Beatles Countdown #81: It Won’t Be Long

{Apr 07}

Doug1960s , No Comments

Popping back onto the countdown at #81 is John Lennon with the opening track from The Beatles’ second album With The Beatles: “It Won’t Be Long.”

This song is a prime example of The Beatles’ early work. It features distinctive “call and response” singing as John will sing “It Won’t Be Long” followed by George & Paul singing some “yeahs” in the background. The “yeahs” would also be a staple of early Beatles’ work like in “She Loves You” and this one was no exception with the four-letter word being repeated fifty-six times! Even more, the song would feature a descending guitar riff similar to the scaling work Harrison did at the time and also had a pause break near the end to set up a dramatic vocal ending. Clocking in at a little over two minutes as well, the song perfectly portrays the style of songwriting the band had at the time. It also features a bit of world play that Paul & John were enamored with at the time like in “Please Please Me.” While primarily a Lennon composition, Paul helped a bit and was marveled at their chance to do word play as he would later marvel at the line “It won’t be long ’til I belong to you!” So with all the musical characteristics and even a similar word play, it’s pretty apparent that this might be the template for their early works.

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Beatles Countdown #82: Lovely Rita

{Apr 06}

Doug1960s , , No Comments

Paul’s streak on The Beatles countdown continues at #82 with a bouncy, loveable track from Sgt. Pepper’s: “Lovely Rita.”

“Lovely Rita…meter maid!” The opening words of the song set the pace for the song with its great melody. You can’t hear those words and not enjoy singing along to one of the best tracks on one of the best albums of all time. Written originally as an anti-authority song, Paul changed it to a love song about a meter maid. At the time, the English simply knew the maids as “traffic wardens” and Paul himself learned of the term by reading a newspaper article about a retired meter maid named “Lovely Rita.” The phrase struck him as overtly sexual and he would later say in the Anthology “…to me a ‘maid’ was always a little sexy thing: ‘Meter maid. Hey, come and check my meter, baby.’” Later, a meter maid named Meta Davies would claim Paul wrote this song for her after giving him a traffic ticket, but Paul would dismiss that claim like many others. Another possible meaning of the song was as part of the infamous Paul Is Dead hoax which states that Paul was distracted by Rita while driving which led him to speed off to his death. It’s a shock the “hoax” got so much attention and momentum as it did. The song might have had another meaning as well, but let’s look at the music itself first.

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Allow Me To Present: Codeine Velvet Club

{Mar 16}

Doug2000s , No Comments

It’s exciting for me to say that Balarama Music has done its first interview today with the lovely & talented Lou Hickey of the band Codeine Velvet Club. Huzzah! You should definitely check that out by clicking here. If that band name sounds familiar, well it should. Not only have I referenced the band many times here since I first heard of them in September, but I also ranked their debut album as the third best album of last year (see the rest of the list by clicking here). Now, I’m not writing about CVC simply because Lou granted me an interview. It’s great she did, but I’ve been meaning to write this one for a while. With The Beatles countdown going on, it’s been a little hard to write about other stuff. With that said though, Codeine Velvet Club is a band that everyone should be checking out right now so let’s dive right into them.

CVC is really the collaboration between Lou Hickey (did you read the interview yet?) and Jon Lawler. His name won’t sound familiar to my readers here, but I have talked about his main band many times here before: The Fratellis. My fandom of that band is really how I got into CVC. After discovering The Fratellis, their debut album Costello Music from 2006 quickly became one of my favorites from the last decade and their follow-up Here We Stand from 2008 easily contained one of my favorite songs from the last decade in “Mistress Mabel,” a song I love to cover when I’m playing at open mike nights across Richmond. When I’m a fan of a band, I know it’s weird, but I almost have to stay updated on the band. Whether it’s checking Wikipedia or the band’s webpage, I find a way to stay abreast on any new rumblings from the band. It could be a new album in the works or just a random B-Side being released on a soundtrack; I want to know all of it. I’m just a curious guy like that which is really why this site exists in the first place. Anyway, originally hearing that the band wanted to release two albums in 2009, I was ecstatic. Of course, it didn’t turn out this way, but I kept checking back for any bits of news I could. News of a solo album by Lawler came & went and it wasn’t until a random day in September searching through Wikipedia (I’m addicted!) that I came across three words that would drastically change my iPod for the next six months: Codeine Velvet Club.

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Beatles Countdown #83: Lady Madonna

{Mar 16}

Doug1960s , No Comments

Paul McCartney brings us some old-time boogie-woogie with #83’s slot on the countdown: “Lady Madonna!”

Having seen a picture titled “Mountain Madonna” which had an African woman suckling her kid, Paul was inspired to write this as a tribute to women everywhere shortly before the band’s trip to India. The lyrics describe the titular woman’s journey’s throughout the week though Paul famously leaves out Saturday as he figured it must have been “a real night out.” John had a minor contribution to the song too as he borrowed his famous “see how they run” lyric from “I Am The Walrus” for the song’s middle eight. The upbeat, quirky song was accompanied by a promotional film (or music video) which The Beatles had some expierence with. However, when it came time to shoot for the film, all the band wanted to do was work on and record a new song they had just penned: “Hey Bulldog.” As such, one of the two promotional films features mainly studio recordings & performances, most of which are of that song! Denis O’Dell, who was in charge of the filming, would recall had he had a plan for the film, but all that went out of the window as soon as Paul started playing something new on the piano.

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Beatles Countdown #84 – She’s Leaving Home

{Mar 16}

Doug1960s , , 1 Comment

A stunning piece from the masterpiece Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band clocks in at #84: “She’s Leaving Home!”

Though later called “a McCartney song through-and-through,” Paul would himself say that John wrote the song with him. While Paul handled most of the composition, John would add the lyrics to the chorus as well as sustained notes to the music which Paul later said made the song what it is. Paul said he drew his inspiration from a newspaper article about a girl who had run away from home in February 1967 without any of her belongings. The girl was Melanie Coe who, in an ironic (or not) fashion, had actually met the band in 1963 on the TV Show Ready Set Go after winning a competition. Paul himself was the one to award her for her miming skills! At first, Melanie didn’t realize the song was about her though she could see the similarities. After hearing Paul talk about the song in an interview, she was able to piece it together that she was the inspiration to the song. Coincidentally, Melanie said Paul even got most of her life right as she did feel like she was living alone for so many years and her parents had given her everything that money could buy. Kind of weird, huh?

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Beatles Countdown #85 – Dig A Pony

{Mar 16}

Doug1970s , No Comments

Sorry for the break, but let’s keep the countdown rolling with #85 as John Lennon tells us all he wants in a selection from the Let It Be album: “Dig A Pony!”

Later dismissed as “another piece of garbage” by John in 1980 before his death, the song was lyrical nonsense with Lennon himself addressing by saying “I just make it up as I go along.” Like “I Am The Walrus,” the song features a bunch of randomly-linked nonsensical phrases with no real set meaning. The chorus was the exception here as Lennon screams “All I want is you” aimed directly at Yoko Ono who dominated the subject matter of most of his songs at the time. With that said, perhaps the song represents Lennon’s mind at the time: a crazy mess where random thoughts pop up here & there, but his desire for Yoko always comes to the forefront. Or maybe I’m reading too into it. Who knows? The lyrics of the song do contain a bunch of funny & obscure references though. The Beatles’ one-time name Johnny And The Moondogs pops up in the line “I pick a moondog.” Mick Jagger also gets mentioned in the line “I roll a stoney, well you can imitate everyone you know” though that does seem to be a sharp take on their competition at the time, but also one that’s been repeated a lot. In the abundance of Dylan-esque phrases in the song, I’m sure you can pinpoint out more obscure references too.

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Beatles Countdown #86: Maxwell’s Silver Hammer

{Mar 08}

Doug1960s , No Comments

Coming up at #86 is Paul McCartney’s attempt at dark comedy as he tells the plight of a homicidal maniac in “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer!”

Penned shortly after The White Album sessions in October 1968, the song tells the plight of Maxwell Edision who uses his titular silver hammer to murder his medical school teacher, girlfriend, and finally the judge presiding over his case. Sounds pretty dark for a Beatles song, huh? The vaudevillian song was written by McCartney as an analogy for whenever something goes wrong in life. As he would later say, “It epitomizes the downfalls in life. Just when everything is going smoothly: Bang! Bang! Down comes Maxwell’s Silver Hammer and ruins everything.” On the music itself, George Harrison would comment that it was “one of those instant whistle-along tunes which some people hate and other people really like.” That perhaps would be the nicest thing said about the song by the other three. The dark comedy song first made its appearance in the Let It Be sessions and was captured in the subsequent film as they show Paul McCartney working on it. It wasn’t until their final recording session together for Abbey Road that they dedicated time to it at the behest of Paul McCartney who wanted it to be a single. This is where the “controversy” around the song comes around as I alluded to in “Fixing A Hole.”

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