Glass Onion: Anniversary Edition Notes

The Esher demo of Glass Onion is played in the same key (Am) but Lennon's guitar is tuned down (this time by a semitone). At this stage there is only one verse and no bridge. Lennon messes up the lyrics and descends into stream of conscious gibberish, paraphrasing 'Chicago' by Fred Fisher. A post-Rishikesh lyric manuscripts, written on the back of an envelope, omits the word 'man' from the

Walrus and me/close as can be

lines and reveals that Lennon (and McCartney?) was (were?) even more ambitious about trying to cram in self-references

Trying to make a dovetail joint for a yellow submarine

Lennon was still tweaking lyrics during the recording at various points, trying out

Fool on the Hill is standing/sitting/living there still

Walrus and me are as nice/cool/keen/close as can be

Looking through a hole in the ocean

There were musical as well as lyrical self-references - a mellotron quote of Strawberry Fields Forever was cut (along with the sound effects coda heard on Anthology 3) but a nod to The Fool On The Hill (with Paul and Chris Thomas on recorders) made it to the final version.



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10:32 Glass Onion (pt.2)

A completely minor song like Glass Onion is a genuinely rare thing for the Beatles (Golden Slumbers, I Me Mine & Eleanor Rigby spring to mind). But from a songwriting point of view there's very little great stuff here that they haven't done much better elsewhere. Don't get me wrong. Glass Onion is a well recorded album track. And I like it personally. But if I was putting together a must listen to list of songwriting tips this wouldn't make the cut.

The main weaknesses are a melody that's doesn't resolve or go anywhere based round an A diminished chord (A C Eb) - the 'sing-song' 2 note melody was done a lot more effectively on I Am The Walrus. And the lyrics are poorly set and just give the impression that they were shoehorned in. Listen to “Lady Madonna trying to make ends meet”. And the cast iron shore line is squeezed by the needless 'yeah'.

Onions Have Layers

'Onion' is a horrible word to sing anyway but even more so when you put the stress is on the wrong syllable. Un-YON. Yuck. Making it the title and final word makes it stick out all the more. And having no rhyme to the hook (bunion, grunion, dungeon, luncheon?) and placing it on a bland chord that doesn't resolve (G maj, the bVII) means we get neither drama nor resolution.

It's ironic that 'Glass Onion' was Lennon's suggestion for renaming Apple recording artists The Iveys (they chose to be called Badfinger instead). A phrase that didn't work as a band name was also flawed as a song hook. Sometimes ideas have knots in them. You just have to work round them as best you can.

Deep breath.

As I said I like the song. That may be just my upbringing. But here are some good songwriting points and some better examples.

5 Good Things About Glass Onion

1) Ticket 22: Bluesify Your Melody
Done better on From Me To You

Lennon smothers the song in blues sauce by singing the 'out of key' Eb (b5).

NOthing is REAL
place you go EV'rything
LOOKing THROUGH ...see how the OTHER half
LOOKING through a glass Onion

What's more all the OOKC's* - C7 F7 Gm7 are created by altering 'in key' chords with blue notes - Bb in C7 and Gm7 and Eb in F7.

But it's all too jarring here. From Me To You is way smoother.


2) Ticket 32: The James Bond Chord Progression
Done better on Hey Bulldog

The rising chromatic chord melody starting from the 5th

Am - F/A - Am6 - Am7

in the B section is possibly the coolest part of the song. But bridge of Hey Bulldog is far superior, with the same idea appearing in TWO keys and the insistent “You can talk to me...” having a much stronger emotional pull than “Oh yeah...”


3) Ticket 40: A Very Small Vocal Range
Done better on Here Comes The Sun

Both songs have a span of a 5th but Harrison playfully inverts his melodic ideas keep them fresh where Lennon goes for jarring and repetitive. The fact that he doesn't use all 7 notes but doesn't create ambiguity, like Rain, just monotony.


4) Ticket 41: Use Same Ending In Two Sections
Done better on Let It Be

Recycling your ending in an AABA structure (Ticket 26) is a bold move but it doesn't give us the same sense of closure and comfort that Paul achieves in his 'hymn'


5) Ticket 2: Put Your Song On A Diet
Done better on Eleanor Rigby

2 snare hits for an intro and a sudden stop after the final verse. There is no fat on the hog. The 2:18 duration is more remarkable when you realise 29 seconds is taken up by George Martin's cello coda**. But there's no shortage of compact Beatles classics. (See what I did there?)


Hey this is my 400th post!!!!! (Read the very first right here)


*Out Of Key Chords (Ticket 28)

** This replaced Lennon's SFX coda (heard on Anthology 3). A wise choice as they'd done it better on the fade out of I Am The Walrus (not to mention Revolution 9).

10:31 Glass Onion (pt.1)

John Lennon was a man of many contradictions. On the one hand he hated people over analysing, and reading hidden meanings into, his songs. From intellectuals enraptured by his aeolian cadences, though 'Paul is Dead' stupidity, to the Manson Family's lethal interpretations. But on the other hand , for all his protestations, he was just as guilty as his audience - convincing himself that Hey Jude was REALLY about his love affair with Yoko rather than a song of comfort for his own abandoned son.

Arguably his attempts to ridicule and infuriate the obsessives DaVinci-coding their way through lyrics sheets only added more fuel to the fire. In Glass Onion, if you look closely, you can clearly see, not the Freemason's all seeing eye, but the Lennon's raised middle finger as he references five other Beatles songs - including one which references a song which references another song. Deep man!

1) Glass Onion - Strawberry Fields Forever

I told you about Strawberry Fields you know the place where nothing is real

Let me take you down 'cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields Nothing is real


2) Glass Onion - I Am The Walrus

I told you about the walrus and me/here's another clue for you all/the walrus is Paul

I am the egg-man, they are the egg-men, I am the walrus, goo goo a' joob


3) Glass Onion - Lady Madonna - I Am The Walrus – Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds

Lady Madonna trying to make ends meet

Lady Madonna, children at your feet/Wonder how you manage to make ends meet?


Lady Madonna - I Am The Walrus

Monday's child has learned to tie his bootlace/See how they run

See how they run like pigs from a gun


I Am The Walrus – Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds

See how they fly like Lucy in the sky

With your head in the clouds and you're gone/Lucy in the sky with diamonds


4) Glass Onion - Fool On The Hill

I told you about the fool on the hill

But the fool on the hill sees the sun going down


5) Glass Onion - Fixing A Hole

Fixing a hole in the ocean/Tryin' to make a dovetail joint

I'm fixing a hole where the rain gets in/And stops my mind from wandering

   The song is another example of Lennon's trippy lyrical style aka 'stream of consciousness, free-association, psychedelic, nonsense literature, surrealism'. It's something that is often attributed to LSD use but was evident in his prose and poetry even from childhood. I think drugs receive far too much credit for inspiring the Beatles songwriting (something I plan to write about in more detail) - anyone who grew up on The Goon Show, Stanley Unwin & Lewis Carroll wouldn't need much chemical encouragement to bring the weird.

Like Happiness Is A Warm Gun most of the weird phrases are simply real life details made startlingly poetic. The bent back tulips were an unusual flower arrangements in a posh London restaurant called Parke's, a perfect place for 'seeing how the other half lives', a dovetail joint is something in carpentry (and a cheeky drug reference) and the Cast Iron Shore was a real place in Liverpool.

Next time we'll look at what Glass Onion does well from a songwriting point of view.

        

Golden Ticket: The Rising 5th (Ticket 32)

Here at long last is a full discussion of the rising 5th ticket in downloadable podcast form!

or download here.

Here's a full list of all the songs used in the podcast

Minor 

James Bond Theme from Dr No – intro – Monty Norman
Savoy Truffle - chorus - The Beatles
Besame Mucho (cover) – verse - The Beatles (Velázquez/Skylar)
Secret Agent Man – intro - Johnny Rivers
Blackberry Way – verse – The Move
The Mission - 1st verse and solo – Queensryche
Brian Wilson (Album Version) – coda - Barenaked Ladies
Love Me And Leave Me – intro - The Seahorses
White America – intro - Eminem
Chains – intro/verse - k.s. Rhoads
Hey Bulldog – chorus - The Beatles
The Fool On The Hill – end of chorus - The Beatles
Cry Me A River – verse – Arthur Hamilton
Hangar 18 - intro and verse - Megadeth
Glass Onion - instrumental break - The Beatles
Better For Me If I'd Never Been Born -end of chorus – Matt Blick
Ain't Misbehavin – mid 8 - Fats Waller

Major

I'll Be On My Way - intro – The Beatles
Don't Ever Change (cover) – intro/bridge - The Beatles (Goffin/King)

Take Good Care Of My Baby (cover) - intro – The Beatles (Goffin/King)

From Me To You – bridge into verse – The Beatles
Ask Me Why – bridge - The Beatles
All Or Nothing At All – mid 8 – Altman/Lawrence
Raining In My Heart – verse - Buddy Holly
The Rain Song – instrumental break - Led Zeppelin
Isolation – intro/verse - Plastic Ono Band
(Just Like) Starting Over – intro – John Lennon
Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive – Bing Crosby And The Andrews Sisters
Because – intro, verse - Dave Clark Five
Kind of a Drag – intro/chorus - The Buckinghams
It's a Laugh – chorus - Hall & Oates
Old Before I Die - end of verse – Robbie Williams
It's All Been Done – pre chorus/bridge - Barenaked Ladies
Maybe This Time (from Cabaret) – verse – Kander/Ebb

Major and Minor

Losing My Mind (from Follies) verse/bridge – Stephen Sondheim
Mis-Shapes – Pulp

thanks to Nancy Rost, Cliff Middleton, Thomas Spademan, John Argentiero, Rick Amorphis, Rod 'Downburst' Johnson & The Songwriting Secrets of the Beatles by Dominic Pedler

More tickets to write and golden ticket posts

Other versions -
UK The Songwriting Secrets ... (Kindle)
USA The Songwriting Secrets ... (Hardback)
USA The Songwriting Secrets... (Kindle)

10:19 Savoy Truffle – The White Album Is Like A Box Of Chocolates

Critiquing

Allow me to be blunt. This is not a very good song. At least I don't think it is. And I think I have some good reasons.

But

I like the track. And I have a couple of reasons for that too. My reasons? Firstly, it's an interesting recording, with lots going on and it's well played. A perfectly credible album track that holds it's own - more than mere filler. And secondly, I have listened to this album repeatedly from a very young (and largely uncritical) age. We have personal history, Savoy Truffle and I.

But I'm trying to learn the art of songwriting from The Beatles here and that requires me to be critical about what works and why (and what doesn't and why) IN THE SONGWRITING. And if you're reading this blog I guess that's what you're here to do too.

Which is all to say – you may love Savoy Truffle. Great. Try and work out why. Because, like me the real object of your affection may be an arrangement, a recording, a performance or even a life event. Or it may be a polyrhythm, a play on words, an internal rhyme or a dominant substitution. Either way let me know in the comments.

Good Bits

The song as a whole is well played and quite funky for the Beatles, but for me almost everything cool about the song is packed into the first 10 seconds.

We have a very free form feel, driven by the electric piano and lead guitar. The melody starts on 9th degree of the scale and a Lennon edit (ticket 37) means we have a disorientating bar of 3/4 at the start of verses 1 & 2, almost like the song is crashing then rebooting, but the third verse (which has the same lyrics as verse 1) is 4/4 all the way through. Check out the way tangeRINE falls on the one in v1 and on the four in v3. The internal rhyme in the opening line CREAM tangeRINE is beautiful.

The chorus has a menacing rising 5th movement (ticket 32 the legendary James Bond chords) - probably the best chord progression in the whole song, but it's used much more effectively in the chorus of Hey Bulldog (not to mention the instrumental break in the White Album's Glass Onion).

The sax's are another Marmite element – the original session players were horrified by the distorted effect, but I like it and think producer/arranger/keyboard player Chris Thomas* did a great job in writing some hooky riffs.

The overall concept is cool, in a way – a bad boy chocolate lurking in the box ready to take you down! But I'm not sure the execution does it justice.

Bad Sounds

There are a couple of things wrong with this song and they're things we've come across before. First an ugly chromatic melody – just like Harrison's For You Blue and Paul's Maxwell. The verse melody is largely constructed from chord tones ascending from the 3rd to the 5th.

montelimar – G# A A# B
pineapple heart - A# B C C#
coffee desert - B C C# D

and the almost chromatic

know it's good news - B C - D D#

This links up with the chorus in a subtle way, as the ascending chromatic concept reappears in the 'James Bond' chords but elsewhere there are too many chords that don't resolve and too many chromatic notes leaving everything feeling constantly unsettled. Just like Old Brown Shoe. Broadly speaking the song is in E major but the verse resolves to Em and the chorus resolves to G major.

And whatever you think of the sax sound, the drums sound nasty!

Bad Words

Savoy Truffle is a smorgasbord of bad lyrics techniques.

Bad prosody

Putting the emPHAsis on the wrong syLLAble. No one says SAV-oy. They say sa-VOY. When that's your chorus/title you got a problem.

Nonsense

I feel your taste? Listen, do you smell something?

Random change of 'person'

Speaking of which, why does George feel your taste? It's not him with the chocolate issues. It's Eric Clapton. So we've changed person. Unless what he's 'feeling' is the taste of Eric himself. Yuk!

Filler

We all know Ob-la-di-bla-da. But can you show me where you are?

What on earth has this got to do with the song? And though the fact that Harrison is misquoting one of his own band's lyrics (Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da) is nothing too heinous,** he is borrowing (again!) from Lennon's Glass Onion, which self-references five Beatles songs and was recorded less than one month earlier.

Lastly I'm just a little put off by the hectoring tone (as previously heard on Think For Yourself). Nag your friends to freedom? I don't think so.

Time to file this song away. Next time a special post on a special chord sequence!

*that's right – George Martin took a long holiday in the middle of the White Album and a number of tracks were produced or co-produced by George's apprentice Chris Thomas.

**thanks to Rich for pointing out that McCartney does sing "bla-da" at the very end of Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.

10:7 Why Don't We Do It In The Road?

He liked it...he put a ring on it

there aren't many people who can claim to have written a pop song inspired by monkey sex but Paul McCartney is in that special minority. Having witnessed the simian version of doing the nasty in Rishikesh, Macca grabbed his guitar and penned this unforgettable track. Ringo, drafted in at the last minute, prevented it being a solo McCartney track but Lennon (who was next door adding the finishing touches to Glass Onion and Piggies with Harrison) was angry at not being invited. A good thing in my opinion, as at this stage John might have been tempted to make more of a 'statement' with it. As it is, it remained a bit of cheeky McCartney fluff, on a par with calling Her Maj “a pretty nice girl”.

Three Questions

I've realised most analysis on Beatles Songwriting Academy boils down to one of three questions. Why is this song so good? Occasionally, why is this song so bad? and rarest of all Why ISN'T this song bad?

Question 3 is the most relevant here.

Let's face it we have a straight 12 bar blues.The same verse repeated 3 times. A grand total of 3 chords and 14 words. It should be horrible, but it's not. Why?

First, it's hard to hate a song that lasts 1:41. A short running time will always cover a multitude of sins.

Second, there's a slight ambiguity to the lyrics. We all know what the 'it' is. Any songwriting 101 class would tell you to develop the concept in subsequent verses but the fact that Paul never spells it out sustains the mystery. Where would you go with it anyway? Why don't we do it in the shed? On the roof? In the bath?

Same But Different

But for me the prime cause of interest is the way Paul moves the phrasing of the main line. Generally vocalists will vary notes but not change the rhythm too much, other than to stretch the whole phrase out. But Paul does some odd but cool things to the main 8 beat (2 bar) phrase. Perhaps the simplest way to explain it is to look which words fall on the strong beats (the 1 and 3).

In the first three lines of every verse there's a rest on the first beat followed by the words don't, do and road falling on the third, first and third beats (give or take a few syncopated pushes).

(1) why don't we do it in the road

So we've pretty much got all the strongest words on the strongest beats (though you could argue 'it' is more important than 'do' in the phrase).

But at the end of the verse the whole phrase moves forward a beat, and now starts on the 1.

why don't we do it in the road

which gives a very off kilter feel.

On the very last line of the song the phrase is similar to the original one but squashed up and one beat shorter. The final chord lands on the one instead of the word 'road'.

(1) why don't we do it in the road (1)

This approach mimics the way a jazz instrumentalist might approach a solo, playing with the melody by displacing it. On a micro level you can hear it in some of the classic licks of Chuck Berry.

Grab some of your songs ideas, take a phrase and try moving it forwards or backwards a beat. It's a very arresting trick.

Other Stuff

There are other cool bits that make this an enjoyable track for me. Like the fake drum intro (McCartney is hitting his acoustic guitar) before the real drum fill comes in.

The way the 'band' stops for the opening phrase of every verse AND the very last phrase (ticket 30)

The primal 'four to the floor' feel of the bass and piano suits the 'animal' subject. And the funky bass fills on v3? Take a bow Paul.

I would never have expected to get two posts out of this slender tune, but I think the very fact this song exists has something really important to teach us about the working life of a songwriter. More on that next time.