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

 

(Continued from Part Three)

To this point, the group's music was being marketed differently to those in America from those in England, and, because of the plethora of singles and intermingling of songs on difference album, it got very confusing for the record-buying public.  Thankfully, this practice changed to the point where in most instances, a new Beatles album was exactly the same, whether you were playing it on a record player in Europe or one in the U.S.

"Yes It Is" is a Top Track* on Beatles VI, released later as the B-side to "Ticket To Ride".  Although the lyrics don't directly refer to it, they seem to suggest that a former lover has died and the desire to move on with one's life.  It was one of the toughest songs to record that year, with the rhythm section requiring 14 takes.

Alan W. Pollack notes, "The roster of chords appearing in the song is relatively standard but both the ordering of their progressions, as well as the voice leading transitions between some of them, is extraordinary."

Beatles VI became the group's seventh #1 album and sold over one million copies.  In August, the Beatles released the movie Help!  The studio album of the same name featured songs from the movie on side one and other songs they recorded in the same sessions on the other side.  This groundbreaking song represented the first time that rhythm tracks were recorded and overdubs added in later.

Writer Ian MacDonald, in his 2005 book Revolution in the Head:  The Beatles' Records and the Sixties called the song "psychologically deeper than anything the Beatles had recorded before" and "extraordinary for its time".   "I think the interesting thing was the crazy endings; instead of ending like the previous verse, we changed the tempo," McCartney said to Barry Miles for the book Many Years From Now.  "We picked up one of the lines, 'My baby don't care,' but completely altered the melody.  It was quite radical at the time."  

  "Ticket To Ride" thus pioneered the idea that a song could have a completely different ending to it, an outro.  The Beatles promoted the song on television shows such as Top of the Pops and Thank our Lucky Stars. 

"Ticket To Ride" made it seven straight #1's in the U.K. and also hit #1 in the United States, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands and Norway.

The album Help also reached #1 in the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia and Germany and went Triple Platinum.  

Although no one, his bandmates, the critics, and certainly not the public, realized it at the time, this next song is John's cry for help. Beatlemania had radically changed life for the members, and John especially took it hard. Cynthia Lennon, John's wife at the time, described the song as a "cry for help" from John (a subject we will hear more about later).  "It reflects the frustration he felt at the time," Cynthia explained.  "He was the idol of millions, but the freedom and fun of the early days had gone." 

"The greater the Beatles' popularity, the more threatened and anxious John had become," said Beatles biographer Bob Spitz (in the book Beatles:  The Biography), "not only from his part in the band's snowballing commercialism but over his appearance and his songwriting as well. Weight, too had become a nagging problem--John had gotten 'plump', according to a friend -- and he was demoralized and depressed by worsening vision." 

 

The Beatles released "Help" in July, two weeks before the album of the same name.  It was a top 5 song around the world and #1 in the U.S., the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands and Norway and attained Gold status.

Next, we've arrived at one of the all-time classics, not only by the Beatles but in history.  McCartney wrote it, like many songs of the period, at 57 Wimpole Street in London, where a then 22-year-old Paul lived in an attic room at the top of the family home of girlfriend Jane Asher.  However God works, many feel the inspiration for the few geniuses in our musical midst must come from God, and Paul has an interesting story about the writing of this all-time gem:

              I woke up with a lovely tune in my head.

              I thought, "That's great, I wonder what

              that is?"  There was an upright piano 

              next to me, to the right of the bed by the

              window.  I got out of bed, sat at the

              piano, found G, found F sharp minor 

              seventh - and that leads you through 

              then to B to E minor, and finally back to

             G.

George Martin remembers the song existing in some form or another for at least a year:  "I first heard 'Yesterday' when it was known as 'Scrambled Egg' - Paul's working title - at the George V Hotel in Paris in January, 1964."

Paul had played "Scrambled Egg" so many times that those in the Beatles' entourage no doubt grew tired of it.  Richard Lester (director of the film Help!) said "If you play that bloody song any longer I’ll have the piano taken off stage. Either finish it or give it up!’”

As we know, Paul did finish it.  After filming the movie, Paul and Jane went on vacation at a Portuguese villa of friend Bruce Welch of the Shadows.  Paul finally finished the song while driving the 180 miles from the airport to the villa.  "It was a long hot, dusty drive," McCartney recalled.  "Jane was sleeping but I couldn't.  I remember mulling over the tune and suddenly getting these little one-word openings to the verse."

"I started to develop the idea:  'Scram-ble-d eggs, da-da da.'  I knew the syllables had to match the melody, obviously:  'da-da da' 'yes-ter-day', 'sud-den-ly', 'fun-il-ly', 'mer-il-ly', and 'yes-ter-day', that's good.  'All my troubles seemed so far away.'  It's easy to rhyme those 'a's:  say, nay, today, away, play, stay, there's a lot of rhymes and those fall in quite easily, so I gradually pieced it together from that journey.  'Sud-den-ly', and 'b' again, another easy rhyme:  me, tree, flea, we, and I had the basis of it."

Welch confirmed that the song was essentially finished on this trip--"I was packing to leave and Paul asked me if I had a guitar," Bruce said.  "He'd apparently been working on the lyrics as he drove to Albufeira from the airport at Lisbon.  He borrowed my guitar and started playing the song we all now know as 'Yesterday'."

Now that he had finished it, Paul was not sure if he had stolen the idea or the inspiration had come only to him.  He played it for everyone he met, asking if they recognized it.  Of course, nobody did.

The recording of it is also unique in the Beatles' history:

            I brought the song into the studio for the first 

            time and played it on the guitar.  But soon

            Ringo said, "I can't really put any drums on 

            it - it wouldn't make sense.  And John and

           George said, "There's no point in having

           another guitar."  So George Martin

           suggested, "Why don't you just try it by

           yourself and see how it works?"  I looked at

           all the others:  "Oops.  You mean a solo

           record?"  They said, "Yeah, it doesn't

           matter, there's nothing we can add to it - do

           it."    

"Yesterday" exploded to #1 in the U.S. (the group's 10th career #1), Australia, the Netherlands and Norway and was a huge hit across the world.  It sold well over one million copies in the United States alone, and ranks as The #8 Songs of the Rock Era*--enjoy!

 

For many of their early shows, the Beatles closed with the Little Richard hit "Long Tall Sally".  Desiring to end with one of their own songs, McCartney wrote this song, and the Beatles closed their shows with it with few exceptions through their final performance on August 29, 1966.

Paul wrote it at the family home of girlfriend Jane Asher where he was staying.  Lennon played the Hammond organ, and the Beatles performed it in their final appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on September 12, 1965.  The screamer "I'm Down" is the B-side of "Help.             

Ringo got to do a rare lead vocal on "Act Naturally", written by Johnny Russell.  "I found it on a Buck Owens record," Starr told the others, "and I said, 'This is the one I am going to be doing,' and they said 'OK'.  

Here is one of the highlights on the Help! album, written by Lennon.  The Beatles recorded three songs on February 18 at EMI (Abbey Road).  Beginning at 10 a.m. in Studio Two, they worked for three hours on "Ticket To Ride", "Another Girl", "I Need You" and "Yes It Is".  

After a break, the band returned from 3:30-5:15 and recorded nine takes of this song.  "You've Got To Hide Your Love Away" is one of the only Beatles songs to include an outside musician, flautist Johnnie Scott.  

"They told me roughly that they wanted 3/4 time," Scott told Mark Lewishohn for the book The Complete Beatles:  Recording Sessions, "and the best way of fulfilling their needs was to play both tenor flute and alto flute, the second as an overdub.  As I recall, all four of them were there and Ringo was full of marital joys; he'd just come back from his honeymoon."

This is all about a man-to-man conversation with the message that if the one man didn't treat his woman right, the other man would steal her.  Combined with the melody line and major key, this message comes through as unremorseful, which is exactly what makes the song work so well.  

It doesn't appear that John and Paul wrote "You're Going To Lose That Girl" long before recording it.  They wrote it at John's home, meaning it was composed either during their January time in London performing Another Beatles Christmas Show or after they came back from their February vacations.

The Beatles undoubtedly rehearsed the song on tape, which must have led to the confusion of calling the first take "take two" by mistake.   In any case, that take was a false start while the second attempt ("take three") was the one they kept.

All that needed to be done then was the overdubs.  John double-tracked his lead vocals, George made a few attempts at his guitar solo (as heard in the bootleg recordings) before he had the one he wanted, Paul added a piano part, and Ringo thumped the bongos.  

"I've Just Seen A Face" is another song Paul wrote while staying at the family home of Jane Asher.  The group recorded it in six takes on June 14, 1965, with a maraca part overdubbed on the last one.  It contains no bass guitar part.

For new music fans (and for those who perhaps don't understand the brilliance), the Beatles, in a breathtaking display of versatility, also recorded the screamer "I'm Down" and the classic ballad "Yesterday" on the same day as "I've Just Seen A Face". 

When the group began, they were solid musicians, but as time went on, they began to excel on their own instruments while also jumping to other ones.  Lennon displays his electric keyboard work on "The Night Before", one of the key components of the song.

George used a tone pedal on this song to provide the unusual guitar sound--"It's Only Love".

You've already heard some examples of the group beginning to expand the boundaries of what recording artists could do.  That experimentation and innovation had only begun--learn more in Part Five, exclusively on Inside The Rock Era!