Songs
Although most of the songs on any given Beatles album are usually credited to the Lennon/McCartney songwriting team, that description is often misleading, and rarely more so than on The Beatles. With this album, each of the four band members began to showcase the range and depth of his individual songwriting talents, and to display styles that would be carried over to his eventual solo career. Indeed, some songs that the individual Beatles were working on during this period eventually were released on solo albums (John Lennon's "Look At Me" and "Child of Nature," eventually reworked as "Jealous Guy"; Paul McCartney's "Junk" and "Teddy Boy"; and George Harrison's "Not Guilty" and "Circles").
Many of the songs on the album display experimentation with unlikely musical genres, borrowing directly from such sources as 1930s dance-hall music (in "Honey Pie"), classical chamber music (in "Piggies"), the avant-garde sensibilities of Yoko Ono and John Cage (in "Revolution 9"), and the overproduced sentimentality of elevator music (in "Good Night"). Such diversity was quite unprecedented in global pop music in 1968, and the album's sprawling approach provoked (and continues to provoke) both praise and criticism from observers. "Revolution 9", in particular, a densely layered eight-minute-and-thirteen-second sound collage, has attracted bewilderment and disapproval from both fans and music critics over the years.
The only western instrument available to the group during their Indian visit was the acoustic guitar, and thus most of the songs on The Beatles were written and first performed on that instrument. Some of these songs remained acoustic on The Beatles (notably "Rocky Raccoon", "Julia", "Blackbird" and "Mother Nature's Son") and were recorded in the studio either solo, or by only part of the group.
Individual compositions
Lennon's contributions to the album are generally more hard-edged lyrically than his previous output, a trend which carried over to his solo career. Examples include his pleas for death on "Yer Blues", his parodic "Glass Onion", which mocks fans who read too much into The Beatles' lyrics (see also Paul is dead), and what may be references to drug addiction in "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" ("I need a fix..."). Lennon's intensely personal "Julia" may be seen as foreshadowing his later song "Mother" from his first solo album, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band; the political "Revolution 1" begins a pattern of overtly political songs like "Give Peace a Chance" and "John Sinclair"; "Revolution 9" reflects extensive contribution and influence from Yoko Ono, another feature of much of Lennon's solo output. Lennon's songs on The Beatles embrace a wide array of styles, including blues ("Yer Blues"), acoustic ballads ("Julia" and "Cry Baby Cry"), and rock ("Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey"). Lennon would later describe his contributions to the White Album as among his favourite songs recorded with The Beatles.
McCartney's songs for the album include pop ballads ("I Will"), the proto-heavy metal "Helter Skelter", a Beach Boys homage ("Back in the U.S.S.R."), and a music-hall foxtrot ("Honey Pie") among others. The soothing, stripped-down "I Will" foreshadowed themes of McCartney's later solo career.
Harrison's sparse ballad "Long, Long, Long" is stylistically quite similar to much of his solo output. His songs on The Beatles also includes the lyrically sophisticated "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", a chronicle of gastronomic excess and dental trauma in "Savoy Truffle", the up-beat "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" ( in actuality a McCartney composition) and a class-driven piece of social commentary in "Piggies". Even Ringo Starr was given leave to include the first song composed entirely by himself on a Beatles' album, the country-ish "Don't Pass Me By".
The album is the first by the group not to feature any genuine Lennon-McCartney collaborations - in fact there would only be one more co-write from the pair in the remainder of the band's career ("I've Got a Feeling" from the Let It Be album). This new lack of co-operation and focus is reflected in several fragmental, incomplete song ideas that were recorded and released on the album ("Why Don't We Do It in the Road?", "Wild Honey Pie", and an officially untitled McCartney snippet at the end of "Cry Baby Cry" often referred to as "Can You Take Me Back"). On previous albums, such undertakings might have been either abandoned or collaboratively developed before release, but here again, The Beatles represented a change of course for the band. The trend continued for the rest of the band's recording career: such song fragments were presented by joining them together as a long suite of songs on side two of Abbey Road.
Self-reflection and change
Many of the songs are personal and self-referencing; for example, "Dear Prudence" was written about actress Mia Farrow's sister, Prudence, who attended the transcendental meditation course with The Beatles in Rishikesh. Often she stayed in her room, engaged in Transcendental Meditation. "Julia" was the name of Lennon's beloved but frequently absent mother, who died during his youth. "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" expresses concern over being "bought and sold," a theme in later songs about Harrison himself, such as "Handle with Care", recorded with The Traveling Wilburys. "Glass Onion" is a Beatles song about Beatles' songs.
Some of the songs on The Beatles mark important changes in the band's recording style. Previously, no female voices were to be heard on a Beatles album, but Yoko Ono made her first vocal appearance on this record, adding backing vocals in "Birthday" (along with Pattie Harrison); Yoko also sang backing vocals and a solo line on "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill" and, as noted earlier, was a strong influence on Lennon's musique concrète piece, "Revolution 9," an avant-garde sound collage that McCartney initially did not want to include on the album.
Compositions not included
A number of songs were recorded in demo form for possible inclusion but were not incorporated as part of the album. These included "Mean Mr. Mustard" and "Polythene Pam" (both of which would be used for the medley on Abbey Road); "Child of Nature" (recorded with drastically different lyrics as "Jealous Guy" for Lennon's Imagine), "Jubilee" (later retitled "Junk" and released on McCartney's first solo LP); "Etcetera" (a McCartney composition later recorded by the Black Dyke Mills Band as "Thingumybob"); "Circles" (which Harrison would return to fourteen years later on his 1982 album "Gone Troppo"); "The Long and Winding Road" (completed in 1969 for the Let It Be LP); "Something" (which ended up on Abbey Road); and "Sour Milk Sea" (which Harrison gave to friend and Apple artist Jackie Lomax for his first LP, Is This What You Want). Other songs recorded for, but ultimately left off The Beatles received significant exposure via bootlegs, notably Harrison's "Circles" and "Not Guilty" (which he would eventually re-record as solo tracks and release on his 1982 album, Gone Troppo and 1979 self-titled album, George Harrison respectively) and Lennon's manic "What's the New Mary Jane".
Editing concerns, and release
The Beatles was the first Beatles' album released by Apple Records, as well as their only original double album. Producer George Martin has said that he was against the idea of a double album at the time and suggested to the group that they reduce the number of songs in order to form a single album featuring their stronger work, but that the band decided against this. Interviewed for the Beatles Anthology, Starr said he now felt it should have been released as two separate albums. Harrison felt on reflection that some of the tracks could have been released as B sides, but "there was a lot of ego in that band". He also supported the idea of the double album, to clear out the backlog of songs the group had at the time. McCartney, by contrast, said it was fine as it was and that its wide variety of songs was a major part of the album's appeal.
The White Album (1968) shares the same 22nd November release date as The Beatles second album, With The Beatles (1963).
SOURCE: wikipedia
Beatles Music
http://tinyurl.com/6lnkps
White Album
http://tinyurl.com/5sjvog
The Beatles - Revolution
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment