2020 Beatles Bible Bracket Challenge | Page 20 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

Beatlebug said
^^I’m gonna feckin’ cry. Beautifully put, I couldn’t agree more.

(also how tf are you so good at expressing yourself in not your native language them be mad skillllz)  

A lot of YouTube commenting.

It is in rare occasions that we found ourselves having to choose between two of our favourite pieces of art. This bracket has certainly brought a lot of people together with opinions alike from left to right, as well as confronted differing views of subjective art. After a lot of arguing, throwing our opinions at other people’s walls and in occasions tearing ourselves apart from having to take decisions we never thought we should have to take, we have finally ended up in the final round with two Beatles songs that are unanimously beloved. Everything up to this point hasn’t been in vain, considering how, after we’ve all lost the ones we loved the most, we ended up with something we can all agree on. John Lennon faces himself with two of his best compositions and, most would agree, some of the best compositions in the history of rock and roll.

During the recording of their sixth studio album, the Beatles broke their way out of a creative rut. After Help ! Had been published, and the film had been recorded, the group decided they were too worn out to keep making films and appealing to a childish demographic of young girls lusting over them whenever they went onstage. By the time their fifth studio album had been recorded and out for the public, Malcolm X had been shot in the peak of the Civil Rights Movement, avant-garde film was rising in popularity with the arrival of Bergman and Godard, and Bob Dylan had gone electric, twice. This isn’t to say Rubber Soul was recorded with the intent to embody all of the changes that were happening in Europe, America and the world. But the overwhelming sense of change was present, and the Beatles, most of all John, were feeling left behind in the verge of what, unknowingly, would later become the Summer of Love. John and the group had already started using marijuana to ease down all the stress fame had brought onto them, as it had started to rise in popularity among musicians in general. In My Life is one of the tracks in Rubber Soul that represents the search for the greater meaning in music. It generally doesn’t sound like any Beatles song prior to it, with its slow pace and melancholic tone. More than any other track on what became one of the most iconic LPs in the world of pop music, In My Life was certainly a call for maturity from their audience. Essentially, “we can’t make boilerplate rock music for the rest of our lives”, a message that was received with critical acclaim, but wouldn’t prove effective with their live audiences, in the end resulting in the band deciding to quit touring. In In My Life , John decides to make the song about himself, leaving any pre-conception of successful music at the door and focusing on what feels best. He sings about his beloved close-ones and greets those he’s never going to see again with a last farewell, while with a welcoming hug he receives those that are going to stay until the end of his days. Sonically, the song stands on the feet of smooth guitars and bass. Ringo plays his set with such gentleness it doesn’t appear to be there at all. Every hit counts, including hi-hats and drums, in the end resulting in utter perfection. John utilizes the harmonies the Beatles had become famous for and uses them to his advantage, making the song not more convoluted, but more pleasant instead. It is one of those times were every vocal performance feels worthy, and of course Paul and George don’t do anything but live up to the part. In My Life stunned and continues to stunt people because it possess a sense of re-assurance most songs only even dare to desire. Not only is it a breath of fresh air for the band musically speaking, but at some point it is relatable to everybody. John manages to find a perfect balance between making the listener invested themselves and also substantially enhancing the artistic value of their catalogue. Not that Rubber Soul doesn’t have other songs that reenforce that feeling, Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) and If I Needed Someone come to mind. But In My Life is considered to be the ultimate track inside of the album, the center piece, the one you are waiting for the whole way through, being it your favourite or just a cute song you like. It represents a lot of the qualities John would’ve liked to pursue when composing a track like Help ! In the past he had been limited by recording schedules and concerts ahead to come up with music as fast as he could. Now, he was more relaxed, and focused on what he wanted to do. It might’ve caused some troubles with those that probably wanted to see him perform. For posterity, however, it is now considered to be one of the best artistic choices the band could’ve made, because the result is a bottomless pit of pure musical masterpieces. In My Life is probably the first one of them.

Strawberry Fields Forever came in a time were the entire musical landscape had drastically changed in less than a year. The two main songwriters had been encouraged to write songs about their childhoods. On one hand, Paul McCartney decided to write a charming song with ear-grabbing melodies as it was Penny Lane . John went in a different direction. He really wanted to write the personal masterpiece he had been aching for all of these years. He came up with something: an acoustic guitar progression that was interesting, with lyrics that ranged from sweet to mind-blowing. It is not necessarily the meaning in his words, but how he positions them and builds upon them to make them stand out. The lyrics portrait an insecure man, inviting you on a trip to the images that trouble his mind. Strawberry Fields is said to be a real children’s house in Liverpool, but honestly it doesn’t matter. The place sounds unreal nevertheless. As one of the best songwriters of his era, Lennon certainly had a natural talent for executing this type of unbelievably pleasant lines without much effort. There was a problem though. Sgt. Pepper ‘s Lonely Hearts Club Band was in the works. After Revolver , the band was thought to be walking on high rope because nobody could follow up such a record progression and get away with it. What people didn’t know is that they absolutely could, and nothing was by accident. Strawberry Fields Forever has always felt like that first single that proved to the people, including contemporary musicians, that they were no one to mess with, they were in charge of the musical landscape and the evolution of music. The Beatles had turned psychedelic and we were f*****g loving it. Every artistic change that seemed to have a chance in the avant-garde had to go through the Beatles first to be accepted as the norm. If you had any freaky ideas you wanted to go mainstream, you just had to wait for John or Paul to get a grasp of it and even subtly apply it to their music for it to become acceptable. Everyone was looking at them. Revolver felt like that starting point of that alfa quality to the band when it came to experimentation. Strawberry Fields Forever embodied that entire sentiment in less then five minutes. The opening lyrics hit like a bucket of warm water. “Let me take you down ’cause I’m going to”. Is that “to” when things really knock you out of your chair. Waves of sounds come rushing in through the speakers. It doesn’t take long before it all builds up to a greater statement. With every verse, you get a different universe. Instruments are added, lyrics start to unfold. “No one I think is in my tree. I mean it must be high or low”. You may think it doesn’t make any sense, but that is clearly a child version of John speaking through his adult self. Somehow he makes the verses sound like true nonsense speeches a boy would throw at you out of nowhere. And then it goes back: “Let me take you down”. Lennon constantly goes forwards and back from the present to the past, and the music only gets more interesting. The song is filled with new ways of looking at and playing music. It comes down to editing. New take. Chop. Cut. Skip. Do it again. Speed it up. Slow it down. Now put them together. Can we get some reverb? Add some groove to it. Horns. Strings. More horns. Shot of LSD. “Nothing is real”. Okay, new take. Everything in the song broke the rules of what the conventional recording of a single song should look like when you were handling psychedelia. Nowadays it seems almost obvious, but the release of Strawberry Fields Forever /Penny Lane was one of the most important new paragraphs in rock music. On the cover, the band look like they had been through so much in so little time, it had literally made them insane. With those mustaches, looking serious. John was putting on his glasses. He wasn’t a product anymore, he was an artist. They all had matured, and it was time for the world to accept it. They had heard it all, so, like any prodigy would do, they created their own little world in which to manufacture the new sounds they were aching for. After a couple of months Sgt. Pepper ‘s Lonely Hearts Club Band would come out and finally support the fact: they were insane.

In My Life and Strawberry Fields Forever are two of the most beloved Beatles songs because they embody the band. They are the perfect combination of new ideas mixed with pleasant melodies, breath-taking confidence, loads of replay value. They are very different in their own right. Many would discard Strawberry Fields Forever as just being too tryhard and nonsensical, but that’s what it’s here for, it’s the right amount of disorder to embody its sense of humour but not enough to push the song off the cliff of credibility and seriousness. Many would discard In My Life as being too simple, being to poppy, not having that much musical impact on the band, but if that were the case, and every song should be a brand new way of approaching sound, it would be asking too much from artists that adored harmony as well, ending up with mostly experimental garbage; In My Life is the masterpiece it is because it’s a break from all that, while inadvertently in a way still creating something unseen. But in the end something has to come ahead. If we’re looking at it objectively, the track that stands on its own the most is Strawberry Fields Forever . In My Life has infinite replay value, but in a way, I’m still hoping to listen to Wait to come after it. I’m not a big fan of Wait , but in the end Rubber Soul is probably the musical statement we should be talking about instead of just In My Life . Granted, that track may as well be the best in the album, and the most representative of the forward-thinking attitude of the members of the band to really poor themselves into their music. But in a way, so is Girl, so is I’m Looking Through You , so is Nowhere Man . Would we look up to In My Life as much if it wasn’t surrounded by just as much envelope-pushing music? Strawberry Fields Forever is bigger because it’s not the result of anything, but the starting point of so much more. Is what allowed the band to go into the studio with their heads up and make Sgt. Pepper ‘s Lonely Hearts Club Band, make the White Album , make Abbey Road . And even lyrically, John recalls his life with much more illusion and uncertainty, but somehow manages to grasp inches of depth that In My Life just doesn’t. It is a time capsule, of utter craftsmanship and creativity. I can hear the whole recording session through the song. Every guitar lick, every pronunciation of a line, every string-section. Songs like A Day In The Life were conceived on the grounds of recordings like these making them not be ashamed of their mistakes, and their whacky ideas shooting themselves in the foot. Everything had to be so polished up to that point. Every musician dressed in suits on stage. If a song didn’t go #1 it wasn’t worth a damn. And God forbid you uttered a curse word on live TV. In My Life was excellent but it was conceived under those same rules of what was considered “proper behaviour”. Strawberry Fields Forever didn’t exist after those changes, it made them happen. I find it to be more daring, more refreshing. It was a turning point not for the band, not for music, but for culture in general. Most people heard that single and didn’t think “that was nice”; they, instantly, regardless of if they liked it or nor, thought “what the hell was that?”.

I said previously, comparing it to Dear Prudence , that Strawberry Fields Forever represents a milkshake instead of wine, a zany t-shirt instead of a suit, Star Trek instead of The Sopranos. But, considering the times to which culture had been summited throughout the 1960s, 1967 was just the right year to stop being so serious, and mostly everybody wanted nothing else but to put on a pink shirt, buy a milkshake and eat up two hours of Star Trek high out of their minds. Strawberry Fields Forever does not only provide that freedom to the listener, but also explores the artistic ambitions of John Lennon . His way of exploring recorded music allows the listener to explore their listening experience, in the way we are told a childhood story from the perspective of that child and while all that is happening, waves of sound bang our heads like they’ve never been hit before. In My Life just can’t fight something as rock solid, despite as many pros it may have to its credit. It’s the ultimate psychedelic song, and surely the most brave single release in the history of music.