THE BEATLES AS MUSICIAN This page intentionally left blank THE BEATLES AS MUSICIANS Revolver through the Anthology WALTER EVERETT New York Oxford Oxford University Press 1999 Oxford University Press Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Paris Sao Paulo Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright © 1999 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Everett, Walter, 1954- The Beatles as musicians : Revolver through the Anthology / Walter Everett. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-509553-7; 0-19-512941-5 (pbk.) 1. Beatles. 2. Rock music—1961-1970—Analysis, appreciation. I. Title. MT146.E94 1999 782.42166'092'2 — dc21 98-23704 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper For Barbara, John, and Tim This page intentionally left blank PREFACE Poetry and Music The Beatles' lyrics have been discussed for better than thirty years. We know that it need not be a stream-of-consciousness lexicon from Lennon or a detailed character study from McCartney to be a Beatles composition rich in singular words and meanings; each of more than 750 different word roots is heard in only a single Beatles song. For example, the knowledgeable Beatles listener will know in which particular song each of these words appears: "sympathize," "cows," "scarlet," "butterflies," "opaque," "lemonade," "darning," "poppies," "fuse," "turnstile," "handkerchief," "hogshead," "illusion," "bootlace," "snow- peaked," "velvet," "glimmering," "disease," "limousine," and "bellyfull."1 Simi- larly, we know that the rich vocabulary expresses a wide variety of themes in a multitude of poetic styles and systems. The Beatles' accompanying music has not enjoyed the same amount of at- tention, even though it is as rich as their lyrics. Their melodic shapes, contra- puntal relationships, harmonic functions, rhythmic articulations, formal de- signs, colors, and textures draw from many different tonal languages and appear in countless recombinations to bring individual tonal meanings to their poetry. For instance, the progression lll-IV-V appears in many Beatles songs, with differing meanings determined by varied contexts. In "Please Please Me," this progression, G-A-B, convenient because of the parallel chord fingerings on the guitar, adds a bluesy pentatonic demand to an otherwise politely dia- tonic song in a major key. In "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," the same pro- viii Preface gression is expanded for a deep excursion into another world when ill (B ) be- comes a key unto itself, an intermediate chord is added between IV and V, and V is sustained for a full measure. In the bizarre "I Am the Walrus," the same progression, there C-D-E, is momentarily given a nearly atonal syntax, tak- ing from its context a whole-tone quality. It is the uncanny ear of the Beatles that allows these three chords, III-IV-V, to assume such a variety of individ- ual meanings across their career. Goals and Critical Stance The purpose of this book is to examine and celebrate the musical practices and structures in the Beatles' performance and composition from the music's earli- est incarnations through finished product, during the second half of their ca- reer as a group, charting the musical techniques and patterns that emerge at various points and adapt to changing needs as the Beatles' styles and goals con- tinuously evolve. We shall pick up and put aside various methodological tools as the material demands, and this material consists not only of the "canon"— the Beatles' LPs, singles, and CDs recorded in London and officially released by EMI—but of every available document of a Beatle's musical activity during the period covered. This book results from the study of many thousands of audio, video, print, and multimedia sources, including the close consultation of un- counted audio recordings of the Beatles' compositional process, traced through tapes that are heard and treated as the equivalents of compositional sketches and drafts. The reader will find particularly useful both the thoroughness with which every known recording is contextualized both historically and musically, and the fact that aspects of the Beatles' instruments, vocal production tech- niques, recording equipment, and studio procedures—the essence of their per- formance practice—are exposed here as in no other source. "Bootleg" drafts are discussed and documented in all thoroughness considered necessary, so as to portray the compositional genesis of a song and its arrangement and to per- mit the reader to seek copies of specific sources. It may seem incongruous, or at least unusual, to approach a body of popu- lar music that was composed and performed by young men who did not read musical notation (and was intently followed by millions with no musical in- doctrination whatsoever) with analytical methods that only a musician with some degree of training could appreciate. Two years' study of college-level music theory would be essential to following much of this book's theoretical discussion, and some of the points raised are more advanced still. An appended table of chord functions (describing the most characteristic functions of all chords mentioned in this book) and the glossary (with its succinct definitions to some fifty-five terms used in this book) should help the less initiated stay on course.2 Of the thousands of books and articles related to the Beatles, only a small proportion deals seriously with their music, and only a few rare writers have done so from a perspective molded by formal musical study; seldom has an analysis of a Beatles song appeared that can be called in any way thorough. Yet Preface ix this book suggests that there are many musical reasons worthy of considered speculation that place the Beatles' work among the most listened-to music of all time. The fact is that even though these recording artists and their millions of listeners are rarely if ever consciously aware of the structural reasons be- hind the dynamic energy in "I Saw Her Standing There," the poignant nostal- gia in "Yesterday" the organized confusion of "A Day in the Life," or the exu berant joy in "Here Comes the Sun," it is the musical structures themselves, more so than the visual cues in performance or the loudness of the given amplification system, that call forth most of the audience's intellectual, emo- tional, and physical responses.3 This book traverses the complete history of the Beatles' composition, perfor- mance, and recording practices in the second half of their career. As it would be virtually impossible to do justice to the Beatles' work within a single book, the author intends to present this chronology in two volumes, divided between the end of 1965 and the beginning of 1966. The point of division pays homage to the stylistic innovations of Revolver (1966) and thus groups together here the Beatles' most experimental and final works, and it also happens to fall exactly at the midpoint of the telling of the story. Each chapter is devoted to the projects of one year and is presented in sections that alternate a chronological summary of the musical events over a given period, with a detailed track-by-track discus- sion of every song composed by a Beatle through the group's duration. The mu- sical detail, aspects of which are frequently related to similar patterns in other songs by the Beatles or by their peers, and which is occasionally summarized for a global perspective on the group's musical interests, remains the book's central concern, while the accompanying historical information should be viewed as a contextual backdrop. The approach to each song covers its compositional inspi- ration, heavily documented from the most unimpeachable sources; its record- ing history, including the identification of every part, its performer and instru- ment; and its most salient musical features, presented in an analysis of the text that often features comparisons of the dominant musical and poetic goals. In- novations are carefully noted as they appear, and some important compositions require several pages for full appreciation. Some later songs that introduce noth- ing new of note, on the other hand, are given short shrift. The book's various analytical approaches are suggested by the musical materials themselves, and they cover as wide a range as do the Beatles' eclec- tic interests. The early Beatles' least challenging harmonies, forms, colors, and structures—twelve-bar blues forms, four-square phrases, simple guitar arrangements, diatonic and pentatonic components, live recording—were replaced in the later phases of their career by more interesting and complex features—innovative forms and colors, irregular phrase rhythms, chromatic ornaments and key shifts, multilayered and electronically altered studio pro- ductions. At some times, harmony and voice leading are the main focus; at others the interplay of rhythm and meter is center stage; and at still others the recording process itself is primary. But from the simplest to the most ad- vanced discussion, techniques are always based on the piece-specific charac- teristics of the works themselves.