Beathoven

Beathoven

Studying the Beatles

The Harrisong (3) 1964

It's 1964. The Beatles produce their second film and two albums, A Hard Day's Night and Beatles For Sale. George has stopped writing songs and relies on Lennon and McCartney for material.

A Hard Day's Night
With Lennon feeling prolific, George got just one lead vocal on this album, though McCartney didn't fare much better and Starr got nothing at all.

I'm Happy Just To Dance With You
Interviewed around this time Harrison said he had no plans to write any more songs. He didn't have the time and he was leaving that up to John and Paul now. That's exactly what John and Paul did with a song based around the same distinctive opening chord sequence as Do You Want To Know A Secret.

John and Paul provided a great band track and harmonies as well. Harrison does a convincing single-tracked sell. At least they wrote him more than one verse lyric for this song.

Some other group had a 1990's hit with this song.
Track four and all of 1.55 minutes.

Beatles For Sale
With Lennon feeling unprolific, the Beatles revert to covers to finish the album, including two featuring George, although, as usual, he was credited for only one of them. Significantly, neither George nor Ringo got a Lennon/McCartney original. The writing was on the wall: become a songwriter or die.

Words Of Love
Harrison sings a harmonized lead on his showpiece Words Of Love, but that's not what the album credits say, giving the vocals to John and Paul. Without this guitar showpiece the Beatles would have lacked a cover of Buddy Holly in their official opus.
[Track 9]

Everybody's Tryin' To Be My Baby
Harrison sings an overly-echoed lead on his standard rocker Everybody's Tryin' To Be My Baby which Martin felt was strong enough to close the album. I have always disagreed. Other versions of the track are included on the BBC CDs and Anthology.
[Track 14 -- closing slot]

Help!
Where Don't Bother Me had been spontaneous, Harrison's next songs were hand-crafted for Help!: two Beatlesongs that would not offend a Koala Bear.

Our apprentice enlisted Lennon's help to finish the pieces off, working through the night on the eve of Starr's wedding. He would have been smart to have involved Lennon in a similar way later because of one significant side effect: it meant that Lennon arrived at the recording studio already knowing the song, as he did with Lennon/McCartney material. Lennon contributes strongly to both Harrison's Help! tracks.

I suspect that Lennon did write a song for Harrison for Help!, but ended up singing it himself. You're Going To Lose That Girl has all the hallmarks of a John and Paul George song, including the distinctive opening verse chord sequence. It's certainly not the kind of material John was writing for himself on Help!.

Harrison would be less kind to his Help! songs than we are, but of the twelve originals, Harrison's were placed in the best eight or nine. More significantly, they are distinctively Harrison songs. Note how he resists the temptation to write lead guitar songs: a Harrisong is just as unlikely to have a solo as any other Beatlesong.

I Need You
Harrison fell in love Patti Boyd during the A Hard Day's Night shoot, which shows in the gentle side of I Need You. Speaking words of love was not yet his forte, as the lyric illustrated.

The song structure adheres to a conservative four clause verse formula that dominates the Harrison and McCartney contributions to Help!. What saves the track is its studied stately pace, particular the silences. A sparse architecture, which really shows in the coda.

Great strumming on this track with Harrison's distinctive up-stroke nicks. Low cooing harmony. Harrison's favored use of suspended fourths shows in the intro and the tag chorus. We hear these again in Savoy Truffle ("is sweet now, turns so sour").

Where might Lennon have helped? Let me speculate wildly: The verse has the classic 1964/1965 length of 14 bars. The chord progression f#-c# could well be Lennon. The bridge conforms to the model Lennon used for Please Please Me and finishes with a 5-bar phrase.

A single-tracked vocal with echo in places. Harrison's voice is clear and certain. This song made it to the soundtrack.
[Track four. 2.24 minutes. A Major. I VVBV BV K]
[I=Intro V=Verse B=Bridge K=Coda]

You Like Me Too Much
The same conservative song structure as I Need You, with an added piano/guitar solo which reminds me of the fills in The Ballad Of John And Yoko suggesting it may have been devised by Lennon and Harrison working on two guitars before being transferred to pianos for the recording session.

The distinctive introduction was reused by Harrison on his Most Famous Song Something.

Harrison's verse starting on A minor and ending on D is a variation of the chorus chords for Don't Bother Me. It's interesting to note Harrison's completely different approach to these chords to McCartney in songs like All My Loving. Where McCartney sticks to Honeysuckle Rose/Tea For Two jazz model, Harrison is at once modal, a habit that carried through to My Sweet Lord.

Like Don't Bother Me, this song indicates two possible tonics, another Harrison habit that would become de rigeur for all three Pepperbeatles.

Where might Lennon have helped out? Let me speculate again, for the curious: The solo is based on a 12-bar form: this was the default when nothing more original occurred to the Beatles. Tagging the chorus phrase on the end of solo is typical of Lennon. The bridge opens with a phrase reminiscent of the intro to I Don't Want To Spoil The Party and finishs with a four note chromatic run similar to those in Wait! and The Word. The progression b7 to D7 is a Lennon signature that occurs rarely in Harrison's work. The feature instrument occurs in the intro, bridge and outro, something Lennon favored.

George does his own underharmony. Vocal is single-tracked. Clearly enunciated, but lazy slips at times.
[Track 10. 2.30. G Major. I VVBV SBV K]
[I=Intro, V=Verse B=Bridge S=Solo K=Coda]

Apprentice George
One random song on With The Beatles and two wannabe efforts on Help!, such is the education of the unwilling novice Beatle songwriter.

Harrison doesn't have notebooks full of thousands unfinished sketches or piles of scrunched-up lyric attempts thrown in the corner. There were probably no other songs started. Think about it: your first songwriting attempts going out to millions of listeners. Life in a golden cage.

In his first three compositions, bland lyrics and lazy tunes are offset by the strong architecture and the sense of space of his songs.

In the next article I will look at Harrison's post-apprenticeship songs on Rubber Soul and Revolver.