10:10 I'm So Tired (pt.2)

The Melismatic Madrigalistic Mystery Tour

Last time, I characterised I'm So Tired as a throwback to an earlier standard of writing for Lennon. One very clear blast from the past is the return of melisma, the technique of stretching one syllable over many notes. Melisma is all over early Beatles albums like a rash

Misery: “treating me ba----d”
All I've Got To Do: “Whenever I------”
Hold Me Tight: "It's you, you you----"
I Wanna Be Your Man: "Ma-an!"
and Not A Second Time - all over the place!

But it all but vanished from later work, the only real example that come to mind is Because “it turns me on------”.

Here though it really emphasises the drowsy subject matter, stretching out “I'm so-o-o-o tired” like one long yawn. The effect is even more pronounced when he slides down from a B to a G# on the second verse “I'm sooooo tired”

Madrigalism

In fact the whole song is great example of madrigalism (Ticket 49), the stretched out lazy rhythm of the vocals and the drop from the root chord to the (out of key) VII chord

I'm so (A) tired (G#7)

makes it sound as though he's sliding down the wall as he slips into unconsciousness.

Melody

There's a lot of originality in the melody too. Lennon stays off the root note, hardly ever coming to rest (geddit?) The melody starts very unusually on the 2nd degree of the scale (ticket 50), the 2nd verse slide (see above) misses the root note out altogether and John uses other non-chord tones (ticket 13) as well, mainly singing lots of B's over D chords (6th).

In fact the whole song avoids camping out on the root. At the end of the verse the melody lands on the root, but over a Dm chord (the legendary iv or minor 4 chord) and at the end of the chorus we get the root chord A major but Lennon stubbornly keeps singing an E (the 5th). Apart from a solitary incident of b3rd blue notes, (ticket 22) on “no no no” the melody is completely diatonic giving a great example of ticket 14 – write in key melody over out of key chords. (We'll look at those chords next week).

Lyrically, we have some parallel lyrics (ticket 24)

I wonder should I - get up/call you
my mind is – on the blink/set on you

and straight repetition (I'm so tired on line 1 and 2) which adds to the stickiness, but the jewel in the crown is the humorous rhyming of cigarette/stupid get*, which should be enough to earn Lennon the title of 'Scouse Cole Porter'. It's something that the Arctic Monkeys did well on their first two albums, most notably coupling 'Ford Mondeo' with 'have to say owt' on When The Sun Goes Down.

Lennon sings “my mind is set on you” which is a weird phrase, especially when you think that 19 years later George Harrison went on to cover Rudy Clark's 1962 song Got My Mind Set On You.

Coincidence or something more sinister?!?!?!**

*If you're wondering 'get' is the Liverpool pronunciation of the English word 'git' which is roughly equivalent to the American 'S.O.B'.

**It was a coincidence, obviously. And yes, Paul is still alive.

10 Preconceptions About The Beatles (pt 2)

In my last post I listed a few preconceptions I had when I started this blog two years ago. Let's see if I was right...

1) The Arctic Monkeys are better songwriters than the Beatles

WRONG – Arctic Monkeys were another young British band with regional accents and cheeky sense of humour whose sudden rise to fame looked like something akin to Beatlemania. The big difference was that, in Alex Turner, they had a lyricist with the wit and sharp eye of a young Dylan and they burst onto the scene with a fully realised sound/style. When they survived the hypestorm almost completely unscathed and delivered an assured and mature second album without pausing for breath (along with another albums worth of quality B sides and EPs) it looked like they were unstoppable.

But 2009 changed all that. Album number 3 was largely dour, turgid and overly influenced by producer Josh Homme and I had started listening to the Beatles. Arctic Monkeys are a great band, far better lyrically than The Beatles and quicker to mature in the studio, but they need to turn in another 8 or 9 incredible albums that continue to develop and stretch to claim the crown, and sadly that doesn't seem likely to happen.

2) Judging the Beatles for trite lyrics is merely a result of unfairly comparing song lyrics to printed poetry

WRONG - Compare any song lyrics to poetry by putting them side by side on a page or even read them aloud and the lyrics are guaranteed to come of worse. BUT. Many of the Beatles lyrics are undoubtedly poor, even when compared to other pop song lyrics. The truly awful outnumber the excellent, and the average and mediocre outnumber both. There's hundreds of better lyricists out there - Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Nik Kershaw, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen – the list goes on and on and on...

3) George Harrison could have been as good a songwriter as Lennon and McCartney (and was later) but wasn't given a fair chance

WRONG - This assumption came from two things, Harrison knocking the ball out of the park on Abbey Road with Here Comes The Sun and Something and the fact that his first post Beatles album was a critically acclaimed TRIPLE album! While Harrison compared his time in the Beatles to a 7 year bout of constipation (which I guess would make All Things Must Pass a giant diarrhoeic bowel movement) the general perception is that ATMP was a mix of classics and filler (think Use Your Illusion). I don't have an opinion as the album is still on my 'to do' list, but even if it was a 24 carat disc, the next album of originals didn't arrive till 3 years later and Harrison only managed 7 more solo albums in the next 27 years.

We could indulge in 'What If' scenarios (that's what comments sections are made for!),

Lennon/McCartney/Harrison? – too many chiefs in the kitchen
Lennon/Harrison? – too similar, an overdose of dark cynicism that would make Roger Waters sound like The Wiggles
McCartney/Harrison? – might have worked. But would we have lost out on Lennon/McCartney songs? And surely Paul would have driven George crazy? (see Let It Be for further details)

but whatever may have been, George was never in John and Paul's league. Harrison's songwriting career didn't start till Dec 63 with Don't Bother Me and then nothing happened for another 18 months. Lennon and McCartney just had too big a head start. I think it's comparable to Dylan, Springsteen and Bon Jovi. Each are good writers in their own right and genre, but if Bon Jovi had been in Springsteen's band or Springsteen in Dylan's they would never have been able to compete and would never have developed. (OK, maybe that's a poor example!)

4) John Lennon gave up songwriting to be a house husband and was just coming into his prime when he was killed

WRONG - I'm not even going to get into the whole 'was Lennon really baking bread and reading bedtime stories or just having a Brian Wilson-style drug-fuelled hibernation?' debate. It's sufficient to say Lennon's solo career was hampered by the same laziness and apathy that plagued his work with the Beatles and his resurgence, while very welcome, produced yet another mix of promising songs and Yoko's experimental crap swimming in bland, middle of the road production. The posthumous leftovers Milk And Honey only promised more of the same.

What do you think? Am I right now?
I'll look at the remaining 6 assumptions next time.

Special Guests

File this under complete trivia but did you know that The Rolling Stones appear (after a fashion) on the Sgt Pepper cover, and the Beatles appeared on The Stones' Their Satanic Majesties cover? Check it out

And in other news, one of my favourite songwriters was spotted checking out The Beatles Story in Liverpool recently. Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys obviously thought you have to sport a late 50's Lennon hairstyle to get in....

Finally, is Paul McCartney the Charles Dickens of rock? You decide...