John Lennon (1940 - 1980)

John Lennon died at age 40, 40 years ago today.

I did this blog post 12 years ago, linking to both of my parents' memories of being in the same city where he died on December 8, 1980.

Both of their posts mention that they named me John when I was born 99 days later. Now I'm almost 40 and I'm living on the Upper West Side, not far from where it happened on West 72nd Street by Central Park. I've walked by there many times, always thinking about it, never quite believing it really happened here.

(Photo from John Lennon's Instagram.)

Happy 80th birthday to Ringo Starr! 🥁

Ringo is the first Beatle to turn 80. Since he was the oldest Beatle, that would still be true if all of the Beatles were alive.

In this video, drummers play Ringo's set and talk about what was so great about his drumming.

Dave Grohl: Define "the best drummer in the world." Is it someone that's technically proficient? Or is it someone that sits in the song with their own feel? Ringo was the king of feel.… You hear his drumming and you know exactly who it is.

Chad Smith (Red Hot Chili Peppers): He really had a knack for coming up with really interesting musical parts that became rhythmic hooks.

Here's another video with a more in-depth analysis by Sina. I especially like a minute and a half in, when she plays an example of "what Ringo is not like." She plays a series of flashy beats that she says sound familiar because they've been used in many songs, but you'd be hard-pressed to place them as being from any one song. Then she plays a beat that's clearly distinctive to one Beatles song and would be hard to mistake for anything else.




As an example of Ringo's inventive drumming, here's "She Said She Said." From the beginning, Ringo frequently breaks up the 4/4 beat with drum fills as John Lennon sings about having a conversation. The instruments become more flowing and dreamlike when the time signature switches to 3/4 as John thinks back to his childhood. Ringo blends into the background and plays no fills during that flashback, as a contrast with the disruptive present day in 4/4.






(Photo of Ringo Starr in 2019 from Wikimedia Commons.)

Little Richard (1932 - 2020) 🎹

Little Richard has died at age 87.

Here he is playing some of his great songs in 1972, starting with my favorite, "Lucille," and then "Rip It Up," "Good Golly Miss Molly," "Tutti Frutti," and "Jenny Jenny."




Rolling Stone lists his "20 Essential Songs."

The New York Times says:

Richard Penniman, better known as Little Richard, who combined the sacred shouts of the black church and the profane sounds of the blues to create some of the world’s first and most influential rock ’n’ roll records, died on Saturday morning. He was 87.…

Little Richard did not invent rock ’n’ roll. Other musicians had already been mining a similar vein by the time he recorded his first hit, “Tutti Frutti” — a raucous song about sex, its lyrics cleaned up but its meaning hard to miss — in a New Orleans recording studio in September 1955. Chuck Berry and Fats Domino had reached the pop Top 10, Bo Diddley had topped the rhythm-and-blues charts, and Elvis Presley had been making records for a year.

But Little Richard, delving deeply into the wellsprings of gospel music and the blues, pounding the piano furiously and screaming as if for his very life, raised the energy level several notches and created something not quite like any music that had been heard before — something new, thrilling and more than a little dangerous. As the rock historian Richie Unterberger put it, “He was crucial in upping the voltage from high-powered R&B into the similar, yet different, guise of rock ’n’ roll.”

Art Rupe of Specialty Records, the label for which he recorded his biggest hits, called Little Richard “dynamic, completely uninhibited, unpredictable, wild.”

“Tutti Frutti” rocketed up the charts and was quickly followed by “Long Tall Sally” and other records now acknowledged as classics. His live performances were electrifying.

“He’d just burst onto the stage from anywhere, and you wouldn’t be able to hear anything but the roar of the audience,” the record producer and arranger H.B. Barnum, who played saxophone with Little Richard early in his career, recalled in “The Life and Times of Little Richard” (1984), an authorized biography by Charles White. “He’d be on the stage, he’d be off the stage, he’d be jumping and yelling, screaming, whipping the audience on.”

More from NYT:

Rock ’n’ roll was an unabashedly macho music in its early days, but Little Richard, who had performed in drag as a teenager, presented a very different picture onstage: gaudily dressed, his hair piled six inches high, his face aglow with cinematic makeup. He was fond of saying in later years that if Elvis was the king of rock ’n’ roll, he was the queen. Offstage, he characterized himself variously as gay, bisexual and “omnisexual.”

His influence as a performer was immeasurable. It could be seen and heard in the flamboyant showmanship of James Brown, who idolized him (and used some of his musicians when Little Richard began a long hiatus from performing in 1957), and of Prince, whose ambisexual image owed a major debt to his.

Presley recorded his songs. The Beatles adopted his trademark sound, an octave-leaping exultation: “Woooo!” (Paul McCartney said that the first song he ever sang in public was “Long Tall Sally,” which he later recorded with the Beatles.)

The Beatles' "I'm Down" was McCartney's homage to Little Richard:



The obit on Little Richard's racial significance:

“I’ve always thought that rock ’n’ roll brought the races together,” Mr. White quoted him as saying. “Especially being from the South, where you see the barriers, having all these people who we thought hated us showing all this love.”

Mr. Barnum told Mr. White that “they still had the audiences segregated” at concerts in the South in those days, but that when Little Richard performed, “most times, before the end of the night, they would all be mixed together.”

If uniting black and white audiences was a point of pride for Little Richard, it was a cause of concern for others, especially in the South. The White Citizens Council of North Alabama issued a denunciation of rock ’n’ roll largely because it brought “people of both races together.” And with many radio stations under pressure to keep black music off the air, Pat Boone’s cleaned-up, toned-down version of “Tutti Frutti” was a bigger hit than Little Richard’s original. (He also had a hit with “Long Tall Sally.”)

Most of Little Richard's songs fit the same template of upbeat rock over a 12-bar blues, but he slowed things down on "Send Me Some Lovin'":




NYT on how Little Richard got started (of course, read the whole obit for more of his life story):

Richard Wayne Penniman was born in Macon, Ga., on Dec. 5, 1932, the third of 12 children born to Charles and Leva Mae (Stewart) Penniman.… An uncle, a cousin and a grandfather were preachers, and as a boy he attended Seventh-day Adventist, Baptist and Holiness churches and aspired to be a singing evangelist. An early influence was the gospel singer and guitarist Sister Rosetta Tharpe, one of the first performers to combine a religious message with the urgency of R&B.

By the time he was in his teens, Richard’s ambition had taken a detour. He left home and began performing with traveling medicine and minstrel shows, part of a 19th-century tradition that was dying out. By 1948, billed as Little Richard — the name was a reference to his youth and not his physical stature — he was a cross-dressing performer with a minstrel troupe called Sugarfoot Sam From Alabam, which had been touring for decades.

In 1951, while singing alongside strippers, comics and drag queens on the Decataur Street strip in Atlanta, he recorded his first songs. The records were generic R&B, with no distinct style.…

Around this time, he met two performers whose look and sound would have a profound impact on his own: Billy Wright and S.Q. Reeder, who performed and recorded as Esquerita. They were both accomplished pianists, flashy dressers, flamboyant entertainers and as openly gay as it was possible to be in the South in the 1950s.

His break came in 1955, when Mr. Rupe signed him to Specialty and arranged for him to record with local musicians in New Orleans. During a break at that session, he began singing a raucous but obscene song that Mr. Rupe thought had the potential to capture the nascent teenage record-buying audience. Mr. Rupe enlisted a New Orleans songwriter, Dorothy LaBostrie, to clean up the lyrics; the song became “Tutti Frutti”; and a rock ’n’ roll star was born.…

Rolling Stone quotes Elton John in 1973:

“I heard Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis, and that was it.… I didn’t ever want to be anything else. I’m more of a Little Richard stylist than a Jerry Lee Lewis, I think. Jerry Lee is a very intricate piano player and very skillful, but Little Richard is more of a pounder.”

Here's "Crocodile Rock," Elton John's tribute to early rock 'n' roll. You can particularly hear Little Richard's influence when he screams: "Oh, lordy, Mama! Those Friday nights!"




When Prince died in 2016, I wrote: "Prince is often said to have been inspired by James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Sly & the Family Stone, and many others. One influence that shouldn't be overlooked is Little Richard, one of the greatest singers, songwriters, and pianists of the early days of rock 'n' roll."

A 2004 Prince concert review elaborated on this:

Prince proved at his St. Pete Times Forum performance Monday that he's the soulful link between the pioneers of R&B music, guys such as Little Richard and James Brown, and modern funky hitmakers....

Brown, Little Richard and Chuck Berry were never known for their modesty. Like Muhammad Ali, they knew they were the greatest. So does Prince.

And like Little Richard, Prince knows he's pretty.

"I wrote this song looking in the mirror," Prince said, grinning, while performing an acoustic version of Cream. Prince, who was wearing about as much foundation and mascara as Little Richard would, told the crowd that while others may need to go to the psychiatrist for comfort, all he needs to do is write perfect pop songs and look at himself in the mirror to be happy. Then he squealed into laughter.

Not to mention Prince's androgyny. Like Little Richard, Prince has always toyed with gender roles. An African-American man wearing a faceful of makeup? Lasciviously licking his lips - and guitar strings - onstage and in his videos? Strutting around in high-heeled boots, in sequined purple coats? ...

On Monday, Prince dazzled the crowd for nearly 2-1/2 hours, singing, dancing, swiveling his hips, then grabbing his guitar to shred out piercing notes.

The star teased the audience, camped it up, strutted his funky, 5-foot-2 body, batted his eyelashes, jammed with his band, cajoled them like they were pals.

Prince was the link between old school and the new. Would we have some of today's brightest, most talented stars without his influence?

When you consider how much music has been inspired not only by Little Richard but also by Prince, Elton John, the Beatles … you start to appreciate the full, staggering impact of Little Richard.



You gave me such a wonderful start!

The 100 Best Songs of the 2010s (41-50)

We're now in the better half of the best songs of the decade…

(Click here for the whole list so far, with a Spotify playlist.)


50. Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros — "Life is Hard"

I cried at one part of this video.




49. Lorde — "400 Lux"

(Here's a fun cover with a new wave vibe by an Israeli group, the Young Professionals.)




48. Francesca Esmé — "Adult Things"

Full disclosure, the singer is a friend of mine. The song was written by David Safran from Chicago, Illinois; here's an Atlantic post about it.




47. Paul McCartney — "New"

After half a century of making music, Paul McCartney still keeps things "New." I love when this song seems to be ending but then there's a doo wop coda.

(Unplugged backstage.)




46. Ra Ra Riot — "Boy"




45. Chairlift — "Wrong Opinion




44. The Strokes — "Tap Out"




43. King Tuff — "Black Moon Spell"

Rock isn't dead.




42. Regina Spektor — "You've Got Time"

(Strings version.)




41. Prince — "This Could Be Us"




< — 51 - 60

31 - 40 —>

The Beatles' Abbey Road

It was 50 years ago today! The Beatles released Abbey Road on this day in 1969 in the UK. (It was released in the US a few days later, October 1.)

A new version of Abbey Road is supposed to come out tomorrow, and I'm looking forward to it after listening to the revelatory remixes of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and the White Album by George Martin's son Giles, who's made even the 2009 remasters of those albums sound like demo tapes by comparison.

Abbey Road was the last studio album the band ever recorded, although it was released before Let It Be. Abbey Road was such a great breakthrough for the Beatles that it's shocking to think they had already privately broken up by the time it was released. Beatles fans will always disagree over what's their best album, but Abbey Road is a strong contender. Better production techniques make it the best-sounding Beatles record — the only one that feels like it could have come out in the middle of the '70s. There's a new warmth and richness to the guitar tones.

George Harrison reached his songwriting peak on Abbey Road. That he was still limited to his usual 2 songs per album only highlighted that he was no longer a "third" songwriter but a true equal to John Lennon and Paul McCartney; his songs were "Something" and "Here Comes the Sun." George's memorable guitar solo on "Something" is the instrumental part of the song that's most often commented on, but Paul's bass line throughout the song was also vital, almost a counterpoint to the singing. It was George's first and only song on a Beatles single that wasn't just a B-side: "Something" was released with John's "Come Together" as a double "single," which went #1 in the US and other countries.




"Come Together" starts the album on a dark note, with the band sounding united as they play a primal, minimalistic hook that fuses guitars, bass, and drums; every instrument feels essential, especially Ringo's repeated fill. Eerily, John starts each repetition of the hook by saying: "Shoot me!"

How many albums are so full of great songs with so little filler? "Oh! Darling" takes the style of Fats Domino but goes further, with wonderful screaming by Paul and drumming by Ringo.




"I Want You (She's So Heavy)" is by John, who gives up his typical verbosity and sings the title of the song and just a few other words over and over, out of a seemingly obsessive craving. The song builds up a massive wall of guitars playing an epic, Led Zeppelin-like riff that feels like it could go on forever until it's suddenly interrupted by a song that could hardly be more different: "Here Comes the Sun."




The meditative "Because" has John, Paul, and George singing every line together. John said he was listening to his wife, Yoko Ono, playing Beethoven's "Moonlight" Sonata, asked her to play the chords backwards, and then wrote "Because" around that. The actual chords to "Because" aren't the same as the Moonlight Sonata's first movement played backwards or forwards, but you can still feel how the spirit of Beethoven touched Lennon. [ADDED: My mom, Ann Althouse, remembers listening to Abbey Road, especially "Because," with my dad.]




The famous "Abbey Road medley" starts out with one of the Beatles' most underrated songs: "You Never Give Me Your Money," which is like a little medley in itself, going from Paul singing the title alone at the piano, to old-school rock with a honky-tonk piano and lyrics of economic struggle ("Out of college, money spent, see no future, pay no rent…"), to a slower and more poignant section ("But oh, that magic feeling, nowhere to go…"), to a guitar solo by George that kicks things into a higher gear, goes through multiple key changes, and leads to a more energized Paul: "One sweet dream! Pick up the bags, get in the limousine!" What comes next, when the major key briefly switches to a quieter minor passage, is to me one of the most subtly emotional moments in the whole Beatles' oeuvre, and it's all the more moving for being so fleeting: "Soon we'll be away from here. Step on the gas, and wipe that tear away."




The end of the Abbey Road medley is … "The End," which starts out sounding like a hard rock song by Paul, but turns into a showcase for every band member: first a drum solo (the only time the usually unpretentious Ringo ever played one in a Beatles song), followed by dueling guitar solos by the other 3. Then, with the same abruptness as the switch from "She's So Heavy" to "Here Comes the Sun," hard rock gives way to musical theater, and the Beatles close out the album with a gorgeously orchestrated aphorism that seems to sum up a whole band based on the idea of love.

Abbey Road is an early example of an album with an unlisted "hidden" song at the end: "Her Majesty," performed only by Paul. It was supposed to go in the medley, after "Mean Mr. Mustard," but Paul was unsatisfied with his song and decided against it. The Beatles later heard the album with "Her Majesty" tacked on at the end, ending on the unresolved note that was supposed to segue into "Polythene Pam," because a studio engineer didn't know where else to put the song. The Beatles liked this effect, so they left the album that way — flawed and yet perfect.

Wanna feel old?

Nirvana's breakthrough album Nevermind is older today . . . than the Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand" single was . . . on the day Nirvana released Nevermind.

Should we stop listening to Michael Jackson?

"Radio stations in Canada, New Zealand and Australia are removing Michael Jackson songs from their playlists after two men alleged in a new documentary that the late singer abused them."

Even if all the allegations are true, canceling Michael Jackson is a "Bad" and "Dangerous" road to go down.

Silencing music by a dead person who committed crimes does nothing to stop those kinds of crimes from happening in the future. If we consistently threw out all music by people who once acted horribly, we’d have no John Lennon,* no Beatles, no Miles Davis. Of course, the Beatles revolutionized rock and pop music, and Miles Davis revolutionized jazz. So we’d be left musically impoverished, just to let us feel vaguely good about ourselves.

* John Lennon said this in 1980, the last year of his life:

All that "I used to be cruel to my woman / I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved" was me. I used to be cruel to my woman, and physically — any woman. I was a hitter. I couldn't express myself and I hit. I fought men and I hit women. That is why I am always on about peace, you see. It is the most violent people who go for love and peace. . . . I am a violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence. I will have to be a lot older before I can face in public how I treated women as a youngster.

(And yes, I am that guy!)

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

It was 50 years ago today!

The Beatles released their seminal concept album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, on June 1, 1967. (Well, that's what many sources say, although Wikipedia says it was released on May 26 in the UK and June 2 in the US.)

Comments on some of my favorite songs from the album:

“With a Little Help From My Friends” has one of my favorite bass lines ever. Part of what’s great about it is that it’s so simple, so easy to play. This band wasn’t about showing off the individual members' ability to play their instruments; it was about them coming together to bring us a seemingly endless stream of ideas (musical and otherwise), and allowing us to bring our minds in tune with theirs. Ringo Starr gave what many would call his finest vocal performances on this song; his usually modest baritone suddenly switches to a triumphantly soaring tenor high note at the end. One nice thing about Beatles songs sung by Ringo is that he had great backing vocalists in John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

“She’s Leaving Home” might seem overly sentimental or corny, but I don't mind that. The lyrics are wonderfully detailed; someone (I forget who) remarked that you don't normally hear the word "clutching" on a rock album. I love the interaction between Paul and John in the chorus, representing the main character's mother and father, respectively: Paul sings the title in falsetto, while John adds his distraught questions/comments in a lower register. I also love how a line that would seem prosaic on paper, “Waiting to keep the appointment she made,” becomes wound up with an exciting sense of possibilities as a result of the quivering vibrato of the strings. (Unusually for the Beatles, the orchestral instrumentation was arranged not by George Martin but by Mike Leander.) The wordplay of the father's hapless line, "We gave her everything money could buy/Bye bye," brings back the theme of the early Beatles hit "Can't Buy Me Love," while showing how much the band has matured.

"Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" is a strange John song based on a 19th-century poster, which switches midway into a waltz overlaid with kaleidoscopic calliope music, thanks to George Martin carrying out John's instructions to conjure up a circus so vividly you can “smell the sawdust.”

The album's only song by George Harrison, “Within You Without You," is the spiritual centerpiece of the album — a beautiful merger of Indian and Western classical music. (Cultural appropriation? Yes please!)




After the reprise of the album's title song, which would feel to someone hearing the album for the first time like it must be the last song, the sound of the audience fades out as the band starts playing an encore, "A Day in the Life" — the artistic pinnacle of this album if not the whole band. It starts in a dream-like state as John sings about disconcerting imagery (with outstanding drumming by Ringo), before being interrupted by an orchestra with each instrument chaotically sliding from a low, quiet note to a high, loud note.

That crescendo segues into a more relaxed, upbeat section in which Paul sings about his everyday actions with a melody that has some resemblance to John’s but in a different key and more choppy (staccato) and repetitive, which fits the mundane lyrics (“woke up . . . drank a cup . . .”). In contrast, John’s melody has a legato, drawn-out quality more evocative of dreaming.

A seemingly mundane detail in Paul's section is that he “had a smoke,” which at first calls to mind a man having his first cigarette of the day as he sets out in the morning, but then takes on a druggy meaning when he says he “went into a dream.” At that point, Paul sings in a more legato, John-like style over a disorienting sequence of chords, during which we have a hard time telling what key we're in (this is effective regardless of whether the listener knows music theory), eventually leading to John repeating the first line of the song ("I read the news today . . ." — which now feels like one more detail about the ordinary morning from Paul's section).

After John's last line (one of the defining statements of '60s rock: "I'd love to turn you on"), the orchestral crescendo happens again, and the song abruptly ends on a loud, sustained piano chord in the same key as Paul’s section, seemingly closing the album by bringing us firmly back to reality. There's one more surprise . . . before we're left to contemplate the genius we've just heard.

Mama Cass

"Mama" Cass Elliot of the Mamas and the Papas was born Ellen Naomi Cohen on September 19, 1941. She would have turned 75 today. She died in 1974 at age 32.

Here's "Monday Monday":




"California Dreaming":




My mom, Ann Althouse, comments on the "Monday Monday" video:

I remember how it felt to see them on TV like that -- looking so different from other groups of the time. The men were like the other men, but the women were different, because of Cass and because of her contrast with Michelle [Phillips], who would have stood out as phenomenally pretty anyway, but standing there next to Cass, she made a fantastic contrast, and there were many people who were suddenly discovering that the fat one was even more attractive. It was kind of like with The Beatles, the way many girls thought Ringo was the most attractive, when, by conventional standards, he was the only ugly one. Back in the 60s... when everything was a revolution.

I respond:

Now it's hard to imagine anything being a revolution!

I rarely think any Beatles cover is an improvement on the original, but one exception is the Mamas and the Papas doing "I Call Your Name" (by John Lennon):




Mama Cass and Johnny Cash were charming together:




And here's Mama Cass on her own, singing her signature song, "Dream a Little Dream of Me."

The Beatles' Revolver turns 50

50 years ago today, on August 5, 1966, the Beatles released Revolver, an artistic breakthrough for the band which many would call the greatest rock album of all time.

1. The first song on the album, "Taxman," is by George Harrison, but Paul McCartney deserves a lot of credit for both the classic bassline and the manic lead guitar. Paul's guitar solo (which, unusually, is heard twice in the song) seems to have been influenced by George's growing interest in Indian classical music, and foreshadows the vocal melismas in George's next song on the album, "Love You To" (the last word of each verse in that song — "meeeeee" — evokes the middle of the "Taxman" guitar solo).




2. The Beatles had previously used a string quartet in "Yesterday," but the second song on Revolver, "Eleanor Rigby," was the first time they used no instruments other than strings and voice. It's also one of the earliest Beatles songs to focus on specific characters beyond the standard personal pronouns (you/I/she/he), paving the way for "Penny Lane," for instance. With its themes of loneliness, religion, and death, "Eleanor Rigby" was a shockingly weighty and profound song for a band that used to be best known for teen-oriented pop songs like "I Want to Hold Your Hand."






3. The Beatles used backwards guitar for the first time in John Lennon's "I'm Only Sleeping."




4. George's second song on the album, "Love You To" wasn't the Beatles' first use of sitar (which was in "Norwegian Wood"), but it was their first song with only Indian instruments and voice.




5. John was generally very critical of Paul, but they both agreed that "Here, There, and Everywhere" was one of Paul's best songs.




6. "Yellow Submarine" — a song so colorful and childlike it gave rise to an animated movie.




7. "She Said, She Said" features a brilliant use of shifting time signatures: the song starts in the standard rock 4/4 (when singing about the present), then switches to a 3/4 waltz once he sings about "when I was a boy . . ." I don't have a link to the album version (I assume you own it or can stream it), but Ringo Starr's drumming on this song is some of his best.




8. John's acidic "She Said, She Said" is nicely juxtaposed with Paul's ebullience in the next song on Revolver, "Good Day Sunshine."




9. George and Paul brilliantly harmonized their guitar parts on John's "And Your Bird Can Sing."




10. "For No One" is one of my very favorite Beatles songs. Paul perfectly fused lyrics to music here. The slow, methodical chord changes in the verse reflect the singer's dwelling on the breakup and trying to analyze things from every possible perspective. Then the emotional intensity is heightened by the shift to a minor key in the chorus ("and in her eyes you see nothing . . .").




11. In his book Revolution in the Head: The Beatles Records and the Sixties, Ian MacDonald calls "Dr. Robert" "one of The Beatles' most incisive pieces." MacDonald explains:

Concerning a New York doctor who habituated his socialite clients to narcotics by mixing methedrine with vitamin shots, the song shifts key evasively, stabilising only in its middle eight — an evangelical sales-pitch backed by pious harmonium and warbling choirboys. Lennon's caustic vocal . . . is matched by McCartney's huckstering harmony in fourths ('he's a man you must believe') and by Harrison's double-tracked guitar, with its unique blend of sitar and country-and-western.

12. "I Want to Tell You" is George's third and last song on Revolver. George usually had a maximum of two songs per album; this is the only time George got three songs on a normal-length Beatles album. (The White Album had four, but it was a double album.)




13. "Got to Get You Into My Life" is an outstanding Paul song in a Motown vein.






14. The last song on Revolver, "Tomorrow Never Knows," is one of the most startling in the Beatles' whole catalog. The basic song is unusually simple for the Beatles: there's just one melody (no vocal harmonies), one drum beat, and two chords repeated over and over. That kind of minimalism was rare in 1966. The lyrics are the most blatantly drug-inspired of any Beatles song: "Turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream . . . Listen to the color of your dream . . ."

What's truly ground-breaking about the recording is the tape loops which each Beatle made at home and brought to the studio to be added to the mix. Ian MacDonald lists the five loops (most of which were speeded up): (1) a seagull-like sound, which is actually Paul laughing; (2) an orchestra playing a chord; (3) a Mellotron (a precursor to the synthesizer) played on the "flute" setting; (4) a Mellotron played on the "strings" setting; and (5) a sitar. The song also includes a backwards, cut-up version of the guitar solo from "Taxman." MacDonald observes that the loops are played "in cross rhythm, invit[ing] the audience to lose its time-sense in a brilliantly authentic evocation of the LSD experience."




Here are the original tape loops in isolation, one after another (not as they're heard on the record):

Sir George Martin (1926 - 2016)

I read the news today, oh boy . . . George Martin has died at 90.

It would be hard to overstate the effect George Martin had on the Beatles. And it would be hard to think of any human being in the world who wasn't an actual rock musician, yet had a bigger impact on rock music, than him.

George Martin wasn't just a great producer who happened to work with the greatest rock band of all time. There's a reason he's called the fifth Beatle, but even that honorific fails to capture what he really did. He didn't merely provide so many studio innovations that it's possible to pick out many Beatles songs where his effect on the finished product was at least as important as that of some of the actual Beatles. He radically challenged every preconception of what a rock band was supposed to be, in a way that didn't just change what the Beatles sounded like, but changed the next 50 years of music. George Martin allowed the band to encompass Western classical music ("Eleanor Rigby," "In My Life"), Indian classical music ("Without You Without You," "Love You To"), jazz ("When I'm 64," "Honey Pie"), and more.

There have been so many volumes written about what George Martin added to the Beatles' recordings. I'll just point to one small example, remembering that there are dozens and dozens of things like this in the Beatles' oeuvre. This is an analysis of "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" by Ian MacDonald in his book Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties:

Lennon wandered into an antiques shop and picked up a Victorian circus poster advertising . . . a show put on by some travelling tumblers . . . in 1843. This appealed to his sense of the ridiculous and, when the new album [Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band] called for another composition from him, he hung the poster on the wall of his home studio and, playing his piano, sang phrases from it until he had a song. Taking it to Abbey Road, he asked George Martin for a 'fairground' production wherein one could smell the sawdust — which, while not in the narrowest sense a musical specification, was, by Lennon's standards, a clear and reasonable request. (He once asked Martin to make one of his songs sound like an orange.) While The Beatles' producer worked more naturally with the conventionally articulate McCartney, the challenges of catering to Lennon's intuitive approach generally spurred him to his more original arrangements, of which Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! is an outstanding example. Using harmonium, harmonicas, and a tape of Victorian steam organs and calliopes cut up and edited into a kaleidoscopic wash, he created a brilliantly whimsical impression of period burlesque, ideally complementing Lennon's dry nasal delivery. Few producers have displayed a tenth of the invention shown here.

From the New York Times obituary:

George Martin, the urbane English record producer who signed the Beatles to a recording contract on the small Parlophone label after every other British record company had turned them down, and who guided them in their transformation from a regional dance band into the most inventive, influential and studio-savvy rock group of the 1960s, died Tuesday. . . .

When the Beatles played “Please Please Me” for him for the first time, for example, it was in a slow arrangement meant to evoke the style of Roy Orbison, one of their heroes. Mr. Martin told them the song sounded dreary, and insisted that they pick up the tempo and add a simple harmonica introduction. His suggestions transformed “Please Please Me,” which became their first big hit.

Always intent on expanding the Beatles’ horizons, Mr. Martin began chipping away at the group’s resistance to using orchestral musicians on its recordings in early 1965. While recording the “Help!” album that year, he brought in flutists for the simple adornment that enlivens Lennon’s “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away,” and he convinced Mr. McCartney, against his initial resistance, that “Yesterday” should be accompanied by a string quartet.

A year later, during the recording of the album “Revolver,” Mr. Martin no longer had to cajole: The Beatles prevailed on him to augment their recordings with arrangements for strings (on “Eleanor Rigby”), brass (on “Got to Get You Into My Life”), marching band (on “Yellow Submarine”) and solo French horn (on “For No One”), as well as a tabla player for Harrison’s Indian-influenced song “Love You To.”

It was also at least partly through Mr. Martin’s encouragement that the Beatles became increasingly interested in electronic sound. Noting their inquisitiveness about both the technical and musical sides of recording, Mr. Martin ignored the traditional barrier between performers and technicians and invited the group into the control room, where he showed them how the recording equipment at EMI’s Abbey Road studios worked. He also introduced them to unorthodox recording techniques, including toying with tape speeds and playing tapes backward.

Mr. Martin had used some of these techniques in his comedy and novelty recordings, long before he began working with the Beatles.

“When I joined EMI,” he told The New York Times in 2003, “the criterion by which recordings were judged was their faithfulness to the original. If you made a recording that was so good that you couldn’t tell the difference between the recording and the actual performance, that was the acme. And I questioned that. I thought, O.K., we’re all taking photographs of an existing event. But we don’t have to make a photograph; we can paint. And that prompted me to experiment.”

Soon the Beatles themselves became intent on searching for new sounds, and Mr. Martin created another that the group adopted in 1966 (followed by many others). During the sessions for “Rain,” Mr. Martin took part of Lennon’s lead vocal and overlaid it, running backward, over the song’s coda.

“From that moment,” Mr. Martin said, “they wanted to do everything backwards. They wanted guitars backwards and drums backwards, and everything backwards, and it became a bore.” The technique did, however, benefit “I’m Only Sleeping” (with backward guitars) and “Strawberry Fields Forever” (with backward drums).

Mr. Martin was never particularly trendy, and when the Beatles adopted the flowery fashions of psychedelia in 1966 and 1967 he continued to attend sessions in a white shirt and tie, his hair combed back in a schoolmasterly pre-Beatles style. Musically, though, he was fully in step with them. . . . His avant-garde orchestration and spacey production techniques made “A Day in the Life” into a monumental finale for the kaleidoscopic album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”

It was 51 years ago today

The Nation told the band not to play . . .

Lennon or McCartney?

My favorite answer is by Adam Duritz of Counting Crows (starting at 4:44):

I think Lennon's a great lyricist especially … a great writer, really. But melody is unquantifiable. I mean, you live your day, so you've got shit to write about. I don't know where people get melody from. The ability to write something that sticks in people's heads for 10, 20, 50, couple hundred years — the ability to be Puccini or McCartney … I don't know where that comes from. And I don't know how one guy wrote so many pieces of music that I can hum 50 years later. I don't know how it's possible. And that to me is such a rare thing.… All the dark … cool songs in the world are great, but the only reason we love music is because melody gets to the gut.… The ability to write something that we're all humming … that's how I remember the Beatles. Not that Lennon didn't write a lot of great songs too, but McCartney's abilities there are … without peer.

Happy 70th birthday to Paul McCartney and Roger Ebert!

Sitting around listening to Christmas presents

We're playing the remastered version of the Beatles' Revolver. My stepdad reacts to George Harrison in "Love You To": "He sounds so enthusiastic: 'I'll make love to you, if you want me to . . . Or, if not, I'll just play my sitar . . . '"

For the annals of "unconvincing Facebook alerts"

There's a Facebook application called iLike, where you can make a list of your favorite music and get alerted when one of your favorites is going to play a concert in your town. This message from iLike just arrived in my inbox:

"George Harrison posted a concert near you!"

Cassette-taped musicians

Famous musicians made from cassette tapes by "iri5" (via Drawn!):

25 random things about me

It's the craze that's sweeping Facebook:

In the past few weeks, a chain letter called "25 Random Things About Me" has wormed its way through Facebook at an alarming speed. The exhibitionistic format has remained surprisingly intact: In addition to rattling off 25 facts about themselves, "Random Things" authors are supposed to tag 25 of their Facebook friends, prompting them to write their own note and tag 25 more people, and so forth and so on.

[UPDATE: The evolutionary basis of "25 things."]

Here's mine, cross-posted from Facebook:

1. My first word was "happy." My first phrase was "Beach Boys." My first sentence was "I want it."

2. I haven't eaten meat since I was in elementary school.

3. I was baptized on Wall Street.

4. My favorite band is the Beatles. I used to say my favorites Beatles song was "You Never Give Me Your Money," but I can't decide anymore.

5. In the summer between 7th and 8th grades, I got an electric guitar and practiced about 8 hours a day.

6. The most famous people I've met are Al Franken, Christopher Hitchens, and Lorrie Moore, the last of whom is an old friend of the family.

7. I have a weird set of movies I watch over and over, while I haven't seen a lot of the most famous ones. I've never seen Forrest Gump, Titanic, etc. Movies I've seen a ridiculous number of times: My Dinner with Andre, Back to the Future trilogy, Annie Hall, Duck Soup.

8. I'm a pessimist and a skeptic, but I try not to be a cynic. I think the world is probably doomed, but I have confidence that a lot of individuals will make a good-faith effort to try to make things better along the way to our demise.

9. I spent a month in Rome but have never seen the Sistine Chapel's ceiling.

10. Since the beginning of 2007, I always wanted Obama as president and Biden as VP. I couldn't believe I hit the nail on the head.

11. I have a vivid memory of touching Courtney Love's bare shoulder when she was crowd surfing at a Hole concert, one of the emblematic moments of my teenage years.

12. When I was a law review editor I spent about half an hour on the phone with an author debating every single contraction in the piece, about 60 in all. He loved contractions, and I didn't want any of them, so we compromised and changed about half of them to full words.

13. People tell me I'm very "tech-savvy," but I'm actually technophobic. I waited as long as possible to switch to a cell phone and digital camera, and I still don't have any kind of iPhone/Blackberry/etc. because I prefer writing things down in notebooks.

14. I wish I'd been European instead of American; I think I'd fit in better in Europe.

15. When I was in middle school, I didn't cut my hair for a long time and I looked like this.

16. When I was 2, I played a game we called "do counter," which was getting up on the kitchen counter and recognizing spices. I knew each one by smell, or as I called it back then, "hmell."

17. This article accurately describes me.

18. The first time I acted in a play, there was a part at the end where the other actor ran up to me (per the script), but I accidentally struck her forehead with my teeth, causing her to bleed onstage. We were both fine, but I felt really bad. People in the audience didn't realize anything had gone wrong; they thought it was fake blood.

19. I cook myself dinner almost every night.

20. I used to sketch people's faces all the time, and I wish I still had the time or inclination to do so. One of my favorites is a drawing I did in 7th grade of Justice Scalia.

21. I can't whistle. But I'm really good at snapping.

22. I can't give you an answer about whether I'm a liberal or not. I often agree with them, but I also think they get too much stuff wrong.

23. I have a crush on Regina Spektor and Tracyanne Campbell, the singer from Camera Obscura.

24. I'm tired of being in my 20s; I can't wait till I'm in my 30s.

25. I started a blog last April. You should bookmark this link and read it on a regular basis.

Obviously, that last one was done for Facebook and is a moot point for you who are reading it here.

Music Friday: John Lennon and Regina Spektor, Real Love

I love how she dramatically changes the chords and melody while staying true to the song:



Regina Spektor covered "Real Love" as part of a Lennon tribute album done as part of the "Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur."

December 8, John Lennon day

The clock radio woke us, and the first sound that came over it was an announcer’s voice: “We’ll have more about the murder of John Lennon after this.”

We sat bolt upright in bed. Had we heard correctly? It had come to us at the tail end of sleep, maybe he had really said some other name, or not the word “murder.”

But when the commercial was over, we learned that it was true. Then we remembered hearing an unusual storm of sirens when we’d gone to bed around midnight, sirens which we now learned had been a couple of miles north of us....

We went to a law students’ party, and one guy, a student’s husband, ... told us that he and his wife lived on the Upper West Side and had been out walking at the time of the murder, just a couple of blocks away, and had heard the horrible sirens, and without knowing anything about what they were for, he had suddenly begun to cry as he walked home.

That's an excerpt from my dad's account — you can read the whole thing here.

And here's my mom's version — posted a few hours later, before either of them had seen the other's post.

(Notice my cameo appearance in the first paragraph of my dad's post and the last paragraph of my mom's post.)