Catching up on Beatles news

A thousand apologies for the lengthy absence from this space. I'll try to resume semi-regular blogging starting now. Below is a news round-up from my time away.

- Paul will appear on The Colbert Report this Wednesday for an hour-long music special. Colbert: "I think this McCartney kid’s got something special and I’m gonna put him on the map!"

- In Memphis for a gig late last month, Macca visited Graceland for the first time and left a memento at Elvis' grave.

- From Rolling Stone's review of the Wings Over America re-issue: "There’s something daft and touching about how McCartney strives for band democracy: Whenever Denny Laine sings lead, you can almost hear the fans stampede for their bathroom weed break. Here's a better, more detailed appraisal. And here are some streaming tracks from the triple album. And video. Ah, the Seventies!

- The news that John felt some shame over his spell as a radical activist is not news at all. It's been well documented for years. The more interesting part of this story deals with John's desire near the end of his life to return to Liverpool. He "wanted to sail into the city on board luxury liner Queen Elizabeth 2 as his fans lined the shore."

- Photograph, a collection of pictures that Ringo took on tour and in the studio as a Beatle, is being released in e-book form on June 12th and in (laughably overpriced) physical form next December.

- June 1st was the 46th anniversary of the release of Sgt. Pepper's. In her infinite wisdom, The Gray Lady sneered at it.

- It's a staple of "How The Beatles Impacted History" journalism: Yes, The Beatles won the Cold War. I love this detail: "A widely held fantasy that Woodhead (an ex-British spy turned filmmaker who traveled throughout Soviet Russia) heard over and over was that the Beatles landed in the USSR to play an impromptu concert on the wing of their tour airplane on their way to Japan. The Soviet city would change in each telling but people sincerely believed that this undocumented performance happened."

- A guitar played by John and George was recently auctioned off for $408,000.

- Help! is coming to Blu-ray later this month.

The most Beatles-esque Beach Boys song?

The title surely belongs to "Girl Don't Tell Me," a Brian-penned, Carl-sung track from Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!). It's been said that Brian actually wrote the song for The Beatles, but I'm not sure this has been verified. Either way, in the guitar breaks and the escalating vocal parts, it quickly calls to mind "Ticket to Ride." The lyric too is very Lennon-esque, with the male lead bemoaning the lies of his ex-crush and vowing to forget her. Underrated song.

For more posts on The Beatles and the Beach Boys, go here.

(If the video is removed, go here.)

Bad songs by The Beatles

They do exist. The Beatles were but men, prone to missteps and lapses in judgment.

I recently came across this rundown of unFab creations that was compiled by Neil McCormick of The Telegraph. I'm painting with broad strokes, but it seems there are essentially four categories of bad Beatles songs you'll find in such lists: John's occasional misfire (vague, I know, but his duds aren't easily classifiable like the others'), Paul's music-hall confections, George's self-serious Eastern dirges and Ringo's ... songs. McCormick targets a cut or two from each group - John: "Revolution 9"; Paul: "Your Mother Should Know"; George: "The Inner Light" and "Long, Long, Long"; and Ringo: "Honey Don't" and "Octopus's Garden." I agree with some but not all of these. I happen to love "Your Mother Should Know," along with Paul's other dainty throwbacks like "When I'm Sixty-Four" and "Honey Pie." Ringo's moments in the sun usually don't bother me, but I'm emphatically not a fan of George's Eastern/stoner outings, particularly "Within You Without You" and "It's All Too Much." Joyless and navel-gazing, in my opinion. As for John, I'm not keen on "Revolution 9," but I consider his body of work to be the strongest overall. I even like his misogynist tirade "Run for Your Life" quite a lot.

For my own (very short) list, I have a different approach in mind. I'm going to write about the two Beatles songs that annoy me the most. I'm limiting it to two because only this pair has consistently stuck out over the years. By objective standards, they may not represent the worst of the worst (perhaps far from it, even), but for various reasons they get under my skin. And that's worse than merely being bad.

- "I Need You" (Help!)

An otherwise unmemorable song that is made memorably irritating by the nasal, offbeat, dragging guitar effect that George conjured up with a volume pedal. It sounds like a car horn mixed with a duck call; it's grating every time. I can credit George for trying something different, but all he managed to do in the end was constantly interrupt his own song. George Martin should've said no. Whenever I listen to Help!, I always bypass this track. It's the lone bum note on Side One.

- "Blackbird" (The Beatles)

Paul's precious paean to the civil rights movement is beloved by many. If you browse user comments on YouTube, you'll find that, through "Blackbird," people locate inner peace, experience the numinous, and achieve cosmic unity with Paul. I've never come close to any of that. On the contrary, I think "Blackbird" is a crashing bore. I detect no color, no spark, no passion. The melody is dull and erratic; Paul's vocal is little more than serviceable; and - to top it off - the chirping bird sample is super contrived and obvious. An exceedingly amateur touch, if you ask me. It rankles hard. On Side Two of "The White Album," I'll take "Martha My Dear," "Rocky Raccoon," "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?" and "I Will" (to say nothing of John's contributions) over "Blackbird" every day of the week.

. . .

By speaking well of "Run for Your Life" and trashing "Blackbird" in the same post, I may get excommunicated from the Global Community of Beatles Fans. I'm prepared to accept the consequences.

"Help!" ...

... in haiku form.

1) "Help!"
2) "The Night Before"
3) "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away"
4) "I Need You"
5) "Another Girl"
6) "You're Going to Lose That Girl"
7) "Ticket to Ride"
8) "Act Naturally"
9) "It's Only Love"
10) "You Like Me Too Much"
11) "Tell Me What You See"
12) "I've Just Seen a Face"
13) "Yesterday"
14) "Dizzy Miss Lizzy"

Sunday haiku - "Dizzy Miss Lizzy"

Carried by John's voice,
this joyous cover ends Help!
with loud rock 'n' roll.

Saturday haiku - "Yesterday"

It's a true classic:
no song has been covered more
than Paul's "Yesterday".

Friday haiku - "I've Just Seen a Face"

A brisk country tune
that almost sounds like bluegrass,
"Face" finds Paul smitten.

Wednesday haiku - "Tell Me What You See"

The highlight of "Tell":
Paul's electric piano,
which adds bright color.

Monday haiku - "You Like Me Too Much"

George did his girl wrong,
but he knows she won't leave him:
she likes him "too much".

Friday haiku - "It's Only Love"

One of John's habits
was to judge his songs harshly,
e.g., he loathed "Love."

Wednesday haiku - "Act Naturally"

A twangy cover,
"Act" lets Ringo have some fun
at his own expense.

Tuesday haiku - "Ticket to Ride"

With its thick rhythm
and unique, sped-up outro,
"Ticket" broke new ground.

Monday haiku - "You're Going to Lose That Girl"

Though it feels jaunty,
"Lose" is packed with taunts from John:
he might steal "that girl".

Sunday haiku - "Another Girl"

When Paul makes the claim,
"I don't take what I don't want",
he's channeling John.

Saturday haiku - "I Need You"

For his guitar part,
George used a volume pedal,
which gives "Need" texture.

Thursday haiku - "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away"

A somber affair,
"Hide" shows John as Bob Dylan,
"feeling two foot small".

Tuesday haiku - "The Night Before"

Paul keeps vague on "Night":
was he spurned by his girlfriend
or a one-night stand?

Sunday haiku - "Help!"

Full of urgency,
"Help!" makes clear the strain John felt
from fame and success.

Best three songs in a row - Pt. 5

Parts one, two, three, and four. Below is part five.

Album: Help!
Three songs: "I've Just Seen a Face," "Yesterday," and "Dizzy Miss Lizzy"
Comments: On Help!, there are five masterpieces: the title track, "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away," "Ticket to Ride," "I've Just Seen a Face," and "Yesterday." It's an impressive array, and it made my task difficult. This was true especially because four of the five songs are located close to one another in the track order - "Help!" and "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" have one song in between them, while "Yesterday" follows "I've Just Seen a Face" without any interruption. Logically, I started with these for my analysis. But trios are the name of the game, which meant that I also had to consider the merits of "The Night Before", as it is the song that bridges "Help!" and "Love Away." Then to make a threesome that incorporated the latter pair of songs, I had to choose between "Tell Me What You See" and "Dizzy Miss Lizzy." Despite being a cover, "Lizzy" triumphed. Thus it came down to the opening three songs on Help! versus the closing three.

I ultimately went with the closing three based on this line of thinking: though "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" is probably the finest of the lot, both "I've Just Seen a Face" and "Yesterday" are very close behind, with each of them handily outpacing "Help!," the fourth best of the six songs. And then I judged "Dizzy Miss Lizzy," which plays the role of frenetic album send-off that "Twist and Shout" and "Money" had before it, as bringing more to bear than "The Night Before." Altogether, it's a stunningly strong collection of songs, foreshadowing the historic greatness that would come with the next album, Rubber Soul, and basically keep coming until the end of The Beatles' career.

I have to say more about "I've Just Seen a Face" and "Yesterday," both of which are stirring and strikingly personal compositions. Crucially, both were written by Paul, who through this stage of The Beatles' run had been significantly outshone by John and his more formidable songwriting prowess (just look at the previous entries in this series). On their own, both "Face" and "Yesterday" would've represented artistic breakthroughs for Paul. But together, they pointed to a major shift in The Beatles' established order, whereby Paul began writing at a level that approached John's and at a rate that exceeded his (it should be noted that John did not go quietly; in fact, he absolutely dominated Rubber Soul and still was more consistent, arguably, all the way to The End). What a contrasting pair "Face" and "Yesterday" are, the former brimming with affection-drunk enthusiasm and the latter full of introspective despair. Having one follow the other was a bold and interesting move, akin to rearranging the track order of Revolver so that "Here, There and Everywhere" and "For No One" were in succession. Those, I might add, are two more classics courtesy of Paul.

Another welcome change was breaking away from the tyranny of the opening three songs. That is, with the previous three albums that I examined, it was the initial trio of tracks that took the prize for Best Three Songs in a Row. The deviation on Help! suggests that The Beatles' albums were becoming deeper and more consistent. The second half of the '60s, of course, showed this to be true.

Quick comment

I don't think this is unreasonable: The movie Help wouldn't feel like such indulgent nonsense had it been even marginally about The Beatles.