10:20 Honey Pie (pt.1)

My dad's always played fruity old songs like that...I like the melody of old songs, and the lyrics actually as well...I would quite like to have been a 1920's writer, 'cause I like that thing...up in top hat and tails...So this is just me...pretending I'm living in 1925.

'Honey Pie' was me writing ... to an imaginary woman, across the ocean, on the silver screen...it's another of my fantasy songs...it's not a parody, it's a nod to the vaudeville tradition that I was raised on.

Paul McCartney: Beatles Interview.org 

Style And Structure

The Beatles frequently dabbled in what Paul called 'fruity songs' and John Lennon dismissed as 'granny music' - deliberately and derivatively old fashioned songs. Love em or loath em, this breadth of styles is another mark of the Beatles songwriting greatness. Can you imagine Zeppelin/Gaga/Bieber/Springsteen revisiting long discarded unfashionable genres? Discuss...

Of all the Beatles time travelling Honey Pie is probably the most assured 1920's jazz pastiche and would sit happily in a 'Jim Mac's Jazz Band' set list.

Paul's Dad and friends...

First of all we have a 12 bar long jazz style verse (tickets 35 and 53). In modern pop songs the verse appears two or three times with different lyrics, but in jazz songs the verse, is usually sung once at the beginning, often in free time, to set the scene - lyrically, the content of all verses like this can be boiled down to “And that is why I say...”. Then we have a 32 bar 'chorus' or refrain in an AABA structure (Ticket 26).

In contrast Yellow Submarine (which Lennon didn't hate, by the way) was more of a folk song, though it did originally have an intro verse. When I'm Sixty Four and Maxwell had no intro verse,  Sixty Four has two very non-jazz bridges (both subtly different) and musically Maxwell is straight forward verse/chorus 60's style cheesy pop.

Within the structure, we have a very consistent attention to detail in the period vocabulary and whimsical tone of the lyrics

I'm in in love but I'm lazy
Honey Pie
silver screen
weak in the knees
you are driving me frantic
my position is tragic
will the wind...kindly send her sailing back to me

And while, Paul is no match for any of the great showtune lyricists of the early 20th century he displays true wordsmithery here, in his command of assonance and alliteration -

assonance – silver screen and now the thought of meeting you makes me weak in the knee

alliteration – will the wind, blew her boat, across the sea, send her sailing, silver screen

Arrangement

The arrangement keeps up the 20's conceit in obvious (scratchy old record effect - 0:10) and subtle (distorted, over-compressed sax/clarinet) ways. There is no double tracking, Ringo uses brushes on the kit, and George's bass on the 1st and 3rd beats contrasts with Paul's 4 to the bar piano chords (which is usually the role of rhythm guitar). But John's chord stabs really add to the groove and the whole track swings.

You can't say the same for Lennon's solo though. When George Harrison said "John played a brilliant solo on 'Honey Pie' - sounded like Django Reinhardt or something" he was right up to a point. The point being 1:40 onwards. Because, after a few bars of genius (1:33 – 1:39), he hilariously bails out, realising he can't navigate the changes and quits while he's ahead.

"Sounds like John Lennon or something..."

The arrangement show glimpses of madrigalism (ticket 49) with the 'seasick' chromatic rising (Eb7 E7 - 0:44) and falling chords (G F# F Em - 1:04) and clarinet fills (1:56).

Next time we'll finish up with a look at the heart of this great song – the melody and chord progressions.

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.

Three Hammer Prevention Questions

The tragedy is not that Maxwell is a poor song but that McCartney “flogged it to death in the studio in a pedantic effort to perfect it [and] ended up driving his colleagues mad” acting like an “immature egotist who frittered away the group's patience and solidarity on sniggering nonsense” (MacDonald p.357) just like he did to an even greater extent with Ob La Di, Ob La Da

The funny thing is that everything McCartney did wrong on this song he's done with wonderful success on other songs.

Written at the tail end of the White Album, rehearsed during the Let It Be sessions, recorded over 3 days in July 69 with more overdubs and tweaking in Aug this was a major piece of work (the band even rented an anvil for Ringo to play) that totally failed to live up to (Paul's) expectations. Here are three questions that you can ask to stop yourself making the same mistakes.

1) Are my fellow musicians up for this song?
2) Is there a legitimate technical reason why this song is taking so long?
3) Does this song warrant the amount of polish I'm lavishing on it?

A splendid time is guaranteed for all

Q: Are my fellow musicians up for this song? If not keep it short or save it for the solo album.

Yellow Submarine was just as silly as Maxwell, if not more so. It took two days to record. But by all accounts the band had a whale of a time (you see what I did there?). Playing bathtubs, blowing bubbles shouting nonsense through echo chambers, marching round with a bass drum in a conga line with Brian Jones & Marianne Faithful. What's not to like? Lennon & Harrison despised Maxwell and Lennon took no real part in the recording.

Long Long Long

Q: Is there a legitimate technical reason why this song is taking so long? If not get the best version you can quickly and then call it a day. You can always revisit it some time in (distant) the future.

A Day In The Life took 5 days to record over a period of 2 months. You Know My Name (Look Up The Number) took 4 days over 3 years. Some thing take longer because they're complex and you're breaking new ground, and some take longer because you're desperately trying to make something brown and smelly look bright and shiny. Ob La Di, Ob La Da and Strawberry Fields Forever were both recorded, scrapped and rerecorded. Guess which one the whole band were most enthusiastic about...

Hey! You've got to throw that song a-way

Q: Does this song warrant the amount of polish I'm lavishing on it? If not recorded it roughly and move on.

Throw away songs are great and you don't have to throw them in the bin. Just throw them on the table like the musical junk food they are. You don't need to get the silverware out. What if Maxwell had been a solo acoustic number played in the same loose style as Her Majesty? Or a raucous jam like Maggie Mae? Wouldn't that have been better? It certainly would have engendered more goodwill with it's take it or leave it attitude than the version we have.

This is something I find myself facing when recording joke songs like The Soundcheck Song so I hope it's helpful to you. Do you have any other suggestions for knowing when you're giving too much time to an inferior song?

12:20 Maxwell Edison In The Hall Of Shame

Maxwell's in the dock but he doesn't stand alone. His accomplice Paul McCartney must shoulder the blame too. The charges are as follows

Rhyme Fever

The rhymes in themselves aren't bad, but driven by a need to rhyme the story gets distorted in all kinds of ways

• I must not be so... - so what?
• Is Maxwell at school or studying medicine at university? Medical school? (do you really have to write lines on the board at med school?)
• bang and clang? - presumably the clanging was caused by the hammer hitting the metal plates in everyone's heads?

I've paid good money for this dictionary, dammit!

Quizzical? Pataphysical? So you know big words – don't rub it in

Inigo Montoya rule

Pataphysics is a spoof science of imaginary solutions invented by Alfred Jarry (MacDonald p.357). No test tubes needed. Unless they're imaginary ones of course.

Sentence

McCartney - a restraining order preventing you coming within 100 yards of a three syllable rhymes.
Maxwell – Your hammer will be taken away and given to Pete Seeger.

12:19 Maxwell's Silver Hammer

Let's turn to one of the most despised songs in the Beatles catalogue. I can't say I hate it, but I certainly wouldn't take a bullet for it. For that matter, I wouldn't even take a gentle swat with a rolled up newspaper in it's defence. What makes this the Jar Jar Binks of the Fabs setlist. Bad taste? A chipper tune about a serial killer? As the writer of The Eglon Song I may not be the best qualified to judge on matters of taste. But as someone said “No life is wasted, it may serve as a horrible example to others” let's not let Maxwell die in vain. I want to unpack, nay tease out, just what makes this such an unpalatable song in order to spare YOU dear songwriter the shame of creating another such monster.

Here's my suggestions

Lyrics

First, the lyrics are bad, no doubt about it. HOW, I'll leave for another time. WHY? Well, McCartney paints himself into a corner by a demanding form and rhyme scheme. This leads him to make words up, leave words out, ignore the internal narrative and logic. The scheme AABBCD/EEFFGB (give or take a few failures) is massively ambitious, and to make matters worse Macca is drunk on 3 syllable rhymes – Valerie in the gallery, & Edison with his medicine are all very clever but Ira Gershwin he ain't.

Secondly, the big vocabulary rather than rendering the song cute makes it sound smarmy & smart arse. There are a million things wrong with using the word 'pataphysical' but the biggest is that it screams “Hi! I'm Paul McCartney and I know big words that you don't understand.”

Third there is no warmth or involvement. Lots of people like When I'm Sixty Four. It's 'our' song. I (the singer) am singing to you (the listener). I'm singing about our relationship. It's also very cleverly a young person's song about being old (now there's a brilliant way to draw everyone in). Maxwell is a song about a person we care nothing about sung by a narrator we know nothing about.

But the fourth and fatal nail in the coffin (would you like your metaphors shaken or stirred?) is it's a joke song that's not funny. It's a cheeky 20's style comedy song. But it has no jokes. At least When I'm Sixty Four raises a few wry smiles “Will you still need me? Will you still feed me?” and the ridiculously named grandchildren. Where's the laughs here?


Melody

I'm finding out quite a few Beatles songs have lousy lyrics carried on the wings of beautiful melodies. Why doesn't Maxwell flutter heavenwards? No surprise. The tune is a turkey.


Try it yourself. Write a new set of lyrics. It's possible you'll come up with a better song. But unlikely you'll come up with a great one.

Put simply the solid repetition and shuffle rhythm make the tune predictable, while at the same time the combination of wide jumps and chromatic passages make the tune ugly.

So to sum up - structure and rhymes overrule logic and sense, and we have smarmy, patronising, cold, unfunny lyrics set to a predictable and ugly tune.

What's not to like?

Good points?

There's a C natural in the melody on “PataphysiCAL” that's neither in the key OR the chord. Clever. There's no intro (Ticket 2) and a single D chord to end (on the third beat) (Ticket 18). Both examples of economy. But I gotta confess I'm scratching around here.

There are two more posts to come. I couldn't sleep at night if I didn't banish Maxwell to the Lyrical Hall of Shame. And I want to look at why Macca thrashed this turkey to death and how you too can know when you're flogging a dead...erm...turkey.

Excuse me now, there's a strangely metallic knock at the door...

Blessed Are The Prolific (pt. 1)

In a way this goes right to the heart of why Lennon & McCartney were such great songwriters. All other Be-atletudes lead to this. Being a singletasker, having a co-writer and limiting your options all allow you to be prolific and that is the one thing that will turn a good songwriter into a great one.

Here’s a favourite illustration

A ceramics teacher divided his class into two groups. One group would be graded solely on quantity of work – fifty pounds of pottery would be an “A”, forty would be a “B”, and so on. The other group would be graded on quality. Students in that group had to produce only one pot – but it had better be good.

Amazingly, all the highest quality pots were turned out by the quantity group. It seems that while the quantity group kept churning out pots, they were continually learning from their disasters and growing as artists. The quality group sat around theorising about perfection and worrying about it – but they never actually got any better.

Apparently – at least when it comes to pottery- trying and failing, learning from failure, and trying again works a lot better than waiting for perfection. No pot, no matter how misshapen, is really a failure. Each is just another step on the road to an “A”. It is a road littered with imperfect pots. But there is no other road.

John Ortberg: If You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat (p.148) The story he quotes is from 
David Bayles & Ted Orland: Art & Fear (p.29)
 

 

 200 Songs

Why were Lennon & McCartney so good?

Between 1962 and 1970 Lennon & McCartney wrote close to 200 songs. Almost all were recorded and released. The majority were top 10 hits as singles or album tracks. Whereas most writers today would throw away a song that wasn’t good enough for their next album or didn’t fit stylistically, the boys always had a reason to finish that song. And because of their insane recording schedule they always had to come up with more songs.

Here, There & Everywhere

The norm for today’s artists seems to be that they are either writing OR recording OR touring. Letting the studio or the road disrupt the habit of writing is a problem somewhat unique to SONGwriters.

For example, on the rare occasions that a novelist does go on a promo tour he doesn’t spend 200 nights a year for 2 years reading people his most recent book.

What could be more damaging to fresh creativity than regurgitating your previous efforts night after night without attempting anything new? Yet this is everyday life for many successful recording artists.

Road Songs

 

For a band with a schedule as insane as the Beatles had from 62-66 writing on tour was a necessary evil. From Me To You was written on a tour bus, All My Loving backstage, She Loves You in a hotel room. Can’t Buy Me Love was not only written on tour but recorded in a studio in Paris while they played a residency there!

It's All Too Much

Of course the band stopped touring in ’66 but The Beatles didn’t regard recording as a legitimate reason to take a break from songwriting either (which makes sense as they were always recording). And I’m not referring to the way many successful bands enter the studio with unfinished songs (though they were guilty of that too). I mean continuing to write new songs even as they were laying down songs they’d just finished.

Assistant producer Chris Thomas remembers Harrison playing Something to him on the harpsichord while they were recording Piggies for the White Album. McCartney gave Lennon a preview of MMT’s The Fool On The Hill while writing With A Little Help From My Friends for Sgt Pepper.

When the time came for shooting a video for the Lady Madonna single, instead of miming to the song the band decided to record a completely new song, Hey Bulldog, and let the crew film them doing that instead.

You would think that recording 32 songs for the White Album would have exhausted the supply but by the time it was mixed they already had Polythene Pam, The Long And Winding Road, Let It Be, Something & Maxwell’s Silver Hammer lined up ready to go.

Slow Down

 

With such a workload did they ever just relax and take a holiday?

McCartney wrote most of the lyrics to Yesterday while on holiday in Portugal with Jane Asher (having written the bridge while filming Help!). When the Beatles went off to find the meaning of life in India, Lennon, Harrison & McCartney wrote 23 songs in couple of month.

So I guess the answer is no.

Read Blessed Are The Prolific part two