My thoughts on songs 31-40

"She Came In Through the Bathroom Window" is the next song on the list; this song is all Paul. Ironically, the first thing that stands out about this song is the background vocals; the "oohs" and the "ahs" carry the whole song. I’m assuming that George did all the great guitar fills, but I’m not quite sure about that. The drums are terrific, of course. One line that has always stood out is the line where Paul sings, “She could steal but she could not rob.” I’ve always tried to understand what this line really means. Another unique thing about this song is the hand claps, but they’re not really hand claps; they sound like shots in the second verse. That effect is something that I’ve not heard on any previous Beatles song. This is another one of those songs in the Abbey Road side 2 medley that is basically a half-finished song. If you look at my Beatles list, you’ll see that I put an asterisk (*) next to all the songs that are in the Abbey Road side 2 medley. In case you didn’t see the asterisk at the bottom of the list, what that means is that if I were to call this medley one song, it would have been my favorite Beatles song. One of the things that I dislike about Spotify is that when the Abbey Road medley comes on, they divide all the songs up instead of playing it as if it’s one song. There’s probably a setting for that that I can override, but I haven’t figured it out yet.  Oh yeah, one more thing, I was so happy when my college age daughter made this her ring on her phone!  She likes The Beatles!!!

This is another song by John that could very well be described as a solo effort because it's all John except for the flute. I’ve often heard people talk about this song as being influenced by Bob Dylan. I don’t get that. I really don’t hear anything in this song that reminds me of Bob Dylan; it’s a simple song that again uses a couple of John’s favorite chords, specifically G and B minor. His guitar sounds like a 12-string, which I’ve never heard before on a Beatles record. And by that, I mean an acoustic 12-string guitar; of course, George played a 12-string Rickenbacker all throughout A Hard Day’s Night. John’s vocal seems very sincere, and that’s one of the things I like about this song. To be honest, I’m not sure I love the flute in this song, but it is unique. One thing you’ll find out about Beatles songs is that they tried to bring something unique to every song they recorded, and certainly that’s the case here.

So, this is the first George song that appears on my list of favorite Beatles songs. There aren’t many people who would put this song before his other favorites, such as "Something" or "Here Comes the Sun." My take on this song is that it’s the first song that really doesn’t sound like a traditional Beatles song. The guitar sound that George gets is different than anything we’ve heard before, and of course, Paul plays a fuzz bass. That’s something that we’ve never heard before and will never hear again. One of my favorite lyrics appears in this song when George sings, “Although your mind’s opaque, try seeing more if just for your own sake.” In the past, George’s rhymes have been very plain and simple, but not on this song. The other lyric that stands out is, “The future still looks good, and you’ve got time to rectify all those things that you should.” These lyrics by George hint at a more complex songwriter than we first heard on his first song, "Don’t Bother Me." One of the other things that I really like about this song is Paul’s harmony on the chorus. It’s different because we hear Paul singing falsetto, but it’s not as if the notes are so high that he couldn't have done this in a regular voice; however, it works beautifully. Another thing unique about this song is that Paul and George both are playing essentially the same part. George plays the lead part, and Paul plays the exact same thing on the bass. So, as I started off by saying, not many people would put this as their favorite George Harrison song, but I do find his lyrics to be quite compelling, even more compelling than his later songs. This is one of those songs that rarely gets heard on the radio; in fact, probably the only place to ever play this song would be Sirius Beatles channel #18. The album Rubber Soul, on which this song appears, is one of my favorites; in fact, Rubber Soul (the US version in particular) is the most cohesive Beatles album out there. What makes the US version so much better than the UK version is the flow of the music. To this day, when I listen to "Think For Yourself," I can always hear the follow-up song coming into my head. In this case, the follow-up song was "The Word," so I can hear that piano opening riff coming right after the end of "Think For Yourself." That’s one of the things about vinyl records that was so enjoyable. Modern listening doesn’t allow us, or encourage us, to listen to the whole side of a record. Before the age of CDs, however, we would put a record on the turntable and listen to it one song after another, and so it got to the point where we knew what the next song was going to be. 

Here's another piano-heavy song off Rubber Soul. Not many people know it, but Paul took piano lessons during this period, and it shows. His playing on Rubber Soul is terrific. The thing that I love about this song is the background vocals. John and George harmonize perfectly on the "ooh, la, la's." But even more interesting is on the chorus when John adds, "No, I wouldn’t, no, I wouldn’t." It’s such a strange juxtaposition with Paul’s soothing voice, and then you hear John come in on the left channel. It took me a long time before I realized what John was saying. When I finally got ahold of the stereo version of Rubber Soul, I was able to hear the different background vocals at the end of this song. Paul chimes in with his falsetto voice, which cracks a few times, and that only surfaces when you hear the stereo version. There was a time when I first got ahold of the stereo version that all I listened to was the right or left channel. By the time I got the stereo version, I knew these songs so well that it was more interesting to listen to one side instead of both sides at the same time.

This song starts off heavy on the brass section, which was somewhat revolutionary for a pop song back in 1968. It’s one of John’s statement songs; he turns the phrase "all you need is love" into something that you now see in half the gift shops that you visit on vacation. Such a simple saying has become an accepted, important piece of the 1960s. The timing of this song is quite interesting because after each line in the verse, instead of staying in 4/4 time, it goes to ¾ time. John was known for doing stuff like that, and it came naturally to him. The recording that we listen to these days is actually the live version of the TV performance. I forget how many people watched this live TV performance by The Beatles, but something tells me it was close to a billion people. John handles his nerves by chewing gum, Paul looks relaxed, and incidentally, Paul sings a terrific background vocal along with George. During this live performance, George makes a mistake on the lead. I didn’t know this at the time, but he clearly misses the last two lines of his lead. Rather than dub a new track of a new lead, they decided to keep the lead just as it is. During the chorus, we hear saxophones, which we’ve never heard on Beatles albums prior to this. I characterized this song as a statement song because it’s a phrase that we hear repeated frequently, and it’s become part of the world’s culture. John’s other statement songs, in my opinion, are "Revolution," "Imagine," "The Ballad of John and Yoko," and I think that’s it. I get a kick out of Paul singing "She loves you yeah yeah yeah" as the song fades out. I remember reading about what a big production this was for George Martin at the time because he had to run cables from the large studio with the orchestra into his production booth. I went to a lecture by George Martin in New York City, and he talked about how nervous he was to pull off this song.

"Golden Slumbers" is another George Martin and Paul McCartney masterpiece. If you’re a Beatles fan, you know how much George Martin meant to their music; here, he does a terrific job with the arrangement. The strings sound phenomenal, and it’s somewhat intricate. The song starts off with a simple piano lick, Paul comes in, and you can tell that this song is leading someplace. It’s very apparent that Paul is starting to wrap up his Beatles career. Ringo’s drumming is spot on, but I wish the recording made the drums sound a little better. Paul shows us his gravelly voice when he sings, "Smiles await you when you rise." I’m not sure any of the other Beatles had anything to do with this song; it seems to be clearly just Paul and George Martin. Again, I’ll remind everybody that the Abbey Road medley is my favorite 10 plus minutes of Beatles music.  However, for this list, I've treated them as separate songs.

So, I’ve got two versions of "Revolution" in my top 40. This is the slow version, which starts out on acoustic guitar. This is the version where John’s voice sounds soothing. The very beginning of this sounds as if he’s crushing guitars; that’s what I always thought of when I heard the crushing of wood or paper or something—whatever it is, it’s very strange. I love the words of this song, and at the time, I remember thinking to myself that John wanted to make his words known to as many people as possible. So, what he did, instead of putting out a song to please everybody, he put out two versions of the same song: a slow version and a fast version. I love what George does with his guitar fills, predominantly on the right channel, but as we get near the end of the song, it’s on both channels. Only The Beatles could get away with singing background vocals like " shoopy Doo whop." I often wonder if they considered singing something else, but the "shoopy Doo whop" just sounds so natural. People who don’t know The Beatles probably frown and cringe over them singing the background vocals as they do, but as a Beatles fan, you love it. There’s an A note that drones throughout the song; it’s hard not to listen to it because it’s so predominant, first on the bass guitar and then on a horn—it even could be on a keyboard. John’s words flow so nicely on this song, and I consider it one of his better compositions.

Here’s another example of a George Martin and Paul McCartney masterpiece. Paul's lyrics tell a story of a girl running away from home. The song is all about the cello and the violins, but the part that I love the most is John acting and singing as if he’s giving the parents' reply, and his words are priceless. On the first chorus, he sings, "We gave her everything money could buy," and then he transitions that into singing "Bye bye" as he fades out. On the next chorus, he uses a different version of the word "bye"; he sings, "We struggled hard all our life to get by," and then transitions that to "Bye bye" as he fades out on that chorus. Then, on the final chorus, he says, "Fun is the one thing that money can’t buy," and then transitions that into "Bye bye." It’s so perfect. I actually didn’t know what Paul was talking about when he said, "She met a man in the motor trade." In my mind, I always thought she was having an abortion, but that doesn’t make any sense to me because isn’t "motor trade" just a guy who works on cars? Anyway, I don’t know what that line means; it’s probably an English idiom that I just don’t understand. Regardless, George Martin does a terrific job on the strings, and Paul and John work perfectly together to put this song together.

 This is The Beatles' first number one song, and this song has everything. Listen to Ringo’s terrific drumming. His timing is tremendous, and he comes up with really unique fills. As the story goes, John’s first version of this song was slow; he sang it as if it was a Roy Orbison ballad. But then George Martin said no, it’s gotta be a little bit faster. As I read about this, I was amazed to hear that the boys went home and reworked the song overnight into the version that we now hear. It’s got everything, as I said: a catchy verse, a catchy chorus, and a harmonica, which John really didn’t like to play as they got later in their career. We hear John playing harmonica on their first album, but then we don’t hear it surface again until we get to the song later in the decade on the Yellow Submarine album called "All Together Now." We also hear a vocal mistake during this song, and they even left it in during the remaster. It comes around a minute thirty, and Paul starts to sing, "I know you never even try," while John starts to sing, "Why do you never," and then he gets in sync with Paul and sings the same thing. The next line starts off with John laughing, and it’s such an infectious little chuckle that a Beatles fan really appreciates. So, as I started off by saying, this song was their first number one song in the UK; it didn’t become a number one song in the United States until after "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "She Loves You." They end the song singing a 6th note of the chord, just like they do on "She Loves You," and as corny as it sounds, it works perfectly. I love this song. 

Paul wrote so many great songs on the piano, and this is an example. It starts off very simply with his piano, a flute, and his voice. We now know that this song is about the Maharishi and their visit to India in 1968. At the time, I didn’t know it was about the Maharishi, and I don’t think other people did either. It’s a very cutting song. The lyric that stands out is when Paul sings, "Nobody hears him or the sound he appears to make." It sounds like it could have been a John addition. At a minute twenty-five, we get a break, and the song opens up, and it actually has a driving beat with what is probably a tuba. I wonder if Paul knew at the time how cutting this song was, and I wonder if the Maharishi knew it was about him. Near the end of the song, Paul sums up the lyrics with the simple line, "They don’t like him." There are some weird sound effects in this song near the end, as we hear a hush of maybe horses going from the right channel to the left channel—anyway, it’s really weird, but it’s a good sound. When I saw Paul McCartney perform this song in Philadelphia, I was actually right in the pit, standing right in front of him, and he did this song on a small upright piano. During the part where he sings "round and round," the piano and Paul were up in the air and starting to spin in a circle. It seemed so precarious, but that’s the closest I’ve ever been to Paul; I was probably 20 feet away from him. Paul wrote so many good songs on the piano that I started to think that his best songs were on piano, but then I started to think of all of the great songs that he’s done on acoustic guitar as well, such as "Blackbird" and "I’ve Just Seen a Face." Anyway, I think this is one of Paul’s top 20 songs that he’s ever written.