"Yellow Submarine"

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I forgot to write about something I noticed when I listened to Yellow Submarine a few days ago.  In "Yellow Submarine," there's the line "Every one of us has all we need."  I think it's meant to describe what the previous line states - the "life of ease" where everyone has enough.  But because the pronouns change from singular ("one") to plural ("we"), it actually describes an excess.  Each single person has the amount required by the whole group of people.

"Hey Bulldog"

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I listened to the Yellow Submarine album this morning, mostly to hear "Hey Bulldog" after seeing some footage of it from the new Beatles 1 Video Collection and not remembering the song that well.

This evening I thought I'd try figuring out the riff, and it was pretty easy.  I figured out most of the chords for the rest of the song too, but I figured them out on guitar, and I don't know if they're played differently on piano (with inversions and such), so I didn't include them.

"She Loves You"

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Back in August when I listened to Anthology 1, I finally understood a line in "She Loves You" that I'd previously been unable to comprehend.  It's the third line in the third verse:  "Pride can hurt you too."

At the time, I realized that because of the too/two homophone, this line could be either "Pride can hurt you too" (probably the more obvious meaning) or "Pride can hurt you two," as in "Pride can hurt the two people in this relationship."

To-day I happened to re-read my reminder to myself to get around to writing about this, and I realized that there's more to that line than I originally thought.  There is that too/two homophone, but the key to which meaning is meant lays in the "Pride" earlier in the line.  A prideful person would be more likely to perceive the "you" as the singular you where a less prideful person would understand it as the plural you.  A prideful person would think of their self alone where a less prideful person would think about other people and the relationship between them.

Between the ambiguous you and too/two, it's a really clever line that could be interpreted in different ways.

"All I've Got to Do"

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As part of my listening schedule, I just listened to With the Beatles.  A few lines of one of the stanzas in "All I've Got to Do" sounded familiar:

And when I, I wanna kiss you, yeah
All I gotta do
Is whisper in your ear
The words you long to hear
And I'll be kissin' you

There are some incredibly similar lines in "Do You Want to Know a Secret":

Let me whisper in your ear
Say the words you long to hear

Apparently "Do You Want to Know a Secret" was primarily composed by John Lennon and "All I've Got to Do" solely by Lennon, so that similarity makes sense.

"I'll Be Back"

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After listening to A Hard Day's Night on Thursday, I figured out (at least an approximation) of the bass part for "I'll Be Back."  I might have some of the rhythms wrong, and I might even be missing some notes, but it's at least pretty close.  One thing I discovered while learning it is that McCartney includes an extra note at the beginning of the first verse.  In all the other verses, there's just a descending line starting with an A note, but in that first verse, he drops down to an E before going back to the A and then doing that descent.  The part before that just alternates between A and E, so I think he just got stuck doing that and missed his cue.

I referenced The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook for the chords, although I didn't play them exactly the way the book has them listed.  I think it sort of combines the other parts to get chords.  So if the rhythm guitar plays a B minor chord over which the lead guitar plays an A note, the book just combines those two things and says, "Play a B minor 7th."

I tried to figure out the lead guitar part for this a few weeks ago and didn't get anywhere, but then I got the whole thing this afternoon before I recorded this.

"Baby It's You"

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I just wrote a post about some songs by the Shirelles (mostly about implications of melismas), and since the Beatles covered some of their songs, I felt it'd be worth noting here that they do the same thing as the Shirelles in "Baby It's You."

The "apart" in the line "It's not the way you kiss that tears me apart" is broken up into syllables, so the way that it's sung reflects what the word means.

"Lovely Rita"

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I recently listened to the Tremeloes' cover of Buddy Holly's "Peggy Sue," and for some reason, I then got thinking about "Lovely Rita."  I'm not sure if it's an indication of Holly's influence on the Beatles or just common poetic devices, but there seems to be a resemblance between "Pretty Peggy Sue" (a line from two of the verses in Holly's song) and "Rita, meter maid."  The syllable count for each phrase - even the division among the words - is the same (two syllables, two syllables, one syllable), and there's alliteration between two consecutive words ("Pretty Peggy" and "meter maid").

Regardless of that possible influence, I found a few other interesting things in the lyrics of "Lovely Rita."

The final line in the third verse exhibits two strains of alliteration:

In a cap, she looked much old
And the bag across her shoulder
Made her look a little like a milit'ry man

There are a lot of words that begin with M or L, so the collection of words appears (and - more importantly - sounds) uniform, like Rita's appearance.

There’s also assonance in the last line of the second verse:

Standing by a parking meter
When I caught a glimpse of Rita
Filling in the ticket in a little white book

Again, there's a sort of uniformity, but - if I have my phonetics correct - the I in white isn't the same as the other Is.  It's a long vowel where the others are short.  So the vowels sounds in that line provide a sort of audible representation of Rita's filling in the book.  The previous Is go with each other, but she hasn't gotten to that last one yet.  It's as if it has yet to be filled in.

"A Hard Day's Night"

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When I listened to A Hard Day's Night to-day, the bass part for the title track seemed like it wouldn't be too hard to figure out.  I referenced the version on Live at the BBC too, although I'm not sure if that bass part matches the studio version exactly.

Even just in listening to it over the last few months, I noticed a little bass riff that occurs after "You know I work all day / To get you money to buy you things" (acting as an embellishment of the "things"?) and during the solo.  I think I have that figured out correctly, but - as with everything in this project - I might be wrong.

In order to play that riff, I have to play the preceding G note as an open string.  Before I figured that out though, I was playing the G note on the fifth fret of the D string.  In my recording, I sometimes go between the two, and because of the difference in the thickness of the strings, it sounds a bit weird at times.

A few years ago, I discovered this article/video/radio show clip that explains the opening crash.  According to that, the bass plays a D note at the beginning.  I haven't tried recreating it with the guitar parts, but I'll get around to it eventually.

"Tell Me Why"

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I haven't been doing much work on learning the songs (mostly because I've had difficulty distinguishing the parts), but when I listened to A Hard Day's Night yester-day, I thought the bass part to "Tell Me Why" would be pretty easy to figure out because it sounded pretty much like a scale with a few back-tracks.  It didn't take too long to figure out, and then I referenced The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook for the chords (although I played the opening part as just E minor chords, not E minor 7ths as the book says; it goes between E minor 7ths and A majors, and that's a difficult transition to make quickly).

I'm still suspicious about the last note in the bass part at the very end of the bridge ("Well, I'm beggin' on my bended knees…").  I played an E note, but the chord above it is a D major, so I probably have that wrong.

"Free as a Bird" CD Single

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Yester-day I found the "Free as a Bird" CD single at Half Price Books.  I wasn't aware of this, but it includes some other tracks.  There are alternate versions of "I Saw Her Standing There" and "This Boy," and there's also a Christmas song:  "Christmas Time (Is Here Again)."

So now I have an-other title to add to my listening schedule.

"Misery"

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When I listened to Please Please Me yester-day, I thought the piano part in "Misery" sounded pretty easy to figure out (and it was; it's pretty much just a C major scale, although it doesn't start on C).  So I figured that out, and then I got the chords too.

My guitar tone isn't the best here, and I think there's a slight tempo mistake in the second piano phrase, but it's close enough.

Please Please Me

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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."