The great Norm, may he blog for ever, has been pressing his fan base to produce him a list of their five favourite Beatles songs. That's a hard task he's set us. I was going to say it is like picking your five favourite kinds flower. Yes, relatively easy - roses, pansies and so on. But then I realised it's like picking your five favourite kinds of plant. Where do you start? How can you choose from all that plenty?
Anyway, my method of deciding if I really love a song is the covers band test. You are sitting in a pub, a covers band is playing away in the background and suddenly you catch an opening riff that makes you turn away from your companions to listen.
So the first sound that would make me swivel one hundred and eighty degrees would be Shhhhhhtttttttttt Shhhhhhhttttttt which is the opening to Come Together on the Abbey Road album. As is often the way with such things, Come Together is exactly the opposite of my kind of song. I like strong melodies and the tune of Come Together is repetition on a couple of notes. I like good rhyming and on Come Together it's hit and miss, miss, miss. I like words that make sense, and the lyrics on this song are Lennon surreal nonsense. But I love the spareness, the singing to the groove and the guitar coming in late and then winding in and out.
I was thinking about this post as I was coming home this evening. I stopped in my local Spa. Come Together was playing on the radio behind the counter. "Do you know what that song is?" I asked the shop assistant, who looked about nineteen. "No, but it's The Beatles isn't it?" he said.
My second song would be While My Guitar Gently Weeps by George Harrison from the White Album. It is a rich full sound, with beautiful guitar. It's a wonderful song for jamming. I did it once on recorder while a friend did guitar and we improvised for hours. "I look at the world and I know it is turning" goes over a sliding chord progression that hints at quarter tones. It's an ecstatic song.
Oh God, this is so hard. Satirical and commonsense Beatles (Revolution)? ("But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao/You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow"). Tales of everyday sadness Beatles (Eleanor Rigby)?
Back to the pub table and the covers band. Dum da da da dum daaaah dum dum dum. Start swinging on the chair. Well, it's Day Tripper, released as a single, recorded during their Rubber Soul period. I approve of the woman in the song that he "Tried to please her/She only played one night stands."
(Get the sixties dancers in this video).
Next a beautiful love song, Something, also from Abbey Road. Whenever our family would argue about who was our favourite Beatle my mother would say, "George Harrison as he wrote Something." We would howl "but Lennon and McCartney wrote all the rest." But she would obstinately stick to George Harrison Something and I think now that showed great judgement. The Beatles put out a single with Come Together on one side, Something on the other. What could be better than that?
In this video Harrison's lady, Patti Boyd, is exquisitely pretty. "Somewhere in her smile she knows" - her smile is enchanting.
Beatles exuberant. Yes, Help! A song that lifts your heart and feet. And could we ever do the happy silliness of the film again?
Five Beatles songs. Two by George Harrison. Three by Lennon/McCartney. Nothing from Sergeant Pepper, which I admire more in its music hall entirety than in its separate parts. Nothing from Let it Be, though I have been listening to the Let it Be that was issued without the Phil Spector strings mushing and shmaltzing the sound and would put The Long and Winding Road high up in any list of love songs.
I have to get this down before other songs start banging on my inner ear demanding I choose them. They were marvellous. What did we do to deserve them?
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