The Love You Take Is Equal to the Love You Make (Fab 4 w/o)
Sep 13 '05 (Updated Sep 23 '05)
The Bottom Line Thirteen albums, twenty-two singles, seven years - and a legacy to last a lifetime.
Not liking The Beatles is as perverse as not liking the sun.
I wish I could take credit for that quote. It's so succinct, so slyly witty, so true. (I also with I could find who originally said it - all I remember is that I saw it in a Rolling Stone album guide back in college, but that's beside the point for now.) It's the perfect retort for anyone with the audacity to scoff at The Beatles' legacy. You don't have to go ga ga for the music. You don't have to own any of the memorabilia or stock all of the albums in your CD collection. You don't even have to listen to them all that often. But you do have to acknowledge that they've had some degree of influence over every band that has come along in the last forty years. Pop music would still be around today even if The Beatles hadn't opened the door to complex melodies, sonic experimentation, concept albums, sugary harmonies, politics in music, over-the-top fanaticism, and so much more, music would a much blander place.
Yeah, it's only right to at least appreciate The Beatles, but as for me, I love 'em. Even though they split up five years before I was born, I grew up with a vague awareness of the group thanks to a few of their records in my parents' music collection. It took joining boy scouts, though, to really teach me to appreciate the band. On our camping trips, as the evening campfires were dying down, some of the older scouts had the tradition of pulling out a battery powered stereo playing through two or three Beatles albums before heading off to the tents for the night. I don't think any of us knew why we wanted to listen to something that had been so important to our parents' generation, but being out there, isolated in nature, away from the pressures of school and everyday life, it just made sense for us to connect with something that belonged more to the ages than the contemporary music of the late eighties we heard outside of camp.
And soon I found myself bringing blank tapes to those older scouts, begging for copies of everything I could get my hands on. I wore those tapes out, studying them just as hard as I studied my school work. I would try to figure out what all the layered sounds were that made up the sonic collage at the end of I Am the Walrus. I would practice my Spanish by translating lyrics from Abbey Road. We'd find excuses to use tracks from The White Album as part of the soundtrack for our A/V club projects. I sing songs like Yellow Submarine or Penny Lane when it came try to audition for school musicals. I threw myself headfirst into the group, and through it all, I discovered just how strong the echoes were that The Beatles left through rock and pop music, even decades after the fact.
Now that alexdg1 has called for for a Beatles music write-off, it's a perfect opportunity to sit down a contemplate some of their songs. There are enough people out there willing to squabble over which Beatles songs are actually the best, and which are the most influential, and such lists are always so subjective, so I've decided just to list some of the songs that have some special meaning for me or are just plain interesting in some way. So here goes...
Something - Let's start out with one of the biggies. It's probably George Harrison's most memorable tune he penned for The Beatles, and Frank Sinatra called it the greatest love song of the twentieth century. A love song not so much about how great it is to be in love, but rather how overwhelming it is. How when you find the right person, everything else becomes insignificant, including yourself. If it's meant to be, all you can do is surrender and hold on for the ride into the unknown.
♬ you're asking me will my love grow
I don't know, I don't know
you stick around now it may show
I don't know, I don't ♬
You Know My Name, Look Up the Number - And we move from the deep and meaningful to the silly and flippant. I love that The Beatles wrote a song based around a phone book slogan. I love that they can repeat the same song over and over in different styles in the course of one tune. I love that the song took more than two years to record I love that there is absolutely no attempt to make this song sound meaningful, serious, or even, lets face it, good. If Monty Python and the Beatles had switch jobs for a day back in the late sixties, it would go a long way towards explaining just what the hell was going on with the song.
♬ good evening and welcome to Slaggers
featuring Dennis O'Bell
come on Ringo, let's hear it for Dennis ♬
For No One - As heartbreaking as it is beautiful. A song of denial, doubt, regret, longing, missed opportunities, and soldiering on as life continues to fall apart. Despite all the negativity that flows through the lyrics, there's still a crisp, baroque feel to the pop, bathing it in a classical glow. And if there were ever any doubt that the French horn is a perfect pop instrument, this song lays it to rest.
♬ and in her eyes you see nothing
no sign of love behind the tears
cried for no one
a love that should have lasted years ♬
Hey Bulldog - Blues rock has rarely sounded this menacing and creepy. From the pounding piano riffs that open the song to the sharp, punchy delivery of the lyrics to the sizzling guitar solos to the way John and Paul bark back and forth to one another at the end. It's not the only time that The Beatles turned aggressive, but nowhere else did the sound like they were having so much fun doing so.
♬ childlike - no one understand
jackknife - in your sweaty hands
some kind of innocence is measures out in years
you don't know what it's like to listen to your fears ♬
You've Got to Hide Your Love Away - The Beatles turn to folk rock. The rolling 6/8 time signature. The soft tambourine rhythm line. That flute solo that closes out the song. And the sheer, painful melancholy of never being able to confess your love to the object of your desire. Part of me thinks that I like this song so much simply because of the scene in Help! where the lads played this song in their super cool apartment.
♬ how could I even try
I can never win
hearing them, seeing them
in the state I'm in ♬
Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey - Yes, I know it's a song that means absolutely nothing, but at the same time, it's a song that can mean absolutely whatever you want it to mean. A song about friendship? Sure. A song about spiritual discovery? Yeah. A song about being misunderstood? Yep. Some sort of hidden message about Paul's death? Why not. And through it all, it's a great, hard-rockin' goofy romp.
♬ your inside is out and your outside in in
your outside is in and your inside is out
so come on ♬
Lady Madonna - Nursery rhymes meet honky-tonk bar blues, with some fantastically dirty sax riffs to round out the sound. I had a friend back in college who was a music major and used to like to play this one on the piano in the dorm's lounge, only he liked to show off and would play it at about three times the normal speed. No other cover of the sound has ever felt so fun and energetic, but The Beatles still do it best.
♬ Lady Madonna, children at your feet
wonder how you manage to make ends meet
who finds the money when you pay the rent
did you think that money was heaven sent? ♬
The Fool on the Hill - There's something sinister and menacing in the fanatical individualism, but at the same time, the songs instrumental breaks are absolutely beautiful in their carefree, childlike innocence and playfulness. I've never been able to figure out if the subject of the song is being put in a positive or a negative light here, but nevertheless, I can't help feeling that the world would be a better place with more people who lived like this.
♬ but nobody wants to know him
they can see that he's just a fool
and he never gives an answer
but the fool on the hill sees the sun going down
and the eyes in his head see the world spinning round ♬
Nowhere Man - Forget the rich, melancholy pop arrangements, the flawless harmonies, the endearingly jangly guitar rhythms, the unconventional melodic structure, or anything else that first jumps out about this song. If there's any one thing that makes Nowhere Man so great, it's the fact that this is the first Lennon/McCartney composition (mostly just Lennon) that began to subject matter outside the boundaries of love, and it opened up the doors to thematic exploration in pop music for The Beatles and the innumerable bands that followed in their footsteps.
♬ doesn't have a point of view
knows not where he's going to
isn't he a bit like you and me ♬
A Day in the Life - Proof positive that the sum can sometimes be greater than the sum of its parts. It's not the best place to start when you want to explain to someone the difference between Lennon's and McCartney's songwriting styles, since the individual sections find the two men in rather mediocre songsmith territory. But when all those sections start to overlap it becomes positively mesmerizing. Anyone interested in just how much influence a record's producer can have on the final result could do a lot worse than starting their investigation here.
♬ I'd love to turn you on ♬
Day Tripper - I've never hid my love for power pop, and no one would dare dispute that The Beatles are the single biggest influence on all the power pop pioneers of the seventies all the way up through today. Within The Beatles catalogue, though, this is power pop ground zero. I can trace many of my favorite bands back to that opening guitar riff, along with the way the bass and tambourine sidle their way into the mix. Add in the fact that Day Tripper has made for some great mash-ups in recent years, and we've got a song that really mustn't be overlooked.
♬ got a good reason for taking the easy way out
got a good reason for taking the easy way out
she was a day tripper, a one way ticket, yeah
it took me so long to find out
and I found out ♬
Michelle - If The Beatles had all been born twenty-five years earlier, there probably would have been quite a few more songs with the cheeky-romantic, old-timey sound of Michelle. And while more songs with this much charm would certainly be welcome, they'd probably diminish what makes Michelle so unique. Let's be glad The Beatles fell where they did in history. (Incidentally, I've never fully gotten over my misapprehension that the French lyrics are really just Paul singing "someday monkey won't play piano songs.")
♬ Michelle, ma belle
sont des mots qui vont tres bien ensemble
tres bien ensemble ♬
I Am the Walrus - Surrealism captured perfectly in sound. Is it a song about nothing or is it a song about so very much that there's no way to possibly comprehend it all? Before I sat down and listened to the song, never knew that something so confusing and bizarre could be so fascinating. I used to sit and listen to the song's coda over and over again, just to try and figure out what all went into that sonic collage. Imagine my surprise, years later in one of my college literature classes, to realize that some of those spoken lines mixed into the background of I Am the Walrus actually came from a scene in King Lear
♬ yellow matter custard dripping from a dead dog's eye
crabalocker fishwife pornographic priestess
boy you been a naughty girl
you let your knickers down ♬
In My Life - Rarely does a song come across this romantic without tripping over the sappiness ladled over the music. In My Life play all the cards right. The way the song opens with its wistful childhood nostalgia, giving over to sheer, heartfelt declaration of love and dedication. The rich guitar riffs, the piano solo, the vocal harmonies, the ooh's in the background, those falsetto notes that rise up the last time the title comes around in the lyrics - they're all great, but it's the sweetly romantic sentiment that gets me every time.
♬ but of all these friend and lovers
there is no one who compares with you
and these memories lose their meaning
when I think of love as something new ♬
Maxwell's Silver Hammer - Homicidal mania probably doesn't have much business on a pop album, and it certainly has no place inside a goofy sounding that sounds like it was written for some children's television show. But here we are. It's probably the creepiest moment on Abbey Road simply because the tune is bouncy enough to suck you in and get you singing along long before you realize your singing about an unstoppable killer on the loose.
♬ bang-bang Maxwell's silver hammer
came down upon her head
bang-bang Maxwell's silver hammer
made sure that she was dead ♬
I Will - I'll readily admit that I Will leans a little too far to the sappy side of things for its own good, but the song is so sweetly innocent and warm, its impossible not to smile when you hear it. It may be a romantic movie cliché, but the notion of falling in love at first sight only to realize that everything in your life has been pointing to that person is captured perfectly in the minute-and-three-quarters of I Will. (Incidentally, listen to I Will and My Best Friend's Girl from The Cars back to back sometime. There's too much on an echo for it to be a coincidence.)
♬ for if I ever saw you
I didn't catch your name
but it never really mattered
I will always feel the same ♬
Strawberry Fields Forever - I was born well after the psychedelic movement, so I can only imagine the kind of bombshell Strawberry Fields dropped on the world of popular music. The dreamy quality of the lyrics, the way the flutes and strings blend with the traditional rock instruments to create something slightly out of phase with reality, the feeling that the song was disassembled piece by piece and put back together by someone with a distaste for following directions, that whole creepy, paranoia inducing coda - they've all crept into popular music over the last few decades, but back then, this was as avant garde as it came.
♬ living is easy with eyes closed
misunderstanding all you see
it's getting hard to be someone but it all works out
it doesn't matter much to me ♬
Eleanor Rigby - Did The Beatles invent the Kronos Quartet when they recorded Eleanor Rigby? Probably not, at least not consciously, but never before had anyone entertained the notion that you could arrange a pop song with nothing but a classical string quartet underneath the vocals. This is one of those songs that you can't listen to too closely for too long without just breaking down into a serious depressive episode. And through it all, Eleanor Rigby outshines most writers who've made their living writing poetry in the last few decades.
♬ Eleanor Rigby died in the church and was buried along with her name
nobody came
Father McKenzie, wiping the dirt from his hands as he walked from the grave
no one was saved ♬
Two of Us - A perfect glimpse of what friendship is all about - simple and honest, warm and supportive, the kind of friendship that's been around so long that there's nothing that needs to be said to keep things going. It's all the more striking that the song was written and recorded at a time when none of The Beatles could stand to be in the same room with one another for any extended period of time. But through the all animosity and infighting surrounding the sessions for Let It Be, Two of Us proved that the flame of friendship was still alive, foreshadowing the fantastic work the group would do together for their swan song, Abbey Road. (Does it still count as foreshadowing when Let It Be got so tied up in post production that it came out after Abbey Road?)
♬ you and I have memories
longer than the road that stretches out ahead
two of us wearing raincoats
standing so low in the sun
you and me chasing paper
getting no where, on our way back home ♬
Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End - The perfect end to the perfect career as a band. There's a sense of importance and five about this trio of songs that closes out Abbey Road (assuming we overlook Her Majesty, which has more of the feel of a bonus scene added after the credits of a movie for a laugh). It almost feels like The Beatles revisit all of the musical highlights of their career in the dozen or so "movements" that make up these five minutes. And how appropriate is it that the last line of the last song of the last album The Beatles recorded is:
♬and in the end the love you take
is equal to the love you make ♬
Fifteen words that capture what the career of The Beatles was all about.
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