Once upon a time, in song vids
One more Beatles-related post, and then I'll shut up on the subject again for a while. But YouTube is a treasure dome with some amazing footage, both of the originals and cover versions. So, I present:
Let's start with the mop top phase. They look absurdly young and actually were just that, but these early cheerful tunes are still immensly hummable, and when I catch them on the radio, I sing or whistle along. So, for a start: I Wanna Hold Your Hand:
For some reason, perhaps Hamburg-related nostalgia, the Beatles did German versions of some of their early songs. Behold Komm Gib Mir Deine Hand (and might I say, boys, way better German pronounciation than many an actor in American tv shows supposed to play a German - one can tell they've actually been in the country):
(If you want to hear more, they also did Sie Liebt Dich, aka She Loves You.)
One of the early songs that was great for concerts and still gets covered by rock artists today was I Saw Her Standing There. Here's a live performance:
As this was mainly a McCartney song, he sung the lead while the Beatles were still together. However, there is also a version with John Lennon in the lead out there, which he sang at a concert with Elton John in Madison Square Garden, in the mid-Seventies.
(If you didn't understand the introduction, what John said was: Hi. I'd like to thank Elton and the boys for having me on tonight. We tried to think of a number to finish off with, so's I could get out of here and be sick. And we thought we'd do a number of an old estranged finacé of mine called Paul. This is one I never sang. It's an old Beatle number and we just about know it.... )
The opening sequence of A Hard Day's Night shot by Richard Lester, capturing Beatlemania like nothing else:
We now move on to the phase where they went from being perceived as "well, the teens like that kind of thing" to "hang on, could it be these songs are classics in the making?" The first song of the Beatles which used "classical" instruments was, of course, Yesterday. Which is according to Guinness the most covered song in the world, and that started pretty much as soon as it was released; everyone who was anyone through the generations, from Elvis to Sinatra to Ray Charles, did a version. It's a song full of weariness and nostalgia suitable for older singers and written by a very young one. To this day, Paul McCartney maintains he simply woke up with the melody in his head, though it took a while to come up with suitable lyrics (the working title was Scrambled Eggs). So, Yesterday. First as performed by Paul back then, live:
And now a great mash-up of the most famous cover versions, by: marvin gaye, shirley bassey, frank sinatra, andy williams, nana moskouri, ray charles, bob dylan, joan baez, elvis presley, marianne faithfull, tom jones, willie nelson, eva cassidy, boyz 2 men, the supremes, en vogue & placido domingo:
If you have the time, check out Marianne Faithfull's cover as well, and a very recent live version sung by Paul McCartney. John Lennon had a bit of a Yesterday complex, not least because it was one of the few Lennon/McCartney songs he had absolutely nothing to do with. Usually, the way their partnership worked was that while in most cases one or the other was the main author of the song instead of a straightforward 50/50 work separation, the other person contributed feedback (criticism, encouragment, whatever was needed) in addition to musical and textual polishing). Not with this song, though, and as it was undeniably the most popular, which if part of your relationship is an ongoing competition has to sting a little. Came the big breakup and ensuing early 70s bitterness, this resulted in one of the most bitchy songs ever written, How do you sleep? , with its line "the onlyl thing you ever did was Yesterday".
Back to the Beatles heyday. Their songs were getting more and more sophisticated, but the live performances were more and more drowned out all the screaming from the fans. Here is Help, with its deceptively cheerful tune and actually very depressed lyrics, which John later referred to as very autobiographical:
Norwegian Wood was another song in the Lennonian confessional vein:
Meanwhile, Paul McCartney went into a surrealist direction with Eleanor Rigby, and this vid provides very fitting imagery for that:
There were still songs that had no more than your usual rock band instrumentation, but even so, the noise level at live concerts made them less and less understandable. Check out Paperback Writer as sung in Japan:
(And compare the record version.) Another case in point, Nowhere Man live in Munich in their last year of touring:
At which point they stopped touring and became a studio only band. Which resulted in the first "concept" album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and the single Strawberry Fields/ Penny Lane, which is a great illustration of McCartney and Lennon tackling a similar theme - childhood memories from Liverpool - in completely different ways. Penny Lane is descriptive and full of snap shots, evoking a great sense of place, Strawberry Fields is introspective as hell. There several vid versions available on YouTube, including what follows.
For Penny Lane, it's an excerpt from a Beatles cartoon (the actual song starts at 1.52), which fits:
The Strawberry Fields Forever promo has some fame as the first music vid in the modern sense, and they went for the full psychedelic atmosphere here:
Strawberry Fields
And then there is that song with the initials that caused trouble, but which was inspired by a school drawing of Julian Lennon's. (Which still exists. Here it is.) Lucy in the Sky with Diamons:
The classic pattern for Beatles albums was "all songs by Lennon/McCartney, one song for Ringo, one by George". This did not sit too well with George as he matured as a song writer, but Ringo who in the biography comes across as the most even-tempered of the lot was fine with it. The songs John and Paul wrote for him tended to be upbeat, not big in range but fun to sing. For the Sgt Pepper Album, this was With a little help from my friends, which later was covered more famously by Joe Cocker. However, I'm not going to present the Cocker version; instead, here's one from recent years, Ringo and Paul singing the song together for a charity concert at Radio City:
On to Leonard Bernstein's favourite Beatles song, aka the one that made him declare Lennon & McCartney were "the best song writers since Schubert", She's Leaving Home:
Rock Band
And here's a cover version by Kate Bush:
The Sgt. Pepper album closes with A Day in the Life:
Check out I the instrumental cover version by Jeff Beck as well. And thus ends the summer of love and the period of greatest harmony and collaboration. We're now entering in the era where they started to fall apart, which nonetheless produced enduring musical classics. Let's start with Revolution (a song which actually discourages, not encourages same, which is presumably why John Lennon couldn't make up his mind about the "in"/"out" line:
Also from the White Album is Blackbird, here in a version sung in the 70s by Paul McCartney with Wings:
And now it's time for the neglected George Harrison, writing as classic a song as the two juggernauts. While my guitar gently weeps, from a 1971 live performance:
Back in the USSR was a Beach Boys parody but even without that reference is a fun song. (You should see some of the YouTube comments arguing about whether or not the Beatles hate America, though.) Just why it's matched to images from the Beatlemania days in the early 60s, I don't know, but here it is:
Back to the ballads. One by John Lennon, which manages to be a love song for his mother and Yoko Ono at the same time. ("Julia" was his mother's name; "ocean child" is the translation of Yoko's name.):
Sean Lennon did a cover version for Julia:
Meanwhile, Paul McCartney wasn't inclined to be autobiographical about his mother just yet (though that was to come), and still in the parody vain, this time more aiming at Elvis, wrote Lady Madonna:
I already linked various Hey Jude versions yesterday, but found one where they're rehearsing, complete with George Martin chatting with George Harrison and admonishing Paul to do it again, here.
Magical Mystery Tour, as a film, was the first genuine Beatles flop, but the songs were beloved as ever. Here's Shirley Bassey covering The Fool on the Hill:
And we're entering the final phase, aka the one where they barely talked to each other. George and Ringo were both not in the studio for various reasons when The Ballad of John and Yoko was recorded (14th April 1969), but Paul was, which is why this last number one single by the Beatles had only two of them playing (John Lennon on rhythm guitar, lead guitar and percussion, Paul McCartney on drums, piano, bass guitar, maracas and providing harmonics to John's lead voice). Christ, you know it ain't easy, indeed. I do love the self-aware irony here, plus it contains the best summing up of the courtship of John Lennon and Yoko Ono we're likely to get:
The last two albums were Let it Be and Abbey Road, recorded and released in reverse order. Let it Be started as Get Back (which in itself tells you something), one of Paul McCartney's increasingly desperate attempts to get the group back together, in this case, since the idea of going on tour again anonymously was immediately veto'd by the rest, via a documentary of them recording their new album. The resulting film is not easy to watch as all the tension is very palpable (there is a reason it wasn't released until the group was over), but there are occasional breaks in the chill. Quoth Jonathan Gould, one of the latest Beatle biographers: The first two songs Paul introduced, 'I've Got a Feeling' and 'Two of Us,' were both based on his sharing all or part of the lead singing with John -- something that, with the exception of 'Birthday,' they hadn't done since 1967. 'I've Got a Feeling' was actually a joint composition, in the manner of 'A Day in the Life,' with Paul's verses joined to a release that John had written independently. 'Two of Us' had the two of them singing in parallel harmony thoughout the verses, and though Paul would later maintain that he wrote the song about his new romance with Linda, it's hard to see how the line "You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead" could refer to anyone but John and Paul. In the weeks ahead, the Beatles would perform dozens of variations on 'Two of Us,' which would come to serve as a musical barometer of the emotional climate in the group, expressed in angry versions, tender versions, jokey versions, and impassioned versions of the tune.
Here's Two of Us in the finished version:
And here's a quite different version during rehearsal:
While this rehearsal shows them in a good mood and interacting with each other, by contrast the recording of the song that ended up as the title, Let it be, shows John Lennon looking on hostile and bored while Paul McCartney sings. (This, btw, would be the other Beatles song referencing the song writer's mother, in this case Mary McCartney, who died only a few months before Julia Lennon did.)
(Let it be became one popular ballad, of course; have an Allison Crowe cover.)
The song originally meant to be the title, Get Back, ended up concluding both album and film in a live version performed on the rooftop of the Apple building. John Lennon later said that the "get back to where you once belonged" line was passively-aggressively aimed at him and Yoko by Paul, which isn't impossible, but in this particular performance he's not the target:
My absolutely favourite visuals for any of the Abbey Road songs are all
luminosity's magnificent Buffy the Vampire opus magnum, Scooby Road, and I can't think of any of the songs now differently. However, here are two non-Luminosity versions. First, of Something by George Harrison, which for my money is actually the best song on the album, which must have been satisfying for George. Here he's singing it in 1971 live:
Because, a Lennon composition, showcases the harmony of their voices which is why it's the last Beatles song here:
But not the last song. After John Lennon's death, Paul McCartney wrote Here Today about him, which - pace George Harrison with All Those Years Ago! - is not only my favourite tribute but a way to say goodbye that never fails to touch and move me:
Let's start with the mop top phase. They look absurdly young and actually were just that, but these early cheerful tunes are still immensly hummable, and when I catch them on the radio, I sing or whistle along. So, for a start: I Wanna Hold Your Hand:
Click to viewFor some reason, perhaps Hamburg-related nostalgia, the Beatles did German versions of some of their early songs. Behold Komm Gib Mir Deine Hand (and might I say, boys, way better German pronounciation than many an actor in American tv shows supposed to play a German - one can tell they've actually been in the country):
(If you want to hear more, they also did Sie Liebt Dich, aka She Loves You.)
One of the early songs that was great for concerts and still gets covered by rock artists today was I Saw Her Standing There. Here's a live performance:
As this was mainly a McCartney song, he sung the lead while the Beatles were still together. However, there is also a version with John Lennon in the lead out there, which he sang at a concert with Elton John in Madison Square Garden, in the mid-Seventies.
(If you didn't understand the introduction, what John said was: Hi. I'd like to thank Elton and the boys for having me on tonight. We tried to think of a number to finish off with, so's I could get out of here and be sick. And we thought we'd do a number of an old estranged finacé of mine called Paul. This is one I never sang. It's an old Beatle number and we just about know it.... )
The opening sequence of A Hard Day's Night shot by Richard Lester, capturing Beatlemania like nothing else:
We now move on to the phase where they went from being perceived as "well, the teens like that kind of thing" to "hang on, could it be these songs are classics in the making?" The first song of the Beatles which used "classical" instruments was, of course, Yesterday. Which is according to Guinness the most covered song in the world, and that started pretty much as soon as it was released; everyone who was anyone through the generations, from Elvis to Sinatra to Ray Charles, did a version. It's a song full of weariness and nostalgia suitable for older singers and written by a very young one. To this day, Paul McCartney maintains he simply woke up with the melody in his head, though it took a while to come up with suitable lyrics (the working title was Scrambled Eggs). So, Yesterday. First as performed by Paul back then, live:
And now a great mash-up of the most famous cover versions, by: marvin gaye, shirley bassey, frank sinatra, andy williams, nana moskouri, ray charles, bob dylan, joan baez, elvis presley, marianne faithfull, tom jones, willie nelson, eva cassidy, boyz 2 men, the supremes, en vogue & placido domingo:
If you have the time, check out Marianne Faithfull's cover as well, and a very recent live version sung by Paul McCartney. John Lennon had a bit of a Yesterday complex, not least because it was one of the few Lennon/McCartney songs he had absolutely nothing to do with. Usually, the way their partnership worked was that while in most cases one or the other was the main author of the song instead of a straightforward 50/50 work separation, the other person contributed feedback (criticism, encouragment, whatever was needed) in addition to musical and textual polishing). Not with this song, though, and as it was undeniably the most popular, which if part of your relationship is an ongoing competition has to sting a little. Came the big breakup and ensuing early 70s bitterness, this resulted in one of the most bitchy songs ever written, How do you sleep? , with its line "the onlyl thing you ever did was Yesterday".
Back to the Beatles heyday. Their songs were getting more and more sophisticated, but the live performances were more and more drowned out all the screaming from the fans. Here is Help, with its deceptively cheerful tune and actually very depressed lyrics, which John later referred to as very autobiographical:
Norwegian Wood was another song in the Lennonian confessional vein:
Meanwhile, Paul McCartney went into a surrealist direction with Eleanor Rigby, and this vid provides very fitting imagery for that:
There were still songs that had no more than your usual rock band instrumentation, but even so, the noise level at live concerts made them less and less understandable. Check out Paperback Writer as sung in Japan:
(And compare the record version.) Another case in point, Nowhere Man live in Munich in their last year of touring:
At which point they stopped touring and became a studio only band. Which resulted in the first "concept" album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and the single Strawberry Fields/ Penny Lane, which is a great illustration of McCartney and Lennon tackling a similar theme - childhood memories from Liverpool - in completely different ways. Penny Lane is descriptive and full of snap shots, evoking a great sense of place, Strawberry Fields is introspective as hell. There several vid versions available on YouTube, including what follows.
For Penny Lane, it's an excerpt from a Beatles cartoon (the actual song starts at 1.52), which fits:
The Strawberry Fields Forever promo has some fame as the first music vid in the modern sense, and they went for the full psychedelic atmosphere here:
Strawberry Fields
And then there is that song with the initials that caused trouble, but which was inspired by a school drawing of Julian Lennon's. (Which still exists. Here it is.) Lucy in the Sky with Diamons:
The classic pattern for Beatles albums was "all songs by Lennon/McCartney, one song for Ringo, one by George". This did not sit too well with George as he matured as a song writer, but Ringo who in the biography comes across as the most even-tempered of the lot was fine with it. The songs John and Paul wrote for him tended to be upbeat, not big in range but fun to sing. For the Sgt Pepper Album, this was With a little help from my friends, which later was covered more famously by Joe Cocker. However, I'm not going to present the Cocker version; instead, here's one from recent years, Ringo and Paul singing the song together for a charity concert at Radio City:
On to Leonard Bernstein's favourite Beatles song, aka the one that made him declare Lennon & McCartney were "the best song writers since Schubert", She's Leaving Home:
Rock Band
And here's a cover version by Kate Bush:
The Sgt. Pepper album closes with A Day in the Life:
Check out I the instrumental cover version by Jeff Beck as well. And thus ends the summer of love and the period of greatest harmony and collaboration. We're now entering in the era where they started to fall apart, which nonetheless produced enduring musical classics. Let's start with Revolution (a song which actually discourages, not encourages same, which is presumably why John Lennon couldn't make up his mind about the "in"/"out" line:
Also from the White Album is Blackbird, here in a version sung in the 70s by Paul McCartney with Wings:
And now it's time for the neglected George Harrison, writing as classic a song as the two juggernauts. While my guitar gently weeps, from a 1971 live performance:
Back in the USSR was a Beach Boys parody but even without that reference is a fun song. (You should see some of the YouTube comments arguing about whether or not the Beatles hate America, though.) Just why it's matched to images from the Beatlemania days in the early 60s, I don't know, but here it is:
Back to the ballads. One by John Lennon, which manages to be a love song for his mother and Yoko Ono at the same time. ("Julia" was his mother's name; "ocean child" is the translation of Yoko's name.):
Sean Lennon did a cover version for Julia:
Meanwhile, Paul McCartney wasn't inclined to be autobiographical about his mother just yet (though that was to come), and still in the parody vain, this time more aiming at Elvis, wrote Lady Madonna:
I already linked various Hey Jude versions yesterday, but found one where they're rehearsing, complete with George Martin chatting with George Harrison and admonishing Paul to do it again, here.
Magical Mystery Tour, as a film, was the first genuine Beatles flop, but the songs were beloved as ever. Here's Shirley Bassey covering The Fool on the Hill:
And we're entering the final phase, aka the one where they barely talked to each other. George and Ringo were both not in the studio for various reasons when The Ballad of John and Yoko was recorded (14th April 1969), but Paul was, which is why this last number one single by the Beatles had only two of them playing (John Lennon on rhythm guitar, lead guitar and percussion, Paul McCartney on drums, piano, bass guitar, maracas and providing harmonics to John's lead voice). Christ, you know it ain't easy, indeed. I do love the self-aware irony here, plus it contains the best summing up of the courtship of John Lennon and Yoko Ono we're likely to get:
The last two albums were Let it Be and Abbey Road, recorded and released in reverse order. Let it Be started as Get Back (which in itself tells you something), one of Paul McCartney's increasingly desperate attempts to get the group back together, in this case, since the idea of going on tour again anonymously was immediately veto'd by the rest, via a documentary of them recording their new album. The resulting film is not easy to watch as all the tension is very palpable (there is a reason it wasn't released until the group was over), but there are occasional breaks in the chill. Quoth Jonathan Gould, one of the latest Beatle biographers: The first two songs Paul introduced, 'I've Got a Feeling' and 'Two of Us,' were both based on his sharing all or part of the lead singing with John -- something that, with the exception of 'Birthday,' they hadn't done since 1967. 'I've Got a Feeling' was actually a joint composition, in the manner of 'A Day in the Life,' with Paul's verses joined to a release that John had written independently. 'Two of Us' had the two of them singing in parallel harmony thoughout the verses, and though Paul would later maintain that he wrote the song about his new romance with Linda, it's hard to see how the line "You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead" could refer to anyone but John and Paul. In the weeks ahead, the Beatles would perform dozens of variations on 'Two of Us,' which would come to serve as a musical barometer of the emotional climate in the group, expressed in angry versions, tender versions, jokey versions, and impassioned versions of the tune.
Here's Two of Us in the finished version:
And here's a quite different version during rehearsal:
While this rehearsal shows them in a good mood and interacting with each other, by contrast the recording of the song that ended up as the title, Let it be, shows John Lennon looking on hostile and bored while Paul McCartney sings. (This, btw, would be the other Beatles song referencing the song writer's mother, in this case Mary McCartney, who died only a few months before Julia Lennon did.)
(Let it be became one popular ballad, of course; have an Allison Crowe cover.)
The song originally meant to be the title, Get Back, ended up concluding both album and film in a live version performed on the rooftop of the Apple building. John Lennon later said that the "get back to where you once belonged" line was passively-aggressively aimed at him and Yoko by Paul, which isn't impossible, but in this particular performance he's not the target:
My absolutely favourite visuals for any of the Abbey Road songs are all
luminosity's magnificent Buffy the Vampire opus magnum, Scooby Road, and I can't think of any of the songs now differently. However, here are two non-Luminosity versions. First, of Something by George Harrison, which for my money is actually the best song on the album, which must have been satisfying for George. Here he's singing it in 1971 live:
Because, a Lennon composition, showcases the harmony of their voices which is why it's the last Beatles song here:
But not the last song. After John Lennon's death, Paul McCartney wrote Here Today about him, which - pace George Harrison with All Those Years Ago! - is not only my favourite tribute but a way to say goodbye that never fails to touch and move me: