Dear Prudence: Anniversary Edition Notes

Dear Prudence was written in Rishikesh in dropped D (DADGBE) but the Esher demo is pitched almost a full tone down from that (CGCFAD). Lennon is having fun dragging out the 's' in "Dear Prudenssssssss..." every chance he gets. On this unplugged version you can clearly hear Lennon continue the drone bass note under the menacing out of key chords at the end of the bridge. A nasty discordant effect thankfully disguised by the bass on the studio version.

At 4:13 Lennon launches into a semi-audible exposition

Prudence was struck by an illness in the middle of her meditation course in Rishikesh, India. No one was to know that [laughs] sooner or later, she was to go completely berserk under the care of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. All the people around were very worried about the girl, because she was going insane.So we sang to her. Thank you.

The Giles Martin mix is gloriously clear but misses the first few notes (which now reside on the end of USSR). Given that he fixed so many of the previous mix's faults it's a shame that this edition creates a new one. But at least we've lost that crappy jet sound. Swings and roundabouts...

Johnny Lennon is singing bass BVs (again!) along with Mal Evans, Jackie Lomax and John McCartney (cousin) mucking in on BVs and handclaps. Paul is on drums – the outtake ('Vocal, Guitar and Drum') helps to show how average the drum performance is. Not only is Paul clearly NOT Ringo, Paul isn't even the best drummer in the er... Paul... The finished version of Prudence is glorious, but the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts – especially the two drum tracks combined on the final verse.

Wikipedia: “although some commentators list this sound [in the bridge] as a flugelhorn, it is in fact Harrison's lead guitar, played on his Gibson Les Paul”.

Wikipedia are talking out of their flugelhorn. You can hear it clearly on the 'almost' isolated track here (along with the drum solo).

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10:37 Dear Prudence (pt.2) Sunny Scales And Scary Chords

Like most Beatles songs, Prudence keeps wandering out of key but generally you'd expect this sunny track would be major. Arguably, it's in the mixolydian mode (Ticket 51).

D major contains D E F# G A B C # and D, so you'd expect to hear D G and A major chords.
D mixolydian contains D E F# G A B C natural, and D, so you'd expect to hear D G and C major chords.

The C and A chords both appear in the song but the A is a lot less prominent. C is all over the 4 verses, both as D/C and C major but A only turns up in the bridge (D G/D A/D G/D) and the intro/outro (D6 C6/D D C/D G/D A/D C/D) where it's outnumbered by C.

The melody avoids picking sides by not using C, C# or G (Ticket 14) creating an 'in key' melody over out of key chords (Ticket 40).

Chords

But freshening things up with D mixolydian isn't enough for Lennon, who uses the chord progressions to spices things up by adding F major and Ab major (in the brilliant spooky end to the bridge at 2:01) to the A major/D and D major/Bb.

Let's pause there.

D major. Over. Bb.

Take a moment to play that sucker. It's NAYSTY! Bb D F# A. Then add Lennon singing an E during that chord (DEAR prudence). Oh the humanity! How can such a cluster from hell (D E F# over a Bb bass) work outside of a horror film soundtrack?

The Beatles rarely kept their chord progressions in key and Lennon was great at singing non-chord tones and making them work (the chorus of Help is a personal favourite) but here you have both. How did it work and stay so sweetly melodic?

First, the chords appear as arpeggios rather than strummed 'block chords' which softens the dissonance. Second the dissonance (Bb) occurs as part of a logical moving line (D C B Bb) as opposed to being suddenly hit over the head with a cluster. Similarly, the non-chord tone in the melody (E) drops to the root (D) and then the 5th (A) going from outside to solidly inside (Dear Pru-dence).

Another unconventional thing about the verse is how the bass ditches the R b7 6 b6 progression (D C b Bb) after the first go and replaces it with A C B Bb. Who came up with that? The first note in Lennon's guitar part is the open A string followed by 'both' D strings. So maybe Paul was just following the guitar (for once). But Paul also made exactly the same substitution on Lennon's Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds which has no similar guitar line. Maybe they're both geniuses.

Finally

Structure wise we're looking at an old school AABA (Ticket 26) with an intro and a first verse repeat (Ticket 67)

i A1 A2 B A3 A1 i

there's a nice contrast between the A and B sections (Ticket 5). A has a descending chord pattern and B ascends. Speaking of contrasts the final verse ends with some contrary motion (Ticket 12) with the lead guitar heading heavenwards (the sun is up) as the chords keep moving down. And preceding that is a lovely guitar counter melody.

The verse is full of clever development. Uncharacteristically we have two different melodic ideas (dear prudence and the sun is up) over the same chord sequence. The latter part is an example of static melody over moving chords (Ticket 48).

And I'm sure that piano is sped up.

10:36 Dear Prudence (pt.1) Ringoing Going Gone

Prudence Farrow with Ringo Starr in Rishikesh. Oh the irony.

Dear Prudence is a fantastic, deceptively simple, song and was one of Lennon's favourites. Perhaps more closely identified with Rishikesh than any other track, it was inspired by Mia Farrow's sister, Prudence, going a little nuts while studying meditation with the Beatles in India. The legend has Lennon singing it outside her door, but Prudence denies hearing the song till she was 'Back In The US(SA)'.

Using the same Donovan/Gypsy Davy finger picking pattern that appears on Julia, Blackbird and Happiness Is A Warm Gun, it's another example of using a technical exercise to write a song (Ticket 59). Other 1968-approved songwriting ideas are the R b7 6 b6 line (Ticket 68) that appeared in While My Guitar (this time in the major form - D, D/C, D/B, D/Bb) and some Lady Madonna style boogie-woogie piano (Ticket 25) making a cameo appearance at 3:31.

Less praiseworthy is the way Lennon (ahem) 'paraphrases' the first line of Raining in My Heart "The sun is out; the sky is blue", changing 'out' to 'up'.

Back in the UK, the band headed for Trident Studios, possibly to take full advantage of the 8 track recorder, laying down tracks that are as inspired as they are scrappy, perfectly capturing the vibe of the song. Ringo however was not there. Having quit the band during the previous session (Back In The USSR) and gone AWOL, Paul stepped up (or rather sat down) in his place.

One of the amazing thing about the Beatles is how world-class songwriters like Lennon, McCartney and Harrison were also prepared to be sidemen on 'the other guy's' songs. And what a sideman Paul McCartney was! – backing vocal, drums, super loud bass, piano, tambourine, cowbell, handclaps and a flügelhorn (audible only to the pure of heart).

I Can't Believe It's Not Ringo™

Let's talk about that drumming. The same kind of 'lead drumming' last heard on A Day In The Life, Paul's performance is so good that many people swear it MUST be Ringo. Conspiracy theorists point to how un-McCartney-like it is compared to his solo era skin-bashing. But let me make this clear. It doesn't matter how much of an expert you think you are. Ringo was in a different country. With his family. Writing Octopus's Garden. And Prudence was completed before his return. Besides, a listen to the semi-isolated track reveals a few flubs amongst the flams. And the fact that the fills are overdubbed onto a basic beat makes McCartney sound slightly better than he really is.

Unusual Prudence

The song is a bit of an oddball for a number of reasons. This is the only example of dropped D tuning I can find in all the Beatles catalogue. It has a fade in/fade out bookended chord progression (Ticket 4) something which only shows up in Eight Days A Week. We have the aforementioned lead drumming and rogue blue notes (in the boogie-woogie piano part) like the cellos in Yesterday and Piggies. And the droning double-D strings in the guitar perhaps reflect the Indian genesis more subtly than Tomorrow Never Knows.

Perhaps most importantly from a songwriting point of view, repeated chord sequences are very un-Beatles-like, though standard procedure today (Demons and Radioactive by Imagine Dragons for examples consist of a single four chord sequence all the way through).

Next time. Stuff about chords, small melodies and which scale we're using.

10:22 Happiness Is A Warm Gun (pt.1)

The Genesis and Structure of Lennon's Precursor to the Abbey Road Medley

This is probably John Lennon's most complex Beatles song, rivalled only by A Day In The Life and Strawberry Fields Forever, which are both complex for very different reasons.

Genesis

The original demo (recorded at George Harrison's house) has five sections one of which doesn't appear on the finished version. The White Album has four sections, two of which don't appear on the demo.

White Album                 Anthology 3 (Esher Demo)

She's Not A Girl             -
I Need A Fix                  I Need A Fix
-                                   Mother Superior
-                                   Yoko Ono Oh No
-                                   I Need A Fix
Mother Superior             Mother Superior
Happiness Is A...            -

The three distinct sections that make up the demo are all different songs that were pieced together (ticket 55). Though the weakest section was dropped (Yoko Ono, Oh No), two more sections were added between demo and studio sessions and were presumably written specifically for inclusion in this song. So there are four sections, but they're constructed from three separate 'parts'. With me so far?

In working this way Lennon was prefiguring the Abbey Road medley in his own miniature way, for, though he contributed fragments to 'The Long One', the latter was McCartney and Martin's baby and Lennon had little enthusiasm for it.

The song was fully formed by the time Lennon turned up at Abbey Road on Sep 23, 1968, which means the edits and revisions were mostly John's handiwork rather than a group effort (see below). But what the band undoubtedly contributed was nailing him down to specific time signatures and numbers of bars. Listen to the demo (above) to hear how (ahem) 'fluid' Lennon's timing is. Elastic doesn't begin to cover it. There are so many odd bars it's hard to know where beats have been removed (ticket 37) or added (ticket 52).

Though “95 takes” is often bandied about it actually took a mere 70 (!) to lay down the backing track (an edit of takes 53 and 65, probably spliced at 1:34). The remaining takes were spent overdubbing backing vocals, organ, piano, snare drum, tambourine, extra bass, barely audible tuba (!) and rerecording the lead vocals (you can hear a spill from a guide vocal at 2:21).

At the start of recording the title was Happiness Is A Warm Gun In Your Hand. It's unlikely that was the demo's title as that section hadn't been written yet!

Structure

Let's look at the song section by section.

Section 1: “She's not a girl who misses much”

John trims the fat (ticket 2) by having the intro consist of a single syllable “she's...”

What follows is the finger picking pattern John learned from Donovan in Rishikesh and used on Julia and Dear Prudence. Paul used it in a more primitive fashion on Blackbird. The guitar sounds heavy, almost slowed down in a similar way to the Rain backing track. The 2 chord pattern appears initially in the key of Em then switches to Am. The riff is in 4/4 albeit with a varying numbers of bars, and a single 2/4 bar appears during the words "donated to the...”

Lyrically this is, by far, longest section, there are no repeats and nothing in the 'first person'.

This section also features the work of one of the Beatles many uncredited co-writers (more on this here). Apple's publicist Derek Taylor* brainstormed lyrics on this section with Lennon and contributing the “lizard on a window pane” and “velvet hand” lines from personal recollections. Despite the bizarre stream of consciousness lyrics almost everything mentioned in this song has it 's basis in real life, or news reports. Donating what you've eaten “to the National Trust,” for example, is a euphemism for taking a dump outside.

Section 2: “I need a fix...”

Here we switch to 3/4 time and become modal. The centre is still A but the chord sequence (A7 - C - Am) veers between major and minor. The lyrics consist of two first person lines (one repeated). Lennon later (unconvincingly) denied “I need a fix cause I'm going down” referred to drugs.

Section 3: “Mother Superior jumped the gun...”

Here the chords (implied by the riffing) are Am C Am G. The time signature is either a 9/4 bar followed by a 10/4 bar (a clear Lennon extension – ticket 52) or a sequence of 6/8, 3/4 and 3/4 followed by 6/8, 3/4 and 4/4. Lyrically we have one line sung six times with melodic variations.

Section 4: “Happiness is a warm gun”


The chords switch from Am to the relative major key – C major. The progression is a stock doo wop pattern C, Am, F, G with an Fm (the m4 - ticket 8) preceding the false ending (ticket 47). The song boasts a second false ending as the track fades back in for a final drum hit.

Lennon took the title from a gun magazine, The American Rifleman, which he saw in Abbey Road studios.

Next time we'll get some tips for how to combine your random song fragments into a complete song, then take a closer look at all the rhythmic weirdness going on it this song, before concluding with what (if anything) ties together such a patchwork quilt of a song.

*Uncredited, he may have been, but he did get a namecheck in John's Give Peace A Chance

Ev'rybody's talkin' 'bout
John and Yoko, Timmy Leary, Rosemary,
Tommy Smothers, Bobby Dylan, Tommy Cooper,
Derek Taylor, Norman Mailer, Alan Ginsberg, Hare Krishna

10:2 Julia (pt.1) Introduction

Julia is another high watermark in John Lennon's songwriting with the Beatles. It is a masterclass in matching the mood of the music with the lyrical message and terrific example of how to write compelling, beguiling song even though you're breaking all the rules.

John wears a coat in India, Donovan hogs the guitar, Mike Love prepares to explore the Amazon

Written in Rishikesh, India it was recorded 3 days before the final mixing sessions of White Album. An entirely solo Lennon performance (with McCartney coaching him from the control room) it took a mere 3 takes to get the basic track down.

John used the same fingerpicking pattern throughout that he employed on Dear Prudence and the intro of Happiness Is A Warm Gun and which Paul used for Blackbird (though Paul's version is more of a sloppy half-strum). Both Beatles had recently learned this pattern in India from Donovan and/or Gypsy Dave. It's impressive to note that even at this late stage of their career they were still learning and incorporating new concepts into their compositions.

Donovan gives John a guitar lesson?

The track is ethereal and weirdly catatonic. The opening monotonal melody, the never changing picking pattern and the oddly stretched-out first syllable in the title all contribute. But beginning and ending each verse with the word Julia, starting on high A and finishing by descending to the lower D, always falling and appearing at the top again, always overlapping with itself like endless ocean waves is a crucial component in establishing the hypnotic, dreamlike mood.

The lyrics also play their part, effectively conveying the unreachableness of would-be mistress Yoko (John was with his wife in India) and his deceased mother Julia.

'Julia' is calling, but never touches him, her smile is as intangible as the wind (though 'windy smile' also conjures up a baby that needs burping!). She is 'sleeping sand' and a 'silent cloud', her smile and her eyes are calling him rather than any particular spoken message. She is always distant - most of the song is sung about her, rather than sung 'to' her. In contrast the singer can't stop 'speaking his mind', 'singing a song of love' even if 'half of what he says is meaningless'.

There is much more to this song than can be packed into a single post but here's some of the key points I'll be hitting in future posts. Get listening to Julia and see if you can spot where I'm heading.

• Consistency of lyrical imagery
• Out of key chords and their relationship to the melody
• Creative ways to compensate for lack of rhymes
• Using jazz song structures in folk/pop music
• A favourite Beatles chord progression (borrowed from Eleanor Rigby?)