place.



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The Cookies' "Chains"

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