Abbey Road: Side One

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The Music of the Beatles

414 calificaciones

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University of Rochester

The Music of the Beatles

414 calificaciones

The Music of the Beatles will track the musical development of the band, starting from the earliest days in Liverpool and Hamburg, moving through the excitement of Beatlemania, the rush of psychedelia, and the maturity of Abbey Road. While the focus will be on the music, we will also consider how recording techniques, the music business, the music of other artists, and the culture of the 1960s affected John, Paul, George, and Ringo as they created the Beatles repertory. There is probably no band or artist that has had more written about their music than the Beatles. There are many good books on the band's biography, several insider accounts offering glimpses behind the scenes, books that interpret the meaning of the songs, and even books that catalog dates and people regarding the band. This course will try to synthesize much of that information into an account of the Beatles' development as musicians and songwriters.

De la lección

Get Back

Once there was a way to get back home. The Get Back sessions embrace a return-to-simplicity approach but are aborted. Abbey Road attempts to get back to the band's previous manner of working. Let It Be combines material from Get Back with newly recorded tracks. Abbey Road, Let It Be, and singles from this period.

The Grand Finale: Abbey Road10:08

Abbey Road: Side One5:49

SCU - Here Comes the Sun, Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, I Want You (She’s So Heavy)14:39

Conoce a los instructores

John Covach
Professor of Music and Director
Institute for Popular Music

We turn now to side one of Abbey Road. And six songs come together by John.

Something by George.

Maxwell's Silver Hammer by Paul. Oh!

Darling by Paul. Octopus's Garden by Ringo.

And I Want You (She's So Heavy) by John, in that playing order.

I will, in the next video, in the song close-up, take a little closer look

at Maxwell's Silver Hammer and I Want You (She's So Heavy), as well as, Here Comes

the Sun, which, strictly speaking, is on the

first, is the first song on the second side.

But we'll do it before we talk about the big Paul second side in the next video.

So I'm going to save my comments on Maxwell's Silver Hammer, and I Want

You (She's So Heavy) for that close-up that follows in the next video.

Let's have a look, consider for a minute

John's song Come Together.

Again, it's another one of these John wordplay kind of tunes where

he's the, the songs don't literally make any sense but they put together

things and interesting and fun of kinds of combinations It's

further interesting that he seems to have lifted a line from a Chuck Berry song.

And Chuck Berry found out about

it, you know, and you don't really, you

don't really not pay Chuck Berry his copyright royalties.

And so I think that what ended up happening, you

can correct me on the, on the in the forum.

If, if, if you know, if you know the

story more accurately than what I'm about to say.

But I think the way that they settled it, is that John told

Chuck Berry that he would do an album where he would feature a number

of Chuck Berry songs.

And of course, if John Lennon does an album where sings a

bunch of Chuck Berry songs, Chuck Berry gets the publishing on all that.

And so that was the way they sort of settled this,

this little thing was for John to record some of Chuck's

songs as John Lennon the Beatle, and of course sold tons

and tons and Chuck Berry made tons and tons of money.

The idea of Come Together, especially the way it

seems like John is saying at the beginning, shoot me

maybe referring to to heroin, but of course, the

way things ended so tragically for him In 1980.

It now it's now kind of spooky to listen to him

sing those, those lines at the beginning of course it's the

wordplay here is very, very much reminiscent of what we talked

about earlier this wee-, in one of the earlier videos this week.

Dig a Pony, you know And, and also I've Got

a Feeling.

This sort of wordplay kind of thing that goes

back to things like Happiness is a Warm Gun.

And even back before that. And it's a simple verse form.

So from that point of view it's a

very straightforward almost kind of blues-based kind of tune.

George Harrison's Something we already talked about a little bit as an AABA form.

We won't say too much more about it here.

Except that it stands up pretty well to Come Together, and the song

that follows Something which is Paul's Maxwell's Silver Hammer.

That being a tune we'll talk about in the next close up.

I'll just say now that if you think about the sequencing so far of

this first side, Come Together, Something, and

Maxwell's Silver Hammer, three very different sounding tracks.

And not just because they're

by three different songwriters But in a way very similar to

what they had done with the White Album and with Sergeant Pepper.

And even going back to things like

Revolver and Rubber Soul, we're getting a selection

of tunes that all sound like, in many ways, they could be a different band.

And we've talked a bit about that, kind of that wide variety of different sounds and

stylistic approaches, the Beatles were able to get

away with early on, because they were the Beatles.

Now, of course, they've been so influential a lot

of groups are doing this kind of thing, but we

see that as a consistent feature that, that takes

us, that shows us the continuity with their earlier work.

Following Maxwell's Silver Hammer, we get Paul doing Oh!

Darling.

This one very clearly in a 50s style.

And so this brings us back to the idea of Paul

as we talked about on the White Album sort of going for

earlier styles.

That's another way in which you're sort of trying to get back

and trying to get back to his roots and that kind of thing.

This one in AABA form and we can think of it maybe as most clearly

related to something like Lady Madonna or going back to an

earlier style like something like I Will did on, on the White Album.

Octopus's Garden, the Ringo song

we already talked about with regard to his his being inspired by the the habits of

octopuses or octopi, whatever the plural of that is at the bottom of the ocean.

And then John's I Want You (She's So Heavy) which

we'll spend more time talking about in the next video.

So as we look over side one, just to kind of

get an overview of that side that was put together,

because that's the way John Lennon wanted it to go.

We get six very different and very contrasting

tunes that all of which when we, especially when

I, when I try to make these connections

with regard to Maxwell's Silver Hammer and I Want

You all of these really reach back and

connect up with so many other things the Beatles

have done up to this point, when we listen to those and look at those songs together.

Come Together,

Something, Maxwell's Silver Hammer, Oh!

Darling, Octopus's Garden, and I Want You (She's So Heavy).

So in the next video let's take a much closer look at Here

Comes the Sun, Maxwell's Silver Hammer and I Want You (She's So Heavy).

[BLANK_AUDIO]

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