I was just listening to this song (it’s on my playlist right now) and I was struck by how unusual it is. Even on the White Album, it is TOTALLY uncharacteristic of the Beatles. It doesn’t fit with them stylistically. It doesn’t fit into anything stylistically - what style of music is that song supposed to be? That synthesized horn line and the hard-driving drumbeat, plus the very unusual chord changes, really get to me. It seems really ahead of its time, sort of reminding me of some modern indie rock.
I am a lifelong Beatles fan and have little opinions like this on so many of their songs, so this post will seem trifling to non-fans. However those who are fans as I am will know what I mean about Savoy Truffle.
It was an example of the light shining out from under George Harrison’s basket. He spent so long in the shadows, that they weren’t interested in doing his songs. So naturally, he started to accumulate a backlog of worthy entries. George had this thing about using chords and structures that everybody else didn’t, to make his songs stand out. And hey, it worked!
Incidentally, that strange sounding horn part is not synthesized. It’s a real saxophone section–four tenors and two baritones–which George had the engineer on the session run through an overloaded amp so it would distort. At the playback, George formally apologized to the musicians “for what I’ve done to your beautiful sound…but it’s the way I want it.”
I think I remember reading somewhere the song was inspired by dental work being faced by Eric Clapton. No cite - sorry…maybe it was in “I Me Mine” - Harrison’s autobiography.
In Revolution in the Head (an excellent song-by-song analysis of the Beatles’ music), Ian McDonald doesn’t have many nice things to say about this song, calling it “pointless” and saying that the sax section struggles to make the “mordant” E minor sequence sound nice. He makes no mention of any styllistic differences between this and other Beatles songs.
Here are the lyrics. They basically list the contents of the “Good News” candy assortment and their effect on Clapton’s teeth. The “we all know ob-la-di ob-la-da” line may be a veiled barb at McCartney but I’m not sure what it’s meant to mean.
I love this song. It rocks. I love the juxtaposition of the menacing, ferocious music with the lyrics about, of all things, sweets (and resulting tooth decay).