Love Me Do
Few words need wasting on a gloss interpretation of Love Me Do. The Beatles did not undergo a prolonged public apprenticeship like, say, David Bowie. This is the only genuinely artless song they put out as a single. Its stark baldness made it stand out then, as it does even 50 years later (that and the harmonica hook). From here on in The Beatles recording career is a stairway to heaven.
A small thing can said about sound and their associations. Love Me Do is a dry record, little or nothing in the way or reverb or signal distortion is applied. This was contrary to music industry practice at the time. As their recording career developed George Martin created a sparse and defined sound for The Beatles. The Beatles played on their own records. There were not massed ranks of session musicians to bolster the sound. On stereo mixes instruments were mixed clearly and widely separated. Any effect used was usually brief and for a definite purpose.
The sound of the Beat Combo evolved through the impact of certain drugs into psychedelic rock and eventually progressive rock. I can never find the quote but I remember hearing one of the Grateful Dead describe how they would be playing one of the Merry Pranksters acid tests. They’d drop acid, start playing a song like (I’m a) Roadrunner and 20 minutes later they’d still be playing, wondering where the time just went.
Sounds and arrangements have specific associations that are more than just changing fashion. Recreational drugs are of course crucial. Let’s not forget drug taking does not evolve in an abstract manner. Being illegal they are often subject to dramatic changes in the relation of supply and demand. They also suit certain times and places better than others. For example, who wants to get into consciousness expansion during an economic depression?
There will be changes in sound when there are changes in the use of music. Is the music you generally listen to about private contemplation, e.g. personal sound-tracking, or is it about public congregation, e.g. dance? Dance music, the kind of music The Beatles made early on, is sparse and simple.
Money
In his essay, The Disappearing Decade, Ian MacDonald contended that the Counterculture of the 60s, which overlapped in various ways with the New Left, was a reaction against the actual revolution (for want of a better word) going on in the decade; ordinary people desiring materially affluent and liberated lives. In other words the 60s gave birth to the 80s.
Despite many perceptive observations the essay misses the point. Firstly about the Counterculture/New Left connection, they were not nearly as closely bound as they appeared. Primarily though the problem is with the 80s. It may have seemed to Ian MacDonald, almost certainly a disappointed leftie, that the 80s were when everyone became a suburban scumbag. It seemed that way to a lot of people in the 90s, but that is the official narrative, and history is always written by the winners. Thatcher’s party never won a majority of the public to its agenda. One of Thatcher’s political strengths was realising the uses of active minorities. The Tories prevailed thanks to her official opposition, who spurned every chance to derail her government. The result of Thatcherism was to send Britain on a course of widening class division and growing poverty. The working class lost out thanks to her, if the majority understand that now, many people knew it even then.
This brings us on to one of the best Beatle covers on record: Money. The Beatles transformed the arrangement and thereby the meaning of this song, from a loose swing to an impatient shout. It can be taken as a paean to avarice, but in many ways it sums up what money and fame meant to four (broadly speaking) working class lads: “I wanna be free!” To begin with The Beatles worked on the assumption they would have a few years prime earning ahead of them. If they had not thought about it they were endlessly reminded by journalists, who seemed always anxious to ask “how long do you think it will last?” or “what will you do when it’s over?”
According to Paul, the first thing John did after finding himself truly rich for the first time was buy box after box of Jaffa Cakes and stuff himself silly. That was freedom for John.
Norwegian Wood
I learned only recently that the working title of this song was its subtitle, this bird has flown. It’s a well known exercise in Dylan-esque bluff, about an affair John had with a journalist, with a casually melodramatic ending. There is a theory about the lyric which, if true, makes the song even more acidic.
Shortly before writing the song John was given a present by his then wife, Cynthia, a mechanical bird singing from inside a cage. The bird seemed to sum up his predicament, as he saw it, stuck in his Fat Elvis period. “This bird has flown” in this context means “I’m leaving you”. He didn’t leave for another two and a half years, so mired was he in his life. All in all it’s a stunningly cruel song.