As long as one of them aren’t Mr Moonlight.
Haven’t a clue …
Oh, right, that whole Valley Girl thing s/he’s has going on.
[Really, that’s kind of line isn’t craft, it’s art. You just can’t work at it.]
Definitely not - I don’t even think I prefer “Mr. Moonlight” to “Don’t Pass Me By”.
I swear I need to start taking Aricept. Thank you.
(and now I realize I have it VHS, not DVD…crap).
Hugely underrated song. I mean, I can see why people hate it, but still: that opening vocal blast is one of the finest things John Lennon ever did. And the organ solo…come on, that’s hilarious! How can you not just fall about with laughter when that ridiculous thing comes chiming in?
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Not just that, but IIRC, he was a big influence on Chick. Without Todd, Chick tracts wouldn’t be half as much fun to collect. With the combined influence of Todd’s conspiracy theory jones and Alberto Rivera’s anti-Catholic bent, Chick tracts went from traditional fire and brimstone Baptist proselytizing to sheer hilarious madness presented with an absolutely straight face. Love 'em.
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Aw, come on, you know you really love “Mr. Moonlight”! Admit it! After all, who can forget the wonderful performance from the TV series?
The Beatles meet Professor Ludwig Von Brilliant who is on a mission to view an eclipse
No, he actually wrote the verse “in a dream” and shopped it around to his friends for many weeks, thinking he must have unconsciously plagiarized it. Once he realized he hadn’t, he still had to come up with the bridge (“Why she had to go, I don’t know/She wouldn’t say”) and then the lyric, which took a long time. There’s no record of the Beatles spending any significant time in the studio trying to block out an arrangement for “Yesterday,” and only two takes of it were ever recorded (the second was the released one). They spent more time perfecting “Hold Me Tight” than “Yesterday.”
You have it backwards: John’s melodies are horizontal (proceeding more or less in a straight line across the staff) while Paul’s are vertical (encompassing a wider range of notes).
Revolution in the Head is a great book, but MacDonald didn’t do any original research for it, and a lot of his conclusions are speculative. Mark Lewisohn’s The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions is an essential resource. McCartney also talks a lot about the songs he wrote for the Beatles, including “Yesterday,” in his authorized biography Many Years From Now. I also thought Bob Spitz’s book was pretty good.
I have held off commenting in this thread, simply because the friend described in the OP was a fool. But as the thread has evolved, the topics are more interesting.** Just a note to say that **Nonsuch ** speaks truth - and I would give the ** Spitz book a much higher rating - I really enjoyed it and the story of the writing of Yesterday is nicely played out…
You Like Me Too Much is memorable. A pleasant and nicely flowing song that could easily be mistaken for a Lennon-McCartney creation. It has unmistakable early Beatles sound and feel. It shows promise for George as a songwriter, which did happen.
It’s an interesting song in that George Martin and Paul McCartney accompany on piano – playing separate ends of the same Steinway grand. John Lennon adds electric piano.
It’s before Rubber Soul, being released first in the UK on Help! and in the US on Beatles VI.
It sometimes reminds me of Paul’s later We Can Work It Out because of its pleasantly-flowing, even-tempered, advice-giving nature. I like the way its bridges merge into and out of the verses so fluidly. It’s well crafted, inventive, and never monotonous.
Really? I’m sure you’re correct. It’s weird how one remembers things, no? I consider John to be more vertical (probably because of his lyrics–they seem to have more depth, leading me to think up and down) and Paul to be just out for a good song (no angst inspired type stuff) aka horizontal (whatever meets the rhyme scheme etc and he’s got more varied of a sound, so I tend to think broad ranging aka horizontal).
Musically, I know from nothing. One thing about McDonad’s book is that he goes into music theory, which I know nothing about–I can kind of see what he’s saying, but I really have no idea re harmonics and major/minor etc. So, no doubt, John is more horizontal and Paul more vertical. I’ll try to remember it.
And here we end this lesson on how eleanorigby’s mind works (or doesn’t).
Anyhoo, the Beatles are a really good band and they wrote their own stuff. Anyone want to talk about the Monkees? 
The US and UK *Rubber Soul’*s differed. There were two George Harrison songs on the UK version, If I Needed Someone, and Think For Yourself. Only Think For Yourself was on the US. Being from USA, I guess you mean Think For Yourself was the first memorable Harrison song. Except to note that I also favor You Like Me Too Much, I agree it was around this general time George started coming out with notable songs.
Nah, I was referring to the UK version - I think “If I Needed Someone” is a good song, but could take or leave “Think For Yourself” (Never a fan of “You Like Me Too Much”, either, though I don’t think it’s terrible).
Agreed, If I Needed Someone is the best of the three.
I love If I Needed Someone. It fits in very well with Rubber Soul, too because a lot of songs from that and Revolver have that kind of melodic melancholy.
Think of a John song like “Help.” In the line “When I was younger, so much younger than today,” every syllable except the last one is sung on the same note. If you looked at it on a piece of sheet music, it would be a row of dots in a straight (horizontal) line.
Now think of a Paul song like “Got to Get You Into My Life.” The line “I was alone, I took a ride/I didn’t know what I would find there” has a much wider range of notes, so it appears “vertical,” with notes ranging from the top to the bottom of the staff.
Thus ends my knowledge of musical theory. And for the record, I agree that George’s truly memorable songwriting didn’t begin until Rubber Soul.
Unfortunately, you can also point to Paperback Writer, by Paul - which has a very similar mostly one-note pattern (“Dear Sir or Madam, would you read my book - it took me years to write - would you take a look”). Or John’s In My Life or I’m a Loser, which are more dynamic.
I agree with the characterization of John as Horizontal and Paul as Vertical, but come at it differently:
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John was more concerned with how the single-line, primary melody played out across the supporting chords. His focus was on the story of the lyrics cutting through the music.
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Paul was more concerned with the harmonic variation - using more complex chordal structures and layers throughout a song. Yesterday is really an ingenious chord progression that is, for want of a better term, mathematically elegant and simple while also not a simple 3-chord structure. And the use of the string quartet for the arrangement highlights the deeper harmonic structures in the song. So if you took a cross-section of one of Paul’s songs at any one moment, that vertical slice would show more complexity. Paul wanted the lyrics / melody to be in service to the overall sound of the song…
Does that work?
My favorite example of Paul doing the Johnny One-Note thing is “Silly Love Songs.” The melody begins with one pitch repeated 13 times in a row.
In both cases - Paperback and Silly Love Songs - Paul gives the truly lead role to the bass. Think about how prominent the bass is in Paperback, and how the bass has the dynamic line that your ear locks onto in Silly Love Songs.
His innovation on bass is huge - one of the top few in terms of influence…
WordMan–that is how McDonald refers to horizontal and vertical. When you start dragging harmonics into it, I am lost. I don’t know from Major D7 or whatever (heck, I could never understand why F major wasn’t the same as G minor --I may have that backwards–but none of my music teachers–the ones in music class in school–explained that type of stuff). I never studied an instrument-piano- past about 3 months. Am trying to learn how to play the acoustic guitar but I completely suck at even getting my fingers to “go” in the right positions…
I know that John was interested in doing a song on just one note (I believe it was middle C)–“Tomorrow Never Knows”. I’m sure there are exceptions to the horiz/vert rule for both of them.
Nonsuch–I got that the first time (the one note essentially sustained across being “horizontal”); I thought I was agreeing with you, but probably wasn’t clear.