Beatles Countdown #78: No Reply

{Apr 08}

Doug1960s , No Comments

John Lennon’s first complete story & the opening track to The Beatles’ fourth album stakes it claim on the countdown at #78: “No Reply.”

Written about a man unable to get in touch with his unfaithful girlfriend & the pain that follows, “No Reply” would be John Lennon’s version of “Silhouettes,” a 1957 hit by The Rays with a similar topic. John had originally written the song for Tommy Quickly, one of Brian Epstein’s artists, but John realized the potential of the song & saved it from becoming one of “The Songs Lennon And McCartney Gave Away.” The song would become John’s first complete story and their music publisher Dick James commented on how Lennon was improving in his songwriting seeing as this song actually resolved itself. Before that, John (and apparently Dick James) had thought that his stories drifted off from the subject matter in a vague open-ending way instead of finishing the story. Lennon would go on to write a bunch of timeless stories with the absence of his songwriting-ADD (i.e. “The Ballad Of John And Yoko”), but “No Reply” definitely started him down that style of songwriting. While it was primarily a Lennon song, Paul would claim that he helped with a few missing elements to the song which was the custom for the duo at the time. John never spoke out against this and his silence must be his concurrence; the two really only disagreed on the credit for three songs in their whole career. Three out of hundreds! More on that later and back to the song…

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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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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 #89 – Yer Blues

{Mar 02}

Doug1960s , No Comments

As we start with the 80s in the countdown, John Lennon makes his first appearance at #89 with a depressing track from the self-tilted album known as The White Album: “Yer Blues!”

An obvious cry for help now, Lennon at the time painstakingly tried to cover it up as a parody, refusing to own up to the blunt lyrics and his blues singing out of fear, shame, or both. According to Anthology, Lennon was extremely depressed in India (despite meditating eight hours a day) and when he wrote the line “I’m so lonely I want to die,” he was actually serious. At the end of his marriage with Cynthia, wanting desperately to be with Yoko Ono, having lost one of his best friends in Brian Epstein, drifting away from his close friends, finding out the Maharishi was not exactly who The Beatles thought he was; man, it’s no surprise to see why John was depressed here. Really, I don’t know how Lennon expected this song to fly over anyone’s head. I guess in their catalogue of deep metaphors shrouding obvious feelings like “Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey”, he expected this kind of blunt, emotional plea to be written off as the parody he hoped it to be by naming it “Yer Blues” instead of “Your Blues.” It really wouldn’t be until his solo career with songs like “Cold Turkey” and “Mother” that he would bare his soul so openly to the world so this was still fairly new. Trying to patronize the song to avoid critical backlash, it’s really unsure what exactly Lennon was afraid of. He had opened up before in songs like “I’m A Loser” and he had sung the blues in the past, but also not to this degree for either. He would later tell interviewers about his love for blues singer when he was younger, but he was quoted by Rolling Stone as saying: “…To sing it was something else. I’m self conscious about doing it.” He also wouldn’t start putting his heart out for the world until after The Beatles. All of these things probably heightened his fear of releasing the song as the truth. Paul tried to console John over the song telling him to “say it straight,” but ultimately Lennon’s fear won and he got his easy defense for the song.

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Beatles Countdown #93 – This Boy

{Mar 01}

Doug1960s , , No Comments

Continuing on with the most famous songwriting partnership in history, the B-Side of “I Want To Hold Your Hand” clocks in at #93: “This Boy!”

Though always held up that it was a joint song, the song was more primarily written by John Lennon in one of Paul & John’s many hotel sessions though naturally Paul had a lot of influence. On tour in 1963 with a couple of hours to kill, the two got together to write a song based in harmony. Written around doo-wop chord progressions, John Lennon drew inspiration from Smokey Robinson’s “I’ve Been Good To You,” a favorite artist of The Beatles at the time. They would later cover “You Really Got A Hold On Me” by Smokey Robinson’s Miracles in the same recording session. Paul would later add in The Teddy Bear’s “To Know Him Is To Love Him” to the list of inspirations to this song. John & Paul wrote the song in three-part harmonies for themselves & Harrison in a move that Paul said he liked to do from time to time to expand the versatility of the band. They would later master multi-layered harmonies in “Because” at the end of their career. Originally, the band had a guitar solo in the middle eight of the song, but it was dropped during the recording process for a blistering vocal performance by John Lennon that stood out with the otherwise timid nature of the song. Just another last minute addition that makes the song.

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