As mentioned, this one has a sort of inverted canonicity, being a recompiled album as per Capitol’s habit for US first release, but then ascended into official worldwide standing for the later rereleases and remasters. That retcon does have the advantage for our purposes of putting a number of works from both pre- and post-Pepper periods into one place, rather than bumping a bunch of them all the way to Past Masters.
Reminds me: In the Cirque du Soleil “Love” soundtrack album, the Strawberry Fields track is presented as a verse by verse “assembly” progression, from John solo to final version.
ETA: And a lot of us at any given time could, and in some cases still would, swear on a stack of Bibles that we clearly and distinctly heard [insert whatever applies here] in one of these records, only to then have multitudes tell us that it is not so. Part of the experience, I suppose.
Good point. This reinforces my hazy notion that Lennon, years after the fact, might have mentioned that the alternate words occurred to him…so, if this is true, it’s likely that they occurred to him years later, too, perhaps the very day he mentioned this, while living in New York in the 1970s.
Basically, an older Lennon making a nasty little joke by parodying a moment from his younger self’s creative output.
(Thanks and a tip o’the hat to BiffyTheElephantShrew for the album cover link)
Eric Idle’s (or Neil Innes?) new lyrics were hilarious.
*“I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together”
*became “I know you know what you know but you should know by now that you’re not me”
not to mention “goo-goo-ga-joob” becoming “Do a poo-poo”
Thinking about it a bit more, George probably holds the Beatle record for this. By my count, the intro to “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” repeats this same note 33 times in a row. It somehow seems more noticeably weird in “Strawberry Fields” though.
True…but I think the other examples (John’s and Paul’s) were about *sung *melodies. If we get into riffs, instrumental bits, and the like, things will get complicated.
Your example is a good one…but note that it’s en example of one instrument (in this case, the piano) playing the same note repeatedly, while the other instruments do a descending chromatic pattern (resembling the Spanish-tinged chord pattern in Led Zeppelin’s “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You.”) This is a pretty standard device – think of the guitar riff in “Michelle,” where the “odd” beats contain the descending tones while the “even” beats repeat the pedal point (I think that’s the technical term).
Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane were recorded with the Sgt. Peppers material but were left off because they wanted to release them as singles before Sgt. Peppers.
That’s the usual story, but a look at the recording chronology as detailed by Lewisohn suggests the Beatles didn’t really begin Sgt Pepper in earnest until after “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane” had already been recorded and earmarked for a single.
After completing Revolver in June 1966, the Beatles took a five-month break from the studio. They don’t seem to have spent much of the time writing new material: upon returning to the studio in late November, they spent a month working on just two songs*: “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “When I’m 64,” the latter being a reworking of a song Paul had written years earlier. Once these were finished, at the end of December, Paul brought in “Penny Lane,” which they worked on for the next three weeks. It was evidently decided before the track was even finished that this would be one side of the new single, as a mix was prepared to ship to Capitol in the USA the same day the final overdubs were recorded.
With “Penny Lane” in the can, the Beatles spent two days on the basic tracks for “A Day in the Life,” but recorded nothing else in the last half of January. All of the remaining Pepper songs (plus “Only a Northern Song”) were recorded in the two-month period from February 1 to April 1, 1967, with some overdubbing and mixing continuing over the following three weeks. So even though the Beatles were technically working on Pepper material as far back as November 1966, Pepper as an album project didn’t really exist until February 1967.
*Not counting the 1966 Christmas record, which was thrown together in a day during this period, or the improvised freak-out “Carnival of Light,” which was likewise tossed off in a single session.
And there are several different ways to read it, which is so cool. (I’ve always interpreted it as “err, yes,” not “a yes,” but that only adds another layer.) There’s “I think I know,” meaning he thinks he knows. There’s “I think- I know,” where he starts by saying he thinks and then decides he wants to be more definitive. It’s brilliant writing that crams a lot of thinking and indecision into just a few words.
As noted, these lines have long been debated, and I don’t know that John himself ever settled exactly what he sang here.
I find the above to be quite awkward. The interpretation that makes the most sense to me is:
“I think, er no, I mean, er yes, but it’s all wrong”
This seems most consistent with John’s muddled state at the time, and dovetails nicely with “That is, I think I disagree.” He’s quite uncertain throughout this passage, and is stuttering his way through it.
I hadn’t intended to comment on this “album,” because in fact it’s really an EP of purpose-recorded songs (some of which I find rather weak) with a bunch of singles tacked on.
I only rate the title track and “Fool on the Hill” from side one. “Flying” is pleasant but a throwaway, and I’ve never thought much of “Blue Jay Way” or “Your Mother Should Know.” I have a certain respect for “I Am the Walrus,” but don’t think as highly of it as many.
I find “Hello Goodbye” to be among the most annoying songs in the entire Beatles canon. OK, Paul, we get that you’ve mastered the C major scale already! On the other hand…“Strawberry Fields Forever” may be the most amazing achievement in the history of rock. I don’t know that I can too coherently say why I feel that way, other than how utterly different it was from anything that came before, and that it takes me to an amazing place every time I hear it.
That moment in February 1967 when I first heard it on the radio (late at night on a distant AM station) was life-changing for me — and that’s no exaggeration. When it came back from the false ending with those completely unprecedented backwards mellotron bits and the stinging guitar, it’s as if I knew at the moment the world had shifted on its axis, and things would never be quite the same.
This leaves “Penny Lane,” a wonderful if slightly more conventional achievement, “Baby You’re a Rich Man,” which I quite like, and “All You Need Is Love,” which is well-intentioned but in reality a rather ordinary song tarted up with psychedelic trappings at the end.
It’s no wonder The Beatles went back to basics on their next single and album, as I think they knew they’d already stepped over the line from magically creative to throwing anything up against the wall.
Understood. So, maybe half of the White Album is “back to basics,” while the next album they recorded, Let it Be, is almost 100% “back to basics” (ignoring the Spector overlays). Interesting that for their final project, “Abbey Road,” they shifted back a bit. Not as “back to basics” as Let It Be, but more than the 1967 albums. On average, maybe about the same as the a White Album? No, I’d say the White Album feels more raw, and Abbey Road a bit more fussily produced. A step closer to 1967 than the White Album, in other words. I guess they got most of their “back to basics” jones out when making “Let It Be” (called “Get Back” at the time). Interesting they decided not to release it (yet). Seems they enjoyed PLAYING “raw stuff,” but assumed the record-buying public would prefer not to hear it – that their audience expected something more slickly produced. Maybe?
I think it’s simpler than that. The stuff from the Get Back sessions just wasn’t very good, and the making of the album (the rooftop session excepted) was overall an unpleasant experience. I think The Beatles knew that their work on these sessions was substandard, and all just walked away from it and wanted nothing to do with it.
Spector was called in to “rescue” the sessions a year after the fact, and though McCartney was steamed at what he did, at the time the others pronounced themselves satisfied with his work (though I think they may have changed that view over time).
George Martin was asked to produce Abbey Road, and he agreed upon the condition that it would be “like the old days” where he would have a significant voice in things — a voice that had been somewhat diminished on the White Album sessions (it’s safe to say he would have preferred a single album, for example).
I think the point I was making earlier was that there was a conscious stepping back from the precipice that the psychedelic aspects of “Blue Jay Way” and (the endings of) “I Am the Walrus” and “All You Need Is Love” represented — which seem pretty arbitrary in retrospect.
Despite its production sheen, Abbey Road does contain identifiable songs with structures and a minimum of dissonant or non-musical flourishes. I think The Beatles realized, and indeed had on most of The White Album too, that this is where their strengths lay.
