The Beatles - Cry Baby Cry

 #The Beatles #John Lennon #Paul McCartney #George Harrison #British invasion #pop rock #psychedelic rock #blues rock #classic rock #British psychedelia #folk rock #1960s

"A piece of rubbish!" This was John Lennon's reaction in 1980 when asked about his "White Album" composition "Cry Baby Cry." Why would he react so negatively about this song? Those who take the time to examine the writing style of John Lennon through the years will easily notice the changes within the context of the time period. For instance, his output in 1967 generally used imagery to paint a picture that didn't necessarily make sense but sounded as if it did, such as with “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” and “I Am The Walrus.” By 1968, he put this aside for the most part and dealt much more with real occurrences in his own life and/or his interpretations of real events, such as with “I'm So Tired,” “Sexy Sadie” and “Revolution.” It is within the context of his 1968 output that we experience a “throwback” of sorts with “Cry Baby Cry,” a song which started to take shape the previous year and exuded the obscure but effective lyrics Lennon was known for at that time. Concerning John's negative opinion of the song in 1980, Beatles writer David Quantick offers the explanation that he “might have dismissed the song for not being about anything concrete.” This appears to make sense in light of the fact that, when looking back at his career as a songwriter, he would cite autobiographical songs, such as “Help!” and “Strawberry Fields Forever” as his best work. If that was the criteria he used in his later life, songs about imaginary characters involved in nonsensical activities could be seen as useless to him, or “rubbish.” Most Beatles fans and authors would wholeheartedly disagree, however. Ian Mac Donald, in his book "Revolution In The Head," describes "Cry Baby Cry" as “one of the most evocative products of that creative channel.” “An underrated Lennon royalty satire; it's his most accomplished Lewis Carroll pastiche,” writes Tim Riley. “A song with an air of a particularly dreamlike ghost story - one of the strangest and most beautiful lyrics on the 'White Album,'” writes David Quantick. “Alice trips gently through Lennonland for just about the last time. It ranks among his most magical,” writes Nicholas Schaffner.  From: http://www.beatlesebooks.com/cry-baby-cry

The Beatles - Revolution

 #The Beatles #John Lennon #Paul McCartney #George Harrison #British invasion #pop rock #psychedelic rock #blues rock #classic rock #British psychedelia #folk rock #1960s #music video

‘Revolution’ was John Lennon’s response to the popular calls for uprising in the US and Europe. It was a revision of a version already recorded for the White Album, and became the b-side of the ‘Hey Jude’ single. Although taped after ‘Revolution 1’, this faster, louder version was the first to be released. The song was written in India while The Beatles were studying meditation in Rishikesh.
John Lennon: “I wanted to put out what I felt about revolution. I thought it was time we fucking spoke about it, the same as I thought it was about time we stopped not answering about the Vietnamese war when we were on tour with Brian Epstein and had to tell him, ‘We’re going to talk about the war this time, and we’re not going to just waffle.’ I wanted to say what I thought about revolution. I had been thinking about it up in the hills in India. I still had this ‘God will save us’ feeling about it, that it’s going to be all right. That’s why I did it: I wanted to talk, I wanted to say my piece about revolution.’”
While ‘Revolution 1’ found Lennon uncertain about whether to join the struggle, on the faster ‘Revolution’ he emphatically demanded to be excluded. The urgency of the new arrangement was a result of Paul McCartney’s resistance to Lennon’s hopes of ‘Revolution 1’ being The Beatles’ next single after ‘Lady Madonna’. With the backing of George Harrison, McCartney argued that the recording was too slow, inspiring Lennon to re-record it in an up-tempo, distorted and spontaneous outburst of anti-revolutionary fervor. After two years lost in an LSD haze, and newly energized in his love for Yoko Ono, Lennon gladly rose to the challenge he perceived.
John: “We recorded the song twice. The Beatles were getting real tense with each other. I did the slow version and I wanted it out as a single: as a statement of The Beatles’ position on Vietnam and The Beatles’ position on revolution. For years, on The Beatles’ tours, Brian Epstein had stopped us from saying anything about Vietnam or the war. And he wouldn’t allow questions about it. But on one of the last tours, I said, ‘I am going to answer about the war. We can’t ignore it.’ I absolutely wanted The Beatles to say something about the war.” ‘Revolution’ featured the most distortion on any Beatles recording, particularly in the twin fuzz-toned guitars plugged directly into the Abbey Road desk and deliberately played loud to overload the meters.
George Martin: “We got into distortion on that, which we had a lot of complaints from the technical people about. But that was the idea: it was John’s song and the idea was to push it right to the limit. Well, we went to the limit and beyond.”  From: https://www.beatlesbible.com/songs/revolution/

The Beatles - Come Together

 #The Beatles #John Lennon #Paul McCartney #George Harrison #British invasion #pop rock #psychedelic rock #blues rock #classic rock #British psychedelia #folk rock #1960s #animated music video

‘Come Together’, the lead song on The Beatles’ Abbey Road album, was conceived by John Lennon as a political rallying cry for the writer, psychologist and pro-LSD activist Timothy Leary. ‘Come Together’ was composed for Timothy Leary’s campaign to stand against Ronald Reagan as governor of California. Leary and his wife Rosemary had traveled to Montreal for John and Yoko’s bed-in for peace, which took place on 1 June 1969. The Learys participated in the recording of Lennon’s ‘Give Peace A Chance’, and were both name-checked in the lyrics. The following day Lennon offered to help Leary’s campaign. His slogan was ‘Come together, join the party’. Lennon sent Leary a demo tape of song ideas. However, the campaign ended when Leary was imprisoned for cannabis possession, allowing Lennon to record the song with The Beatles.
“The thing was created in the studio. It’s gobbledygook; ‘Come Together’ was an expression that Leary had come up with for his attempt at being president or whatever he wanted to be, and he asked me to write a campaign song. I tried and tried, but I couldn’t come up with one. But I came up with this, ‘Come Together’, which would’ve been no good to him – you couldn’t have a campaign song like that, right?”
Leary was bemused when he came to hear The Beatles’ recording of the song. He said, “Although the new version was certainly a musical and lyrical improvement on my campaign song, I was a bit miffed that Lennon had passed me over this way. When I sent a mild protest to John, he replied with typical Lennon charm and wit that he was a tailor and I was a customer who had ordered a suit and never returned. So he sold it to someone else.” ‘Come Together’ was Lennon’s last politicized stance in The Beatles, although much of it was shrouded in imagery: the song lampooned the hippy figureheads who would seek followers among the dropouts of society. Musically, ‘Come Together’ took its cue from Chuck Berry’s 1956 song ‘You Can’t Catch Me’; both songs contain the lines “Here come old flat-top”. Lennon was later sued by Berry’s publisher Morris Levy. They settled out of court, and Lennon agreed to record more songs owned by Levy.
“‘Come Together’ is me – writing obscurely around an old Chuck Berry thing. I left the line in ‘Here comes old flat-top.’ It is nothing like the Chuck Berry song, but they took me to court because I admitted the influence once years ago. I could have changed it to ‘Here comes old iron face,’ but the song remains independent of Chuck Berry or anybody else on earth.” The result was his 1975 album Rock ‘N’ Roll, which contained Berry’s ‘Sweet Little Sixteen’ and ‘You Can’t Catch Me’, along with Lee Dorsey’s ‘Ya Ya’ (also recorded with the 11-year-old Julian Lennon on drums for 1974’s Walls And Bridges).  From: https://www.beatlesbible.com/songs/come-together/

The Beatles - Rain

 #The Beatles #John Lennon #Paul McCartney #George Harrison #British invasion #pop rock #psychedelic rock #blues rock #classic rock #folk rock #1960s

Released on the ‘Paperback Writer’ single, ‘Rain’ is considered by many Beatles fans to be their finest b-side. Much like Revolver’s ‘I’m Only Sleeping’, ‘Rain’ found The Beatles exploring LSD-influenced feelings of detachment from the real world, and the belief that heightened consciousness can be found within the self. The song is generally credited to John Lennon, although Paul McCartney claimed it was co-written.
The Beatles had discovered during the ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ sessions that slowing down the speed of their recordings revealed hidden depths. They recorded the rhythm track of ‘Rain’ at a fast tempo, then slowed the tape down so the song was a tone lower. Ringo Starr’s drums, locked in to McCartney’s high bass guitar notes, were a key feature of the song.
Paul said, “The drums became a giant drum kit. We got a big, ponderous, thunderous backing and then we worked on top of that as normal, so that it didn’t sound like a slowed-down thing, it just had a big ominous noise to it. It was nice, I really enjoyed that one.” Ringo Starr later said ‘Rain’ was among his favourite performances on a Beatles recording. “I feel as though that was someone else playing – I was possessed!”
The other key feature of ‘Rain’ was John Lennon’s backwards vocals, heard during the coda at the song’s end. Lennon claimed that the discovery was the result of a stoned accident, when he threaded his rough mix tape of the song into his reel-to-reel player the wrong way round. John said, “I got home from the studio and I was stoned out of my mind on marijuana and, as I usually do, I listened to what I’d recorded that day. Somehow I got it on backwards and I sat there, transfixed, with the earphones on, with a big hash joint. I ran in the next day and said, ‘I know what to do with it, I know - Listen to this!’ So I made them all play it backwards. The fade is me actually singing backwards with the gutars going backwards. [Singing backwards] Sharethsmnowthsmeaness [Laughter] That one was the gift of God, of Ja, actually, the god of marijuana, right? So Ja gave me that one.” Lennon’s version of events was backed up by George Harrison and studio engineer Geoff Emerick. Producer George Martin, meanwhile, recalled the discovery as being his. He said, “I was always playing around with tapes and I thought it might be fun to do something extra with John’s voice. So I lifted a bit of his main vocal off the four-track, put it onto another spool, turned it around and then slid it back and forth until it fitted. John was out at the time but when he came back he was amazed. Again, it was backwards forever after that.”  From: https://www.beatlesbible.com/songs/rain/