Best Idea Wins

There was no real musical ego problem. There were a lot of other ego problems, but whoever had the best idea got their way. No one really stood on the cliff saying, "F**k you, no."

Ringo Starr: Rolling Stone Magazine

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10:38 Back In The USSR (pt 1) Weird Al McCartney

Back In The USSR was the reason Ringo quit the Beatles, the only track to feature all three remaining members on bass AND drums and a sort of multilayered parody, channeling both on Chuck Berry and the band that plagiarised him – the Beach Boys.

Parody In Arrangement

Taking his initial inspiration from the UK government ad campaign “I'm Backing Britain” McCartney developed a fictional 1st person narrative (Ticket 70) - a Russian singing about how cool life is in an oppressive communist regime set to a rip-roaring US-style track. An uncharacteristically edgy, but unique angle (see Ticket 42).

I wrote that as a kind of Beach Boys parody. And 'Back in the USA' was a Chuck Berry song, so it kinda took off from there

It's tongue in cheek...'Georgia's always on my mind', there's all sorts of little jokes in it...We added Beach Boys style harmonies

The Beach Boys elements (which Mike Love claims credit for) manifest in the bridge and the all-American vocab like “gee”. There is a nod to “Beach Boys style harmonies” but it's caricature rather than careful pastiche – a Mike Love approved bass part, a single high wordless descant and the main melody. No dense Wilson richness, though the Beatles were certainly capable of that).

Parody In Lyrical Structure

Flew in from Miami Beach B.O.A.C.
Didn't get to bed last night
On the way the paper bag was on my knee
Man, I had a dreadful flight
I'm back in the USSR

Verse one is a really strong opening and sets the scene wonderfully with the positive feelings towards Russia being developed in the second verse (Gee it's good to be back home). But it's instructive to look at how McCartney developed the song in direct relation to the template Back In The USA. Because a great parody is not merely 'one song to the tune of another' poking fun at something, but in the hands of a true artist (like Weird Al) uses the lyrical shape and development to inform the lampoon (Ticket 71).

Back In The USA

Oh well, oh well, I feel so good today
We touched ground on an international runway
Jet propelled back home
From over the seas to the U.S.A.

Back In The USSR

Flew in from Miami Beach B.O.A.C.
Didn't get to bed last night
On the way the paper bag was on my knee
Man, I had a dreadful flight
I'm back in the USSR

Notice how Paul copies the first verse by opening with the plane landing

We touched ground on an international runway/Flew in from Miami Beach

expressing his emotional state

I feel so good today/Man, I had a dreadful flight

and naming his home in the last line.

From over the seas to the U.S.A./I'm back in the USSR.

The bridge meanwhile emulates Berry's (place) name-checking

Well the Ukraine girls really knock me out
They leave the west behind
And Moscow girls make me sing and shout
That Georgia's always on my mind

New York, Los Angeles, oh, how I yearned for you
Detroit, Chicago, Chattanooga, Baton Rouge...
From the coast of California to the shores of Delaware Bay

This was something of a Berry trope as he also did it on Sweet Little Sixteen

They're really rockin' in Boston, in Pittsburgh, Pa.
Deep in the heart of Texas and round the 'Frisco Bay
All over St. Louis and down in New Orleans
All the cats wanna dance with Sweet Little Sixteen

which is the track which Brian Wilson 'rewrote' as Surfin' U.S.A.

You'd catch 'em surfin' at Del Mar, Ventura County line
Santa Cruz and Trestle, Australia's Narrabeen
All over Manhattan and down Doheny Way
Everybody's gone surfin' - Surfin' U.S.A.

Which brings us full circle!

Almost.

Ringo never played Back In The USSR with the Beatles, but he did perform it with these guys...

More on Weird Al's songwriting here and here
Lennon With Chuck Berry
McCartney quotes are mostly from Many Years From Now via Beatles Bible and Beatles Songwriting And Recording Database For more on the Berry/Beach Boys plagiarism see Wikipedia

Ringo And The Helpful Bass Player

I'm sure it p***ed Ringo off when he couldn't quite get the drums to 'Back In The USSR,' and I sat in. It's very weird to know that you can do a thing someone else is having trouble with. If you go down and do it, just bluff right through it, you think, 'What the hell, at least I'm helping.' Then the paranoia comes in - 'But I'm going to show him up!' I was very sensitive to that.

But not quite sensitive enough, as Ringo quit the band during the White Album sessions after Paul apparently criticised him for screwing up a drum fill.

Sources: Beatles Songwriting And Recording Database and Beatles Bible

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 Preconceptions About The Beatles (pt 3)

Let's wrap up the last 6 illusions I was labouring under (or was I?) when I started this blog.
Read the previous parts here and here.

5) None of the Beatles were very good players. Especially Ringo

WRONG - Forget 'Bigger Than Jesus', no Beatles quote has been more misunderstood and misused than Lennon's “Ringo isn't even the best drummer in the Beatles” wisecrack. And it was just that - a wisecrack. So for the record here's three reasons why Ringo was an amazing drummer

1) The sheer number of beats and styles he navigated with ever really repeating himself over 211 songs
2) The fact that in 7 years of recording that only a handful of takes broke down due to an error on Ringo's part
3) The incredible feel he displayed in combining swing time and straight time in the same song. Straight fills in a swingtime song, changing from section to section, it's subtle and very, very hard to pull off. Jim Keltner is the only other drummer I've heard manage it.

(There's more Ringo love here and here)

It's true that none of the band were virtuosos. They never left the stage for 20 minutes while Ringo got his groove on and set his gong on fire (oooh missus) or George whipped out the violin bow. They all played for the song. Always and forever. But the band boasted 3 solid competent guitarists, McCartney was a genius multi-instrumentalist and Lennon and McCartney were world class vocalists.

6) Sergeant Pepper may be a classic album but I don't really like it, and the individual songs aren't that great

RIGHT. And WRONG. And HALF RIGHT. -  Yes it is a classic album. Just so you know. But here's the surprise. I really like it! I heard Pepper a lot growing up, and didn't rate it. I think the reason was aged 15 I was looking for songs that would work in a heavy metal context. While The Who and even Abba (don't ask) had tracks that would translate, Pepper was a dud. But that's no way to judge an album! It's true it has less 'stand alone' songs than any other album (bar Abbey Road) and it would have been stronger with Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever. But c'mon - A Day In The Life? And I personally love Within You Without You, When I'm Sixty Four and Getting Better.

7) The Beatles are overrated

WRONG - Ridiculous as it may sound the Beatles are underrated purely because they so lauded for unimportant superficial reasons that it cause people to miss the most crucial thing. They were the greatest songwriters since the Broadway showtune writers like Gershwin, Kern and Porter

8) The Beatles are the greatest band in history

RIGHT - The combination of great songs plus innovation in business, technology, marketing, breaking box office, viewing and chart records and other 'firsts' mean no one act will ever be able to touch the fab four

9) The Beatles were a great live band

Pretty much WRONG - The Beatles were a great live band long before they were recording artists but by the time they finished in 69-70 they were abysmal and you could argue that they began to go downhill as soon as Brian Epstein began limited them to playing less than an hour per live gig.

Think about this. Next time you listen to a classic Beatles song reflect on the fact that you're almost certainly hearing the very last time that the Beatles EVER played that song.

10) I want to be Woody Guthrie when I grow up

WRONG - Two years ago my ambition was to have the breadth of songwriting ability of Woody Guthrie – a man that could tackle the political This Land Is Your Land and then turn round and knock out a kids classic like Going To The Zoo.

Glossing over the fact the Guthrie didn't write the latter song (Tom Paxton did) I've found a new role model. Who else could kick off an album with a snide political R&B song, followed by a Puff The Magic Dragon wannabe then a Raga meet Classical song about isolation and make it all sound unified? Revolver-era Beatles, that who.

So now I want to be the Beatles (if and) when I grow up.



I know a lot of my readers grew up on Abbey Road and cut their teeth on Rubber Souls, but can you remember any preconceptions you had before listening to the Beatles? Were you right?

Under The Influence: Kim Thayil (Soundgarden)

We looked deep down inside the very core of our souls and there was a little Ringo sitting there. Sure, we like telling people it's John Lennon or George Harrison, but when you really look deep inside of Soundgarden, there's a little Ringo wanting to get out.

 Kim Thayil quoted on Spinner.com