2:6 With The Beatles - It Won't Be Long/All My Loving

Next up on our whistle stop journey through the Lennon & McCartney back catalogue two classic songs. It Won’t Be Long & All My Loving.

Things in common.

Neither has an intro of any description! The first sound you hear are the vocals (Chorus on IWBL, verse on AML). That really grabs you by the throat.

They both have a chromatic descending thing happening in the bridge chords. They used this a lot on songs like Michelle, Got To Get You In My Life. (Ticket 32)

Neither song starts on the root chord (Ticket 6). IWBL on the m6 (iv), AML on the m2 (ii). Unusual (except for the Beatles). Try it.

Both songs end simply on the first beat of the bar (IWBL on a ringing Emaj7). Ticket 18 is another way not to outstay your welcome.

It Won’t Be Long

Has the cool echoing in the verse that we first heard in Please Please Me. It propels the song along and emphasises your key words (although in this case it’s only yeah!)

The twangy descending guitar hook in the verse is interesting in that it’s played twice, then once, then twice. It’s very Lennon to just drop a bar, or a beat (see the verse of All You Need Is Love). He’s in too much of a hurry to get back to singing the verse.

The verse is made up solely of the bVI & I (C & E). This same 'out of key' chord change occurs in their cover of Carl Perkins’ Honey Don’t.

All My Loving

Lennon’s rhythm playing really adds to the groove. He contributes a fantastic 12/8 strumming pattern over the verses and a contrasting off part on the choruses.

McCartney’s vocal line is characteristically wide ranging. He really was (is?) a master melodisist (spellcheck is telling me I made that word up). Spending time playing his melodies certainly won’t do you any harm as a songwriter.

I’ll revisit some of these points in the future, but for now just listen to ‘em and play ‘em. They’ll do your songwriting good!

Related Post: With The Beatles (pt1)

 

2.2 She Loves You pt 2

We covered the chorus of this song in a previous post.

Break New Ground With Every Song

Very early in their careers the Beatles are consciously avoiding repeating themselves. The Verse/Chorus format is a new one for them and, after a run of ‘first person songs’ addressed to their fans they write one about the ‘third person’. So it’s important to keep looking at your recent songs and trying something different. You don’t arrive at Sgt Pepper levels of innovation unless you make it a habit to constantly break new ground in small ways.

Here’s another small example. Trying to play the chorus’s “yeah, yeah, yeah” vocal hook on guitar pushes Harrison into new chord shapes.

They’re played (from D to top E) 5003, 4002, 2000.

The last one is a straight Em, but have you ever played a pattern like that in any other song? Me neither.

Original. But Not Too Original

The chord structure in the verse & pre chorus is simple but effective. They almost go for the traditional doo-wop chord sequence of

G Em C D (I vi IV V)

But they change it just enough to keep it interesting

In the verse it's

G Em Bm D (I vi iii V)

And the pre chorus is

G Em Cm D (I vi iv V)

This is a pretty simple ‘trick’ – anyone can throw in a different chord or two but the Beatles are great at doing as much as possible with very simple patterns. I’m sure it’s part of their memorability – giving you something you’ve heard a hundred times before with a one little twist.

But using the same pattern twice and only changing one chord? Isn’t that too boring? Here’s another trick. Each chord in the verse lasts for one bar. Each chord in the pre chorus lasts for two.

Same yet different. Haven’t I heard that before? No, not quite.

More from this classic song next time.

1:12 From Me To You

From Me To You was the band’s third single. It’s a classic song, notable for at least three things.

Fast Workers

They could work incredibly fast.

Written on 28th Feb, recorded 5 Mar, mixed 14 Mar, released 11 April.

That’s 5 days from writing to recording.

Written, edited & mixed in 2 weeks

and only 42 days from creation to being in the charts.

Un-Believable.

The bridge.

It has a wonderfully smooth transition to and from the verse and really feels a part of the song (something they didn’t always pull off at this stage in their career). They use some key changes and progressions that are pretty stock in jazz but sound fresh transplanted into ‘beat’ music.

Using a C7 to transpose out of the key of C we go to

Key of F major - playing Gm7 (ii7), C7 (V7), F (I) then shift to

Key of G major – playing D7 (V7), G (I) then use G+ to as an unorthodox way to get back to the

Key of C major for the verse.

Lyrics

The song is also notable for being the first set of lyrics they managed to write that were any good. Though, to use a painting illustration, I mean good, not in a Mona Lisa sense but good as in “the boys made a really good job of painting the spare room.” Simple lyrics, consistent and reasonably cliché free (at least for the Beatles), a nice example of that early Beatles directness. They are singing the song to ‘YOU’.

Both verses end “with love from me to you” and start with “if there’s anything that you want/I’ve got everything that you want”. There’s also some lyrical development in the bridge “I’ve got arms…/I’ve got lips…”

The biggest aid to memorability though is the fact you hear almost the entire lyrics twice in only 1:58.

Lennon’s Blues

Rather than telling us he’s blue as he does in so many songs Lennon shows us by using the b3 of C major (Eb) in the melody. The note appears on

call on me (sounding as a b7 against the F chord) and

send it along (b5 against the Am chord)

Intro/Outro

Once again the Intro is an adaption of another part of the song (this time the first line of the verse melody) and is brief (only 2 bars long).

The end is a vocal & harmonica call and response built from the last two notes of the verse followed by a quick recap of the harmonica intro creating a really nice bookend effect.

The chord progression too is interesting C (I), Am (vi), Ab+ (bvi+), C (I) then ending not on the C but the Am (William Mann’s famous ‘Aeolian cadence’).

Some interesting non-diatonic chords here and there – a couple of augmented chords and the F7 (iv7) that’s implied by Lennon’s bluesy melody.

Lastly, though it’s an accident, I like the weird phasing on the drum fill (at 0:06 on the mono mix) - a result of editing two different takes together apparently.

Tickets To Write

T21 try working faster!

T22 Lennon’s blues melody formula. Add the b3, b5 or b7 into major key melodies. Be bold dahling!

T23  write less lyrics. Repeat the first verse rather than writing a 3rd or 4th.

T24  use repetition even when you're not repeating –

If there’s anything/I’ve got everything

I’ve got arms/I’ve got Lips

Ticket 25 Try transplanting stock chord progression/musical patterns from other genres (eg The Police's use of 60's R&B progressions in Every Breath You Take)

T4 & T9 Create new sections and melodies out of old

T10 End on the vi

and the ever present Brevity (T2)

and single ringing last chord (T18).

Please Please Me (Song)

The 3rd song recorded for Parlophone is the first that shows signs of true genius. The playing (especially Bass & Drums) is brilliantly tight. The song is a model of both economy and ‘hooky’ writing.

Intro. The first hook is the opening lead guitar/harmonica melody. This is essentially a slightly adapted version of the first half of the verse melody. What that means is that when you hear the verse for the first time you feel you’ve already heard it before. Genius!

Note also the economy of doing this with just the first half of the tune. Why take up 14 whole seconds when 7 will do?

Next the verse restates the melody and you might say develops it (4 bars now instead of 2 bar). But McCartney adds a static harmony (remaining on the high E) as Lennon descends the scale from E to G#. This use of oblique motion gives a memorable ‘chiming’ effect to the tune. Bars 4 and 8 of the verse have no vocals, but what could be a dead bar at the end of each phrase is filled with two very distinctive guitar fills. First off-beat chords G(bIII) A(IV) B(V) – doubled by Harrison for extra effect, and then a single note root, octave, fifth fill, this time emphasised by the drums dropping out.

The Pre Chorus again feels incredible hooky due to the call and response vocals “Come On”, the ascending B.V. harmony and the accented ‘pushes’ causes a build in tension which brilliantly reflects the lyrical theme of romantic (sexual) frustration and releases into the ‘chorus’ (if you can call something a little over two bars long a chorus). To my ears the third chord vi (C#m) is unexpected too.

More economy in the turnaround (a recap of the intro). Heading back into the verse they play it once. Going to bridge we only get half. This means that every single time you hear that intro hook it’s different. The outro is the same length as the intro but has vocals over the top.

The bridge is a perfect contrast to the verse. The busy eighth notes of the melody against the verse’s strident quarter notes, the repetitive semitone movement against the almost whole octave descent and the solo voice as opposed to the pealing harmony. The end of the bridge however bears more than a passing resemblance to both the beginning of the verse and the end of the chorus adding yet another layer of familiarity.

Finally the outro is a mash up of the intro and the end of the chorus, and just as you begin to expect a fade out there is a blistering set of non diatonic chords I(E) bIII(G) bVI(C) V(B) I(E), a hint of the first verse fill, and it’s all over in 2:03. The first sound after the final chord died away was producer George Martin saying, “You’ve just made your first number one.” He was right. It truly is a thing of beauty.

Tickets To Write

What can we take away from it? Well, just listening to a classic like this over and over again can’t do a songwriter any harm.

But main things are

T2 Brevity – try cutting away all the excess. Do you need to play that riff four times? How about twice? Or once? Or half?

T3 make everything a hook. Even a one bar guitar fill.

T4 Try to create intros/outros/solos from existing parts of the song. This will greatly increase the stickiness of your song. The Beatles were masters of this (See Help for example). Nirvana did it too - on the solo of Smells Like Teen Spirit.

T5 Have a bridge that contrasts with the other musical sections fast/slow, wide/narrow range etc.

Any shortcomings? Yes -the lyrics are clumsy and trite. Lennon is feeling blue yet again (there’s always rain in his life). But unoriginal as they are the music matches the mood so perfectly that it covers a multitude of lyrical sins.

Anthology 1 contains an early alternative version of Please Please Me