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The Beatles Anthology

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from: Erik Tarloff

A Miracle of Songwriting

Posted Monday, Oct. 9, 2000, at 5:35 PM ET

Chris,

Boy, you really cut to the chase, don't you? Asking me to put my Paul versus John cards on the table before my morning coffee has kicked in ... I'm not sure that's cricket. Especially since my answer is the nonhip one. Which is to say, leaving personality to the side for the moment, the Beatle songs I tend to like best are usually those written by Paul. Perhaps because my background is in classical music, I cherish his gift for crafting a beautiful melody, which is genuinely world-class--on the order of Jerome Kern or Harold Arlen, say--and also admire the breadth of his musical influences, which extend from British music hall to Delta blues, with odd detours to areas as diverse as Brazil's Hector Villa-Lobos (the "Eleanor Rigby" accompaniment) and the concerto grosso of the high German baroque ("Penny Lane").

To illustrate what I admire about his work, let me cite a relatively uncelebrated McCartney contribution to the White Album, "Martha, My Dear." This song doesn't qualify as a Major Statement; it's a love song addressed to his sheep dog. But its inventiveness and originality are unobtrusively breathtaking. The jaunty piano introduction ventures into unorthodox harmonic regions, and the melody's opening phrase shifts from 4/4 to 3/2 time with no perceptible grinding of gears (such rhythmic innovations are relatively commonplace in 20^th-century classical music but almost unprecedented in pop). And all that technical stuff to the side, the tune is compulsively catchy. All in all, it's a small miracle of songwriting.

Listen to audio
Martha, My Dear

But I agree with you that this whole Lennon-McCartney dichotomy is finally rather artificial. For one thing, many of their songs were real collaborations. And in addition, most of what Paul has written after leaving the Beatles has been much less interesting than before, which suggests, at the very least, that his work benefited from having a brilliant friend, partner, and rival looking over his shoulder, mocking the dross and grudgingly applauding the gold.

And there are plenty of Lennon songs I wouldn't want to be without.

When we factor in personality, it gets even more complicated. (It's odd how we feel we know these people, isn't it? Without having met them*, we still feel little hesitation about assessing their personalities. Well, the literature is very extensive and sufficiently indiscreet that we may know more about the private lives of the Beatles than we do of many of our good friends.) Paul's sunny-side-up, oil-on-troubled-waters, every-parent's-favorite-Beatle side can be appealing in small doses but becomes cloying over time. And John's rebellious, angry, Teddy Boy side has a romantic penumbra that evanesces a bit when you learn what an ugly drunk he was, capable of bullying nastiness, anti-Semitic slurs, and even physical violence.

Your own answer to your second question may reflect the difference in our ages. Having been an adolescent throughout the entirety of the Beatles period may make a difference. I'm not an early Beatles person either, but I draw the line much farther back than you. To me, the cut-off point--the first really significant turning point--occurred with Rubber Soul. The group was still purveying conventional pop in that album but on a level so sophisticated and so ambitious compared to what their contemporaries were up to that, even without any overt experimentation, the music no longer sounds conventional. It's comparable, one might say, to Mozart's K. 271 piano concerto, his earliest out-and-out masterpiece, a piece in which the mature composer (all of 21 years old at the time and still living in his father's house in Salzburg) makes his first uncompromised appearance.

But comparisons between the Beatles and the classics, which were fairly common in the late '60s--did you ever see the Leonard Bernstein telecast on the subject?--are pretty fatuous. Popular music aims to do something totally different from classical, so the exercise is intrinsically forced and misleading. A more pertinent question would concern an assessment of the Beatles' music relative to jazz or to the great American popular songwriting of the '30s and '40s. Do you place them on the same level as the Gershwins and Hoagy Carmichael, for example, and the aforementioned Kern and Arlen? Higher? Lower?

And since you backed me into an unhip corner with your first letter, let me set a similar trap for you: Which version of "Revolution," one of the great Lennon songs, do you favor? The cut on the White Album or the single? I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours.

Erik

*Full disclosure: My parents, London-based show business expatriates, were on friendly social terms with Paul McCartney and his then-girlfriend Jane Asher in the mid-'60s.

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from: Erik Tarloff

A Miracle of Songwriting

Posted Monday, Oct. 9, 2000, at 5:35 PM ET

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Reader Comments from The Fray:

[Reaction to Monday's entry:]

Solipsism, shmolipsism. It's heartening to note how much this bunch of boomers were affected by the Fab Four, and thought about them, and take the Paul vs. John weltenschaung, or the "Revolution" vs. "Revolution" posture. Under the influence of hormones and vast quantities of various pharmaceuticals around about 1970 I was sure the Beatles were aliens, among us with special knowledge to impart to the illuminati. But in that state I spent too much time trying to decipher the code in the moving letters in the fabric of my jeans.

The time changes and key changes and technical details were probably George Martin.
The angst was John.
The walrus was Paul.
Just enjoy it.

--Brian Levy

(To reply, click here.)

You must learn about Liverpool: its status and impact on northern England, the impact of its history as a port city and shipyard center. These factors created a unique socio-economic environment for Liverpool, different from Manchester, different from Leeds. The Liverpool culture as it was in the 1950s helped shape the outlook of its youth, and the Beatles represent that cultural heritage. Starkey had the poorest upbringing, and Harrison the closest thing to middle class of any of them. Because of McCartney's closeness to his musical family extending before him, he is the most rooted in Liverpool's heritage of the embarkation point of American popular music into Britain, during the post-war era. Ask Paul about the music, that's what John would have said.

--Jono

(To reply, click here.)

I enjoyed reading your exchanges here, and I agree that Rubber Soul, rather than Revolver, has plenty to offer in the way of Lennon/McCartney musical experimentation and maturity. But it had begun even earlier than that. Listen to Help and you'll notice a sudden departure from the purely simple boy-loves-girl stuff. Indeed, even different instrumentation such as the use of the sitar began to make its appearance there.

--Paul Splett

(To reply, click here.)

Say what you want about John vs. Paul or Revolver vs. White but "Hamburg that most romantic of northern european cities"!!!!! Eh?!!!! Ever actually been to Hamburg? Must have been one helluva girl if you found it romantic! Try Copenhagen or Stockholm next time.

--simon warner

(To reply, clickhere.)

I just got back from four years in Hamburg and I totally disagree with you two. Hamburg is a beautiful city! Maybe you never got away from the Reeperban and surrounding St. Pauli district? I've never seen a city with so many parks and trees, the general architecture is elegant, there's a white sand beach along the Elbe, bicycle paths everywhere, there are more canals than in Venice and the bars never close ( I lost count of how many times I walked out of a bar into full daylight--not recommended).

--Maldwyn

(To reply, clickhere.)

In discussing the quality of "Martha My Dear" (definitely my favorite song on the White Album), Erik Tarloff mentions an effective rhythmic shift in the melody. I think it worth mentioning that unusual rhythms, phrasings, and chord progressions previously unknown, or at most little seen, in pop music were characteristic of the Beatles' songs from the beginning.

One of the first serious critical appreciations of the Beatles as songwriters was by the musicologist Deryck Cooke, who analyzed the phrasing in "Yesterday" (a McCartney song, of course) with great admiration for its creativity, originality, and imagination. (The essay is in Cooke's collection Vindications.)

I think this characteristic deserves to be mentioned along with the sheer beauty of the melodies and the breadth of the musical influences: The classical references Tarloff finds in "Penny Lane" and "Eleanor Rigby" were at least possibly and partially from George Martin, who arranged the guest instrumentalist parts of those songs, which I suspect are what's being referred to. But the melodies of the instrumental parts were evidently Paul's own, and the suggestions of instruments were at least partially his as well.

--Meriadoc

(To reply, clickhere.)

I agree with this posting. George Martin, who, unlike the Beatles, was musically literate, played a major role in plotting out and writing down the musical arrangements. But usually the ideas came from the original song writers (according to Martin, Paul was far more specific in his instructions than John, who tended toward the impressionistic). Thus, for example, Paul, having heard a Brandenberg Concerto on his car radio en route to the Abbey Road studio one day, requested a piccolo trumpet for "Penny Lane." On the other hand, the suggestion of a string quartet accompaniment for "Yesterday" came from Martin--this story is in The Beatles Anthology, the book under discussion, incidentally--but McCartney then sang some of the lines he wanted the individual strings to play.

I also agree that a certain harmonic freshness distinguished the Beatles' song writing from very early on, although it was certainly more venturesome in the later albums than their earlier efforts.

If you like the Deryck Cooke essay (did you know he's the same Deryck Cooke who prepared the performing version of Mahler's unfinished 10th symphony?), you should also check out a book by another British musicologist, Wilfred Mellers, called Twilight of the Gods. It has some very good material.

--Erik Tarloff

(To reply, clickhere.)

Another book must be mentioned when it comes to analyses of Beatles music: Revolution in the Head, by critic and Shostakovich biographer Ian MacDonald, much of which was over my head, especially the talk of harmonics. But it was enlightening even for those of us who slept through Music Appreciation (for instance, the simple comparison of Lennon's "horizontal" melodies with McCartney's "vertical" melodies).

Here's a variation on the "desert island" game that we used to play (and of which George Martin would approve): Edit the White Album down to a single LP. You then have the greatest Beatles album ever, bar none (wait--let me listen to Revolver one more time). For the record, "Martha, My Dear" makes my cut. And how about "I Will"--what a tune! Do you know that's Paul singing (not playing) the bass line? Stop me before I start blathering...

--cazzie

(To reply, click here.)

A Fraygrant writes:

Before he was killed John did an interview with Playboy where he gave detailed opinions and the origins of nearly every Beatles song. Is this article available anywhere on the web?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There are several, including this one. But before you reach any conclusions about the authorship of Lennon-McCartney tunes, you should consult a book called Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, which came out a few years ago. It's an odd, fascinating, sloppily-edited book, but at the heart of it are interviews Paul gave to a long-time friend (the book's author is Barry Miles). In these quotes, McCartney discusses the writing of every single tune they wrote, and gives a percentage breakdown on who did what. (He'll say, "That was maybe 60 percent mine, 40 percent John.") Sounds a little self-serving, but his assessments ring absolutely true. His memory seems quite clear, and he recalls little tidbits on the songwriting that support his case. Beatles fans (especially those dismissive of Paul) should read it because they'll learn a lot. (e.g., Paul wrote the tune for "In My Life," and it was Paul's tape-loop experimentation that produced the astonishing sound of "Tomorrow Never Knows." Hey, I love John, but it's time to give Sir Paul credit.

--Bill

(To reply, clickhere.)

[Reaction to Tuesday's "Book Club"]

I always listen to the acoustic "Revolution" as a warmup to the electric take. It takes on a sort of Led Zeppelin dynamic, acoustic blues before the thunder erupts. And of all Beatles songs, this is the biggest eruption of them all. The guitars howl like the damned, the drums 'n bass lock in thundering goose-step, and Lennon sounds righteously pissed off. If I was in a band I'd cover it that way too. Open with the acoustic shuffle and harmonies and then split some skulls wide open going electric. But then maybe I've listened to too much Led Zeppelin.

--Jerol

(To reply, click here.)