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

 

(Continued from Part Six)

Beatle concerts were still dominated by the hysterical screaming of fans, which made it nearly impossible for not only their fans to hear the music that they were playing, but for the Beatles themselves to hear.  The group purchased more powerful 100-watt amplifiers designed by Vox especially for them.  

But even these were not even close to powerful enough for fans to hear the music above the loud screaming.  As a result, the band became increasingly bored with live shows and realizing that the concerts were no longer about the music, the Beatles decided that their tour in August would be their last.  Their finale was at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, California on August 29.  The band had played nearly non-stop over a four-year period that saw them give 1,400 concerts throughout the globe.

What happened next would, in the nomenclature of the time, "blow everyone away".  

Now free to focus all of their creative talents on recording, the Beatles next release was one for the ages, featuring a level of experimentation in the studio never seen before.  The group began recording in November of 1966 and they wouldn't finish until they had taken 700 hours of studio time, according to Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick in the 2006 book Here, There and Everywhere:  My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles by Emerick and Howard Massey.  

Emerick told Jonathan Gould, for Gould's 2007 book Can't Buy Me Love:  The Beatles, Britain and America:

              We had microphones right down in the 

              bells of brass instruments and

              headphones turned into microphones

              attached to violins.  We used giant

              primitive oscillators to vary the speed of

              instruments and vocals and we had

              tapes chopped to pieces and stuck

              together upside down and the wrong

              way around.

Although the songwriting styles of Lennon and McCartney were increasingly becoming different, there were still striking similarities; both sides of this classic double release were reflections about the Liverpool they remembered growing up. 

The sessions for the new album yielded the non-album double-A-side single, with Lennon's "Strawberry Fields Forever", which, with its synthesis of two different versions of the same song and reverse-taped cellos produced an strange and mysterious sound, the likes of which had never been heard in recorded music.  

Strawberry Field was the name of a Salvation Army children's home near Lennon's childhood home in Woolton.  Along with friends Pete Shotton and Ivan Vaughan, John roamed the grounds of Strawberry Field.  There was a garden party held on the grounds that he especially looked forward to.  "As soon as we could hear the Salvation Army band starting, John would jump up and down shouting, 'Mimi, come on.  We're going to be late,'", Mimi Smith, John's aunt and a parental guardian, told author Hunter Davies for the book The Beatles. 

"It took me a long time to write it," Lennon said later. "See, I was writing all bits and bits. I wanted the lyrics to be like conversation. It didn't work."

John wrote the song over six weeks in Almeria, Spain in the fall of 1966 while he was filming his role as Private Gripweed in the Richard Lester movie How I Won The War.  Unhappy with the framework, John searched for something else, and it was Paul who came up with the idea for the layered flute melody that makes "Strawberry Fields" so unique and gives the song its character.  Paul did it using a secret weapon.

No one thought much about the Mellotron in those days, an instrument created to replicate orchestral sounds.  A keyboard is used to trigger pre-recorded tape loops of other instruments such as brass, flutes and choirs.  The Mellotron lacked digital synchronizing, which artists at the time thought was a disadvantage. To Paul, the Mellotron was exactly what the song needed, and he was spot on.

The creation of this sonic masterpiece took 26 takes in the studio.  That off-kilter flute at the beginning, courtesy of the little-used Mellotron, sounds as good today as it did 54 years ago.  "Strawberry Fields Forever" reached #1 in Canada and the Netherlands and #2 in the U.K. and went Gold.

McCartney contributed another great song as the other side to the single.  He wrote it about a roundabout at Smithdown Place in Liverpool that was the location for a major bus terminus, originally a vital tram junction of Liverpool Corporation Tramways.  In their childhood, Lennon, McCartney and Harrison met there often while waiting for a bus to school or to each other's house.  

 

Paul sat at the bus shelter waiting for John to meet him on Penny Lane, a street near their houses.  While waiting, Paul wrote down things he saw, including a barber's stop with pictures of its customers and a nurse selling poppies for Remembrance Day (November 11th, the day World War I officially ended).  McCartney later turned these images he saw into the song we now know, which celebrates his fond memories of growing up in Liverpool.  Most of the places mentioned in the song are in Smithdown Place, which overlooks the roundabout.

Over the years, Penny Lane evolved into Beatles-themed restaurants and shops.  The barber's shop mentioned in the song is still there, but most of the other places in Paul's lyrics are long gone.  The shelter in the middle of the roundabout where the nurse sells poppies later became Sgt. Pepper's Bistro, but that has since closed.  

"Penny Lane" features numerous modulations that occur in mid-verse and between choruses.  The piccolo trumpet solo you hear is from session musician David mason.   From February of 1967, and #1 in nearly every major country in the world, the classic "Penny Lane". 

Together, "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane" make up The #3 Double-Sided Hits of the Rock Era*.  

The plan was that "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane" would be the star attractions on the group's upcoming album, but by the summer, the Beatles had accumulated 13 new songs for the project, and both ended up being stand-alone singles.  

Finally in May, the Beatles released Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which astounded critics, other recording artists, and the record-buying public with its complexity.  And they did it with just the simple four-track recording process available at the time.   Jonathan Gould described the legendary album in his 2007 book, Can't Buy Me Love:  The Beatles, Britain and America:

             The overwhelming consensus is that the

             Beatles had created a popular 

             masterpiece:  a rich, sustained, and

             overflowing work of collaborative genius

             whose bold ambition and startling

             originality dramatically enlarged the

             possibilities and raised the expectations

             of what the experience of listening to

             popular music on record could be.  On

             the basis of this perception, "Sgt.

             Pepper" became the catalyst  for an

             explosion of mass enthusiasm for

             album-formatted  Rock that would

             revolutionize both the aesthetics and 

             the economics of the record business

             in ways that far outstripped the earlier

             pop explosions triggered by the Elvis

             phenomenon of 1956 and the

             Beatlemania phenomenon of 1964.

Sgt. Pepper was unique in so many ways--it introduced the concept album in which the project had a theme rather than a loose collection of songs such as had been the case since the phonograph was invented.  The production and special effects were mind-blowing and influenced every album from that point forward.  Sgt. Pepper was the first album to include lyrics to the song, something you see quite often now, but that was never the case until this album.  

The album cover itself was a conversation starter, with the Beatles posed as the fictional group that they refer to in their songs with famous people (some living, some dead) in the background.   The group included photos of every person who had influenced their lives that they could think of.

Instead of the customary breaks between songs, one track merged into the next, with sounds of talk in the studio, laughter, electronic sound effects and animal sounds accompanying the transition. The album was a landmark production of experimentation, with ideas presented to and originated from producer George Martin.  Strange, chaotic activity never captured on music before awaited the music consumer.  The songs themselves are magnificent diversification.

Listening to Sgt. Pepper was something completely new--it was a listening experience, and one that music fans would turn to again and again, each time experiencing something different or hearing a sound for the first time.  Never before had listening to an album so consumed a record consumer.  Everywhere, surprises and producing wizardry leapt out from the album, including steam organs, orchestras, sitars, and even a pack of foxhounds.

Music from the album helped define the Summer of Love in 1967, but much of the work was done in the spring, recorded in over 400 hours during a 129-day period.

Paul conceived of the idea for the album while on a return flight to London in November.   Unable to sleep, he thought of the idea to create a new identity for the band which would allow them to experiment, with each Beatle taking on an alter-ego in the "Lonely Hearts Club Band".  During the flight, Paul and Mal Evans, the group's road manager, had a conversation about the "S" and "P" markings on the salt and pepper sachets, which led to the title "Sgt. Pepper".  According to McCartney, Evans said something to the effect of "Do you want salt and pepper?" and Paul thought he said "Sgt. Pepper?"  McCartney liked the sound of it, and so the idea was born. 

 "I thought it would be nice to lose our identities, to submerge ourselves in the persona of a fake group," Paul said.  "We could make up all the culture around it and collect all our heroes in one place."

The opening track introduces us to the fictional band that performs on the album, especially Ringo's character, "The one and only Billy Shears".  The Beatles recorded the song on February 1, 1967 and completed it in four days.  On March 6, the sounds of the imaginary audience and the noise of an orchestra tuning up were added.  Crowd noise from a 1961 recording of "Beyond The Fringe" and out-takes from the orchestral overdub session for "A Day In The Life" make up these sounds.  Ringo sang the second part of this medley as his character "Billy Shears".   Here is "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"/"With A Little Help From My Friends".

John was inspired to write this song after his four-year-old son Julia showed him a  drawing of a school friend of his, Lucy. 

  People who say "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds" is about the drug LSD are wrong; it simply isn't true.

"Getting Better" was a collaborative effort between Lennon and McCartney and a case study in the individual personalities with John's more pessimistic views contrasting with Paul's happier outlook.  McCartney refers to the song as an example to depict exactly why he loved writing with Lennon.  He said, "I was just sitting there doing 'Getting better all the time' and John just said in his laconic way, "It couldn't get no worse."

Sgt. Pepper ruled the U.K. Album chart for 23 straight weeks, followed by another four the following year.  It topped every other Beatles album in sales within three months, with 2.5 million copies flying off the shelves.  

 

 

This McCartney song is ambiguous.  The lyrics explore the good feeling one gets from letting their mind wander.  Paul has since said "Fixing A Hole" is an ode to marijuana.  In his 1997 biography Many Years from Now, Paul said that "mending was my meaning.  Wanting to be free enough to let my mind wander, let myself be artistic, let myself not sneer at avant-garde things."  

The Beatles began recording "Fixing A Hole" on February 6, 1967 at Regent Sound Studios in London as all studios at Abbey Road were unavailable.  It was the first time the group used another studio to record for EMI.

Paul was inspired to write "She's Leaving Home" after seeing a story in the newspaper The Daily Mail (on February 27, 1967) about a teenage girl, 17-year-old Melanie Coe, who ran away from home to be with her boyfriend.  It is an ironic coincidence that McCartney had met Coe three years before, when he chose her as the prize winner for miming on the television show Ready Steady Go! in 1963.  

 

When she first heard the song, Coe thought it sounded like her, but assumed "I didn't run off with a man from the Motor Trade, so it couldn't have been me!"  It wasn't until years later when she learned that she was in fact the inspiration for the song.

Coe returned home to her parents before getting married at age 18 and leaving home permanently.  After that marriage dissolved, Melanie moved to California and once dated Burt Ward of Batman fame!

This next magical song about horses, the Hendersons, somersaults, dancers and non-stop action is one of the highlights of the album.  Here is the story behind that song.  On January 31, 1967, during filming for "Strawberry Fields Forever" Lennon wandered into a Sevenoaks antique shop when he noticed a poster advertising a February 1843 benefit for Mr. Kite (a famous somerset thrower, vaulter, rider, etc. of the circus) by Pablo Fanque's Circus Royal.  

John bought the poster and mounted it above the piano in his home.  A little over two weeks later, Lennon wrote "Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite".  "Everything in the song is from the poster," Lennon later said.  "Except the horse wasn't called Henry, it was called Zanthus."

But what about this Pablo Fanque--who is he?  "He was born William Darby in Norwich, but we have no idea why he changed his name to Pablo Fanque, and there's evidence to suggest that he and his children used both names interchangeably as a surname," said Mike Dash, historian and writer for The Smithsonian magazine.  Fanque's horses kept to the rhythm of the music.  

Fanque's dancing horses toured factory towns from Manchester to Leeds and also went to Scotland.  Fanque was remembered for many years for his ability and his business perseverance, said a chaplain of the British Showman's Guild after Fanque's death.

McCartney wrote this song on the family piano at 20 Forthlin Road in Liverpool ("When I was about 15", he said) and it was the first song to be recorded on the album.  "Back then I wasn't necessarily looking to be a rock 'n' roller," Paul said.  "When I wrote 'When I'm Sixty-Four' I thought I was writing a song for Sinatra.  There were records other than rock 'n' roll that were important to me."

 

 

Paul wrote this affectionate tale of a meter maid named Rita.  Naturally, people don't like getting parking tickets so Paul created someone giving out the tickets that one might fall in love with.  "I was imagining the kind of person I would be to fall for a meter maid," he said. 

 

Road manager Neil Aspinall came up with the idea to bring back the theme song as a lead-in to the final track.  The Beatles wisely chose to speed up the tempo a bit.  John, Paul and George shared lead vocals on "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)".

 

"A Day In The Life", which Lennon described as "a sound building up from nothing to the end of the world", concludes the album.  As the final completion of a masterpiece on the masterpiece that is Sgt. Pepper, the accompanying 40-piece orchestra was recorded beyond a 20,000 hertz frequency so that the final note that they played was audible only to dogs.  

After that note is of course the famous final chord.  Lennon, McCartney, Starr and Mal Evans shared three different pianos with George Martin on the Harmonium, and all played an E-major chord at the same time.  The final chord continues for over 40 seconds as the recording sound level was increased as the vibration faded.  At the very end, due to the increased recording level, listeners can hear the sounds in the studio, including rustling papers and a squeaking chair.

The Beatles also completely ignored the limitations of the phonographic record, as the groove on the record was cut back to repeat pieces of tape recorded backwards which played into infinity.

Much more to come from this legendary group!