The Beatles, The #1 Artist of the Rock Era, Part Three

 

(Continued from Part Two)

The Beatles toured Europe, Australia, New Zealand and China in the summer before a full tour of the United States for the first time.  When confronted with the news that a show in Jacksonville, Florida would be segregated, the Beatles did what any sane group of people would do.  They refused to perform.  As Lennon said, "We never play to segregated audiences and we aren't going to start now."   

In July of 1964, the Beatles released the album Something New, which peaked at #2 in both the U.S. and Canada and has gone Double Platinum.

 

This song was first recorded as "Match Box Blues" by Blind Lemon Jefferson in 1927.  Several Blues musicians reworked the song, and the Beatles version is influenced by the Carl Perkins version.

Pete Best used to sing lead on theis song until he was fired.  Lennon took over on lead in performances in Hamburg, but Ringo sang lead on the recorded version.  Perkins was on hand for the recording session of "Matchbox".

 

"Slow Down" was originally written and recorded by R&B artist Larry Williams.  Lennon always liked the song and the Beatles performed it several times in Hamburg.  The group recorded it during the sessions for A Hard Day's Night and included it on the flip side of "Matchbox".  

Lennon overdubbed his lead vocals and Martin added a pounding piano part to it.  Lennon's screaming vocals reflect the days in Hamburg when the Beatles turned up their showmanship to attract passersby into the Indra and Kaiserkeller, where they performed.  Lennon essentially recreated that Hamburg environment on the recording.

While the Beatles were playing an 18-day residency at the Olympia Theatre in Paris, the group had a piano moved into the George V Hotel so they could start writing songs for the upcoming movie.  The group wrote "Can't Buy Me Love", "You Can't Do That", "If I Fell", "And I Love Her" and "I'll Be Back" during that stretch.

During their first trip to the United States in February, feeling they needed some more upbeat songs, the group wrote "I Should Have Known Better", "I'm Happy Just To Dance With You" and "Tell Me Why".  Here is the latter song.

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After completing filming of A Hard Day's Night on April 24, Epstein made sure the members had a month off to themselves.  Paul and Jane Asher joined Ringo and girlfriend Maureen in the Virgin Islands.  The two couples enjoyed the peace and quiet and sailed in a yacht, but Paul knew just the same that when they got back, the Beatles would need to record some songs for side two of the album.  

The ever-conscious Paul wrote "Things We Said Today" while on the trip:

                   I remember writing "Things We Said

                   Today" in one of the cabins below deck

                   one afternoon on my acoustic guitar.  I

                   got away from the main party but it 

                   was a bit queasy downstairs; you

                   could smell the oil and the boat was

                   rocking a bit and I'm not the best

                   sailor in the world, so I wrote a little

                   bit of it downstairs and then the rest of

                   it on the back deck where you couldn't

                   smell the engine.  I don't know why the

                   engine was on, I suppose we were

                   moving.

Up to this point, the Beatles were doing what many of the other acts at the time were doing (churning out hit records), only they were doing it much better than anyone had ever done it to this point.  Beginning with the 1965 album Beatles for Sale, the songwriting of Lennon and McCartney began to mature, and the group not only blossomed but changed music forever.  That is the good news.

The bad news is that Lennon and Harrison began to regularly use LSD.  McCartney too experimented with it beginning in 1966. 

Here is one of countless examples of the innovations this group made that we take for granted today.  This song begins with a single, percussive feedback note produced by McCartney plucking the A string on his bass, and Lennon's guitar, which was standing up against Paul's bass amp, picking up feedback.  It was the first use of feedback on a Rock & Roll record.  McCartney talked about what it was like to be there:

              John had a semi-acoustic Gibson guitar.  It

              had a pickup on it so it could be amplified...

              We were just about to walk away to listen to

              a take when John leaned his guitar against

              the amp.  I can still see him doing it...it went

              "Nnnnnnwahhhh!".  And we went, "What's

              that?  Voodoo!"  "No, it's feedback."  "Wow,

              it's a great sound!"  George Martin was 

              there so we said, "Can we have that on the

              record?"  "Well, I suppose we could, we 

              could edit it on the front."  It was a found

              object, an accident caused by leaning the

              guitar against the amp.

Lennon wrote the guitar riff while the Beatles were recording "Eight Days A Week".  "I told them I'd write a song specially for the riff," Lennon said for the book The Beatles Anthology.  "So they said, 'Yes.  You go away and do that', knowing that we'd almost finished the album Beatles for Sale."

"I Feel Fine" spent five weeks at #1 in the U.K., three weeks at #1 in the U.S. and also topped charts in Canada, New Zealand, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden and sold over one million copies.  In the U.K., the song was the fifth-highest selling single of the decade and as of 2018, ranked as the #53 best-selling single of all-time there according to the U.K.'s Official Charts Company.

 

This song is one of a handful of Lennon/McCartney songs that were fully recorded the same day they were written (October 8, 1964), joining "Birthday", "The Ballad Of John And Yoko" and "All Together Now".  "She's A Woman", a #4 smash on its own as the B-side to "I Feel Fine", was a staple in the group's live shows for the next two years.  In his biography Many Years From Now written by Barry Miles, McCartney talked about the song:

                 This song was written the morning of the

                 session.  I have a recollection of walking

                 round St. John's Wood with that in my

                 mind so I might have written it at home

                 and finished it up on the way to the 

                 studio, finally polished it in the studio,

                 maybe just taken John aside for a second

                 and checked with him.  "What d'you think?"

                 "Like it."  "Good.  Let's do it!"

Lennon's choppy off-beat guitar chords drive the song, most of which was recorded in an afternoon session.  "John did a very good thing:  instead of playing through it and putting like a watercolor wash over it all with his guitar he just stabbed on the off-beats," McCartney said.  "Ringo would play the snare and John did it with the guitar, which was good, it left a lot of space for the rest of the stuff."

Harrison, who didn't play that afternoon, overdubbed his lead guitar part, McCartney overdubbed piano and vocals, and Starr recorded the sound of a chocalho, a cylindrical metal shaker, that evening.

 

The Beatles released the album Beatles for Sale, their fifth album of 1964, with the corresponding U.S. release being Beatles '65.  The former, #1 in the U.K., Australia and Germany, went Platinum, while Beatles '65 went Triple Platinum and topped Album charts in the U.S. and Canada.

 

The Beatles made another revolutionary change on their first single from the album Beatles VI.  "Eight Days A Week" marks the first time that a song opened with a fade-in, and it was also the first unfinished song the group took into the studio, something that would become common place for the band.  The group did all the recording in two recording sessions on October 6. 

When "Eight Days A Week" reached #1 (#1 in the U.S., Canada and the Netherlands), it gave the Beatles seven #1 songs in a calendar year, still a Rock Era record.

We thank Beatlesebooks.com for invaluable behind-the-scenes information on much of the songs we are featuring!

When Martin talked about an up-tempo, energetic song, the word he frequently used was "potboiler".  Martin wanted the first track on every Beatles album to be a "potboiler" that would generate excitement.  Hence, "I Saw Her Standing There" led off the Beatles British album Please Please Me, "It Won't Be Long" began the second British album With The Beatles, and "A Hard Day's Night" led off that album.  

The task proved a bit more challenging for this album as the group were writing mostly mid-tempo songs.   "I Feel Fine" or "She's A Woman" would have worked perfectly except they were chosen for the A and B-sides, respectively for the first single and wouldn't be on the album, counterintuitive to today's thinking.  "Kansas City" and "Rock And Roll Music" also would have worked, but they weren't original songs.

The one left was in fact this mid-tempo song.  John and his wife Cynthia were on a month-long vacation to Tahiti in May of 1964 with George and his future wife Pattie Boyd.  During this break from the busy Beatles schedule, John took time to write out several new songs, including "Any Time At All" and "When I Get Home".  And, since "No Reply" was first recorded on June 3, it seems logical that it was written during this vacation as well.  

 

John habitually underestimated the quality of his work and apparently he didn't have confidence in "No Reply" as he first offered it to an artist named Tommy Quickly.  Fortunately, the Beatles also recorded it, as it turned out not only to be the choice to lead off the album but it is one of their most popular songs.  Released as a single in Germany, "No Reply" jumped to #5.  

 

The Beatles performed and recorded this Lennon song on a British edition of the U.S. television show Shindig! on October 3, 1964 at the Granville Studio in London.  London residents of the Beatles Fan Club watched the show and cheered their heroes.  "I'm A Loser" was nearly chosen as a single before "I Feel Fine" won out.

 

Paul wrote this song when he was 16 years old.  The sound of the song was different and the bridge words and melody were slightly different.  When the Beatles were putting together songs for the new album, Paul remembered "I'll Follow The Sun" from six years earlier.  He and John changed the feel and tone of it by adding acoustic guitar, rewrote the bridge and added a harmony melody for John in the studio.  To go along with the acoustic feel, instead of playing the drums, Ringo hit his legs with his hands to provide the beat.  

 

The Beatles' cover of the Chuck Berry song "Rock And Roll Music" was released as a single in some countries with it going to #1 in Australia and Norway and #2 in Germany.

This special is designed so that each artist can be heard all in one day, one segment after the other.  Only by doing that can one truly appreciate the artist, and we highly recommend it.  Join us for Part Four!