2020 Beatles Bible Bracket Challenge | Page 11 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

sir walter raleigh said
I Am The Walrus vs Nowhere Man

Girl vs Tomorrow Never Knows

A Hard Day’s Night vs I’ve Just Seen A Face

For No One vs. Ticket To Ride

EDIT: Inspired by m’gal @lovelyritametermaid I think it’s time for me to start justifying given the bracket is tightening. I’m gonna pretend I work for Pitchfork.

Nowhere Man explores the insecurities of a young man with the landmark wooden, straightforward, folk-sensitive sound of Rubber Soul . I do appreciate that track a lot. I Am The Walrus doesn’t fit in a category as defined, given Lennon decides to embark on a lyrical adventure in which he isn’t trying to discover himself, but rather everything else around him. The way the writing is so carefully placed around the heavy distorted drums and strings creates an aesthetic quite unusual, that prooves experimental but compelling as well. His confidence, not only in his words but in his musical experimentation, makes the latter song a much more rewarding journey.

Tomorrow Never Knows has been defined as the oddest track surrounding Revolver . It is outstanding to hear the spiritual, drug influenced lyrics backed by the band sounding groundbreaking in every sense from the drums, to the backwards guitars to the tape edits. Girl is a damn fine song, but an inconsistent one. The track, also written by Lennon, has the audacity of presenting poetic gems such as “When she was told when she was young that pain would lead to pleasure, did she understand them when they said that a man must break his back to earn his day of leasure? Will she still believe it when he’s dead?” yet just around the corner still turn amateurish with phrases like “She’s the kind of girl who puts you down when friends are there, you feel a fool”. Lennon moans “Girl… Girl…” on the chorus of the song like a middleschooler would after his first rejection, and it is hard to put apart how much is genius and how much isn’t. This dichotomy is not served well when the instrumental behind the bridge sloppily provides 4/4 vocal “dits” behind a 6/8 melody. Girl zig zags around being a deep song when it sometimes shows levels of immaturity in all fronts. It can be charming at times because of it, but there isn’t a single line in Tomorrow Never Knows that sounds less zany than the other, and it coincides with the instrumental more than perfectly.

Comparing a song sometimes comes down to intent vs. execution. I’ve Just Seen A Face is a case were as much as you poke holes in it, you’ll never find anything about its content that doesn’t match the pace. The track is more than intentionally presenting a fast-moving country guitar melody that accordingly represents a very much alive sense of youth and the discovery of love. It doesn’t treat the matter as seriously as a song could, but it isn’t trying to, and makes it more effective. We can feel the passion in his childish words: “Falling, yes I am falling, and she keeps calling me back again”. A Hard Day’s Night on the other hand present a bit of a problem. As much as it bursts in with an energy chord blast being the opener, the lyrics present a subject matter that is uninteresting, relying in one good catchphrase to support the entire song, when the reality is there isn’t much of a song left. As an album, A Hard Day’s Night is constantly trying to break the wall between sentiment in meaning and sentiment in expression and usually fails, mostly because of the band’s incapability of realizing the power they possessed to create without bounderies. We now know they would be very much capable of achieving that level of breakthrough (and much more!). A Hard Day’s Night recembles Help ! as an album that reminds us of those awkward middle points where they still couldn’t, and the title track lacking in any sense of interesting melodical expression to whatever nonsense a “hard day’s night” is in the first place is its primal sin. However, if there is at least one track on these albums that doesn’t fail at these chores, even if it is the result of not being a very complicated theme to begin with, it is I’ve Just Seen A Face . I guess you could say less is more in this case.

Neither of the tracks sound like the rest of the songs on their respective tracklists. Ticket To Ride bangs the tom toms pausedly creating an almost accidentally psychedelic effect and the bass mushes into a surprisingly muddy sound that intoxicates the well put together vocal harmonies. For No One presents a soloist opening his heart at the feet of his baroque piano. McCartney stands alone against the entire band and still manages to bring more emotional sorrow. The woman you love is going forever in the next train and you just “think you’re gonna be sad”? The Revolver track presents a narrator who is clearly devastated. “No sign of love behind the tears. Cry For No One , a love that should have lasted years”. The woman is still standing next to you, and it is more painful to watch every sign of love disappear than it is in Ticket To Ride for her to literally go away. The flute cries on the instrumental solo after the narrator describing a mundane routine in which the couple’s passion has vanished, and we feel invested in the story as soon as we hear the feelings going through this person’s mind as he looses it. Whereas Ticket To Ride only describes the subject as “The girl that’s driving me mad”. As musically compelling as that Help ! track is, For No One wins by content alone.

sir walter raleigh said
A Day In The Life vs And Your Bird Can Sing

Help ! vs Hey Bulldog

In My Life vs I Saw Her Standing There

Day Tripper vs Rain

Harrison’s guitar enters the room. And Your Bird Can Sing presents double melodies that swirl around the track like birds themselves would. John sings as if he was whispering into your year: “I’ll be ’round”. It is very reassuring. I state this because I don’t want to dismiss this hidden gem off Revolver , which is a great one, because A Day In The Life is better. In the comment section of the audio for And Your Bird Can Sing one comment stands out: “In two minutes a teeming universe of sound was created and then taken down”. Very poetic, and in fact a statement that I would agree with, as I would with any piece of music good enough that it can spark that sensation in a lot of people including me. In that case A Day In The Life doesn’t create a universe, it creates two. It is a perfectly good example of how the balance between the Paul universe and the John universe was essential to the Beatles presentation as a musical force stronger than iron. And it creates bridges between both universes that are as shaky as they are grand. A Day In The Life is the initial concept, the creative process, and the final product, all bravely shown at once. When you hear Paul getting up in the morning you know you’re in a safe space surrounded by granny love songs and sheepdogs, poignant piano chords and melodies that feel like ancient folklore. But as soon as John comes back, as much as there is still a feeling of hope, there is now a troubled sense of uneasiness too. “Oh, really? Well, what did you read in the news?” is what we’re all thinking about when John cries to us. If it isn’t the best Lennon/McCartney song, it’s the most representative for sure. The track develops into that scary repitted crescendo and that final piano chord. Not to mention it kicks off cut out by people cheering the Hearts Club Band and ends on a freaky, unexpected sound collage. That makes it the unbeaten song it is. The fact that it isn’t a song, but the final piece on a masterpiece. And Your Bird Can Sing does feel like a musical world created and destroyed in less than two minutes. The difference is A Day In The Life feels like it never even got built, it just has always been there, awaiting to be discovered. And just like matter itself, it can never be destroyed either, only transformed.

As I’ve stated before, Help ! is a track with a lot of issues. Partly because it was rushed into production way before Lennon was comfortable deciding what he wanted to do with it. The guitars and drums invade John’s privacy in a kind of awkward way, until he ends up singing “Help me if you can, I’m feeling down, and I do appreciate you being around” in upbeat rhythm, f*****g major scale. Hey Bulldog is mostly a team effort. The band is prepared to make one more time an ode to nothing in their session-free spare time as soon as the piano riffs in. Then the guitars and drums punch their way into the melody for John to sing whatever nonsensical piece of lyric as if it was a Bible chant, making it quintessentially Beatlesque. “If you’re lonely you can talk to me”. That is what Help ! could use, in fact. Some talking. And some confidence too. Bullfrog!

What would you rather have for dinner? A great entrance or a great dish? I Saw Her Standing There kicks off the Beatles’ discography with a rockabilly bass harmony preparing to make anyone ready for action in 1963 move. But In My Life will move you. Just not in the same way. This is actually the song that John made when he realized his feeling could also be expressed in sounds. This is one of the band’s most heartwarming harmonic moments. The way the chord progression is crafted to go along the main melody is so precise and smooth it makes songwriting seem easy. John remembers his entire life right before our very ears. He doesn’t give any specific names because he knows those empty spaces will be filled with our personal connections once the song gets to us. It is so purposefully relatable and sweet, that the instrumental only needs two or three sounds per bar from the drums to feel like a complete piece. George Martin gives us a fine, and odd, classical piano solo just before Lennon repeats “And though I’ll never loose affection… I know I’ll often stop and think about them…” And indeed we will. I, for one, often stop and think about those last falsetto vocal melodies at the end of the song that reassure me that “In his life he love me more” as if it was a tale as old as time. You can party with 17-year-olds all you want, but in fact, that may be one of the things you remember when singing along to the verses of In My Life .

It was common in the days of vinyl to release the fast song as the A side and the ballad on the counterpart. Day Tripper is proof that B sides can be just as poignant, badass and memorable (technically it was a double A-Side but in the first prints We Can Work It Out was written in the top and presented as the main single). The riff has aged as that old-school rush of adrenaline running through your spine you get when you listen to old gems. You’re probably hearing it right now while reading this. Feels good, doesn’t it? Well, that was also the feeling you would get when listening to Paperback Writer . The only difference was, Revolver had kicked in. The guitars sounded ethereal, the drums electric, the editing weird. That is why Rain is the better track. Because it was better than its A-Side and it was a psychedelic influenced ballad. Nothing equal had ever been even tried before, and it was a showcase of possibilities. Ringo goes nuts with artful fills. John’s voice doesn’t sound real anymore, he sounds like an angel. The lyrics are overwhelmed with ear candy: “When the rain comes, they run and hide their heads. We might as well be dead”. What a songwriter John turned out to be once he discovered how to surround his sentiments with focused aesthetics. Rain does it so well, it circles around a kind of melancholy that along with the vocal harmonies, actually makes it feel like it’s raining. Can you hear it right now? I can’t, at least not to the extent of wonder Rain actually feels like when given a proper listen. That is why it wins over Day Tripper . Because it is the proof that sound, when taken to its maximum capacity of beauty, overcomes the feeling of momentary amusement a great riff can cause. A sound so eargrabbing, you could put it backwards and it would produce the same sensations. It actually tries it out and it succeeds.

sir walter raleigh said

A Day In The Life vs And Your Bird Can Sing

Help ! vs Hey Bulldog

In My Life vs I Saw Her Standing There

Day Tripper vs Rain

  

And Your Bird Can Sing . A Day In The Life is a groundbreaker and a masterpiece, but I think I get more pleasure, routinely, from And Your Bird Can Sing .

Help ! vs Hey Bulldog . A tough one. I do love Hey Bulldog , but in this case I’m going with Help !, it’s practically a coin toss for me.\ with these two.

In My Life vs I Saw Her Standing There . I Saw Her Standing There , I appreciate In My Life more than I love it.

Day Tripper vs Rain . Rain . The drums, the guitars, the backwards vocals. Just love it.