"In Spite of All the Danger"

Inexplicably, a post I wrote about "In Spite of All the Danger" on tumblr back in 2014 got some likes recently.  I'd completely forgotten about the point I made in the post, and I felt I should write an updated version of the post here.

I'd been listening to a two-disc compilation album of Gene Vincent and noticed that a phrase in the backing vocals in "Wear My Ring" seems to be the model (whether consciously or not) for a phrase in the backing vocals in "In Spite of All the Danger."

In "Wear My Ring" (in A major), the phrase appears at the end of the bridge (first at ~1:03):

In "In Spite of All the Danger" (in E major), the phrase appears about halfway through the verse (first at ~0:14):

There are no words in either, just "ah"s.

While the two songs are in different keys, the pitches in these two phrases are exactly the same and in the same order, and while the rhythms are a bit different, the two phrases fall in similar places within the measures.

The liner notes in the Anthology 1 album mention Vincent's influence ("the Beatles usually performed this ["Ain't She Sweet"] in the more mellow style of Gene Vincent and his Blue Caps' influential 1956 version"), and in the Anthology book, the Beatles mention meeting him in Germany (page 69).  I remember reading somewhere that "In Spite of All the Danger" bears some similarity to Elvis Presley's "Trying to Get to You" (and it does), but this backing vocal phrase seems to indicate Vincent's influence on the Beatles, too.

"In Spite of All the Danger"

I listened to Anthology 1 yester-day and noticed a small feature in "In Spite of All the Danger."  Lennon starts singing each verse alone but is joined by McCartney at the end of the first line, so "In spite of all the" is sung by one voice and "danger" (or "heartache" in the second verse) by two.  This arrangement (with "danger" and "heartache" sung by two voices) provides a sense of that "all."