"Don't Pass Me By"

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As might have been obvious from my last post, I learned the piano part from "Don't Pass Me By."

"Don't Pass Me By"

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Collection Audit:

I'm listening to The Beatles' eponymous album, and the bass part for "Don't Pass Me By" caught my ear.  It's more elaborate than just the root and the fifth of whatever chord it's played beneath, but the root and the fifth are the most prominent notes.  It provides an alternating figure that seems to portray the footsteps that are mentioned in the first verse:

I listen for your footsteps comin' up the drive
Listen for your footsteps, but they don't arrive

I also noticed that there's a bit of a pause within the last line of the first two verses, so there's a separation between "I don't hear it" and "does it mean you don't love me anymore?" and between "I don't see you" and "does it mean you don't love me anymore?"  That pause emphasizes the not hearing and not seeing that are in the lyrics themselves.

An-other post from my Collection Audit project that's relevant here too.

I don't know if it's indicative of an influence or just a coincidence, but this same feature of the root and the fifth resembling footsteps is also present in Fats Domino's "Walking to New Orleans" (although that's with palm-muted guitar rather than bass), which - like "Don't Pass Me By" - also has a chord progression that consists only of the tonic, sub-dominant, and dominant (in Db major where "Don't Pass Me By" is in C major).  Apparently, "Lady Madonna" was a pastiche of Domino's style, so the Beatles might have been familiar with "Walking to New Orleans" too.

"While My Guitar Gently Weeps"

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For my Collection Audit project, I'm listening to The Beatles.  I noticed a grammatical intricacy in the lyrics of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" although it doesn't affect the meaning at all.  When it's heard, there's no difference, but when written out, one line could be either "I look at the world, and I notice it's turning" or "I look at the world, and I notice its turning."  Either way, the singer/speaker notices the turning of the world, but grammatically, it could be an indirect statement (I notice [that] it's turning) or a possessive adjective (its) modifying a gerund (turning).

"Ticket to Ride"

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Collection Audit:

I'm listening to the Beatles' The Beatles 1 and working on my transcriptions of their songs for my Beatle-specific project.  I noticed something about the chorus of "Ticket to Ride."  Two of the four lines are "She oughta think twice; she oughta do right by me."  It's very similar to the last line of each verse (and also the title) of Bob Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright," except that where Dylan says not to think twice, the Beatles say "she oughta think twice."  The "think twice" and "(al)right" are the two similar elements. 

Apparently, "Ticket to Ride" is more of a John Lennon song than a Paul McCartney song, and since he mentioned that "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" from Help! (the same album that "Ticket to Ride" appears on) is from his "Dylan period," it seems a bit more likely that "Ticket to Ride" had some of that Dylan influence too.