"Good Morning, Good Morning"

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The thing about transcriptions is that they sometime solidify a line into one meaning, where the audible version could be taken more than one way.  There's an instance of this in "Good Morning Good Morning."  One of the lines could be transcribed as "I've got nothing to say, but it's OK" or "I've got nothing to say but it's OK."

"I've got nothing to say, but it's OK" has the speaker saying that it's fine that he doesn't have anything to say.

"I've got nothing to say but it's OK" has the speaker saying that "It's OK" is the only thing he has to say.

"Getting Better"

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There's a troublesome relative pronoun in a line in "Getting Better" - "The teachers that taught me weren't cool."  Instead of that, it should be who, since it refers to people ("the teachers").  It's a minor point, but it illustrates either that the singer/speaker hasn't been paying much attention to what his teachers were saying or that the teachers neglected to point this out in the first place.

"I Should Have Known Better"

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I used to know some of the parts to "I Should Have Known Better," and over the last few days, I re-learned/remembered them.

I've been going through my harmonica book in order to get better at it, but the harmonica part here is still very rough.  I cobbled it together from a few takes, and the part during the solo took at least nine attempts.

I took the chords from The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook, but I haven’t studied the original closely enough to know if I play them in the exact same rhythm.

I’m still unsure of the last notes of the guitar solo.  I resolved it to (part of) a G major chord (D and G), but the original seems to have a bit of dissonance.

"With a Little Help from My Friends"

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One of the lines in "With a Little Help from My Friends" is "Lend me your ears, and I'll sing you a song."  I'm not sure if the Beatles were conscious of this (because it's become a pretty common phrase), but "Lend me your ears" comes from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.  After Caesar's death, Mark Antony speaks to a crowd and begins with "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears." (III.ii.73).

"She's Leaving Home"

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When I listened to a few Sgt. Pepper songs about a week ago, I also listened to "She's Leaving Home."  I noticed that the first and third verses start with the same structure ("Wednesday morning at five o'clock..." and "Friday morning at nine o'clock…").  Both mention the day of the week and the time.  I didn't think too much about that at the time, but this morning I got thinking about this again, and I realized that it's not significant that those two are the same, rather that the second verse doesn't follow that structure.  Instead of talking about the titular "she," the second verse deals with the parents when they realize that the girl has gone.

If that structure were followed in the second verse, it'd be "Thursday morning at [some number] o'clock" and go on to tell about the girl.  Instead, it starts with "Father snores as his wife gets into her dressing gown."  The girl isn't physically present anymore, which is reflected in both A) her absence in the verse and B) Thursday's being skipped over.

I listened to the whole album (and noticed some other things, about which some more posts are queued) to finish off my transcription of "She's Leaving Home," and - in doing so - I noticed something else I'd never noticed:  the lines before each chorus all end with a homophone ("buy" or "by"), which - after the proper chorus - are recalled with "bye."  So, the first chorus:

(She) We gave her most of our lives
(Is leaving) Sacrificed most of our lives
(Home) We gave her everything money could buy

She's leaving home
After living alone
(Bye bye) For so many years

The second:

(She) We never thought of ourselves
(Is leaving) Never a thought for ourselves
(Home) We struggled hard all our lives to get by

She's leaving home
After living alone
(Bye bye) For so many years

And the third:

(She) What did we do that was wrong
(Is having) We didn't know it was wrong
(Fun) Fun is the one thing that money can't buy

Something inside
That was always denied
(Bye bye) For so many years

I'm not sure if there's anything to this other than just a poetic effect, but it's a great effect.

"When I'm Sixty-Four"

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I have an-other project like this based on Electric Light Orchestra, and I've (slowly) been going through their albums.  I just posted some notes about Face the Music, and I listened to a few songs from Sgt. Pepper to compare "Evil Woman" with "Fixing a Hole."  I also found a phrase in "Down Home Town" that's an astonishingly-well-crafted homage to "She Loves You" (it uses the same notes!).

In any case, since I was already listening to one Sgt. Pepper song, I added "When I'm Sixty-Four" to my now-playing list just for the sake of completing a bit more of my transcription.  I noticed a line in the second verse:  "Sunday mornings go for a ride."

It's not too spectacular by itself, but it has connections to two other Beatle songs - "Day Tripper" and "Two of Us" from Let It Be.  Back in February, I noticed that both contain the phrase "Sunday driver" (or "Sunday driving").  And now I've discovered that "When I'm Sixty-Four" has something similar.

Like I said back in February, it seems significant that the girl in "Day Tripper" goes on Sunday drives alone where the pair in "Two of Us" goes on them together.  The couple in "When I'm Sixty-Four" seems to fit into that paradigm too, aligning with the pair in "Two of Us."  It's unsurprising then that "When I'm Sixty-Four" and "Two of Us" - with their similar views on Sunday driving - were both written by Paul McCartney.

"I Feel Fine"

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I happened to hear "I Feel Fine" on the radio at McDonald's to-night, and I noticed something about the third verse:

That her baby buys her things, you know
He buys her diamond rings, you know
She said so
She’s in love with me, and I feel fine, ooh

"Things" rhymed with "diamond rings" is also a feature of two verses of "Can't Buy Me Love."  There's some similarity with the first lines of the first verse ("a diamond ring" rhymes with "anything"):

I'll buy you a diamond ring, my friend
If it makes you feel alright
I'll get you anything, my friend
If it makes you feel alright

But there's a greater similarity with the first lines of the third verse ("diamond rings" rhymes with "kind of things"):

Say you don't need no diamond rings
And I'll be satisfied
Tell me that you want the kind of things
That money just can't buy