[The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show -- Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, George Harrison, John Lennon]
[James] Paul McCartney (b. June 18, 1942, Liverpool, UK) was born in Walton Hospital, where his mother, Mary, had worked as a nurse in the maternity ward.
He has one brother, Michael (b. January 7, 1944).
McCartney was baptised Roman Catholic but was raised non-denominationally: his mother was Roman Catholic, and his father, James "Jim" McCartney, was a Protestant turned agnostic.
In 1947, he began attending Stockton Wood Road Primary school. He then attended the Joseph Williams Junior School, and passed the 11-plus exam in 1953 with three others out of the 90 examinees and thus gained admission to the Liverpool Institute.
In 1954, while riding on the bus to the Institute, he met George Harrison, who lived nearby.
Passing the exam meant that McCartney and Harrison did not have to go to a secondary modern school, which most pupils attended until they were eligible to work. It also meant that Grammar school pupils had to find new friends.
In 1955, when Paul was 14, the McCartney family moved to 20 Forthlin Road in Allerton.
Mary McCartney rode a bicycle to houses where she was needed as a midwife, and an early McCartney memory is of her leaving when it was snowing heavily.
On October 31, 1956, Mary McCartney (who was a heavy smoker) died of an embolism after a mastectomy operation to stop the spread of her breast cancer.
The early loss of his mother later connected McCartney with John Lennon, whose mother, Julia, died when Lennon was 17.
McCartney's father was a trumpet player and pianist who had led Jim Mac's Jazz Band in the 1920s. He encouraged his two sons to be musical.
Jim had an upright piano in the front room that he had bought from Harry Epstein's store, and McCartney's grandfather, Joe McCartney, played an E-flat tuba.
Jim McCartney used to point out the different instruments in songs on the radio, and often took McCartney to local brass band concerts.
After the death of his wife, Mary, Jim McCartney gave McCartney a nickel-plated trumpet, but when skiffle music became popular, McCartney swapped the trumpet for a £15 Framus Zenith (model 17) acoustic guitar.
McCartney, being left-handed, found the Zenith impossible to play. He then saw a poster advertising Slim Whitman and realised that Whitman played left-handed, with his guitar strung the opposite way to a right-handed player.
McCartney wrote his first song (I Lost My Little Girl) on the Zenith, and also played his father's Framus Spanish guitar when writing early songs with John Lennon.
He later started playing piano and wrote When I'm Sixty-Four.
Per his father's advice, he took music lessons, but since he preferred to learn by ear, he never applied himself to his studies.
Fifteen-year-old McCartney met Lennon and the Quarrymen (a band formed by John Lennon with several school friends) at the Woolton (St. Peter's church hall) fête on July 6, 1957.
At the start of their friendship Lennon's Aunt Mimi disapproved of McCartney because he was, she said, "working class," and called McCartney "John's little friend."
McCartney's father told his son that Lennon would get him "into trouble," although he later allowed The Quarrymen to rehearse in the front room at 20 Forthlin Road.
McCartney formed a close working relationship with Lennon and they collaborated on many songs. He convinced Lennon to allow George Harrison to join the Quarrymen after Lennon's initial reluctance (because of Harrison's young age) when Lennon heard Harrison play at a rehearsal in March 1958.
Harrison joined the group as lead guitarist, followed by Lennon's art school friend, Stuart Sutcliffe, on bass. McCartney would later be at the forefront of the dismissal of Sutcliffe, due to Sutcliffe's uncertain muscianship.
By May 1960, they had tried several new names, including the Silver Beetles (and played a tour with Johnny Gentle, in Scotland). The Beatles changed the name of the group for their performances in Hamburg, in August 1960.
Starting in May 1960 The Beatles were managed by Allan Williams, who booked them into Bruno Koschmider's Indra club in Hamburg. McCartney's father was reluctant to let the teenage McCartney go to Hamburg until McCartney pointed out that he would earn two pounds and ten shillings per day. As this was more than he earned himself, Jim finally agreed.
The Beatles first played at the Indra club, sleeping in small, dirty rooms in the Bambi Kino, and then moved (after the closure of the Indra) to the larger Kaiserkeller.
In October 1960, they left Koschmider's club and worked at the Top Ten Club, which was run by Peter Eckhorn.
When McCartney and Pete Best went back to the Bambi Kino to get their belongings they found it in almost total darkness. As a snub to Koschmider, they found a condom, attached it to a nail on the concrete wall of their room, and set fire to it. There was no real damage, but Koschmider reported them for attempted arson. McCartney and Best spent three hours in a local jail and were deported, as was George Harrison, for working under the legal age limit.
Lennon's work permit was revoked a few days later and he went home by train, but Sutcliffe had a cold and stayed in Hamburg, and then flew home.
The group reunited in December 1960, and on March 21, 1961, played their first of many performances at Liverpool's Cavern club.
McCartney realized that other Liverpool bands were playing the same cover songs, which prompted him and Lennon to write more original material.
The Beatles returned to Hamburg in April 1961, and recorded My Bonnie with Tony Sheridan.
Sutcliffe left the band after the end of their contract, so McCartney reluctantly took over bass.
After borrowing Sutcliffe's Hõfner 500/5 model for a short time, he bought a left-handed 1962 500/1 model Höfner bass.
On October 1, 1961, McCartney went with Lennon (who paid for the trip) to Paris for two weeks.
The Beatles were first seen by Brian Epstein at the Cavern club on November 9, 1961, and he later signed them to a management contract.
The Beatles' road manager, Neil Aspinall, drove them to London on December 31, 1961, where they auditioned the next day, but were rejected by Decca Records.
In April 1962, they went back to Hamburg to play at the Star-Club, and learned of Stuart Sutcliffe's death a few hours before they arrived.
The Beatles were ready to sign a record contract on May 9, 1962, with Parlophone Records -- after having been rejected by many record companies -- but Epstein sacked Pete Best (at the behest of McCartney, Lennon and Harrison) before they signed the contract.
Love Me Do was released on October 5, 1962, featuring McCartney singing solo on the chorus.
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Love Me Do is an early Lennon/McCartney song, principally written by Paul McCartney in 1958-1959 while playing truant from school aged 16.
John Lennon wrote the middle eight.
The song was The Beatles' first single, backed by P.S. I Love You and released on October 5, 1962. When the single was originally released in the United Kingdom, it peaked at number seventeen; in 1982 it was re-issued and reached number four. In the United States the single was a number one hit in 1964.
Love Me Do is intrinsically a song based around two simple chords: G7 and C, before moving to D for its middle eight. It first profiles Lennon playing a bluesy dry "dockside harmonica" riff, then features Lennon and McCartney on joint lead vocals, including Everly Brothers style harmonising during the beseeching "please" before McCartney sings the unaccompanied vocal line on the song's title phrase. Lennon had previously sung the title sections, but this change in arrangement was made in the studio under the direction of producer George Martin when he realised that the harmonica part encroached on the vocal (Lennon needed to begin playing the harmonica again on the same beat as the "do" of "love me do" although, according to Ian MacDonald, for the earlier 6 June audition the harmonica was overdubbed, allowing Lennon to sing the title phrase unhindered).
This is illustrative of the time constraints on this particular session - their first recording session proper; as for instance, when a similar situation later occurred on the Please Please Me single session, the harmonica was superimposed afterwards using tape-to-tape overdubbing.
Described by MacDonald as "standing out like a bare brick wall in a suburban sitting-room", Love Me Do with its stark "blunt working class northerness" rang "the first faint chime of a revolutionary bell" compared to the standard tin pan alley productions occupying the charts at the time.
Love Me Do was recorded by the Beatles on three different occasions with three different drummers:
The Beatles first recorded it on June 6, 1962 with Pete Best on drums, as part of their audition at EMI Studios at 3 Abbey Road, London. This version (previously thought to be lost) is available on Anthology 1.
By September 4, Best had been replaced with Ringo Starr (producer George Martin did not approve of Best's drumming; the decision to fire Best was not his however), and on that day the Beatles with Starr recorded a version again at EMI Studios.
One week later, on September, the Beatles returned to the same studio and they made a recording of Love Me Do with session drummer Andy White on drums, as Martin was unhappy with Starr's performance on September 4 and he was relegated to playing tambourine. As the tambourine was not included on the September 4 recording, this is the easiest way to distinguish between the Starr and White recordings.
First issues of the single, however, did feature the Ringo Starr version, prompting Mark Lewisohn to later write: "Clearly, the 11 September version was not regarded as having been a significant improvement after all."
It was also later included on the compilation albums Rarities (American version) and Past Masters, Volume One. The Andy White version of the track was included on the Beatles' debut UK album, Please Please Me, The Beatles' Hits EP, and all subsequent album releases on which Love Me Do was included. For the 1976 single re-issue and the 1982 "20th Anniversary" re-issue, the Andy White version was used. The CD single issued on 2 October 1992 contains both versions.
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All Lennon-McCartney songs on the first pressing of their debut ablum, Please Please Me (recorded in one day on February 11, 1963), as well as the Please Please Me single, From Me to You, and its B-side, Thank You Girl, are credited to "McCartney-Lennon," but this was later changed to "Lennon-McCartney."
They usually needed an hour or two to finish a song, which were written in hotel rooms after a concert, at Wimpole Street, at Cavendish Avenue, or at Kenwood (John Lennon's house).
McCartney also wrote songs for other artists, such as Billy J. Kramer, Cilla Black, Badfinger, and Mary Hopkin -and most notably he wrote two hit songs for the group Peter & Gordon-launching their career. One song, World Without Love, became a #1 hit in the UK & USA (Peter was the brother of Jane Asher, McCartney's girlfriend at the time).
Lennon, Harrison, and Starr lived in large houses in the "Stockbroker Belt" of southern England, but McCartney continued to live in central London: in Jane Asher's parents' house, and then at 7 Cavendish Avenue, St John's Wood, near the Abbey Road Studios.
It was at Cavendish Avenue that McCartney bought his first Old English Sheepdog, Martha, which inspired the song Martha My Dear.
McCartney often went to nightclubs alone, which offered "dining and dancing until 4.00 a.m." and featured cabaret acts.
He would get preferential treatment everywhere he went, which he readily accepted, even once accepting an offer from a policeman to be allowed to park McCartney's car.
McCartney later visited gambling clubs after 4am, such as The Curzon House, and often saw Brian Epstein there.
The Ad Lib club (above the Prince Charles Theatre at 7 Leicester Place) was later opened for the emerging Rock and Roll crowd of musicians, and tolerated their unusual lifestyle.
After the Ad Lib fell out of favor, McCartney moved on to the Scotch of St James, at 13 Masons Yard.
He also frequented The Bag O'Nails club at 8 Kingly Street in Soho, London, where he met Linda Eastman.
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With The Beatles was the group's the second studio album, released in November 1963 on Parlophone, and was recorded four months after the band's debut Please Please Me. The album features eight original compositions (seven by Lennon/McCartney, as well as George Harrison's first composition) and six covers (of Motown, R&B, and Broadway hits). Most of the songs from the album were released in the United States as Meet The Beatles! on January 20, 1964, and the remaining that were not, featured on their next US album, The Beatles' Second Album.
The album was also released in November 1963 by Capitol Records in Canada, with a slight change to the title Beatlemania! With The Beatles. This release has the distinction of being the first Beatles LP released in North America, pre-dating the Capitol US Meet The Beatles! and the Vee Jay Records Introducing... The Beatles LP's by two months.
The LP had advance orders of a half million and sold another half million by September 1965 -- making it the second album to sell a million copies in the UK. With The Beatles stayed at the top of the charts for 21 weeks, displacing Please Please Me, so that The Beatles occupied the top spot for 51 consecutive weeks. It even reached number eleven in the "singles charts" (because at the time UK charts counted all records sold, regardless of format). EMI Australia did not receive the cover art, and used a caricature of the band in a similar style to the black and white photograph on other releases. The Beatles were unaware of this until fans showed them the cover during their only Australian tour, and informed the EMI publicity people they were not pleased with the substitution.
On February 26, 1987, With The Beatles was officially released on compact disc (in mono only, catalogue number CDP 7 46436 2). Having been available only as an import in the US in the past, the album was also issued domestically in the US on LP and cassette on July 21, 1987.
Along with the rest of the Beatles' canon, it was re-released on CD in newly re-mastered stereo and mono versions on September 9, 2009.
With The Beatles.
All songs written and composed by Lennon/McCartney, except where noted.
Side one
No. Title Lead vocals Length
1. "It Won't Be Long" Lennon 2:13
2. "All I've Got to Do" Lennon 2:03
3. "All My Loving" McCartney 2:08
4. "Don't Bother Me" (George Harrison) Harrison 2:28
5. "Little Child" Lennon and McCartney 1:46
6. "Till There Was You" (Meredith Willson from The Music Man) McCartney 2:14
7. "Please Mister Postman" (Georgia Dobbins, William Garrett, Freddie Gorman, Brian Holland, Robert Bateman) Lennon 2:34
Side two
No. Title Lead vocals Length
1. "Roll Over Beethoven" (Chuck Berry) Harrison 2:45
2. "Hold Me Tight" McCartney 2:32
3. "You Really Got a Hold on Me" (Smokey Robinson) Lennon with Harrison 3:01
4. "I Wanna Be Your Man" Starr 2:00
5. "Devil in Her Heart" (Richard Drapkin) Harrison 2:26
6. "Not a Second Time" Lennon 2:07
7. "Money (That's What I Want)" (Janie Bradford, Berry Gordy)
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A Hard Day's Night was the third studio album by The Beatles, released on July 10, 1964 as the soundtrack to their film A Hard Day's Night. The American version of the album was released two weeks earlier, on 26 June 1964 by United Artists Records, with a different track listing. It was eventually replaced by the original United Kingdom version with its first release on CD and LP re-release, 26 February 1987.
While showcasing the development of the band's songwriting talents, the album sticks to the basic rock and roll instrumentation and song format. The album contains some of their most famous songs, including the title track and its distinct, instantly recognizable opening chord; and Can't Buy Me Love, both were Transatlantic number one singles for the band. The album and film are said to portray the classic image of the Beatles, as it was released at the height of Beatlemania.
The title of the album was the accidental creation of drummer Ringo Starr.
According to Lennon in a 1980 interview with Playboy magazine: "I was going home in the car and Dick Lester [director of the movie] suggested the title, Hard Day's Night from something Ringo had said. I had used it in In His Own Write, but it was an off-the-cuff remark by Ringo. You know, one of those malapropisms. A Ringo-ism, where he said it not to be funny... just said it. So Dick Lester said, 'We are going to use that title.'"
Side one of the LP contains the songs from the movie soundtrack. Side two contains songs written for, but not included in, the film, although a 1980's re-release of the movie includes a prologue before the opening credits with I'll Cry Instead on the soundtrack.
A Hard Day's Night is the first Beatles album to feature entirely original compositions, and the only one where all the songs were written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney.
Normally, Paul McCartney and Lennon would contribute a roughly equal number of songs to each album, but A Hard Day's Night is the one Beatles album on which Lennon's dominance as songwriter is by far the greater, being the primary writer of nine of the 13 tracks on the album, and co-writing only one song with McCartney (I'm Happy Just to Dance with You). This is also one of three Beatles albums, along with Let It Be and Magical Mystery Tour, in which Starr does not sing lead vocal on any songs. Starr sang the lead vocal on Matchbox, a cover of a Carl Perkins song recorded contemporaneously with the songs on A Hard Day's Night and released in Britain on the Long Tall Sally EP.
This is the first Beatles album to be recorded entirely on four-track tape, allowing for good stereo mixes. Despite this, until 2009, the Compact Disc release of this album (catalogue number CDP 7 46437 2) was available only in mono, though many of the tracks appeared in stereo on CD for the first time with the release of the boxset The Capitol Albums, Volume 1 in 2004. Three tracks from the album were issued in stereo on the 1962–1966 compilation.
All tracks credited to Lennon/McCartney.
Side one
No. Title Lead vocals Length
1. "A Hard Day's Night" Lennon with McCartney 2:34
2. "I Should Have Known Better" Lennon 2:43
3. "If I Fell" Lennon and McCartney 2:19
4. "I'm Happy Just to Dance with You" Harrison 1:56
5. "And I Love Her" McCartney 2:30
6. "Tell Me Why" Lennon 2:09
7. "Can't Buy Me Love" McCartney 2:12
Side two
No. Title Lead vocals Length
1. "Any Time at All" Lennon 2:11
2. "I'll Cry Instead" Lennon 1:46
3. "Things We Said Today" McCartney 2:35
4. "When I Get Home" Lennon 2:17
5. "You Can't Do That" Lennon 2:35
6. "I'll Be Back" Lennon, with McCartney 2:24
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Help! is the title of the fifth British and ninth American album by The Beatles, and the soundtrack from their film of the same name. Produced by George Martin for EMI's Parlophone Records, it contains fourteen songs in its original British form, of which seven appeared in the film Help!. These songs took up the first side of the vinyl album and included the singles Help! and Ticket to Ride. The second side contained seven other releases including the most covered song ever written, Yesterday.
The American release was a true soundtrack album, mixing the first seven songs with orchestral material from the film. Of the other seven songs, two were released on the US version of the next Beatles album, Rubber Soul, two were back-to-back on the next US single and then appeared on Yesterday and Today and three had already been on Beatles VI.
The album features Paul McCartney's Yesterday, arranged for guitar and string quartet and recorded without the other group members. John Lennon's You've Got to Hide Your Love Away indicates the influence of Bob Dylan and includes classical flutes. While several compositions on 1964's Beatles for Sale, as well as I'll Cry Instead from A Hard Day's Night, had leaned in a country and western direction, McCartney's I've Just Seen a Face was almost pure country, taken at such a fast tempo that it might have been bluegrass if not for the absence of banjo and fiddle.
Ticket to Ride, also released as a single, was felt by Lennon to be "heavy" in its sound compared to the group's previous output and daring in its reference to a boy and girl living together. McCartney called the arrangement "quite radical."
George Harrison contributed I Need You and You Like Me Too Much, his first compositions to be included on a Beatles album since Don't Bother Me, from 1963's With The Beatles.
The record contained two cover versions and a few tracks more closely related to the group's previous pop output, yet still marked a decisive step forward towards forthcoming achievements. The record sleeve-note shows Lennon and McCartney made more extensive and prominent use of keyboards, previously played unobtrusively by Martin, which would alter the group's future sound and the way they, particularly McCartney, went about the recording process. Four-track overdubbing technology encouraged this. Lennon, for his part, made much greater use of acoustic guitar, forsaking his famous Rickenbacker. All these developments can be traced on the previous Beatles for Sale, but were less obvious as this had been recorded more hastily, lacked chart hits and contained many old favourite cover versions.
The original LP's format of featuring songs from the soundtrack on side one and non-soundtrack songs on side two follows the format of the album A Hard Day's Night.
In later years, Lennon said that the title track of the album was a sincere cry for help, as the pressures of The Beatles' fame and his own unhappiness began to build, and that he regretted turning it from a downbeat song in the style of Roy Orbison's "Only the Lonely" to an upbeat pop song as a result of commercial pressures.
All songs written and composed by Lennon/McCartney, except where noted.
Side one
No. Title Lead Vocals Length
1. "Help!" Lennon 2:18
2. "The Night Before" McCartney 2:33
3. "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" Lennon 2:08
4. "I Need You" (George Harrison) Harrison 2:28
5. "Another Girl" McCartney 2:05
6. "You're Going to Lose That Girl" Lennon 2:17
7. "Ticket to Ride" Lennon 3:10
Side two
No. Title Lead Vocals Length
1. "Act Naturally" (Johnny Russell, Voni Morrison) Starr 2:29
2. "It's Only Love" Lennon 1:54
3. "You Like Me Too Much" (Harrison) Harrison 2:35
4. "Tell Me What You See" McCartney 2:36
5. "I've Just Seen a Face" McCartney 2:04
6. "Yesterday" McCartney 2:03
7. "Dizzy Miss Lizzy" (Larry Williams) Lennon
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Yesterday
McCartney composed the entire melody of Yesterday (1965) in a dream one night in his room at the Wimpole Street home of his then-girlfriend Jane Asher and her family. Upon waking, he hurried to a piano, turned on a tape recorder, and played the tune.
McCartney's initial concern was that he had subconsciously plagiarized someone else's work (known as cryptomnesia). As he put it, "For about a month I went round to people in the music business and asked them whether they had ever heard it before. Eventually it became like handing something in to the police. I thought if no-one claimed it after a few weeks then I could have it."
Upon being convinced that he had not robbed anybody of his melody, McCartney began writing lyrics to suit it. As Lennon and McCartney were known to do at the time, a substitute working lyric, entitled Scrambled Eggs, was used for the song until something more suitable was written. In his biography, Many Years From Now, McCartney recalled: "So first of all I checked this melody out, and people said to me, 'No, it's lovely, and I'm sure it's all yours.' It took me a little while to allow myself to claim it, but then like a prospector I finally staked my claim; stuck a little sign on it and said, 'Okay, it's mine!' It had no words."
During the shooting of Help!, a piano was placed on one of the stages where filming was being conducted. McCartney would take advantage of this opportunity to perform Scrambled Eggs accompanied by the piano. Richard Lester, the director, was greatly annoyed by this, and eventually lost his temper, telling McCartney to finish writing the song, or he would have the piano removed.
McCartney's original lyrics were, "Scrambled eggs, Oh, baby how I love your legs."
McCartney originally claimed he had written Yesterday during The Beatles' tour of France in 1964; however, the song was not released until the summer of 1965. During the intervening time, The Beatles released two albums, Beatles for Sale and A Hard Day's Night, both of which could have included Yesterday. Although McCartney has never elaborated his claims, it is likely that the reason for such a long delay, if it existed, was a disagreement between McCartney and George Martin regarding the song's arrangement, or, equally likely, the distaste of the other Beatles for the song.
Lennon later indicated that the song had been around for a while before: "The song was around for months and months before we finally completed it. Every time we got together to write songs for a recording session, this one would come up. We almost had it finished. Paul wrote nearly all of it, but we just couldn't find the right title. We called it Scrambled Eggs and it became a joke between us. We made up our minds that only a one-word title would suit, we just couldn't find the right one. Then one morning Paul woke up and the song and the title were both there, completed. I was sorry in a way, we'd had so many laughs about it."
McCartney said the breakthrough with the lyrics came during a trip to Portugal in May 1965:
"I remember mulling over the tune Yesterday, and suddenly getting these little one-word openings to the verse. I started to develop the idea ... da-da da, yes-ter-day, sud-den-ly, fun-il-ly, mer-il-ly and Yes-ter-day, that's good. All my troubles seemed so far away. It's easy to rhyme those a's: say, nay, today, away, play, stay, there's a lot of rhymes and those fall in quite easily, so I gradually pieced it together from that journey. Sud-den-ly, and 'b' again, another easy rhyme: e, me, tree, flea, we, and I had the basis of it."
On May 27, 1965, McCartney and Asher flew to Lisbon for a holiday in the Algarve, and he borrowed an acoustic guitar from Bruce Welch -- whose house they were staying in -- and completed the work on Yesterday
The song was offered as a demo to Chris Farlowe prior to The Beatles recording it, but he turned it down as he considered it "too soft."
Two days after returning home, the track was recorded at Abbey Road Studios on the June 14 and June 17, 1965. There are conflicting accounts of how the song was recorded, the most quoted one being that McCartney recorded the song by himself, without bothering to involve the other band members.
Alternative sources, however, state that McCartney and the other Beatles tried a variety of instruments, including drums and an organ, and that George Martin later persuaded them to allow McCartney to play his acoustic guitar, later on editing in a string quartet for backup. If so, none of the other band members was included in the final recording.
However, the song was played with the other members of the band in a 1966 Tokyo concert.
McCartney performed two takes of Yesterday on June 14, 1965.
Take 2 was deemed better and used as the master take with string quartet overdubbed and released.
Take 1, without the string overdub, was later released on the Anthology 2 compilation. On Take 1, McCartney can be heard giving chord changes to George Harrison before starting, but George does not appear to actually play. Take 2 had two lines transposed from the first take: "There's a shadow hanging over me"/"I'm not half the man I used to be," though it seems clear that their order in take 2 was the correct one, because McCartney can be heard, in Take 1, suppressing a laugh at his mistake.
Although McCartney had fallen in love with the song, he had a much harder time convincing the other members of the band that it was worthy of an album place, the main objection being that it did not fit in with their image, especially considering that Yesterday was extremely unlike other Beatles' songs at the time. This feeling was so strong that the other Beatles refused to permit the release of a single in the United Kingdom.
This did not prevent Matt Monro from recording the first of many cover versions of Yesterday to come. His version made it into the top ten in the UK charts soon after its release in the autumn of 1965.
Yesterday has achieved recognition as being the most recorded song in the history of popular music; its entry in the Guinness Book of Records suggests over 3000 different cover versions to date, by an eclectic mix of artists including Joan Baez, Liberace, Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Daffy Duck, Plácido Domingo, and Boyz II Men.
Yesterday, however, has also been criticised for being mundane and mawkish; Bob Dylan had a marked dislike for the song, stating that "If you go into the Library of Congress, you can find a lot better than that. There are millions of songs like Michelle and Yesterday written in Tin Pan Alley." Ironically, Dylan ultimately recorded his own version of Yesterday four years later, but it was never released.
Shortly before his death in 1980, Lennon explained that he thought the lyrics didn't "resolve into any sense... They're good -- but if you read the whole song, it doesn't say anything; you don't know what happened. She left and he wishes it were yesterday -- that much you get -- but it doesn't really resolve. ... Beautiful -- and I never wished I'd written it."
The tonic key of the song is F major (although, since McCartney tuned his guitar down a whole step, he was playing the chords as if it were in G), where the song begins before veering off into the relative minor key of D minor. It is this frequent use of the minor, and the ii-V7 chord progression (Em7 and A7 chords in this case) leading into it, that gives the song its melancholy aura. The A7 chord is an example of a secondary dominant, specifically a V/vi chord. The G7 chord in the bridge is another secondary dominant, in this case a V/V chord, but rather than resolve it to the expected chord, as with the A7 to Dm in the verse, McCartney instead follows it with the IV chord, a Bb. This motion creates a descending chromatic line of C B Bb A to accompany the title lyric.
The string arrangement supplements the song's air of sadness, especially in the groaning cello melody that connects the two halves of the bridge (on the line, "I don't know / she wouldn't say") as well as the descending line by the viola that segues the chorus back into the verses. This simple idea is so striking, McCartney mimics it with his vocal on the second pass of the chorus.
This viola line and the high A sustained by the violin over the final verse are the only elements of the string arrangement attributable to McCartney rather than George Martin.
Thes first phrase is only seven measures instead of the customary eight. The IV-I (plagal or "Amen") cadence at the end of this section results gives the music a quasi-reverential flavor.
When McCartney appeared on The Howard Stern Show, he stated that he owns the original lyrics to Yesterday written on the back of an envelope.
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On June 12, 1965, The Beatles were appointed Members of the Order of the British Empire (MBE); they received their insignia from Queen Elizabeth II at an investiture at Buckingham Palace on October 26, 1965.
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Rubber Soul is the sixth studio album by the English rock group The Beatles, released in December 1965. Produced by George Martin, Rubber Soul had been recorded in just over four weeks to make the Christmas market. Unlike the five albums that preceded it, Rubber Soul was the first Beatles album recorded during a specific period, the sessions not dashed off in between either tour dates or during filming projects.
After this, every Beatles album would be made without the need to pay attention to other commitments, except for the production of short promotional films or principal photography and editing to Magical Mystery Tour. The album was described as a major artistic achievement, attaining widespread critical and commercial success, with reviewers taking note of The Beatles' developing musical vision.
Side One
1. "Drive My Car" 2:25
2. "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" 2:01
3. "You Won't See Me" 3:18
4. "Nowhere Man" 2:40
5. "Think for Yourself" (George Harrison) 2:16
6. "The Word" 2:41
7. "Michelle" 2:40
Side Two
No. Title Length
1. "What Goes On" (Lennon/McCartney/Starkey) 2:47
2. "Girl" 2:30
3. "I'm Looking Through You" 2:23
4. "In My Life" 2:24
5. "Wait" 2:12
6. "If I Needed Someone" (George Harrison) 2:20
7. "Run for Your Life"
***
Paperback Writer is a 1966 song recorded and released by The Beatles. Written by Paul McCartney and credited to Lennon/McCartney, the song was released as the A-side of their eleventh single. The single went to the number one spot in the United States, United Kingdom, West Germany, Australia, New Zealand and Norway. Written in the form of a letter from an aspiring author to a publisher, Paperback Writer was the first UK Beatles single that was not a love song (though Nowhere Man which was a single in the US, was their first album song released with that distinction). On the US Billboard Hot 100, the song was at number one for two non-consecutive weeks, being interrupted by Frank Sinatra's Strangers in the Night.
Paperback Writer was the last new song by the Beatles to be featured on their 1966 tour.
***
Eleanor Rigby
Eleanor Rigby was originally released on the 1966 album Revolver. The song was primarily written by Paul McCartney.
It remains one of The Beatles' most recognizable and unique songs, with a string octet orchestration by George Martin, and striking lyrics about loneliness. The song continued the transformation of the group, started in Rubber Soul, from a mainly pop-oriented act to a more serious and experimental studio band.
As is true of many of McCartney's songs, the melody and first line of the song came to him as he was playing around on his piano. The name that came to him, though, was not Eleanor Rigby but Miss Daisy Hawkins. In 1966, McCartney recalled how he got the idea for his song:
“I was sitting at the piano when I thought of it. The first few bars just came to me, and I got this name in my head... "Daisy Hawkins picks up the rice in the church." I don't know why. I couldn't think of much more so I put it away for a day. Then the name Father McCartney came to me, and all the lonely people. But I thought that people would think it was supposed to be about my Dad sitting knitting his socks. Dad's a happy lad. So I went through the telephone book and I got the name McKenzie.
Others believe that Father McKenzie refers to Father Tommy McKenzie, who was the compere at Northwich Memorial Hall.
McCartney originally imagined Daisy as a young girl, but anyone who cleaned up in churches would probably be older. If she were older, she might have missed not only the wedding she cleans up after but also her own.
McCartney said he came up with the name Eleanor from actress Eleanor Bron, who had starred with the Beatles in the film Help!. Rigby came from the name of a store in Bristol, Rigby & Evens Ltd, Wine & Spirit Shippers, that he noticed while seeing his then-girlfriend Jane Asher act in The Happiest Days Of Your Life. He recalled in 1984, "I just liked the name. I was looking for a name that sounded natural. Eleanor Rigby sounded natural."
In the 1980s, a grave of an Eleanor Rigby was discovered in the graveyard of St. Peter's Parish Church in Woolton, Liverpool, and a few yards away from that, another tombstone with the last name McKenzie scrawled across it.
During their teenage years, McCartney and Lennon spent time "sunbathing" there; within earshot distance of where the two had met for the first time during a fete in 1957. Many years later McCartney stated that the strange coincidence between reality and lyric could be a product of his subconscious, rather than being a meaningless fluke.
The actual Eleanor Rigby was born in 1895 and lived in Liverpool, possibly in the suburb of Woolton, where she married a man named Thomas Woods. She died on 10 October 1939 at age 44, which, because 1940 was a leap year, was exactly one year to the day before Lennon was born. Whether this Eleanor was the inspiration for the song or not, her tombstone has become a landmark to Beatles fans visiting Liverpool.
A digitized version was added to the 1995 music video for the Beatles' reunion song Free as a Bird.
In June 1990, McCartney decided to donate (from his private collection) a document dating from 1911 which had been signed by the 16-year-old Eleanor Rigby. The recipient charity, Sunbeams Music Trust, instantly attracted significant international interest from collectors because of the significance and provenance of the document.
The nearly 100-year-old document was sold at auction in November 2008 for 115,000 pounds.
U.K. newspaper the Daily Telegraph reports that the uncovered document “is a 97-year-old salary register from Liverpool City Hospital.” The name E. Rigby is printed on the register, and she is identified as a scullery maid.
The Beatles finished off the song in the music room of John Lennon's home at Kenwood. John Lennon, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, and their friend Pete Shotton all listened to McCartney play his song through and contributed ideas. Someone suggested introducing a romance into the story, but this was rejected because it made the story too complicated. Starr contributed the line "writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear " and suggested making "Father McCartney" darn his socks, which McCartney liked, and Harrison came up with the line "Ah, look at all the lonely people."
Shotton then suggested that McCartney change the name of the priest, in case listeners mistook the fictional character in the song for McCartney's own father.
McCartney couldn't decide how to end the song, and Shotton finally suggested that the two lonely people come together too late as Father McKenzie conducts Eleanor Rigby's funeral. At the time, Lennon rejected the idea out of hand, but McCartney said nothing and used the idea to finish off the song, later acknowledging Shotton's help.
The "Eleanor Rigby"/"Yellow Submarine" single issued by Parlophone in the UK. "Eleanor Rigby" stayed at #1 for four weeks on the British pop charts.
"Eleanor Rigby" does not have a standard pop backing; none of the Beatles played instruments on it, though John Lennon and George Harrison did contribute harmony and backing vocals.
Instead, McCartney used a string octet of studio musicians, all performing a score composed by producer George Martin. For the most part, the instruments "double up" -- that is, they serve as two string quartets with two instruments on a part. Microphones were placed close to the instruments to produce a more vivid and raw sound. George Martin asked musicians to play without vibrato and recorded two versions, one with and one without, the latter of which was used. McCartney's choice of a string backing may have been influenced by his interest in Antonio Vivaldi. Lennon recalled in 1980 that Eleanor Rigby was "Paul's baby, and I helped with the education of the child ... The violin backing was Paul's idea. Jane Asher had turned him on to Vivaldi, and it was very good."
The octet was recorded on April 28, 1966, in Studio 2 at Abbey Road Studios and completed in Studio 3 on April 29, and June 6. Take 15 was selected as the master.
George Martin, in his autobiography All You Need Is Ears, takes credit for combining two of the vocal parts, having noticed that they would work together contrapuntally.
The original stereo mix had Paul's voice only in the right channel during the verses, with the string octet mixed to one channel, while the mono single and mono LP featured a more balanced mix. On the Yellow Submarine Songtrack and Love versions, McCartney's voice is centered and the string octet appears in stereo in an attempt to create a more "modern" sounding mix.
Eleanor Rigby was released simultaneously on August 5, 1966 on both the album Revolver and on an A-side single with Yellow Submarine on Parlophone in the United Kingdom and Capitol in the United States.
It spent four weeks at number one on the British charts, but in America it only reached the eleventh spot.
It is the second song to appear in the Beatles' 1968 animated film Yellow Submarine. The first is Yellow Submarine, and these two the only songs in the film in which the animated Beatles are not seen to be singing. Eleanor Rigby is introduced just before the Liverpool sequence of the film, and its poignancy ties in quite well with Ringo Starr (the first member of the group to encounter the submarine) who is represented as quietly bored and depressed.
***
They stopped touring after their last concert at Candlestick Park, San Francisco, on 29 August 1966. The other three Beatles had often talked about stopping touring, but after the Candlestick Park concert, and after having played so many concerts where they could not be heard, McCartney finally agreed that they should stop playing live concerts.
McCartney was the first to be involved in a musical project outside of the group, when he composed the score for the film The Family Way in 1966.
McCartney later attempted to persuade Lennon and Harrison to return to the stage, and when they had a meeting to sign a new contract with Capitol Records, McCartney suggested "going back to our roots," to which Lennon replied, "I think you're mad!"
***
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Side One
1. "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" 2:00
2. "With a Little Help from My Friends" 2:43
3. "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" 3:26
4. "Getting Better" 2:47
5. "Fixing a Hole" 2:35
6. "She's Leaving Home" 3:33
7. "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" 2:35
Side Two
1. "Within You Without You" (George Harrison) 5:05
2. "When I'm Sixty-Four" 2:37
3. "Lovely Rita" 2:41
4. "Good Morning Good Morning" 2:42
5. "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)" 1:19
6. "A Day in the Life"
***
The Beatles (The White Album)
1. "Back in the U.S.S.R." McCartney 2:43
2. "Dear Prudence" Lennon 3:56
3. "Glass Onion" Lennon 2:17
4. "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" McCartney 3:08
5. "Wild Honey Pie" McCartney 1:01
6. "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill" Lennon 3:05
7. "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" (George Harrison) Harrison 4:45
8. "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" Lennon 2:43
Side two
No. Title Lead vocal Length
1. "Martha My Dear" McCartney 2:28
2. "I'm So Tired" Lennon 2:03
3. "Blackbird" McCartney 2:18
4. "Piggies" (Harrison) Harrison 2:04
5. "Rocky Raccoon" McCartney 3:41
6. "Don't Pass Me By" (Richard Starkey) Starr 3:42
7. "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?" McCartney 1:41
8. "I Will" McCartney 1:46
9. "Julia" Lennon 2:54
Side three
No. Title Lead vocals Length
1. "Birthday" McCartney with Lennon 2:42
2. "Yer Blues" Lennon 4:01
3. "Mother Nature's Son" McCartney 2:48
4. "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey" Lennon 2:24
5. "Sexy Sadie" Lennon 3:15
6. "Helter Skelter" McCartney 4:29
7. "Long, Long, Long" (Harrison) Harrison 3:04
Side four
No. Title Lead vocal Length
1. "Revolution 1" Lennon 4:15
2. "Honey Pie" McCartney 2:41
3. "Savoy Truffle" (Harrison) Harrison 2:54
4. "Cry Baby Cry" Lennon, with McCartney 3:11
5. "Revolution 9" Speaking from Lennon, Harrison & Yoko Ono 8:13
6. "Good Night" Starr 3:11
[edit]
***
Although Lennon had quit the group in September 1969, and Harrison and Starr had temporarily left the group at various times, McCartney was the one who publicly announced The Beatles' breakup on April 10, 1970 -- one week before releasing his first solo album, McCartney.
The album included a press release inside with a self-written interview stating McCartney's hopes about the future. The Beatles' partnership was legally dissolved after McCartney filed a lawsuit on December 31, 1970.
Although McCartney's relationship with John Lennon was troubled, they reconciled during the 1970s.
McCartney would often call Lennon, but was never sure of what sort of reception he would get, such as when McCartney once called Lennon and was told, "You're all pizza and fairytales!"
McCartney understood that he could not just phone Lennon and only talk about business, so they often talked about cats, baking bread, or babies.
On the morning of December 9, 1980, McCartney awoke to the news that Lennon had been murdered outside his home in the Dakota building in New York.
Lennon's death created a media frenzy around the surviving members of The Beatles.
On the evening of 9 December, as McCartney was leaving an Oxford Street recording studio, he was surrounded by reporters and asked for his reaction to Lennon's death. He replied, "I was very shocked, you know -- this is terrible news," and said that he had spent the day in the studio listening to some material because he "just didn't want to sit at home."
When asked why, he replied, "I didn't feel like it," and added, "drag, isn't it?"
When published, his "drag" remark was criticised, and McCartney later regretted it. He furthermore stated that he had intended no disrespect but had just been at a loss for words, after the shock and sadness he felt over his friend's murder.
In a Playboy interview in 1984, McCartney said that he went home that night and watched the news on television—whilst sitting with all his children—and cried all evening. His last telephone call to John, which was just before Lennon and Yoko released Double Fantasy, was friendly. During the call, Lennon said (laughing) to McCartney, "This housewife wants a career!" which referred to Lennon's "house-husband" years, while he was looking after Sean Lennon.
McCartney carried on recording after the death of Lennon but did not play any live concerts for some time. He explained that this was because he was nervous that he would be "the next" to be murdered.
In 1981, six months after Lennon's death, McCartney sang backup on George Harrison's tribute to Lennon, All Those Years Ago, along with Ringo Starr.
The 1990s saw McCartney venture into classical music. In 1991 the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society commissioned a musical piece by McCartney to celebrate its sesquicentennial.
McCartney collaborated with Carl Davis to release Liverpool Oratorio.
EMI Classics recorded the premiere of the oratorio and released it on a 2-CD album.
In the early 1990s (after another world tour), McCartney reunited with Harrison and Starr to work on Apple's The Beatles Anthology documentary series. It included three double albums of alternative takes, live recordings, and previously unreleased Beatles songs, as well as a ten-hour video boxed set.
In late 2001, McCartney was informed that ex-Beatles' lead guitarist, George Harrison, was losing his battle with cancer. Upon Harrison's death on November 29, McCartney told Entertainment Tonight, Access Hollywood, Extra, Good Morning America, The Early Show, MTV, VH-1, and Today that George was like his "baby brother". Harrison spent his last days in a Hollywood Hills mansion that was once leased by McCartney.
On November 29, 2002 -- on the first anniversary of George Harrison's death --McCartney played Harrison’s Something on a ukulele at the Concert for George.
[Voice-Leading Considerations,
with an example from a piano transcription of Paul McCarney's Yesterday]
***
Tony Andreason (b. c. 1942) / The Trashmen
The Trashmen is a rock and roll band formed in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1962. The group's lineup was Tony Andreason on lead guitar and vocals, Dal Winslow on guitar and vocals, Steve Wahrer on drums and vocals, and Bob Reed on bass guitar. The group played surf rock which included many elements from garage rock.
The Trashmen's major notable hit was 1963's "Surfin' Bird", which reached #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the later part of that year. The song was a combination of two R&B hits by The Rivingtons, "The Bird's the Word" and "Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow". The earliest pressings of the single credit the Trashmen as composers, but following a threat from The Rivingtons' legal counsel, that group was subsequently credited as composers. The song was later recorded by many artists, including the Ramones, The Cramps, Silverchair, Pee-Wee Herman, Equipe 84, and even the thrash metal band Sodom. It has been used in several movies and television shows (such as well-known scenes in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket and John Waters' Pink Flamingos). It is featured in the soundtrack in the video game Battlefield Vietnam. More recently it has been the subject of a 2008 episode of the animated series Family Guy, launching the song to #8 on the iTunes Top 10 Rock songs chart and #50 on the UK Singles Chart in 2009.
The Trashmen went on to have other hit singles on the charts. In 1964, "Bird Dance Beat" hit #30 on the Billboard in the United States, as well as becoming a top 10 hit in Canada, and a mega hit in Brazil. Five other Trashmen singles charted, and overall they released 14 albums. They were prolific enough for a four CD box set of their work to be released later.
The group disbanded in 1967 but reunited in the 1980s, they played together until the death of Steve Wahrer, who died of cancer in 1989[2]. Tony Andreason's brother, Mark, filled Steve's shoes as drummer. In 1999, The Trashmen played in Las Vegas, Nevada at The Las Vegas Grind to a full house. Since then, they have reunited to play select gigs including Chicago (July 2007), Spain (September 2007), Chicago (November 2007), Wisconsin, and Cleveland (March 2008).
The Trashmen played for the first time in over a decade in their homestate of Minnesota, when they played the birthday bash for KOZY (AM) Radio at the Reif Center in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. The Trashmen returned to Grand Rapids, where they played in 1964.
They have since been touring Europe and the US with successful 2009 gigs in Germany, The Netherlands, France, Spain, Belgium, Italy, and Austria, with many more playdates on the calendar.
The Trashmen's song "Surfin' Bird" was featured prominently in the 2008 Family Guy episode "I Dream of Jesus," in which Peter becomes obsessed with the song, singing and dancing along to it at the slightest provocation. It was referenced once again in the 2010 episode "Big Man on Hippocampus", in which Peter loses his memory and discovers the song again.
Played during a segment in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket.
'Weird Al' Yankovic has credited The Trashmen with influencing his songwriting.
[8942 B. Wilson / 8942 McCartney / 8942 A. Franklin]
