When the Beatles hit the airwaves in 1964 I wasn’t a fan. I was a high school junior and “I Want to Hold Your Hand” sounded like “bubble-gum music” to someone just getting acquainted with Bob Dylan songs through Peter, Paul, and Mary before I ever had a Dylan album. But I came around with the energy of the music and with lyrics like those in “Drive My Car,” “In My Life,” “If I Needed Someone,” “Yesterday,” and “Eleanor Rigby.” They had evolved as a band and as songwriters.
Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band broke on the music scene in 1967 like a startling sunrise, and we were delirious listening to it. It was like nothing we’d ever heard before, the way Highway 61 Revisited was two years before, but totally different from that. It opened up the gates for what music could sound like. Now it sounds dated, but we listened with expanded consciousness and our mouths hanging open for a year. What The Beatles had done for years that had everyone enthralled now seemed like a prologue, even though their music had evolved and grown with every year, especially with Rubber Soul and Revolver.
McCartney wrote in the liner notes that they made the album pretending that they were this other band made up of alter egos of themselves. Everything about Sgt Pepper’s was groundbreaking, from the cover art setting themselves in the midst of cultural icons going back as long as a hundred years or more, implying “This is how big we are,” to the dayglo suits and persona of a military band, to the alter-ego of the "Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band" (a good description of what they started out to be), to the album package with their photographs and the printed lyrics, to songs and lyrics that were experimental and at least interestingly different. The Rolling Stones tried to follow with Their Satanic Majesty’s Request, which was weak competition.
There are some memorable songs on the album. They’d evolved their music beyond “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “I Saw Her Standing There.“ “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” was a campy persona that sort of said “This is what we were, but we’re a whole new thing now.” The first verse starts out with a strong electric guitar accompanying Paul’s half-screaming lyrics over a raucous crowd, followed by a break with celebratory horns:
It was twenty years ago today
That Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play
They’ve been going in and out of style
But they’re guaranteed to raise a smile.
So may I introduce to you the act you’ve known for all these years?
Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band!
The next two verses mellow out with a description that’s reminiscent of their enjoyment of fame and their audience over their first few years of popularity, which they’d emphatically left behind them when they stopped the insanity of touring and stadium concerts where they couldn’t even hear themselves over the deafening roar of screaming crowds and chose to become a strictly studio band.
We’re Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
We hope you will enjoy the show
We’re Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
Sit back and let the evening go.
Sergeant Pepper’s lonely, Sgt. Pepper’s lonely,
Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
It’s wonderful to be here. It’s certainly a thrill.
You’re such a lovely audience
We’d like to take you home with us.
We’d love to take you home.
It finishes with the final verse returning to the almost screaming introduction of the “band” and “the one and only Billy Shears and Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” with an invitation to sing along. Then the mood mellows down as Ringo sings a gentle “With a Little Help from My Friends,” perhaps speaking for the band in asking what their fans would do if The Beatles stopped being “The Beatles.”
What would you do if I sang out of tune?
Would you stand up and walk out on me?
Lend me your ears and I’ll sing you a song
And I’ll try not to sing out of key.
Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends.
I get high with a little help from my friends.
Gonna try with a little help from my friends.
What do I do when my love is away?
(Does it worry you to be alone?)
How do I feel by the end of the day?
(Are you sad because you’re on your own?)
No, I get by with a little help from my friends.
I get high with a little help from my friends.
Gonna try with a little help from my friends.
“Friends” seems to have a double meaning, that of drugs and also of each other. It's followed by the psychedelic “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” with John singing a tune that has his stamp on it.
Picture yourself in a boat on a river
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies.
Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly
A girl with kaleidoscope eyes.
It’s a dreamscape that most listeners assumed was a description of a psychedelically induced state. It has interesting poetic images, but not much substance. Lennon said it was inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass and a drawing by his son. It sounds like it's accompanied by a high-pitched stringed instrument that I’m not familiar with, maybe a harpsichord, which adds a light, airy sound to the song. The poetry of “A girl with kaleidoscope eyes” is what has always stuck with me.
“She’s Leaving Home” is a melodrama evoking the sadness of a girl leaving her family at five o’clock in the morning “leaving the note that she hoped would say more.”
Stepping outside, she is free.
She (We gave her most of our lives.)
Is leaving (Sacrificed most of our lives.)
Home (We gave her ev’rything money could buy.)
She’s leaving home after living alone
for so many years. Bye, bye . . .
Why would she treat us so thoughtlessly?
How could she do this to me? . . .
She (We never thought of ourselves)
Is leaving (Never a thought for ourselves) . . .
Something inside that was always denied . . .
She’s leaving home, bye, bye
The mother’s laments sound like they’re stemming from guilt, self-centeredness, and resentment. The strings provide a soap-opera accompaniment as McCartney sings lead while Lennon chimes in on the mother’s complaints (in parentheses). Claiming they “never thought of ourselves,” she sounds like she’s only thinking of herself. “Bye, bye” is sung with a drippy, mocking tone that undercuts the sadness of parents having no emotional connection to their daughter. It’s not clear whether “Bye, bye” is the daughter’s voice or The Beatles’ voice, but most good art is ambiguous and open to interpretation.
“Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite” returns to the theme of show business entertainment expressed in “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band.” Lennon took inspiration from an 1843 poster advertising black entrepreneur Pablo Fanque’s circus, even taking lyrics directly off the poster. It’s accompanied by recorded calliope and harmonium music to give it a wild circus atmosphere with a circus barker’s pitch trying to create a surreal, hyped-up excitement.
For the benefit of Mr Kite
There will be a show tonight on trampoline
The Hendersons will all be there Late of Pablo Fanque’s Fair – What a scene!
Over men and horses, hoops and garters
Lastly through a hogshead of real fire!
In this way Mr K will challenge the world!
. . . And of course Henry the Horse dances the walz!
It’s catchy if shallow, but I would find the tune and lyrics running in my head frequently. The songs that I loved on Sgt Peppers and often replayed in my head were the lighthearted “When I’m Sixty-Four” and “Lovely Rita.” There’s no self-pity or dread in the first, only the lighthearted, humble hope that his love will stick by him when he’s not the young man he is now. The humor is delightful, with clarinet and perhaps other woodwinds accompanying Lennon’s singing.
When I get older, losing my hair
Many years from now
Will you still be sending me a valentine
Birthday greetings, bottle of wine?
If I’d been out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I’m sixty four?
You’ll be older too.
And if you say the word, I could stay with you.
I could be handy mending a fuse
When your lights have gone.
You can knit a sweater by the fireside
Sunday mornings, go for a ride.
Doing the garden, digging the weeds
Who could ask for more?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I’m sixty four?
“Lovely Rita” has Lennon singing lighthearted lyrics, wooing Rita in a right proper and respectful way. I wonder if he was consciously writing in his Sgt Pepper’s Band persona in both these songs. Perhaps they were a pose, but they’re infectious and delightful songs regardless.
Standing by a parking meter
When I caught a glimpse of Rita
Filling in a ticket in her little white book.
In a cap she looked much older
And the bag across her shoulder
Made her look a little like a milit’ry man.
Lovely Rita, meter maid
May I enquire discreetly
“When are you free to take some tea with me?”
Took her out and tried to win her
Had a laugh, and over dinner
Told her I would really like to see her again.
Got the bill and Rita paid it
Took her home, I nearly made it
Sitting on the sofa with a sister or two.
Oh, lovely Rita, meter maid
Where would I be without you?
Give us a wink and make me think of you.
“Within You, Without You” is Harrison’s dreamy spiritual meditation playing sitar with other Indian musicians playing tabla drums and other Indian instruments in a criticism of Western materialism with an invitation to a more spiritual life, with a bit of condescension. “We're not trying to outwit the public. The whole idea is to try a little bit to lead people into different tastes.” – George Harrison, 1967.
We were talking – about the space between us all.
And the people – who hide themselves
behind a wall of illusion.
Never glimpse the truth – then it’s far
too late – when they pass away.
Magical Mystery Tour was a lackluster album composed of songs from the soundtrack of a film with the same title, including the gem “The Fool on the Hill,” plus other Beatles studio cuts, including the McCartney’s irresistible “Penny Lane,” Lennon’s psychedelic “Strawberry Fields Forever,” and the utopian “All You Need Is Love.”
The major followup from Sgt Pepper’s was The Beatles, referred to as the White Album due to it’s blank white cover. Abandoning the technical and classical/avant-garde experimentation of Sgt Pepper’s, it was a two-record set of songs in wildly varying styles that kept me off-balance but fascinated from song to song. It didn’t get quite the critical praise like Sgt Pepper’s initially, but most of the critical reaction was good, some of it effusive. Even critics who praised it disagreed emphatically on what songs were good and what weren’t. Later opinion has rated it more highly.
In my mind it’s The Beatles’ crowning achievement, even though it was apparently made with a great deal of strife and internal conflict between all of them. Later, John commented that "Every track is an individual track; there isn't any Beatle music on it . . . John and the band, Paul and the band, George and the band." It was criticized as a collection of unrelated solo tracks. It’s been described as a survey of the whole range of American/British music of the 20th century, including rock and roll, blues, country, folk, reggae, avant-garde, hard rock, British music hall, and psychedelic music. There’s no consistent style at all, and yet it’s always seemed like a hodgepodge that somehow hangs together on its own unique terms. Its shifts are surprising and interesting, making me listen to each song on its own terms.
The album starts off with a takeoff on Chuck Berry’s “Back in the USA” titled “Back in the USSR” with a different melody and rhythm. It starts with the roar of a jet engine before Ringo’s breakneck drum pace moves it into straight up high energy rock and roll with McCartney singing as a patriotic Russian. “I’m back in the USSR/You don’t know how lucky you are, boy/Back in the US Back in the US Back in the USSR.” It sounded like giving the finger at the anti-communist sentiment of the period, but it does say “Back in the US Back in the US” before switching to “USSR.” The album then moves into the mellow and languid “Dear Prudence” with Lennon entreating a shy and introverted woman to “come out and play,” said to be written about Mia Farrow’s sister in India. It’s a beautiful melody and a pleasant listen.
“Dear Prudence” is followed by “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” a McCartney tune that Lennon later called “granny music shit,” an indication of the sort of animosities generated while making the album. I think it’s a delightful, lighthearted song that’s always fun to listen to. Desmond falls in love with a singer named Molly and they marry.
In a couple of years, they have built a home, sweet home
With a couple of kids running in the yard
Of Desmond and Molly Jones (Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha)
Happy ever after in the marketplace
Desmond lets the children lend a hand
Molly stays at home and does her pretty face
And in the evening, she still sings it with the band
Yes, ob-la-di, ob-la-da
Life goes on, brah
La-la, how the life goes on
Yeah, ob-la-di, ob-la-da
Life goes on, brah
La-la, how the life goes on
In a couple of years, they have built a home sweet home
With a couple of kids running in the yard
Of Desmond and Molly Jones (Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha)
Happy ever after in the marketplace
Molly lets the children lend a hand
Desmond stays at home and does his pretty face
And in the evening, she's a singer with the band
I always took Desmond doing “his pretty face” as simply a swipe at gender stereotypes, nothing more. “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill” satirizes the American (and perhaps British) identification of hunting with masculinity, with a takeoff on Buffalo Bill.
Hey, Bungalow Bill
What did you kill
Bungalow Bill?
He went out tiger hunting with his elephant and gun
In case of accident he always took his mum
The All-American bullet-headed Saxon mother’s son
George Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” is the strongest song on the album:
I look at you all see the love there that’s sleeping
While my guitar gently weeps
. . . I don’t know why nobody told you how to unfold your love
I don’t know how someone controlled you
They bought and sold you
I look at the world and I notice it’s turning
While my guitar gently weeps
With every mistake we must surely be learning
Still my guitar gently weeps
I don’t know how you were diverted
You were perverted too
I don’t know how you were inverted
No one alerted you
Harrison initially played it with acoustic guitar, but the other Beatles were resistant, so he asked friend Eric Clapton to record an electric guitar part, which became the final version. Harrison was no slouch on electric guitar – Rolling Stone in two separate ratings of the 100 greatest guitarists put him at 11th and 18th. Harrison and Clapton traded lead guitar lines in later performances together. The song conveys a deep sadness at the lack of love and compassion we have for each other. It’s Harrison that’s weeping. It’s one of The Beatles’ best, most moving songs.
“Martha, My Dear” is a lovely, humble entreaty to a woman to “Don’t forget me” and “you’re bound to see/that you and me were meant to be/for each other.” The “White Album” was said to be The Beatles’ effort to explore all the genres of American and British popular music of the 20th century. I don’t know what the British music hall genre is, but maybe this song is it. It starts with a cheery rhythm on piano, then adds a tuba and other horns. It’s a lighthearted love song that sounds as if Lennon and McCartney are singing together, but it sounds like the kind of McCartney “silly love song” he was often panned for.
“Blackbird” is McCartney’s invitation to black people to claim their rightful place in the world. It’s a simple, very moving lyric and music that’s been covered by many others. It’s heartfelt and sincere. Bettye LaVette sang it in first person in her early 2000s comeback after having a rock and roll hit in the 60s, in first person – “I was only waiting for this moment to be free.”
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to be free
Blackbird fly Blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night
“Piggies” is Harrison’s satire on the “bigger piggies” rapacious chase after wealth on the backs of “little piggies.” The significance of the word “bacon” implying a metaphorical cannibalism only just occurred to me in writing this.
Have you seen the little piggies
Crawling in the dirt
And for all the little piggies
Life is getting worse . . .
Everywhere there’s lots of piggies
Living piggy lives
You can see them out for dinner
With their piggy wives
Clutching forks and knives
To eat their bacon
“Rocky Racoon” is a playful western melodrama about a “young boy named Rocky Racoon” and his attempt at revenge for someone stealing his girl. It starts out with McCartney speaking the first verse in an adenoidal voice with some sort of southern drawl, accompanied by a simple acoustic guitar. Then he switches to a normal voice in the second:
Rocky Raccoon checked into his room
Only to find Gideon's bible
Rocky had come equipped with a gun
To shoot off the legs of his rival
His rival it seems had broken his dreams
By stealing the girl of his fancy
Her name was Magill and she called herself Lil
But everyone knew her as Nancy
Now she and her man who called himself Dan
Were in the next room at the hoedown
Rocky burst in and grinning a grin
He said Danny boy this is a showdown
But Daniel was hot – he drew first and shot
And Rocky collapsed in the corner
Now the doctor came in stinking of gin
And proceeded to lie on the table
He said Rocky you met your match
But Rocky said, doc it's only a scratch
And I'll be better, I'll be better doc as soon as I am able
Now Rocky Raccoon fell back in his room
Only to find Gideon's bible
Gideon checked out and he left it no doubt
To help with good Rocky's revival
It's a western movie parody that at the same time engages your sympathy for Rocky in spite of his violent intention, perhaps because of its horse opera nature. I love the song for the character of Rocky and for its campy, comic book story with the western theme of the hero getting shot and saying “doc, it’s only a scratch,” and the humor of the doctor coming in “stinking of gin,” so drunk he collapses on a table. Rocky’s the irresistible hero. There’s a nice little harmonica break toward the end. It’s just a fun song to listen to that I’ve loved from the first time I heard it, like Bob Dylan’s “Million Dollar Bash.” What he did was take a lightweight novelty song with a little humor, a drunk doctor and Gideon’s bible (”Gideon checked out/And he left it no doubt/To help with good Rocky’s revival”) and turn it into a mini-novel where you fall in love with the hero and root for him and love his optimism that he’ll be OK.
“I Will” is a beautiful McCartney love song with a lovely melody and simple accompaniment on what sounds like some high-register guitar or keyboard instrument. It’s followed by Lennon’s “Julia,” a more subdued song that he said was a tribute to his mother, killed in a car crash in 1958. It’s a dreamy reverie that’s full of feeling and a very pleasant listen. “Honey Pie” was a 1920s style flapper era song that sounded like Rudy Vallee. It’s lightweight but delightful to listen to. I don’t think The Beatles ever lost the sense of the absurdity of their fame or McCartney couldn’t have written “You became a legend on the silver screen/And now the thought of meeting you makes me weak in the knees.”
“Mother Nature’s Son” is McCartney’s beautiful short ballad paying homage to the natural world:
Born a poor young country boy – Mother Nature’s son
All day long I’m sitting singing songs for everyone . . .
Find me in my field of grass – Mother Nature’s son
Swaying daisies sing a lazy song beneath the sun
McCartney’s “Helter Skelter” is intense, hard rock, almost sounding like heavy metal.
When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide
And I stop and I turn and I go for a ride
And I get to the bottom and I see you again
Well do you, don’t you want me to make you
I’m coming down fast but don’t let me break you
Tell me tell me tell me the answer
You may be a lover but you ain’t no dancer
It’s an exhilarating song that sounds like someone on speed, exciting to listen to, but not too often. Wikipedia says “helter skelter” is the British name for a spiral slide found on playgrounds. Who would have thought? The song is followed by Harrison’s “Long, Long, Long,” a gorgeous, dreamy song expressing his “exhausted, relieved reconciliation with God,” whatever “God” meant to him, according to author Ian McDonald. It has restrained guitars and an interesting, intermittent heavy drumbeat by Ringo between verses.
Sgt Peppers and The Beatles broke the molds for pop/rock music as the 60s faded, as much as Dylan’s Highway 61 did in 1965. Sgt Peppers was a concept album with several songs that had nothing to do with the concept except for musical experimentation. Even though The Beatles was a hodgepodge of seemingly unrelated songs, it somehow all made sense as an expression of all their various musical inclinations and capabilities, and as a history of 20th century American and British pop music styles. Both albums were audaciously experimental in different ways and courageous musical adventures. I still think The Beatles was the zenith of The Beatles’ music.
Sgt Peppers and The Beatles (“the White Album”) set a bar that was hard to follow. Although The Beatles first made an album initially called Get Back which would later be released as Let It Be, they released Abbey Road first. Though I liked it, it was frustrating to listen to a medley of less than two minute songs followed by “The End” at 2:05. I was disappointed that songs I liked were so briefly there and gone. Only two out of the eleven songs on side two were over three minutes. But I still liked the album, and it’s grown on me over the years to become my favorite Beatles album.
George Harrison grew as a songwriter with “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” and “Long, Long, Long” and had two of the best three songs on Abbey Road with “Here Comes the Sun” and “Something,” which was covered by over 150 artists, including Frank Sinatra, who mistakenly called it his favorite Lennon/McCartney song. Sinatra also called it “the greatest love song of the last 50 years.” Lennon thought it was the best song on the album and McCartney said it was his favorite Harrison song. Several critics praised it as having Harrison’s finest guitar playing.
The album starts with Lennon’s “Come Together,” which was catchy but weird for me: “Hold you in his arms, yeah/You can feel his disease.” It’s followed by “Something,” which soars with a wonderful melody and some of Harrison’s best guitar playing, then McCartney’s amusing “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.” Then comes “Oh, Darling,” a rock and roller that’s one of McCartney’s best screamers where his voice breaks and drops at the end of a line with a Buddy Holley hiccup. It’s as passionately intense as anything of McCartney’s I’ve ever heard.
Ringo pitches in with the lighthearted “Octopus’s Garden,” an entertaining fantasy that tickled me like a kid. I wondered if he composed it as a song for his kids. It seems to sort of fit with “Yellow Submarine.” Side two begins with “Here Comes the Sun,” which is almost impossible to not sing along with. The guitar part is just a beautiful ride that runs over and over in my head after every time I listen to it.
“You Never Give Me Your Money” is a four-minute McCartney tune with the tempo changes that became common in McCartney’s solo work and with Wings (“Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” and “Band on the Run”). It starts slow with a piano accompaniment and prominent drumbeat in a ballad mode voicing the sadness of missed communication as each “break[s] down,” then it speeds up with a rocking rhythm lamenting that “All the money’s gone, nowhere to go,” then slowing down again to wonder where the “magic feeling” went. Then it speeds up again as they escape in a limousine saying “What a sweet dream/Came true today.” How “all the money’s gone” fits with escaping in a limousine is anybody’s guess. But it’s a song I love.
You never give me your money
You only give me your funny paper
And in the middle of negotiations
You break down
I never give you my number
I only give you my situation
And in the middle of investigation
I break down
Out of college, money spent
See no future, pay no rent
All the money's gone, nowhere to go
At a job I got the sack
Monday morning, turning back
Yellow lorry slow, nowhere to go
But oh, that magic feeling
Nowhere to go
Oh, that magic feeling
Nowhere to go
Nowhere to go
Ah, ah, ah
What a sweet dream
Pick up the bags and get in the limousine
Soon we'll be away from here
Step on the gas and wipe that tear away
What a sweet dream
Came true today . . .
Yes it did
After the mellow “The Sun King,” the rest of the album is taken up with a medley of two short Lennon songs and a string of McCartney tunes, all between one and two minutes long. I love “She Came in through the Bathroom Window,” written after a fan actually did that to get into Paul’s house. Harrison, plays wonderful electric guitar fills between lines and verses, and Ringo’s drumming is tasty as always without showing off.
She came in through the bathroom window
Protected by a silver spoon
But now she sucks her thumb and wanders
By the banks of her own lagoon
Didn't anybody tell her?
Didn't anybody see?
Sunday's on the phone to Monday
Tuesday's on the phone to me
She said she'd always been a dancer
She worked at 15 clubs a day
And though she thought I knew the answer
Well I knew but I could not say
And so I quit the police department
And got myself a steady job
And though she tried her best to help me
She could steal but she could not rob.
They’re intriguing lyrics: she seems to change identities. How does “protected by a silver spoon” fit with being a dancer working at “fifteen clubs a day?” Who could imagine Paul McCartney stealing, let alone robbing? But most folk and rock musicians identify themselves with outlaws, from Woody Guthrie to Dylan to McCartney, including “Band on the Run.”
“Golden Slumbers” is half all-out wail and half gentle lullaby. It starts soft, goes to almost screaming, then ends with the lullaby singing a child to sleep. And I love how both parts fit together. I just wished both these songs were longer.
“Carry That Weight” starts briefly with “Boy, you’re gonna carry that weight/Carry that weight a long time,” the horns move in with the melody of “You Never Give Me Your Money” with new lyrics and a guitar solo by George: “I never give you my pillow/I only send you my invitation/ And in the middle of the celebration/I break down.” Only a minute and a half, the four Beatles sing together on this, as Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison did on “Because” and “Sun King.” I love Harrison’s guitar playing on these late albums when he asserted his own style instead of letting McCartney and Lennon influence how he played. He rarely plays fast with a lot of notes like Clapton, but he plays with a wonderful expressiveness, like a smooth Robbie Robertson.
“The End” is rock and roll driven by Ringo’s great drumming as almost a lead instrument, with Harrison coming in on a great guitar solo until it slows down with a light piano to assert that “And in the end/The love you take/Is equal to/The love you make” before finishing with Ringo’s drumming and another brief electric guitar fill by Harrison. It’s an intriguing statement to ponder. “The End” is followed by “Good Night,” a lovely lullaby by John, reportedly written for his son Julian but also sounding like he’s saying good night for The Beatles.
Now it's time to say good night
Good night, sleep tight
Now the sun turns out his light
Good night, sleep tight
Dream sweet dreams for me (Dream sweet)
Dream sweet dreams for you
Close your eyes and I'll close mine
Good night, sleep tight
Now the moon begins to shine
Good night, sleep tight
Dream sweet dreams for me (Dream sweet)
Dream sweet dreams for you
Good night, good night, everybody
Everybody everywhere
Good night
The album ends with the lovely and brisk “Her Majesty,” an apparent homage to The Queen:
I imagine she’s a pretty nice girl
But she doesn't have a lot to say
I imagine she’s a pretty nice girl
But she changes from day to day
I wanna tell her that I love her a lot
But I gotta get a belly full of wine
I imagine she’s a pretty nice girl
Someday I'm gonna make her mine, oh yeah
Someday I'm gonna make her mine.
Ultimately I learned to enjoy the medley for what it is, as a medley. Though I think the “White Album” is their best, I enjoy listening to Abbey Road now more than any other Beatles album.
Let It Be, originally titled Get Back and recorded before Abbey Road, was released in May of 1970. It sold well but had a very mixed critical reception, more negative than positive. Opinion has been more favorable over time, though. I liked it a lot from the beginning. I think I saw the movie with the unannounced performance from Apple Studio’s rooftop before I got the album.
The album starts off with “Two of Us,” an engaging Lennon and McCartney duet. It’s hard to know which songs are more Lennon or more McCartney because they’re all signed Lennon/McCartney, but even though a duet this sounds like a Lennon song to me. Accompanied by a slapping drum rhythm and a couple of understated acoustic guitars, it paints a picture of two people driving in the country with no particular destination, enjoying each other’s company and heading for home.
You and me Sunday driving
Not arriving
On our way back home
We're on our way home
We're on our way home
We're going home
Two of us sending postcards
Writing letters
On my wall
You and me burning matches
Lifting latches
On our way back home
We're on our way home
We're on our way home
We're going home
You and I have memories
Longer than the road that stretches out ahead
Lennon’s “Across the Universe” is a slow and dreamy, mystical tune with some beautiful poetry in it.
Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup
They slither wildly as they slip away across the universe
Pools of sorrow, waves of joy are drifting through my opened mind
Possessing and caressing me
Jai Guru Deva, Om
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
Images of broken light which dance before me like a million eyes
They call me on and on across the universe
Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letter box
They tumble blindly as they make their way across the universe
The song’s accompaniment has a simple acoustic guitar, backed with strings orchestrated by the famous or infamous Phil Spector. Lennon and Harrison had brought him in because of the supposed poor quality of the recording. It’s a tune with a slow serene melody and a very pleasant one to listen to, but McCartney hated the result. I don’t hear anything problematic with the guitar accompaniment and the singing, so I’m not sure what Lennon and Harrison didn’t like. The album was later reissued without strings as Let It Be … Naked.
“I’ve Got a Feeling” is a lazy rocker with McCartney singing the first two minutes, then Lennon comes in for two verses. It finishes with Lennon and McCartney weaving his lyrics around Lennon’s. It’s like they blended two songs with different lyrics into one with an infectious result. Harrison weaves good guitar lines around the lyrics that gives the song some drive.
I've got a feeling, a feeling deep inside (McCartney)
Oh yeah, oh yeah, that's right
I've got a feeling, a feeling I can't hide
Oh no, no, oh no, oh no
Yeah, I've got a feeling
All these years I've been wandering around
Wondering how come nobody told me
All that I've been looking for was somebody
Who looked like you
I've got a feeling that keeps me on my toes
Oh yeah, oh yeah
I've got a feeling I think that everybody knows
Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah
Yeah, yeah I've got a feeling, yeah, yeah
Everybody had a hard year (Lennon)
Everybody had a good time
Everybody had a wet dream
Everybody saw the sunshine
Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah
Everybody had a good year
Everybody let their hair down
Everybody pulled their socks up
Everybody put their foot down
Oh yeah
(M) (I've got a feeling)
(L) Everybody had a good year
(M) (A feeling deep inside)
(L) Everybody had a hard time
(M) (Oh yeah)
(L) Everybody had a wet dream
(M) (Oh yeah)
(L) Everybody saw the sunshine
(I've got a feeling)
Everybody had a good year
(A feeling I can't hide)
Everybody let their hair down
(Oh no)
Everybody pulled their socks up
(Oh no no)
Everybody put their foot down, oh yeah
Harrison contributes a sweet and laid-back love song on “For You Blue” with John Lennon playing a funky lap-held slide guitar.
I've loved you from the moment I saw you
You looked at me that's all you had to do
I feel it now I hope you feel it too
Because you're sweet and lovely girl I love you
Because you're sweet and lovely girl it's true
I love you more than ever girl I do
“The One After 909” is a rock and roll song from 1960 or earlier. It gets a great treatment on Let It Be that gets under your skin as it tells the story of a boy chasing a girl who missed the 9:09 train but caught the next one. It’s a raucous number with Harrison’s lead guitar and what sounds like rhythm guitar backed by a jumpy, energetic electric piano.
My baby says she's traveling on the one after 909
I said move over honey I'm traveling on that line
I said move over once, move over twice
Come on baby, don't be cold as ice
Said she's traveling on the one after 909
I begged her not to go and I begged her on my bended knees
You’re only foolin round, only foolin round with me
I said move over once, move over twice
Come on baby, don't be cold as ice
She said she's traveling on the one after 909
Picked up my bag, run to the station
Railman says you got the wrong location
Picked up the bag, run right home
Then I find I got the number wrong
Both “One After 909” and “Get Back” are great, high energy rock and roll like Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Bo Diddley tunes.
In contrast, “Let It Be” is an unhurried ballad with a churchy organ backing by Billy Preston and a soulful guitar solo and fills by Harrison. To me “Let It Be” is the best thing McCartney ever recorded, maybe my favorite Beatles song ever. The lyrics express the timeless wisdom of how to be at peace with oneself and the life one has. Change what you can for the better, but don’t beat your head against the wall hanging on to regrets and frustrations about things that are out of your control, the surest route to an unhappy life. But it isn’t just advice and philosophizing. It’s a powerful emotional expression from his heart. I assumed he must be harking back to a Catholic upbringing with “Mother Mary comes to me,” but he once said in an interview the reference was instead to his mother.
In the movie Let It Be he sings both “Let It Be” and “Long and Winding Road” in a full screen shot of his face with such sincerity and genuineness that I think they’re the closest expressions of his emotional core in all his music, far more than even “Yesterday.” They’re the best things on the album, notwithstanding the great rock and roll of “Get Back” and “The One after 909.”
Lennon was the utopian moralist and idealist philosopher with a trippy imagination. (“Imagine all the people/Living life in peace/You may say I'm a dreamer/But I'm not the only one,” and “Last night the wife said/Oh, boy, when you’re dead/You can’t take nothin with you but your soul”) McCartney was like a kid in a Montessori School on play day, with free rein to make whatever he felt like, creating narrative songs telling stories with characters from his fertile imagination like little novellettes: “Eleanor Rigby,” “Penny Lane,” “She Came in through the Bathroom Window,” “Rocky Racoon,” and “Get Back.”
Brett Nelson
Joan Baez – The Kingdom of Childhood Passes
I’ve been writing these articles about the musicians I loved in my formative years not only for those who were formed by the same music but for those younger people who might learn to appreciate their own music choices on a deeper, more satisfying, and meaningful level. That’s how I learned. Anyone who gets this kind of deep appreciation from any form of art feels their life and soul enriched by it. I don’t know if my articles can foster such enrichment, but that’s my ultimate hope, beyond just increasing awareness and appreciation of the musicians I write about. One of the most effective antidepressants is a sense of participation in something larger than oneself. I learned how to live perhaps more from listening to the wisdom and feelings expressed in music I listened to and novels I read than any other source of education.
I first encountered Joan Baez’s music in high school when I bought her first album, the 1960 self-titled Joan Baez, which I wasn’t enthralled with because her voice sounded kind of shrill to me, and the song selection didn’t appeal to me as I remember. Seven or eight years later a friend played me Any Day Now, her double LP of Bob Dylan songs, recorded in Nashville with top country music session players, many of whose names I’d run across before, some of whom played on the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s Will the Circle Be Unbroken album. What I heard on Any Day Now was smooth, relaxed, and unhurried, singing a wonderful selection of eighteen Dylan tunes with a depth of feeling and musical accompaniment that often matched and sometimes bettered Dylan’s recordings, including an 11-minute cover of “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.” Many years later Dylan said in an interview that she sang his songs better than anyone. I quickly bought the album and fell in love with it.
Any Day Now hops around with songs from different stages of Dylan’s career, starting with “Love Minus Zero/No Limit,” then reaching back for “North Country Blues,” which Baez sings with a voice full of foreboding that chronicles the progressive dying of a town dependent on one industry through the story of a young woman married to a miner.
The iron ore poured
As the years passed the door
The drag lines an' the shovels they was a-hummin’
Till one day my brother
Failed to come home
The same as my father before him . . .
Oh the years passed again
And the givin' was good
With the lunch bucket filled every season
What with three babies born
The work was cut down
To a half a day's shift with no reason
Then the shaft was soon shut
And more work was cut
And the fire in the air, it felt frozen
Till a man come to speak
And he said in one week
That number eleven was closin'
They complained, in the east
They are paying too high
They say that your ore ain't worth diggin’
That it's much cheaper down
In the South American towns
Where the miners work almost for nothin’
So the mining gates locked
And the red iron rotted
And the room smelled heavy from drinkin’
And the sad, silent song
Made the hour twice as long
As I waited for the sun to go sinking
I lived by the window
As he talked to himself
This silence of tongues it was building
Then one morning's wake
The bed it was bare
And I was left alone with three children . . .
You can feel the downward slide of hope and spirit in Baez’s voice and in a loosely-strung electric guitar that mirrors the moods of the song. It’s not an uplifting song but it’s compelling to listen to, and it makes you feel how people must have felt in Hibbing, MN where Dylan lived his early years. Whether Dylan imagined it in 1963 or not, he was prophetic about what happened to American manufacturing over the next 50 years that led to the election of a president who voiced the grievances of those left behind when their jobs moved overseas.
The infectiously cheery “You Ain’t Goin Nowhere” changes the mood, an irresistible song with intriguing lyrics and understated acoustic guitar and piano with a nice violin fill. I love the couplet that ends the chorus: “Oh, oh, are we gonna fly/Down in the easy chair!”
Buy me a flute
And a gun that shoots
Tailgates and substitutes
Strap yourself
To the tree with roots
You ain't goin' nowhere
Whoo-ee! Ride me high
Tomorrow's the day
My bride's gonna come
Oh, oh, are we gonna fly
Down in the easy chair!
Genghis Khan
He could not keep
All his kings
Supplied with sleep
We'll climb that hill no matter how steep
When we get up to it
Whoo-ee! Ride me high
Tomorrow's the day
My bride's gonna come
Oh, oh, are we gonna fly
Down in the easy chair!
Almost all the superb musical accompaniment is understated and supportive rather than prominent. It’s all background for Baez’s voice and Dylan’s songs. They’re Nashville musicians, but “You Ain’t Goin Nowhere” is about as close as it gets to country music.
She sings a slow and soulful rendition of “I Pity the Poor Immigrant,” with a somewhat more prominent accompaniment with piano and a soulful dobro. It’s unclear who Dylan was thinking of in the song, but most immigrants come here poor and go through the last hired, first fired cycle. Any poor ethnic group developed a small subset who found an economic opportunity in crime – there were Irish gangs, Jewish gangs, Puerto Rican gangs, Mexican gangs, black gangs, and more. The song suggests a Mafia kingpin, but it’s ethnically anonymous. He “falls in love with wealth itself,” “uses all his power to do evil,” and “builds his town with blood.”
I pity the poor immigrant
Whose strength is spent in vain,
Whose heaven is like Ironsides,
Whose tears are like rain,
Who eats but is not satisfied,
Who hears but does not see,
Who falls in love with wealth itself
And turns his back on me.
I pity the poor immigrant
Who tramples through the mud,
Who fills his mouth with laughing
And who builds his town with blood,
Whose visions in the final end
Must shatter like the glass.
I pity the poor immigrant
When his gladness comes to pass.
Next comes a tour de force a cappella version of “Tears of Rage.” She’s known for doing songs like “Amazing Grace” a cappella, but this is a song with free-form poetry and little structure or rhythm, and she does it remarkably well without losing a sense of timing in the song, even with no accompaniment to establish a rhythm. It’s an enigmatic lyric apparently describing the strained relationship between a daughter and father, powerfully sung.
We carried you in our arms
On Independence Day
And now you'd throw us all aside
And put us on our way
Oh, what dear daughter 'neath the sun
Would treat a father so
To wait upon him hand and foot
And always tell him "No?"
Tears of rage, tears of grief
Why must I always be the thief?
Come to me now, you know
We're so alone
And life is brief
We pointed out the way to go
And scratched your name in sand
Though you just thought that it was nothing more
Than a place for you to stand . . .
It was all very painless
When you went out to receive
All that false instruction
Which we never could believe
And now the heart is filled with gold
As if it was a purse
But oh, what kind of love is this
Which goes from bad to worse?
It's followed by the achingly gorgeous eleven-minute “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands,” which Dylan said in “Sara” on his Desire album was written for his wife. It’s a beautifully poetic, almost melancholic song, maybe the best love song I’ve ever heard. It’s accompanied by a slow, almost hymnlike organ. “Sad-Eyed Lady” is an ode to a woman he has deep appreciation and respect for who he clearly has on a pedestal, but not because he has an idealized image of her. To the contrary, he sees her with clear eyes and appreciates her for who she is in all her facets like a priceless cut gemstone, unlike those who want something from her and can’t see her for who she is. He pays homage to her in very specific language, but in poetic metaphors which are almost surreal that only Dylan himself could likely know what they meant – “The kings of Tyrus with their convict list.” But “your deck of cards missing the jack and the ace” suggests she’s not impressed with hotshots and slick seducers. This is just a sample of eleven minutes worth of wonderful poetry.
Oh, the farmers and the businessmen, they all did decide
To show you the dead angels that they used to hide.
But why did they pick you to sympathize with their side?
Oh, how could they ever mistake you? . . .
With your sheets like metal and your belt like lace,
And your deck of cards missing the jack and the ace,
And your basement clothes and your hollow face,
Who among them can think he could outguess you?
With your silhouette when the sunlight dims
Into your eyes where the moonlight swims,
And your match-book songs and your gypsy hymns,
Who among them would try to impress you?
Sad-eyed lady of the lowlands,
Where the sad-eyed prophet says that no man comes,
My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums,
Should I leave them by your gate,
Or, sad-eyed lady, should I wait?
The singer’s telling her he sees who she is in all her in all her complexity. He’s not sure he’s worthy of her, but he’s humbly asking if he should leave his gifts at her gate or wait for her to open it. I have no idea what “warehouse eyes” means.
Baez does justice to “I Dreamed I Saw St Augustine,” one of my favorite Dylan songs with a sadness and poignance that’s close to Dylan’s. It has a mournful piano break after the second verse that feels like a natural fit in the song and sets up the grief in the last verse: “I put my fingers against the glass/And bowed my head and cried.” She doesn’t quite reach the emptiness that Dylan expresses in the last line as his voice drops to barely get the last words out, but she draws out the last word to convey much of the same abject remorse and grief.
“One Too Many Mornings” starts with a gorgeous acoustic guitar accompaniment with a gentle bass, and gorgeous strings that add an anticipatory tension to the song. She draws out notes in a way that emphasizes the sadness of the end of a relationship. This is one song that surpasses Dylan’s recording. I can’t imagine anyone doing it with more tenderness.
It’s a restless hungry feeling
That don’t mean no one no good
When everything I’m a-sayin
You can say just as good
You’re right from your side
And I’m right from mine
We’re both just one too many mornings
And a thousand miles behind
In retrospect it must have seemed like it echoed the end of their relationship, although it was written earlier and likely about Suze Rotolo. Dylan’s breakup with Baez in 1965 was abrupt and heartbreaking for her, so it’s a testament to her resilience that she could come back in 1968 and record these songs with such feeling and respect for the songs.
Next comes “Boots of Spanish Leather.” I’ve heard several good versions, including Dylan’s. It’s accompanied by a great rhythm guitar with some steel guitar and dobro. It doesn’t have the poignance of Dylan’s version, where you can almost hear him realize after the next to last verse that his love is saying goodbye. But I love the feeling and rhythmic flow of Baez’s recording.
“Walkin” Down the Line” is a catchy version of a song Dylan never recorded to my knowledge,
with a brisk guitar-picking accompaniment. It sounds like a fifties folk song with a bit of rock and roll flavor, and it tends to run through my mind for hours or days after I’ve heard it.
My money comes and goes
My money comes and goes
My money comes and goes
And rolls and flows
Through the holes in the pockets in my clothes
I got my walkin shoes
I got my walkin shoes
I got my walkin shoes
And I ain’t a-gonna lose
I believe I got the walkin blues
I’m walkin down the line
I’m walkin down the line
And I’m walkin down the line
My feet’ll be a-flyin
To tell you bout my troubled mind
I love “My money comes and goes/And rolls and flows/Through the holes in the pockets of my clothes.” I’ve never heard or read assonance used better than that. Baez sings it like a river flowing with hardly a ripple over rocks beneath its surface. It’s pure pleasure to listen to.
Last is a wonderful rendition of “Restless Farewell,” not an easy song to sing with its long lines and complex rhythm. She does it with mostly her own accompaniment on rhythm guitar except on the choruses. It’s apparently an ode to Dylan’s friends in his early folk days in Minneapolis’s Dinkytown as he’s moving beyond that with a different vision of his future.
Oh all the money that in my whole life I did spend
Be it mine right or wrongfully
I let it slip gladly past the hands of my friends
To tie up the time most forcefully
But the bottles are done
We’ve killed each one
And the table’s full and overflowed
And the corner sign
Says it’s closing time
So I’ll bid farewell and be down the road . . .
Oh a false clock tries to tick out my time
To disgrace, distract and bother me
And the dirt of gossip blows into my face
And the dust of rumors covers me
But if the arrow is straight
And the point is slick
It can pierce through the dust no matter how thick
So I’ll make my stand
And remain as I am
And bid farewell and not give a damn
It’s an affectionate but bittersweet goodbye to a happy time and good friends by someone who knows he needs to move on to pursue a larger vision that he can only follow elsewhere. Baez sings it with a sense of loss but with assuredness that it’s time to move on.
Even with country music backing and occasional steel guitar or dobro fills, the album never sounds like a country music album, or a folk album for that matter. It sounds like an album driven by her vision and her taste that makes it a uniquely Joan Baez album, even though it’s all Dylan songs. The album is a testament to Baez’s love of Dylan’s music to want to pay tribute to it in this way, and her toughness that she could do it only a few years after their deeply painful breakup. She continued to honor Dylan’s songwriting, as we’ll see with subsequent albums.
In the 70s she came out with a string of albums on top of Any Day Now that belied her “Saint Joan” image and showed her to be a complex and vulnerable woman with a sense of humor and a down-to-earth likeable sensibility. After Any Day Now came the superb Diamonds and Rust, titled after the opening song. “Diamonds and Rust” is apparently about a call Dylan made to her out of the blue in 1974. It’s a beautiful and moody song recounting their relationship and Dylan’s apparent feeler to her about rekindling it. She’s recognizing there’s a price to pay for the offer, and she’s unwilling to pay it again.
Well, I’ll be damned, here comes your ghost again
But that’s not unusual, it’s just that the moon is full
And you happened to call
And here I sit, hand on the telephone
Hearing a voice I’d known a couple of light years ago
Heading straight for a fall
As I remember your eyes were bluer than robin’s eggs
My poetry was lousy, you said . . .
We both know what memories can bring
They bring diamonds and rust
Well you burst on the scene already a legend
The unwashed phenomenon, the original vagabond
You strayed into my arms
And there you stayed, temporarily lost at sea
The madonna was yours for free, yes the girl on the half shell
Could keep you unharmed . . .
Now you’re telling me you’re not nostalgic
Then give me another word for it –
You who’re so good with words
And at keeping things vague
Cause I need some of that vagueness now
It’s all come back too clearly
Yes I loved you dearly
And if you’re offering me diamonds and rust
I’ve already paid
Baez toured with Dylan and a host of others, including old folkies, in the Rolling Thunder Review in 1975, singing four duets with him dressed exactly like Dylan with the same vest, scarf, and hat, even to white face paint. She also played “The Woman in White” in Dylan’s film from the tour Renaldo and Clara, while Dylan’s wife Sara played Clara. There is a scene from the film where Dylan and Baez sit having a conversation like old friends when Dylan complains teasingly that “You went out and got married on me,” and she tells him “You went and got married first,” to which he tells her, after a pause like he’s trying to think of a dodge, “Yeah, but I married the woman I loved,” and Baez says “Yes, you did.” He tells her they should have gotten married, to which Baez replies without hesitation that it would never have worked. Wikipedia says they actually toured together again in 1984 with Carlos Santana.
The second song on the album is one of my favorite Jackson Browne songs, “Fountain of Sorrow.” Browne sings with a rhythm and a flow of language that’s as effortlessly fluid as a river, and Baez matches that here. She’s accompanied on a lively piano by someone named Joe Sample and by superb guitarists Dean Parks and Larry Carlton, whose names show up on a lot of the albums I listened to in the seventies, as well as the ubiquitous Jim Gordon on drums throughout the album, listed as Mucho Gordo on one song.
Looking through some photographs I found inside a drawer
I was taken by a photograph of you . . .
You were turning round to see who was behind you
And I took your childish laughter by surprise
And at the moment that my camera happened to find you
There was just a trace of sorrow in your eyes . . .
When you see through love’s illusions there lies the danger
And your perfect lover just looks like a perfect fool
So you go running off in search of a perfect stranger
While the loneliness seems to spring from your life
Like a fountain from a pool
Now for you and me, it may not be that hard to reach our dreams
But that magic feeling never seems to last
and while the future’s there for anyone to change
Still you know it seems it would be easier sometimes to change the past
I’m just one or two years and a couple of changes behind you
In my lessons at loves pain and heartache school
Where if you feel too free and you need something to remind you
There’s this loneliness springing up from your life
Like a fountain from a pool
Fountain of sorrow, fountain of light
You’ve known the hollow sound of your own steps in flight
You’ve had to hide sometimes, but now you’re all right
And it’s good to see your smiling face tonight . . .
You’ve had to struggle, you’ve had to fight
To keep understanding and compassion in sight
You could be laughing at me, you’ve got the right
But you go on smiling, so clear and so bright
And it’s good to see your smiling face tonight
I love the lines “I took your childish laughter by surprise” and “Still you know it seems/ it would be easier sometimes to change the past,” as well as the joy in “But you go on smiling, so clear and so clear and so bright/And it’s good to see your smiling face tonight.”
It’s followed by an excellent rendition of a song by Stevie Wonder and Syreeta Wright titled "I Never Dreamed You’d Leave in Summer” with Carlton and Parks on guitar and the combined acoustic and electric pianos that accompanies many of the songs on the album. It’s an example of the wide range of song styles on the album showcasing her versatility. “Children and All That Jazz” is a Baez-penned chronicle of trying to get her toddler ready for bed after an exciting day. It starts out at a high pitch and breakneck pace as she’s naming all the friends her son’s played with that day, dropping in pitch throughout and winding down the tempo at the end as she feels her fatigue, an experience I’m sure all parents are familiar with.
. . . Sweet Pearl and Nicholas
Come here and tickle us
I don’t like nicknames
I like to play games
One of them’s Batman
That’s where it’s at man
Look at your T-shirt
I see you’re all wet now
I’ll give you a bath if
You go to bed now . . .
Light of my life is
Younger than new leaves
Brighter than you please
Says that he loves me
Big as the world and
Gabriel Harris
You go to bed now
You go to bed now
It’s quarter to nine, I’m tired,
I’m tired, I’m tired
One of your mice died
That was when you cried
Get in the tub and
Play with your boats now
Sit here beside me
I’ll tell you a story
One about snakes and
Anything gory
I’m falling asleep and
You’re smarter than I am
Light of my life, good night, good night,
good night
I never had kids, but the intense energy of small children and resistance to going to bed is palpable as I listen to this affectionate song, and I can feel her love and exhaustion, as well as what it’s like for a parent trying to get an energetic toddler ready for and into bed.
Next comes a cover of Dylan’s “Simple Twist of Fate,” one of my favorite songs from Blood on the Tracks. She turns Dylan’s meditative acoustic guitar treatment into a jumping rock and roll version at a faster tempo and with a lot of piano accompaniment by Larry Knechtel on acoustic piano and Joe Sample on electric piano and both Larry Carlton and Dean Parks adding guitar fills. It keeps the spirit of the song but is quite a contrast with Dylan’s take. She even sings one verse with a spot-on imitation of the sneer Dylan sometimes sang with, though he doesn’t sing “Twist of Fate” like that. It sounds like playful teasing rather than satiric. She sings the song in respectful homage, and there’s no doubt that she likes the song.
They sat together in the park
As the evening sky grew dark,
She looked at him and he felt a spark tingle to his bones.
'Twas then he felt alone and wished that he'd gone straight
And watched out for a simple twist of fate. . .
He woke up, the room was bare
He didn't see her anywhere.
He told himself he didn't care, pushed the window open wide,
Felt an emptiness inside to which he just could not relate
Brought on by a simple twist of fate.
He hears the ticking of the clocks
And walks along with a parrot that talks,
Hunts her down by the waterfront docks where the sailors all come in.
Maybe she'll pick him out again, how long must he wait
Once more for a simple twist of fate.
It’s a story of a one-night stand that left the man empty and longing for more connection after she’s already gone when he wakes up. It’s mysterious as “he felt a spark tingle to his bones” but at the same time “he felt alone and wished that he’d gone straight/And watched out for a simple twist of fate.” It speaks of the ambivalent push me-pull you of relationships in those who both want connection and fear being hurt, which perhaps mirrors something in the relationship Baez and Dylan had. In any case she liked the song enough to record it.
One of the best songs on the album is her tender cover of John Prine’s poignant “Hello in There” about an old couple whose children have moved to distant places and “left us alone.”
Me and Loretta we don’t talk much now
She sits and stares at the back door screen
All the news just repeats itself
Like some forgotten dream
That we’ve both seen
Someday I’ll go and call up Rudy
We worked together at the factory
What’ll I tell him if he asks “What’s new?”
Nothin’, what’s with you?
Nothin’ much to do
You know old trees just grow stronger
Old rivers grow wider every day
But old people they just grow lonesome
Waitin’ for someone to say
Hello in there
Hello
So if you’re walkin’ down the street sometime
And spot some hollow ancient eyes
Please don’t pass them by and stare
Like you don’t care
Say hello in there
Hello
Say hello in there
Hello
The last stanza with “hollow ancient eyes” and the plea to not “pass them by and stare/Like you don’t care” hits your heart with the song’s picture of how lonely old people without social connections can be. Baez’s pitch drops as each stanza nears its end, and you feel the compassion for people “Waitin’ for someone to say/Hello in there/Hello.”
She then segues into a self-penned tribute to Dylan’s return to live performing in 1974 titled “Winds of the Old Days.” It starts with her reading that “the prince had returned to the stage.”
Hovering near treacherous water
A friend saw her drifting and caught her
Unguarded fantasies flying too far
Memories tumbling like sweets from a jar . . .
Breath on an undying ember
It doesn't take much to remember
Those eloquent songs from the good old days
That set us to marching with banners ablaze
But reporters, there's no sense in prying
Our blue-eyed son's been denying
The truths that are wrapped in a mystery
The sixties are over, so set him free . . .
Why do I sit, the autumnal judge?
Years of self-righteousness will not budge
Singer or savior, it was his to choose
Which of us knows what was his to lose?
‘Cause idols are best when they're made of stone
A savior's a nuisance to live with at home
Stars often fall, heroes go unsung
And martyrs most certainly die too young
So thank you for writing the best songs
Thank you for righting a few wrongs
You're a savage gift on a wayward bus
But you stepped down and you sang to us
And get you down to the harbor now
Most of the sour grapes are gone from the bough
Ghosts of Johanna will visit you there
And the winds of the old days will blow through your hair
It’s a vulnerable and honest song, a blessing to the lover she felt so deeply hurt by in 1965, cheering Dylan on for performing live again. “Memories tumbling like sweets from a jar,” “Why do I sit, the autumnal judge/Years of self-righteousness will not budge/Singer or savior, it was his to choose/Which of us knows what was his to lose?”, and “You’re a savage gift on a wayward bus,” and are fine poetry (but there’s no sense of self-righteousness with its stance of moral superiority here – “years of self-righteousness” seem to have already budged). I always took the last line as a compliment, not an indictment, as in wild gift on a bus repeatedly taking off in unexpected and original creative directions. “The sixties are over, so set him free” and “Which of us knows what was his to lose?” make it a humble, generous, forward-looking song.
I don’t know what she thought of Highway 61 Revisited, but she recorded “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” and “Love Minus Zero/No Limit” from Blonde on Blonde for Any Day Now, plus songs from John Wesley Harding. And she references “Visions of Johanna” in “Winds of the Old Days,” so she still followed his music, clearly cheering him on here. Taken with “Diamonds and Rust” “Winds of the Old Days” is a testament that if her poetry was lousy in the sixties, it wasn’t in the seventies, emphatically demonstrated here and on her followup album Gulf Winds.
“Winds of the Old Days” is followed by Janis Ian’s deeply longing and sad lament “Jesse” with a melancholy piano and a yearning, synthesized horn solo by Baez at the end.
Jesse, come home, there’s a hole in the bed
Where we slept, now it’s growing cold
By the hearth, all apart, it hangs on my heart
And I’m leaving the light on the stairs
No I’m not scared – I wait for you
Hey Jesse, it’s lonely, come home
You can feel the longing in Baez’s voice throughout the song, but especially when she sings the last line – the same in each verse, as she pauses and holds off with each two words on the last, making you feel the raw, honest emotion devoid of self-pity, letting him know how she misses him, with little confidence her hope will be answered. It’s a supremely poignant song.
She lightens up with “Dida,” a marvelous duet with Joni Mitchell whose lyrics consist of a single word, “Dida.” It’s an exhilarating tune with Mitchell weaving her voice around Baez’s lead singing that results in a smooth meld of two wonderful voices in which each sings their own improvised melody. It’s a virtuoso performance.
It’s followed by a medley of eight lines from Stephen Foster’s “I Dream of Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair” combined with three verses from “Danny Boy.” I can’t imagine anyone singing “I Dream of Jeannie” or “Danny Boy” with more depth of feeling than in this recording, but I later heard Papa John Creach’s instrumental recording of “Danny Boy” on the violin that may surpass even Baez. When she ends with “Oh Danny boy, Oh Danny boy, I love you so,” there’s no doubt about how deep the love of the woman in the song is. It’s powerful singing.
Baez issued a double live album in 1976 titled From Every Stage (referring to the stages of her career) with five Dylan songs including a wonderful performance of “Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts” that at least equals Dylan’s (“I just love this song,” she says in introducing it), Emmylou Harris’s “Boulder to Birmingham\,” Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne,” “Diamonds and Rust,” and a better version of “I Shall Be Released” than the one on Any Day Now.
Then came Gulf Winds, an album entirely of songs written by Baez, fully confident of her own writing ability and justifying her confidence. It starts with “Sweeter for Me,” a love song to someone who can’t be with her, with whom she “cannot be/What you want me to be when you are next to me.” Each verse ends with “You suffered sweeter for me than anyone I’ve ever known.” How he suffered for her isn’t said, but it sounds like a personal song from Baez’s life.
Next comes the lively and giddy “Seabirds” about writing while she’s sitting in a bar looking out on the ocean, with ocean and seagull sound effects. It has some sort of Latin/reggae beat with acoustic guitar, light organ, and hand drums with a jazzy feel.
Don't worry about my politics they are what they are
I work best when I get some rest right now I'm in a bar
Overlooking the whole wide world it's over the Pacific
I've never written when I was drunk this could be terrific!
And the seabird struggles in the wind, she topples, balances again
The lady sitting next to me is gazing in the eyes
Of the stranger sitting next to her who’s mouthing truths and lies
He's actually quite nice, I guess, he has an honest look
He doesn't know I've lost my mind scribbling in this book
And the seabird struggles in the wind, she topples, balances again . . .
Four big pelicans just flew by, the room got very still
One of them carried the breath of God tucked way back in his bill
I know it was the breath of God, it's the same as the secret of life
He's carrying it off to the Shah of Iran to trade it for the end of strife
And the seabird struggles in the wind, she topples, balances again
The chorus with the seabird toppling in the wind slows down, sung with a tentative uncertainty as it struggles for balance. “Seabirds” is just a fun song to listen to and one of my favorites on the album, as is the next song, the celebratory “Caruso.”
Miracles bowl me over and often will they do so
Now I think I was asleep till I heard the voice of the great Caruso . . .
A friend of mine gave me a tape
She'd copied from a record disc
It was made at the turn of the century
And found in a jacket labeled "misc"
And to cellos, harps, and flugelhorns
With the precision of a hummingbird's heart
Was the Lord of the monarch butterflies,
One time a ruler of the world of art
Bring infinity home let me embrace it one more time
Make it the lilies of the field or Caruso in his prime
Yeah, the king of them all was Enrico, whose singular chest could rival
A hundred fervent Baptists giving forth in a tent revival
It's true he was a vocal miracle, but that's only secondary
It's the soul of the monarch butterfly that I find a little bit scary . . .
There are oh so many miracles that the Western sky exposes
Why go looking for lilacs when you’re lying in a bed of roses
It’s a brisk song with a driving rhythm, accompanied by a mellow but fast electric guitar by Dean Parks, organ with a light touch, and complex percussion by Jim Gordon. I love the chorus: “Bring infinity home let me embrace it one more time/Make it the lilies of the field or Caruso in his prime,” and especially the line “It's the soul of the monarch butterfly that I find a little bit scary.” It’s a great song.
“Kingdom of Childhood” is an engaging eight-minute reflection on the uncertainty and insecurity of life.
The ship that sails the seven seas
Has finally brought me to me knees
It’s not much to my liking
. . . the tide comes in, death rides it like a viking
Happiness is temporary, believe me I know
It can arrive as a shining crystal and leave as the melting snow
Come all you lads and lasses, the Kingdom of Childhood passes
Oh but I’m hardy in these years
Or I’d have sunk down in my tears to the earth beneath my feet
I want to endure the slings and arrows
That Hamlet spoke about, but harrowed,
he was forced to a ragged defeat
There was a method to his madness
But overcome by pride and sadness, he did not endure
Surely his death was a grave mistake
How many deaths do we really calculate, isn’t that true, Lord? . . .
If it was misfortune who woke you up
To pour you the dregs from her broken cup, cast her aside
The sunrise will appear with the mockingbird
Who stays deep in the canyon and is heard glorious in his song
He cannot be wrong
Happiness is temporary, believe me I know
It can arrive as a shining crystal and leave as the melting snow
Come all you lads and lasses, the Kingdom of Childhood passes
The song is a meditation on the loss of those nirvanic childhood years when we played all day and our imaginations were free to create worlds and dream of heroic actions, a creativity that most of us lost in the educational system and the necessary conformity required in becoming an employee and earning a living. It’s also about the loss of innocence in learning about the realities of the adult world that contains losses, defeats and sometimes even tragedies.
“O Brother” is a searing response to Dylan’s song “Oh Sister” from his Desire album, where he seems to threaten a woman with God’s disapproval if she doesn’t treat him the way he thinks she should (“Our Father would not like the way that you act/And you should realize the danger.” Danger? Really? She takes him eloquently to task for laying a guilt trip on the woman, either Dylan’s wife Sara or Baez, and for cruelty to friends in the past.
You've got eyes like Jesus but you speak with a viper's tongue
We were just sitting around on earth, where the hell did you come from?
With your lady dressed in deerskin and an amazing way about her
When are you going to realize that you just can't live without her?
Take it easy, take it light, but take it
Your lady gets her power from the goddess and the stars
You get yours from the trees and the brooks and a little from life on Mars
And I've known you for a good long while and would you kindly tell me, mister
How in the name of the Father and the Son did I come to be your sister?
Take it easy, take it light, but take it
You've done dirt to lifelong friends with little or no excuses
Who endowed you with the crown to hand out these abuses?
Your lady knows about these things but they don't put her under
Me, I know about them too, and I react like thunder
Take it easy, take it light, but take it
So little brother when you come to knock on my door
I don't want to bring you down but I just went through the floor
My love for you extends through life and I don't want to waste it
But honey, what you've been dishing out you'd never want to taste it . . .
Take it . . . Easy, take it light. But take it.
It seems she’s writing as if “Oh Sister” were about his wife Sara and admonishing him to realize what a gift to him she is, but then she asks “how in the name of the Father and the Son did I come to be your sister?” She holds nothing back from memories over the years of Dylan’s well-chronicled harshness to others and says “I react like thunder,” without referencing her own wounds. But also says “My love for you extends through life” and gently admonishes him to “Take it easy, take it light.” It’s a fast-paced song with her acoustic rhythm guitar changing intensity and pace while it dominates and drives the song, backed by electric guitar and organ.
She follows “O Brother” with a reflection on the awareness that for Dylan and her “Our Time Is Passing Us By,” a leisurely song with her simple guitar picking and piano backing her.
Well it was fun for the first few years, playing “legends in our time”
And there were those who discussed the fact that we drifted apart in our prime
And we haven't got too much in common except that we're so much alike
And I hate it, for though you're a big part of me, but our time is passing us by
So I can sit here in my silver chair, you can stay there on your gold
You can say you've got commitments and I can say I'm growing old
And I can get up and make comments on the colors of the evening sky
But our ships have come home and the night's rolling in
And our time is passing us by
But cast us adrift and cross a few stars and I'm good for one more try
I love the line “we haven’t got too much in common except that we’re so much alike.” It's not clear if she’s talking about their time in the music scene passing them by or if she’s saying the window for them resuming their relationship is passing when she says “I’m good for one more try,” which sounds like the latter. Gulf Winds apparently comes after her stint in Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue. She wrote a number of songs that frankly expressed her wide-ranging thoughts and feelings about her relationship to Dylan, and both she and Dylan seemed to have ambivalence and conflicted feelings about each other. After Gulf Winds she seems to have left that behind, although they did tour together with Carlos Santana in 1984.
The highlight of Gulf Winds is the title song that ends the album. It’s an ode to her family and her early years growing up, on through her early 30s. Her most personal song, it’s fast-paced ten-and-a-half minutes accompanied only by her deft and swift picking on acoustic guitar.
There's high winds on the pier tonight, my soul departs from me
Striding like Thalia's Ghost south on the murky sea
And into midnight's tapestry she fades, ragged and wild
Searching down her ancestry in the costume of a Persian child
Gulf Winds bring me flying fish, that shine in the crescent moon
Show me the horizon where the dawn will break anew
And cool me here on this lonely pier, where the heron are flying low
Echo the songs my father knew in the towns of Mexico
When I was young my eyes were wise, my father was good to me
Instead of having a flock of sons he had two other girls and me . . .
It's hard to be a princess in the States when your skin is brown
And Mama smoothed my worried brow, as I leaned on the kitchen door
"Why do you carry the weight", she said "of the world and maybe more" . . .
My grandfathers were ministers and it came on down the line
My Father preached in his parents' church when he was ten years and nine
And Mama dressed in parishioners' clothes and didn't believe in Hell
Her daddy fought the DAR, if he'd lived, I'd have known him well . . .
My father turned down many a job just to give us something real
It's hard to be a scientist in the States when you've got ideals
And Mama kept the budget book, and she kept the garden too
Bought fish from the man on Thursdays, fed all of us and strangers too . . .
Now Father's going to India, sometime in the fall
They tried to stay together but you just can't do it all
I'll think about him if he goes, there's a little gray in his hair
Though not much 'cause he's Mexican, they don't age, they just prepare
And if he goes to India, I'll miss him most of all
He'll see me in the mudlark’s face, hear me in the beggar's call
And Mama will stay home, I guess, and worry if she did wrong
And I'll say a prayer for both of them and sing them both my song
Gulf Winds bring me flying fish, that shine in the crescent moon
Show me the horizon where the dawn will break anew
And cool me here on this lonely pier, where the heron are flying low
Echo the songs my father knew in the towns of Mexico
I love the line “he’s Mexican, they don’t age, they just prepare.” The song’s a family chronicle and a tribute to her parents, particularly her father, who was born in Puebla, Mexico, grew up in Brooklyn, and earned a PhD in physics from Stanford. Baez’s mother was the daughter of an Anglican priest in Edinburgh. The family converted to Quakerism when Baez was young. She seems to have identified with her father – “It’s hard to be a princess in the States when your skin is brown;” “It’s hard to be a scientist in the States when you’ve got ideals.” Baez and her mother were both arrested in 1967 along with 70 other women for blocking the Armed Forces Induction Center in Oakland, CA, and she spent a month in jail.
In my mind it’s pretty much a tossup between Gulf Winds and Diamonds and Rust as to which is her best album, but I lean toward Gulf Winds as more personal overall and a greater poetic accomplishment due to having written all the songs herself. All the songs are good, and “Seabirds,” “Caruso,” and “Gulf Winds” are terrific. It’s been said that politics is disastrous to art, and I’m not moved by songs like “Joe Hill” and “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around” on her live From Every Stage album, regardless of how much the latter meant to the civil rights movement. But these three priceless albums cement her stature as a sensitive, perceptive, and compassionate singer and songwriter.
Brett Nelson
The Beatles – Breaking the Molds
When the Beatles hit the airwaves in 1964 I wasn’t a fan. I was a high school junior and “I Want to Hold Your Hand” sounded puerile to someone just getting acquainted with Bob Dylan songs through Peter, Paul, and Mary before I ever had a Dylan album. But I came around with the energy of the music and with lyrics like “Drive My Car,” “In My Life,” “If I Needed Someone,” “Yesterday,” and “Eleanor Rigby.”
Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band broke on the music scene in 1967 like a startling sunrise, and we were delirious listening to it. It was like nothing we’d ever heard before, the way Highway 61 Revisited was two years before, but totally different from that. It opened up the gates for what music could sound like. Now it sounds dated, but we listened with expanded consciousness and our mouths hanging open for a year. What The Beatles had done for years that had everyone enthralled now seemed like a prologue, even though their music had evolved and grown with every year, especially with Rubber Soul and Revolver.
McCartney wrote in the liner notes that they made the album pretending that they were this other band made up of alter egos of themselves. Everything about Sgt Pepper’s was groundbreaking, from the cover art setting themselves in the midst of cultural icons going back as long as a hundred years or more, implying “This is how big we are,” to the dayglo suits and persona of a military band, to the alter-ego of the Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – a good description of what they had started out to be, to the album package with their photographs and the printed lyrics, to songs and lyrics that were experimental and at least interestingly different. The Rolling Stones tried to follow with Their Satanic Majesty’s Request, which was weak competition.
There are some memorable songs on the album. They’d been evolving their music beyond “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “I Saw Her Standing There” to “Yesterday,” “Eleanor Rigby,” “Drive My Car,” and “In My Life.” “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” was a campy persona that sort of said “This is what we were, but we’re a whole new thing now.” The first verse starts out with a strong electric guitar accompanying Paul half-screaming over a raucous crowd, followed by a break with celebratory horns:
It was twenty years ago today
That Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play
They’ve been going in and out of style
But they’re guaranteed to raise a smile.
So may I introduce to you the act you’ve known for all these years?
Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
The next two verses mellow out with a description that’s reminiscent of their enjoyment of fame and their audience over their first few years of popularity, which they’d emphatically left behind them when they stopped the insanity of touring and stadium concerts where they couldn’t even hear themselves over the deafening roar of screaming crowds and chose to become a strictly studio band.
We’re Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
We hope you will enjoy the show
We’re Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
Sit back and let the evening go.
Sergeant Pepper’s lonely, Sgt. Pepper’s lonely,
Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
It’s wonderful to be here. It’s certainly a thrill.
You’re such a lovely audience
We’d like to take you home with us.
We’d love to take you home.
It finishes with the final verse returning to the almost screaming introduction of the “band” and “the one and only Billy Shears and Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” with an invitation to sing along. Then the mood mellows to Ringo singing a gentle “With a Little Help from My Friends,” perhaps speaking for the band in asking what their fans would do if The Beatles stopped being “The Beatles.”
What would you do if I sang out of tune?
Would you stand up and walk out on me?
Lend me your ears and I’ll sing you a song
And I’ll try not to sing out of key.
Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends.
I get high with a little help from my friends.
Gonna try with a little help from my friends.
What do I do when my love is away?
(Does it worry you to be alone?)
How do I feel by the end of the day?
(Are you sad because you’re on your own?)
No, I get by with a little help from my friends.
I get high with a little help from my friends.
Gonna try with a little help from my friends.
“Friends” seems to have a double meaning, that of drugs and also of each other. It was followed by the psychedelic “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” with John singing a tune that has his stamp on it.
Picture yourself in a boat on a river
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies.
Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly
A girl with kaleidoscope eyes.
It’s a dreamscape that most listeners assumed was a description of a psychedelically induced state. It has interesting poetic images, but not much substance. Lennon said it was inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass and a drawing by his son. It sounds like it’s accompanied by a high-pitched stringed instrument that I’m not familiar with which adds a light, airy sound to the song. The poetry of “A girl with kaleidoscope eyes” is what has always stuck with me from the song.
“She’s Leaving Home” is a melodrama evoking the sadness of a girl leaving her family at five o’clock in the morning “leaving the note that she hoped would say more.”
Stepping outside, she is free.
She (We gave her most of our lives.)
Is leaving (Sacrificed most of our lives.)
Home (We gave her ev’rything money could buy.)
She’s leaving home after living alone
for so many years. Bye, bye . . .
Why would she treat us so thoughtlessly?
How could she do this to me? . . .
She (We never thought of ourselves)
Is leaving (Never a thought for ourselves) . . .
Something inside that was always denied . . .
She’s leaving home, bye, bye
The mother’s laments sound like they’re stemming from guilt, self-centeredness, and resentment. The strings provide a soap-opera accompaniment as McCartney sings lead while Lennon chimes in on the mother’s complaints (in parentheses). Claiming they “never thought of ourselves, she sounds like she’s only thinking of herself. “Bye, bye” is sung with a drippy, mocking tone that undercuts the sadness of parents having no emotional connection to their daughter. It’s not clear if “Bye, bye” is the daughter’s voice or The Beatles’ voice, but most good art is ambiguous and open to interpretation.
“Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite” returns to the theme of show business entertainment in the opening song “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band.” Lennon took inspiration from an 1843 poster advertising Pablo Fanque’s circus, even taking lyrics directly off the poster. It’s accompanied by recorded calliope and harmonium music to give it a wild circus atmosphere with a circus barker’s pitch trying to create a surreal, hyped up excitement.
For the benefit of Mr Kite
There will be a show tonight on trampoline
The Hendersons will all be there
Late of Pablo Fanque’s Fair – What a scene!
Over men and horses, hoops and garters
Lastly through a hogshead of real fire!
In this way Mr K will challenge the world!
. . . And of course Henry the Horse dances the walz!
It’s catchy if shallow, but I would find the tune and lyrics running in my head frequently. But the songs that I loved and sometimes replay in my head were the lighthearted “When I’m Sixty-Four” and “Lovely Rita.” There’s no self-pity or dread in the first, only the lighthearted, humble hope that his love will stick by him when he’s not the young man he is now. The humor is delightful, accompanying Lennon’s singing with clarinet and perhaps other woodwinds.
When I get older, losing my hair
Many years from now
Will you still be sending me a valentine
Birthday greetings, bottle of wine?
If I’d been out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I’m sixty four?
You’ll be older too.
And if you say the word, I could stay with you.
I could be handy mending a fuse
When your lights have gone.
You can knit a sweater by the fireside
Sunday mornings, go for a ride.
Doing the garden, digging the weeds
Who could ask for more?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I’m sixty four?
“Lovely Rita” has Lennon singing lighthearted lyrics, wooing Rita in a right proper and respectful way. I wonder if he was consciously writing in his Sgt Pepper’s Band persona in both these songs. Perhaps they were a pose, but they’re infectious and delightful songs regardless.
Standing by a parking meter
When I caught a glimpse of Rita
Filling in a ticket in her little white book.
In a cap she looked much older
And the bag across her shoulder
Made her look a little like a milit’ry man.
Lovely Rita, meter maid
May I enquire discreetly
“When are you free to take some tea with me?”
Took her out and tried to win her
Had a laugh, and over dinner
Told her I would really like to see her again.
Got the bill and Rita paid it
Took her home, I nearly made it
Sitting on the sofa with a sister or two.
Oh, lovely Rita, meter maid
Where would I be without you?
Give us a wink and make me think of you.
“Within You, Without You” is Harrison’s dreamy spiritual meditation playing sitar with other Indian musicians playing tabla drums and other Indian instruments in a criticism of Western materialism with an invitation to a more spiritual life. “We're not trying to outwit the public. The whole idea is to try a little bit to lead people into different tastes.” – George Harrison, 1967.
Magical Mystery Tour was a lackluster album composed of songs from the soundtrack of a film with the same title plus other Beatles studio cuts, including the McCartney’s irresistible “Penny Lane,” Lennon’s psychedelic “Strawberry Fields Forever,” the utopian “All You Need Is Love,” plus the gem “The Fool on the Hill.”
The major followup from Sgt Pepper’s was The Beatles, referred to as the White Album due to it’s blank white cover. Abandoning the technical and classical/avant-garde experimentation of Sgt Pepper’s, it was a two-record set of songs in wildly varying styles that kept me off-balance but fascinated from song to song. It didn’t get quite the critical praise like Sgt Pepper’s initially did, but most of the critical reaction was good, some of it effusive. Even critics who praised it disagreed emphatically on what songs were good and what weren’t. Later opinion has rated it more highly.
In my mind it’s The Beatles’ crowning achievement, even though it was apparently made with a great deal of strife and internal conflict between all of them. Later, John commented that "Every track is an individual track; there isn't any Beatle music on it . . . John and the band, Paul and the band, George and the band." It was criticized as a collection of unrelated solo tracks. It’s been described as a survey of the whole range of American/British music of the 20th century, including rock and roll, blues, country, folk, reggae, avant-garde, hard rock, music hall, and psychedelic music. There’s no consistent style at all, and yet it’s always seemed like a hodgepodge that somehow hangs together on its own unique terms. It’s shifts are surprising and interesting, making me listen to each song on its own terms.
The album starts off with a takeoff on Chuck Berry’s “Back in the USA” titled “Back in the USSR” with a different melody and rhythm. It starts with the roar of a jet engine before Ringo’s breakneck drum pace moves it into straight up high energy rock and roll with McCartney singing as a patriotic Russian. “I’m back in the USSR/You don’t know how lucky you are, boy/Back in the US Back in the US Back in the USSR.” It sounded like giving the finger at the anti-communist sentiment of the period, but it does say “Back in the US Back in the US” before switching to “USSR.” The album then moves into the mellow and languid “Dear Prudence” with Lennon entreating a shy and introverted woman to “come out and play,” said to be written about Mia Farrow’s sister in India. It’s a beautiful melody and a pleasant listen.
“Dear Prudence” is followed by “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” a McCartney tune that Lennon later called “granny music shit,” an indication of the sort of animosities generated while making the album. I think it’s a delightful, lighthearted song that’s always fun to listen to. Desmond falls in love with a singer named Molly and they marry.
In a couple of years, they have built a home, sweet home
With a couple of kids running in the yard
Of Desmond and Molly Jones (Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha)
Happy ever after in the marketplace
Desmond lets the children lend a hand
Molly stays at home and does her pretty face
And in the evening, she still sings it with the band
Yes, ob-la-di, ob-la-da
Life goes on, brah
La-la, how the life goes on (Heh-heh)
Yeah, ob-la-di, ob-la-da
Life goes on, brah
La-la, how the life goes on
In a couple of years, they have built a home sweet home
With a couple of kids running in the yard
Of Desmond and Molly Jones (Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha)
Happy ever after in the marketplace
Molly lets the children lend a hand
Desmond stays at home and does his pretty face
And in the evening, she's a singer with the band
I always took Desmond doing “his pretty face” as simply a swipe at gender stereotypes, nothing more. “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill” satirizes the American (and perhaps British) identification of hunting with masculinity, with a takeoff on Buffalo Bill.
Hey, Bungalow Bill
What did you kill
Bungalow Bill?
He went out tiger hunting with his elephant and gun
In case of accident he always took his mum
The All-American bullet-headed Saxon mother’s son
George Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” is the strongest song on the album:
I look at you all see the love there that’s sleeping
While my guitar gently weeps
. . . I don’t know why nobody told you how to unfold your love
I don’t know how someone controlled you
They bought and sold you
I look at the world and I notice it’s turning
While my guitar gently weeps
With every mistake we must surely be learning
Still my guitar gently weeps
I don’t know how you were diverted
You were perverted too
I don’t know how you were inverted
No one alerted you
Harrison initially played it with acoustic guitar, but the other Beatles were resistant, so he asked friend Eric Clapton to record an electric guitar part, which became the final version. Harrison was no slouch on electric guitar – Rolling Stone in two separate ratings of the 100 greatest guitarists put him at 11th and 18th. Harrison and Clapton traded lead guitar lines in later performances together. The song conveys a deep sadness at the lack of love and compassion we have for each other. It’s Harrison that’s weeping. It’s one of The Beatles’ best, most moving songs.
“Martha, My Dear” is a lovely, humble entreaty to a woman to “Don’t forget me” and “you’re bound to see/that you and me were meant to be for each other.” The White Album was said to be The Beatles’ effort to explore all the genres of American and British popular music of the 20th century. I don’t know what the British music hall genre is, but maybe this is it. It starts with a cheery rhythm on piano, then adds a tuba and other horns. It’s a lighthearted love song that sounds as if Lennon and McCartney are singing together, but it sounds like the kind of McCartney “silly love song” he’s sometimes panned for.
“Blackbird” is McCartney’s invitation to black people to claim their rightful place in the world. It’s a simple, very moving lyric and music that’s been covered by many others. It’s heartfelt and sincere. Bettye LaVette sang it in first person in her early 2000s comeback after having a rock and roll hit in the 60s – “I was only waiting for this moment to be free.”
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to be free
Blackbird fly Blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night
“Piggies” is Harrison’s satire on the “bigger piggies” rapacious chase after wealth on the backs of “little piggies.” The significance of the word “bacon” implying a metaphorical cannibalism only just occurred to me in writing this.
Have you seen the little piggies
Crawling in the dirt
And for all the little piggies
Life is getting worse . . .
Everywhere there’s lots of piggies
Living piggy lives
You can see them out for dinner
With their piggy wives
Clutching forks and knives
To eat their bacon
“Rocky Racoon” is a playful western melodrama about a “young boy named Rocky Racoon” and his attempt at revenge for someone stealing his girl. It starts out with McCartney speaking the first verse in an adenoidal voice with some sort of southern drawl, accompanied by a simple acoustic guitar. Then he switches to a normal voice in the second:
Rocky Raccoon checked into his room
Only to find Gideon's bible
Rocky had come equipped with a gun
To shoot off the legs of his rival
His rival it seems had broken his dreams
By stealing the girl of his fancy
Her name was Magill and she called herself Lil
But everyone knew her as Nancy
Now she and her man who called himself Dan
Were in the next room at the hoedown
Rocky burst in and grinning a grin
He said Danny boy this is a showdown
But Daniel was hot – he drew first and shot
And Rocky collapsed in the corner
Now the doctor came in stinking of gin
And proceeded to lie on the table
He said Rocky you met your match
And Rocky said, doc it's only a scratch
And I'll be better, I'll be better doc as soon as I am able
Now Rocky Raccoon he fell back in his room
Only to find Gideon's bible
Gideon checked out and he left it no doubt
To help with good Rocky's revival
It's a western movie parody that at the same time engages your sympathy for Rocky in spite of his violent intention, perhaps because of its horse opera nature. I love the song for the character of Rocky and for its campy, comic book story with the western theme of the hero getting shot and saying “it’s only a scratch,” and the humor of the doctor coming in “stinking of gin,” so drunk he collapses on a table. Rocky’s the irresistible hero. There’s a nice little harmonica break toward the end. It’s just a fun song to listen to that I’ve loved from the first time I heard it, like Bob Dylan’s “Million Dollar Bash.” What he did was take a lightweight novelty song with a little humor, a drunk doctor and Gideon’s bible (”Gideon checked out/And he left it no doubt/To help with good Rocky’s revival”) and turn it into a mini-novel where you fall in love with the hero and root for him and love his optimism that he’ll be OK.
“I Will” is a beautiful McCartney love song with a lovely melody and simple accompaniment on what sounds like some high-register guitar or keyboard instrument. It’s followed by Lennon’s “Julia,” a more subdued song that he said was a tribute to his mother, killed in a car crash in 1958. It’s a dreamy reverie that’s full of feeling and a very pleasant listen. “Honey Pie” was a 1920s style flapper era song that sounded like Rudy Vallee. It’s lightweight but delightful to listen to. I don’t think The Beatles ever lost the sense of the absurdity of their fame or McCartney couldn’t have written “You became a legend on the silver screen/And now the thought of meeting you makes me weak in the knees.”
“Mother Nature’s Son” is McCartney’s beautiful short ballad paying homage to the natural world:
Born a poor young country boy – Mother Nature’s son
All day long I’m sitting singing songs for everyone . . .
Find me in my field of grass – Mother Nature’s son
Swaying daisies sing a lazy song beneath the sun
Lennon acknowledged in 1980 that “Sexy Sadie” was about the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi – “I just called him Sexy Sadie.” McCartney’s “Helter Skelter” is intense, hard rock music almost sounding like heavy metal.
When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide
And I stop and I turn and I go for a ride
And I get to the bottom and I see you again
Well do you, don’t you want me to make you
I’m coming down fast but don’t let me break you
Tell me tell me tell me the answer
You may be a lover but you ain’t no dancer
It’s an exhilarating song that sounds like someone on speed, exciting to listen to, but not too often. Wikipedia says “helter skelter” is the British name for a spiral slide found on playgrounds. Who would have thought? The song is followed by Harrison’s “Long, Long, Long,” a gorgeous, dreamy song expressing his “exhausted, relieved reconciliation with God,” whatever “God” meant to him, according to author Ian McDonald. It has restrained guitars and an intermittent heavy drumbeat between verses.
John Lennon was the utopian moralist and idealist philosopher with a trippy imagination. McCartney was like a kid in Montessori School on play day, with free rein to make whatever he felt like. Sgt Peppers and The Beatles broke the molds for pop/rock music as the 60s ended, as much as Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited did in 1965. Sgt Peppers was a concept album with several songs that had nothing to do with the concept except for musical experimentation. Even though The Beatles was a hodgepodge of seemingly unrelated songs, it somehow all made sense as an expression of all their various musical influences, inclinations, and capabilities, and as a history of 20th century American and British pop music styles. Both albums were audaciously experimental in different ways and courageous musical adventures.
