parlophone pharaohs (pt. 3)

seriouser and seriouser

The Beatles begin as an energy and an essence, with something contagious in their ferocity and electricity, in their grace and wit and rebellious ebullience. They were pop, not poetry (since poetry is Art and Art is Not Pop) – the dialogue of a chemical reaction between the public and their works. But the arc was poetic from the kickoff. Change is the story of those first five years, how the band evolves and in turn evolves the culture. How their raw savvy deepens, how something you could really only call genius emerges to make them over over each seasonal quartet, how extra-musical the (global!) impact ends up. It’s about interplay, between the four artists, and their inner circles reverberating out to every pair of eyes and/or ears on Earth. But the records are the record, and their power to affect all around them is alive and alight. The Beatles’ gifts were so abundant and undeniable, they intensified the wonder of music itself.

TICKET TO RIDE (A-side, R 5265, 4/9/65)
The new wave they epitomized crashes into 1965. Chiming guitars which shock at the touch and the heaviest beat in existence pin down yet another ethereal plea. As usual, the lyric plays with structure, and gives more power to the woman than you’d expect. As usual, you’re not sure if John is about to immolate or dissolve into a pool of tears.

YES IT IS (B-side, R 5265, 4/9/65)
“This Boy” with a modern glaze – it’s the weaker song, but it’s stranger (via George’s volume pedal and a tart wash of harmonies) and spookier (via a lyric that gives up no answers). Ian McDonald overstated its significance; they were just getting better at being evasive, another trick learned from Friend Dylan and their choice of breakfast.

HELP (A-side, R 5305, 7/23/65)
Here’s the original depression-rock single, giving lie to Greil Marcus’ designation of “Strawberry Fields Forever”/“Penny Lane” as “the first concept 45”. The refashioning of rock ‘n’ roll into pop-rock they spearheaded is complete – this song could’ve been written yesterday – and John never rendered his pain as sympathetically as this again.

I’M DOWN (B-side, R 5305, 7/23/65)
Half the crackerbox snarl of “She’s a Woman”, half the sheer tumbling joy of “Long Tall Sally”: it doesn’t swing, it’s vaguely futuristic, and like every time Paul decided to grind his larynx it’s a little bit silly. For once, the cute Beatle is the one you’re scared to jilt – but when he goads John into assaulting that organ it’s just pure, gleeful play.

THE NIGHT BEFORE (Help!, PCS 3071, 8/6/65)
Ah, Help! – the most significant “transitional album” of all time (items like Bringing it All Back Home are too seminal to count), attached to a very funny movie which doesn’t want to pick between old tricks and the shock of the new. This brisk, fun, soul-tinged throwaway is one of their last merely ordinary songs, a guitar break its easy highlight.

YOU’VE GOT TO HIDE YOUR LOVE AWAY (Help!, PCS 3071, 8/6/65)
John’s greatest Dylan rip is more melodically pointed and emotionally cogent than his foremost surrealist-pop counterpart was capable of. Here, all the aching subtext of his most ardent covers and most downbeat originals is stitched into a flawless heartbreak-folk, making similar strokes (e.g. “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today”) sound grandiose.

I NEED YOU (Help!, PCS 3071, 8/6/65)
For all the profundity with which he was to be credited, George Harrison was always as naïve as this song; he was his sharpest as a dark young wit piercing dull moments. Where this unremarkable-or-less tune shows promise is in how uncommonly pretty it is, which was a gift of his – his wide-eyed wonder withered when he put it into words.

ANOTHER GIRL (Help!, PCS 3071, 8/6/65)
Paul is famous for a sense of melody that makes him sound like a genius and a sense of structure that makes him sound like a crazy person. This is one of the last times he wrote something that sounds entirely tossed-off – where the blues bits of “Can’t Buy Me Love” felt like a device, here they feel indifferent. Every part of this does, in fact.

YOU’RE GOING TO LOSE THAT GIRL (Help!, PCS 3071, 8/6/65)
The chorus is so ravishingly good it’s easy to overrate this song, and usually I’m quite happy to; I just don’t want to fawn too hard over it in the company of two untouchably perfect tracks each from John and Paul. But even a seed of jealous chagrin is justified by the still-cutting-edge plea to Treat Her Right, Man. (I mightn’t need Ringo’s bongo).

ACT NATURALLY (Help!, PCS 3071, 8/6/65)
It’s like the minor travesty of “Honey Don’t” stripped away the rambunctious danger of the Old Ringo, and we’re left with the corny cutie pie. Still, there’s a showbiz skill in the vocal that tracks with how much better an actor he was than the others. But at heart, it’s a glorious simpleton’s love letter to country-pop. Great Paul harmony, too.

IT’S ONLY LOVE (Help!, PCS 3071, 8/6/65)
Lennon slagged this in his Playboy interview, and you can’t help but agree to an extent – he was just too smart to dump a lyric this lazy on millions of listeners this late in the game. But he almost never let a song survive without a flake of brilliance, and there’s something brittle and beautiful in this chorus pointing the way to “Julia” and “Love”.

YOU LIKE ME TOO MUCH (Help!, PCS 3071, 8/6/65)
With the slightest twist, George makes hay of his naïveté in a way “I Need You” never bothers to. The side 1 track is sincere sans justification, a lyric that might as well not even be there, the music an alluring drift through nothing special. This is jaunty, with a tongue poking out of its cheek – yet still fully sufficient as a straight, sweet valentine.

TELL ME WHAT YOU SEE (Help!, PCS 3071, 8/6/65)
The world had watched them interact enough to know their innocence was a pose. They could still do wondrous things with it, though, as this song demonstrates, its every syllable deliberate and deeply felt. One critic called this “impossibly erotic”, which again shows how much mileage they could get from the gentlest ambiguity.

I’VE JUST SEEN A FACE (Help!, PCS 3071, 8/6/65)
A rush of breathless genius, Paul pulling that tricky-to-tap-into trick of finding just the right music to match the feeling he’s picked to evoke. To date, there are few songs which capture the disorienting euphoria of falling into new love as well as this. The one with the string quartet was easier to hallow, but this one is just as accomplished.

YESTERDAY (Help!, PCS 3071, 8/6/65)
It’s been covered something like a zillion times – not counting savvy rip-offs like “As Tears Go By”, and the pushy gentility of that (great) song renders it a more instructive baroque-pop touchstone. This is neither pretentious nor prissy; it’s just fucking good. You hear the sharpness of his thought, the fluency of his gift, the bows on the strings.

DIZZY MISS LIZZY (Help!, PCS 3071, 8/6/65)
Reference Rock ‘n’ Roll (which excessively deploys a Larry Williamsish wall of horns), against which this cover sounds like, I dunno, “Twist and Shout”. There was a point at which John became too exhausted (or fucked up) not to show his strain – as here. For the Fabs, this cut is only OK; for anyone else, it’s a wildfire. “Girl, I wanna marry you!”

DAY TRIPPER (A-side, R 5389, 12/3/65)
Just before the fruits of their drug use ripened into technicolor vaudeville and rococo tastemaking came there this, an old-school Lennon/McCartney song a la “I Want to Hold Your Hand” or “She Loves You” with a sundazed glaze of What It’s Like When the Good Weed Slowly Starts to Hit. As avant-garde as anything they ever recorded.

WE CAN WORK IT OUT (A-side, R 5389, 12/3/65)
Well it’s not “A Change is Gonna Come”, but it’s not “Let it Be” either. Bless them for not going full pretentious when they engaged in a little mind expansion; they stuck to their simple vocabulary and just got inquisitive. Here’s one result, a plea for amity that sounds not only genuine, but as if the narrator is discovering the concept in real time.

DRIVE MY CAR (Rubber Soul, PCS 3075, 12/3/65)
Finally, a Black-inflected track slick and complex enough to do Motown some justice, and the art in their art-pop is somewhat more intense. Even the silly lyric feels like an exercise in something further out; the situation is comic without being frivolous, and it’s tinged with phantom notes of sexiness, sweetness, and (best of all) ironic distance.

NORWEGIAN WOOD (THIS BIRD HAS FLOWN) (Rubber Soul, PCS 3075, 12/3/65)
Another art school miniature. Here the ironic distance swings cruel, though happily you can’t quite tell (Dylan’s version is more graphic). But the cross-legged-on-carpet folk setting and hemisphere-hopping instrumentation peace you out, and blur it into a waking dream that leaves you vaguely unsettled. John’s misogyny at its most elegant.

YOU WON’T SEE ME (Rubber Soul, PCS 3075, 12/3/65)
The piano-led arrangement expands pop’s palette – this had to sound as spit-shined in 1965 as Anne Murray’s cover did in 1974. But other than the imprecision of the central conflict and what I swear is an unintentional decrescendo on Ringo’s part, there’s not a lot that’s weird about this song. And yet it still might’ve sounded visionary on Help!.

NOWHERE MAN (Rubber Soul, PCS 3075, 12/3/65)
You can blame the Byrds for most of this, but they never had the chops to come on as assured as it does. The melody is pure golden rain, thrown back up to heaven by those steely harmonies, and the vocal evokes the title character’s apathy while also burning a hole in it with a level of compassion the music itself elevates. More impossible pop.

THINK FOR YOURSELF (Rubber Soul, PCS 3075, 12/3/65)
Finally somebody slipped him the bright idea to turn his delivery in A Hard Day’s Night and Help! into a song. The noncommittally political lyric is portentous where it could be sly, but between the perfect deadpan of the vocal and that righteous-ass fuzz bass, the intended effect is achieved enough. Fabulous harmonies on words like “rectify”.

THE WORD (Rubber Soul, PCS 3075, 12/3/65)
I consider “All I’ve Got to Do” and “Tell Me Why” lost masterpieces, but frankly this shows them up as a kid accidentally riding his exuberance to victory. Lennon almost never sounded so cool – the self-assurance here is deadly, and he’s deploying it solely for a complex yet universal lyric which deifies love itself (and language too, kind of).

MICHELLE (Rubber Soul, PCS 3075, 12/3/65)
Meanwhile McCartney slips a Hallmark in a passing fille’s back pocket, to which she replies, “quoi?” Slinky and dulcet, it’s really just showing off at this point – with this level of privilege and awareness of his own prowess, he could’ve written entire LPs for Frank Sinatra or Nina Simone, which may well have been even better than Post Card.

WHAT GOES ON (Rubber Soul, PCS 3075, 12/3/65)
Ringo got publishing on this one, and there’s a plainspoken element in the lyrics and country amble in the music which are either absolutely him, or a canny imitation L/M never bothered to try for George (who was nailing down his persona). Another love-in-limbo song where you’re not sure if it’s a dream, or a slice of life all too hazily recalled.

GIRL (Rubber Soul, PCS 3075, 12/3/65)
Historians and superfans can clarify whether the group spent a lot of time in Greece that summer; either way, here’s “Michelle”’s not-nice sister. The bitter lyric somehow artfully dodges outright sexism – though when the backing vocals go tit tit tit tit tit tit you go ahead and blame it a little. The only song I know of whose chorus is an inhale.

I’M LOOKING THROUGH YOU (Rubber Soul, PCS 3075, 12/3/65)
Most pop in 1965 still sounds drenched in reverb or caked with mud, but these guys had endless time and money, and were in the same state of mind to want to sit and listen with their ears pressed to the speaker to interlocking parts for hours. “What You’re Doing” meets “You Won’t See Me” – but as good as “We Can Work it Out”.

IN MY LIFE (Rubber Soul, PCS 3075, 12/3/65)
In between being the world’s most enlightened boy band and the world’s most revered rock stars, they casually cut a midtempo pop ballad whose hymnlike majesty isn’t far beneath that of “Ave Maria”. Again ironic distance comes to the rescue (sped-up piano break), but this is a perfectly sincere, effective augmentation of their fave theme: love.

WAIT (Rubber Soul, PCS 3075, 12/3/65)
The conspicuous filler – the “When I Get Home”, the “Hold Me Tight” – skewed just enough to be worthy of its company. There’s something luminous and fractured about it even as it lurches ahead and avoids saying anything in particular. The way the hook spirals up and back down its melody (“till I come back”) feels as vital as this album gets.

IF I NEEDED SOMEONE (Rubber Soul, PCS 3075, 12/3/65)
This one’s really a Byrds song, and yet again a distance allows it to land in a blameless zone between fond tribute and smirking parody. George’s lyric is one for the “Don’t Bother Me” fans, the misanthrope with a new girlfriend and no time for you, and if it isn’t as funny as he could be it’s saved by how cute he is, as well as several “aaaaaah”s.

RUN FOR YOUR LIFE (Rubber Soul, PCS 3075, 12/3/65)
But see, the “You Can’t Do That” fans had all they needed. Respect for bringing this LP to a brisk, thorny close, and for the admittedly stirring menace in the writer’s ever-flintier voice (maybe). But you can’t quite get away with this even as a joke now, unless you balloon it to operatic proportions like “Kim”, which I don’t like anymore anyway.

PAPERBACK WRITER (A-side, R 5452, 6/10/66)
John called this a potboiler rewrite of ‘Day Tripper’ because it is. But because Paul can be so blithely lame sometimes – this lyric is the sort of joke that spurred another John barb about how PM’s idea of avant-garde was having one ear painted blue – it’s easy to forget how deftly he could rock, how nice a novelty Brits delivering arch lyrics still is.

RAIN (B-side, R 5452, 6/10/66)
The beat is a storm warning, so heavy and potent it makes “Ticket to Ride” sound like an antique shuffle; the guitars are so coruscating they could strip the face off a Byrd; the whole thing is higher than heaven and surely no less sweet, the honey in the rock. Back when psychedelia was still a just monochrome doodle and a tape run backwards.

ELEANOR RIGBY (A-side, R 5493, 8/5/66)
Chamber-pop is one of the more plainly regressive genres, but as someone who loves the saw of a string in close quarters I certainly can’t complain when it comes like this. The minor-key but never downbeat arrangement feels like something thrillingly new, and for once vagueness, indifference and bitterness adds up to tender and trenchant.

YELLOW SUBMARINE (A-side, R 5493, 8/5/66)
Not all melodies so ‘childlike’ they’re destined to eventually annoy you (and then win you over again, the cycle repeating indefinitely) are created equal. For one thing, they have to be strong enough to hook in; just ask “All Together Now”. It’s a shame that the title image is so famous, we can’t freshly experience how fucking weird an idea it was.

TAXMAN (Revolver, PCS 7009, 8/5/66)
Oh, that George – so cute he can sell us a millionaire bitching. I mean hey, this hook is sharp enough for me after this last season. Even if he hadn’t developed chops (or whatever you call it that led to “Something”), GH was clever enough to know how to disguise it, presuming it’s him (internal tension alert: Paul plays the shredding solo).

I’M ONLY SLEEPING (Revolver, PCS 7009, 8/5/66)
Whereas much of Sgt. Pepper sounds like swimming in sugar, much of Revolver sounds like drowning in sunshine. Again, the relevant forms are exploded and reconfigured – this is like a solarized folk if not music hall in a rock lexicon, their old sound smeared, shattered, and shimmering. Possibly the first drug hangover lyric, but bars either way.

LOVE YOU TO (Revolver, PCS 7009, 8/5/66)
Musicologists in the know can tell me whether or not he’s just droning, punk for sitar, but it wouldn’t shift my affection one iota. This is so detached it’s ominous, a bad trip atrophied into apathy – the “Think For Yourself” curmudgeon meeting the “Within You Without You” scold halfway, the sound so new it renders meaning meaningless.

HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE (Revolver, PCS 7009, 8/5/66)
Further adventures in applying dream sheens to old models. McCartney’s melody is “Waterloo Sunset” or “God Only Knows” or “Yesterday” golden, the arrangement is spare yet divine, and even as it verges on eerie it makes you feel safe. The Ink Spots would’ve killed to sing this back in the ‘40s, if they’d have had to fight anyone for it.

SHE SAID SHE SAID (Revolver, PCS 7009, 8/5/66)
A cultural contribution from Peter Fonda so much more valuable than Easy Rider (The Limey comes closer) – he wanted to be Countercultural Captain America, but a wit of Lennon’s stature just reduces him to the weird girl at the party. Anyway, now both of them know what it’s like to be dead. More golden rain, more more-perfect pop(-rock).

GOOD DAY SUNSHINE (Revolver, PCS 7009, 8/5/66)
We can’t have just nice things on Revolver. This cheery, seemingly unironic little ditty sounds like Harpers Bizarre dropped in a cup of lean, though neither thing had been invented yet. Meanwhile, what’s she doing to Paul beneath that shady tree? And who is that murmuring in the background, presumably from behind a bush? Mr. Mustard?

AND YOUR BIRD CAN SING (Revolver, PCS 7009, 8/5/66)
On Rubber Soul, birds fly, and John’s pissed about it; on Revolver, they break, and he’s shoving it in your face. John’s vision of pop(-rock) at this time, worlds away from (and beyond?) his retrogressive/futurecasting Plastic Ono Band caterwaul, is radiant and rigid, vinegar in the words and honey (ahh) in the rock. A whole other planet in 2:01.

FOR NO ONE (Revolver, PCS 7009, 8/5/66)
Come Ram, Paul would no longer care about paring down; here, he’s adapting baroque elements to commendably modest trappings. When John got upset, he got scary, but when Paul was moody he’d never put it in print, leading to those obfuscated “miffed yet tender” ballads like “What You’re Doing” or “I’m Looking Through You” or this.

I WANT TO TELL YOU (Revolver, PCS 7009, 8/5/66)
The “it it’s only me, it’s not my mind” line, which George later admitted he’d meant to switch, sums up the lyric’s confusion as well as anything, but the music benefits from not being able to settle on an approach. Another track where the skewed context lifts less interesting material – the fade-in, the little piano dissonance, Paul’s melismatics.

GOT TO GET YOU INTO MY LIFE (Revolver, PCS 7009, 8/5/66)
Spruced especially up on some strain of green, Paul composes a love-letter to same, and happens to dream up Blood, Sweat and Tears in the meantime. As is too typical, he accidentally composes a sharp, rousing, original, pretty much no-notes love song in the process. The horns aren’t gaudy – they’re blasts of hot steam on a naked blacktop.

TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS (Revolver, PCS 7009, 8/5/66)
I wanna turn off my mind, relax and float downstream just thinking of that opening overwhelm. It’s so on it’s terrifying, but it’s so seductive it’s pacifying. The track for anyone who over the last year and a half had been wondering, “what exactly do you mean by all this?” If I’m not mistaken it took Don Draper till 1968 to get to this one.

BAD BOY (A Collection of Beatle Oldies, PCS 7016, 12/16/66)
Just in time for Christmas, a call from Parlophone to remind you that even if the boys never come back from Wonderland, you still love them and spending money on them. A hits LP better at dulling crowded peaks than Dylan’s first one, baited with another whatever Larry Williams cover – the only time the Beatles ever sing the word “poop”.