Tag Archives: the beatles

#1137: The Beatles – Rocky Raccoon

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When I first heard ‘Rocky Raccoon’ by the Beatles for the first time, I want to say I had a reaction that was very similar to this YouTuber’s. Coming up as the third round in that animal “trilogy” on the White Album after ‘Blackbird’ and ‘Piggies’, it had me thinking this song was going to be a song about a raccoon. Interesting to say the least, but we’ll see how it goes. Then Paul McCartney comes in with the exaggerated Southern drawl in the introduction. I thought it sounded too silly. I made fun of it a bit, was ready to dismiss the whole thing entirely. But then, McCartney starts singing for real, and I was sort of spellbound. I don’t think I realised that I liked the song that much until I started singing it spontaneously a period of time afterwards. Goes to show, you’ve got to give every song a chance.

‘Rocky Raccoon’ isn’t about an actual raccoon, by the way. Doesn’t stop me from imagining these anthropomorphic creatures acting out the song’s storyline. Set in the Wild West with those cowboy hats and everything, very clear imagery. Anyway, that’s what the song is importantly, a story. It’s pretty much spelled out in the lyrics. The titular character checks into a hotel to get revenge on a man (who calls himself Dan) who’s ‘stolen’ his girlfriend. The girl’s name is Lil McGill, but everyone knows her as Nancy. Rocky Raccoon challenges Dan to a showdown. Dan shoots him quick on the draw and Rocky loses. Rocky recovers miraculously fast and goes back to the hotel to lick his wounds. And at points of this storytelling come some jumpy, upbeat honky-tonk piano breaks (provided by George Martin) to really tie the pieces together.

I don’t know how Paul McCartney does it. The melody used throughout his so simple, but so memorable. Almost like a lullaby. Shouldn’t be surprised as the guy’s pretty much a master of melody, so much so it left a lot of his peers and bandmates stumped. But a song with a name like ‘Rocky Raccoon’ could go badly so easily. Good thing it was McCartney who wrote it. Also without it, we wouldn’t have Rocket Raccoon in Guardians of the Galaxy. That’s a movie series I’m not very keen on myself. But what I’m getting at is that its influence and legacy goes out farther than just music. The track is very Paul, but you’ve got to hand it to the other bandmembers for their contribution the song’s sound. George Martin’s aforementioned piano performance livens up proceedings, and to reinforce the country-western vibe, John Lennon provides a harmonica part for what would be the final time on a Beatles recording.

#1087: The Beatles – Rain

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The story of how I came to know ‘Rain’ by the Beatles is short and very, very simple. Back in 2009, I downloaded the 2006 LOVE remix album – one that introduced me to a lot of Beatles tracks before I went ahead and sought out most of their proper discography. On the version of ‘All You Need Is Love’ that closes that album out, little splices of other Beatles songs come in during the repeated ‘Love is all you need’ mantra. A harmonised ‘Rain, I don’t mind’ came in at about 2:53 seconds in. I liked the little refrain. I typed in ‘rain i don’t mind’ into Google, ‘rain i don’t mind beatles’ came up as the autocomplete option. The music video was the first search result. And that was that. I was already on a Beatles kick as it was, and now another hit was added to the collection.

‘Rain’ was written by John Lennon and recorded by the band during the sessions out of which came Revolver in the summer of 1966. As any Beatles fan will know, the track didn’t appear on that LP. It had already been released as the B-side to ‘Paperback Writer’ months earlier. Now, you hear the term ‘B-side’ and you automatically think, “Well, it’s probably not that good than all the other songs that made the album, or the track on the flip side.” But every Beatles fan will tell you you’re wrong and that ‘Rain’ is actually one of the band’s best and one of their most underappreciated because of the ‘B-side’ status. There’s nothing to deep about it, Lennon sings about how the weather shouldn’t affect the way we think, particularly when it rains, and that it’s our minds that bring us up or down no matter how things are when you look at the sky in the morning. If there is something deep there, I’ve yet to see it. Seems to be a what you see is what you get situation. But Lennon was doing a lot of drugs in that time, so anything’s possible.

Apart from the fact that is just an outright solid tune, melody and the rhythm working together perfectly, there’s a bunch of other aspects about it that separate from those other songs that you’ll hear from day-to-day. Like how the band actually recorded the backing track (guitars and drums) at a much faster speed before it was slowed for the vocals and bass guitar to record over it. Lennon also took great pride in being the first person to incorporate backwards vocals into a song, something he was motivated to do after getting high one night and mistakenly putting a reel of tape on the wrong way round and being astounded by what he heard. Even though Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr didn’t necessarily play together on the song, the former overdubbed his bass guitar later as I said, the two are still locked in unison, providing one of the best rhythm section performances in the Beatles catalogue. Starr was particularly proud of his drumming. When you witness the speed at which he did it, you can see why. I think this song’s great. Gotta say I prefer this version of the video though.

#1036: The Beatles – Piggies

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Here it is. Everybody’s favourite George Harrison song from the White Album. Only kidding. I’m quite sure that ‘Piggies’ brings about some polarizing opinions. Some may think it’s fine. Others will probably turn to you and say they can’t stand the thing. If you were to ask me, I would gladly listen to this track a hell of a lot more than ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’, which would be something of sacrilege to many, many people. I’ve just never been able to get into it. I mean, it’s all right. A bit melodramatic for me. The Anthology 3 version’s beautiful though. If Lennon and McCartney got their solo acoustic songs on the double album, then ‘Gently Weeps’ should definitely have been Harrison’s time to shine.

But anyway. ‘Piggies’, yes. The track’s another one of Harrison’s spiteful compositions made in order to make a commentary on an aspect of society. He first did it with ‘Taxman’ in 1966. While that was a satirical comment on, well, how much money was taken from him through taxes, ‘Piggies’ arrives as a biting piece on the rich in general. Harrison paints a picture of a world wherever everyone exists as pigs. The little (poorer) piggies are scrounging around, trying to make ends meet. The bigger (rich) piggies are ignorant to what goes on ‘below’ them as they strut around in their ‘starched white shirts’, and what Harrison suggests is that these bigger piggies need a smack to make them see sense.

Is the imagery a bit too on the nose and obvious? I mean, I guess so. But you couldn’t say that the musical shifts and the melodies aren’t interesting at the very least. The track goes with a great baroque and regal approach, led by a grand string arrangement courtesy of the main man George Martin and a harpsichord – which also has its own little solo – played by engineer Chris Thomas. It’s a track littered with totally unexpected moments. The movement and key change from those opening verses to the “In their sties…” middle part should have no right sounding as good as they do. There’s that little riff that plays after the “They don’t care what goes on around” lyric, which always sounds good to my ears. And for whatever reason, just when you think the song’s finished, Harrison comes in with a monotone ‘One more time’ before the strings blare out this rousing flourish to properly finish it off. I’ve come so used to it I can more or less say the phrase at the exact time Harrison says it. But it would certainly leave some people scratching their heads.

#1024: The Beatles – Penny Lane

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I’m sure I’ve told this anecdote before, but it was seeing the videos for ‘Penny Lane’ along a few Beatle promos (‘Hey Bulldog’, ‘The Night Before’) that fully changed my mind about seeing what all this hype about the Beatles was. In fact, I am certain I have, because I dedicated a whole post to it in about 2014. To summarise that post, I wasn’t really sure about the Beatles before 2009, but then the Rock Band game came out alongside the remasters. VH1 had a timeslot dedicated to Beatles videos. ‘Penny Lane’ was one of them, and upon hearing the music and seeing the jovial chemistry between these four people on-screen – plus, the supposed agreement that this was the best band of all time – I sent myself into the void and ended up researching everything there was to know about the group.

‘Penny Lane’ is one of my favourite Beatles songs. Years after humming the track to myself on the way to school when I was 14, it still brings a happy feeling when those ringing bass notes mark the sudden introduction. But it’s not just for nostalgia’s sake that I appear to be clinging onto this one for some sort of support. Just in general, the track is executed to perfection. Paul McCartney wrote a song about a street in Liverpool he would frequently pass through as a kid, mirroring the same approach John Lennon took on for ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’. While that track became the experimental psychedelic exhibition, ‘Penny Lane’ was much straighter in approach whilst still maintaining a regal air about it with all the woodwinds and trumpets and other instrumentation that were more typical of an orchestra than a rock band.

As I said earlier, the music video played a big part in me wanting to find out more Beatles stuff. In the context of their careers, it was made at the point where the Beatles made it clear they weren’t going on tour anymore. The videos for ‘Strawberry Fields’ and ‘Penny Lane’ were also revealed after an extended break, in which people were wondering if the Beatles bubble had burst and they were heading for a split. They came back with moustaches and promo videos where they weren’t lipsyncing to the words or ‘playing’ their instruments. They make it most clear in this one in a very obvious manner. They ride past their instruments on their horses as if they are above them, to say ‘we’re not doing that stuff anymore’. When John Lennon starts saying “In Penny Lane” at 1:46, the camera switches to another scene as if to say ‘Nope. We don’t do that here.’ And when they are actually handed their instruments at the end, they pretend they have no idea what they are and start fiddling about with them, while Lennon flips a table over because he didn’t get his guitar. It’s a funny, little anti-music video, signifying that these boys were now men. Men with funny looking moustaches.

#1013: The Beatles – Paperback Writer

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Hey, look at that, it’s a Beatles song. So now comes the problem in how I can possibly approach this post without writing something that you can already find online… I think I just have to accept that when it comes to Beatles material, you can’t really write anything without regurgitating something that’s already been said or researched. But that’s why I have to put my own personal angle in there. Thinking about ‘Paperback Writer’, I don’t think it was one by the band where I heard it the first time and was instantly amazed. It’s only just over two minutes in length, but 14-year-old me needed those extra listens for it to all come together. It did. Thirteen years later, it feels just as good when those opening vocal harmonies come in.

Recorded during the sessions for what would become Revolver in 1966, Paul McCartney was inspired to write the track by his aunt, who suggested he write about something other than love for a change, and after he saw Ringo Starr reading in the backstage area of a venue. He and John Lennon got together, wrote the lyrics in the form of a letter from an aspiring writer who wants to get their book published and eventually worked on the track with George Harrison and Ringo Starr in the studio over two days in April ’66. Continuing their quest on experimenting in the studio, which properly started on sessions for the previous album, the group changed the line-up configuration to record the song’s backing track, with McCartney on lead guitar (he plays the riffs and the chugging lines during the verses), Harrison playing the rhythm, Starr on the usual drums and Lennon on tambourine. They did it in two takes, with the second being used for the final cut. That’s all they needed.

Got a lotta love for this power-pop number. With the Revolver Super Deluxe box set that came out a few months ago, some commenters were quick-witted to notice the huge similarity between the main guitar riff here and what would be used for the horns in ‘Got to Get You into My Life‘. Never would have put two and two together. Clearly, this was a melody McCartney had had in his head, so to make two songs out of it is quite something. Yeah, the riff’s cool, but there has to be huge props given to the bass guitar. Using a Rickenbacker bass instead of his signature Hofner and aided with some engineering know-how by Geoff Emerick, the low end has a fatter groove and provides a real drive to everything that’s happening. Plus, do like the Frère Jacques backing vocals by Lennon and Harrison in the final verses. Why they chose to sing that, I don’t know. But it just works. So, there you have it. Another Beatles post done. There’ll be more to come.