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(c) Ian Hammond 1999
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Please Please Me
Lennon dominates the debut album, leaving three lead vocals for Paul and two for George, although only one was credited on the cover.
Chains
Harrison sang lead on this cover of a nondescript 1961 Cookies hit, backed by Lennon and McCartney. One reason Harrison is called the Invisible Singer is because his lead singer role was sometimes omitted from the album credits, as in the case of this song. Harrison made a habit of covering Goffin and King material.
[Track 4]
Do You Want To Know A Secret
Whether Lennon, and McCartney, really wrote Do You Want To Know A Secret for Harrison is probably unknowable, but that's the song he was landed with. One theory is that they decided to give Harrison a little boy lost image. I have seen no evidence for this contention and I assume everything they must of known about George Harrison would have spoken against the idea.
Harrison may have heard the song for the first time at the recording session. Not that the song was difficult to learn: it has only one verse which is repeated three times. Notice his dialect on "I've known the secret for the week or two".
Billy J. Kramer had a hit with this song. He's still probably singing it somewhere tonight.
[Track 11. 1:55]
With The Beatles
Apart from three tracks where Harrison sings lead, he also duets with John on Smokey Robinson's You Really Got A Hold On Me, the last cover song the band studied and recorded (except for a Ringo's Act Naturally). For the rest, the album was dominated by Lennon with Paul taking only All My Loving and Hold Me Tight as original Lennon/McCartney leads.
Don't Bother Me
"I've got no time for you right now, don't bother me" tells us something about Harrison in general and about his early attitude to songwriting in particular. Harrison wasn't interested. Period. It wasn't until he was laid up sick for a week that he relented and constructed this charming lyric and most of the music to go with it.
| I was a bit run
down and was supposed to be having some sort of
tonic, taking it easy for a few days. I decided
to try to write a song, just for a laugh. I got
out my guitar and just played around until a song
came. I forgot all about it till we came to
record the next LP. It was a fairly crappy song.
I forgot all about it completely once it was on
the album. {He forgot about writing songs for almost two years after that} I was too involved in so many other things that I never got round to it.
|
Early songs may tell us
more about a writers later style than those that come
between. Harrison's penchant for white-note chords, runs
of chords separated by a tone and distinctive use of the
Dorian mode are all be to heard here. The chorus chords
(e-A) return in Long Long Long
("how I love you"), Savoy Truffle
("you know that what you eat...") and
hypnotically in My Sweet Lord ("my
sweet lord").
Lyrically, Harrison discards his big-eared buck-tooth
Beatlegrin, donning the Laconica Morosa [my
invented words] that we would come to know and love as
the years rolled by. "Leave me alone": only
nineteen years old and Already Going Garbo. He had not
yet met his Eyes Of Blue nor seen his Sea Of Bengal.
The Beatles worked hard on the song producing a remake
with a rather peculiar beat, but one in tune with the
darker hues of late 1963 as reflected by the cover of With
The Beatles. Harrison is often more au courant than
his older Beatle brothers.
Melodically, the song ranges over a ninth, a broader
interval than most of the songs he wrote between 1965 and
1969. Harrison's vocal is double-tracked, hiding some
little octave inflections but high lighting a slight
randomness Harrison has in his vocal attack. Harrison
plays a period-correct solo that reminds me of the solo
in Polythene Pam.
The song sounds longer than its 2.25 minutes, which has
something to do with the architecture of the piece.
Harrison's song structure is always well paced and
creates a lot of space in short time frames.
One of the very few home demos from the period has
Harrison working on the bridge. The demo chord pattern
includes a trademark Harrison diminished chord (a sharp
diminished).
| D | D | e | e | Demo bridge | ||
| D | D | e | e | |||
| b | a#o | G | G | |||
| C | C | e | e |
The final version of the
third phrase drops the diminished chord, in favor of:
| b | a#o | G | G | Demo | ||
| b | b | a | a | Final |
The demo inner guitar line
reads f#-e-d-c-b rather than the d-f#-e-d-e
of the final.
Harrison's composing method on the demo tape is tightly
disciplined. He works only on the phrases of the bridge
and avoids singing the surrounding verse, except for the
end of the chorus and the upbeat of the following verse.
Fourth track on the album, Don't Bother Me
seems to be the first complete song by Harrison. He's
still collecting royalties folks.
[Track 4. 2:25 minutes]
Roll Over Beethoven
Each of the three front-line singers had their standard
rocker. John had Twist And Shout, Paul
had Long Tall Sally, and George took
over Roll Over Beethoven from John to
keep it in their repetoire, mainly because of the chops.
It may be the song they performed the most times, which
explains their dexterity and the multiplicity of
arrangements.
George once remarked the albums did not capture
the best recording of some tracks. There are better
versions available than the album cut, but it's still a
rock 'n' roll classic.
[Track 8. Second side opener]
Devil In Her Heart
Martin selected George's cover of Devil In Her
Heart for this album, a track similar to
Lennon's Anna, giving him a ballad lead
singer role. It took Harrison until Something
on their last album to claw back this kind of status.
It's a reminder that the standard cliched roles we assign
to the Beatles, with all the arrogance and ignorance of
retrospect, were not as clear and well defined in the
early days of Beatlemania at all.
[Track 12 - the dead slot]
The Early Harrison
George Harrison saw himself as a fully fledged member of
a band, contributing in many departments. He did not see
himself exclusively as a lead guitarist waiting
for his fifteen seconds of fame.
He writes his first song almost unwillingly and only
because confinement leaves him no better option. The demo
tape shows him working with great haste. It seems to be a
chore. Like a student forced to do some homework.
With two tracks on the first album and the three on the
second he could have probably held or increased his quota
on the following A Hard Day's Night album. But,
instead he retired as a songwriter. And not for
the last time.
The
Harrisong (3) discusses his songs on A Hard
Day's Night, Beatles For Sale and Help!.