Left of the Dial

Harry Potter: The Real Inspiration

I know, I know, I know. A lot of people think J.K. Rowling...appropriated Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea, or Diana Wynne Jones' Charmed Life or several other candidates.

But I think we all know where she really found her original inspiration.

The very spit and image. 

[HT: the wondrous BeatlePhotoBlog]

Bye bye

I remember laughing quietly with Top Management as we realized the two of us just been watching this little baby, less than a week old, sleep. Just...sleep. For fifteen minutes we'd just been sitting there on the couch, leaning forward, watching her sleep. And we laughed at ourselves...and then went right back to simply watching her simply sleep. 

And now, to quote the bard, it's all this. 

 

Radio Silence

Things have been a bit quiet here on Left of the Dial. One reason is because I've been blogging over at a new blog, Reason to Believe, with old friend and regular Left o' the Dialian DT. The new blog is pretty much entirely devoted to music, at least for now, so I might post less music-related stuff here. Then again, maybe not, since that would just leave funny or sweet family stories and, honestly, we simply don't have much such material these days. 

Hm. Probably time to throw them all into Thunderdome and see what happens. Bet there'd be some funny and sweet stories then. 

Words of Love

So the ten year old says to me the other day, “Dad, will you teach me about music?”

This isn’t quite up there with a few other questions I’ve been asked in my life: “Would you like to write Batman?” "Want to go watch Bruce rehearse for Letterman?" “Honey, the kids are asleep: wanna join me in the shower?” But, man, it wasn’t far off.

“What do you mean?” I ask, having learned by now that when dealing with the better gender, clarity is oh so vital. “Do you mean, like, teaching you what a sonata is, or a blues, or do you mean more like about Bach and Beethoven and the Beatles and R.E.M. and stuff?”

She thinks for a moment, then smiles. “Yes,” she says.

Kids. 

So the next day we’re driving in the car and I’ve got Buddy Holly in the CD player. So I start to tell her about Buddy, his importance, his impact, some of his most famousest songs and so on.

“Words of Love” comes on.

She listens for a minute, then says, “you know, this sounds a lot like “Do You Want to Know a Secret?”

We’re off to a good start. 

 

Better Than the Beatles

If not bigger. 

Greatest Beatles Covers

Left o’ the Dialian DT axed (in part):

have their been any truly GREAT Beatles covers?

Great question and, wow, there really are a dearth of great—or even good—Beatles covers, aren’t there? I wonder if that’s less because the material is difficult than because most artists shy away from it, either out of reverence or fear. I mean, it is a little bit like trying to recreate the Sistine Chapel: maybe you could do a credible job, but it’s unlikely (to put it mildly) that you’ll actually improve upon it.

So I like Paul Westerberg’s “Nowhere Man” a lot, but it’s not like it’s going to come close to replacing the original in my heart—and I say that as a stone Replacements fanatic.

I was serious when I said that U2’s “Helter Skelter” is nearly great, but the way Bono butchers the lyric is either inexcusable if accidental or positively hideous in its narcissism if intentional. Which is a shame.

If Sonic Youth had ever followed through on their threat to record all of The White Album, THAT would have been a thing of at least sporadic majesty, I’m quite sure. Alas, they didn’t. They did cover “Within You Without You,” which is nice...but...I mean...you know. Don’t make me say it.

And speaking of, George Harrison toured Japan in the early 90s with Eric Clapton and his band: does their version of “If I Needed Someone” count? ‘cuz it was pretty great, especially Clapton’s guitar work.

Oh, and of course, Prince and Sir Paul and Tom Petty and the rest covering "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" was genius entirely on the basis of The Purple One’s inhumanly incendiary guitar work.

I do think Aerosmith’s “Come Together” is great, if not quite Great. But Earth, Wind and Fire’s “Got to Get You Into My Life” IS Great, with that thar capital G. Certainly in the Top Ten and maybe the Top Five, no matter how horrific the film for which it was recorded. Wish the song started earlier here, rather than almost a minute into the clip. Life’s too damn short.

David Bowie’s “Across the Universe,” on the other hand? Dreck.

And great as he clearly was, and cool as it was to cover it when it was about two days old, I don’t think Jimi’s “Sgt Pepper’s/With a Little Help from My Friends” is up to his standards, although that may be because the rest of the Experience was, well, the rest of the Experience, and not really up to his standards, much less that of the Beatles.

And don’t even talk to me about “Revolution” by the Thompson Twins...although Tiffany’s “I Saw Her Standing There” was delectable. And you know what? Yeah, The Carpenters’ version of “Ticket to Ride” was all lounge lizard oozing nastiness...but even so, Karen’s voice was nothing but pure goodness. What an amazing instrument. So rich and gorgeous with that ever-present heartbreaking melancholy shot right through.

World Party did a nice but pointlessly note-perfect cover of “Happiness Is a Warm Gun.” Similarly, Elliott Smith covered quite a bit of Beatles material, such as “Because,” and did so beautifully.

But beyond it being his voice rather than John’s, Paul’s and/or George’s, what’s the point? Okay, it’s lovely—and it is...but so what? What did it illuminate that the earlier version hadn’t already? What did it bring to the table? Again, it’s wonderful, but not really necessary. A pleasant b-side tribute.

Although the same can’t necessarily be said for his live covers, where he did bring something new: his unique vulnerability, which adds a new layer to the song.

I don’t actually like Joe Cocker’s “With a Little Help from My Friends,” but it’s hard to argue that it’s not pretty great.

Obviously, leaving a whole bunch out, but at the end of the day, I think there are only really a few Beatles covers that are Truly Great, or at least close enough for jazz and no surprise, they’re by masters.

If Elvis had gotten the words right (what’s so damn hard about that?!) to “Hey Jude,” that’d prolly be the all-time champ. Alas, he did not. His “Yesterday” is pretty damn great, though—not surprisingly—but I think the background vocals detracts from the ultimate effect: a song about loss where you've got a bunch of soulful ladies backing you up kinda sends mixed messages to the song’s detriment.

Stevie Wonder’s “We Can Work It Out” is vintage Stevie, which is to say, it’s one of the greatest American musicians ever doing what he does, which is simply better than all but a handful of the greatest ever:

But there’s one who is, I think even better, someone who’s a master but certainly not in Stevie’s league because, honestly, who is? Who else can trump both Paul McCartney and Prince in terms of sheer talent? Not this guy. But the gravitas he brings to his cover lays waste to even Stevie’s infectious exuberance.

Which leaves...Johnny Cash doing “In My Life.”

Little if any of the beauty of the original but with a craggy grandeur as magnificent as Dakota’s badlands. I suspect John Lennon himself would have been awed.

While My Guitar Violently Screams

I just stumbled across this clip. Tom Petty sounds really good, and Jeff Lynne, the most successful b-talent perhaps in rock history, also sounds swell. George’s son Dhani—the spit and image of George—looks like he’s never been happier. And the guitarist does a beautiful job of recreating Eric Clapton’s original obbligato accompaniment, does he not? He does.

But just wait until the three and a half minute mark for the real guitar solo to begin. If you likee the rock music at all, you must watch this. With the sound cranked. NOW.

If this is not my favorite guitar solo of all time, it has rocketed into my Top Ten. I've listened to this a dozen times now and I get goosebumps every damn time.

Because he’s one of the most brilliant singer-songwriters of the past thirty years, a phenomenal singer and an unsurpassed bandleader and performer, he sometimes gets overlooked as a guitarist. If this solo doesn’t qualify him as one of the truly all-time greats in rock history, then such things have no meaning.

The word “blistering” is not strong enough. His complete and total mastery of the instrument, the flawless technique, the searing tone, the fluidity of movement, how he plays around the singers, the way he effortless drops littles quotes from Clapton’s original solo into the middle of this maelstrom and then back out…sweet Jesu, this is the essence of rock and roll guitar.

You know, I’d normally be concerned about overselling it, about how folks couldn’t help but be let down by the actual performance. There’s no danger of that.

[Now the real question: what the hell happened to the guitar?]

In Praise of Ringo

Okay. So everyone knows that Ringo Starr is the most underrated drummer ever.

Actually, not everyone knows that. But they should. In reality, Ringo is, bizarrely, the butt of many jokes. Folks will refer to the Beatles as Two Geniuses, a Really Talented Role Player…and the Luckiest Man in History.

Which is absurd. For one thing, the Beatles might never have made it in the United States in the first place if it weren’t for Ringo; the funny-lookin’ dude with the big nose and the goofy name got a seriously disproportionate amount of the press in the early days—far more than the conventionally handsome singers. He was an easy hook for the press to go with. And keep in mind that American success was far from a given—no other British rock act had ever really made it big here before.

Then there’s the chemistry factor. When you’ve got just four guys, if any one of them isn’t quite clicking for whatever reason, even if it’s just that his sense of humor is off, it can destroy a band, or at the very least keep it from reaching its full potential. Which isn’t to say that a band has to be best friends, of course—Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey famously feuded for years, even coming to blows onstage. In fact, nobody in the Who really liked anyone else in the Who. Which is fine. That worked for them, that was their successful chemistry. Love may be all the Beatles needed, but clearly hatred worked better for the Who. And the Who’s not the only band with those kinds of anger management issues, not by a long shot. Different strokes and all that.

So Ringo’s non-musical contributions shouldn’t be overlooked. The interaction of those four personalities was a major key to the band’s success. But let’s focus on Ringo’s actual musicality.

I recall reading a Modern Drummer interview with him when I was about 13, where the pull quote was something like, “It took me years to accept the fact that I was the greatest rock drummer in the world.” And I remember thinking how absurd that was, and believing that, for pete’s sake, I was a better drummer than Ringo.

Which was half-right. I probably was able to play faster and more cleanly and more complicated time signatures. But to think for a moment that all that meant I was a better drummer is a sign, as if any were needed, of just how young and stupid I was. (Some things never change. Well, I’m no longer young.)

It’s my impression that most people think Ringo’s a great drummer, because he was the drummer in the Beatles, and therefore he must be a great drummer. Which seems like flawed logic, although it’s actually rock solid (so to speak).

Then there are the people who love music and are quite knowledgeable about it. This is the group of folks most likely to think Ringo sucks and to make disparaging comments about him. Another common comment from the semi-educated is “Ringo was the second-best drummer in the Beatles.” A little knowledge is a mighty dangerous thing. Paul McCartney is a brilliant musician and he’s recorded down some really fine performances on drums over the years. But there’s a big difference between doing that and being a drummer. As master drummer Rick Marotta once said, Paul’s never played an entire gig as a drummer, and until that happens, he’s a musician who sometimes plays drums, not a drummer.

Which brings us to the one group of people who virtually always give Ringo his props: drummers. Because drummers know just how damn hard it is to get exactly the right feel for any given song. They know how easy it is to play one of the same old patterns for a song, patterns which always work just fine, and how tough it can be to come up with something new, that’s not just new but also just right. They know how hard it is to practice restraint and not overplay.

And all that stuff is stuff at which Ringo excelled.

An example: the odd pattern he plays at the very beginning (and many other places in the song) of “Come Together.” There’s nothing particularly difficult about it. And yet I’m not sure anything like it was ever put on record before. It’s interesting and strange and tasteful and fits beautifully—a rare and magical combination.

Another example: the odd and restrained pattern he plays on “In My Life,” where he doesn’t play quarter-notes or eighth-notes on the hi-hat, as would every other drummer in the world. Instead he merely plays whole notes, hitting the hi-hat once per measure, just before the 4. So unusual, so tasteful, so perfect. No difficult, just rare beyond words, and yet absolutely ideal for the song.

“Rain,” “Tomorrow Never Knows,” “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” “Ticket to Ride,” “Get Back,” “Two of Us”—these songs have nothing in common save exceptional Ringo performances, imaginatively conceived and absolutely flawlessly executed.

There are dozens, nay, scores of other examples, but just listen to one of the most-neglected masterpieces in the Fab Four’s canon, “Long Tall Sally.” Ringo rocks so hard and so tight, it’s the drumming equivalent of a diamond’s atomic structure. Getting that half-straight/half-swing feel is an almost-forgotten art, and even back then it was incredibly hard to nail as immaculately as he did during this two minutes and three seconds (two minutes and three seconds!) of perfection. Possibly Paul McCartney’s greatest rock performance as a vocalist—if it weren’t for “Twist and Shout,” it might just be the greatest vocal performance on any Beatles recording—it’s not difficult to believe that Macca was spurred to such stratospheric heights by Ringo’s asskicking. This is one of those songs that is undeniable proof of their greatness—to cover a great song done extremely well by Elvis and brilliantly by Little Richard and somehow manage to top them both is practically inconceivable. And yet there ‘tis. An unsurpassed performance by the greatest cover band in history. The fact that the cover band was also the greatest collection of writers in rock history is merely proof that Allah exists and that He loves us.

I said up above that there was one group of people, drummers, who always gave Ringo his due. Actually, there was one other group. It was called the Beatles.

It’s no coincidence that after the break-up John, Paul and George all continued to work with Ringo on a regular basis. Even after all three of them had worked with other drummers, including magnificent drummers like Jim Keltner and Jim Gordon and the incomparable Steve Gadd—easily a contender for the shortest of short lists of Most Versatile and Just Plain Best Drummers Ever—they all kept going back to Ringo. These are guys who, it’s safe to say, knew something about creating great music, guys who knew how vital a drummer is to great music, guys who could not only afford but also had easy access to absolutely any drummer in the entire world. And yet they kept going back to Ringo again and again and again.

Maybe, just maybe, those guys were onto something. The Beatles was one seriously exclusive club. They didn’t let just anyone in—in fact, obviously, they let almost no one in. But they not only let Ringo in, they booted a long-time member to make room.

Ringo got in the old-fashioned way: he earned it, by being one of the greatest rock and roll drummers ever.

Hey Bulldog

I know, too much of the YouTube. But as has been said, the damn thing’s like crack.

Except that this isn’t anything like crack. Really, this is what passes for second- or maybe even third-rate by the standards of the Beatles. And yet, damn, what a great tune. And seeing the two of them standing next to each other singing into the same microphone…jeez louise, I get goosebumps just thinking about it. Actually watching it? I thought my arms were actually going to freeze and shatter.

Hard to believe John never liked his voice. The way it harshens slightly on the word “can” in the choruses? Amazing. The way Paul goes up on the second “Hey bulldog” line? Phenomenal. Fantastic bass, perfectly in-the-pocket drums, tasty guitar solo, great rock and roll pounding piano.

In other words, pretty much boilerplate Beatles. The kind of thing they could knock out in a couple of hours. (cf “A Hard Day’s Night,” “Birthday” and “The Ballad of John and Yoko”) And still somehow come up with a classic.

[And yet they spent years on “You Know My Name (Look Up the Number).” Sometimes life isn’t straightforward.]

It’s fun to talk about All-Time Greatest Bands Ever. But everyone else is competing for runner-up. And the gap between the boys at the top and whoever’s got second place is enormous and unbreachable. They’re so much greater than everyone else that it’s tough to really give them their due. You start thinking, well, I’m just being sentimental. Or I’m misremembering. Or I’m buying into the hype of an overinflated rep. They can’t really be that great.

And then you listen.

And you realize, oh, yeah, they really were that great. No matter how great you think they were, they were even better.

One in a Million Half-Full Glasses

So the other night pal Dave said something that got to me thinking. We were discussing the almost unbelievable fact that Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was recorded on a 4-track. Given that with Pro Tools you can pretty much have an at least theoretically unlimited number of tracks to work with these days, assuming you’ve got enough computer power, why aren’t there more masterpieces created? Where are the geniuses nowadays? Where’s today’s Bob Dylan? For that matter, where’s today’s Mozart or Beethoven? Or Shakespeare?

But the thing is, the reason we hold up, what, a few dozen artists of that caliber and ask where the successors are, is exactly because those artists were so extraordinary.

There were thousands of musicians composing and performing regularly between 1760 and 1791, yet the only two anyone but the hardest of the hardcore really bothers with these days are Haydn and Mozart. Of the thousands and thousands of baroque composers, the only two anyone really cares about anymore are Handel and Bach…and Handel’s mighty far behind Bach, especially if you take away his Water Music and his Messiah. [Feel free to toss Vivaldi in there if you care to; I’ll not stop you but I won’t join you neither.] We talk about Shakespeare’s contemporaries, such as Johnson and Marlowe, but the number of times they’re actually performed is equal to but the tiniest fraction of Shakespeare productions.

Something like 96,100,000,000 people have ever lived on the earth. How many of them turned out something as magnificent as the Sistine Chapel? Or The Art of the Fugue? Or To Kill a Mockingbird? Or Abbey Road?

I often write on Left of the Dial about how I see the glass as being half-full. The joke, as anyone who knows me in real life can easily attest, is that I’m actually a guy who almost always tends to see the glass as being half-empty. I try to view it as half-full, but that’s a conscious decision; my first natural inclination is almost always to see it as being half-empty.

So does it suck that we don’t have someone today equal to the greatness of Bach or Beethoven or Shakespeare or the Beatles or Dylan? You bet. But even better is that we ever had them at all, and that thanks to the wonders of modern technology, we can still enjoy their genius whenever we want.

One in a million? The Beatles were four out of ninety-six billion, one hundred million.

Each of ‘em was 1 in 24,025,000,000.

And I’m just mighty glad they ever were.

Why This Band Plays On

From one of my favorite writers, a former editor at Rolling Stone. His book, "Shot in the Heart," is about his family and specifically his brother, Gary Gilmore and a more powerful book I’ve never encountered. I don’t agree with everything he’s written here, but I thought it worth reprinting. Besides, I’ve been writing enough about one of my other obsessions. It’s good to switch speeds occasionally. My boy Greg Maddux taught me that in spring training one year.

You can find the original here.

Why This Band Plays On

By MIKAL GILMORE

FORTY years ago this month, the Beatles began their second major tour of America with a performance at Shea Stadium in Queens. It's an event worth noting: more than 55,000 people attended that night, Aug. 15, 1965. It set a world record at that time for a pop concert, and it was the biggest public moment of the Beatles' remarkable career.

It's also worth noting that these days we seem to be reconstructing a shadow history of the band and its achievements. That is, almost every year now we observe some milestone of the Beatles. Last year it was the anniversary of the group's astonishing 1964 appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show." Two years from now, June 2007, the occasion will be a commemoration of 1967's "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" - an epochal work that still stands as popular music's most famous and form-breaking album. Commentators from all over the world will weigh in on that one.

Which raises a number of questions: Why do we continue to pore over the Beatles' high points? Why is it that those lifetime-ago moments still fascinate us? In part, of course, it's simply because there's such an undeniable epic arc in both the Beatles' story and in their music. Certainly, they possessed an extraordinarily intuitive skill for filling the needs of their times, and for realizing the potential of their own talents.

But there's another reason, just as important, that accounts for the lasting appeal of their history: The Beatles demonstrated that musical and social change could emanate from the shared spirit of the same body politic.

Rock 'n' roll, of course, had already shown it could stir cultural tumult. In the 1950's, Elvis Presley and numerous rhythm-and-blues and rockabilly artists had brought new audiences and sensibilities into the mainstream. Rough, rude and provocatively rhythmic music - from both black and white upstarts - had broken through the barriers, meeting fierce opposition, until the new spirit was almost tamed.

Whether they meant to or not, the Beatles raised the stakes on all this, and they did it right from the start.

Their American debut, on "The Ed Sullivan Show" on Feb. 9, 1964, coincided with my 13th birthday. I certainly didn't understand everything I was seeing - the girls in the audience sticking their tongues out leeringly at the group, the whole shock-of-the-new effect of these four men who looked so foreign and who commanded their melodies with such assurance and their instruments with such synchronous force - but I knew, as millions of others did, that I was witnessing something seismic.

The next day, the Beatles' performance was the only thing we talked about at school. The girls loved the band members' long hair, the boys seemed unnerved by it, but everyone agreed that the Beatles and their music was an awakening.

In the days following, the arguments and reactions around the country only grew. While Elvis Presley had already shown us something about using rebellious style as a means of change, the Beatles helped incite something stronger in American youth that night - something that started as a consensus, as a shared joy, but that in time would seem like the prospect of power - a new kind of youth mandate.

I wasn't at Shea, but I saw the Beatles a week later at Memorial Coliseum in my hometown, Portland, Ore. I was 14 and had won tickets to the concert in a local drawing, which I count among my life's luckiest moments.

I could see them on stage - small, suited figures moving and playing, looking holy in the blinding luminescence of flashbulbs and house lights. The collective yowling scream of the audience - to this day, the loudest thing I've heard - seemed to emerge from a mass fever dream. All these years later it still moves me to realize how jolting and transcendent it was to be in a room - no matter how large - when the Beatles played.

And from film clips of the Aug. 15 concert, Shea was the same. Everybody there that night - the thousands upon thousands of screaming teenagers ("supersonic seagulls" as Paul McCartney recently described them), the legion of exhausted policemen, even the Beatles themselves - seemed overwhelmed by the intensity of the event and its implications.

The poet Allen Ginsberg attended the same performance I did at Memorial and rendered the experience in his poem "Portland Coliseum":

The million children

the thousand worlds

bounce in their seats, bash

each other's sides, press

legs together nervous

Scream again & claphand

become one Animal

in the New World Auditorium

- hands waving myriad

snakes of thought

screetch beyond hearing

while a line of police with

folded arms stands

Sentry to contain the red

sweatered ecstasy

that rises upward to the

wired roof.

Ginsberg understood what he was witnessing: mass fervor that great - especially from the young - has always felt threatening. That's because it can seem unruly, powerful enough to upset traditions and values or to incite dangerous action. There had been small riots at rock 'n' roll concerts in the 1950's - chairs thrown, fisticuffs - but the threat implicit in 1960's music was something else: it was about setting things loose, about changing or upending the world. The barricade of policemen I saw that day at the Beatles' show - the same line Ginsberg had seen - certainly acted as if they were seeing something more than mania. The scream the Beatles brought forth in America was just too unforeseen and too big. It could help shake the order of things, and in time it would.

THAT August in 1965, we didn't fathom where the power in this sort of communion might lead. We didn't know where we were going with the Beatles, and they didn't know where they were headed. The music that followed their 1966 retirement from live performances turned often hopeful and generous (not to mention unbelievably creative), and more important, compassionate. "Sgt. Pepper" is often viewed as whimsical or naïve, and yet songs like "She's Leaving Home," "Getting Better" and "A Day in the Life" gave voice to the combined senses of hope, strangeness and anxiety that marked the lives of many in that period.

By the end of the 1960's, though, the Beatles' songs had grown more mournful, frightened and angry. John Lennon grew suspicious of his audience's politics in "Revolution" and of the whole world in "The Ballad of John and Yoko," whereas Paul McCartney's "Let It Be" and "The Long and Winding Road" played like doleful prayers of solitude. By 1969, the two men - who had once exemplified collaboration - could barely sing to each other across a gulf of mutual recrimination.

All this, sadly, reflected the tenor of the time. The spirit of Western youth - especially American - descended from bliss to disillusionment, as political assassinations, the madness of Vietnam, the strife over civil rights and political protests, the effects of unmonitored drug use and the violence of the Manson family and Altamont all bore down, taking a steady toll.

The Beatles came to their bitter, nasty end in April 1970 - the one event we tend not to commemorate. It's more pleasurable remembering the big bang of the "Ed Sullivan" appearance and the Shea Stadium concert. But the sort of promises born in those moments may no longer be possible. It's true, of course, that subsequent mass popular music events like 1985's Live Aid and this year's Live 8 concerts have followed through on some of what the Beatles made possible, albeit in cautious, inoffensive ways.

It's also true, though, that the sort of youth power that the Beatles helped awaken is simply no longer even considered. The cultural perspective that defines youth has changed drastically.

We've infantilized adolescents. We view them as children whose judgments are immature, who have to be protected from influences that may steer them in wrong directions - directions that may threaten decency or disrupt social authority. True, the same things were said about teenagers in the 1950's and 1960's, but part of our ambition was to dispute mores and intimidate hegemony. Today, the pressures against such instincts for adolescents come from both within their peer group and the culture at large. Teenagers now are themselves often the harshest critics of young nonconformists.

Meanwhile, watchdogs across the spectrum - from Bill O'Reilly to the Rev. Al Sharpton to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton - worry over the effects that rude rap or scandalous video games may be having on the young. And today's conservative mind-set stigmatizes the sort of insurrectionary voice that the Beatles, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones and others exercised in much of their 1960's music.

Last year, when R.E.M., Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam, the Dixie Chicks and others played concerts to promote a defeat of President Bush, their efforts were seen as a risky anomaly. It was as if songs like the Beatles' "Revolution" or Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth," James Brown's "Say It Loud (I'm Black and I'm Proud)" and Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" had never filled the air in those years conveying a sense of political and generational transformation that, for a time, seemed imminent and irrefutable.

Maybe this sort of reflection seems too far a stretch from the joys felt on those warm nights in the summer of 1965. There's no denying that above all else the Beatles were fun; had they not been, they would not have enjoyed so much effect or such staying power.

But fun on the level that the Beatles managed to achieve - at least in those days - implied more than a collective, thrilling scream. We remember the Beatles for their music and spectacle, but we celebrate them because, when they stood before their American audiences in 1964 and 1965, we witnessed the social and cultural power that a pop group and its audience could create and share. From there, I guess, you measure how much we've learned, or how much we've lost.

Mikal Gilmore, the author of "Shot in the Heart," is working on a book about the Beatles and the 1960's.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Silly Love Songs

Paul McCartney’s "Silly Love Songs" is one of the more ingenious pop tunes ever, a song that manages to be both a catchy little ditty and a surprisingly complex composition. Rumor has it that McCartney wrote it as a one-fingered-salute to the critics who’d said he was no longer capable of writing anything other than silly love songs.

The majority of the song is based around a repeating three-chord-structure. These basic chord changes are first heard in the somewhat industrial-sounding introduction—an ironic counterpoint to the lushness to follow? or on his own ability to seemingly churn out perfect pop ditties with automaton-like efficiency?—where they’re run through twice. A simple but unusual pattern, it consists of the tonic, mediant and subdominant, rather than the far, far more common tonic, subdominant and dominant; making things even a bit more interesting, the mediant and subdominant are both seventh chords, adding a certain amount of tonal richness and ambiguity.

Then we’re into the main body of the song. The chord changes are heard once again, but this time the feeling is completely different. Where before we had sixteenth notes on the high hat and factory-like percussion with whole note chords on the piano, the percussion has disappeared to be replaced by standard (if outstanding) drumming (courtesy of Joe English), with eighth notes on the high hat. The piano’s still there, but it’s no longer just playing bare chords, instead comping tastefully.

The main difference, though, is the bass line, certainly one of the finest in rock history as well as one of the most memorable and, not incidentally, mixed extremely high. In fact, it’s the lead instrument of the song, louder than either the drums or piano. Which, astonishingly, are the only instruments for this first verse. Just bass, drums and a little bit of colorization from the piano comping quietly in the background—not at all standard for your typical silly love song.

Then, of course, there’s the vocals, singing one of those instantly catchy melodies McCartney literally used to be able to write in his sleep (cf. "Yesterday). Mind-bogglingly, this fantastic melody is never heard again until the very end of the six-minute-tune.

Think about that for a second. Imagine being able to write a melody as lovely and catchy as the first verse’s: "you’d think that people would have had enough of silly love songs." Now imagine you’ve got so much talent that you can simply toss it to the side and move on. After all, you’ve got plenty more where that came from.

In fact, before the song’s over, McCartney will come up with five different melodies to go over that one basic set of chord changes, as well as others for the different sections of the song. Many of them are related to each other yet remain distinctly different, thanks to augmentation, diminution, interpolation, extrapolation and so on. Brass suddenly pop up to introduce the chorus, during which they disappear, to be replaced by strings. This is the "I love you" section and, sure enough, it’s the same three chords with a new melody on top.

After the chorus, we get the second verse, the "I can’t explain, the feeling’s plain to me, say, can’t you see" (hey, I didn’t say the lyrics were brilliant) verse, whereupon McCartney comes up with a different, yet equally catchy melody, his third over the same chord changes. This time, Linda’s singing the "I love you" melody from the chorus in the background, kept company by the horn section.

Another chorus, this time both Paul and Linda singing the "I love you" melody and then we come to the bridge, the "love doesn’t come in a minute" section, which is played over an entirely different set of chord changes.

Then it’s back to the good ol’ three-chord-structure again, this time for the solo. But as there’s no noticeable guitar in the song and the piano’s been relegated to simple comping and the bass has been taking the leads all along, what’s he to do? Why, he has the horn section take the solo, playing yet another melody, this one a variation on what they’d been playing in the background during the second verse, related to the original melody, only now each of their phrases is answered by the strings.

Then we’re into yet another section. It could be the chorus or it could be a verse, since they’re over the same set of changes. Since Paul’s singing yet another melody, the "how can I tell you about my loved one" line, however, it might simply be a whole new section, especially since it’s over a setting similar to the industrial introduction. Sans percussion sounds, however, its effect is completely differently, largely thanks to the addition of the drums and bass. After two runs through this, Linda begins to sing the "I love you" chorus part behind Paul’s lead line.

We come out of that for a quick trip to the brass and strings running through the changes once, and then it’s back to the new version of the introduction section. This time through it’s Paul singing the "I love you" melody while Linda soon adds the "I can’t explain, the feeling’s plain to me" part from the second verse. After a bit Denny Laine chimes in with the "how can I tell you" line that Paul’d had the first time but has since discarded. And, of course, all this is interlocking over the same three chords.

Finally we get back to a verse, which turns out to be the triumphant reappearance of the first melody, over five minutes after we first encountered it. Whereupon the entire song wraps up yet, interestingly, ends not after another chorus but at the end of this verse and, enigmatically, on an unresolved median chord rather than the expected tonic. All in all, pretty good stuff for a simple silly love song.

Bigger'n the Beatles

So a favorite game Top Management and I like to play is coming up with new band names. Generally this comes about when one of us utters a particularly odd or pungent combination of words which strikes us as having potential. My all-time favorite (that can be shared) remains Idle Worship, although Übërsphïnctër still holds a mighty place in my heart (followed by its country and western spin-off side-project, Goobersphincter), but we’ve invented hundreds.

This morning she came up with one for the ages: Tasty Hobos.

I won’t tell you the train of thought that led up to this noxious yet brilliant nom de rock. But it's just one more reason that I love her so much. (Another is that she's up for pizza almost as much as I am. And she's really cute.)