Look Ma, No Head!

Another great video I found on The Beatles Video Blog. It's the incredible Tommy Emmanuel playing a hot-rodded medley of When I'm 64, A Taste of Honey , Day Tripper & Lady Madonna.

Not bad for a guy with no head. (I think this footage was shot by my mother).

You might also like While My Ukelele Gently Weeps 

11:1 I Me Mine (pt.1)

The last song the Beatles ever recorded or rather, McCartney, Harrison & Starr recorded, hence Harrison’s humorous intro (which you can hear on Anthology 3) -

"You all will have read that Dave Dee is no longer with us. But Micky and Tich and I would like to carry on the good work that`s always gone down in number two"

The 11th hour session was needed because footage of the song being rehearsed had been included in the film’s final cut, even though they'd never actually recorded it.

Is it any good?

It’s very imaginative, well written and has decent lyrics.

The time changes from 6/8 to double time 12/8 (or 12/16 if you want to be pedantic) and back again are brilliantly executed.

The chorus is really a 12 bar blues but after 10 bars where it would go back to the I chord (A) it goes straight into the beginning of the verse (Am). This is a very extreme form of the Lennon Edit (Ticket 36) (i.e. just chopping out any extra beats or bars that you don’t really need).

There’s some great chord progressions with internal melodies going on.

That change again!

At the end of the verse is the descending root chord change (Ticket 17) that Harrison used on Something and which he probably learned from A Taste Of Honey.


I, Me, Mine (All through the day, I, Me, Mine)

Am Am (maj7) Am7 Am6 Fmaj7 (the internal melody goes A, G#, G, F#, F)

Something (I don’t want to lose her now…)

Am Am (maj7) Am7 D9 (the internal melody goes A, G#, G, F#)


During this same bit McCartney’s bass line is going up from an A to a high F creating a really nice contrary motion effect (Ticket 12).

Spicy Chords

The combination of odd bass notes and/or melody notes gives us some really spicy chords.

Am/C (or C6) – second chord in the song
Dm/F (or F6) – everyone’s weaving it
E7b9 (or Fdim7/E) – comin’ on strong all the time

And we also have a few chords that don’t belong in Am – D, D7, E7 and of course the A7 progression hinted at in the 12 bar section.

That’s enough for now.

More on melody and lyrics next time, what I don’t like about this song and a bit of interesting trivia.

I’ll leave you with a question.

Phil Spector’s mixes on Let It Be generally involved plastering millions of orchestral overdubs on the songs, but he did something more radical to this song.

What was it? 

   

1:7 A Taste Of Honey

First, a word of explanation. If this is a supposed to be a blog about the Beatles as songwriters, why am I including cover versions? Our first cover version is a good example of why. Though A Taste Of Honey is the worst cover on Please Please Me, oddly enough it’s very significant in the development of Beatles songwriting. This cover of a Lenny Welch disc, originally a film title song, is an embarrassingly earnest folk-dirge. But it has three things that the Beatles later ‘borrowed’ for their songs.

It’s the first ‘officially released’ Beatles song with a time signature change (from 3/4 to 4/4).

It ends on the F# major chord (the ‘picardy’ third) even though the song is in F# minor (Dorian mode actually). This switch from minor to major crops up again in several Lennon/McCartney songs including I’ll Be Back.

Lastly the verse’s opening chord sequence which is spelled (taking the dorian tonality into account)

iim(F#m), iimM7(F#mM7), iim7(F#m7), V(B).

is exactly the same chord sequence found in Harrison’s ‘Something’ in the section starting

“I don’t want to lose her now.”

The reason this is such a memorable hook is that the chords contain a descending chromatic line

F# (in the F#m)

F natural (in F#mM7)

E (in F#m7)

and

D# (in B major).

F# to F to E to D#. No wonder it sounds so sssshhhmoove…..

McCartney also used a similar chromatic motion in Michelle though the chord progression is slightly different.

Tickets To Write

T15 Use a time signature change between sections (e.g. verse in ¾, chorus in 4/4).

T16 In a minor key song try finishing on the major chord as a surprise ending.

T17 Spice up your chords by putting in a chromatic counter melody within them. You could even try nicking this exact chord sequence. George Harrison got away with it!