0 Rubber Soul (1965)

(Previous cryptic comments on UK version here.)

Another way to divide my narrow little world: those who believe Rubber Soul properly kicks off with "Drive My Car," as found on the UK version, and those who believe it starts with "I've Just Seen a Face," on the US. Neither song appears on the other version, which is part of what makes this debate so intractable. And each song frames what follows differently, though the great majority of what follows is nearly identical, only shuffled about a bit and with a few additions or deletions. Suffice to say: the lean studied exuberance of "Face" leads off an album I like quite a bit more than the one that starts with a honking shambolic limo fantasy. Earlier this year the collective marketing geniuses behind 50 years of united Beatles mess finally closed one circle and released some 13 US versions of Beatles albums on CD (with the inevitable box set of all of them), for which I was humbly grateful, welcoming back an old friend. (I recently learned the hard way that trying to work with the tags and labels of digital music is harder and less rewarding than you would think.) The distinction between the two versions has turned out to be critically important to me. In fact, when it comes to the UK versions, I think I even understand better the other side of another issue that divides my world, preferring Revolver to Rubber Soul. But Rubber Soul—the US version—is one of the first albums I really knew and it has always been a good deal more than a collection of songs. For me, for various reasons, it feels like no less than the Beatles at their absolute best, inventing a kind of chamber pop music full of moods and shadings, inventive yet simple, charming but never shallow, insinuating itself well into the grains of my life, and forever listenable.



My parents gave me Rubber Soul for my 11th birthday in 1966, which is the album I had asked them for. They were relieved it was the right Beatles album because they had not been able to make out the title for the proto-psychedelic lettering of the brown blob in the upper left corner. They also gave me an anthology of horror short stories, which they knew I liked. I have a birthdate that falls early in the month of March, and many years, especially when I was a kid, it cast a kind of glow over the whole month, which is otherwise useless. That year was a notable example as I immediately retired to my bedroom in all my leisure hours, playing the album front to back to front to back and reading the stories.

The stories leaned toward established classics with a literary veneer. I don't remember all the titles but there were things by Poe, Henry James, and Ambrose Bierce, along with "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "The Open Window" by Saki, "The Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connell, "The Monkey's Paw" by W.W. Jacobs, perhaps "A Distant Episode" by Paul Bowles. My own preferences happened to be for even more shocking fare, with twist endings—e.g., Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," Jerome Bixby's "It's a Good Life"—but anything that was weird and macabre would do.

Years later I came to realize how deeply impressed by the album and book both together I was. At some point the track sequencing of the album became so familiar that I could hear the beginnings of next songs in the ends of many—even still felt disembodied stirrings to flip a record after hearing "Michelle" and "Run for Your Life"—and many of the moods of the stories were compressed into the music as well. This is no doubt part of the reason I keep making such a big deal out of the versions. When you expect to hear "Think for Yourself" following on the ending strains of "You Won't See Me," and what you get is "Nowhere Man"—which does not belong on Rubber Soul (though it does, and I understand why)—it's naturally upsetting to a certain sense of the order of things. The stories and songs began to interpenetrate more and more.

"The Yellow Wallpaper" is one example, first published in 1892 and now considered a milestone of feminist literature. It's actually a rather long story that takes the form of journal entries by a woman who has been confined by her husband, for the sake of some kind of recuperation, to a single bedroom. The door is locked, the windows barred, and she is forbidden books to read. Even the journal she keeps has to be secret. Gradually she goes mad, evinced by an ever more intense fascination with patterns she sees in the wallpaper of the room. I could lay there in my bed idly reading such a fevered narrative and I happened to have some wallpaper of my own I could look at and search for patterns. Then, perhaps, would come John Lennon singing the lovely song he wrote with Paul McCartney about a strange, tentative one-night stand, "Norwegian Wood": "She showed me her room / Isn't it good Norwegian wood." We are all looking at the walls now.

"Norwegian Wood" remains a solid candidate for the most memorable song of Rubber Soul, of course, and I think it's so good it's even managed to grow some in stature for me over the years. It's famous partly as the place where George Harrison's fascinations with Indian music and the sitar began to be felt, as a sitar is used—much like a Western instrument but adding a strange and wonderful texture. What I notice most about the song now is how artfully structured it is, poised and balanced almost like Japanese art, with a light but certain hand, words and music fitted together seamlessly. In 1987, in fact, a Japanese novel inspired in part by the song was published, Norwegian Wood, which was later made into a movie in 2010. Lennon wrote "Norwegian Wood" in part based on an affair he'd had, though he was at pains to hide that fact from his wife of the time, Cynthia, which accounts for the elliptical way the story proceeds. McCartney finished off the lyrics, making a strange situation even more so by making it sound as if a lover denied sex has burnt the place down in retribution. That is so at odds with the otherwise gentle and plaintive tone of the song as to be positively disorienting. For years I thought the perception had more to do with the stories I was reading than with anything objective in the song, but McCartney later owned up to it. "She led him on, then said, 'You'd better sleep in the bath,'" he told one interviewer. "In our world the guy had to have some sort of revenge." It cheapens the song, though the conflagration was actually the perfect note for me back in my room reading my book of stories and playing the album all the time.

Another story I read: "The Open Window" by Saki (H.H. Munro, a British writer), first published in 1914, a quick piece of stunt work, done in swift sure strokes. Stories by Saki often seem motivated by effect in the same ways as those of O. Henry, and Saki could work his elements cunningly, as the very short "The Open Window" shows. A young girl tells tales and things are not what they appear. The final result is something of a joke, but somehow with a sickening undertow. In my daydreamy hazes, I heard the end of the first side of Rubber Soul with this: Harrison's "Think for Yourself," the weirdly discombobulated "The Word" that followed it, and finally the soothing tones, veering off into incomprehension with the French, of "Michelle." They suit the Saki vibe. "You're telling all those lies," Harrison sings in "Think for Yourself." "Do what you want to do / And go where you're going to." Then "The Word," a wailing shouter it took Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison to concoct, injects a kind of unpleasant anarchy. The most vilified track on Rubber Soul has always been McCartney's "Michelle," which along with "Yesterday" is widely taken as McCartney's nadir (with the Beatles) of "silly love songs" and/or ample reason even not to take him seriously at all. I really don't have a problem with "Michelle" and never have—certainly it's a bit on the cloying side, but it is also disorienting and weird with the language shift and I like that. I see links in "Michelle" to concurrent European pop strains just then coalescing, part of a broader insinuation of pop song with image, practiced by the Beatles themselves (or director Richard Lester) in A Hard Day's Night. The film director Jean-Luc Godard put Chantal Goya in Masculin Feminin. David Lynch later picked up the mantle and extended it with Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, Mulholland Dr., and other films. By its very blandness and gorgeousness, there is something in "Michelle" of the unworldly conflation of beauty and horror. Or maybe that's the book I was reading.

It's hard not to overstate the impact of a record album as an artifact—at the time for a lot of people and certainly for me in my room. My door was closed, and I lay on the bed reading the book, and I would take breaks every 15 or 20 minutes to turn the album. Sometimes I wanted to look at the album instead of the book. The front and back were two different worlds, the front a color shot from a strange angle with a strange lens, a background of thick green foliage in shadow and the browns and blacks of the Beatles and their leather jackets. The back was more of a toss-off, a collection of black and white shots pasted up around the track listing. I was fascinated by the image of Paul smoking a cigarette, holding it in his mouth, eyes closed against the smoke which wreathes his face. The cigarette made it seem grown-up, sophisticated, and hardened. Then I considered the shot of George dressed as a cowboy, in vest and boots and jeans and cowboy hat. It annoyed me somehow. It was too cheeky. I preferred another shot of him with his head tilted, in shadow. And there was Ringo flaunting his rings. John peeking out from a bush.

Another story I read: "The Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connell, first published in 1924, which I ran into later being taught in high school. There's something at once daring and safe about this story—daring in its willingness to embrace the taboo of premeditated murder as sport (and cannibalism and darker regions by implication), and safe in its assumption that the entertainment of such ideas will always be taken as provocative. Today it feels like the world the story was written in had to be safer just by its ability to be so easily shocked. The song I associated with it was the obvious one, that self-consciously very bad song by Lennon, "Run for Your Life"—I mean "very bad" in the transgressive, immoral, juvenile delinquent sense, which thrilled me very much. But it's also one of the few Beatles songs in their whole catalog that has aged most poorly, with that extremely unpleasant and very direct shot of misogyny at the center. But it was a high point for me at the time, I have to admit. It's got a great fast tempo, and it's tuff, and as the last song on the second side I was frequently inspired to stand up on my bed and jump up and down and then right then turn the record over and play it again. Reflex.

I should note that the tones and textures of these songs may arguably be too tight. Many seem almost interchangeable, or maybe that's something about the way I played the album. This was notably the case with "Think for Yourself." I have always been confused about which side of the album it belongs on and I have spoken with others who have the same confusion, and it's always this song—side 1, in case you were wondering. And I wonder sometimes if this isn't also related to missing "In My Life" almost entirely. More likely that's a song I needed to grow into. I think now it's almost certainly the most remarkable song on the album, the one the album should be known by if you had to pick one. It is an amazing song to have been written by a 25-year-old and 23-year-old, Lennon and McCartney, though they later disagreed on who did what and how much. No matter. Few songs anywhere so completely capture and define a feeling that lies on the far side of sentiment. Not nostalgia exactly—not nostalgia at all, I would argue—but simply a poignant awareness that time steals all things but memory, and memory finally fades too with the rememberer, and all that's left are artifacts such as these, and mysteries. The simple lines can be searing: "There are places I remember ... Some have gone and some remain ... Some are dead and some are living ... I know I'll often stop and think about them." The Lennon who'll often stop and think about them has been gone for decades but it's the Lennon I knew and loved best: idealistic, inevitably disappointed, wearing cynicism only as a shallow mask, a last-ditch shield. But holding close—he believed in love as much as any of them, maybe more. Though it may be all you need is love (an inferior song) in the end all we have is each other. That is the wisdom of "In My Life." I also think of it as one of the best examples of a Beatles collaboration. Lennon may be the primary author but he has entirely absorbed McCartney's affinity for gentle affection, and adapted it to his own pain. Fifth Beatle George Martin kicks in a lovely bridge and it's done. The best Beatles song on this album, one of the best they ever made, and only getting better to this day.

Detail: Rubber Soul (1965)

0 Help! (1965)

(There's a less fragmented version here. And see also A Hard Day's Night, now with complete updates, here.)

More on the mess made by the marketing laboratories of early/mid-period Beatles. For the record, I am officially in sympathy with the Beatles who wanted to put chopped-up dolls and cuts of meat on the cover of the US-only Yesterday and Today. It's a travesty. At this point these UK track sequences can still be alienating too. (I still feel like someone midway in transition from a QWERTY to a Dvorak keyboard. It messes with my mind.) Example: WTF is "Dizzy Miss Lizzy" doing here? Or "Yesterday"? They are less like albums (let alone soundtracks) and more like collections of songs that sometimes clump. For this album, the first seven tracks also appeared in the movie and on the US version of the soundtrack. To me they are the core of Help! and then there are some pretty good random Beatles songs and/or weird soundtrack blurts, depending on the version you have or know or prefer. In short: Help! I need somebody.



"Help!"

"The Night Before"—This Paul McCartney song opens up the world of 1965 Beatles proper, behind the hits, among other things making a good start to a puppy love song project, which seems to inform so many songs here. Of course, it was always love, love, love with these guys—if only because ultimately it's the major theme of pop music itself—but the flavors and approaches changed a lot, perhaps nowhere so plain and deliberately as on this otherwise innocuous "soundtrack" album. After years of touring, years of songwriting and studios, years of a train and a room, a car and a room, and a room and a room, they were evidently in the mood for novelty in their songwriting. Point of view, balance of power, the particularity of unique situations—they played with all these elements, with their usual energy and abandon. On "The Night Before," for example, the point of view belongs to the boy, who wants his girl back. She has the balance of power now, but only, perhaps, because he thought he had it in the first place, and was wrong. Which only makes it worse for the foolish singer: "Love was in your eyes ["eye-hee-izz"], ahh, the night before / Now today I find you have changed your mind / Treat me like you did the night before," he begs her helplessly. The chug-chug tempo might be slow (a continuing problem actually with many of the songs on this album) but the point is made, and then the guitar solo by Paul McCartney is made (which Wikipedia characterizes as "terse and stabbing"), and then the point is made again. Give me back my yesterday!

"You've Got to Hide Your Love Away"—Influenced by Bob Dylan and the coming of folk music, this John Lennon song is considered by many, including Paul McCartney, as Lennon simply doing a Dylan impersonation. I don't much hear it that way myself—for one thing, Dylan would never use the fruity flute solo at the break—but OK, sure, the influence is apparent enough. The Beatles more or less gave this song away to another UK act, the Silkie, who made a #10 hit out of their faithful cover in the fall of 1965. Overall its sentiments may be more mature than other songs in the puppy love song project. The object of adoration is nowhere in sight. The singer has been abandoned, and boy, is he bummed. His opinion of how to proceed from here? Denial. Pretend it didn't happen, pretend you aren't feeling the feelings you're feeling, and fob the blame off on "the world" (society) for the necessity of such repressions. Yes, it's only levels of petulance, thus perhaps not really so mature after all, nor that far removed from teen boy and girl concerns. But it's also one of the loveliest songs in their catalog, flute solo and all, convincing because it is so careful and deliberate and stays so close to the sadness. The aggressive macho Lennon everyone forgets is here replaced with the self-pitying Lennon who bleats honesty for betterment of the world. As a conceptual understanding of Lennon that's a bit overdone, but one of its clearest sources is here in this song.

"I Need You"—A George Harrison song, and a very good one, looking forward to Rubber Soul in its way as much as "Tell Me What You See" does, later on this album. One key hook of "I Need You" is the strange, backward-sounding noise Harrison makes on his guitar using a volume pedal—it seems to push against the direction of the song, like a car skidding against wet pavement into sand. That reminds me I should say again that all these songs have the general headlong momentum of the Beatles during this period, the canny and unexpected ways of stitching together pop music. "I Need You" also has a pensive feel to it, which fits the lyrical thrust nicely. In terms of the puppy love song project, "I Need You" falls in the more conventional bin, though perhaps marked by more vulnerability and openness than usual. The point of view is the boy's, and the balance of power falls to the girl. She has left and he wants her back, but he knows he has no hold on her. The song is a plea—for attention, for pity, for anything he can get. It's only about a notch above groveling. Thus the extremities of it, the honesty (searing or otherwise—it's never really moved me much that way), set it apart some. The circumstances and situation described are familiar—make that overfamiliar—to pop songs. But it's the Beatles from arguably their best period, it's George Harrison figuring out how to write Beatles songs, and it has hooks and an endearing mood. It's a winner, that's all.

"Another Girl"—This song and the next are where I was first alerted to the puppy love song project of the core songs in Help!, maybe because they both use the word "girl" in the title and present such strikingly different narratives. "Another Girl" is a Paul McCartney song but not exactly a "silly love song." In fact, it's a good deal like a John Lennon song in attitude. The point of view and the upper hand in this song both belong to the boy, who boasts aggressively to his girlfriend that he can leave her any time (because he has got ... "Another Girl"). Typically, the edge is filed off the dominating sentiment—it's puppy love, remember—by retreating to a more upbeat, positive, even gentle message, meant to distract. The girl addressed may not be a good girl (she's making the singer say he's got nobody but her), whereas the girl on the side, according to the singer, "will love me to the end / Through thick and thin / She will always be my friend." Compare this expression of need and vulnerability with "I ain't no fool and I don't take what I don't want," just a verse or two earlier. Will the real Beatle please stand up? But that's part of the fascination of the project. Sometimes in love the bear eats you, and sometimes you eat the bear. Wait, no, I'm not saying that right. Well, PC or no, I still like "Another Girl" quite a bit, of course, but the song is more intriguing to me now for the light it throws on the Lennon-McCartney collaboration. It was written by McCartney on his own, with no input from any of the others, including Lennon, who is nonetheless fully internalized in it.

"You're Going to Lose That Girl"—Pronounced "you're gonna lose that girl," this song sounds in attitude much like a certain type of John Lennon song, and that's Lennon on lead vocals in his mode of hypermasculine aggression. But it appears it was actually more a genuine collaboration with Paul McCartney. In addition to use of the word "girl" in the title, it ties itself to the previous song with an unusual chord change in the bridge that occurs in both. In the puppy love song project they remain two of the most interesting. "You're Going to Lose That Girl" is also unusual in another way. Its point of view is not of either principal in a relationship, the girl or the boy, but rather a friend of the boy, standing off to the side, speaking frankly. The singer does not like the way he sees his friend treating the girl. The balance of power here is complex. The girl has none, she is in the song only as an object that is coveted and cared for poorly. The boy appears to enjoy most of the power over her. Interestingly the friend, who normally in a situation like this would probably be a bit of a sad sack, instead sounds remarkably sure of himself. "I'll make a point / Of taking her away from you," he boasts (and "yeah!" the backing singers McCartney and George Harrison enthusiastically chime in—everyone's on the singer's side in this one). Things soften again as usual toward the end—"And I will take her out tonight / And I will treat her kind"—but still, it's not the best situation, and the girl is just a cipher. This might just be an argument about whose dick is bigger.

"Ticket to Ride"—With this song we more or less conclude the basic core of Help! essentials, all of which are in the movie, on this album, and on the US version of the soundtrack too. "Ticket to Ride" was also a pretty big hit in its own right, making it up to #1 for a week in May 1965, before the movie was released. It was also much beloved by a particular babysitter of ours, who played the radio when she was watching us. Because of her, I never stopped listening to pop music on the radio. I think "Ticket to Ride" is still pretty well loved, appearing on Rolling Stone lists of this and that and elsewhere. John Lennon claims the authorship, but Paul McCartney, who gets lead guitar duties here again, remembers working closely with him on it. In terms of the puppy love song project, it's reasonably straightforward: abandoned boyfriend POV, he is sad. The girl has the upper hand and indeed appears only as an absence: "She's got a ticket to ride and she don't care," etc. I like the jangly, thumpy, mechanical way it proceeds, but the truth is it's lost much of its appeal for me over the long years. The matter of the title is interesting: some take it for the obvious (she's traveling away), some think it refers to the town of Ryde on the Isle of Wight, and still others speculate it's about health documentation carried by prostitutes in Hamburg, Germany, to assure prospective customers. Well, whatever. Even mediocre Beatles songs from this period have their charms, if only because of the band's unmistakable sound and some nice touches. Here it is the delicate guitar figure on the attack and the big "my baby don't care" finish, spanning whole scales.

"Act Naturally"

"It's Only Love"—Rubber Soul

"You Like Me Too Much"—The second George Harrison song on this album (as it happens, the first since With the Beatles to include Harrison songs at all) bends toward nothing-burger, I'm afraid, which I will lay at the feet of a poky tempo. And juvenile lyrics, which at least bear their own interest in the annals of the ongoing puppy love song project of the wider era. "You Like Me Too Much" was not in the movie and not on the US version of the soundtrack either, relegated instead to Beatles VI. It might be fair to say it's a weak song, but it's unmistakably Beatles of this era and has multiple points in its favor. It's great to hear another Harrison song and also another song with Harrison on lead vocals. The piano intro involved George Martin and Paul McCartney at either end of the keyboard playing at once, a musical figure Bob Dylan later recreated for Blonde on Blonde's "Temporary Like Achilles." In terms of puppy love songs, here we find the boy with the upper hand, bragging. He has nothing to worry about in this relationship and knows it, enjoys it even: "Though you've gone away this morning / You'll be back again tonight," he starts. "You've tried before to leave me / But you haven't got the nerve," he continues. "You'll never leave me and you know it's true," he concludes. But no fears, the reasons are all good, all good: "'Cos you like me too much and I like you," they bawl in harmony. Well, all right. But we'll have to get back to you about the unsettling undertone.

"Tell Me What You See"—All signs are that this song is something of a bastard stepchild, with John Lennon disavowing any part in it and a hazy Paul McCartney thinking he might have written 60% of it, according to Wikipedia, and everybody else more or less hiding their love away. It was another one not in the movie nor on the US version of the soundtrack, but rather packed off to Beatles VI. It must be said it also doesn't have a whole lot of pick up and go, sauntering along at sluggish tempo, though of itself that's not such a problem. The melody takes place in a nice lower register and it's fun to sing with; the lead vocals are a joint effort by Lennon and McCartney. The Everlys harmonies are slowly but surely taking on more of the folk textures then current, with the songwriting, though it's all couched still in terms of the puppy love song project, which I think is actually more the problem. If Help! is the place where the Beatles really made a point of working out the permutations of puppy love songs, "Tell Me What You See" is approximately where they ran out of ideas. The passivity is numbing. I hate to be the grumpy grown-up who does not understand, but look, the yearning that is the point of this song could be eliminated absurdly quickly by speaking up once to the object of adoration. One grows impatient—suck up and tear off the band-aid, etc. Maybe the most interesting feature of the song is the spinet-sounding keyboard at the bridge, foreshadowing some of the baroque textures ahead on Rubber Soul and "In My Life." They would be leaving the puppy love songs behind soon enough, more and more.

"I've Just Seen a Face"—Rubber Soul

"Yesterday"—Speaking of the puppy love song project, here is arguably the biggest, greatest, most insidiously pervasive puppy love song of all time—#1 for four weeks in the fall of 1965 and now with 2,200 cover versions and counting. "Yesterday" came just after the peaks of Beatlemania, shortly after John Lennon's Jesus remark. It was not in the movie. It's the first Beatles song performed by just one member. Though never particularly a favorite I don't despise it either the way some do, such as John Lennon himself so publicly years later. It's obvious in every way that the little shorty (all of 2:08) is a Paul McCartney "silly love song." It's conventional enough that at one point I wanted my parents to listen to it for their opinion. The strings made it classical, or classy, or something (thoughts of a 10-year-old). That was probably the peak of it for me. I think Lennon's raging about it as some kind of hideous abomination was misplaced, of course, some sort of unfortunate Freudian event. Someone might have taken him aside and reminded him Elvis Presley was waist-deep in these waters by 1957. Elvis was the original rock 'n' roll prostitute. That said, there is something undeniably insipid about "Yesterday" too: "Things were so much better in my immediate past, oh boo hoo, la la la" is small-scale at best. But ultimately there's no shame in "Yesterday." McCartney appeared happy to play the role of the heartthrob, teen or otherwise, and this plays very nicely to that. He's sad. He's available. He needs a shoulder. Will it be yours? [SCREAMS] Cha-ching.

"Dizzy Miss Lizzy"—How did this—what the ruck is it doing here? One more homeless Beatles rock 'n' roll cover looking for a place to lay its head, and I think one of their best actually (albeit with naysayers too). First point of confusion: I thought this was on the US album Something New, but it is actually yet another on the US Beatles VI (which incidentally must make the Beatles among the first to that particular Roman numeral). "Dizzy Miss Lizzy" is not in the movie. Second: As best I can tell from a cursory Internet search, it appears that people who don't like "Dizzy Miss Lizzy" don't like the Larry Williams original, arguing it's a knockoff of Little Richard's "Good Golly Miss Molly." But Larry Williams is actually, I think, one of rock 'n' roll's great semi-hidden treasures, chipping in at least one stone classic with "Bonie Moronie"; he never has been a knockoff of Little Richard though obviously he has a similar way with words and names (his biggest hit was "Short Fat Fannie"). John Lennon and Paul McCartney were big fans of Williams (and Little Richard, of course, McCartney's favorite) so no surprise that the Beatles also covered Williams's "Slow Down" and "Bad Boy." There's something maybe a little detached and cerebral about this version of "Dizzy Miss Lizzy," which might in turn be due to yet another somewhat lackadaisical tempo, but George Harrison's guitar is wicked stinging, Lennon's vocal has all the authority of his full roar, with screams, and it sounds unself-consciously in love with rock 'n' roll and with everything about itself, which is infectious. Maybe it shouldn't work, when you break down the elements, but it does.

Detail: Help! (1965)

0 McCartney (1970)

I loved this one-man studio project when it was new, McCartney's first solo release after the Beatles breakup. I was just getting out of junior high and looking forward to high school, and a little unbelieving that the Beatles had picked that moment to break up. I resented the reviews that slagged it as self-indulgent, lightweight fluff—what has become the usual casual knock on Paul McCartney, a deeply wrong view. I considered the one-man studio project aspect of it a positive rather than a negative myself. I thought it was pretty cool he was doing all this himself (what do you want, I was 15). So I had myself a good old infatuation with McCartney, moved on to other things, and eventually in my mind "Maybe I'm Amazed" stood in as the best of what I recalled. But over the years these potent fragments have surfaced one evocative way or another. A radio station randomly played "Momma Miss America" one morning in the '90s on my way to work and ever since it has been among my favorites, a hearty quirky stew of banging piano and fuzzed guitar, and pure rock 'n' roll (recognizing its uneven qualities, but the high points are worth it). Someone on Facebook name-checked "Junk" a day or two after shuffle had memorably put it in my way (it sounded so good I went to check the title). It all culminates on "Maybe I'm Amazed," which felt and still feels almost like a seamless next step for the Beatles, one anyway, or maybe what I mean is it sounds like it could/should be on Abbey Road. Who wouldn't like another Abbey Road song? Still, coming back in recent days, I was surprised by how unsatisfying the slightness of McCartney can be. Thirteen songs, 35 minutes, goes some way toward explaining. What's interesting is how unfinished most of them feel as songs—some wonderful ideas, some great performances, but they mostly feel like finely sculpted parts. Take "That Would Be Something," whose basic lyrical themes are "meet ya in the fallin' rain, mama" and "that would be something." I like the primitive style but it could stand development. Part of what has always been interesting to me about the McCartney/Lennon collaboration is that they were both good at lots of things and often managed to fill in each other's gaps in songwriting. All different ways, supplying a lyric for the chorus, a bridge, a chord change, etc. I'm not suggesting Paul McCartney missed John Lennon here per se, but rather that he missed a collaborator he could consider a pop music equal. Precious few of them exist in the world at any given time, of course, and it was never going to be Linda, God bless her. So part of what makes this album both deficient and fascinating is seeing McCartney's gaps so plainly left unfilled or rounded off.

Detail: McCartney (1970)

0 A Hard Day's Night (1964)

(There's a less fragmented version here.)

For me, with Beatles albums before Sgt. Pepper, it has taken some getting used to the "real" UK tracks and sequencing (not to mention things gone entirely missing since, such as the album Hey Jude, a favorite). It's no bother attempting to sort it out, of course, and indeed the new versions are better in many cases. But I still miss elements of what I knew. The US Hard Day's Night (with red instead of blue album cover art) was one of the first albums I owned, and I played it to death, but it's fairly different from this one. For example, it included an instrumental version of "This Boy" from the movie soundtrack. I'm not even sure that's commercially available now, or where it is if so. Still, the UK version is better, if only because it has more Beatles songs from this great period. Here's about some of them.



"A Hard Day's Night"—That chord—this song—the way it attacks, and moves, the dense textures, the blunt black and white poise. Could the movie possibly have been in color with this for its theme? Even after all the years of withering familiarity and exposure, "A Hard Day's Night" still finds ways in to me—heard in the background at random, in the cover by Alvin & the Chipmunks, or taking to my armchair to study it closely, it can still surprise, and command great force. I don't think I had actually realized until very recently what an object of mystery and veneration the opening chord has become (Randy Bachman outlines the main points in a short and gratifying audio clip here). That's all very interesting—and goes to the musical vocabulary I find myself lacking to describe the intricacies of these pop songs. In fundamental ways pop itself is reinvented here. What else is going on in this song to make it so effective? It's mostly a John Lennon composition, based on a remark Ringo made in an interview about the grueling schedule, which they had been on for years by that point, and it has that vague air of threat in the background Lennon could bring to his songs (more on that below). A big hit—of course—#1 for two weeks in the summer of 1964, with the release of the movie. At "When I'm home," it lunges for the moon, affirming, "Everything seems to be right." Glorious howling vocal at the top of their (and my) range, something you have to reach for pretty deep. A nice scream, then a nice guitar break from George Harrison. Is this helping? I think this could have been the song whoever it was was talking about when they said writing about music is like dancing about architecture.

"I Should Have Known Better"

"If I Fell"—Indications are that the Beatles themselves did not take this song that seriously, introducing it in performance as "If I Fell Over." But that's just their charming way, yes? More or less a John Lennon song, according to the usual signs and sources (that's Lennon singing by himself at the start), it also features those unmistakable Lennon / McCartney close harmonies reminiscent of the Everly Brothers. Part of that effect comes from the two sharing a single microphone, singing cheek to jowl in physical space. This song is also interesting because of the eccentric structure, which is basically all verses, no chorus, and bears many moods and shifts in tone across its 2:22. It launches with the vocal and a run-on tangle of words, then there is a brief pause and the song opens wide with a ratatat snare drum figure and McCartney singing. A small moment but wonderful. The teen puppy love angle here—because teen puppy love is what they did approximately until Bob Dylan introduced them to marijuana—is fear of commitment due to fear of rejection and emotional pain, from the point of view (intentionally or otherwise) of a callow person who only believes he is wise. "If I give my heart to you / I must be sure," the singer firmly avows. Yeah, good luck with that, as ever. There's a slightly unpleasant turn at the end when it becomes apparent in a throwaway that the singer is probably actually contemplating an affair and may be a bit of a rat ("So I hope you see that I / Would love to love you / And that she will cry"). Pure Lennon, actually, who was capable of surprising mean streaks when it came to women (cf. "Run for Your Life"), which is probably why he wrote so many "woman" songs in the '70s. Subject matter rarely matters with early Beatles songs anyway.

"I'm Happy Just to Dance With You"

"And I Love Her"—This was a hit, riding the momentum of the movie and peaking at #12 in August 1964, with "If I Fell" on the flip. It was nearly a year ahead of my radio times, and though it was on the red soundtrack album I knew (also appearing in an instrumental version) I did not connect with it until oldies radio started importuning in about the late '70s. It's really quite beautiful—I don't think it's too much to call it stunning—in a way that harks directly to Buddy Holly, with Paul McCartney's voice plain carrying the melody. Maybe I like it so much because it's easy to sing with, I can really hit some of the important notes and words hard. Maybe it's another case of a nearly perfect song to play on car speakers. But I'm not getting tired of it on any speakers now and I think I would have to rank it high on the list of Beatles ballads. Since it's a ballad, and McCartney does most of the singing, I'm sure you can guess who wrote it. I found this note in Wikipedia that I want to include. I hear a lot about the innovative musicality of the Beatles but I don't have the vocabulary or chops to parse that stuff out for myself. But this seems evocative of things I've heard people say, and important: "A majority of this song switches back and forth between the key of E and its relative minor C#m. It also changes keys altogether just before the solo, to F. It ends on the parallel major of the key of F's relative minor, D. This technique is known as Picardy third resolution." (Me, I just think it feels good to sing with it.)

"Tell Me Why"—Not all the songs on this album are in the movie—nor, for that matter, are all the songs in the movie on this album. But "Tell Me Why" is in both and actually occupies an important part of the movie. Recall that the picture essentially tracks the lads from the end of one show through the events that take them to the next. Along the way we see various fantasies made of their songs, and we see them rehearse, but not until "Tell Me Why" do we see them in live performance. This is "the real deal"—scare quotes mandatory because it's all cinema. But it's tremendously effective, suddenly cutting to a hall full of screaming, weeping girls and this song blasting. It's a John Lennon song so it has an edge to the words, almost confessional in an inside out sort of way. I guess that's based on what we know of Lennon's life at the time, secretly married, unhappily, even while living on the road approximately the kind of life we see in the movie (the famous "train to a room to a car" pursued by thousands of screaming teen girls everywhere constantly). And they were on the road most of the time. But musically "Tell Me Why" is at once so simple and such a bracing explosion of harmony and sound that it almost works like a generic early Beatles song (first honors for that would of course likely go to "She Loves You," which is in the movie but not on this album). "Tell Me Why" appeared on two US albums, the red soundtrack and Something New, which also feels like some nod to the importance it is accorded in the movie.

"Can't Buy Me Love"—A Paul McCartney song and ultimately one of the biggest Beatles hits of all, enjoying a five-week stay at #1 starting in March 1964, approximately the peak of Beatlemania. "Can't Buy Me Love" was the song holding the #1 spot in the historic week of early April 1964 when the Beatles occupied all of the top five positions. It was followed by "Twist and Shout," "She Loves You," "I Want to Hold Your Hand," and "Please Please Me," which means it was also the only song from the Hard Day's Night movie. In fact, after the title song, "Can't Buy Me Love" is probably the most pervasive Beatles tune in the movie, recurring more than once and providing the soundtrack for one of the picture's most iconic montages. Still, I have to say, it's not really a favorite—this could well be a matter of overexposure. Or the missing harmonies, which marks it out a little. Or maybe it's just not that good—it seems a little humdrum, which is not helped by the hackneyed sentiment, the basic "love over gold" business (neatly undercut elsewhere by John Lennon's vocal on the cover of "Money," though of course "love is all you need" was their future). McCartney himself recognized the paradox in the context of their massive world conquest imperial phase going on at the time, telling one interviewer later, acknowledging the strange life they experienced on the ascendant, "It should have been 'Can Buy Me Love.'" Maybe the thought experiment here needs to be, "If there were no other Beatles songs but this one, how would you feel about it then?" Would your answer depend on whether you could remember the disappeared catalog, and what would it be? 

"Any Time at All"—More of a John Lennon song—that's him bleating it out at the attack, albeit with Paul McCartney singing along to shore up some of the high notes, according to Wikipedia, and there's also a section of the song by McCartney, so ultimately a true collaboration. That's the good news. The bad news is there's not much to this one, though it plays well in your all-day Beatles music housecleaning mix, quick and efficient at 2:13, with hard edges and blunt force, a sweet drop or two, and on. The basic position would seem to be declaring oneself open to love, though inexplicably with a bit of a chip on one's shoulder. "Any time at all, all you gotta do is call, and I'll be there," says the singer, but he sounds like he's mad about something. Maybe you shouldn't call right now. Except that might make him even more mad. On the other hand, he softens appreciably a second later. "If you need somebody to love, just look into my eyes," he says, the smoothie, adding later, "If you're feeling sorry and sad, I'd really sympathize." I bet. Oh, how quickly we plunge into these things. So there are questions of sincerity or at least motivation, I think, and some willingness to chalk it all up to another era if you want. It's not for others to judge, there is probably some viable level of identification going on here in terms of gender relations among teens at that time, so leave it at that. McCartney's banging guitar chords and picked-out piano notes in the instrumental break are probably the best part of it.

"I'll Cry Instead"—Another hit song, peaking at #25, also in August 1964, and another John Lennon song too, though more in a country vein. To complicate matters, each version of the soundtrack had a unique version of this song—the US version was a little bit longer. But at any rate it was taken out of the movie late. According to Wikipedia, it was restored in fragment form in a later edit, part of a titles montage, but I never noticed it the last time I looked at the movie. Seems Lennon was into the confessional mode early, as it's another song that speaks by implication to his general unhappiness with the super-mega-star lifestyle in which he was embroiled (trapped). A venting exercise. There's also helpings of the gender hostility he would spend the next decade resisting and apologizing for: "But I'll come back again someday / And when I do, you better hide all the girls, / 'Cos I'm gonna break their hearts all 'round the world," so on so forth. Pretty mild compared to where he could and would go. And typically enough for the Beatles, especially in this early period, it sounds as happy as picnic music anyway, so the angst hardly stands out, even if the song keeps returning to the title theme. For me, this is a great example of all-day Beatles music. You can trace out the sources and elements of individual songs, praise them to the highest skies one at a time, and maybe even make the case for one being greater than another. But for me it's often all just generic Beatles music, sounds good loud on sunny days, and on to the next song. Rinse and repeat. All part of the inherent greatness of the band generally, and this album specifically.

"Things We Said Today"—Did not make it into the movie or the US version of the soundtrack, appearing instead on the US album, Something New, which came out within weeks of the movie. Busy busy, sorting out this mess. Because it was not on the US soundtrack, and I did not own Something New until I was in my 20s, it still feels a bit like a "new" song, unfamiliar in that it was not grooved into me by the age of 14. It's a Paul McCartney song and really takes it around the block, with McCartney's typical bent toward the ballad but also with rapidly shifting tempos and moods, and an aloof yet searing melody. Lennon's acoustic playing has sharply dramatic flourishes that power it up even as McCartney's lyric takes an interesting strategy, projecting nostalgia into the future as he has reportedly said. By the time "Things We Said Today" reaches the chorus it has already traveled widely. In its way it's another example of a perfect Beatles song. There's a hook that grabs attention right away in the acoustic guitar, while the verses bob and weave about, carrying a complex melody that only insinuates itself further the more it is heard. There is an enduring feeling of discovery in it that sends it a long way. I find I can get caught up in ruts of playing it many times consecutively and listening closely. But why is this so effective? Why does it sound so good? Wikipedia has a discussion of the compositional elements so I refer you to that for thoughts on chord and key changes. Sometimes I just feel inadequate about getting at what makes these things work so well.

"When I Get Home"—A John Lennon song, which deliberately or by happenstance echoes a line in the title song, "A Hard Day's Night," although the sentiment there—"When I get home to you I find the things that you do / Will make me feel all right"—seems at first rather different here. The singer announces he has "a whole lot of things to tell her" when he gets home, and they don't necessarily sound like good things. False alarm, he means the best: what he wants is to "love her till the cows come home." The next song, "You Can't Do That," is the better example of this style of Lennon, suspicious and hostile toward women, apparently working out issues of masculinity for the moment by flat assertion and threatening manner—that insecurities thing again, what a hassle. The youth, suits, caps, puppy dog boyish manner, turn in the lyrics, and context of the times paper it over, and it's easy enough, even now, to hear this primarily as the usual wondrous Beatles munge of elements from places like the Everly Brothers, Shirelles, and a lot of years already of playing small clubs and honing their rock 'n' roll. I particularly like the way the song floats up with a big breath from a "whoa" at the bottom of the diaphragm to a keening, falsetto "Ahhhh-eee-I," in the attack and liberally sprinkled along the way. Music to howl with, stamp feet, jump up and down, simulate tantrums. It's otherwise the cocky, strutting Lennon, described in more detail below, that moves this along, with brash impatience and force. Not much to it, but irresistible in its way.

"You Can't Do That"—Another John Lennon song, and a good example of the counter-Lennon, the one popular history has mostly scrubbed, the near misogynist angry strong-man realist who bellowed "Money (That's What I Want)" and whose most ringing moment may have been "Run for Your Life" (as opposed to the gentle punster doodler in wire-rims who staged bed-ins for peace). That Antilennon also appeared in the '70s, as on "Jealous Guy," but it runs so far outside the typical perception of him I think there's a kind of amnesia about it. But it's clearly the thrust of "You Can't Do That," a proto-garage hard rocker, from the title sentiment and aggressive attack in the early seconds forward. In the context of Beatlemania at large, heard through the din of screaming, it's almost cute, like Ricky Nelson playing at the badass in Rio Bravo. But sight unseen, image unknown, it could well be a revelation on the order of "Money." This singer is not a good man. He is surly, snarling—abusive, that overused word—perfectly clear about what he means: "I got something to say that might cause you pain / If I catch you talking to that boy again / I'm gonna let you down / And leave you flat / Because I told you before, oh / You can't do that." One might ask what is meant by "let you down" and "leave you flat," but whatever they are there can't be that much good spin of it. The story gets worse from there, but the song is otherwise a pretty sharp straight-up electric guitar romp, out of the Chicago schools of rhythm and blues (with solos!), and they acquit themselves fine, especially Ringo.

"I'll Be Back"—One more John Lennon song, in another vein. I love the stark drama of it, achieved in a complex of ways: from the switching around between major and minor keys, the flamenco style of strumming the acoustic guitar, the weird aimless structure, the confusing ambiguities of situation described, apparently involving a breakup but told from many angles (foreshadowing the puppy love song project of the next soundtrack album), the abrupt fade. "I'll Be Back" appears and proceeds and disappears again like a visitation. It's thus fitting, I suppose, that the prevailing sentiment is of a haunting or even stalking (thinking of the "Run for Your Life" John Lennon we know from the previous song too), embedded in the title itself, albeit gently, gently. At one point it sounds as if the singer is causing the rupture, making it seem as if it is a caprice on his part, passive aggressive, even cruel, something he has done before. A strange point to make as one is dumping someone, but all right. Maybe there are circumstances. Has she been unfaithful? Has it happened before? Chasing down these and the multiplicity of other nuances of the space between people in relationships would come to be a great preoccupation of theirs, which makes this a fitting last song on the album. Reading up about it on Wikipedia just now, it appears "I'll Be Back" also borrows chords from Del Shannon's "Runaway," a haunted song in its own right. Beautiful—a musical amplification, but also thematic, as "I'll Be Back" may serve as a response to the runaway ... or by the runaway ... a wonderful ambiguity, full of its own tensions. Will this couple make it? Stay tuned.

Detail: A Hard Day's Night (1964)