beatles

You are currently browsing articles tagged beatles.

Actually, I am the walrus

4 February 2010 in ideas, music, visual | No comments

I’ve love infographics, and I’ve gone on and on about collaboration and the Beatles before, so when I heard that someone had created an infographic displaying the degree to which Beatles collaborated on songs — well, “interested” would be hugely understating my emotions at the time. (Thanks, Dan, for the tip).

Author: Michael Deal. Full image here.

“The Beatles: Authorship & Collaboration” is a nicely composed graphic, clearly breaking down the contributors to each song, Beatle and non-Beatle. The songs are laid out chronologically, and the overall effect clearly reveals that the Beatles collaborated less as they progressed in their careers. (If anything is true of the Beatles, it’s that they grew apart over time). The chart’s data is drawn from Beatlesongs, which quantifies the degree to which each Beatle contributed to the writing of a song, using a scale of 0 – 100%.

Beatles - Collaboration - Octopus's Garden

I can’t quibble with the desire to understand and visualize the degree to which each Beatle shaped each song, but I find the quantification bit a little — well — falsely precise. It makes for a nice infographic, but a mere skim through The Official Abbey Road Studio Session Notes, 1962 – 1970 makes it clear that there was quite a lot of collaboration among the four Beatles — not to mention the various “fifth Beatles,” the “Black Beatle,” and their producer, George Martin. Perhaps there’s a difference between “collaboration” and “authorship?”

In the example to the right, “Octopus’s Garden,” is said to be 100% Ringo? Yes, Ringo does receive sole credit for “authorship,” but it is widely known that George had a significant role in shaping it. In fact, George works out the song on a piano in the Let It Be movie. How to represent this softer sort of collaboration? Good question. Shapes? Sizes? Colors? Dimensions? Whatever it is, it should fairly communicate the organic nature of creative collaboration. And dispense with the too-neat round numbers.

Morning Harrison

27 August 2009 in music | No comments

Jim James of My Morning Jacket has recorded some pared-down, reverbed-up covers of George Harrison songs under the name Yim Yames. I’ve included one here: “Long, Long, Long” from the White Album, and I appreciate the quiet, deferential treatment that Jim James gives his songs. Good stuff, “Yim.”

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Here’s a good story in the engineer’s notes from the original recording of “Long, Long, Long” on Monday, October 6, 1968:

There’s a sound near the end of the song [best heard on the right channel] which is a bottle of Blue Nun wine rattling away on the top of a Leslie speaker cabinet. It just happened. Paul hit a certain organ note and the bottle started vibrating. We thought it was so good that we set the mikes up and did it again. The Beatles always took advantage of accidents.

From the indispensable Beatles Recording Sessions by Mark Lewisohn.

Journalist Mikal Gilmore discusses the research of his Rolling Stone cover article, “Why the Beatles Broke Up.”

What I found most troubling, most tragic, in all of this was two things: Both Lennon and Harrison (Lennon, clearly, in particular) did their best to sabotage the Beatles from mid-1968 onward, and when it all came irrevocably apart, I believe that both men regretted what they had wrought. I don’t think that John Lennon and George Harrison (but Lennon, again, in particular) truly meant the Beatles to end, even though they might not have known it in the moment. I think they meant to shift the balance of power, I think they meant for the Beatles to become, in a sense, a more casual form of collaboration, and I think they clearly intended to rein in Paul McCartney. But they overplayed their hand and — there’s no way around it — they treated McCartney shamefully during 1969, and unforgivably in the early months of 1970.

26 August 2009 | No comments

Design / The Beatles & collaboration

7 December 2006 in music, web | 1 comment

A lot of collaborative work goes on at Cooper (where I work). Designers team up to understand a problem, or to envision a better way of solving it. Sometimes, we collaborate with clients to figure out what’s possible and where possibility and desirability meet. In any case, it’s hard to trace back any particular idea to a particular person or moment; once an idea is out in the world, it gets pushed, pulled, disassembled, reassembled, and so on by everyone until it fits.

My friends and I used to argue over which Beatle wrote a particular song — John? Paul? George? In most cases, it seems pretty clear cut. Cheesy lyrics and a bouncy rhythm? Paul. More complicated, layered lyrics with more straight-ahead rock? John. A sitar in the background? George. In some cases, however, it’s much less clear. “With A Little Help From My Friends,” for instance; or, “Got To Get You Into My Life.” Both have recognizable earmarks of John and Paul.

Are these easy categorizations valid in any way? Is there any way of ultimately knowing who wrote what? I didn’t think so. Until I Googled “beatles songwriting” and found The Beatles Songwriting and Recording Database, an obsessively categorized collection quotes about who wrote what, pulled from various interviews conducted over the last 40 years.

For example:

With A Little Help From My Friends

JOHN 1970: “Paul had the line about ‘a little help from my friends.’ He had some kind of structure for it, and we wrote it pretty well fifty-fifty from his original idea.”

JOHN 1980: “That’s Paul, with a little help from me. ‘What do you see when you turn out the light/ I can’t tell you but I know it’s mine’ is mine.”

PAUL circa-1994: “This was written out at John’s house in Weybridge for Ringo... I think that was probably the best of our songs that we wrote for Ringo actually. I remember giggling with John as we wrote the lines, ‘What do you see when you turn out the light/ I can’t tell you but I know it’s mine.’ It could have been him playing with his willie under the covers, or it could have been taken on a deeper level. This is what it meant but it was a nice way to say it– a very non-specific way to say it. I always liked that.”

Especially intriguing: John wrote “And Your Bird Can Sing,” which (to me) seems to be the most obvious Paul song ever. Perhaps those earmarks I discussed earlier are less applicable than one would expect.

Music / Sad anniverary for the quiet Beatle

29 November 2006 in music | No comments

Today is the fifth anniversary of George Harrison’s death, as I found out when NPR ran a sweet tribute to him this evening. Back when such things mattered, George was my favorite Beatle. Why do such things not matter anymore? I mean, really, is there any question that is more revealing than “Who is your favorite Beatle?” Sure, it’s dated, but any rational, music-aware person should have one, and if they don’t, well, that says a lot right there.

Here’s a cheat sheet for what you can expect from the people you ask, based on very unscientific “research” ...

If they say “Paul,” you can expect some (mostly superficial) charm, and a liberal helping of cheesiness. People who like Paul tend to see Sgt. Pepper as the height of Beatle achievement, and they probably enjoy “Yellow Submarine” and “story songs” about Beatles characters like Eleanor Rigby more than “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” or “Norwegian Wood.”
If they say “John,” you can expect seriousness, outward lefty politics, a love of “meaningful” songs, and perhaps a disdain for both cheesiness and Paul. People who like John, I would guess, simply didn’t like Paul to begin with, or liked him until they heard “When I’m 64″ one too many times, and then dug around to see who wrote the lyrics to “A Day in the Life.”
No one ever says “Ringo” in this day and age, and that’s too bad. He’s charming, a good sport, and (I think) not as bad a drummer as people seem to remember. I challenge you: Listen to “Rain” and tell me that Ringo is an insufferably bad drummer.
George, finally, will always be the favorite of people who you want to know. He represents humility, first of all. He’s never mugging in the movies, and mostly he looks somewhat like you or I would look if we were thrown into the Beatles commercial juggernaut in the early 60’s. On the creativity side, he wasn’t Lennon/McCartney, but his guitar sound was an integral part of the Beatles appeal. It’s always tasteful, and he never tries to get all Eric Clapton on any song, which is why I — for one — can listen to roughly 50 Beatles songs for every Eric Clapton song. Finally, George’s solo stuff was way better than either Paul’s or John’s, and his low profile is endearing in a world in which the faces of rock stars’ are perpetually up in your grill.

Beatles, Taxman — from Alternate Revolver

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Lately, I’ve been listening to Alternate Revolver, a bootleg album of demoes from the Revolver sessions. George’s first contribution to the Beatles’ catalogue — “Taxman” — is on Revolver; it’s not my favorite Beatles song, but it’s a little more straightforward and rockin’ than later George songs. Is it contradictory to commemorate an artist by listening to a pirated version of his/her work? Hmm. I’ll venture a guess that George would appreciate it, so check out Alternate Revolver’s mono mix of the song, and toast the quiet Beatle.