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.
SCU - The Inner Light, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Piggies
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Del curso dictado por University of Rochester
The Music of the Beatles
394 calificaciones
De la lección
A Co-Op of Singer-Songwriters
The White Album both begins a return to roots while also continuing the musical experimentation of the earlier music, but now each song is less of a group effort. Creative differences arise. The White Album and singles from this period.
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John CovachProfessor of Music and Director
Institute for Popular Music
Now we take a look at the George Harrison songs.
Again, I've chosen these songs because with an eye toward trying to point out
things within the the overall kind of arch of interpretation that I've been offering.
Start with the Inner Light. This is a track That
we could see as maybe the last of the George Harrison, Indian music kind
of tunes that he does, with the Beatles.
And we can follow that, that track, that string all the way back to him.
Playing sitar on the John Lenon Norwegian Wood song.
On on, on Rubber Soul.
And then forward to Love You To, Within You Without You, Blue Jay Way, which we
said was a very kind of easterny kind
of thing without without Indian instruments in it.
And this
one The Inner Light an interesting track in many ways recorded in Bombay.
In January of 1968 at least the, the Indian musicians were recorded in Bombay
as part of the wonderwall sessions for George's solo album Wonderwall.
Then they brought it back to Abbey Road in February 1968 and added at the
vo, the vocals and you've got some John and Paul singing along with George at
the end of the track.
And so it, it gets released as the B-Side to Lady.
Madonna.
And in many ways stylistically I think we would want to connect this one up with
Long, Long Long which I was talking about at the end of the last video
because Long, Long, Long is an awful lot like the Inner Light except Long Long
Long is doesn't use Indian instrumentation, and
is probably a better indication of where John,
George is going with these more sort of prayerful
songs than the Inner Light is, the Inner Light
kind of marks the end of this sort of
reveling in Indian instruments and then, sort of an Indian.
Vibe and atmosphere in the tune.
What I find particularly interesting in this one is that this, The
Inner Light, the lyrics to The Inner Light are based on a verse
from the Tae Te Ching I'm probably pronouncing
that wrong, sorry for my Chinese pronunciation on that.
It turns out that a guy a scholar who
had translated that or was a scholar in Chinese studies.
Sent George a copy of the Tao Te Ching and, and said, you know,
maybe you could use some parts of this in, in one of your songs.
Knowing that George had an enthusiasm for Eastern philosophy.
Turns out that if you look in verse
47 of the standard English translation, you'll hear.
You'll see almost I mean, George paraphrases it, but not much.
In this way, we are really, there's not much distinction between what George is
doing with the Inner Light and what John did in Tomorrow Never Knows.
Where John took something from the back of Timothy Leary's The
Psychedelic Experience, paraphrased it a bit, and turned it into lyrics.
Here
George takes something on Tao Te Ching paraphrases
it a little bit and turns it into lyrics.
So the interesting thing is not only that he does that, but that he does that
in a band where there's a song writer
John Lennon who's been doing that a bit already.
So you can see the interaction, the influence
really of what John's been doing in George's music.
And you know what?
It's not the only track that we're talking about here that does that.
As we turn to While My Guitar Gently
Weeps, nobody thinks about that song as being.
Particularly influenced by Eastern philosophy or Chinese
philosophy that kind of thing it seems
like a kind of a you know kind of a blues balladish kind of tune
for Pete's sake its got Eric Clapton doing lead guitar solos, classic lead guitar
solos on a what could possibly Tomorrow Never Knows about this tune but as it
turns out the.
Well, the lyrics to My Guitar Gently Weeps were
actually inspired by the I Ching and by chance.
So, as the story goes, you know, the I Ching is a book of, of chance.
You're throwing sticks or various kinds of things to be
able to kind of Figure out from that and then
consult in the book a kind of to, to achieve
a kind of wisdom or get some advice or, or,
or things about what's going on or the future, this kind of thing.
I'm doing a very terrible job of, of summarizing I Ching,
and I don't mean anybody to be offended by this or think
that I'm sort of not taking it seriously or whatever, I'm
just trying to set the story up and really mean no disrespect.
But nevertheless George by chance, you know his, the first word
he falls on in the I Ching is weeps and then sort
of reads a little bit around it and then begins to write
the song out of that experience sort of basing it, and again.
How is this so different from John Lennon's seeing
a bad, an add for baby formula and writing Cry
Baby, Cry or an ad for a gun ad or
a gun magazine and writing Happiness is a Warm Gun.
It's a very similar kind of procedure. The music may,
the lyrics themselves may be influenced by an Eastern
source but the music itself is markedly not Eastern.
It's also not very psychedelic.
From that point of view.
And again, there's a real sort of character.
He shares, this music shares a character with a lot
of the other White album music, which is that there's not
as much of the kind of psychedelic artifice involved, but
sometimes it's a little bit more of a return to roots.
Now when we get to the next project,
Get Back/Let it Be, it really dispenses with the psychedelia,
and then it's just back to, you know, to guitars.
Guitar, drums, keyboards, kind of thing.
So you, you can see that here.
While My Guitar Gently Weeps, I've said a couple times this week, is probably
a pretty good indicator of where Georges' solo career is headed after The Beatles.
While My Guitar Gently Weeps is pretty much
of a piece with the All Things Must
Pass album and the things that follow from that.
Let's turn to the last song we'll talk about with
regarded George Harrison from the White Album, and that's Piggies.
Maybe not one that you would've thought you know, was,
was so deserving of attention in a certain kinds of ways.
But I think the way it fits into the story is
is at least interesting to me and it fits into my narrative.
The lyrics reflect an anti-conformist position and
in fact the song was written back in 1966.
You think about 1966 and Revolver, think about Tax Man.
John had already written Nowhere Man, right about
anti-conformity and Rain that kind of anti-conformity thing.
So the idea of the Piggies obviously the song is not about barnyard pigs.
Literally it's about the pig, Piggies standing as a metaphor
because the pigs are actually dirty though they consider themselves quite refined.
So you can look at George Orwell's animal Farm
or Something like that as a kind of literary influence.
But the idea that rich people or aristocratic people
who hold themselves as being sophisticated and above others
have actually got a lot of dirty stuff going
on in their lives that most people don't know about
is the kind of thing that you find out about once you get fame
and money and start to move in circles where people know what the stories are.
Behind the headlines.
Right?
There had already been a big government scandal in the 60s in
the UK involving sex and spies and all kinds of crazy stuff.
So you know, it's a fairly easy shot to say, well, these
people they think they're so high and mighty, high and above everybody else.
But in fact, Their just as dirty.
So,
that's who the Piggies in the story are.
What's interesting to me is not only the connection to the anti-conformists stuff
that we've seen especially in the music of John Lennon and in George's song
Tax Man which really kind of takes on the whole tax structure in
a kind of funny funny way you know sort playing with, with the humor.
But what's interesting to me is the ironic use of classical music.
Now, we talked about John with Happiness
As A Warm Gun, using 50s music in a kind of ironic way, that is in a
distance way, I'm not saying this is 50s
music, I'm playing with the idea of 50s music.
I'm sort of doing it In a kind of
post-modern, sort of in quotation marks kind of way, right?
Well, that's what George is doing with classical music.
Classical music becomes emblematic of the high society that he's making fun of.
So to use the harpsichord and the strings and all that kind of thing
in this, while he's talking about the basic hypocritical nature
of these elites, the culture elites is a way of using
their own music as kind of, as a kind of blunt
instrument which what just sort of beat them over the head.
And so it's not like he's endorsing classical music.
He's using it as a a kind of weapon.
As a, as a kind of mode of attack and I would ask you to contrast that with
Paul McCartney's more earnest approach to the use of classical music.
Paul uses classical music in Eleanor Rigby or
when Paul uses classical music in she's Leaving Home.
There nothing ironic about it.
He's embracing classical music for no one the french
horn the trumpet, the piccolo trumpet and Penny Lane.
He's embracing classical music because it adds some classiness.
To his music, not because he's trying to make fun of, of cultural
elites, he wants to be one of those cultural elites presumably right?
George Harrison using a very ironic kind of way, I
think that's, that's significant in this particular use of classical music.
Again and even on this album, Compare this use of classical music on Piggies,
with Paul's use of classical music on something like Mother Nature's Son.
And you see a real difference in approach.
One that's more similar To John Lennon's use
of 50s music in Happiness is a Warm Gun.
Of course, there's the humor that goes with it.
This is all supposed to be kind of a, a,
a, a sarcastic send-up, a kind of a satire in a
certain kind of way, and so we can see the
humor coming from tunes like Tax Man, and especially Savoy Truffle.
Right?
Which is another kind of humorous tune that's on
this album, so it's kind of a pair with that.
One last thing I'd like
to say about Piggies before we before we move on to
talking about Yellow Submarine is that Piggies is sequenced on the album.
Between Blackbird and Rocky Raccoon and apparently, some sources say
this was very conscious by Lennon and McCartney to put these
three sort of animal songs [LAUGH] together so you get
Blackbird, Piggies, and Rocky Raccoon and you gotta wonder whether this
was a big kind of
Gag around the Beach Boy's Pet Sounds, right, which have
been a very impressive album, that they had competed directly with.
We talked about Paul Mall, Paul McCartney's Here and
There and Everywhere as an answer to God Only Knows.
So Paul very aware of Pet Sounds of course there are all kinds of
animal sounds that are, that are used at the end of Piggies as well.
So, who knows, but anyway, the connection of three animal songs
in a row maybe an interesting one here.
Well, let's finish up this weeks lectures by turning our attention to the film
that is a Beetles film that the Beetles hardly had anything to do with.
Yellow Submarine. >> [BLANK_AUDIO]
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