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KEY E Major METER 4/4 FORM Intro -> Verse -> Refrain -> Verse -> Refrain -> Bridge -> Verse -> Refrain -> Bridge -> Refrain -> Outro (w/complete ending)
GENERAL POINTS OF INTEREST
- The somewhat campy SPLHCB overture wisely procedes directly away to an even more frankly campy, feel-good tune for the second track. People take some time to warm up to room temperature and there is no sense putting the make on them before they have done so. In other words, the likes of "Mr. Kite" et al would be lost on your partner at this point, so bide your time, eh?
- I think of WALHFMF as similar to "Yellow Submarine" with its rather purposefully over-simplified musical vocabulary, minus the special effects but with a more advanced antiphonal vocal arrangement, and a MUCH more serious lyrical subtext added. More on that later.
- The form is, yet again, "creatively derived" from standard pop song formats, but is still unusual if you look at it closely. I was almost going to combine what I've called here the Verse and the Refrain into one 16-measure section; after all, we've seen other Beatles songs in which the ending of the Verse has strong Refrain-like elements -- take a look at "Please Please Me," "I Want to Hold Your Hand," and "Ticket to Ride." I decided against this parsing of the form because of the way the final Refrain follows the second bridge all by its lonesome.
- The harmony of the verse and bridge is from relatively straightforward E Major chords, though the intro, outro, and refrain provide modal contrast.
- The verse and refrain melody stays within a very small range of five notes. The bridge opens up the top half of the octave range, though the antiphonal "answering" part keeps reminding you of the melodic floor of the other two sections.
- This is one of the more simply fabricated tracks on _Sgt. Pepper_ in terms of a relative absence of new-fangled techniques, though Lewisohn points out some details that you'd otherwise probably never notice:
- the backing track started with Paul on piano and John on cowbell, (yes, Ringo on drums and George on lead guitar)
- George Martin supplies a Hammond organ behind the intro
- the bass and tambourine were added later along with the vocals
- the crowd noise (taken from Beatles-at-Hollywood-Bowl) is cranked up at the start in order to "mask" the edit between the two tracks - and the song was tentatively titled "Bad Finder Boogie" at some point.
But all that color announcer/side-bar minutiae notwithstanding, STILL, the instrumental arrangement is rather simple.
- The vocal arrangement, though, shows a marked step forward in terms of antiphonal sophistication, not just in terms of variety, but also in terms of the subtle mix of declarative and interogative, both rhetorical and otherwise. At the very least, when you hum this song to yourself, you sing it as a single melody, not quite noticing how the single thread in the actual song is divided between Solo and Chorus:
- Intro: Chorus
- Verse: Solo
- Refrain: Solo, but with Chorus joining on the 3rd repeat
- Verse: Solo alternates with Chorus (both ask quetion)
- Refrain: All (though Solo starts each line by himself) (6 measures!)
- Bridge: Chorus (questions) alternates with Solo (answering)
- Verse: Chorus (question) alternates with Solo (answering)
- Refrain: All (though Solo starts each line by himself)
- Bridge: Chorus (questions) alternates with Solo (answering)
- Refrain: All (though Solo starts each line by himself)
- Outro: Solo with Chorus adding counterpoint
SECTION-BY-SECTION WALKTHROUGH
- In context of the album, you experience this intro as though it is literally *on* the boundary between the title track and our current song. It's only in consideration of the way this phrase recurs for the outro that makes you realize how it really *is* part of the current song; oh, you never noticed this outro repeats at the end? :-)
|C |D |E |- | E: flat-VI flat-VII I
- The verse is eight measures long and consists of a single phrase repeated twice:
------------------------------ 2X ------------------------------- |E B |f# |- B |E | I V ii V I
- The prominent bassline prances around all over the place, but never so much that you lose your clear sense of the simple harmony outlined above.
- The first refrain is eight measures long and consists of a short, 2-measure phrase repeated VERBATIM three times in a row, followed by a final two measures without voices; the latter, well needed in order to balance out the effect of the three-time literal repeat:
--------------- 3X --------------
|D A |E |B |- |
flat-VII IV I V
- The subsequent refrains omit the final two measures, at which point, it is more important to keep the pace going than to provide an oasis from possible over-repetition.
- The bridge finally opens up the melodic range dramatically ("could it BE anybody) and provides something akin to a hinted-at modulation in order to relieve the tedium of being tightly tethered to the key of E:
------------------------------- 2X ------------------------------ |c# |F# |E D |A | ii V-of-V I flat-VII IV
- The hint of a modulation is toward the key of V (B Major), though if you've been following our studies, it should come as no surprise to find the Beatles leaving a V-of-V chord begging (on my bended knees) for some kind of fulfillment, only to be deferred.
- The outro splices one last iteration of the reprise to a disguised repeat of the intro:
|D |A |C |D |E | flat-VII IV flat-VI flat-VII I
- The move from A to C provides a nice cross-relation, and overall, the modal shift at the very end here is welcome in light of the way in which most of the body of the song is so tightly bound to E Major.
- The presentation of the final three chords in 6/4 ("second inversion") is a novel touch.
SOME FINAL THOUGHTS
- IMHO, the subtext of this song is at least as precociously prescient with respect to themes of what are called nowadays "mid life crisis" as is that of "And Your Bird Can Sing."
- Note the opening sensitity to, and fear of, rejection; the willingness to allow friends to at least partially fill the place of lover. Deepest and most enigmatic of all is the fine distinction drawn in the bridge between "need" and "want" of a lover, especially with respect to the relative interchangibility or not of one's ultimate.
- With respect to *needing* anybody, the answer is "I need somebody to love." But with respect to can it *be* anybody, the answer is "I *want* somebody to love." This won't be the first time I've quoted Zimmy, but you've gotta dig the parallelism:
Regards,
Alan ([email protected])
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"Ginger, Eddy Fallon, and Ding Dong." ... "Yeah? And they're your mates,
are they? 121095#107
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Copyright (c) 1995 by Alan W. Pollack
All Rights Reserved
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