Thursday, December 28, 2017

Good Morning Good Morning

Good Morning Good Morning is one of the only true rockers that the Beatles recorded during the psychedelic year of 1967.  That year was completely overlooked on the Rock and Roll Music compilation album, but it could surely have been represented by this track.

John Lennon told the group's biographer Hunter Davies that he got the idea for the song from having the television on one day and hearing a Kellogg's Corn Flakes commercial.  It gave him only a title, however - the lyrics he subsequently came up with have nothing to do with the advertisement.  This reflection on everyday boredom is placed near the end of the album Sgt. Pepper, perfectly setting up the final track A Day in the Life.
Work began on the recording of the song on February 8th, 1967, with the group making eight attempts at the basic track before succeeding.  As Ringo played his drum kit, Paul stood beside him and simultaneously played the floor tom, helping out with Lennon's notoriously tricky time changes.  Four of the eight takes still broke down, including take one which can be heard on the 2017 Super Deluxe Edition box set of the album.  On each of these takes, John played electric rhythm guitar and George was relegated to tambourine, which turned out to be his only contribution to the entire track.

On February 16th, Paul added a bass line and John overdubbed a lead vocal.  Both Anthology 2 and the 50th Anniversary Edition feature the track at this stage of its development.  The song was then set aside for weeks while John pondered over what to add to it.  He eventually decided that a brass section was what was needed, and he knew exactly who he wanted to play it.  The Beatles had worked with a group called Sounds Incorporated both in Hamburg and on their 1965 North American tour.  Only two members remained from the earlier lineup, but six current members of Sounds Inc. arrived at Abbey Road Studios on March 13th to record with the world's most famous band.  After drinking tea and being among the first to listen to some of the finished Pepper tracks, they were put through their paces by John for roughly three hours until he got the sound he wanted.

The track then sat dormant again until March 28th when a stinging electric guitar solo was added by Paul.  John then double-tracked his lead vocal in places, and he and Paul overdubbed the "good morning, good morning" backing vocals.  Afterwards, John and engineer Geoff Emerick spent hours discussing the sequence of animal sound effects that Lennon had chosen to use during the song's fadeout.  Most of those effects were compiled from the EMI vaults in the pre-dawn hours before they went home.

Those effects were overdubbed the following evening, March 29th.  One effect was placed just before the music begins - the crowing rooster, thus tying the song in with the Kellogg's Corn Flakes ad which had inspired it.  Days later, as the album was being sequenced at the mixing stage, the clucking hen at the end of the effects syncing up with the sound of an electric guitar at the start of the Sgt. Pepper reprise was discovered by Emerick and producer George Martin.  This proved to be a brilliant final touch, though the edit on the mono mix, usually the superior version, is not nearly as good as that on the stereo mix.

Monday, December 18, 2017

Good Day Sunshine

As songwriters and performers, the Beatles took inspiration from many different sources.  McCartney claims that the song Daydream by the Lovin' Spoonful, which was a big hit in the spring of 1966, was partly his inspiration to write Good Day Sunshine while sitting out at Lennon's house on a sunny day.

It was one of the last songs to be recorded for the album Revolver, with all of the work being done on two consecutive days.  On June 8th, the basic track was attempted three times, though the first proved to be the best.  While some sources have Paul playing bass guitar, he was otherwise occupied playing piano on this basic track, so either John or (most likely) George played the bass part, and Ringo stuck to his drums.  Vocals were then added to take one, both Paul's lead vocal and John and George's backing vocals.

All other overdubs were added on June 9th.  These included more expressive piano and drum parts by Paul and Ringo to augment their work on the basic track.  The honkytonk piano solo was, of course, played by producer George Martin, recorded at a slightly slower speed so it would sound faster when played at normal speed on the finished track.  Paul, John and George also added additional vocal harmonies to overlap at the end of the song, an effect not unlike one used on their current single Paperback Writer.  A few handclaps by all four Beatles rounded out the work on the track.

The great conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein was so impressed by the song's construction that he took the time to praise it on a CBS news program in 1967.  Indeed, coming in at only two minutes and eight seconds, it does contain more than the average number of clever tricks for such a brief song.  And the ending features one of the only times that the Beatles resorted to a modulation for effect.

Good Day Sunshine opens side two on both the British and American versions of the LP Revolver.  Except for its appearance on one mail-order compilation in the 1980's, the song has never surfaced again anywhere in the group's catalog.  Paul did choose to record the tune anew for his 1984 film Give My Regards to Broad Street, with George Martin once again serving as producer.  And he has revived it a number of times for his stage act over the years. 

Wednesday, December 13, 2017

Golden Slumbers

Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight was recorded as one continuous number right from the very first take.  Since I have already covered Carry That Weight in a previous post, some of this information will necessarily be redundant, and the post itself will be rather short.

Like the other Beatles, Paul McCartney never learned to read music, even though he made some attempts to do so over the years.  While sitting at the piano in his father's house one day, he found a music book with a song called Golden Slumbers.  He liked the lyrics by a contemporary of William Shakespeare named Thomas Dekker, but as they were set to music that he could not decipher, he decided to make up his own tune.  He wrote a single verse to open the song, then used Dekker's words as a refrain before repeating his own verse one more time, the whole composition running only about a minute and a half in duration.

The basic track, consisting of Paul on piano, George on bass and Ringo on drums, was laid down on July 2nd, 1969.  Over the next two days, numerous overdubs were added, most of them to Carry That Weight.  Vocals were also overdubbed, with only Paul singing in the Golden Slumbers section of the track.  He deliberately chose to work against the lullaby aspect of the lyrics, using a strident voice to deliver Dekker's words.

The final overdub featured a thirty-piece orchestra recorded on August 15th, with producer George Martin conducting his own impeccable arrangement.  On the album Abbey Road, the song appears after the only true break in the side two medley, almost as if it is the beginning of a second movement in the overall structure.    

Wednesday, December 6, 2017

Glass Onion

John Lennon began writing Glass Onion in 1968 to both mock and confuse those who sought to find deep meaning in the lyrics of the Beatles' songs.  Of course, the group had opened themselves up to such scrutiny when they decided to print all of their lyrics on the back cover of the Sgt. Pepper album in 1967.  They continued the practice later that year by printing the lyrics of the Magical Mystery Tour soundtrack tunes, including I Am the Walrus, an early attempt to befuddle fans which only succeeded in adding fuel to the fire.

Lennon chose not to be obscure the second time around, making direct references to his songs Strawberry Fields Forever, I Am the Walrus and, interestingly enough, three songs by Paul - Lady Madonna, The Fool on the Hill and Fixing a Hole.  Plus he throws in the deliberately misleading line, "Well, here's another clue for you all.  The walrus was Paul."

When the Beatles met at George's house in May of 1968 to record demo versions of the songs proposed for the "White Album," Lennon only had one verse written as can be heard on Anthology 3.  He plays it three times through, double-tracking his acoustic guitar and vocal, occasionally slipping into gibberish when he forgets his own words, and slowing down significantly in the middle of the verse the last time around.

At some point during the summer, he and Yoko stopped over at McCartney's house for some help in completing the song.  This had been the songwriting duo's process for a few years, though it was now happening much less frequently.  It is, in fact, surprising to learn that it was still going on at all at this late date, but Paul specifically recalls this visit, and claims to have made a few small contributions to the lyrics.

The Beatles did not begin work on the track until September 11th, during producer George Martin's extended holiday from the ongoing sessions for the album.  Young Chris Thomas sat in as producer in the interim.  With John on acoustic and George on electric guitars, plus Paul on bass and Ringo on drums, they recorded thirty-four takes of the basic track before settling on take thirty-three as the best.  The next evening, September 12th, John recorded his lead vocal and Ringo added tambourine.
More drums were overdubbed on the 13th, as well as a piano part played by Paul.  One tiny little detail was added during a session on the 16th by having Paul play a four-note phrase on recorder after the reference to The Fool on the Hill.

John returned to the song on September 26th and compiled tapes of sound effects on four separate tracks - a ringing telephone, breaking glass, a soccer announcer shouting, "It's a goal!" and an organ playing one note.  He inserted these sounds into the song at various points and ended it with the breaking glass and the soccer announcer repeating several times for the fadeout.  The mono mix made of this version can also be heard on Anthology 3.

Once George Martin returned from his holiday and heard the track, he suggested that he could write an arrangement that would serve the song better than the sound effects, and John actually agreed.  So, on October 10th, 1968, a string octet recorded Martin's score, which takes the track to an eerie place unlike the previous version, especially in its ominous fadeout.

We always hear stories of the group's disintegration beginning in earnest during the five-month long sessions for this album, but the basic track on this and many other songs from this period has all four Beatles playing together as well as ever.  John's acoustic guitar can barely be heard in the mix, but the sharp jabs of George's electric guitar and Ringo's drums are tight and precise.  And Paul's bass rarely sounded nastier.  All of this, combined with Lennon's acknowledgement of his partner's work in the lyrics, presented a unified effort on their most disjointed and most fascinating album.