"Please Please Me"

Recently, I listened to a two-CD set of the Everly Brothers.  I noticed that for the first two lines of the verses in "Since You Broke My Heart," the harmony part is only a single pitch.  A few days later, I remembered that "Please Please Me" also has this feature.  When I lookt into the resemblance a bit more this morning, I discovered that there's even more to it:  both songs are in E major, and both single-pitch harmony parts are sung to E notes.

According to the liner notes of the Everly Brothers set, "Since You Broke My Heart" was recorded in 1959.  This is a few years before "Please Please Me," so the chronology allows for such an influence, and the Beatles' live on the BBC cover of "So How Come (No One Loves Me)" illustrates their familiarity with the Everlys.  The liner notes of the Everly Brothers set even mention Paul McCartney specifically:  "there was equally no question that the likes of Paul McCartney had been hugely influenced by their Fifties output."

According to Lewisohn's The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions (p. 20), "Please Please Me" was originally a Roy Orbison-type song.  Lewisohn quotes George Martin's description of it as "very dreary... very slow [with] bluesy vocals."  Martin "told them that the song could be much better if they increased the tempo and worked out some tight harmonies."  Apparently, whether consciously or not, the Beatles patterned their harmonies for this particular song on the Everlys' in "Since You Broke My Heart."

"Please Please Me"

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After I re-learned a guitar part in "Please Please Me," I learned the bass part for the verses too (mostly so I could post an audio example that was more than just a seven-note guitar phrase).

This is only about the first minute; I'm still stuck at the bridge.  The bass part during the verse after this is virtually the same, but I still have the end to figure out too.

"Please Please Me"

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This morning, I got to thinking about how "Please Please Me" has a guitar part doubled on harmonica (or a harmonica part doubled on guitar, whichever).  I knew I'd figured out it before, but I didn't remember it, so I had to figure it out again.  I would post an audio example, but doubling the guitar part with harmonica requires an E major harmonica, which I don't have (and the guitar part by itself wouldn't be too interesting).  So until either I get an E major harmonica or I learn an-other part to the song, this text post will have to suffice.  I made sure to write down the part, so I won't have to re-learn it a second time.

Please Please Me

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[link to original on tumblr]

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I listened to Please Please Me as part of my new(-ish) listening schedule, and I have a few things to say about it:

"Please Please Me"

In the bridge, there's the line "But you know there's always rain in my heart," which I'm pretty sure is a subtle Buddy Holly reference, specifically to "Raining in My Heart," where Holly uses the same image.  (This is one of the things I noticed while listening to Anthology 1 exactly a month ago.)

"Do You Want to Know a Secret"

I've been suspicious about this for awhile, but I'm now pretty sure that in the last verse, in between the "Do you promise not to tell" and the backing "Doo dah doo," someone (I'm not sure who) sticks in an "I" (or possibly an "ah," but "I" makes more sense).  So, the whole line becomes: "Do you promise not to tell (I do dah doo)."  The lead vocals ask a question that the backing vocals answer.

"A Taste of Honey"

I'm not sure if this is specific to the Beatles' version (I have three versions of "A Taste of Honey," but theirs is the only version I have with vocals), but there are two great elements in some lines in the second verse:

There lingers still though we're far apart
That taste of honey

It's inverted so that the verb ("lingers") precedes the subject ("taste"), which mirrors the actual lingering: the effect (the verb) remains although the actor (the subject) is gone.  Also, the verb and the subject are separated by a line break, which mirrors the "though we're far apart."