Welcome to all you CD Babies!

Hey! If you're a visitor from the CD Baby newsletter you're very welcome. Sit down and let me make you a fine cup of english tea.

What you've stumbled upon is one man's foolishly ambitious project to blog his way through all 211 Beatles songs, pull 'em apart to see what makes 'em tick and then put together all the bits into new songs.

I'm on song 38 so far.

I know, epic FAIL.

But I am learning a massive amount already and I haven't even got to the best stuff yet.

I've been writing songs for 25 years but last year I realised that I've been trying to learn about writing simple pop songs from Beethoven, Gershwin, Phillip Glass, Steve Vai & Burt Bacharach instead of studying the greatest pop group of all time.

So that's what I'm here for.

It's a long and winding road and if you think you might learn something by joining me, or just want to encourage me to keep going (Maxwell's Silver Hammer's coming up soon and I think I need a hug) then it would be jolly good if you'd subscribe, follow me, tweet me, share me, leave a comment, send me chocolates, or adopt a Walrus in my name - anything...

Zombie Angels & The Heavy Metal Beatles

Wandering round Liverpool there's certainly lots of hard evidence that the Beatles are Mereyside's favourite sons.

Not many gift shops could boast such a cool sign.

This was a less successful effort which my Son Chico dubbed the Zombie Angel, but is supposed to represent Mother Liverpool & Her Four Sons. Four? Where's John?

There he is. Don't you always think of Lennon as a chubby cherub? Me neither.

Just down the road is a statue depicting Eleanor Rigby.

And that's not the only musical park bench around Mathew Street.

John Lennon is immortalised, both outside the Cavern Pub...

...and inside it too. Or is that a chinese warrior king? I'm not sure.

But a gift shop in Albert Docks seeks to redress the balance a little. Paul McCartney - he's an all white kinda guy.

And all four make an appearance at the local shopping centre...

...and on the outside of the Hard Days Night Hotel.

Don't jump George! The beard isn't that bad!

12:6 She Came In Through The Bathroom Window (pt.1)

Now we get to our first song that forms part of The Long One. The music is cool in a variety of ways but the lyrics are some of the worse that the Beatles ever released. In fact they’re so bad that I feel it’s time to inaugurate the Lyrical Hall Of Shame.

The lyrics stink in a myriad of ways but the overarching crime is that they’re portentous nonsense. Now I’m not against nonsense per se. When we get to Strawberry Fields  and I Am The Walrus  *SPOILER ALERT* expect me to gibber like a bewigged fanboy. But this is a different story…

Let Macca Tell You A Story...

She came in through the bathroom window.
Good start. Attention grabbing. I wonder who is this girl and why she is coming in though the bathroom window? Heck I wonder whose bathroom it is? I’m sure we’ll find out soon!
Protected by her silver spoon.
Is it some kind of magic amulet? Or a ninja weapon like a throwing star? What does she need protection from? Unpleasant bathroom smells?
Now she sucks her thumb and wonders.
About what exactly?
By the banks of her own lagoon. 
Which is presumably in the bathroom. Or is she no longer in the bathroom? If so, what was the bathroom incident all about?

Didn’t anybody tell her? 
What? Sucking your thumb is a bad habit? Or that there was nothing of interest in the bathroom and it really wasn’t worth the effort of climbing through the window.
Didn’t anybody see?
Her magical ninja spoon? Her unorthodox entry? (Perhaps she is a thief?!!!)
Sunday’s on the phone to Monday. Tuesday’s on the phone to me. 
Let’s take a break for a self-referential nod towards Lady Madonna. The fans will dig that.


She said she’s always been a dancer. 
A spoon-wielding, thumb sucking dancer. Or maybe even dancing thief!
She worked at fifteen clubs a day. 
That has to be against all union regulations. You would think a woman who owns her own lagoon wouldn’t need to work so hard.
And though she thought I knew the answer. 
The answer to that question that you haven’t actually mentioned so far? We’re beginning to have a few questions of our own Paul.
Well I knew what I could not say. 
You do surprise me. You’re normally so articulate.

And so I quit the police department. 
There’s another little detail you forgot to mention. You’re a police officer. Or you used to be. Is it too much to ask why you quit?
And got myself a steady job. 
Most people would say being a police officer is a steady job Paul. Pension, health care, no chance of work drying up.
And though she tried her best to help me. 
Presumably by performing another cross-city dance-a-thon? Why doesn’t she sell that lagoon?
She could steal but she could not rob. 
Genius.
Really.

Does anyone know another word for synonym?

To sum up

This is a bad song (lyrically) because -

• It introduces numerous details out of the blue, only to drop them and never mention them again.
• Has pointless imagery and personification that don’t mean anything or represent anything.
• It is cast as a narrative but has no narrative flow or structure.
• It takes a word and tries to make it mean something that it doesn’t.

2/10 McCartney. See me after class.

(Never fear, the rest of you, it all gets better from here!).

Why Paul McCartney thinks Beatles Songwriting Academy is a bad idea

I don’t have any desire to learn [music theory]. I feel it’s like voodoo, that it would spoil things if I actually learnt how things are done.

(Anthology p.175)

Ah, but what do you know Macca? We're going to continuing unravelling the voodoo that you do so well with song no 38 - She Came In Through The Bathroom Window starting right here this week.

And my question for you gentle reader is;

What do you want first, the good news or the bad news?

Book Review: Revolution In The Head

I can’t recommend Revolution In The Head highly enough. For quite a while I was put off by the subtitle. ‘The Beatles Records and the Sixties’ sounds like a ponderous sociological essay on the culture the music was created in.

But the book is actually a brilliant song by song analysis of the music. Every track is presented chronologically looking at when, where and by whom, it was created followed by a page or more of insightful and benignly opinionated analysis.

The third, and final, edition* (Macdonald died in 2003) covers not only the original EMI releases but the ‘Threetles’ songs and a number of tracks from Anthology and Live at the BBC as well.

This is an outstanding book. That Macdonald manages to seamlessly weave in the story of the Beatles as he goes along is a testament to his skill as a writer. The revealing information he gathers is a witness to his diligence as a researcher. And the fact that he has such real insight into the music itself is a mark of his erudition as a music critic who has really, really listened to the music he’s writing about.

It would be a shame for all this skill to be misused in the cause of academic butt-kissery, but happily this is not the case. MacDonald is refreshingly, sometimes hilariously, his own man, cheerfully slaying a few sacred cows in the Beatles oeuvre while at other times lavishing the highest praise on a relatively overlooked early album track. But it’s a mark of his deep knowledge of the music that no matter how many times you may disagree with his conclusions, you never lose respect for them, or him.

As well as 338 pages on the music, there is a 42 page introduction putting the music into the cultural context. Macdonald again proves his worth by making such a potentially dull subject absolutely fascinating. (That said, if you’re a songwriter like me you’ll want to get straight into the songs and leave the intro for desert).

What else?

• A 78 page chronological time line - setting the Beatles music alongside, other music, films, political events etc. (annoyingly laid out sideways in the paperback edition).
• Glossary of musical terms
• Compact Discography
• Index of Songs and Keys (very helpful)
• General index, further reading and a bibliography.

If I had to pick one book as required reading at Beatles Songwriting Academy it would be this one (assuming of course you can already play the songs!)

Author and music buff Nick Hornby is quoted as saying

“After finishing it, I went out and bought a pile of Beatles CDs and listened to them properly for the first time in my life” 

This book may have the same effect on you.

Get this book (UK)
Get this book (US)

*The same edition is confusingly labelled as the Third revised edition & the Second revised edition. Get the one published in 2005 (or later).


See other recommended books.

The Beatles Story in 12 Chapters

A word of explanation might be overdue as we mosey on down this long and winding road. Generally we’ve divided the Beatles output into chapters (there’ll be a page of links to all the CDs at some point) but as we’re going reverse chronologically now it’s going to get really weird.

We did the very last Beatles song I Me Mine which is part of Let It Be (aka chapter 11).

Huh?

Then we jumped straight into Chapter 12 (Abbey Road). After that we should head back to chapter 11 to mop up the rest of Let It Be (though missing out Across The Universe for the time being). That's if I haven't changed my mind again and decided to do them alphabetically, numerically or sociologically.

Confused?

Like me you probably thought studying Beatles songs chronologically would be easy, right? You just grab all the albums in the order they were released and off you go.

Yes?

No.

Problems, problems 

1) Up until Revolver The Beatles released totally different albums with different track lists (and sometimes different mixes) in the UK and US.

2) Most Beatles singles, and some EP tracks didn’t appear on the albums that were released around the same time.

3) Let It Be was released after Abbey Road, even though almost all of it was recorded before.

4) Magical Mystery Tour was originally released as a 6 track EP but was bulked up with misc tracks for US release.

5) The Yellow Submarine Soundtrack comprised one side of Beatles recordings and one side incidental music by George Martin. In recent years the Soundtrack album has been replaced by the Songtrack album which is bulked up in a similar way to MMT.

We can work it out

Here’s how I make sense of it all.

1) The UK albums are the ‘proper’ ones. Once the Beatles took off in the States there was a kind of gold rush between different companies who had licensed singles and Capitol had a the bright idea that by releasing shorter albums, they could release more albums and generate more money. None of this was done with Beatles approval and when they did get involved they made the US releases match the UK ones.

2) I Me Mine (Let It Be) may have been the last song the Beatles ever recorded but it was already ‘in the can’ before Abbey Road albeit in a film can rather than a decent studio recording. So Abbey Road really is the last Beatles album.

3) I’m including all the singles and B sides along with the albums they’re closest to chronologically. Each ‘chapter’ ends with the albums release date, but most singles fit easily into the time frame anyway.

4) 5) Magical Mystery Tour (the US album) has 5 extra tracks but 3 of them are from the same period so the US album could be considered 'close to correct' (which is why the UK CD edition is now the same as the US). Yellow Submarine, on the other hand, comprises tracks from their previous 4 albums. Only 4 songs were previously unreleased (and 1 of those was a Sgt Pepper reject). This was probably their most fragmented period but these two albums minus some tracks combined with a few singles make up one more unified chapter.

So my 12 chronological chapters are…


1 - Please Please Me
2 - With The Beatles
3 - A Long Tall Hard Day’s Night
4 - Beatles For Sale
5 - Help!
6 - Rubber Soul
7 - Revolver
8 - Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
9 - Magical Mystery Submarine
10 - The Beatles White Album
11 - Let It Be
12 - Abbey Road


Please Please Me and With The Beatles are both done, so on we go with Abbey Road.

Learning In Liverpool

This summer my family and I visited Liverpool, home of Steven Gerrard & Jamie Carragher, the Lambanana & of course The Beatles.

It’s an amazing city, with a civic sense of humour and one that really knows how to capitalise on it’s heritage. If you didn’t know where the Beatles came from you’d soon realise just from walking around.

HMV record store

Why did the penguin cross the road? - How should I know!

From time to time I’ll try to post a few pics and recommend things to do in Liverpool.

You won’t be surprised to know I learned a lot about the fab four while I was there. But I also got an insight into the power of songwriting from a very unusual source. You can read my guest post, what I learned about songwriting from a crazy guy in Liverpool over at Nicholas Tozier’s very wonderful blog.

Blessed Are The Prolific (pt. 2) - Write For Multiple Outlets

(Read part one here)

A second secret to the Lennon & McCartney’s prolific output was that The Beatles had lots of different avenues for their songs on something of a sliding scale of quality, starting with the songs they wrote for themselves.

Singles

Every three months, or so, they would try to write the next single. Their practice, unlike today, was not to write an album’s worth of material and then pick the best tracks for a second life as a single - the two were completely separate. It’s interesting to see the number of times a song in progress would be earmarked as a single before it was even finished. That seems remarkable in this day and age.

Albums

Second they wrote album tracks. Every 6 months they had to come up with a new album. Not that album songs were second rate material. Many tracks went on to be hits singles in the US or elsewhere, or when covered by other artists.

Ringo Songs

Third they wrote songs for Ringo (and George in the early days) to sing. These sometimes were the average songs (McCartney calls them work songs, more graft and craft than inspiration) but often they were specifically written (What Goes On, With A Little Help From My Friends). Ringo’s songs had to have a limited range and be possible to drum and sing at the same time.

Cover Songs

Fourth they wrote songs for other artists. Lots of em. Some were failed Beatles songs (Like Dreamers Do, That Means A Lot) many specially written (I Wanna Be Your Man & Come And Get It, for The Rolling Stones & Badfinger respectively). Some were good songs that didn’t fit the Beatles style.

Incredible as it now may seem Paul tried to give away Yesterday to Marianne Faithfull judging it a stylistic bridge too far for a ‘beat group’.

I Think We're Gonna Need A Bigger Box...

Which leads me to another unintended benefit of writing so broadly. The Beatles had the freedom to write anything they wanted knowing that if they came up with anything beyond the pale they could always give it to another recording artist (Catcall – Chris Barber). But when you spend time writing outside the box what you find is that your own box gets bigger.

If you could write for anyone who is totally out of your genre who would it be? Try writing the next single for Beyonce, Susan Boyle or Bonnie Raitt just for fun. You might find that it’s your biggest hit. 


Blessed are they who let the Beatles teach them how to write songs - read more Be-atletudes here

 

Blessed Are The Prolific (pt. 1)

In a way this goes right to the heart of why Lennon & McCartney were such great songwriters. All other Be-atletudes lead to this. Being a singletasker, having a co-writer and limiting your options all allow you to be prolific and that is the one thing that will turn a good songwriter into a great one.

Here’s a favourite illustration

A ceramics teacher divided his class into two groups. One group would be graded solely on quantity of work – fifty pounds of pottery would be an “A”, forty would be a “B”, and so on. The other group would be graded on quality. Students in that group had to produce only one pot – but it had better be good.

Amazingly, all the highest quality pots were turned out by the quantity group. It seems that while the quantity group kept churning out pots, they were continually learning from their disasters and growing as artists. The quality group sat around theorising about perfection and worrying about it – but they never actually got any better.

Apparently – at least when it comes to pottery- trying and failing, learning from failure, and trying again works a lot better than waiting for perfection. No pot, no matter how misshapen, is really a failure. Each is just another step on the road to an “A”. It is a road littered with imperfect pots. But there is no other road.

John Ortberg: If You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat (p.148) The story he quotes is from 
David Bayles & Ted Orland: Art & Fear (p.29)
 

 

 200 Songs

Why were Lennon & McCartney so good?

Between 1962 and 1970 Lennon & McCartney wrote close to 200 songs. Almost all were recorded and released. The majority were top 10 hits as singles or album tracks. Whereas most writers today would throw away a song that wasn’t good enough for their next album or didn’t fit stylistically, the boys always had a reason to finish that song. And because of their insane recording schedule they always had to come up with more songs.

Here, There & Everywhere

The norm for today’s artists seems to be that they are either writing OR recording OR touring. Letting the studio or the road disrupt the habit of writing is a problem somewhat unique to SONGwriters.

For example, on the rare occasions that a novelist does go on a promo tour he doesn’t spend 200 nights a year for 2 years reading people his most recent book.

What could be more damaging to fresh creativity than regurgitating your previous efforts night after night without attempting anything new? Yet this is everyday life for many successful recording artists.

Road Songs

 

For a band with a schedule as insane as the Beatles had from 62-66 writing on tour was a necessary evil. From Me To You was written on a tour bus, All My Loving backstage, She Loves You in a hotel room. Can’t Buy Me Love was not only written on tour but recorded in a studio in Paris while they played a residency there!

It's All Too Much

Of course the band stopped touring in ’66 but The Beatles didn’t regard recording as a legitimate reason to take a break from songwriting either (which makes sense as they were always recording). And I’m not referring to the way many successful bands enter the studio with unfinished songs (though they were guilty of that too). I mean continuing to write new songs even as they were laying down songs they’d just finished.

Assistant producer Chris Thomas remembers Harrison playing Something to him on the harpsichord while they were recording Piggies for the White Album. McCartney gave Lennon a preview of MMT’s The Fool On The Hill while writing With A Little Help From My Friends for Sgt Pepper.

When the time came for shooting a video for the Lady Madonna single, instead of miming to the song the band decided to record a completely new song, Hey Bulldog, and let the crew film them doing that instead.

You would think that recording 32 songs for the White Album would have exhausted the supply but by the time it was mixed they already had Polythene Pam, The Long And Winding Road, Let It Be, Something & Maxwell’s Silver Hammer lined up ready to go.

Slow Down

 

With such a workload did they ever just relax and take a holiday?

McCartney wrote most of the lyrics to Yesterday while on holiday in Portugal with Jane Asher (having written the bridge while filming Help!). When the Beatles went off to find the meaning of life in India, Lennon, Harrison & McCartney wrote 23 songs in couple of month.

So I guess the answer is no.

Read Blessed Are The Prolific part two

12:5 Instant Lennon - Because (pt.5)

I’m finding lyrical parallels (T24) all over the Beatles catalogue but Because is the mother load. The whole song is based on just two such parallels.

Each and every verse is constructed like so...

Because the ____ is ____ it ____ (produces a particular feeling)

The Bridge

Love is ____ Love is ____ Love is ____ Love is ____

My turn

What about -

Because the milk is sour it makes me ill?
Because the bus is full it makes me late?
Love is fat, love is thin. Love is her, love is him?

It’s the Lennon random lyric generator!

Take it for a spin and share your efforts in the comments section!

Read more posts about Because here 

Another post? It Won't Be Long/All My Loving