The Beatles Lyrics Read online

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  When, in a generation or so, a radioactive cigar-smoking child, picnicking on Saturn, asks you what the Beatles affair was all about–‘Did you actually know them?’–don’t try to explain all about the long hair and screams. Just play the child a few tracks from this album and he’ll probably understand what it is all about. The kids of AD 2000 will draw from the music much the same sense of well being and warmth as we do today. For the magic of the Beatles, is I suspect, timeless and ageless. It has broken all frontiers and barriers. It has cut through differences of race, age and class. It is adored by the world.

  Derek Taylor, sleeve notes for the Beatles For Sale album, 1964

  INTRODUCTION

  The Beatles, so young, so keen, in their suite at the George V Hotel in Paris in late January/early February 1964. While there, they heard the news that ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ had got to number 1 in the USA. It was also in the suite that Paul created ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’. Left to right: Ringo, John, Paul, George. (Photograph@Harry Benson 1964)

  One of the strange things about the Beatles phenomenon is that the further we get from them, the bigger they become. Their influence and our interest in them seems to grow all the time. When their old stuff is repackaged it often becomes even more successful than it was when first released. The scruffiest scrap of paper signed by them is worth a small fortune. All round the world there are universities studying their oeuvre–something I would have dismissed as ridiculous, back in the sixties.

  Apple, the Beatles organization formed in 1968, never employed more than fifty people during its early years. I reckon that across the world today there are at least five thousand people making their living out of the Beatles: writers, researchers, dealers, academics, conference organizers, tourism and museum people, souvenir manufacturers, plus members of the several hundred or so tribute bands who dress up as Beatles and play their music all around the world, all year round. It is the music that turns them on–though it is of course excellent fun to go and worship at the tourist sites, attend a Beatles fair and buy rubbishy souvenir tat or have your photie taken on the crossing at Abbey Road.

  If it is the music that matters, where did it all come from? How did they create their songs when they had no musical training and could not read or write music? What were their influences and inspirations? Even more mysterious, having got started, how come they suddenly metamorphosed, discarding childish, hackneyed, borrowed forms to blossom into the most admired, most studied, most gifted songwriters of our age–or perhaps of any age? All artists develop, but in the case of the Beatles the transformation was dramatic. Who would have thought that the minds responsible for ‘Love Me Do’ and ‘Please Please Me’ would go on to produce ‘Eleanor Rigby’ and ‘Across The Universe’?

  Their music–the notes and chords, tunes and rhythms–has been well studied, well analysed, well applauded, almost from the moment they received any national attention. Exceedingly clever musicologists have taken apart the quavers and crotchets, dissected the harmonies, revealed the musical tricks and instruments used, numbered and marked all parts of the musical body. We now know exactly which notes were being played and by whom and for how long in that crashing, earth-shaking crescendo at the end of ‘A Day In The Life’. But what of the words?

  The lyrics have, in comparison, been neglected. (Do note, by the way, it is the lyrics that mainly concern us here, not the melodies.) Can lyrics be pinned down and pulled apart? And even if they can, will it make them any better, any more interesting? Should we presume to analyse when most artists admit they themselves don’t always know where those words came from; or should we hold back, just let them be? After all, these are only pop lyrics not Shakespearean sonnets, so why do we need explanations or primers?

  Because the creative process is always fascinating. Explanations are not necessary to our enjoyment of the piece, but information that helps to illuminate the process only adds to that enjoyment. So I decided to examine the original versions of their songs, discover how and when those words were first written down, how lines were changed or discarded along the way to the recording studio.

  This was to become my self-imposed, self-created mission: to track down as many of the original manuscripts of the Beatles’ songs as possible. To look at their lyrics, both in first drafts and finished versions, and try to explain the meaning, the references, the names and places, phrases and expressions. To unveil them, as much as I could.

  Can their lyrics be described as poetry? In one sense, no. They are part of songs–an art form where words and music fuse together and are complimentary. The lyrics were not intended to be considered as separate entities, so it is perhaps unfair to judge them on their own.

  Unlike some songwriters, the Beatles never began a song with a complete set of verses, all written down. Mostly, they started out with scraps of words or phrases, or only the title. This was John’s normal practice. In Paul’s case, whole tunes did sometimes come to him, but the words came later.

  Words mattered to both of them, though not so much in their early years and in their early songs, when they were following the formula of the time. It was the tune that mattered most. You don’t dance to words. The hook, the arresting phrase, was often enough. John was writing real poetry from an early age, in his own fashion, but these were inscribed on different pages, a different part of his brain; he never thought he could get away with writing what he really wanted to in something aimed at the mass market–or the meat market, as he often described it.

  But John and Paul did have a literary bent, read widely, appreciated good writing and knew exactly what they didn’t like. They also, along with George, passed the eleven-plus exam and went to very good grammar schools and had a grounding in Eng literature, even if at the time they rubbished a lot of it, and the teachers.

  The other day, in a moment of boredom, I studied the faces on the famous Sgt. Pepper cover–all people they admired or had been influenced by–and was surprised to find there were nine writers: Lewis Carroll, Edgar Allan Poe, Dylan Thomas, Aldous Huxley, Terry Southern, William Burroughs, H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Stephen Crane. The musical total came to only three: Bob Dylan, Stockhausen and Bobby Breen, a Canadian singer, born 1927, whom I must admit I had never heard of.

  When John was gowing up, and was asked what he would like to do if he ever properly grew up, he would often answer: journalist. This was not the truth. He really wanted to be a poet, but thought it would sound unreal and pretentious to say so. In a 1975 interview with Rolling Stone magazine, asked what he thought he’d be doing in his sixties, John pictured himself writing children’s books. He wanted to write the sort of books that had given him such pleasure and inspiration as a boy–The Wind in the Willows, Alice in Wonderland, Treasure Island.

  The fact that someone has literary interests does not mean they have literary talent. I personally think John and Paul did. And it was the main reason I wanted to meet them and why in 1966 I first went to interview Paul. ‘Eleanor Rigby’ had just been released and I was amazed not just by the tune but by the words. In The Sunday Times, I described the lyrics as the best of any contemporary pop song. As if I was qualified to pronounce on anything to do w
ith English Lit.

  I still can’t claim qualifications to examine literary text, no more than I have the knowledge and expertise to examine the music–though I can read music, having gone to violin lessons for five years as a child, which is five years longer than John or Paul ever managed. But I felt and still feel sufficiently emboldened to write about what I personally like and think about their songs, what I enjoy. This is partly because I am of their generation and background, growing up in the same sort of houses, attending the same sort of Northern grammar school, and also being around them for a short spell (as their biographer 1966–68). I therefore like to think–though it may possibly be my own fantasy–that I have some idea about what might have been in their minds, where the words might have come from.

  The danger in writing about their songs, be it the words or the music, is to over-analyse and over-intellectualize. I find so many of the Beatles musicology books unreadable–not just because of the jargon, but because they are writing for specialists, often to impress and score points. The same has happened, to a much lesser extent, with the words. And it’s been mainly the more fanatical fans who have got carried away, finding hidden meanings and messages, drug references where none was intended. Quite often, as they progressed, John did throw in meaningless phrases, just to baffle and confuse listeners, and to amuse himself.

  One of the attractions of popular music is that you don’t really have to know or understand or even like the words. They insinuate themselves into your skull and never leave. I remember as a child learning the words of a really rubbish wartime song called ‘Mairzy Doats’–just as John and Paul did, for I recall discussing it with them. It was only years later I discovered the words were ‘mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy’. All nonsense, but no more so than many nursery rhymes that we all have lodged in our heads.

  John thought most analysis of music was pretty much nonsense. In his letters, he rarely wrote about his music-making. There were no descriptions of the agonies of composition, the struggles he was going through to create–which is a common preoccupation in the correspondence of poets and the more literary of novelists. Only after the event did he occasionally give clues as to how and when a song got written, and even then only if asked.

  No one really, truly knows where words come from. ‘Songs are like rabbits: they like to come out of their holes when you’re not looking,’ according to Canadian singer-songwriter Neil Young. T.S. Eliot said that the words in a poem were there to ‘divert’ the mind. This is even more the case with lyrics, which often get chosen for their sound, to fit the musical mood, rather than to convey precise meanings, which tends to make analysing them rather a challenge.

  However, this has not put off the academics. One of the earliest and most comprehensive studies of Beatles lyrics was published by Colin Campbell and Allan Murphy: Things We Said Today: The Complete Lyrics and a Concordance to the Beatles’ Songs 1962–1970. Campbell, later to become Professor of Sociology at York University, was teaching at a university in Vancouver at the time. They transcribed all the lyrics on to a computer–which in the seventies must have been a massive task in itself, as computers were about the size of Wembley Stadium–and then analysed them. The results allowed them to reveal to the world the most frequently mentioned colour in the Beatles’ lyrics: blue, with 35 mentions, followed by yellow, 32. This does not take into account the fact that half of the ‘blues’ refer to the mood rather than the colour, and most of the yellows feature in a single song. As with all statistics, the answers often lead to further questions.

  Campbell and Murphy’s book did, however, feature an excellent introduction in which they traced the development of the lyrics, highlighted the use of homophones (such as, should it be ‘I say high, you say low’ or ‘I say “Hi”, you say “ ’Lo” ’?) Listening to the songs, it’s hard to know which meaning they intend–and in many cases it might not occur to the listener that there could be an alternative meaning–but I am sure the Beatles did it consciously, loving double meanings.

  The academic musicologists, almost from the beginning, were so intent on comparing Beatles tunes with Schubert and Schuman that they gave little thought to the words and whether they might be up there with any of our great poets. Campbell and Murphy in their study started by making a case for Robert Burns as a rough literary equivalent–a songwriter with a lyrical gift, who wrote love ballads, often in the vernacular. They then went on to declare that the most fitting comparison would be Wordsworth–which I think is pushing it, as the traditions of his times were so different.

  It’s true that Wordsworth wrote about his own life in The Prelude, and as a Romantic he advocated letting Nature be our teacher–just as Lennon, particularly in his later songs, asked us to look around and let Love be our teacher; it’s also true that Wordsworth came up with some fairly banal lines, such as his description of a pond: ‘I measured it from side to side/’tis three feet long and two foot wide.’ While working on a Wordsworth biography I raised this with the Dove Cottage experts; their response was defensive, asserting that since Wordsworth was a genius all his compositions, even that one, must be subjected to serious study and consideration and not mocked.

  I suppose the same defence can be used when studying the Beatles’ lyrics. The lyrics of ‘Love Me Do’ might seem banal, but should not be dismissed. It is part of their oeuvre–and more importantly, it was how they began.

  But of course we must avoid too much analysing. It will only annoy John, sitting up there.

  ‘Listen, writing about music is like talking about fucking,’ as he told Playboy magazine in 1980. ‘Who wants to talk about it?’

  The reasons why a book using the original manuscripts of their lyrics has not appeared before is primarily because of the dreaded laws of copyright. When I edited The John Lennon Letters it was relatively simple: all I had to secure was the permission and agreement of Yoko Ono, owner of the Lennon copyright, which she gladly gave. Then find the letters.

  When I first embarked on this project, I thought the copyright of any original manuscripts must still belong to Paul McCartney and the Lennon estate, and some to the Harrison estate. I contacted Paul and Yoko and each seemed interested in the project, and appeared willing to help.

  Then, after legal soundings, and a lot of casting about, I was informed by Sony/ATV that the publishing copyright of almost every Beatles’ song is owned by them and it covers all versions of their songs, even ones they do not know exist.

  Before mechanical recording of songs came in, a music publisher was someone who physically published the music and words of a song in the form of sheet music. That’s how people in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries would learn the latest songs, playing them on an instrument or singing them. From around 1900 onwards, the publisher–who of course was spending money and taking all the risks–owned the copyright and took 50 per cent of all proceeds. When gramophone records came in, the system continued and until 1952 it was sales of sheet music which determined the UK’s weekly hit parade. After that, the sales and influence of sheet music declined, but the power of the music publisher remained.

  The Beatles’ music publisher from almost the beginning of their career was Dick James, under the banner of Northern Songs. He owned 50 per cent, the traditional split, while the other half was divided between John and Paul and Brian Epstein, their manager, with minor shares belonging to George Harrison and Ringo Starr.

  In 1969, Dick James sold his share to Lew Grade of ATV–and the Beatles were persuaded to do the same. At the time, they were paying income tax at around 90 per cent in the pound and this was a way of making a quick tax-free gain.

  In 1985, the rights came up for sale again. Paul and Yoko had not been on the best of terms, but they were interested and tried to get the price down. While they hesitated, in stepped Michael Jackson–and bought the lot for a reported sum of £24 million. In 2005, Jackson had money problems and did a deal with Sony, receiving around £60 million for
half the ownership. Since his death, Sony/ATV has been controlling all the rights.

  Throughout this period, ever since Northern Songs sold out, every time Paul has performed ‘Yesterday’ in public he has been required to pay a copyright fee–even though he is singing his own song, one he composed. Though as a performer, like all performers, he still gets a performance fee, administered by the Performing Rights Society.

  The next major hurdle was locating the manuscripts. I happen to have acquired nine of them, back in the sixties, which is how my interest in them first began. While I was in the studio at Abbey Road, late at night, there would often be scraps of paper lying around. Many of these were just left at the end of the night for the cleaners to burn. Now and again, if I had been following a particular song from the beginning and knew I was going to write about it in the book, I would ask if I could have them. And they would say yes, of course, otherwise they will only be binned.

  The Beatles, at that stage, had no interest in where they had come from or what they had done so far, only in the next thing. They were very young, still in their mid-twenties, an age when you rarely think of keeping stuff. Anyway, the point of being in the recording studio was to record; once the new song was captured on tape, why keep the scribbled words? It was just scrap paper to them.

  Whenever I visited their homes, I would ask if they had lyrics of any earlier songs that I wanted to write about, and they would rummage around and give me the odd scrap. All of these I kept, long after the book was published, just as I kept the memorabilia and ephemera–from football programmes to guide books of the forts on Hadrian’s Wall–picked up while doing my other forty or so non-fiction books. None of the latter has turned out to be at all valuable. But the Beatles memorabilia? Towards the end of 1981, I woke up one day to discover that Sotheby’s had had their first auction of Beatles bits–and that my nine lyrics were worth more than my house.