Although I'm a fan of the One-Disc White Album game (the game wherein you pretend that George Martin gets his way and that the Beatles release a wicked solid single-disc album instead of the slightly all-over-the-place double-disc album that DID get released in November of 1968, and then decide which songs should be on it and which shouldn't be), I've never been able to satisfactorily come up with a One-Disc White Album myself.
There are a lot of issues, you know, in rewriting a Beatles album. It's not necessarily going to work if it's just your favorite songs. You have to achieve a John-Paul parity, or else you'd have been in trouble with at least one of them. And you need at least two cuts from George if you're going to be fair too. Ideally, Ringo will get a vocal. I'm basically holding myself to the standard Beatles 14-track album size, though I'm allowing myself to go as high as 15 if I end up including some of the really short tracks that pepper this album. This should work as a playlist, so I'm filing it away as one. Oh, and I'm going to futz with the order to better accomodate the new direction a one-disc White Album would have.
What my version gets right is parity-- John and Paul get 6 songs each, George gets 2 songs, and we leave in Ringo's contribution out of kindness, which we can do because we've selected two songs that are only about a minute and a half long each. I think there's also a good variety of moods here, with John and Paul and George each getting a straight-up ballad-- well, Paul gets two, but that's Paul. But there's lots of rocking stuff here too.
In fact, the songs that I wanted to include but had to leave out were mostly left out to make room for the various moods I wanted this to include. I want "Savoy Truffle" to be in here somewhere, but "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" seems somehow indispensable, and then I want George's second song to be very different-- so it's "Long, Long, Long." (Besides, I love that song more than is probably healthy.) I have similar problems with "Yer Blues" and "Birthday." And then I find myself leaving out "Revolution 1" just because, you know, at least there's the "Revolution" single... And then, of course, I just want to put in some songs because I heart them, like "Bungalow Bill" and "Cry Baby Cry." You'll note that I also left out songs that might be considered big ones (ahem, "Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da") but which I have always considered inferior. One can't help but bring one's own prejudices into this thing.
So maybe this whole game is flawed. But still, have I done anything right here? Is this what you guys think about while you're supposed to be working? Or am I just mildly mentally ill?
Well, you're in luck, because the whole catalog is going to be released again, this time on vinyl.
MOJO had the story on its website yesterday. And, you know, I like records a lot. But even I might be too exhausted at this point to lay out more money. I swear, though, if they package Let It Be with a reprint of the original photobook, I might yet relent....
Perhaps you've been asking yourself, "Should I buy the recently released digital remastered Beatles box set in mono?" Well, I'm of the opinion that most people probably should, although you personally might not really need to. It kind of depends on how much of a geek you are. But, wait a minute, you're here reading a Beatles blog, aren't you? So, likely yes. But just in case, I've compiled a very unscientific list of some things I find interesting about the mono recordings-- if any of these features are important to you, by all means spend your money. And yes, I'm like two months late to the party. Sorry. It's given me a lot of time to listen, though.
If you're wondering why anyone's considering buying anything in mono at all, it's because the mono releases tended to be the Beatle-sanctioned releases. In the early '60s, stereo was expensive and nichey and more common among older audiophiles, whereas teenagers would just have been blasting their music from radios and cheapie turntables. Although I'm pretty sure all the Beatles albums had stereo counterparts, the stereo mixes were overseen by engineers and interns and stuff after the band members had knocked off to go, I don't know, bang groupies or whatever. When stereo became a bigger deal in the decades to follow, cobbled stereo versions of Beatles music ended up being the dominant versions available. Hearing the songs in original mono, the thinking goes, is to hear them as the Beatles heard them, as they conceived of them sounding. There is an element of greater purity to these tracks, we are told, since they have not been defiled by technologies that our lads simply didn't contemplate. It's kind of like when people get snooty about playing Bach on a harpsichord versus a piano, the former seemingly more pure than the latter. But the difference is more subtle in the Beatles' mono releases than is the difference in timbre between a harpsichord and a piano. That's why I'm not sure everyone really needs to buy them, no matter how tempting. In fact, some of the time I think it's the digital remastering of the tracks more than the mono thing that makes them sound so good, and so clean. And since I haven't listened to the new stereo releases yet (for financial reasons, I am getting them as a Christmas gift), I can't compare just now.
Anyway, that's a long introduction to my long list. Here we go. By the way, please share your own observations in the comments! Or disagree vehemently with mine.
1. The most agreed-upon bit of info that I've read elsewhere is that you're largely struck by how much clearer the bass and percussion are. This is true, pretty much across the board. In case you've somehow remained ignorant of Paul's and Ringo's awesomeness, prepare to be ignorant no more.
2. Rubber Soul is Ringo's masterpiece. You guys. Seriously. On the mono tracks, you can hear every ingenious fill, every instance of freaking epic tambourine-ing, every time the band threatens to lost itself a little bit and Ringo heroically pulls them back. I don't think he was ever better. (Corollary: "You Won't See Me" is now firmly in the running for my favorite song on Rubber Soul, thanks entirely to the wizard at the drums. My post on this one back in May acknowledged Ringo's awesomeness, but trust me that it's heightened hugely in mono.)
3. The Beatles' messy singing is sometimes messier than previously known. This is truer on the early tracks that were recorded in more of a hurry, the band needing run off on their next tour or wherever, but the remastering tends to expose the adorable lack of polish on John and Paul's shared vocals. They don't cut off together, and more frequently than you might have noticed, they're not always in tune with each other. We already knew this. But it's even cuter in mono. (Corollary: "If I Fell" is a major exception. That singing is as flawless as can be, such that even the remastering reveals no issues. In mono, that song is just as smooooooth as you can imagine. Sigh!)
4. There are some Beatles covers that are less beloved by others, but I think virtually all of them are improved in mono. I don't know why it's the covers more so, and I've been trying to put my finger on it without real success. Considering that some of my picks for Most Improved have vocals by George, though, maybe it has something to do with the way the vocal sounds more stagey in mono, more of-a-piece with the band (more on this a few items down)-- which makes George's sometimes-weaker vocal that much more energized. Anyway, I'm feeling more love for "Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby" and "Devil in Her Heart" than I have in ages, to say nothing of "Words of Love," which I had no idea was so fun to listen to.
5. Another song that's dramatically improved for me in mono is "She's Leaving Home," which for some reason was sped up about a semitone (I think?) on the mono version from what's on the old stereo version. Not only does this make the pace a tad brisker and save the song from the grossest levels of self-indulgence, it makes Paul's already-high vocal on this song that much higher-- which for some reason sounds kind of artificial to me. In a good way. Now when I hear it, I hear Paul singing alone, on a darkened stage, a single spotlight upon him as he relates his sad tale. It's THEATRE now, is what I mean, and although this is one of those songs I've never quite understood the intense love for, I think in mono I finally really get it.
6. Are you one of those fans who hates George's little Indian forays? I'm talking about the straight-up Indian stuff here: "Love You To," "Within You Without You," and "The Inner Light." Well, you might hate them less in mono. I never hated them in the first place, but they are somehow easier to listen to in the mono set: the drones buzz less and sound more like active musical participants in what's going (albeit while droning), and you find yourself appreciating the disciplined technique, the perfectly meandering melodic parts the other instruments play. Also, it sounds like George is chant-singing inside your brain, which is kind of neat.
7. Speaking of a Beatle singing inside your brain, this is a weird effect that is sometimes cool, and is sometimes less cool. When you listen to mono recordings with headphones, the music feels like it's coming from the center of your skull, which can be odd and somehow unintimate. (At least it's not an oompa band in your brain, though.) There are some songs that I have always loved because it feels like John is whispering very sweet, very dirty nothings into my ear, but in mono he's moved further away into the more unsexy venue of my brain. (I was just listening to "All I've Got to Do" today, which is a really striking example of this phenomenon.) Worse, his voice obviously isn't so separated as in stereo-- there's more of a wash-of-band feel to the sound, so sometimes it sounds like John is singing on stage to an audience of fans rather than just to me. Which makes me sad.
8. However, sometimes John singing inside your brain is the best effect you could possibly wish for. "I Am the Walrus" is one of the greatest mono tracks for me, at least partially because there's something about John's vocal that's much more terrifying here. Maybe it's because in mono his voice doesn't separate from the instrumental texture, so it seems that much more inhuman. Also great is that prominent percussion we talked about. There's more drive to this song than I've heard before, which somehow makes you hear how tightly held together the whole song is even as it sounds like it's devolving into anarchy. But no. John and the band have you completely in their depraved, depraved power. (Shiver.)
9. If I may make a gigantic generalization: the most impressive mono songs are the songs in which the most stuff is going on. I think this might be more a feature of the digital remastering than the mono, but still and all I'm finding it to be true. However, interestingly, the clarity of all that's going on leaves the songs a little more vulnerable to criticism of intent. That is my pretentious way of noting that, say, "It's All Too Much" proves to be a little too much indeed-- you can hear all the psychedelic instrumentation clearly, but somehow that makes you more unsure of what it's all for. (And that's a song I really like.) Whereas in "Strawberry Fields Forever," say, you're struck for perhaps the first time by the discipline of the arrangement, the structural integrity beneath that deep lazy futzed-with John vocal and all the rest. (Corollary: I had this revelation just tonight. That part in "Strawberry Fields"? In the third verse? Where the strings are playing triplets? I just realized that that is, like, the most important part of the whole song. More on this from me later, maybe. I might just have to mull it over.)
10. But here's an exception that proves the rule. It's possible-- possible, I tell you-- that A Hard Day's Nightis actually the best album the Beatles ever released. I swear. There is more energy in that album that most bands ever muster in their entire careers. Listen to it in mono and then come back and talk to me about this, so we can stare starry-eyed at each other and know exactly what we're thinking.
Well, there we are-- by my count (and it would be hugely embarrassing at this point if I've counted wrong) I've listened to every legally available Beatles song, one by one, since January 1. And hopefully you've listened along with me. If you've missed something, go back and give it a whirl! There's not a song here that's not worth your time. (Except for, arguably, well... you know.)
When I decided to start this project and also start this blog-- which I think I came up with on December 30, 2008, while drunk-- I had no idea it would turn out to be such a great year to be a Beatles fan. But so far in 2009 the various announcements have blown me over, one by one: Beatles Rock Band, Beatles stereo remasters, Beatles MONO remasters, Paul McCartney playing Boston (and, you know, everywhere else), Paul McCartney releasing what I swear is his best album in years, and so on and so forth. I feel like I've been able to share the excitement here with people who care as much as I do, though I obviously still haven't even touched on a lot of these gigantic events. (Look for long-winded posts on those sometime soon, as God is my witness.) But ultimately, the songs are what it's all about, and mostly I've just been listening.
And it's great that it's been a terrific Beatley year, because, honestly? It's been kind of a shitty year for me otherwise. Eh, it's not over yet, and it's looking up, what with me starting a brand new job bright and early tomorrow morning-- it's difficult to communicate exactly how excited I am about this. I hope you guys have all had a better year, though, and if you've been reading, then I hope the posts were fun for you.
Because they've been fun for me to write. The blog has, as I'd hoped, been a beautiful little thing I could keep up in dark times. Even when I halfassed it, the love was there. I feel like I've made friends with frequent commenters and struck up acquaintances with everyone who's reading and not commenting. (I know you're out there. Google tells me so.) Now that we've gone through all the songs, I'm going to continue to blog on Beatley topics and probably (inevitably) a little more on other stuff too-- there's a LOT to blog about, and I'm really thankful to everyone who's given me ideas for topics, many of which I'll be using. The blog is not over. No way. I'm addicted now.
But before we head in that direction, would anyone mind if I, like, took a few days off? I mean, seriously. I think I am more shocked than anyone (except perhaps my husband) that I actually kept up a daily blog for this long, and although it's been great, it's also been a bit draining. It's actually embarrassing how long it sometimes takes me to write even the lamest of posts, and I would like to put a little bit of that time back into my life for, I don't know, say, sleeping-- just for a few days. Anyone who's come to know me at all knows that I can't shut up for too long, and there's no doubt that, as the song says, I'll be back.
Thanks so much for reading so far and caring, for some unfathomable reason, about what one random Beatles fan among millions thinks about things. Keep watching for more. I'm definitely here, listening, over and over and over again-- dancing, sighing, singing along, and writing stuff.
The subtitle of this blog, which insinuates that there's a Beatles song for every day of the year, is kind of a lie, because this is it. "A Day in the Life" is the last Beatles song in the catalog for us to listen to. Because if there's an even better ending to this project than a song called "The End" it's an almost-minute-long E major chord. Right? Right. Please sit back for a few minutes and allow this song to blow your mind out one more time.
There's a lot-- a lot-- that's been written about "A Day in the Life," which is not only a complicated track with lots for a critic or critical wannabe to pontificate upon-- the lyrics, the arrangement, the production, the John-vs.-Paul analysis, the drugs, the counterculture, yada yada-- but also generally acknowledged to be the Beatles' best song anyway, making and topping all kinds of lists of such things. It's enough to make a fangirl wonder what she can possibly add. What I can start by adding is that I still remember how I felt the first time I heard this, playing my Sgt. Pepper cassette tape -- one of the few Beatles cassettes that retained the original song order, thank God-- can you imagine "A Day in the Life" being in the middle of the track listing, followed by, say, "Getting Better" or something? But, okay, so I remember how I felt when I first heard this, and I think it's best described as abject terror. I think I was 13 or something, sitting on my bedroom floor and hugging my knees as the famous E major chord receded into the distance, bug-eyed with something that I'd never quite felt before. This was not where I'd expected an album that began with such joyful showmanship to go. But even now I can still get that feeling, which I think is why "A Day in the Life" is one of my personal favorites (in addition to being one of the objectively greatest songs-- the two are different, after all). What can I say? I like being scared. Naysayers (of which there aren't too many) tend to see this song as kind of overblown and pretentious, but given that the song can move me in my gut just as primally as the likes of, I don't know, "Twist and Shout," it's working for me.
A quick recap of The Story of "A Day in the Life": John's song, which became the verses, was written based on a couple different newspaper stories. One was about a young millionaire (a Guinness heir, actually) and acquaintance of the Beatles who died in a car crash, and one was about bureaucrats counting potholes. If "A Day in the Life" is about disaffection and emotional alienation, it's a feeling that seems accidentally illustrated in the very fact that John wrote a song based on newspaper stories at all. His own lethargic habits around this time involved him lying around his gigantic suburban house surrounded by newspapers, which he'd read obsessively until he dozed off (he was apparently a champion sleeper), sleeping for hours only to wake up and get high again. Alienation was practically John's middle name. (See, every song that John writes is kind of about himself. It's like he can't help it.) Anyway, Paul's song, which became the bridge, is less of a song and more of a doodle, a jumpy little thing he wrote about taking the bus to school in the morning as a boy. It's slight on its own (maybe in an alternate universe Paul made it into an interesting whole song), but through the genius of the Lennon-McCartney partnership it was recognized as the perfect foil to the dreamy modernism in John's song.
(That reminds me of something: one of the many pretentious things I've read about "A Day in the Life" is that it's like The Wasteland in rock song form. I don't know whom to credit this assertion to, but I've read it here and there. What a pretentious and annoying thing to say, right? Especially because John's clearly a better writer than Eliot. Yeah, I said it. But I've never been able to get this idea out of my head, this sense that "A Day in the Life" is some kind of modernist touchstone in the same way that The Wasteland is, that they share a sleepwalking narrator and a dawning awareness of the inherent meaninglessness of all things. But if I continue down this path I'll be writing a book, and probably not a very good one. I just thought I'd bring that up, is all.)
Although there's been heaps written about the arrangement and orchestration, which I'll probably be honor-bound as a Beatles blogger to write about a little further down, I want to remind everyone that even with the amazing production effects led by George Martin, "A Day in the Life" is a really excellent song even reduced to its elements-- well-written and well-played by our boys. To say nothing of well-sung by John. Oh, John, how could I possibly make it through one of your songs without fawning over your singing? I love it when John gets all up into his high range-- it makes him sound like he's singing with a smile, though here it's a smile that's a little vacant. It carries notes of amusement and sarcasm, but it's mostly just hazy. Part of the scariness in the song is that John seems to be acting without very much feeling, or at least with feelings that as listeners we have a hard time understanding. The "I'd love to turn you on" refrain isn't so much a call to action or even a mournful statement about how unreachable humanity has become-- it's more of a shrug, something that John might get around to doing if he ever manages to get off the couch. "I'd love to turn you on. Eh, maybe after this cup of tea." It's a speaker as disaffected as everyone else is, only passingly aware that maybe something's a little off. And all of this is just expressed in his voice. For what it's worth, I don't think this is what John would say about this song, but it's what I hear-- more hopelessness that John might necessarily admit to.
But as fantastically as John sings this, most recently I've been almost unable to listen to anything other than Paul's bass. From the first verse on, he's doing one of those countermelodies that he does, in which the bass line is so charismatic that it seems to sing a duet with the vocal melody. The drums are really shining here, too, with Ringo playing fills that have this neat languorous complexity to them. And the fills only get more complicated as the song goes on, perhaps representing an increasing interior tension on the part of the speaker that John continues to not reveal in the vocal. (Or maybe I just so desperately want John's speaker to feel something that I'm making that up.) Too, though, check out the bass and drums in the middle section, the "woke up, fell out of bed" bit-- the repeating downward bass lines and tappa-tappa-tapping sound like something resembling slapstick. It's weird. It's like the instruments are laughing at something here, or at least highlighting the absurdity of this little morning routine, in light of, you know, the meaninglessness of all things. (One of the sadder things about "A Day in the Life," especially if one is going to call it the Best Beatles Song Ever, is that George is barely here. He's playing congas somewhere, I think, but that's it, there being no room for his rock guitar or sitar ramblings in this particular Lennon-McCartney vision.)
Now, as well as the Beatles themselves are playing here, it's what George Martin brought to this thing that have made it the unforgettable rock-and-roll poem that it is. It starts with just the production, so laden with echo-- particularly on John's vocal-- that we seem to be in a kind of unreal landscape. Echo effects are so key to what's going on here that even Mal Evans' guide vocal during what was to become the first orchestral crescendo was heavily echoed as he counted off. (Mal Evans, the Beatles' road manager, frequently did random things like this on their tracks. Since initially they weren't sure what music would bridge the gap between John's section and Paul's section, Mal just counted off twenty-four measures while John played a little piano-- it was later filled in with the orchestra, but since they never took out Mal, you can actually still hear him counting, and you can hear that he's echoing more and more if you listen really carefully. Nuts, right?)
The orchestral interludes, which I've variously read as either Paul's idea or George Martin's idea, involve a smallish orchestra (produced to sound larger) beginning at the bottom of their range as quietly as they can, then crescendoing gradually as they climb a chromatic scale, up and up and up to the very top of their range-- or at least to the topmost pitch in an E major chord, which is where we land. Martin specifically told the players not to listen to the people sitting around them, to ascend up to the scale at their own pace and, rather than worry too much about articulating new pitches, to just kind of slide as they make their way up. The effect of this is where a lot of the horror in the song comes in-- the high chaos and high drama of this climb from the lowest to the highest point contrasts so nakedly with the apathy of John's lyric and shallowness of Paul's that the orchestral interludes end up being the emotional crux of the song. Without them, there's a hollowness to the song that's almost too much to bear. (You can get a taste for this on Anthology 2.)
Although I could go on forever, as so many have done before me, I think I'll just stop there, because it really is a song I'd rather feel (and fear) than analyze too much more. Sure, something this complicated will always beg analysis, but still and all, "A Day in the Life" ends up being so much more than the sum of its parts that it can't help but catapult itself into the realm of what people call genius, and there's only so much that more analyis can tell us about it. I'll say this much more: for a song about alienation, "A Day in the Life" rings with the ultimate Beatley communal spirit. It is the harmonious marriage of the wildly different aesthetics and skill sets of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Martin. That kind of thing doesn't happen often, not even in the a band like the Beatles-- it's a pretty special day in a pretty amazing life when it can all come together. And you know what else? The very existence of art this fantastic being made, and being so widely embraced and beloved by the masses, might even disprove any dark theories the song propounds about human uselessness. Where art this tremendous can exist, there's always going to be hope for us all.
"A Day in the Life," released in the U.K. side B track 6 of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, June 1, 1967; in the U.S. June 2, 1967.
Although it's not really, of course, not quite. Those paying attention will note that there's one more song to go after today-- and it ain't stupid "Her Majesty," either. But since we're near enough, and since Abbey Road has given me a taste for epilogues, today it's "The End."
So we get each Beatle in a solo moment here, which is very cool and very unique in the catalog. But this isn't the crazed improvisatory jamming that you hear in some of their contemporaries-- the solos unfold against a tight structure, such that it's clearly not just virtuosity for its own sake. You never have a doubt that this is all going somewhere purposeful. The solos are pieces of one larger musical statement. And as always with the Beatles, no one members stands out. It's the band playing together that blows your mind. (Which is why "Her Majesty," the little McCartney jerk-off that follows as an afterthought, basically diffuses everything.)
But I'm getting ahead of myself. The opening guitar stuff is practically a fanfare in guitar form, announcing that something profound is about to happen. When Paul comes in in his best Paul-McCartney-the-rock-star voice, it only amps everything up. And then there's Ringo, doing the drum solo that only he would offer up-- intensely and perfectly rhythmic, exciting yet unshowy, and tight as all hell. The story goes that Ringo didn't even want this solo (he still doesn't love to play solos to this day), and that there was a guitar playing alongside him originally, but to give him a solo along with everyone they mixed out the guitar and let Ringo shine alone. It's a tremendous solo, one that makes you hear how affecting drum music can be even when (especially when) the drums aren't being Keith-Mooned to death, but what's interesting is that Ringo has some even more kickass little moments throughout the rest of the song. Listen for the drums, and you'll be wowed by his ear for detail and his little flourishes of awesomeness. It just goes to show that Ringo's best with a band.
Then, the guitar solos begin with significantly less humility and more showiness than we heard from Ringo. Each of the guitar-playing Beatles takes two bars each and then hands off the line to the next guy-- so we get two bars of Paul, two of George, and two of John, in a pattern that they repeat three times. It's been acknowledged by lots of people, including John himself, that he is the weakest guitarist of the band, but based on this section alone I would argue that he's not so much weaker as he is different, less virtuosic-- a Ringo of the guitar, perhaps. Paul and George offer badass, melodic solo lines in the long tradition of guitar gods, just freaking all over the place and off-the-charts amazing-- especially George, who comes off as the best guitarist, as opposed to Paul, whose totally singable solo lines help him come off as, maybe, the best musician. Does that make sense? I think I hear that here, even though I might be imposing my own preconceptions on this. John, however, plays gritty, growly lines that end up grounding the whole thing, or something. And don't anyone tell me that John's syncopated drive that hurls us into the abrupt piano stuff isn't wicked awesome. But you can kind of hear that he's most adept as a rhythm guitarist, because his rhythmic sensibilities are just so terrific. Ultimately, the balance works totally well, and the Beatles end up carrying on a fascinating musical conversation-- one in which they really are saying goodbye to each other with affection that language couldn't have communicated, especially at this point in their career.
Doesn't mean Paul's not going to give the language a try, though. His piano chords interrupt John's guitar with percussive A minor chords that never let the rhythmic drive relax. And then Paul tries to put some of this stuff into a grandiose lyric, and I guess kind of succeeds. "And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make" is a good line, one of those that sounds simple but might belie a bit of sweat on Paul's part. No doubt he was putting the pressure on himself, trying to come up with, like, The Moral of the Story, or at least The Moral of the Beatles. Though I don't usually like morals, there are a couple musical events happening around the lyric that make me shed most of skepticism: for one thing, the entrance of strings on the second "love"-- particularly noticeable given our guitar/piano/drum context so far. And then, of course, the Beatles are singing together so warmly and so sweetly through this whole last section that a girl could almost die of awesome. And then there's the fact that at the same time the meter slows down into 3/4 on "equal to the love," we're being led with the utmost elegance (supported by Paul's descending bass line) from A minor into C major (its close relative), such that by the time the word "make" comes in on the C cadence it's like fireworks are going off. I don't know how else to describe it.
If you're going to choose to go out with a gigantic gesture, there's no better one than "The End," is there? That C chord just resonates in the air for ever, the loudest and most resonant and most important cadence you've ever heard (or such is the illusion, anyway). It would be corny in a Broadway/Hollywood kind of way if it hadn't all been written so smartly, and if George's soaring guitar solo wasn't the final commentary we hear. You gotta give it to Paul, and to the rest of the band for following his lead, too. I'm not sure any other band has ended their career more awesomely. Oh, Beatles, if this thing has to end, I'm glad that "The End" is the end you chose.
"The End," released in the U.K. side B track 10 of Abbey Road, September 26, 1969; in the U.S. October 1, 1969.
The official story on "Two of Us" is that Paul wrote it as an early love song to Linda Eastman. But if you're a fan, you absolutely can't help but hear it as a song about Paul and John together, as young friends and artists and collaborators, spending someone's hard earned pay. So let's all drink a toast to Lennon-McCartney, kids, and listen to "Two of Us," and hope that all of us have or will have a relationship quite as amazing as this one in our lives. You guys, I love this song, probably more than is reasonable. Excuse me while I swoon.
The album released as Let It Be was, of course, built from sessions of what was to be called the Get Back project, and maybe that's why the song sounds kind of retro. There's that slight Buddy Holly sound in the spare on-the-beat percussion, for instance, and more obviously, there's the Everly Brothers-esque singing-- it all sounds like a throwback to some of the first songs John and Paul played together. The singing in particular is more overtly Everly-esque than a lot of other two-part singing in the Beatles catalog. John and Paul sing in such unvarying thirds that the effect is the classic Everly effect, wherein it becomes hard to tell which line is supposed to be the melody-- you end up hearing the two pitches in each interval as one functional musical unit, each pitch becoming subsumed into the greater whole of that solid third. You might go so far as to say that the two voices become one, and that the whole idea of a unity made of two separate parts is maybe somehow kinda-sorta alluded to in the lyrics of "Two of Us" as well. Isn't that neat?
To further heighten the feeling of two parts uniting, John and Paul are both playing acoustic lead guitar here, eschewing any guitar-driven star quality. In fact, the most impressive guitar work here is done by George, who's playing a pleasantly elaborate bass line, though it doesn't sound very bassy as he's playing it on an electric guitar. He's actually, if I may say so, playing the bass in the manner of someone who's used to playing guitar solos-- it's downright soloistic. The effect in the verses is that Paul and John are strumming in a kind of friendly lockstep, while George on the bassline dances all around at their feet like an eager puppy or something. Does your head hurt yet with all the hammering of the metaphors I'm doing? Ringo, meanwhile, is playing in what might be the most unshowy way he ever has, except for the way that his simple fill holds our hand as we cross from the refrain into the bridge sections. Maybe he figures the rest of them have some stuff to work out.
But anyway, "Two of Us" is obviously not entirely a throwback kind of song-- in fact, there's a beautiful kind of non-symmetry to it that marks it as very Beatley. I'm talking mostly about the fact that the verses do some funky things with meter, and it's all the more delicious for being handled so smoothly that you practically don't even notice it. It's one of those situations in which the metrical shift makes the text sound a little more naturally spoken, so you hear the shift as very natural. In the first bits of the verses, the "two of us riding nowhere" parts are in 4/4, though even this is imperfect, with a little half-measure of two beats that sounds very natural thrown in the middle. But then the refrain slides seamlessly into 3/4, beginning on the word "home," and just as easily slides out of it during the instrumental breaks that come after. There's another big shift that's handled with equal grace when we go from the refrain into the bridge and suddenly go from G major into the parallel g minor. Although the effect is that the entire bridge sounds significantly darker than the verse, it feels totally right, just the way it feels right for the sun to sometimes go behind the clouds. It lends those more wistful lyrics-- "you and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead"-- the musical heft they deserve. And of course Paul's singing on his own here. He's a little more inside his own brain. But he doesn't need to say anything more about what the memories are-- John already knows exactly what he's talking about. That's what's so beautiful about this.
I guess most people wouldn't necessarily call "Two of Us" the best Beatles song ever, and I guess come to that I wouldn't either, but I still find it unspeakably poignant. It's Paul writing it that way, of course, just squeezing my gut the way that he's capable of doing with these sweet little melodies the gods apparently whisper into his ear as he sleeps. But it's also the poignancy of the words he's written. I don't want to take them apart too much-- the "burning matches, lifting latches" stuff sounds like half truth-half wordplay anyway and doesn't want to be analyzed much-- but the delight here is all so simple. "It is so fun," says the song, "just to hang out with you. We have so much fun together!" It's a very easy, very youthful sentiment, and it always makes me smile. I defy you not to be cheered up by "Two of Us."
In Let It Be, they show and early rehearsal in which they're playing this one like a rock song, which ends up not working at all. They were wise to scale it back and folksify it, no doubt. But the rehearsal is still a fantastic clip. John and Paul are having so much fun that you feel like you're watching something that's almost intimate. It's gorgeous. It somehow nails the feeling that's at the heart of this band for me. It makes my gut hurt.
"Two of Us," released in the U.K. side A track 1 of Let It Be, May 8, 1970; in the U.S. May 18, 1970.
For most of 2009, I listened to a Beatles song every day and blogged about it for some reason. All those song titles in the archives are what I thought on any particular day about some particular song. Even though I covered all the songs, I still like to talk about the Beatles, so here's where I do it. You should hang out here and talk about them too.
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