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(c) Ian Hammond 1999
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Across The Universe (4)

Parts 1, 2 and 3 discussed the body of the song. Now its time to look
at the wrapping: the intro and outro, and the completed song.


Intro
Intros and outros are very important to Lennon. He expects an
introduction to get the song going and set the mood before he enters
with his vocal. Universe provides a copybook example.  

The first bar (of Take 2) is based on the Jai Guru Deva link
backing. This first bar is a short intro to the intro itself. It was
dropped on the Let It Be version. Lennon frequently wrote these
intro-intros, as early as Hello Little Girl.

The second bar is an edit of the opening bar of the verse, arranged
for guitar. Do you like the little bit of solo guitar in the intro,
with that sudden leap upwards? It reminds me of the sixths that he
uses in the intro/outro of Dear Prudence. Lennon's demo tapes often
feature a scrap of instrumental melody in the intro or close of a
song, but usually they are dropped in the recorded version. This bit
survived.

The third and fourth bars compress the end of the verse into two bars.
The last bars of the intro features hammered seconds. About the only
place Lennon uses seconds is in his introductions. The cadential chord
progression from e minor to G major is another feature of Lennon's
style. 

Here's a road map to the relationships between the intro and the body
of the song:

                C  (a)  e  (d)  G       verse
        C       C               (G)     link
        C       C       e       G       intro

There's a lot happening in these four opening bars. By the song starts
we've heard elements of the link, the verse and the outro.

Outro
Of course, the repeated outro phrase is as common in a rock song as a
shell on a beach. But the bit Lennon chooses to repeat, for this song,
is neither the hook (across the universe) or the chorus (nothing's
going to change my world), but rather the mantra, which seems rather
obvious in hindsight, since that's what a mantra is for: repetition.

The outro is formed by repeating the two-bar Jai Guru Deva section
of the link.

        C       C       G               link
        C       C                       outro

Lennon does not expect you to be a musicologist to hear the
relationships between the intro, link and outro. He provides
additional evidence with the percussive click clack motto heard
behind the intro, link and outro. 

Across The Universe
Lennon was very proud of the lyric. Years later he met up with Elton
John and Bernie Taupin. Shyly, he asked if Taupin had heard his song
Across The Universe, which Lennon felt wasn't all that bad. Lennon
and Harrison were truly humble in the evaluation of their own work.
Perhaps it was this song, along with Dear Prudence, that Taupin was
thinking of when he later wrote of Lennon as the gardener who cared a
lot.

It wasn't the A-side that Lennon had hoped for -- and in India he had
time to think about that topic. As a single, it suffered from too many
hooks: what was it called: Across The Universe, Nothing's Going
To Change My World or Jai Guru Deva? And it wasn't a B-side either,
Lennon himself giving up that slot to the equally gentle The Inner
Light from Harrison.

After a questionable mix that appeared on a charity World Wildlife
Fund album (No-One's Gonna Change Our World), the song eventually
landed on Let It Be, with a slushy Spector arrangement to match that
of The Long And Winding Road. Thankfully, Anthology restored the
original Take 2, replete with Lennon's ketchupless single-track vocal.

Some prefer the bootlegged hums version with more prominent sitar
and hums harmony behind the link (I haven't heard this version).

Lennon later helped David Bowie in cover the song for Bowie's Young
Americans album.

Across The Universe could easily have found its place on the White
Album. Indeed, McCartney seems to think it was written in Rishikesh
and many RMB'ers mistake it for a Ono-time song. But it WAS recorded
before the trip to India in a nine hour session on February 3 1968 and
Lennon clearly states Cynthia as the Muse's agent. It was probably
written in mid to late 1967.

Some point to the lyric as an example of Ono's influence. It is
certainly different to the Peppertime material, but not so different
to Norwegian Wood or In My Life. Lennon reached back to pre-1966
traditions for both the lyric and music, Julia and Goodnight follow on
the White Album.

The lyric is remarkable, but, for me, the music is even better. The
Beatles struggled with the piece, trying to fit a Peppertime
arrangement to it. In the end it was a simple Norwegian Wood
approach that best suited this song. But drenched in pschedelia as
they were at the time, they were unable to recognize the value of a
simple rustic setting. Rishikesh fixed that.

I said earlier that song was a marker for the end of Peppertime. The
absence of bVII, the presence of a clearly defined dominant and use of
doo wop chords all point to the pre-1967 or pre-1966 traditions that
Lennon put back into his arsenal for the White Album and beyond. 
Peppertime was over.

So, there it is: a simple Lennon song, with its over-length phrases,
its odd phrase lengths, its 3*2 verse grouping, its bars of 5/4, the
Beatlemania chords, the mantra, the prayer, the sixths, the
distinctive intro and outro, the vocal click/clacks: all these style
pointers saying Lennon, and yet despite its apparent lopsidedness,
the completed product flows as conceived in a single breath, from its
first note to its last. 

If Lennon's inspiration created the kernel of the song, it was his
prodigious talent as a craftsman that constructed and completed the
full work. A great song, one of his best, and one of my all-time
number one favorites.

copyright (c) ian hammond 1998. all rights reserved.