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(c) Ian Hammond 1999
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In 1964 and 1965 the pattern does establish the expected key. In 1966 through 1969 it does that very rarely. Let's look at what happens from 1966 on in more detail. Remember, all the examples have been transposed so that the chords of interest are G minor passing to A major.

I'm Only Sleeping has an audacious bridge return. In the example below the first two lines show the lyric layout and a conjectured draft version. Note the relatively weak transition back to the verse with G minor followed by A minor.

The final version replaces the opening A minor of the verse with A major. The affect is magic: The repeat of the first three bars [g |A |d ] displaces the sequence's target to the second bar of the verse, D minor. This displacement is shown in the last line of the example above.

Lennon is playing with tonics here rather than establishing them. It's a sophisticated puzzle.


Strawberry Fields moves from the opening C to a puzzling G minor. Lennon's A major chord explains that G minor, leading the song to D which Lennon twice thwarts with a replacement chord, F.

Lennon must have liked the sequence because he reuses it on Julia and Sun King. Now, in the fourth clause of Sun King he changes the G minor chord for a C7. We see the mind of the composer at work here. You can plug that C7 chord back into Strawberry Fields and it still works.

In none of these songs does the sequence establish the home tonic. Again, Lennon uses the sequence in Strawberry Fields and Sun King to play games with our expectations.

Mr Kite, Bungalow Bill and Free As A Bird are three songs where Lennon uses a kind of sleight of hand. He inserts the minor chord into the song in a place that grabs our attention, following it with an expected chord. When he repeats the sequence he follows the chord with something unexpected and thereby changes the tonic. Again, he's playing with the tonic rather than clearly establishing it.

I Want You uses the pattern in the verse to clearly establish the tonic, but he immediately throws that tonic away for the chorus. He uses the pattern again in the chorus, but this time does not establish a tonic with it.

The pattern in Sun King is remarkable in a number of ways. First, it's one of those cases where people hear variously a G minor, major or power chord. Second, it acts quite differently on the first and second occurrences. In any case, it does not establish a home tonic.


Where we expect Lennon to move from the g|A sequence to D or d, he in fact moves to any of d, D, Eb F, g, Bb or B, revealing a real mastery of tonal movement. In most cases the chord sequence does *not* establish the home key. In Bungalow Bill and (later in Free As A Bird) we see him play with the sequence, giving it multiple interpretations within a section.

To summarize. While the first three chords c#|f#|G# do look very much like C# minor that means little in Lennon's songs, particularly in 1969. We should not assume that Lennon is establishing a key with this sequence unless we find some heavy collateral. In Because we find very little collateral in the verse itself. The fact that he establishes the key clearly coming out of the bridge doesn't help either if we compare the song with I'm Only Sleeping.


For comparison, here are three examples from Harrison and one from McCartney. Most establish a tonic. The only example from a verse, I Me Mine, has a classic iv|V|i close. There may be other examples.

Because and I Want You
The closest neighbor to Because is I Want You possibly developed from the same initial chord pattern.

Lennon remarked during the Let It Be sessions that many of his songs at the time had the same chord structures. The A-section of Sun King has an E|f# pattern which is repeated twice in Don't Let Me Down.


Chromatic Chord Changes
The static verse progression has a distinct lack of movement. We see that most in the unnatural chromatic slide from D diminished to C# minor. There is something remarkable about the progression which can be seen in the diagram below:

The top four lines show the parts of each chord. A simple walk shows that no part needs to move more than a semitone at any time. The g# part has only two notes, the c# part has only three. The only note omitted is the f# of the second chord.

Few songs with the same variety of chords will share this characteristic. Lennon has another song which should give us reason to pause: the arpeggiated sequence of I Want You. Like Because, these arpeggios have an inner bass.

Phrygian Mode: C# 
Is Because Phrygian? The Phrygian scale, E F G A B C D E, includes the flat supertonic as a natural member. Let's transpose the chord pattern to E minor where the Lydian mode is more easily seen:

The Phrygian mode supports a close on F, the flat supertonic. That's interesting but rather meaningless. The modes are fairly arbitrary in these matters and whether we can usefully apply scalar modes to harmonic patterns is doubtful.

Cry Baby Cry certainly gets lots of flat supertonic color out of this mode. Lennon edits the chord pattern to start and end the song with the change F|e, that's a little like Because with F|f-.

Lydian Mode: D
Is the florid coda of Because, or the whole song Lydian? The Lydian mode is F G A B C D E F.

The distinctive feature of this so-called mode is the F major to E minor change. Are there other songs that use that change? There's one at least:

Although, McCartney briefly leaves the home key to get to that chord. Here, There And Everywhere repeats the trick. Julia uses the change to move to the bridge.

Again, I don't think the fact that some songs map to the modes of yesterday has any information for us.


The Link Revisited
The second link chord, usually written D diminished, has a peculiar closing mordant: d-f#-f nat. How do we describe the f#-f nat within the context of the bar, particularly noting that the f natural may be held throughout the bar (e.g. Moog part in the last bar)? Here are two alternative interpretations:


A#7/c##:
If we listen to that diminished chord without the seventh, as it first appears in the intro, then we can interpret the chord as A#7.

That looks horrible, but the chord is A# rather than Bb. Why? Because if we transpose the whole thing down a semitone to C minor then we would certainly call the chord A and not Bbb. I'll move the chord down to C minor to make it easier to deal with:

So, we're looking now at a C minor verse that ends on A. That's more or less what Mr Kite does. In fact, the introduction summarizes that moment.

You see how Lennon uses the two chords D minor and G major to return to C minor. Essentially, in Because, those two chords are missing when returning to the verse. 



The 2001 Chords
Kubrick's Space Odyssey was released in April 1968 to the delight of stoned audiences around the globe. Anyone who played a guitar learned the dramatic D major to D minor opening progression of Richard Strauss's Symphonic Poem, Also Sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spake Zarathustra), based on the writings of Nietzche. 

In London a fan club gathered, including John Lennon ("I see it every week"). Bowie was inspired by the movie to write Space Oddity.

The example below presents the link as two such major-minor progressions with some almost Wagnerian alterations. In the first pair, D to d, the minor chord has a lowered fifth (we conveniently ignore the diminished seventh). 

We get the first chord of the second pair by reinterpreting the d5- of the first pair as C#9-. To do this we need to invent an imaginary C# bass, but that is one of the valid bass notes, in fact, we assume its presence when moving to the bridge, as the example below recalls:

So, the interpretation here is boldly D major to D minor, then C# to C# minor, with some altered and assumed notes required. This admittedly fanciful suggestion has one saving grace: it makes sense when we listen to the music, something the other models lack.

Incidentally, the Moonlight Sonata does happen to have a couple of prominent minor-major chord changes (bar 15, b to B), which, when reversed, become major-minor changes. I'm not suggesting a connection.

Here's a little trivia to end this article. Kubrick went to make A Clockwork Orange, centered on Beethoven's music, and then The Shining, the title of which was derived from Lennon's Instant Karma ("we all shine on"). 


Coda
Those who disapprove of analysis, and who have tortured themselves by reading this article, must have their eyes bulging out of their sockets at this point. You're completely correct: it's a meaningless game, but a game with rules nevertheless. It has as much to do with the performance of a song as a discussion of workings of an engine, or perhaps the chemical composition of the fuel, has to do with a motor sports race.