CHAPTER 2 from .. Craft" to .. Hrt" Formal Structure in the Music of the Beatles
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CHAPTER 2 from .. Craft" to .. Hrt" formal Structure in the music of the Beatles JOHN COVACH OST HISTORIES OF ROCK MUSIC cite early February 1964 as an important date in American popular music; the appearance of the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show on two consecutive Sunday Mevenings ignited a craze for British-invasion pop that had a dramatic effect on the development of rock music, catching the American music business entirely by surprise. Reading from most accounts, one might easily conclude that early Beatles' music was very different from the American pop that it so effectively displaced. 1 Musical analysis reveals, however, that the music of the Beatles engages in a much more complicated relationship with the American pop that preceded it than most writers have thus far detected. John Lennon and Paul McCartney were serious students of both American songwriting and performance traditions. The band covered dozens of American pop tunes dur- ing their early years, including many by the Brill Building songwriters of the late 1950s and early 1960s.2 The BBC sessions reveal that most of the time the Beatles performed approximate versions of the tunes that they covered, working to get the vocal inflections, the accompaniment, and even the guitar solos as close to those on the records as possible.3 This chapter focuses on formal design and argues that as songwriters Lennon and McCartney were greatly influenced by American pop and that early Beatles music as a result uses 1950's and early 1960's American pop as its model, sometimes following its standard organizational practices closely 38 JOHN COVACH FROM "CRAFT" TO "ART" 39 and at other times innovating within its constraints.• In the course of the Bea- craftsperson refers to an approach that privileges repeatable structures; songs tles' tremendous U.S. success in 1964, Lennon and McCartney began to show are written according to patterns that are in common use. When innovation signs of finding their own voices as songwriters; each began trying out new occurs within this approach, is no difficulty with the idea of duplicating ideas that would gradually lead them away from standard songwriting prac- this innovation in subsequent songs. Opposed in a loose way to the craftsper- tices; how these changes occur is the focus of this chapter. In the first inter- son approach is the artist approach. Here, the emphasis is on the nonrepeata- views of 1963-1964, both Beatles composers seem to stress the fact that they bility of innovations; the worst criticism that can be leveled against a creative consider themselves primarily songwriters; in response to questions with how individual according to this approach is that he or she is "rewriting the same they see their careers in music unfolding, McCartney states quite plainly that song over and over." One can see quite readily how such criticism aligns he and Lennon will most likely continue as songwriters long after the Beatles squarely with modernist notions of artistic integrity, while making almost no 5 are no longer a top act. Importantly, initially almost everybody, including the sense in regard to Brill Building songwriting practices; indeed, evaluating band members themselves, saw the Beatles as a fad-a quirky pop group that songwriters such as Coffin and King according to the artist model is unfair- would rise and fall quickly, nothing more than the latest flavor of the week. or at least aesthetically misguided. The argument here is that Lennon and Although the group greatly admired the original rock 'n' rollers of the 1950s, McCartney move from the craftsperson model to the artist model increasingly and Elvis Presley especially, they also admired Brill Building songwriters such and gradually from 1964 until 1968. When the group decides to return to as Gerry Coffin and Carole King, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, and Phil their roots in the wake of the failed Magical Mystery Tour project, both Spector. And even among the first wave of rock 'n' rollers, Chuck Berry and Lennon and McCartney strike a balance between these two seemingly con- Buddy Holly were especially important to Lennon and McCartney as per- tradictory aesthetic and poetic approaches. formers who wrote their own songs. The connection to the Brill Building To support this interpretation, this chapter depends primarily on an songwriters is particularly important with regard to early Beatles music, and account of formal design and its development, although one could also track in many ways their development after the initial splash of early to mid-1964 this evolution by considering aspects of harmonic, melodic, and text-music can be measured music-analytically by how closely each song models Brill relationships. The principal claim is that the Beatles' debt to the American Building practices. pop tradition can be seen clearly in the group's repeated use of a limited num- Lennon and McCartney begin their careers aspiring to be songwriters in ber of typical formal designs and arrangements in their early music. As the American pop tradition, and, accordingly, they view themselves as crafts- Lennon and McCartney begin to move away from the craftsperson model, people, using formal designs and arrangement schemes that are common to this tendency can be detected in singular innovations within this context that much of early 1960's pop. Most readers know where things ended up in just eventually begin to occur so frequently that they obscure the original stylistic a few short years for the Beatles, as Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band context, and perhaps even transform it. (1967) made its mark as the album that-in the now-famous words of Wil- Because this chapter depends on formal analysis, introducing a number frid Mellers-elevates rock music from simple dance fare to serious listening of formal types and labels for them may prove helpful.7 In most rock music 6 music. From Sgt. Pepper forward, rock takes itself very seriously-at times up to the 1970s, four formal patterns occur (see accompanying list). The too seriously, we should acknowledge. Rock musicians no longer aspire so AA.BA form is clearly inherited from the thirty-two-bar AA.BA structure much to be professionals and craftspeople; rather, they aspire to be artists, common to Tin Pan Alley pop of the first half of the twentieth century in adopting and adapting notions of inspiration, genius, and complexity that which each section tends to be eight bars in length. Tunes such as "Over the derive directly from nineteenth-century European high culture. And not only Rainbow" or "Misty" are good examples of a frequently used formal pattern.8 were musicians' attitudes changing, but listeners after 1967 also began to Even in the years before rock 'n' roll, the AA.BA pattern had begun to exceed think of rock music as an aesthetic experience that might, at times, rise above the thirty-two-bar template. Sections can be found that are twelve or sixteen mere pop culture. bars in length, rather than the standard eight, making for designs that Hence, the space between 1964 and 1967 is an important time in pop exceed thirty-two bars but retain the AA.BA pattern. Playing once through music's developing sense of aspiration in general. Such stylistic and aesthetic the AA.BA pattern usually does not result in enough music for most situa- changes almost never happen overnight, and the change from pop songwrit- tions, and so the question arises regarding how much of the music needs to ers to songwriting artists occurs gradually in the Lennon-McCartney songs be repeated to fill out a given arrangement. If the entire AA.BA form is from that three-year period. To track this change, two general ideas will be repeated, this is termed a full reprise; when only part of the AA.BA form employed to organize the discussion. As the term has already been used here, returns, this is called an abbreviated reprise. 38 JOHN COVACH FROM "CRAFT" TO "ART" 39 and at other times innovating within its constraints.• In the course of the Bea- craftsperson refers to an approach that privileges repeatable structures; songs tles' tremendous U.S. success in 1964, Lennon and McCartney began to show are written according to patterns that are in common use. When innovation signs of finding their own voices as songwriters; each began trying out new occurs within this approach, is no difficulty with the idea of duplicating ideas that would gradually lead them away from standard songwriting prac- this innovation in subsequent songs. Opposed in a loose way to the craftsper- tices; how these changes occur is the focus of this chapter. In the first inter- son approach is the artist approach. Here, the emphasis is on the nonrepeata- views of 1963-1964, both Beatles composers seem to stress the fact that they bility of innovations; the worst criticism that can be leveled against a creative consider themselves primarily songwriters; in response to questions with how individual according to this approach is that he or she is "rewriting the same they see their careers in music unfolding, McCartney states quite plainly that song over and over." One can see quite readily how such criticism aligns he and Lennon will most likely continue as songwriters long after the Beatles squarely with modernist notions of artistic integrity, while making almost no 5 are no longer a top act. Importantly, initially almost everybody, including the sense in regard to Brill Building songwriting practices; indeed, evaluating band members themselves, saw the Beatles as a fad-a quirky pop group that songwriters such as Coffin and King according to the artist model is unfair- would rise and fall quickly, nothing more than the latest flavor of the week.