10:8 The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill

(For more on the intro go here)

The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill is a strong contender for sloppiest performance by the Beatles, giving Maggie Mae a run for her money. Deliberately going for a campfire singalong style, (a hangover from Rishikesh where this song was conceived) even Lennon's lead vocals are ropey.

Having contrast between sections (Ticket 5) is a good songwriting technique but here it's too much of a good thing. There's a 'semi key change' from the verse (Am) to the chorus (C major - the relative major) followed by real key change to A Major - the parallel major (Ticket 45) and a tempo change between verse and chorus which is achieved in the same primitive way as the time change in Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds - by a few clomping hits on the drums. The combination of these changes make the verse to chorus seem like a real crunch of gears. The fact that the 4th bar of the chorus is a 2/4 bar, missing two beats (another Lennon edit – ticket 37) completes the 'lunatics have taken over the asylum' feel.

Update: on the original demo version the Lennon edit is a 1/4 bar and the transitions between tempos are much smoother  - you can listen to it here. (Thanks to Lost Originals for the link).

The chorus, though original is both childish and unpleasantly jarring, though to be fair that seems to be the effect John was aiming for. The verse could be said to be employing madrigalism (ticket 49) in the way the 'creeping feel' mirrors someone stealthily tracking tigers in the jungle.

The music is more repetitive than most Lennon tracks with the first two lines of the verse having the same tune and chord progression and obviously the chorus being repeated (albeit in different keys). The melody follows the chord root note movement pretty slavishly throughout but the monotony of that approach is balanced somewhat by the weird chorus chord movement, which is arguably the most interesting songwriting trick on display here. The use of the minor 4 (ticket 8) is something I've written about extensively but here we get a double dose - an Fm in the key of C and Dm in the key of A.

C  G  C  Fm  C  Fm  G
A  E  A  Dm  A  Dm  E

The lyrics, having their basis in true life events, belong in the company of thinly-veiled personal swipes like She Said She Said (Peter Fonda) Sexy Sadie (The Maharishi) and How Do You Sleep (Paul McCartney).

Before we get to I'm So Tired we'll take a little detour and look at something this song has in common with only 11 other Beatles songs but whole lots of Nirvana and My Chemical Romance songs, as well as Queen and Black Sabbath's best selling singles.

Can you guess what it is?

11:14 Get Back (pt. 1)

Get Back is an ultra simple bluesy rocker than manages to transcend the basic raw materials. Saved from being a cheery racist rant by McCartney's characteristic vagueness (the original, allegedly satirical, lyrics about "too many Pakistanis living in a council flat" needing to “get back where they once belonged” were wisely scrapped) it ended up as a cool relentless song about nothing at all.

The simplicity is stunning. There are three chords and essentially one progression, with a few slight variations. The main progression (heard in the verse) is

A, A, D, A


The chorus adds in a G and a D on the last two beats

A, A, D, A (G D)


The final chorus and the chorus before the piano solo alters the progression to

A, A, A, D


The very loose jamming feel creates the illusion of more variations, as different band members miss the G D part at different times and McCartney consistently ignores it on bass.

Lyrically we have only two short verses and a chorus with seven words that repeats the title six times! How do McCartney manage to stop such a simple tune getting monotonous?

First, the melody is in the Mixolydian mode. Though this song is light years from the Beatles 'Indian songs' it does share this scale in common with many of those 'three/two/no chord wonders'. The Inner Light, Tomorrow Never Knows, She Said She Said, Within You Without You, Paperback Writer, Rain all share this scale as do parts of Ticket To Ride and Getting Better. So the unfamiliarity of the scale helps to balance the blandness of the chords.

Second, the vocal melody almost completely ignores the root note. The verse starts on a high E, climbing to a G, before walking down to a low E. The chorus starts on F# again moving up to G before descending to the A root note. So the only root notes in the whole melody are

But, he knew it COULDn't last...
For some CaliFORNia grass...
Get back to where you once belonGED

and the chorus is the only place you come to rest on the root note (and even then, the 2nd and 4th choruses retain an unsettled feeling by ending on a D major chord (the IV).

But that's not all. The 3rd (C#) doesn't appear in the melody AT ALL! It's only due to the occasional A or A7 chord (both of which contain C#) that we hear it as the major sounding mixolydian tonality at all. With the emphasis on E and G, and the passing C natural near the end of the chorus, the melody sounds more like E minor.

In fact the strongest note, apart from the E, is G natural - the b7th in the key of A, and the essential note in the mixolydian mode. (E's are bold and underlined, G's are bold and CAPS)

Jo Jo was a man who THOUGHT HE WAS A loner,
But, he knew it couldn't last.
Jo Jo left his home in TUCSON, ARIZONA,
For some California grass.
Get BACK! Get BACK! Get BACK to where you once belonged.

Melodically speaking this is so 'out there' that it might be better to say that, rather than the melody compensating for boring chords, we need the simple A5, A6 blues boogie part to ground such an unconventional melody.

Ticket 6 is 'stay off the root CHORD'. But now we have a new one - Ticket 50 - 'stay off the root NOTE'. This can produce a restless, 'driving ever onwards' feel.

Try it out.

Next time, we try to decipher the lyrics and find lots more tickets