Gomper

Their Satanic Majesties Request
Track 8
"Gomper" – 5:08






There are some who would claim that Satanic Majesties is not merely a Sgt. Pepper's ripoff, but contains interesting and original ideas of its own. I mean, I think these people exist. If they didn't, I would have nothing to write here. These imaginary contrarians would have their work cut out for them attempting to explain "Gomper", a song which, in addition to lacking any redeeming artistic qualities, is a complete ripoff of the Beatles' "Within You, Without You", the dreary George Harrison "Indian" track on Pepper. Harrison was at least attempting something new – the Stones lack that excuse. An utterly pointless, derivative track.

(How derivative? "Gomper" has exactly the same track length as "Within You, Without You", to the second.)

Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey (Beatles Week)

One more, before I finish up Beatles Week.

The Beatles
The Beatles
"Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey"




A straight up rocker, with John screaming over I-IV changes. There's nothing better in life than that.

Also, check out this clip, which, after a straightforward presentation of the music and lyrics of the song, presents it backwards. I have to tell you, my eyes were opened. Yahoo's the bus ride you ride today!

Help! (Beatles Week)

The Beatles
Help!
"Help!"



This is what one of the Rolling Stone record review guides said:

Theirs is the final, great consensus in popular music—not liking them is as perverse as not liking the sun.

And every word of that is true. They belonged to everyone – hipsters could get off on their raw artistry, their ambition, their ravenous appetite for the exotic; teenyboppers could focus on the catchy melodies, the glorious love songs; longhairs could marvel at their sophistication, their disregard for conventional pop structures; best of all, everybody was on board with the message – as Ringo memorably put it, "It was for love and bloody peace." Values change and fashions come and go, but if your goal is to produce an artistic catalogue that maintains a continued relevance, love and bloody peace has a good chance of staying in style for a while.

The Beatles found different ways of saying the same thing over the years, but to me this track says it best. Over Ringo's double-time skifflish beat, John sings his song of friendship while Paul and George echo the words.

When I was younger, so much younger than today
I never needed anybody's help in any way.
But now these days are gone, I'm not so self assured
Now I find I've changed my mind and opened up the doors.

That was the Beatles' gift to the world: the idea that these words were not just a hokey Hallmark sentiment, but a vital and challenging concept. This song is a lasting monument to the Beatles practising what they preached.

Leave My Kitten Alone (Beatles Week)

The Beatles
Anthology I
"Leave My Kitten Alone"



I am a Springsteen fan. Those who share my obsession know that his officially released albums are but a minor part of his creative output – Springsteen releases an album every few years, but spends so much time writing and in the studio that there are many albums-worth of material that never make it to official release, including some of his greatest songs.

When the Beatles Anthology series was released I was hoping that it would contain a bunch of unreleased winners. I hadn't considered that, unlike Springsteen, the Beatles released an album every six months, and were releasing singles at a near constant rate. Anything of any quality at all made it to an album or a B-side simply because there was so much demand on them for more songs. (It is a testament to their ability as songwriters and performers that they produced so little crap, considering the manic pace of their official releases.)

And so, when the Anthology series came out, I found it to be filled with outtakes and live tracks, interesting in an historical sense to anyone at all fascinated by the band's creative process, but containing no songs of such quality that they could have been included on an official release.

Except for "Leave My Kitten Alone". That weird little chromatic run in the intro signals that something special is about to happen, at the energy never flags – "Kitten" is a non-stop rave up from beginning to end, featuring some passionate Lennon vocals that make you forget all about Little Willie John's original. This is the type of stuff that belied their Brian Epstein-conceived image as nice young men who are polite to your parents – the people who made "Kitten" are the kind of guys you would not want to run into in a dark alley.

And Your Bird Can Sing (Beatles Week)

The Beatles
Revolver
"And Your Bird Can Sing"




One of my private treasures, a song I love that no one else seems to like much. It's those harmony lead guitars – why do they sound so cool here and so lame when Tom Scholz does it?

The song was recorded for Revolver, during the period when the band was heavily into the herbal jazz cigarettes, as Paul put it. That explains the giggling during this outtake:

Two of Us (Beatles Week)

The Beatles
Let It Be
"Two of Us"



Paul's great Every Brother's update. The eventual release played up the folk elements, but as can be seen from this rehearsal clip, the song started out more as a rocker:



There are some interesting things going on rhythm-wise, with odd bar lengths and whatnot. Also notable is the lack of bass – George filled in with some tasty country-flavoured low-string work on the Tele. But in the end, it's Paul and John, singing in harmony, the way they did for many years, and never did again after this album was released.

I Should Have Known Better (Beatles Week)

The Beatles
A Hard Day's Night
"I Should Have Known Better"



The clip above is edited from some A Hard Day's Night footage by a Youtube user, but it perfectly captures not just the exuberance of the song, but the entire film.

(By the way, if you have never seen the movie A Hard Day's Night, you probably should. It is excellent: great music, funny, kinetic performances, and arsty black and white – what more do you need? Here's a taste: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.)

Unlike virtually every other guitar player in the sixties, George Harrison eschewed improvisation, and his recorded output features, almost exclusively, composed guitar solos. On "I Should Have Known Better", he mostly duplicates the main melody:


But fuck me if that doesn't sound great. I think this may have been George's first recording with a Rickenbacker twelve-string, and it went on to virtually define the sound of the album (it's featured in the solos of 5 of the 13 songs).

Money (That's What I Want) (Beatles Week)

The Beatles
With the Beatles
"Money (That's What I Want)"



In which John Lennon makes his case for the title of the greatest rock and roll singer on the planet.

Larry Williams triple play (Beatles Week)

The Beatles

Long Tall Sally EP
"Slow Down"

Beatles VI
"Bad Boy"

Help!
"Dizzy Miss Lizzy"



Rock and roll records were rare in Liverpool in the late 50s, and virtually nonexistent on the radio. Fans had to take whatever records they could get, and they would wear these records out. It appears that at some point John Lennon got a hold of a Larry Williams record, and went on to wear it out.



By the time the Beatles got back from Hamburg, they had probably performed every rock and roll song they had ever heard, including the three Larry Williams numbers in this post.



On the evidence of these performances, there was indeed nobody that could touch them, in Britain or elsewhere.



Larry Williams is today regarded as something of an early rock and roll pioneer, but I wonder how much of that has to do with these Beatles performances, which eclipse Williams' originals – in quality, in energy – by a wide mark.



Williams himself had an interesting life. He was a wild, self-destructive man who met a violent death under questionable circumstances (see his wikipedia entry for more details). Today, his greatest contributions to the world seems to be giving John Lennon an excuse to scream rock and rock songs over a hard driving beat. That'll do.

Anna (Go to Him) (Beatles Week)

The Beatles
Please Please Me
"Anna (Go to Him)"



In addition to being formidable composers, the Beatles were among the best interpreters of the era – they certainly had more skill covering soul ballads than the Stones, whose attempts were timid and uncertain. Here John Lennon has a go at Arthur Alexander's great "Anna (Go to Him)", which features a neat stop-and-start drum pattern and an infectious rhythm piano part (played by George Harrison on guitar for the Beatles version).

Here is Arthur Alexander's original:


As you can hear, the Beatles didn't really change anything about the arrangement. In an earlier blog entry I called their cover a charming homage, but now I think I was selling them short – Lennon is really working hard, and seems to have ambitions beyond just paying tribute to a favoured influence. He isn't trying to cop Alexander's phrasing or anything – it almost seems like Lennon is, in his own way, trying to beat Alexander at his own game. This is far more than the Stones ever attempted, at least at this stage in their careers, and if the Beatles didn't quite match the original's quality, they got close.

Things We Said Today (Beatles Week)

The Beatles
A Hard Day's Night
"Things We Said Today" – 2:40



Every once in a while I'll hear a song that makes me think "God, I wish I wrote that!" – not necessarily the greatest songs in the world, just songs that display a kind of proud craftsmanship. This song is the first I remember thinking that about.

Long time associate and friend of the blog Ron Littlejohn turned me on to the mysteries of "Things We Said Today" way back in high school – coming from a family of Beatles fans, it was a song I'd heard my whole life, but never grokked the sophistication of the composition until Ron pointed it out. The looping six note melody over the i-v pattern in the verse resolves so perfectly, the change from minor to major for the bridge, that little Bb passing chord[*] to get back into the verse – even if you don't know what those words meant, anyone can hear how well the song perfectly resolves itself, how it ties off musical loose ends. Just a gorgeous piece of songwriting by Paul.

[* passing chord doesn't really describe its function, which is essentially the same as the V7 in the final bar of a blues – that is, a turnaround chord, signaling the return to the beginning. Alan W. Pollack has much more on this weird bII chord, along with a wealth of notes on the details of this, and many other, Beatles songs.]

Update 12:52 PM: Check out this clip of London Jazz covering the song, which sounds like it should be playing in the background of one of those Matt Helm movies:



Thanks to Planet Mondo for the clip!

Off The Hook

The Rolling Stones No.2
Side 2, Track 5
"Off The Hook" (Mick Jagger/Keith Richards) – 2:33



A fairly straightforward Mick and Keith composition. Nothing especially notable here except for the double-tracked lead vocals, a technique used by the Beatles in their early years (contemporaneous with the recording of this song) for Lennon songs. He hated double-tracking his vocals because of the amount of effort to get the timing exactly right – every note has to be sung exactly the same as the main track, without any improvisation. This involved a lot of time in the studio doing many takes of the same melody until he recorded two that were exactly the same. Mick solved this problem by just using the first take, regardless of how sloppy it sounded.



Image courtesy of news.bbc.co.uk

Grown Up Wrong

12 x 5
Side 2, Track 4
"Grown Up Wrong" (Mick Jagger/Keith Richards) – 2:05





Another blues shuffle, but this one with a moderately interesting chorus. This site claims that the song has never been performed live, so it's safe to assume that "Grown Up Wrong" grew out of a studio jam, recorded merely to pad the album out to LP length.

Like most of the other Stones songs at this stage of their career, "Grown Up Wrong" features those sloppy background vocals that never come in on time. I can't help but compare these guys to the Beatles, who, by the time of their second album, not only produced more sophisticated compositions, but also recorded filler that was much more interesting than the likes of "Grown Up Wrong", and additionally took pride in their precise background vocal parts. Compare the Stones' song above to, say, "All I've Got To Do", which served a similar purpose on the Beatles' second album. Note how even on an obvious filler track, the Beatles took care to come up with a relatively intricate arrangement.

Tell Me

England’s Newest Hitmakers

Side 2, Track 3

"Tell Me (You're Coming Back)" (Mick Jagger/Keith Richards) – 4:05



There's a great story told in the Beatle's Anthology – it seems that after the band had hit with "Love Me Do" but before they'd proven themselves to be consistent songwriters, producer George Martin had gone looking for a song for the band to cover, a song that would be a likely hit. He found such a song, and gave it to the band. They said, we can't do this song, it's terrible. Martin replied, but it is a surefire hit for someone. The band said, maybe so, but we can't be seen in public doing this song. Martin said, okay, what can you give me instead?

The song the Beatles came up with was "Please Please Me", their first great composition. The song Martin wanted them to do? "How Do You Do It", a bubble gum confection that Gerry and the Pacemakers later turned into an annoying hit, using the Beatles arrangement.

I was always reminded of that anecdote whenever I listened to "Tell Me". "That poor band," I would think to myself. "Forced to perform a pop song clearly unsuited to their style. This has all the hallmarks of studio executive meddling."

Imagine my surprise just now when I saw the Jagger/Richards songwriting credit. I don't know what to think now, or who to blame. Who is responsible for this? The sloppy overdubs, the embarrassing attempts at soul testifying, the incoherent structure – who approved of this mess? I see now that it was released as a single, and actually got to #24 on the Billboard Hot 100, presumably riding the wave of Anglophilia following the Beatles success. I can only hope that the single version recieved some judicious editing – the ablum track is more than 4 minutes long.

Now I've Got a Witness (Like Uncle Phil and Uncle Gene)

England’s Newest Hitmakers

Side 1, Track 5

"Now I've Got a Witness (Like Uncle Phil and Uncle Gene)" (Nanker Phelge) – 2:29

Kids, let me tell you a story about the old days. See, back then, bands would create albums by padding their singles releases with filler. Thank god we don't have to deal with that anymore. This filler often took the form of hastily written instrumentals that, unlike the singles which were usually written by professional songwriters, the band could get a writing credit for – or, in this case, an instrumental of an existing Marvin Gaye song, with the melody removed. Nanker Phelge is a pseudonym used by the band for writing credits of these filler songs.

Aren't you glad I told you all that? Aren't you glad you spent two minutes of your life reading that information rather than wasting your time listening to the track, like I did? I'm already dreading the next track on this album, which also has a Nanker Phelge writing credit.

(BTW, and I’m not sure why anyone would care, but the "Uncle Phil" and "Uncle Gene" of the title are Phil Spector and Gene Pitney, who both got credit for playing something or other on this track. I’d try to find out more about why these two respectable recording artists were in the studio with a bunch of English long-haired louts, but the result just isn’t interesting enough for me to do the legwork.)