"Too Much Monkey Business"

Last week, I was thinking about Chuck Berry's "Too Much Monkey Business" and discovered a feature in it that's also included in the cover that the Beatles did on the BBC.

The line "Same thing ev'ry day, gettin' up, goin' to school" is sung to a melody something like this:

(I'm pretty sure the Beatles' version is in A major but Berry's original is in F major.)

The melody here just alternates between two pitches, so there's a musical representation of the repetition and predictability of the narrator's routine.

"Chains"

Yester-day, I listened to the first disc of On Air - Live at the BBC, Vol. 2 and noticed a small feature in "Chains."  George Harrison sings the line "But I can't break away from all of these" by himself, but the following "Chains"* is sung by multiple voices.  Because there are more voices here, there's a sense of the abundance of "all of these."

While referencing the version on Please Please Me to verify that this feature is there, too, I also noticed that in the line "Can't run around," "around" is sung with a melisma (D C Bb), giving a sense of either breadth or movement.

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*Logically, it has to be "chains," but I think the Beatles actually sing just the singular "chain."  In his book Here, There, and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles, Geoff Emerick explains that on early tracks such as "Misery" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand," the Beatles sang initial S sounds as SH, partially because "it removed any kind of potential 'de-essing' problems, where if there was too much top end (treble), the sound on vinyl would distort" (p. 60).  I think the S is left off "chains" here for a similar purpose.

"Yellow Submarine"

I've been reading a book of four Shakespeare plays (Four Great Comedies by William Shakespeare, published by Washington Square Press), and in the introduction to The Tempest, part of Prospero's speech in Act Five, Scene One is quoted.  One line in particular caught my attention:  "And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault" (V.i.43).  The same sort of description is also in "Yellow Submarine," just with the order reversed:  "Sky of blue and sea of green."

In the McCartney: A Life in Lyrics podcast about "Let It Be," Paul McCartney and Paul Muldoon comment on Shakespeare's influence:

Muldoon:  For all Paul McCartney knew, the words "let it be" had come from his subconscious or as a message from beyond the grave, but after the song was released, he realized that he may have encountered these words long before he wrote the lyrics, back when he was a schoolboy at the Liverpool Institute for Boys.  There, in the English class of Paul's favorite and most formative teacher, Alan Durband, the students read Shakespeare's Hamlet for the first time.

McCartney:  So in those days, I had to learn speeches off by heart, so I can still do a bit of "To be or not to be" or "That this too too solid flesh,"* and it'd been pointed out to me recently that, um, Hamlet, when he's poisoned, he actually says, "Let it be"... Act Five, Scene Two.  ...  He says, "Let be" the first time, and then the second time, he says, "Had I but time (as this fell sergeant, Death, / Is strict in his arrest) O, I could tell you - / But let it be, Horatio."**

McCartney seems pretty convinced that Shakespeare's "Let it be" influenced his own "Let It Be," but there's really a stronger resemblance between "And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault" and "Sky of blue and sea of green" than there is between the two "Let it be"s.  These lines in The Tempest and "Yellow Submarine" both provide a colorful maritime description, but the contexts in which the two instances of "Let it be" appear are quite different.

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*McCartney also recites this in the movie A Hard Day's Night.  I referenced two different editions of the play (Shakespeare: Four Great Tragedies from Signet Classics and The Folger Library General Reader's Shakespeare: Hamlet), but they don't agree on the line numbers.  It's either I.ii.129 or I.ii.135.  As the Signet Classics book notes, there's also a textual issue here:  "Q2 [The Second Quarto] has sallied, here modernized to sullied, which makes sense and is therefore given; but the Folio reading, solid, which fits better with melt, is quite possibly correct."

**Again, there's a discrepancy of line numbers between my editions, either V.ii.337-339 or V.ii.357-359.  The vocative "Horatio" actually goes with the next clause, "Horatio, I am dead."

"Your Mother Should Know"

I was thinking about "Your Mother Should Know" recently, and I realized that the clauses "Let's all get up" and "Lift up your hearts" are sung to ascending melodies (spanning an octave:  E A C E), musically giving a sense of the meanings (although the second is more metaphorical).

"Till There Was You"

I listened to With the Beatles yester-day and noticed a small feature in "Till There Was You."  In the line "There was love all around," the phrase "all around" is sung to notes of all different pitches (A Bb C), giving a sense of that breadth.

"Doctor Robert"

"Day or night" in the line "Day or night, he'll be there any time at all, Doctor Robert" in "Doctor Robert" is a temporal merism.

To some degree, the structure of the song even evinces the statement "he'll be there any time at all" since the name "Doctor Robert" (or occasionally "Bob Robert") appears multiple times throughout each verse (at the end of both of the first two lines, in the middle of the verse, and at the end), suggesting a sort of ubiquity.

"Eleanor Rigby"

The repeated line "I look at all the lonely people" in "Eleanor Rigby" is sung to a phrase something like:

Admittedly, I'm not super confident about the last two notes in each part.

The phrase "all the lonely people" is sung to pitches spanning more than an octave (A down to G and F# down to E), and this breadth provides a musical sense of that "all."  That there's a second vocal part here (in contrast to the single vocal in the verses) also gives a sense of that multitude.

"Taxman"

I listened to Revolver yester-day and noticed a few small features.  Even before I started listening to the album, I realized that the inclusion of the "one two three four" count-off in "Taxman" has a sort of double meaning in light of the subject of the song:  the musicians are counting the beats, but the taxman is counting money.

"Penny Lane"

Lately, I've been listening to the McCartney: A Life in Lyrics podcast.  Yester-day, I listened to the episode on "Penny Lane" and noticed a small feature in the song:  the line "It's a clean machine" exhibits internal rhyme, and this provides a sense of that orderliness.

"Yer Blues"

A few years ago, I noted a temporal merism (morning and evening) in the lines "In the morning wanna die / In the evening wanna die" in "Yer Blues" (that's how they're formatted in the liner notes).  I was thinking about the song again this morning, and I realized that the repeated "wanna die" at the end of the lines is an instance of epistrophe and that, furthermore, since there are two rhetorical devices here, their effect is compounded, resulting in a greater emphasis.

"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"

I was thinking about "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" yester-day, specifically how the choruses (the repeated title line) are sung in a higher register than the verses, and I realized that to some degree, this higher register provides a sense of being up "in the sky."

"Blackbird"

Yester-day, I finished reading the introduction to 1964: Eyes of the Storm.  Near the end, there's a quotation from "Blackbird," and I noticed an ambiguity in the line "You were only waiting for this moment to arise."  I don't know the proper grammatical terms necessary to explain this ambiguity precisely, but the main difference is whether it's "you" that's arising (where the arrival of "this moment" is a sort of prerequisite) or it's "this moment" that's arising (where "this moment to arise" is the direct object of the verb "waiting for").  Comparison with the later line "You were only waiting for this moment to be free," which has the same structure, suggests the former, but I think the latter is also grammatically viable.