THE BEATLES AS MUSICIANS This page intentionally left blank THE BEATLES AS MUSICIANS 1The Quarry Men through Rubber Soul
WALTER EVERETT
1
2001 1
Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogotá Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Paris São Paulo Shanghai Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright © 2001 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Everett, Walter, 1954– The Beatles as musicians : the Quarry Men through Rubber soul / Walter Everett. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-514104-0; ISBN 0-19-514105-9 (pbk.) 1. Beatles. 2. Rock music—1951–1960 —Analysis, appreciation. 3. Rock music—1961–1970 —Analysis, appreciation. MT146 .E95 2001 782.42166'092'2— dc21 2001021263
135798642 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper For Barbara, John, and Tim This page intentionally left blank PREFACE
What constitutes the sounds of a Beatles record, how did they get there, and what makes them so interesting to listen to? These are the ques- tions that get to the heart of the Beatles as musicians, and are therefore the mo- tivation for this book and its companion volume, The Beatles as Musicians: Re- volver through the Anthology. Together the two books are a chronologically ordered examination of the compositional, performing, and recording activi- ties of the most important force in twentieth-century popular music.
Goals and Critical Stance
The Beatles’ music is incredibly rich. Their melodic shapes, contrapuntal rela- tionships, harmonic functions, rhythmic articulations, formal designs, timbral colors, and textures draw from many different tonal languages and appear in countless recombinations to bring individual tonal meanings to their poetry. The purpose of this book is to examine and celebrate the details of such prac- tices from the music’s earliest incarnations through finished product, during the first half of the Beatles’ career as a group. I’ll chart the musical techniques and patterns that emerge at various points and adapt to changing needs as the Beatles’ styles and goals continuously evolve. I will pick up and put aside vari- ous methodological tools as the material demands. This material consists not only of the “canon”— the Beatles’ LPs, singles, and CDs recorded in London and officially released by EMI— but of every avail- viii Preface
able document of a Beatle’s musical activity during the period covered. This book results from the study of many thousands of audio, video, print, and mul- timedia sources, including the close consultation of uncounted audio record- ings of the Beatles’ compositional process, traced through tapes that are treated as the equivalents of compositional sketches and drafts. All available concert, broadcast, and demo recordings in both audio and video formats have been scoured for the broadest possible understanding of what the Beatles did musi- cally. The study of thousands of recordings by other entertainers whose music was covered by the Beatles, or existed contemporaneously with them, also con- tributes to the understanding created here of the Beatles and their musical con- text. The reader will find particularly useful both the thoroughness with which every known recording is contextualized, both historically and musically, and the fact that aspects of the Beatles’ choices of instruments, vocal production techniques, recording equipment, and studio procedures— the essence of their performance practice— are exposed here as in no other source. It may seem incongruous, or at least unusual, to approach a body of popu- lar music that was composed and performed by young men who did not read musical notation (and was intently followed by millions with no musical in- doctrination whatsoever) with analytical methods that only a musician with some degree of training could appreciate. Two years’ study of college-level music theory would be essential to following much of this book’s theoretical discussion, and some of the points raised are more advanced still. The appended table of chord functions (describing the most characteristic functions of all chords mentioned in this book) and the glossary (with its succinct definitions to some fifty-five terms used in this book) should help the less initiated stay on course.1 Of the thousands of books and articles related to the Beatles, only a small proportion deals seriously with their music, and only a few rare writers have done so from a perspective molded by formal musical study; seldom has an analysis of a Beatle song appeared that can be called in any way thorough. Yet this book suggests that there are many musical reasons worthy of considered speculation that place the Beatles’ work among the most listened-to music of all time. The fact is that even though these recording artists and their millions of listeners are rarely— if ever— consciously aware of the structural reasons for the dynamic energy in “I Saw Her Standing There,” the poignant nostalgia in “Yesterday,” the organized confusion of “A Day In the Life,” or the exuberant joy in “Here Comes the Sun,” it is the musical structures themselves, more than the visual cues in performance or the loudness of the given amplification sys- tem, that call forth most of the audience’s intellectual, emotional, and physical responses.2 This book traverses the complete history of the Beatles’ composition, per- formance, and recording practices in the first half of their career. As it would be impossible to do justice to the Beatles’ work within a single book, I present the entire chronology in two volumes, divided between the end of 1965 and the beginning of 1966. The second volume, entitled The Beatles as Musicians: Re- volver through the Anthology, was published by Oxford in 1999. While the pres- ent book stops short of the group’s most experimental middle years, most read- Preface ix ers will be surprised to see just how early its members began consciously searching out new sounds, both stylistically and timbrally. Naturally, a full ap- preciation of their most transcendent late works is only possible with an un- derstanding of the core of their musicianship, formed with a backbone of skif- fle and early rock and roll and evolving through a mature melodic bass line, full use of the entire fingerboards of a full variety of six- and twelve-string electric, acoustic, and nylon-string guitars, the gradual mastery of styles on various keyboard instruments, an expressive mastery of electronic imaging, and a de- sire to express their musical ideas in the clearest, most direct possible way. Ringo’s drumming will at last be given the close attention it has always been due. Each chapter is presented in sections that alternate a chronological sum- mary of the musical events over a given period with a detailed track-by-track discussion of every song composed by a Beatle through the group’s duration. The musical detail, aspects of which are frequently related to similar patterns in other songs by the Beatles or by their peers, and which is occasionally sum- marized for a global perspective on the group’s musical interests, remains the book’s central concern, while the accompanying historical information should be viewed as a contextual backdrop. The approach to each song covers its com- positional inspiration, heavily documented from the most unimpeachable sources; its recording history, including the identification of every part and its performer and instrument; and its most salient musical features, presented in an analysis of the text that often features comparisons of the dominant musi- cal and poetic goals. Innovations are carefully noted as they appear, and some important compositions require several pages for full appreciation. The book’s various analytical approaches are suggested by the musical ma- terials themselves, and they cover as wide a range as do the Beatles’ eclectic in- terests. Therefore, as coverage of the Beatles’ evolving compositional interests proceeds chronologically, the Beatles’ least challenging harmonies, forms, col- ors and structures— twelve-bar blues forms, four-square phrases, simple gui- tar arrangements, diatonic and pentatonic components, live recording— are encountered first, and so analytical discussion begins with rudimentary mate- rials and ideas but builds progressively as the Beatles’ music begins to adopt more interesting and complex features— innovative forms and colors, irregu- lar phrase rhythms, chromatic ornaments and key shifts, multilayered and elec- tronically altered studio productions. At some times, harmony and voice lead- ing are the main focus; at others the interplay of rhythm and meter is center stage; and at still others the recording process itself is primary. But from the simplest to the most advanced discussion, techniques are always based on the piece-specific characteristics of the works themselves. While this book is historically oriented and aims to be comprehensive in its way, it must remain light in its extramusical references, all of which have been extensively covered elsewhere. Except for the most important matters, facts of biography appear only to set the musical context. The interested reader will learn much more about the Beatles’ lives and careers in such document studies as those by Mark Lewisohn (particularly 1988) and Allen J. Wiener (especially x Preface
regarding activities of the ex-Beatles). Many useful interviews and biographi- cal studies, several by those very close to the principals, and hundreds of valu- able audio and video sources will help the interested reader fill these gaps. Those seeking the most compact annotated checklist of every known audio recording by the Beatles in circulation are directed to the catalog being prepared by John C. Winn, which started life in periodic postings to the newsgroup rec.music. beatles and is currently in progress as a regular feature in Beatlology magazine. This listing is particularly strong on mix variants and interview material. There are those who say that the Beatles’ music is numinous, that an appre- ciation of it is not enhanced by any intellectual understanding. Others say that any example of popular music is to be evaluated not in relation to its internal musical issues but solely in terms of its social reception, or that popular music cannot be analyzed to useful ends with tools “created” for the appreciation of classical music, even when exactly the same, or interestingly related, composi- tional techniques are employed in both arenas. Any discussion of musical is- sues, these folks might say, should be restricted to the ideas of which the com- posers, performers, arrangers, and consumers are conscious as they interact with it, even if these people have no vocabulary for, or cognitive understanding of, most musical characteristics. While those with such beliefs are certainly free to limit their own investigations in any desired way, I would hope that the pres- ent study, which delves as deeply into the realm of the musical imagination as it does into the technical, would suggest to them that their own endeavors might be enhanced by an objective hearing of the music that they endow with such spiritual and cultural significance. Some critics would have it that sus- tained reflection on nontraditional sources must represent a “hidden-agenda” promotion of the canonization of such documents by the academic commu- nity— that, for instance, the uncovering of a complex yet satisfyingly voice leading is necessarily an argument toward high valuation as an expressive work of art.3 To them, I can only say that this study tells the story of why this listener enjoys the Beatles’ music with an ear turned toward compositional method, performance practice, and recording procedure. Whether such mat- ters find acceptance in the curriculum is of less import than is having a reader, or a group of readers— yes, perhaps in a seminar setting— find one or more of my observations or interpretations to be rewarding or even cool. And, along these lines, it should be noted that for every Beatle example noted in these pages for its “classically” molded harmonic and voice-leading patterns, two others pursuing very different means toward coherent expression, perhaps even lack- ing a tonal center entirely, are presented without a thought of apology. Neither let it be said that this book’s use of the musical text itself as the primary source is a means to devalue work by others in cultural, social and media studies, crit- ical theory, and reception history; rather, I view all of these approaches, as well as other less scholarly approaches, as complementary and informative to the well-read, well-balanced listener. This book contains a wealth of fully documented factual information weighed from thousands of materials and identifies in every possible instance the earliest or most authoritative sources, which the reader may wish to pursue Preface xi for more detailed coverage of a particular topic. These two volumes, then, con- stitute the first referenced guide to all important literature about the Beatles, as well as the only complete study of their musical history from the group’s in- ception to its end. But the book also presents both many original interpretations and new means for deriving interpretations. In many cases, my own explana- tion as to the “meaning” of a given passage or song— often based on combined elements of the musical and poetic texts, along with knowledge of the com- posers’ biography and intent— is offered, but all listeners must solve the Beat- les’ many mysteries for themselves. My conjecture and fantasies are intended not as edicts but in the hope that the presented facts and proposed methods can aid reader-listeners in delving through the many ambiguities and selecting fac- tors that create their own unified hearings that are in isomorphic harmony with the subject. A great amount of detail is provided on the Beatles’ instruments, which are identified here— by ear as well as by reliable documents whenever possible— in far greater detail than in any other source. Much of this information, gath- ered in thirty-five entries in the appendix, would be useful in evaluating the varied qualities of tone production, but many of the visual descriptions would also be helpful in dating photographs that often appear elsewhere with incor- rect dates. Much other detail— on the Beatles’ listening tastes, circumstances of composition, singing and playing techniques, studio method, facts relating to British and American record releases and success— is included in the hope of making this volume a thorough reference tool, yet I have striven to present the information in a readable fashion. It is recommended in the strongest way that the reader listen with care to the recordings discussed in the text— for ex- ample, you would be able thus to determine who is playing each of the four or five guitars in some given texture. These descriptions, while consistent with all available reliable documentation, were produced by ear. Savor, if you will, the information on recording procedure and musical structure as a guide to thoughtful listening; the speed-reader will be sorely disappointed. Some will wish to learn more about their favorite Beatle songs, others to learn of songs they never knew existed. The voracious reader, especially one with a theoretical bent, may read from cover to cover, but the book is organized and labeled so that many passages of historical and historiographical study are separate from the more analytical prose, allowing readers to navigate their pre- ferred channels. It is hoped that in the end the reader not only will learn the stages in the evolution of the composers’ harmonic vocabulary (which are clearly marked in these pages), the artists’ means of studio experimentation (which are all documented here), or my own particular hearing of any given work but also will learn something about how an appropriate interpretive ap- proach may be devised for deriving the manifold meanings of all such factors in a song by the Beatles or, for that matter, by others. xii Preface
Terminology and Mechanics
Some notes on terminology may be useful at this point. The text refers to chords in two ways; if function within a key is not immediately relevant, chords are identified by root, quality, and figured-bass symbol. Triad and seventh qualities are designated by upper- or lowercase m: uppercase signifies a major quality; f 6 lowercase, a minor. Thus, A Mm 5 refers to the chord built with major triad and minor seventh above the root Af, presented with C in the bass. If a chord’s tonal function is a point of discussion, the key will be established, and the chord will be designated by roman numeral, always uppercase, and any necessary figured- bass. Any figured-bass and roman designations may be altered by accidentals if deviations from the diatonic scale occur. Normal usages are listed in the Table of Chord Functions. On rare occasions, nontriadic chords or other note group- ings are referred to by their numeric pitch-class description, which accounts for the intervals among the members of the grouping reduced to an octave- equivalent prime form. Thus, the [025] designation refers to a three-note group, a “trichord,” whose members may be arrayed within a single octave in such a way that they form two unordered intervals from reference point “zero,” at distances of two and five half-steps, respectively— for example, A– C– D, Bf–C–Ef, C–D–F, C–Ef– F, G–A– C, or G–Bf– C, to name all [025] collections including C. An important distinction must be drawn here between this book’s usage and that found elsewhere involving terminology for formal sections. Rock musi- cians use the terms “verse,” “chorus,” “refrain,” and “bridge” differently from those who work with the traditional pre-1950s popular song. The rock usages are adhered to, and they are defined in the text as they are introduced and again in the glossary of terms. Phrase groups and periods are designated as in basic form texts by Wallace Berry and Douglass Green. The expression of musical ideas in this book would have been very difficult were it not for the appearance of The Beatles: Complete Scores (London: Wise, 1989; distributed in the United States by Hal Leonard, 1993), an 1,100-page compendium of practically full scores of every song appearing on an EMI sin- gle or LP during the years 1962–70. The scores are not without faults, but they will certainly not be replaced in the near future.4 The reader will wish to con- sult the Wise edition in reading the analytical commentary in this volume. This book refers to Wise rehearsal letters in a consistent font and method: A refers to the entire section appearing between rehearsal letters A and B; B+5–8 refers to the fifth through eighth measures following the double bar at B; C-2 refers to the second bar before the double bar at C. But timings programmed into compact discs are also given whenever they are considered relevant, and these cues would be of particular value to those without recourse to the scores.5 All chart information for singles and LPs is drawn from Billboard (for the United States) and Melody Maker (for the United Kingdom) unless stated otherwise. These and other contemporaneous periodicals are also worth seek- ing out. The musical examples in this book are chiefly of two kinds: (1) transcrip- Preface xiii tions of sound recordings, intended as supplements to the Wise scores— their exclusion there necessitates their appearance here to clarify points of discus- sion; and (2) voice-leading graphs and other analytical constructions that pre- sent my arguments in musical notation. I have striven to ensure that all quota- tions of text and music, for which permission has not been secured, conform to all criteria of “fair use” law by their insubstantial length, their scholarly pur- pose, their never before having been printed, and their unperformable nature. Hopefully their appearance here along with the discussion will encourage read- ers to seek out the Wise scores for full versions of the songs quoted here. In this book’s musical quotations, all of which I have transcribed myself, all instruments are notated as they sound. Specific pitch designation will conform to the following system: c1 refers to Middle C, g1 is a fifth above, and c2 is an oc- tave above; f lies a fifth below Middle C, c an octave below, and C two octaves below. Singers’ pitches notated with the transposing treble clef are referred to as notated, as representations of their functional registers, rather than as sounding. Careted arabic numerals refer to scale degrees. This page intentionally left blank ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank the many who have contributed to and supported this work. Oxford editors Maribeth Anderson Payne, Jonathan Wiener, Jessica Ryan, and Soo Mee Kwon and their perceptive and helpful staff, anonymous readers, and consultants have provided expert assistance whenever and wherever needed. Grants from the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies, the Office of the Vice President for Research, and the School of Music, all at the University of Michigan, have made possible the travel, purchase of materials, use of equipment, and compensation for clerical help necessary to complete this project. Devoted department chairs Ralph Lewis and Andy Mead were generous in providing assistance from Joe Braun, Ben Broening, Glenn Palmer, Nancy Rao, Erik Santos, and Laura Sherman. Calvin Elliker and Charles Reynolds made Music Library resources available; networking and software help came from Mike Gould, Robert Newcomb, John Schaffer, and Charles Rand. Additional administrative assistance was provided by Paul Boylan, Morris Risenhoover, Diana Cubberly, Diane Schlemmer, and Julie Smigielski at the Uni- versity of Michigan School of Music, Warren George at the College-Conservatory of Music of the University of Cincinnati, Peter Silvestri and Lynnae Crawford at MPL Communications, Jeff Rosen and Libby Rohman at Special Rider Music, and Rosemarie Gawelko at Warner Bros. Publications. Thanks to James Kendrick of Thacher Proffitt & Wood for legal advice. Rick Everett supplied the beautiful guitars that were essential for this study. The author is grateful for the ideas and support from many theorists, com- posers, musicologists, and technicians over many years, some not credited in the xvi Acknowledgments
body of the text: Jim Borders, Matthew Brown, Lori Burns, John Covach, David Damschroder, Jim Dapogny, Dai Griffiths, Bob Grijalva, Henry Gwiazda, Dave Headlam, Yrjö Heinonen, Rick Hermann, Arthur Komar, Tim Koozin, Jonathan Kramer, Steve Larson, Betsy Marvin, bruce mcclung, Allan Moore, John Rothgeb, Bill Rothstein, Lewis Rowell, Frank Samarotto, Deborah Stein, Marty Sweidel, and Gordon Thompson. Special thanks to Ian Hammond, who read most of the manuscript and provided many helpful comments. Postings at rec.music.beatles and other correspondence from Tom Hartman, Alan Pollack, Andrew Lubman, John C. Winn, and Danny Caccavo contributed significantly to this project, and I’m also indebted to Joe Bichud, Jennifer DeBernardis, Tim Fletcher, D. J. Mangin, Steve Russell, Jim Skrydlak, Don Rife, saki, Ehtue, nowhereman, na, dnorthcut, mahvelous Jennifer, and BigStar for inspiration as well as information. Thanks also to Morris, Pam, and Meredith Everett and to Bill and Angeline Sturgis; to Jack’s in Red Bank, the entire group under Jack Raia in Eatontown’s Sam Goody, the House of Oldies, Downstairs Records, Farfel’s, Darius and Dar- lene, Abbey Road/Appleland, John A. Guisinger II, Mazuma, David Cohen, Schoolkids, Steve Merzon, Larry Wishard, Very English and Rolling Stone, Mark Lapidos and Beatlefest, Robert Wolk, M. Glen, Gary Hein, the Princeton Record Exchange, Scene of the Crime, Sea of Timeless, Dave Stein, CD Where- house, Shaved Fish, Robert W. Barnes, Jim Dean, Rock Dreams, Angela Man- fredonia, Fast Hits, Hello Goodbye, Michael Voss, Bill Walsh, Brian Donohue, and Nick Balaam; to Judy Liao, Jody Forsberg, Karin Laine, Belinda Ficher, and Kanchna Ramchandran; and to John Golden, Bill Keane, Myron Allen, Kevin Addis, Ronnie Mann, Joe Petrillo, Howard Maymon, Mark Bogosian, Bob Thomp- son, William Marx, Don Whittaker, Amy Dunn, Robin Mountenay, Jeff Wood, Bob Murphy, Michael Piret, Tom Caldwell, Monica Roberts, Natalie Matovi- novic, Roger Vogel, and Emily Boyd.
Ann Arbor and Interlochen W. E. April 2001 CONTENTS
Maps: Europe 2; Britain 3; Liverpool 4; London 6; America 8; Asia and Oceania 9
PRELUDE Thinking of Linking 11
ONE And the Band Begins to Play (1956–1960) 19 Historical Narrative 20 Musical Beginnings: The Quarry Men 20 The First Compositions by Lennon and McCartney 24 The Quarry Men with George Harrison 35 British Revolutionaries: The Liverpool Scene 37 Bass and Drums 41 Substance in the Music of the Beatles and Their Forebears 48 Formal, Harmonic, and Melodic Characteristics 48 Rhythmic, Textural, Instrumental, and Vocal Articulation of Structure 62 xviii Contents
TWO Someone to Love, Somebody New (1960–1963) 81 The Beatles with Pete Best 82 Apprenticeship in Hamburg 82 Enter Brian Epstein 102 The First EMI Recordings 119 New Drummer Ringo Starr 119 Introductory Singles: “Love Me Do” / “P.S. I Love You” and “Please Please Me” / “Ask Me Why” 122 The First LP: Please Please Me 142 Composers at Work 159 Spring 1963—The Third Single 159 Composing for the Epstein Stable 166 The Fourth Single: “She Loves You” / “I’ll Get You” 173 The Final Two-Track Recordings 180 Beatlemania: The Second Half of 1963 180 The Second LP: With the Beatles 182
INTERLUDE I Want to Hold Your Hand 197 Initial Reception in America 205
THREE I’m Not What I Appear to Be (1964) 211 The Beatles Conquer America 212 History through May 1964 212 Peter & Gordon; Other Friends 218 “Can’t Buy Me Love” / “You Can’t Do That” 221 A Hard Day’s Night: Film Soundtrack 225 June–July 1964: World Tour, Additional LP and EP Tracks 238 The Australian Tour and Surrounding Events 238 Final Recordings for the EP and LP 240 Late 1964: U.S. Tour and Fourth LP 250 Events of August–December 1964 250 Beatles for Sale and “I Feel Fine” / “She’s a Woman” 253 The Beatles’ Musical Growth in Their First Two Years with EMI 269 Contents xix
FOUR I’m Here to Show Everybody the Light (1965) 273 Popular Music, 1964–1966 273 British Beat Music 273 Pop Music in America 275 A Second Feature Film 280 Help!: Recordings for the Film 280 The Spring of 1965 295 The Second Half of 1965 305 Summer Tours 305 Rubber Soul and “We Can Work It Out” / “Day Tripper” 308 November–December 1965 335
POSTLUDE The Act You’ve Known for All These Years (1957–2000) 339
APPENDIX Instruments Played by the Early-Period Beatles 345
Table of Chord Functions 357
Glossary of Terms 363
Notes 367
References 413
Index of Names, Songs, Albums, Videos, and Artworks 433 This page intentionally left blank THE BEATLES AS MUSICIANS Athens GREECE Stockholm 34 Boras 3 Eskilstuna 3 Vienna Karlstad 3 Goteborg 3 SWEDEN Copenhagen 4 Berlin Rome 5 Hamburg 0126 AUSTRIA Celle Munich 6 Milan 5 Genoa 5 Essen 6 Cologne Arnhem Amsterdam Nice 5 TUNISIA SWITZERLAND Blokker 4 Hillegom Paris 45 Lyon 5 Lyon Liverpool Barcelona 5 Versailles 4 Versailles London Jersey 3 Guernsey 3 Carboneras Madrid 5 Almeria SPAIN Gibraltar THE BEATLES IN EUROPE (Canary Is.) Tenerife
On all maps, numbers following city and place names indicate the dates of Quarry Men / Beatles performances for audiences. (Each such digit signifies the last digit of the year of a performance from 1957 through 1966; thus, the designation “8901” would indicate performances in the years 1958, 1959, 1960 and 1961.) Following are keys to the numbered designations of landmarks on the maps of Liverpool and London.
2 John o' Groats
Elgin 3 Fraserburgh 0 Dingwall 3 Keith 0 Inverness 0 Peterhead 0 Forres 0 Nairn 0 Aberdeen 3 THE BEATLES IN Dundee 34 BRITAIN Bridge of Allan 3 Alloa 0 Kirkcaldy 3
Edinburgh 4 Glasgow 345
Campbelltown Mull of Kintyre Newcastle-upon-Tyne 35
Carlisle 3 Sunderland 3
Stockton-on-Tees 34 Belfast 34 Middlesbrough 3
Scarborough 34
Morecambe 23 Harrogate 3 Fleetwood 2 York 3 Nelson 3 Hull 234 Blackpool 34 Leeds 34 Blackburn 3 Bradford 34 Wakefield 3 Huddersfield 3 LIVERPOOL 789012345 Doncaster 23 Dublin 3 Llandudno 3 Manchester 912345 Sheffield 345 Prestatyn 2 Rhyl 23 Buxton 3 Lincoln 3 Bangor Chester 23 Mold 3 Hanley 3 Mansfield 3 Skegness Crewe 2 Stoke-on-Trent 3 Pwllheli Whitchurch 3 Nottingham 34 Trentham 3
Shrewsbury 23 W Bromwich 2 Tamworth 3 Norwich 3 Wolverhampton 3 Leicester 34 Cardigan Sutton Coldfield 3 Peterborough 23 Great Bay Old Hill 3 Birmingham 345 Yarmouth Coventry 23 Tenbury 3 3 Smethwick 2 Cambridge 3 Northampton 3 Worcester 3 Ipswich 34 Bedford 23 Abergavenny 3 Cheltenham 3 Stowe School 3 Luton 34 ESSEX Gloucester 3 Lydney 2 Oxford 3 Swansea Stroud 2 Romford 3 Cardiff 345 Henley-on- Wembley 3456 Southend-on-Sea 3 Bristol 34 Swindon 2 Slough 3 LONDON Margate 3 Bath 3 Caversham 0 Weybridge 12345 Chatham 3 Weston-super-Mare 3 Aldershot 1 SURREY Sevenoaks Andover Guildford 3 Salisbury 3 KENT Taunton 3 Southampton 34 Portsmouth 3 Brighton 34 Exeter 34 Bournemouth 34 Southsea 3 Isle of Plymouth 34 Torquay 3 Wight
Land's End
3 To: Ford 8? Litherland Town Hall 01 Albany Cinema, Maghull 1 Aintree Institute 1 To: Lowlands Club, W Walton Hosp (PM b. 1942) Casbah Club, West To: Broadway Conserv Mossway Hall, Croxteth 1 Blair Hall, Walton 1 Anfield, Everton 3 St Edward's Colleg St Luke's, Crosby 0 St John's Hall, Tue Alexander Hall, Crosby 0 4 Lathom Memorial Hall, Seaforth 01 To: Huyton Finch L 13 5 Hambleton Hall, P 12 Morgue Skiffle Ce 11 7 6 City 9 8 16 To: Stanley Abba 14 10 18 17 Village Hall, Kno 15 43 Centre 19 29 Wirral 21 22 20 28 23 30 24 25 27 26 36 W 35 32 31 33 34 2 R I V E R 37 39 38 Sefton Dingle Park
Peninsula 41 40
M E R S E Y
THE BEATLES 1 IN LIVERPOOL
1. Hulme Hall, Port Sunlight. 2 19. Jacaranda Club, 23 Slater Street. 90 2. Majestic Ballroom, Conway Street, 20. Cabaret Club, 28 Duke Street. 0 Birkenhead. 23 21. Blue Angel Club, 108 Seel Street. 0 3. Grafton and Locarno Ballrooms, West 22. Ye Cracke Pub, Rice Street. Derby Road. 723 23. Liverpool Institute. (PM 1953–60, GH 4. Percy Phillips’ home studio, 38 1954–59) Kensington Street. 24. David Lewis Club, Great George Place. 1 5. Cassanova Club, London Road. 1 25. Liverpool College of Art (JL 1957–60). 0 6. Odeon Cinema, London Road. 34 26. Liverpool Cathedral, St. James Road. 7. Empire Theatre, Lime Street. 792345 27. 3 Gambier Terrace. (JL flat 1960) 8. Rushworth’s Music House, Whitechapel. 28. 36 Falkner Street. (BE flat) 9. NEMS, 12/14 Whitechapel. 29. Oxford St. Maternity Hospital. (JL b. 10. Hessy’s Music Store, 62 Stanley Street. 1940) 11. The Cavern, 10a Mathew Street. 7123 30. Smithdown Lane. 8? 12. Jazz Society / Storyville, 13 Temple 31. New Colony Club, 80 Berkley Street. 0 Street. 12 32. New Cabaret Artistes Club, 174a Upper 13. Cassanova Club, Dale Street. 0 Parliament Street. 0 14. Royal Iris Cruiseship. 12 33. Rialto Ballroom, Upper Parliament 15. Merseyside Civil Service Club, Lower Street. 72 Castle Street. 1 34. Starline Club, Windsor Street. 1 16. Lewis’s Dept. Store, Renshaw Street. 2 35. Roseberry Street. 7 17. Mersey Beat office, 81 Renshaw Street. 36. Pavilion Theatre, Lodge Lane. 72 18. Odd Spot Club, 89 Bold Street. 2 37. 10 Admiral Grove. (RS home 1946–63)
4 Blackburn 3 West Derby Village 8 Preston 23 t Derby Village 9012 Irish vative Club, Norris Green 7 Sea Darwen 3 ge, Sandfield Park 1 Southport 123 e Brook 1 L A N C A S H I R E Lane bus depot 9 Oldham 3 Page Moss 12 Wigan 4 Litherland 01 Leigh 3 Middleton 3 ellar, Broad Green 8 Aintree 712 St Helens 23 Manchester Bootle 912 Newton le Willows 2 912345 01 123 atoir Social Club, Old Swan 7 2 Prescot 9 Urmston 3 Warrington 2 otty Ash 12 W I R23 R A L M 2 Widnes 23 Stockport 3 2 2 e River Dee r Runcorn 2 3 2 s e y Frodsham 3 0 2 3 Northwich 23 Macclesfield 3 44 CHESHIRE Chester 23 Wavertree 46 45 42 Childwall To: Lee Park Golf Course, Childwall 8? Childwall Labour Club 8? 47 Gateacre Labour Club 8? 48 Halewood Village Hall 1 50 49
51 52 Calderstone Woolton Village 54 58 mile 53 S 57 55 59 C Allerton Park 56 Golf Course A 1/2 62 60 Allerton 61 L
E
63
64
65 Garston
66 70 Speke 68 69 67
38. St. Silas Primary School. (RS 1945–47) 54. Strawberry Field orphanage, 39. 9 Madryn Street. (RS b. 1940) Beaconsfield Road. 40. Dingle Vale Secondary Modern School. 55. “Mendips,” 251 Menlove Avenue. (JL (RS 1951–53) home c. 1945–63) 41. 37 Aigburth Drive. (Sutcliffe home) 56. Red sandstone quarry. 42. Holyoake Hall, Smithdown Road. 7 57. St. Peter’s Church, Church Road. 7 43. Picton Road Bus Depot Social Club. 9 58. St. Peter’s Church Hall, Church Road. 7 44. 12 Arnold Grove. (GH b. 1943; home 59. Woolton Village Club, Allerton Road. 9 1943 – 50) 60. Woolton Wood. 45. 197 Queens Drive. (BE home 1934–63) 61. 174 Mackets Lane. (GH home 1962–63) 46. Mosspits Lane Infants School. (JL 62. 20 Forthlin Road. (PM home 1955–63) 1945–46) 63. 1 Blomfield Road. (Julia Lennon home 47. 9 Newcastle Road. (JL home 1940–c. through 1958) 1945) 64. Winter Gardens Ballroom, Heald Street. 48. Penny Lane roundabout. 7 49. St. Barnabus Church, Smithdown 65. Wilson Hall, St. Mary’s Road. 78 Road. 66. Stevedores’ and Dockers’ Club, Window 50. Dovedale Towers, Penny Lane. 7 Lane. 8 51. Dovedale Road Infants School. (JL 67. Stockton Wood Primary School. (PM 1946–52, GH 1948–54) 1948+) 52. Quarry Bank Grammar School. (JL 68. 72 Western Avenue. (PM home 1946+) 1952–57). 7 69. 25 Upton Green. (GH home 1950-62) 53. Calderstones. 70. 12 Ardwick Road. (PM home to 1955)
5 To: 1 THE Wembley 3456, 3 BEATLES Willesden St John's W IN 4 LONDON 6
7
Acton 55 54 To: 56 Henley-on-Thames 57 (GH home 1969+), Heathrow
58
59
To: Twickenham, Richmond, Ascot (JL home, "Tittenhurst," 1969-71), Weybridge (JL home, "Kenwood," 1964
1. Decca Studios, 165 Broadhurst Gardens. 17. Scala Theatre, Charlotte Street. 2. The Roundhouse, 100 Chalk Farm Road. 18. Regent Sound, 164–6 Tottenham Court 3. Gaumont State Cinema, 195–9 Kilburn Road. High Road. 34 19. Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Gower 4. EMI Studios, 3 Abbey Road. Street. (BE 1956–57) 5. 7 Cavendish Avenue. (PM home 1966+) 20. British Library and Museum, Great 6. BBC Maida Vale Studios, Delaware Road. Russell Street. 7. Paddington Station, Praed Street. 21. Indica Books / International Times, 8. Lisson Gallery, 66–8 Bell Street. Southampton Row. 9. Marylebone Magistrate, 181 22. Sadler’s Wells Theatre, Rosebery Street. Marylebone Road. 23. Guildhall School of Music. (GM 10. Montagu Square. (RS flat 1964–69) 1947 – 50) 11. Apple boutique, 94 Baker Street. 24. Kingsway / DeLane Lea Recording 12. 57 Wimpole Street. (Asher home) Studios, 129 Kingsway. 13. EMI House, 20 Manchester Square. 25. Lyceum Ballroom, Wellington Street. 14. Apple offices (1968–69), 95 Wigmore 26. NEMS (1963 – 66), 13 Monmouth Street. Street. 27. Old Vic Theatre, 103 The Cut. 15. BBC Broadcasting House, Portland 28. Saville Theatre, 135–49 Shaftesbury Place. Avenue. 16. Associated Independent Recording, 29. Northern Songs / Dick James Music Oxford Circus. (1963 – 64), Charing Cross Road.
6 To: 2 Walthamstow 34, Leyton 3, Tottenham, Finsbury Park 345
Wood
Regent's 22 5 Park 17 18 19 8 20 9 15 21 23 11 12 34 30 13 35 48 29 7 14 45 16 24 10 28 25 To: 36 26 East Ham 49 37 38 47 46 39 Hyde 40 32 Park 50 44 43 31 27 53 42 41 51 33 To: Woolwich 3 52 To: Tooting 3, Croydon, Lewisham 3
S C A L E
0 1/ mile
4-8, RS home, "Sunny Heights," 1965-8), Esher (GH home, "Kinfauns," 1964-9)
30. Northern Songs / Dick James Music 45. London Palladium, 8 Argyll Street. 4 (1964–69), 71–75 New Oxford Road. 46. BBC Aeolian Hall, 135–7 New Bond 31. Playhouse Theatre, Northumberland Street. 3 Avenue. 34 47. Chappell Recording Studios, 52 Maddox 32. Trafalgar Square. Street. 33. Institute of Contemporary Arts, 12 48. HMV Record Store, 363 Oxford Street. Carlton House Terrace. 49. Fraser Gallery, 69 Duke Street. 34. MPL Communications, 1 Soho Square. 50. Grosvenor House Hotel, Park Lane. 3 35. Radha Krishna Temple, Soho Street. 51. Buckingham Palace. 36. Trident Studios, 17 St. Anne’s Court. 52. 13 Chapel Street. (BE home 1964–67) 37. Blue Gardenia Club, St. Anne’s Court. 1 53. William Mews. (GH, RS homes 38. Piccadilly Theatre, Denman Street. 1963 – 64) 39. Prince of Wales Theatre, 31 Coventry 54. Royal Albert Hall, Kensington Gore. 3 Street. 34 55. 13 Emperor’s Gate. (JL home 1963–64) 40. BBC Paris Studio, Regent Street. 56. Hammersmith Odeon Cinema. 45 41. Indica Gallery, 6 Mason’s Yard. 57. Queen Charlotte’s Maternity Hospital, 42. Pigalle Club, Piccadilly. 3 Goldhawk Road. 43. Apple Offices and Studios (1968–95), 3 58. Chiswick House conservatory, Saville Row. Burlington Lane. 44. London Arts Gallery, 22 New Bond 59. Olympic Studios, Church Road, Barnes. Street.
7 Boston 46 Nassau New York 456 New York Philadelphia 46 BAHAMAS Woodstock Atlantic City 4 Baltimore 4 Washington, D.C. 46 Washington, Tidewater Jacksonville 4 Toronto 456 Toronto Montreal 4 Cleveland 46 Miami Atlanta 5 Cincinnati 4 Nashville Detroit 46 Birmingham Pittsburgh 4 New Orleans 4 St. Louis 6 Indianapolis 4 Muscle Shoals Milwaukee 4 Minneapolis 5 Chicago 456 Memphis 6 Houston 5 Kansas City 4 Longview Dallas 4 THE BEATLES IN AMERICA Denver 4 Las Vegas 4 Las Vegas Vancouver 4 Vancouver San Diego 5 Seattle 6 Los Angeles 456 Los Portland 5 San Francisco 456
8 Tokyo 6
Dehra Dun Rishikesh New Delhi
Hong Kong 4 Bombay Manila 6
THE BEATLES IN ASIA AND OCEANIA Brisbane 4
Sydney 4 Adelaide 4 Auckland 4 Melbourne 4 Wellington 4
Christchurch 4 Dunedin 4
9 This page intentionally left blank PRELUDE 1THINKING OF LINKING
Five miles southeast of the city center of Liverpool rises a ridge of red sandstone; atop the crest sits Woolton Village. From a vantage point in Woolton Wood, one can look south beyond the industrial flatlands of Speke, across the Mersey estuary to the Wirral peninsula. On a clear day, the north- ern ranges of the Welsh Cambrian mountains are visible twenty miles to the southwest. Every Sunday evening for as long as they can remember, Woolton residents have heard the changing of the bells of St. Peter’s Church, a fifteen- minute performance of every permutation of the first six degrees of a major scale. The ringing of the bells echoes majestically from the sheer 200-foot walls of the red quarry dug directly beneath the bell tower. This is a district of considerable historical interest. A mile from the ridge, ne- olithic Druids marked the five Calderstones with concentric rings and other pre- historic symbols, then placed them in an eighteen-foot circle. Eleventh-century scribes recorded the names of the neighboring manors of Woolton, Allerton, Calderstone, Speke, and Wavertree in the Domesday Book. The population of greater Liverpool expanded in the eighteenth century from 2,000 to 6,000, its growth based on new wealth from the slave trade. Rock quarried in Allerton and Woolton was worked into the locally famous Quarry Bank house in 1866 and— from 1904 to 1978— into the world’s largest Anglican cathedral.1 Of greater present interest is the garden fête hosted by St. Peter’s (Woolton) on the afternoon of July 6, 1957, which saw the meeting of two local teenage gui- tarists. At this affair, John Lennon of Woolton led his amateur band through skiffle and rock-and-roll numbers. Among the listeners was Paul McCartney of Allerton, who there met Lennon and afterward impressed him with his own guitar technique and an ability to recall song lyrics that Lennon could not be bothered to memorize. Paul was to make his debut with John’s Quarry Men the following October, marking the beginning of a twelve-year partnership.
James Paul McCartney was born to James and Mary (née Mohin) McCartney on June 18, 1942, in the north-Liverpool neighborhood of Walton. Their father a cotton salesman and mother a midwife, Paul and his brother Michael (b. 1944) moved from rooms to rooms in the districts of Anfield, Wallasey, Knowsley, and Everton before finding one and then another small council terrace house in Speke, in which the family lived from 1946 to 1955.2 From there, the McCart- neys moved to a larger council home, a three-bedroom terraced house on Forth- lin Road, in the more established residential neighborhood of Allerton, which was Paul’s residence until moving to London in 1963.3 Paul’s mother died at
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forty-six of breast cancer in October 1956, a mere month after symptoms were recognized. The McCartney home always had a piano of World War I vintage because Paul’s father Jim (1902–76), the son of a brass band’s tubist, had been a musi- cian, playing trumpet and piano in leading semiprofessional local bands such as the Masked Melody Makers (in 1919) and the Jim Mac Jazz Band (active in the 1920s). While none of the Beatles received any sort of formal instruction in an instrument, theory, or composition, Paul’s home was musically richer than that of the others; he has said, “I had a little bit more knowledge of harmony through my dad. I actually knew what the word harmony meant.”4 Paul sang in a church choir as a boy, was given a trumpet when about thirteen, and learned enough chords, six, on his cousin Bett Robbins’s banjolele to play “Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue.”5 In November 1987 he said: “[when] people of my gen- eration . . . were growing up, rock and roll hadn’t been invented yet! Blues had started, but that was nowhere near as popular; you had to be a real folkie to be into blues. Anything up to the 1950s was the old traditions, and in Britain that was the music hall. . . . My dad [would be] sitting around the house tapping out things like ‘Chicago’ on the ivories. . . . There was a lot of that music-hall around our house on the radio and the telly.”6 The cheery, superficially bubbly sounds of the British music hall, chromaticized by winking applied dominants and gaudy diminished sevenths, expressed in bouncing dotted rhythms by reed sections and jolly root-fifth oom-pah figures in the bass, and telling the color- ful tales of characters such as Champagne Charlie, Lucy Jaggs, Jim O’Shea, Lily of Laguna, Cushie Butterfield, Billie Bates, and ‘En’ry Hawkins, took a firm hold on McCartney’s imagination. Not only was the vaudevillian “When I’m Sixty- Four” one of his earliest written tunes and not only was he to produce many dance band numbers and fluffy story-line characterizations with the Beatles and afterward, but his lifelong, often dominating motivation to entertain— to give the public a rollicking good time, however light— is utterly consonant with what we know of his father’s musical interests.7 McCartney’s stage humor with the Beatles, manifested in his running gags in the patter between numbers on BBC broadcasts and in the annual Christmas messages recorded for fan club members, in the vaudevillian skits for British television in 1963 and 1964, in his jokey misattributions of songs’ origins in concerts, and in his hammy part in the conclusion to the 1968 film Yellow Submarine, all of it begging rim shots and unappreciative groans, is similarly offered as endearingly light entertain- ment. McCartney has given us a clearer hearing of his father’s music: “Did my dad ever write anything? Well, he used to have this one song, which he’d play over and over on the piano. It was just a tune; there were no words to it. I actually remember him, when I was a real little kid, saying, ‘Can anyone think of any words to this?’ We all did try for a while; it was like a challenge. Well, years later, I recorded it with Chet Atkins and Floyd Cramer in Nashville.”8 The cadence to the first chorus of Jim Mac’s instrumental ditty “Walking in the Park With Eloise” is represented in example 1.1, which reproduces the cornet, clarinet, trombone, and electric bass parts (this last played by the composer’s ex-Beatle
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Example 1.1 “Walking in the Park with Eloise” (James McCartney). © 1974 Kidney Punch Music, Inc. 12 Cornet Clarinet Trombone Elec. Bass
14
son; rhythm parts are omitted) as produced by McCartney in June–July 1974.9 The instrumentation of this chorus lends the tune a Dixieland quality, and a Nashville spirit breaks out later in Atkins’s and Cramer’s characteristic solos on rockabilly guitar and countrified piano, respectively. But the composition’s her- itage in the British stage of the 1920s and 1930s is always at the forefront with its applied dominants, fully diminished seventh applied chord (m. 13 [0:32– 0:34]), many offhand chromatic passing tones, and a jaunty inverted-dotted rhythm. A less-than-flattering view of McCartney’s inclination toward the whimsi- cal is given in this 1987 portrait by radio personality Timothy White: “His seems an existence played out in an English music hall, evoking that senti- mental mid-nineteenth-century tradition— featuring pantomime, sketch com- edy, and the song-and-dance man— that developed from entertainment in inns and taverns. In his music, misfortune is a pratfall, tragedy is dirgeful melo- drama, happiness is a comic fluke, and fulfillment is an illustrated postcard cap- tioned ‘Ardor.’”10 While McCartney’s parentage is not always obvious in his product— not quite to the degree suggested by White— the son certainly did learn from the father that popularity could be gained through a crafty manip- ulation of the art and its audience. As Paul once said, “my dad was the fella at the family parties who played the piano and knew all the tunes. . . . And I re- member him saying to me when I was quite young, learn the piano, you’ll al- ways get invited to parties.”11
John Winston Lennon was born October 9, 1940, to Alfred Lennon (1912–76) and his wife Julia (née Stanley, 1914–58). The bright, artistic, playful, and im- pulsive Julia rarely saw the charming but irresponsible Alf after their 1938 wedding; he left home permanently shortly after John was born. During John’s first years, Julia eked out an existence with John in a small terraced house on
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Newcastle Road (two blocks from the Penny Lane bus terminal). Newcastle Road neighbors maintain that Julia took to prostitution, an allegation not oth- erwise documented. John certainly had a half-sister born in June 1945, the fa- ther unidentified and the infant placed for adoption with a Norwegian couple within weeks of birth. When Julia— never divorced— began a romance with John Dykins and set up a household with him, Julia’s oldest sister, “Mimi” (Mary Elizabeth, 1906–91), sought the aid of Liverpool Social Services, which ruled that John, then about five years old, was to be raised by his aunt and her husband, George Smith, who were themselves without children.12 John’s new home with Mimi and George was a middle-class semidetatched house with a good-sized garden on Menlove Avenue in Woolton. Aside from spells in city- center quarters during college years, the Menlove house called Mendips was to be John’s home for nearly two decades into 1963. In her liner notes for John’s posthumous album, Menlove Avenue, Yoko Ono says that John “grew up in Liverpool, listening to Greensleeves, BBC Radio and Tessie O’Shea.” This is consistent with McCartney’s memory, which has it that Mimi “much preferred classical music and the traditional dance orchestras of the Fifties she heard on the BBC, like Victor Sylvester” to the rock and roll that was a delight to John’s mother, who with Dykins and their two daughters lived a fifteen-minute walk from Mendips.13 The short distance allowed more and more frequent visits between son and mother as John entered his teen years, es- pecially after the sudden death of George Smith in June 1955. From October 1952 to July 1957, John attended Quarry Bank Grammar School, which occu- pied the aforementioned Quarry Bank house. Practical Mimi could not keep John interested in his schoolwork, and she lost ground to fun-loving Julia in music as well, despite the fact that her husband George Smith had given the boy (at about ten years of age) his first musical instrument, a harmonica. The Mendips gramophone simply did not play the music he enjoyed. Instead John became quite taken with Julia’s performance on the banjolele, an instrument (along with piano) that she had learned from her paternal grandfather, and on which she would perform at pubs and local parties.14 John’s own paternal musical heritage is in some dispute. Alf maintained that his own father, Jack Lennon (b. 1855), had emigrated from Dublin to America and found success performing with the Kentucky Minstrels, settling in Liver- pool at the turn of the century to start a family. Mimi (contemptuous of Alf and of any sort of claimed connection between himself and John) dismissed the en- tire story, having been assured by Alf’s brother that although John’s grandfa- ther had been of Irish descent, he had been born in Liverpool and was never a member of the minstrel troupe.15 Another story about John’s musical back- ground, while possibly apochryphal, is certainly in character; it says that as “a choirboy at St. Peter’s Church, he was eleven years old when he was perma- nently barred from Sunday services” for misbehavior.16 Impossible to discipline as a teen, John as a Beatle could publicly defy con- vention only through his cruel juvenile humor. When Paul yukked it up on stage by announcing one song or another as having been recorded by “our fa- vorite American group, Sophie Tucker,” one would not think that insult was the Thinking of Linking 15 intent. John, on the other hand, made it abundantly clear when he was ridi- culing even the afflicted— particularly with his exaggerated imitations of those with spastic paralysis and harelips. More acceptable was his usual stage refer- ence to Peggy Lee as “Peggy Leg” in his introduction to “the song from the mu- sical, The Muscle Man,” “Till There Was You,” which she had recorded.17 To the world at large, John was cheeky but sophisticated when he was heard to have announced “Twist and Shout” to the queen mother and the entire audience at the Royal Variety performance (November 4, 1963) thus: “For our last number I’d like to ask your help. For the people in the cheaper seats, clap your hands, and the rest of you, if you’d just rattle your jewelry.” Only a handful knew that for manager Brian Epstein, this was a private and very cruel joke, for Lennon had informed Brian prior to the performance that he was considering hurling an obscene insult at the royal family at this point in the show; Brian could not have been sure what to expect. While McCartney may be said to have constantly developed— as a means to entertain— a focused musical talent with an ear for counterpoint and other as- pects of craft in the demonstration of a popular common language that he did much to enrich, Lennon’s mature music is best appreciated as the daring prod- uct of a more general, largely unconscious, searching but undisciplined artis- tic sensibility, a less-than-“perfect” vehicle for expressing deeply held personal truths. Lennon had little regard for the mastery of the niceties of received com- positional dictates or for the dull expectations of the bulk of his audience. Not that McCartney’s music is without import, but his pronouncements of hopes for the world (such as his wish for a more humble respect for the natural environ- ment and the animal kingdom) often come across as overstated public relations billboards. All too rarely do they have the subtle-but-vital poetic impact of “Blackbird” (1968), his simply elegant apotheosis for the civil rights struggle. Not that Lennon always resisted being heavy-handed; but even the blunt na- ture of his dire agitprop work (see Some Time in New York City) was itself the dis- play of an artistic stance promoting the direct expression of utilitarian ideals. And not that Lennon’s frequent disregard for technical precision, in realms of craft that lay beyond his interest and patience, hampered his ability to reach others. On the contrary, his sometimes strange music would commonly set in motion deep and strong sympathetic vibrations among the many millions of his devoted listeners. These sorts of differences between Lennon and McCartney are sometimes explained as a manifestation of class distinction between the two. Lennon is seen as the intellectually inquisitive middle-class boy with the leisure to read all of his auntie’s books on struggling artists and while away his childhood in word play, daydreaming, and picture drawing: at about seven, he illustrated a cartoon book he called “Sport and Speed Illustrated,” and at age eleven he painted the pictures used on the cover of Walls and Bridges.18 This is the boy whose most difficult-to-express artistic outpourings were first to find a limited audience in his hilarious and cruel books of vignettes, poetry, and cartoons, In His Own Write (containing many materials written as a teen under the rubric The Daily Howl and published as a book in 1964) and its sequel A Spaniard in the 16 Thinking of Linking
Works (1965); then were to suddenly burst forth— to a seemingly private re- ception— in the aforementioned media plus nontonal music, film, lithography, and “happenings,” upon collaboration with Yoko Ono beginning in 1968; and were to find perhaps their most productive voice in the cathartic album John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. Conversely, McCartney is seen as the sentimental, nonintellectual working-class craftsman who counts his pay in smiles and then moves on to the next project, toiling to get every note just right. There is some truth in these caricatures, but it must be remembered that Lennon was genuine in his lifelong adulation for the most simplistic and vis- ceral rock and roll (even the basic Bo Diddley could move him strongly) and that relatively complex tonal relationships came to be second nature for McCartney early on, requiring less toil and allowing for more imagination by 1965. Also important is the understanding that it was McCartney (a hip Lon- don bachelor in 1966) who introduced Lennon (then a suburban family man) to the proprietors of the Indica Gallery where John met Yoko, and that it was McCartney who introduced the Beatles to the worlds of Stockhausen and Bach, leading to a revolution in the expressive capacity of mainstream rock music. Following his ex-partner, McCartney even published a book featuring his own drawings (Paul McCartney, Composer/Artist, 1981) and was to mount an exhi- bition in Siegen, Germany, of seventy-three of his own paintings in May–July 1999, which exhibition formed the core of the book Paintings (2000). The hor- rible shock of Lennon’s death in 1980 pushed McCartney to create one of his most inspired, personal, and (nearly) unaffected works, “Here Today” (recorded in 1981 for Tug of War), a haunting tribute to the partnership as it began in the fields behind St. Peter’s Woolton Parish Church.
McCartney has said that blues and folk music were fairly unknown in his cir- cle, but he was to attempt covering the ambitious “Guitar Boogie” (a proto- rock-and-roll number made popular in 1948 by Arthur Smith) in his October 1957 debut with the Quarry Men. Lennon’s schoolmate Pete Shotton recalls that John used to play harmonica to such popular tunes as Vaughn Monroe’s “Cool Water” (1948) and Johnnie Ray’s “The Little White Cloud That Cried” (1951) and “Walking My Baby Home” (1952). Famous for his unrestrained vocal delivery, Johnnie Ray probably appealed to Lennon for what was heard as his “black” sound, effectively the product of a much wider and more imagina- tive range of vocal expression than normally shown by other popular white singers. Bob Wooler, who might be called the father of the Liverpool beat scene, describes Ray as “the harbinger of the hiccupers.”19 Lennon has maintained that the American C&W repertoire was as well known as Irish folk music in pre- rock Liverpool; by 1957 the Quarry Men were performing numbers that were made popular in the prerock era by Hank Williams, and by 1960 they were playing others by Les Paul and Mary Ford.20 For the young Beatles, much more important sources from this repertoire were the songs of Carl Perkins, Eddie Cochran, and Johnny Burnette, whose recordings of 1954–55 were direct fol- lowers of Williams’s and Jimmie Rodgers’s style of hillbilly yodeling. But Perkins, Cochran, and Burnette, all of whose records the young Beatles were to Thinking of Linking 17 cover, added a backbeat and changed their styles dramatically when hillbilly turned rockabilly, with the first record releases in 1954–55 of Memphis record- ing artist Elvis Presley. Elvis’s sound, with its unbridled array of vocal nuances accompanied by his hard-swinging rhythm-guitar backbeat and by Scotty Moore’s electrified bluesy bent strings, reached deep into Liverpool in mid-1956 and, in tandem with the British skiffle boom, convinced both Lennon and McCartney that they needed to have guitars.
The primary focus of chapter 1 will be to illustrate the growth as performers and the emergence as composers of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, along- side the 1958 introduction of George Harrison as Quarry Men guitarist. While the Beatles did not crystallize as a quartet until Ringo Starr joined as drummer in 1962, the years prior to that time are rich in musical development and there- fore demand the attention of anyone who would understand how the Beatles came to be what they were. This page intentionally left blank ONE AND THE BAND BEGINS 1TO PLAY (1956–1960)
The lively new skiffle beat and then the all-out-wild rock and roll of the mid-1950s invited all teenagers to drop everything and dance, all shaking to a vibration that didn’t seem to excite parents the same way. Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Gene Vincent: all seemed to speak directly to adolescents in a code that only they could understand. Some listeners shook right through to the soul, enough so that they too needed guitars to fully ex- press their joy. This is the story of a few such souls who shook so joyously, the world was happily caught in their wake. This chapter is organized in two parts, the first recounting the early history of the musicians who would enter Hamburg in August 1960 as the Beatles, the second analyzing the group’s musical interests and talents during this forma- tive period. Propelled by British skiffle, American rock and roll, and a joy in dis- covering new sounds, John Lennon leads the Quarry Men to semiprofessional ability as he picks up an interest in composing from guitarist Paul McCartney. The addition of George Harrison, a guitarist intent on blues and modal scales, gives the young group a local identity that stands out against the predomi- nantly bland backdrop of British pop music of the late 1950s. Table 1.1 pro- vides a time line summarizing the major events of the Beatles’ career through the summer of 1960.
19 20 And the Band Begins to Play (1956–1960)
Table 1.1 Time Line of Major Events for the Beatles, 1940–July 1960
1940 July 7: Ringo Starr born as Richard Starkey, Liverpool Oct. 9: John Lennon born, Liverpool
1942 June 18: Paul McCartney born, Liverpool
1943 Feb. 25: George Harrison born, Liverpool
1956 Sept.?: John Lennon picks up guitar and begins to form skiffle band, the Quarry Men
1957 Mar.?: First public performance of Quarry Men July 6: Paul McCartney meets John Lennon; Quarry Men recorded playing “Putting on the Style” and “Baby Let’s Play House” Oct. 18: Paul McCartney first performs with the Quarry Men, as guitarist
1958 Feb. or Mar.: George Harrison joins Quarry Men as guitarist Summer: Quarry Men record “That’ll Be the Day” / “In Spite of All the Danger” July 15: John’s mother killed Aug. 29: Quarry Men open the Casbah Club Nov. 15?: Johnny & the Moondogs audition for TV show “Discoveries” in Manchester
1959 ?: Lennon and McCartney commit to songwriting partnership Oct.: Group begins rehearsing at Jacaranda
1960 Jan.: Stu Sutcliffe joins group as bassist Mid–Apr.?: Silver Beetles make Forthlin Road recordings Apr. 23–24: John and Paul play as Nerk Twins in Caversham May 20–28: Silver Beetles, with Tommy Moore on drums, tour northern Scotland with Johnny Gentle June 2: Name “The Beatles” first appears in print July: Norman Chapman drums with Beatles on three July gigs; Beatles play one week at New Cabaret Artistes Club, Liverpool
Historical Narrative
Musical Beginnings: The Quarry Men The skiffle craze, spearheaded by Scotsman Lonnie Donegan (once a trad jazz guitarist), dominated Britain in 1956–57.1 Playing mostly Leadbelly’s post- plantation blues and other American folk tunes, often tinged by bluegrass in Historical Narrative 21 numbers such as “Rock Island Line,” “Alabammy Bound,” “Cumberland Gap,” and “John Henry,” skiffle groups, including the Vipers and those led by Done- gan, Johnny Duncan, and Chas McDevitt, encouraged all young Brits so in- clined to take up guitars, tea-chest basses, and washboards.2 All this was stan- dard equipment for creating the sound carried by a lead singer (vocal technique was not an issue), a guitarist who could handle three open chords (I, IV, and V, with optional sevenths welcome on any of the three— mastery not required) in a small handful of sharp keys, and a homemade rhythm section that could manage to place a heavy accent on the backbeat. Backing singers were required by only the most polished recording groups. John Lennon bought a 78-rpm copy of “Rock Island Line,” got hold of a guitar, and gathered his willing Wool- ton mates into such a group.3 The provenance of John’s first guitar(s) has become confused over the years. As best as the memories and legends can be conflated, it seems that John begged Mimi for a guitar and she refused; he ordered one through a newspaper ad and had it shipped to Julia’s, telling Mimi that his mother had bought it for him. John’s musical cohort Rod Davis has recalled this being a Dutch-made Egmond, just like the first guitar owned by George Harrison. Mimi apparently replaced this unsuitable guitar (March 1957 being the accepted date), with a second- hand Spanish-style Gallatone Champion, a steel-stringed instrument pur- chased at Hessy’s, a music shop on the city center’s Whitechapel Street, across the intersection from the more upscale Rushworth’s Music House. Mimi only allowed him to play it on her tiny enclosed front porch.4 By 1956 Julia had shown John a good bit on the banjolele, a hybrid instru- ment joining a banjo head and bridge with a small-scale ukulele neck. Un- schooled in the guitar’s proper tuning, John and Julia removed two strings and tuned the other four to her uke configuration, probably an octave below the so- prano ukulele’s G tuning: G–B–fs–a. Mother and son worked out all John’s chords with unorthodox positions— it certainly made no difference for a skif- fle player. Julia’s musical interests encouraged John’s. They started with Fats Domino’s “Ain’t That a Shame,” a 1955 hit.5 Beginning with the May 1956 re- lease in Britain of “Heartbreak Hotel,” she would regularly play Presley’s three- chord, twelve-bar-based hits, “Hound Dog,” “(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear,” and “Jailhouse Rock” on the banjolele while he worked them out on his guitar. “My mother taught me quite a bit, my first lessons really. Most of our stuff then in the early days was just twelve bar boogies, nothing fancy. Of course, Paul came along later and taught me a few things.”6 The guitar became John’s obsession, and Aunt Mimi saw it as an interference with his schoolwork. Although she did buy him a better instrument, she is well known for having told the boy, “the guitar’s all right as a hobby, John, but you’ll never make a living from it.” John and his friend Pete Shotton formed a duo they called the Black Jacks in the fall of 1956, John on guitar and vocals and Pete on washboard played with thimbles. When personnel were added over the succeeding month, they be- came the Quarry Men, named for their school song, “Quarry Men, Strong be- fore Our Birth.” Perhaps the school’s motto echoed for Lennon the sweat-gleam- ing skiffle stories of poleaxes, pig iron, and shackles. New members included 22 And the Band Begins to Play (1956–1960)
Rod Davis on banjo; Eric Griffiths, guitar (duplicating John’s banjolele tuning); Colin Hanton, drums; and Bill Smith, Ivan Vaughan, or Nigel Whalley, and then Len Garry, appearing with a tea-chest bass. All participation other than Lennon’s was highly intermittent. Table 1.2 approximates the group’s evolving membership and assignments. The first numbers performed by the skifflers are said to include “Rock Island Line,” “John Henry,” “Worried Man Blues,” “Wabash Cannonball,” “Cumberland Gap,” “Don’t You Rock Me, Daddy-O,” “Railroad Bill,” “Freight Train,” “Last Train to San Fernando,” “Maggie May,” and “Putting On the Style.”7 John was an enthusiastic strummer and by all standards was tough on his instrument; fellow Quarry Man Davis says he fre- quently broke his strings.8 The photographic record from August 1960 through February 1964 shows three different sets of knobs, a cracked pickguard, a change of tailpiece/vibrato unit and a total refinishing of the body on his first Rickenbacker guitar, suggesting a battering beyond normal heavy use, so we can assume that the Gallatone was worked pretty hard as well. As John gained technique and repertoire, the band began to cover his favorite rock-and-roll records. Although the BBC played no such music, Julia was not John’s only source for this literature. Shotton says that he and John got their ear- liest exposure to records by Presley, Bill Haley, Gene Vincent, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, and Buddy Holly through late-night continental broadcasts: “Our salvation proved to be Radio Luxembourg, which boasted a late-night program, ‘The Jack Jackson Show,’ devoted primarily to original American rock and roll recordings.”9 Ray Coleman reports that the first rock-and-roll numbers to be added to the Quarry Men’s skiffle repertoire were “Jailhouse Rock,” Perkins’s “Blue Suede Shoes,” and Holly’s “That’ll Be the Day.” Other 1957–58 additions included Presley’s “Baby Let’s Play House” and “All Shook Up,” the Everly Broth- ers’ “Bye Bye Love,” Holly’s “Peggy Sue,” and Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode.”10
McCartney Joins the Group After he saw Lonnie Donegan at Liverpool’s Empire Theatre on November 11, 1956, Paul McCartney traded the trumpet his dad had given him for his first guitar, a natural-finish flattop acoustic model of un- known make with eighteen frets, only twelve of which were clear of the body; dot inlays appeared on only the fifth, seventh and twelfth frets, marking this clearly as a beginner’s instrument. As was the case with Lennon’s, this first box must have been unsuitable, because 1957 photographs already show Paul play- ing the Zenith that he was to use through 1960.11 Building on an introduction to the banjolele courtesy of his cousin Bett, Paul learned a bit of guitar from his friend Ian James, and he often tells a story of tak- ing the bus to find someone who supposedly could show him how to form a B7 chord. Paul’s brother Michael remembers that Paul worked hard at the instru- ment in a wide variety of styles but that he most often covered songs by Presley and Little Richard.12 Among the first songs that Paul learned to play were Eddie Cochran’s “Twenty Flight Rock” and Vincent’s “Be-Bop-A-Lula.” He says he and a schoolmate entertained at one end-of-term class party by standing on a desk- top with guitars, Paul screaming through Little Richard’s “Long Tall Sally.”13 It was Paul’s mate at the Liverpool Institute (the city’s best high school), Table 1.2 Membership in John Lennon’s Groups, 1956–1962
1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962
John Lennon, principal baritone vocals Len Garry, principal tenor vocals Paul McCartney, principal tenor vocals George Harrison, secondary tenor vocals John Lennon, acoustic guitar amp. ac. gtr. electric guitar Eric Griffiths, acoustic guitar Paul McCartney, amplified ac. guitar electric guitar acoustic guitar. G. Harrison, amplified ac. guitar electric guitar acoustic guitar, Ken Brown, ac. gtr. P. M., Piano Rod Davis, banjo Ken Brown, bass Roy Young, piano J. Duff Lowe, piano Bill S., Stu Sutcliffe, Ivan V., electric bass Nigel W., C. Newby, elec. bass tea-chest Len Garry, tea-chest bass P. McCartney, electric bass Pete Shotton, washboard Tommy Moore, drums Colin Hanton, drums Norman Chapman, drums Pete Best, drums Johnny Hutchinson, drums Ringo Starr, drums 24 And the Band Begins to Play (1956–1960)
Quarry Man Ivan Vaughan, who suggested he come to St. Peter’s on July 6, 1957, to hear his group, which on that day played “Cumberland Gap,” “Rail- road Bill,” “Maggie May,” “Putting On the Style,” “Baby Let’s Play House,” and the Dell-Vikings’ hit “Come Go with Me.” John says that this date was his first attempt to perform the last-named song “in public with a real band,” and he hadn’t quite learned the lyrics; reportedly he sang at least one chorus as “come love me darlin’, come and go with me / down, down, down to the peniten- tiary.”14 In a private jab in a very public forum, in the song “Too Many People” (Ram [McCartney 1971]), Paul once told John that their relationship had been Lennon’s lucky break. He might have been referring to their meeting on this July day, for it happens that “Come Go with Me” was the first record Paul had ever bought, and the correct lyrics to this song and to “Be-Bop-A-Lula” proved an immediate talking point between them when they met after the garden per- formance at the hall across Church Road from St. Peter’s. McCartney: “I knew all the words and they didn’t. That was big currency.” A far luckier break was that Paul was able to show John the correct tuning for his instrument, and he taught his new friend a few chords besides. To top it off, Paul demonstrated his own technique in “Twenty Flight Rock”; “then I did my Little Richard imitation, went through all the stuff I knew. John seemed quite impressed.”15 John was quite impressed. After a few weeks of wrestling with his ego, Lennon decided that the group’s musicality was more important to him than was his unrivaled musical leadership; on July 20 McCartney was invited to join the band. After a stay at scout camp and a family holiday, Paul finally joined and had his first gig with the Quarry Men on October 18, 1957 (“well, I suppose that you could say that we were playing hard to get,” Paul was to write in “Here Today,” Tug of War [1982]). From then on, the two met regularly for musical give-and-take. They practiced together on the tiny Mendips porch. With Paul’s dad at work, they would “sag off” school to have the run of Paul’s front parlor and its piano. John having begun classes at the Liverpool College of Art in Sep- tember 1957, Paul would bring his guitar from the Institute right next door, and they would entertain the art students through the lunch hour with Paul’s frenetic vocalizations of “We’re Gonna Move,” “Rip It Up,” and “Good Golly Miss Molly,” John’s “Peggy Sue” and “When You’re Smiling,” and both of them in soft harmony for “All I Have to Do Is Dream.”16 They would meet at Julia’s— her Blomfield Road home was just a few blocks from Paul’s— and work in the vi- brant acoustics of the upstairs bath, with other Quarry Men often crammed in besides. Julia loved it. Paul recalls, “She was always teaching us new tunes. I re- member two in particular, ‘Ramona’ and . . . ‘Wedding Bells are Breaking Up That Old Gang of Mine.’ Much later, during the Beatles years, John and I often tried to write songs with that same feeling to them. ‘Here, There and Every- where’ was one we wrote along those lines.”17
The First Compositions by Lennon and McCartney Document Study Masterpieces such as “Here, There and Everywhere” were a long way off, but composition had begun. McCartney says, “when we started Historical Narrative 25 the Beatles, John and I sat down and wrote about fifty songs, out of which I think ‘Love Me Do’ is the only one that got published.” An early 1962 article in Mersey Beat claims that “John and Paul of the Beatles have written over 70 original songs.”18 These estimates— fifty and seventy— can have significance only if they are taken to include both the many pieces begun at this time but only finished much later and the many abandoned fragments and unfinished works that never received titles or have simply never been documented in any useful way. Following is the the most thorough work-list possible of the Beat- les’ composing activity preceding 1963. In the period before 1961, thirteen songs and instrumental pieces that were ever to reach some stage of completion are thought probable to have been begun: ten predominantly by McCartney (in conjectural order of germination: “I Lost My Little Girl,” “When I’m Sixty-Four,” “I’ll Follow the Sun,” “Hot as Sun,” “Love Me Do,” “Like Dreamers Do,” “In Spite of All the Danger,” “Cats- walk,” “You’ll Be Mine,” and “Cayenne”) and three by Lennon (“Hello Little Girl,” “I Call Your Name,” and “The One after 909”). Two finished compositions (“Cry for a Shadow” by John and George and “Love of the Loved” by Paul) were added to the catalogue in 1961, as were five more in 1962 (Paul’s “Pinwheel Twist,” “P.S. I Love You,” and “I Saw Her Standing There” and John’s “Ask Me Why” and “Please Please Me,” at least the last four of which are thought to fully postdate the Mersey Beat claim for seventy compositions). Of the three re- maining Lennon-McCartney works to be recorded in February 1963, only two (Lennon’s “Do You Want to Know a Secret” and “There’s a Place”) might have been conceived before that year. In addition to these, we have sometimes conjectural titles and in some cases further information but in no case evidence of completion for thirteen pre-1962 compositions accepted— for lack of more specific information— as joint Lennon-McCartney works. These are “I Fancy Me Chances,” “Too Bad about Sorrows,” “Just Fun,” “Wake Up in the Morning,” “If Tomorrow Ever Comes,” “I’ve Been Thinking That You Love Me,” “Won’t You Please Say Goodbye,” “Keep Looking That Way,” “That’s My Woman,” “Years Roll Along,” “Thinking of Link- ing,” “Looking Glass,” and “Winston’s Walk.” The origins of “What Goes On” are often supposed to precede 1963, but the song is undocumented prior to its 1965 recording. Four further compositions (Paul’s “A World without Love,” “Tip of My Tongue,” and “Nobody I Know” and John’s “I’m in Love”) have been men- tioned as having started life in this period, but they are much more strongly as- sociated with their time of completion for other recording artists in 1963–64.19 Further, Johnny Gentle has made the plausible yet unsubstantiated claim that John Lennon helped him complete the song “I’ve Just Fallen for Someone” on May 21 or 22, 1960, by adding the line “just as the song tells us, the best things in life are free.”20 The early Beatles’ other front-man, Tony Sheridan, has made a similar claim, that he cowrote a song entitled “Tell Me If You Can” with McCartney in June 1961. Sheridan has also dated this song to December 1962. He relates the text of the chorus as “Tell me if you can. Could there ever be an- other man who’d love you like I do? Tell me if you can.”21 Finally, six works-in- progress from 1960 have been handed down through tapes made at Forthlin 26 And the Band Begins to Play (1956–1960)
Road on a borrowed portable Grundig recorder. Given here are provisional titles, listed in order from highest to lowest degree of development: “Some Days,” “You Must Write Everyday,” “Well, Darling,” “I Don’t Know,” “Come On People,” and “I’ll Be Leaving”; these intermingle with even looser jams that do not justify con- sideration as even potential compositions. Counting generously, this classifica- tion of compositions and fragments possibly begun before 1963 totals forty- eight items (forty-two of which may have origins predating the March 1962 claim of “seventy”). Undoubtedly many other potential pieces, of which all trace seems to have been lost, were begun and developed during this period, but there was certainly no proliferation of finished Lennon-McCartney compositions be- fore the first twelve weeks of 1963, when the well-trained team began to hit its stride and from which point documentation becomes very thorough.22 Recordings were made only sporadically before the Beatles’ debut in the EMI studios in June 1962, after which time “Love Me Do,” “P.S. I Love You, “Please Please Me,” “Ask Me Why,” “I Saw Her Standing There,” “Do You Want to Know a Secret,” and “There’s a Place” from the preceding work-list were completed and recorded. Because the Beatles never required music notation, contempo- raneous composition documents are few. “In Spite of All the Danger” was one of two songs, the other being Buddy Holly’s “That’ll Be the Day,” recorded by the Quarry Men in the summer of 1958 at Percy Phillips’s home studio on Kens- ington Street, Liverpool. On this day, John, Paul, and George, all with amplified acoustic guitars, John “Duff” Lowe on piano, and Colin Hanton on drums recorded the two songs with a single suspended microphone, direct to a single two-sided shellac-on-metal 78-rpm disc.23 McCartney has said that he com- posed the Les Paul–like “In Spite of All the Danger” in imitation of Presley, and its cadence comes close to “Tryin’ to Get to You” (1956), but we hear Lennon singing lead with McCartney providing only a simple descant along with Har- rison’s vocal “fills” and a simple guitar break.24 The second verse and bridge of this earliest-recorded Beatle composition, culminating in a stop-time retransi- tion on a blue-note colored V, are reduced in example 1.2. Two songs, “Years Roll Along” and “Keep Looking That Way,” and two in- strumentals, “Looking Glass” and “Winston’s Walk,” are apparently known only from their mention in a letter written by McCartney (probably in 1960) to a local journalist, except for McCartney’s later recollection of the lyric “It might have been winter when you told me” from “Years Roll Along.”25 The homemade 1960 tape referred to earlier contains performances of “You’ll Be Mine,” “Cayenne,” and the six pieces given provisional titles.26 “Cry for a Shadow” was written and recorded in Germany in 1961 and first released in France in April 1962. “Pinwheel Twist” is included in a list prepared by Brian Epstein of top prospects for the Beatles’ first EMI session on June 6, 1962, and must therefore be considered quite suitable for performance.27 Two late-1962 Beatle rehearsals of “Catswalk” have appeared, in addition to a commercially released 1967 recording by the Chris Barber Band. Complete versions of “Like Dreamers Do,” “Love of the Loved,” and “Hello Little Girl” are well known through the distri- bution of the Beatles’ Decca audition tape of January 1, 1962, and these three titles were also recorded and released by other artists in 1963 and 1964.28 Three Historical Narrative 27
Example 1.2 “In Spite of All the Danger” (McCartney-Harrison); used by permis- sion of MPL Communications, Inc.
B E PM JL In spite of all the heart - ache that you may_ cause E7 A (aah_) PM GH me,_ I’ll do a-ny- thing_ for_ you, a- ny- thing you want me B E A E E7 A (aah_) wah-wah, wah, wah-wah,wah, to if you’ll be trueto me. I’ll look af - ter you like I’ve E E7 A wah, wah-wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, ne- ver_ done_ be fore, I’ll keep all the B wah, wah. o-thers from_ knock - in’ at_ your_ door. In spite of all the works (“I Call Your Name,” “I’ll Follow the Sun,” and “When I’m Sixty-Four”) are familiar through their finished versions as fully produced Beatle songs ap- pearing in 1964–67, and as mentioned earlier, four others (“A World without Love,” “Tip of My Tongue,” “Nobody I Know,” and “I’m in Love”) were popular- ized by other performers in 1963–64.29 Ten of the oldest numbers were recaptured, if only in the busking of a few seconds’ worth of each tune, during the January 1969 rehearsals for the “Get Back” project. These are “I Lost My Little Girl,” “Hot as Sun,” “I Fancy Me Chances,” “Too Bad about Sorrows,” “Just Fun,” “Thinking of Linking,” “Wake Up in the Morning,” “If Tomorrow Ever Comes,” “I’ve Been Thinking That You Love Me,” and “Won’t You Please Say Goodbye.” All were apparently captured on film that January, as each has been distributed in film-derived audio formats. “Hot as Sun” also appeared on McCartney (McCartney 1970); in addition, “Looking Glass” was mentioned in 1969 film outtakes, but it is not known whether any of its substance was performed at that time. That month’s work also produced the fully rehearsed and best known version of “The One after 909.” “Thinking of Linking” remains mysterious; when Mark Lewisohn asked McCartney about early compositions, this song was recalled. Paul: “’Thinking of Linking’ was terrible! . . . I could never really get past [singing] 28 And the Band Begins to Play (1956–1960)
Example 1.3 “Too Bad about Sorrows.” P Too bad a- bout sor - rows_ too bad a-bout life,_
A: I III