Under The Influence: Kurt Cobain

I like the Beatles, but I hate Paul McCartney.
Rolling Stone

I loved Paul McCartney … He meant more to me than my own parents.
Sandford: McCartney*

The Beatles were a early and formative influence on Cobain. A video survives of him singing Hey Jude at the age of two and he remembers walking around the neighbourhood singing Beatles songs while playing a toy bass drum. He wrote he was "forever grateful" to his Aunt Mari for giving him three Beatles albums and heartbroken when he learned in 1976 that the band had split up years before.

In high-school Kurt wrote a 2000 word essay on Give My Regards To Broad Street after he spent much of the winter of 1984-5 listening to the soundtrack*.

About a Girl was written after Kurt spent three hours listening to Meet The Beatles on repeat to get in the mood and the In Bloom video is a parody of the Beatles appearance on the Ed Sullivan show.

In my Life was played at his funeral.


Here are a few quotes.

I don’t value music much. I like the Beatles, but I hate Paul McCartney. I like Led Zeppelin, but I hate Robert Plant. I like the Who, but I hate Roger Daltrey.

John Lennon was definitely my favourite Beatle, hands down. I don’t know who wrote what parts of what Beatles songs, but Paul McCartney embarrasses me. Lennon was obviously disturbed [laughs]. So I could relate to that. And from the books I’ve read - and I’m so sceptical of anything I read, especially in rock books - I just felt really sorry for him. To be locked up in that apartment. Although he was totally in love with Yoko and his child, his life was a prison.

John Lennon has been my idol all my life but he’s dead wrong about revolution… find a representative of gluttony or oppression and blow the motherf***er's head off.
Flavorwire

Even in Nirvana — the Beatles [were] such a huge influence. Kurt loved The Beatles because it was just so simple. Well, it seemed simple… they sound easy to play, but you know what? They’re f**cking hard!
Dave Grohl: Access Online

Everyone talks about Kurt's love affair with ... the whole punk scene, but he was also a huge Beatles fan, and the more time we spent together the more obvious their influence on his songwriting became.
Butch Vig: NME

Here is Cobain covering McCartney twice (without embarrassment!) And I Love Her (extra links here and here) ...

And Hey Jude (aged 2).

Sources

*I loved Paul McCartney … He meant more to me than my own parents.
Christopher Sandford: McCartney (p.297) - I can find no sources for Sandford's quotes, which seem to be at odds with other quotes. If you can confirm or deny let me know!
Rolling Stone 
Flavorwire 
Access Online 
NME interview 2004
Charles R. Cross: Heavier Than Heaven

LINKS

Dave Grohl on the Beatles

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Under The Influence: Lemmy (Motorhead)

The Beatles just had great melodies – In My Life, If I Fell, And I Love Her and Eleanor Rigby were all excellent.

Lemmy: NME: The 50 Greatest Ever Beatles Songs

[I Saw Her Standing There] was the first track on their first album. Paul counted them in with 1,2,3,4, - a great introduction to the greatest rock band of all time. Nobody even comes into the same planetary system in terms of songwriting and presentation, They never repeated themselves, they kept going from strength to strength. 

Liverpool was only 60 miles from where I grew up in Wales, and lots of girls would come down from there for holidays … this one girl wrote ‘Beatles’ all over my wall, and I asked who they were. She said they were this incredible new band in Liverpool. So I hitch-hiked up there - this was late 1961- and saw them play a number of times at the Cavern. And I can tell you the intensity and excitement everybody felt a couple of years later was already happening … a magic time. 

 Lemmy: Lava Magazine 

12:40 The End Of Something (Something pt.7)

Pop quiz – what the first instrument* you hear on Something? OK. Carry on ...

We're on the home straight with this motherlode of Beatles songwriting – two more posts to go. We'll also take a closer look at a chord progression which crop up in at least four other Beatles songs, but for now lets clear up all the other cool little songwriting odds and ends.

The End

We've already come across a ticket called the picardy third. That's where you have a song in the minor key but you finish on the major instead. This was widely used in Baroque music. But here we keep resolving to A major instead of the expected C major. That's major 6 (VI). It's worth filing away for future reference, because though Something doesn't end on the VI, And I Love Her does, and so does Lately by Stevie Wonder (Ticket 46).

Speaking of the ending – there's another cool idea here - using a false ending (Ticket 47). At the end of the 3rd verse it looks like Harrison is coming in to land, but tricks us by going to A instead of C (2:46), before he immediately loops around and comes in to land.

We have a minor example of an intro made out of another part of the song (see Ticket 4), in this case the end of the verse. I call this the school hymn intro as this is generally cranked out by elderly pianists during dreary school assemblies. The outro is cut from the same cloth.

Micro Recycling

As we said in the last post the fact that Harrison used (at least initially) the same two chords at the beginning of the verse and the bridge constitutes a micro recycling of themes (Ticket 9)

The wide vibrato used at 2:03 – 2:06 of the song mimics the crazy vibrato on George's voice on the line She woos me, aka She woo-ooo-ooo-ooos me (0:22). (BTW that solo was cut live with the string section. No pressure. Well done George).

Ringo's opening sextuplet tom fill* (did you get the right answer?) alludes to the hi hat part in the bridge (starting 1:17). These are the only places sextuplets are used. They really shouldn't fit. And yet they do.

Busy but beautiful

Does McCartney overplay on the track? Probably. But the fills in verse 3 (2:18, 2:37) are beautiful. And his BVs, though plain old ordinary 3rds, contribute to the wonderful lush sound.

Remember the 3 over 4 hemiola from Here Comes The Sun, The End etc? (Ticket 29) here it is again – in the bridge's descending bass line at 1:24 and 1:38.

Lastly, why are we so strongly drawn to the final verse C chord that we never really get? Not only do we have the descending line that leads down to a C but the last three notes of the lead guitar are an ascending line A A# B, It's a beautiful example of contrary motion (Ticket 12) - all roads lead to C major.

Next time I'm hoping to dust off the video camera...