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)

10:11 I'm So Tired (pt.3)

12 Bar Snooze

One of the great mysteries to me about the Beatles evolution is how a band that cut their teeth playing 12 bar blues covers in Hamburg nightclubs could go on to pen so few 12 bar blues songs themselves. To be sure the influence survived in the bluesy vocal lines and inflections in melodies like From Me To You and She Loves You. But the 12 bars structure seems to be something they outgrew. Or did they? Because a surprising number of tracks that don't appear bluesy from Don't Bother Me to The Fool On The Hill are built on 12 bar sequences (ticket 35).

In I'm So Tired the chorus chord progression clearly owes a debt to the American south

A A A A
D D D D
E E A A

just switch the D's in bars 7 and 8 to A's and you have the most basic 12 bar you can have. But the AABBC rhyme scheme does a great job of disguise the origins.

On the verse

A G#7 D E
A F#m D E
A E+ F#m Dm Dm

we have 13 bars, but the Dm is really nothing more than the Lennon extension (ticket 52). John drags out the sequence merely to add “no no no” in precisely the way that John Lee Hooker or Robert Johnson might stretch a pattern to squeeze in one more fill or phrase.

In the verse, though the chords are a 106 miles from Chicago, the lyrical structure again reflects the blues.

Consider the stock lyrics scheme

“When you got the blues, you repeat the the opening line
I said, when you got the blues, you repeat the the opening line
Then sing something else, just make sure it rhymes”

essentially a three section structure with two parts the same (or similar) followed by one contrasting part. In I'm So Tired we have and 2 lines that start “I'm so tired...” sung over almost the same chord progression twice

A G#7  D E
A F#m D E

followed by a line that contrasts musically and lyrically -

  A                         E+            F#m           Dm
I wonder should I get up and fix myself a drink...

All in all a stellar example for ticket 35 - a non blues 12 bar structure.

Chords and Contrasts


While we're looking at that last line check out the chords. The song has only (!) three out of key chords (ticket 28) but each is an absolute gem. First the Dm in last two bar of the verse is the classic Beatles doo wop chord the minor 4 (iv) a trick so ubiquitous it's earned it's own ticket (ticket 8). Here instead of the doo wop approved progression IV iv I (D to Dm to A) we slam into it from a minor 6 (F#m to Dm to A) which is a progression we ran into last time in Bungalow Bill

He’s the E all-American G bullet-headed Am Saxon mother’s Fm son

Note: the final verse chord in both songs is a iv, both are Lennon songs recorded on the same day. Who says you can't recycle ideas?

You can hear this on She Loves You, You Won't See Me and I Will amongst others.

The other two chords, E augmented (E+) and G#7, both contain C natural which is the only out of key note that appears in the melody. The G#7 is the VII7 chord and is of interest because it's same striking chord Lennon used in Sexy Sadie

I'm So Tired - A G#7 D   E   -  I  VII7  IV  V
Sexy Sadie   -  G  F#7 Bm      -  I  VII7  vi

McCartney did something similar (using the minor version – vii7) on his most famous song

Yesterday - F Em7 A7 Dm - I vii7 III7 vi

Stuart Kidd and I used exactly the same G – F#7 Bm move on our song Sadie's Sister (hey, if you're gonna steal be shameless!) but this time the key is D major renedering the progression

Sadie's Sister - G F#7 Bm - IV III7 vi

which is similar to what Radiohead do in Karma Police

Lastly we have a lot of cool contrasts between sections (ticket 5). The verse has one chord per bar but the chorus spends a long time on each chords. Lyrically the verse states “I'm tired” but the chorus talks about why he's tired. And reflecting that distinction the rhythm of the verse melody is very dragged out with lots of melisma but the chorus is more rhythmic and bursting with nervous mental energy.

10:3 Julia (pt.2) Chords

The more I study Beatles songs the more it seems that for John Lennon the centre of his songs are the chord progressions (or the way the melody fights against the chord progression) whereas McCartney's best melodies could sit happily over any number of chord progressions or none at all. I'll expand on this more next time but today let's look at Julia's chord progressions.

The first and fourth verses have an 8 bar structure

D Bm7 F#m F#m
D Bm7 F#m A

whereas all the other verses have 12 bars

D    Bm7  Am7  Am9
B7  B7     G9     Gm7
D    Bm7  F#m  A

only the first two bars and last four bars are identical.

Obviously having verse with totally different construction raises some questions about whether you can even call them both verses. I'll get into that when we look at structure.

When the verse moves into a different section (verse 4 or the bridge) we get 2 bars of D breathing space. This is essential as the verse is designed to loop back on itself. So when it doesn't we need extra time to finish singing the final 'Julia' (and breathe!).

The 10 bar bridge changes key first to C#m then, when the D arrives, C# phrygian mode.

C#m  C#m    D          D
Bm7  Bm6
F#m7 F#m6  F#mb6  F#m

The Bm6 helps to re-establish the original key (as does the F#m7 and F#mb6). In fact the F#m(b6) to F#m to D forms a quite effective weird little cadence.

Out Of Key

So looking at our progressions we have a multitude of out of key chords (ticket 28). There's the old Beatles favourite, the minor 4 (iv) - Gm7, and the much rarer minor 5 (v) - Am7 and Am9. That's tickets 8 & 44. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Here's the full list with the out-of-key notes they contain

Chord  Interval  Note

Am7      v7           c
Am9      v9           c
B7         VI7         d#
G9         IV9         f
Gm7      iv7          bb and f
C#m     VII          g#
Bm6      vi6          g#
F#m6    iii6          d#

If you do the math (alphabet?) you'll notice that in the course of the song Lennon uses all 12 notes!

The Lost Chord

As well as what's in there, what's missing is also interesting. The 3 chord trick I - IV - V is the mainstay of all pop writing yet Lennon doesn't play a straight G major (IV) anywhere in the song. He doesn't even use it's minor substitute Em (vi)! (Ticket 7).

We have an example of a 12 bar pattern that isn't a blues tune (Ticket 35) which is a lot harder to pull off than it might sound (Fool On The Hill is another nice example).

As well as classic Beatles chords we have classic progressions. The bridge ends with a pattern containing a descending chromatic line starting on the b7 of the scale (ticket 31)

b7 – 6  –  b6 – 5
e  –  d# –  d  – c#

placed within the F#m chord that line gives us

F#m7  F#m6  F#mb6  F#m

which is exactly the same progression that most famously occurred in Paul McCartney's song Eleanor Rigby.

Em7              Em6              Emb6                 Em
All the lonely people where do they all come from?

Lennon creates a little subconscious hook in the chord part by hinting at the F#m7 - F#m6 - F#mb6 - F#m pattern with the Bm7 to Bm6 progression that comes just before it. (Ticket 9 – use fragments of the existing melody/chord to create new parts)

A far stronger instrumental hook (ticket 3) is the way Lennon plays almost whole vocal melody on the top string. This may have either been because he created the vocal line by singing the guitar part or wanted to play what he was singing to support his vocals (it is a pretty odd melody).

Either process could be a good starting point for YOUR next song.

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Can't get enough Beatles-style songs about mysterious women? Check out Sadie's Sister, my collaboration with Stuart Kidd – free to download here.

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