"I Saw Her Standing There"

Over the next couple weeks, I'm going to try to listen to all of the Beatles albums, plus the Past Masters compilations of the singles.  To-day I listened to Please Please Me and noticed a few things.  First, here's a small point about "I Saw Her Standing There."

The "fall in love" part of "I'd fall in love with her" in the second verse (and "fell in love" when this line is changed slightly to "I fell in love with her" in the third and fourth verses) is sung to a descending melody (F# E D), musically giving something of a sense of that "fall[ing]."

"One after 909"

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[link to original on tumblr]

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A couple days ago, I learned the bass part for the verses of the Let It Be version of "One after 909."  I decided that it's not really worth it to record anything unless I know at least two simultaneous parts, so I won't be posting a version, but I did notate as much as I know.

I referenced the recordings of "One after 909" on Anthology 1, and I discovered something interesting.  In the bridge in the first partial take in track 25, Paul McCartney starts to play the same bass figure that he took from Chuck Berry's "I'm Talking about You" and used in "I Saw Her Standing There" (which I wrote about back in November).

In "Talking about You," the figure is:

In "I Saw Her Standing There":

And in "One after 909":

The only difference is the key.  I should note that all three songs play this figure raised to different pitches too.  At the beginning of the bridge in "One after 909," it's actually played a fourth higher because it's underneath an E major chord, so it's exactly the same as what's played for the majority of the verses of "I Saw Her Standing There."

The "complete" take of "One after 909" on Anthology 1 (which the liner notes explain is an edit of takes 4 and 5) doesn't have this feature.  Apparently, McCartney elected to play a simpler bass part because he didn't have a pick with him.  This figure isn't present in the version on Let It Be either.

For what it's worth, here's some chronology:

11 February 1963 - "I Saw Her Standing There" recorded

5 March 1963 - "One after 909" [takes on Anthology 1] recorded

16 March 1963 - The Beatles' cover of Chuck Berry's "I'm Talking about You" (in E major, rather than the original's C major) broadcast live on the radio show Saturday Club.

"I Saw Her Standing There"

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[link to original on tumblr]

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About two weeks ago, I said I would write a post about the bass figure in "I Saw Her Standing There" and how it compares with that in Chuck Berry's "I'm Talking about You."  This is that post.

In the verses of "I'm Talking about You," there's just the same measure repeated over and over (played a total of eight times):

During the choruses, there's the same phrase, but it's also raised a fourth (so it begins on an F) and then raised an-other whole step (so it's a fifth higher than the initial phrase and begins on a G).  I wrote out the whole notation last month; it can be found here.

McCartney uses this same phrase.  There're eight eighth notes where the first two are the tonic note, the second pair is the note a third above the tonic and then the tonic, the third pair is a note a fifth above the tonic and then the tonic, and the fourth pair is the note a fourth above the tonic and then the note a half-step below that (a third above the tonic).  Where Berry's figure is based on the C note throughout the verse, McCartney changes a lot, raising or lowering the figure, but keeping those same intervals.  Here's the first verse of "I Saw Her Standing There" (the second and fourth are identical, and the third has only a minor difference):

There are two measures based on an E, one on an A, back to E for three measures, down to B for two, a section of four measures of quarter notes that's unrelated to Berry's figure, then back to that figure based on E for one measure, down to B for an-other, and then up to E again.

The same figure is also in the bridge (although based only an A and B notes), but I won't get into that.  All of that is probably a prolix description anyway.  The point, though, is that the figures are the same, just in different keys ("I'm Talking about You" is in C major; "I Saw Her Standing There" is in E major).  I also think it's interesting that while the figure is raised or lowered, the foundational notes for the phrase are the tonic, subdominant, and dominant notes (C, F, and G in C major; E, A, and B in E major).

Here's Berry's figure again:

And McCartney's from the initial measure of "I Saw Her Standing There":

"I Saw Her Standing There"

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Like I mentioned at the end of this post, I figured out how to play (most of) the bass part for "I Saw Her Standing There" after I read that Paul McCartney based the musical figure on that in Chuck Berry's "I'm Talking about You."  I'm still having some problems with the rhythm during the guitar solo, so this is the bass part up until that point.  At some point, I'm going to notate what I know of this (I already notated Berry's "I'm Talking about You," so it should be pretty easy), and I'll write a post about the figures (which - indeed - are the same).

They're in different keys though.  "I'm Talking about You" is in C major, and "I Saw Her Standing There" is in E major.  The Beatles recorded a cover of "I'm Talking about You" on the BBC (it's on the second Live at the BBC album), and they changed the key from C major to E major, so the figures in their cover and in "I Saw Her Standing There" match exactly.

"I Saw Her Standing There"

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[link to original on tumblr]

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Last month, I was thinking about Chuck Berry's "Little Queenie," and I realized that it has a few similarities with the Beatles' "I Saw Her Standing There."

Just from what I remembered, I knew that the two songs both mention a seventeen-year-old girl standing around.  "Little Queenie" has "There she is again, standin' over by the record machine" and "She's too cute to be a minute over seventeen."  "I Saw Her Standing There" has "Well, she was just seventeen" and the titular "So how could I dance with another, ooh / When I saw her standin' there?"

When I compared the lyrics, I also found lines that talk about the girls' looks.  "Little Queenie" looks like "a model on the cover of a magazine," and the girl in "I Saw Her Standing There" looks "way beyond compare."

The entirety of "Little Queenie" has the speaker/singer admiring the girl and merely thinking about asking her to dance, where those same elements comprise only the first stanza of "I Saw Her Standing There."  The Beatles' singer/speaker actually takes his chance, and the third and fourth verses describe how they "danced through the night."  To some degree, it's like the Beatles wrote what happens next.

I don't know if the Beatles were familiar with "Little Queenie," but Chuck Berry is certainly an acknowledged influence, and the Beatles recorded at least half a dozen of his other songs (only two are on their records ["Roll over Beethoven" on With the Beatles and "Rock and Roll Music" on Beatles for Sale], but there are a lot more on the Live at the BBC albums).  My argument for this specific influence is just conjecture, but I do think "Little Queenie" was floating around in Lennon and McCartney's heads (even if subconsciously) while they were writing "I Saw Her Standing There."

(Of course, only after I wrote all of that, I skimmed the Wikipedia article for "I Saw Her Standing There," and it seems to cast some doubt on what I've written.  However, there is a quote from McCartney about how he used the bass part from Berry's "I'm Talking about You," so there is some of Berry's influence.  Because I know the bass part for "I'm Talking about You" [I even notated it a couple weeks ago], it was pretty easy to figure out the bass part for "I Saw Her Standing There.")