The big point I made about Paul's songs on the
White Album is that he tended to look back, looking at.
Lot of looking at other styles,
mostly previous styles, but sometimes contemporary styles.
As we start, turn to the songs of John Lennon, we don't see much of that.
That doesn't seem to be where John is going it's
a, this is one of the valuable things about being able
to think of these Beatles songs as being written by
Paul or by John or by George and we can begin
to see the places not only where they overlap and do similar
kinds of things, but also the places where there's a real divergence.
And I would say in 1968, this White Album period
in many ways, while there are some interesting parallels between the
two, there's a lot more space between what John and Paul
are doing then there has been maybe up to this point.
They really are sort of finding their
own voices relatively independent of one another.
So
I'm going to talk about these songs with regard to
the songs that are based on phrases of others.
That is, taking sort of found objects as we've seen on previous John songs.
We'll talk about some of those.
We'll talk about songs that refer to the stay in India, of which there are
much more with John and their are of Paul and then we'll talk about the
other songs that don't cleanly fit into
those other categories so, remembering we've got a
lot of song to work through here, I'm going to look at three of them in
a song close up in the next video.
So I won't say too much about those and move through them very quickly.
In fact one of those is the first one that's based
on a phrases of others and that's Happiness Is a Warm Gun.
The phrase of others that, that's refers to, is a magazine ad or a magazine cover.
It's not really clear what the magazine was, but
John saw something about an ad for a gun.
Some people said it was an NRA ad,
"Happiness is a Warm Gun."
And so we ahh, there's an idea for a song, and so it comes from that.
It's an episodic form, and that's what's, in many ways really interesting about
it, we'll get to that in the song close-up in the next video.
Julia" is another one that we'll look up in a, look up look at in more detail, in a
song Closeup and, just in terms of, tying it
in with this idea based on the phrases of others.
It's inspired on a line
from a line from Kahlil Gibran.
Those of you who are a, about my
age may remember the poetry collection "The Prophet."
I don't know What it was like in the country where you lived, but,
United States, every high school kid had a copy of "The Prophet" and you
gave it to your girlfriend as a gift, you know, this kind of thing,
it was considered, you, showed that you were sensitive and you cared about poetry.
So really, sort of, popular kind of hippy, counter culture youth kind of thing.
Not unlike
a Herman Hess, a Siddhartha, or a Journey to the East or something like this.
Anyway, John saw a phrase and it kind of triggered
him off in this song Julia came out of it.
And finally the third one triggered a phrase [INAUDIBLE] is a Song Cry Baby
Cry, which apparently was inspired by an ad For baby formula.
So, you think, now, there's an idea for a song.
How many creative
people have gone around and, you know, seen an add for
baby formula, and said, well, that, that would make a great song.
So it takes a certain kind of mentality, really, to see the promise in that.
Oh yeah. You know, cry baby cry, [INAUDIBLE].
And this is sort of what, this is sort of the space that, that John Lennon is in.
This, sort of, almost kind of fantastical creative.
Space where you can take the smallest little thing and sort of turn it
into something much more meaningful.
Again, a very avant garde art, kind of pop
art approach that was a big part of the 60s.
If you don't remember, don't forget we have to keep
in mind that John, John Lennon was an art school student.
So even though, you know, he didn't spend a lot of time in
class [LAUGH], and he was kind of a nerd do well as a student.
He was familiar with a lot of these
kinds of aesthetic approaches and this kind of thing.
It wasn't like
he was an uneducated guy.
Let's turn to the a survey of the songs that refer to India.
I mentioned earlier on when I was talking about
the Rishikesh trip that Mia Farrow was there with
her sister Prudence, and she spent, Prudence, that is,
spent so much time meditating in her, little tent.
That somebody was, had to go like get her to come out.
[LAUGH] To meals and things, you know.
And so it turned out that it fell to John Lennon to do that.
So he wrote this song. About Dear Prudence.
To Prudence asking her if she would please come out.
It's a modified AABA form and is a fantastic a fantastic track on that album.
Another one that came from a, a story, having to do with a situation at in India.
Was the song Bungalow Bill.
Of course, a bungalow.
Being the typical kind of suburban kind of residence
that one might live in, a bungalow, and the
idea that the suburbs are like the safe place
to live for conforming people who always follow the rules,
but then they put on a hat and they go out and they think they're great big game
hunters and this sort of, you know A kind
of idea that somebody leads a relatively safe, suburban conforming
life, on the weekends can go out and be a big a big sort of hunter seeking danger.
This guy thinks, so Bungalow Bill it's kind of a finger wager inspired by
a guy in India who took a break from meditation to go and hunt tigers.
Of which by the way in Richard Cash there were plenty of, there had to be
somebody on look out for tiger's at the ash at all times so that one of them.
Would makes its way into the ashram and
cause cause trouble.
The contrasting verse-chorus form, Bungalow Bill.
A note, for years, I thought that classical guitar lick
at the very beginning was George Harrison playing this sort of
flamenco guitar lick and I, when I was a kid,
and I thought, man, boy, he can really play flamenco guitar.
It turns out it's a sample. They had a keyboard called the Mellotron.
They did the strings, the flutes,
the flutes, for example, Strawberry Fields are,
are, are Mellotron flutes. There was a tape for each key.
And that note was, the note for that key was on a tape.
You would push it, and a tape, a tape recorder would play that
note until you ran out of tape, and then the sound would stop.
But it also had a set of tapes that were nothing but sound effects.
And this would be valuable like in a radio
studio, where you wanted to have like gunshots and helicopters
and sirens and things, you know, to, to illustrate various
kinds of radio plays, that kind of thing, the records.
Now, one of the things they had on this
[INAUDIBLE] was a Flamenco guitar lick.
Well, doggone it, if that isn't exactly the
lick you get at the beginning of Bungalow Bill.
It's somebody standing up in [INAUDIBLE] and going, bink, and that lick
coming out, and that's what you get at the beginning of that tune.
Another John Lennon tune, talking about India, is the song "I'm So Tired."
It's a song about insomnia he says, you know, he
did so much meditating that it made it difficult to sleep.
That's a kind of a' 50s
R&B track so that's once sense in which we can see John looking to earlier styles
like Paul did so much of, on that album. A modified AABA form.
Yer Blues is one of the few Beatles blues tunes.
There aren't that many Beatles blues tunes.
Stones, there's a lot more. But the Beatles, not so much.
And this is, this is one of them.
John Lennon had said it's a song about trying to
reach God and feeling suicidal. Hm.
So anyway, Yer Blues, a song referring to
his feelings when he was in India meditating.
A simple verse form, like so many blues are
a simple verse formats, entirely keeping with the blues tradition.
Everybody's Got Something to Hide is something that the Maharishi used to say.
well, the Maharishi to say all the time,
come on, come on.
And that, of course, is one of the
lyrics in the tune Everybody's Got Something To Hide.
And the part about me and my monkey are kind
of a, a, a fun kind of juxtaposition for John Lennon.
After all, he thought the Maharishi had something to
hide when he left India, India, which was that
he really wasn't who he was putting himself to
be, you know, he put himself to be this high
spiritual guy, according to John Lennon. And he was chasing young British girls.
And [UNKNOWN] to him.
So everybody's got something to hide, referring again
to the [UNKNOWN], you know, what's going on there.
Even more in that, in that vain is sexy Sadie.
Which, the, the original title for that song.
Was Maharishi and I think George Harrison said to John, you know that
must be just a little obvious, you should think of something that's more artful than
just Maharishi and then you know just and almost like the Dylan
song, After the Newport Fall Festival where he positively forced pick where
he just sort of goes after those people who he taught rejected him, At Newport.
Here's John going directly at the Maharishi, but he decides to change it
from Maharishi to Sexy Sadie, and of course, what did Sexy Sadie do?
He made a fool of the Beatles, according to
John Harrison so it, or, or John [LAUGH] John Lennon.
And so it's about that scandal or the, the The scandal they thought they were
having, and remem, I, I, I hasten to add that much of this has been disproven.
The, not that John felt this way, but
that actually happened the way they thought it happened,
so just want to preserve the, the memory of a, of who's, a guy
who seemed to have been a really good guy, and that's the Maharishi.
Anyway, a modified AABA form this one," Sexy Sadie."
Some other John songs that don't fit into this idea of being
based on the phrases of others or referring to India Glass Onion."
A song that is filled with references to other Beatles songs
in many ways it's a kind of a re a return to,
I am the Walrus.
And if you think about songs that kind of that are sort of this John Lennon sort of
angularish kind of strings cellos.
That kind of John Lennon kind of tune.
You could sort of go, Straweberry Fields, You could go,
I am the Walrus. .
You could go Glass Onion, and we'll talk about some
more stuff on Abbey Road that kind of follow that string.
And we're going to talk about Revolution in the close up.
So, I'm not going to say too much about the two versions of Revolution.
The slow on, Revolution 1 and the faster one that the hit
record, the hit single, or the B-side that was also a hit Revolution.
Just point out, net, for now, that the lyrics themselves deal with
protest, and the kind of things that were going on
in the United States over the Vietnam War,' member we
want to make a connection with that and Paul's Blackbird so
that we have those two [UNKNOWN] that's an interesting parallel.
I do want to say something about the two other songs, John Lennon
songs on the White Album that we won't get a chance to
talk about on the close up, and that's Revolution 9 An electronic composition
that, I think, marks the furthest point in the Beatles' experimentation
with avant-garde techniques.
It's not the last experimentation, but it really is, for all intents
and purposes, whatever you think about the other Beatles music, Revolution 9.
Is not a piece of popular music.
It's just not.
It's a tape piece, so really, and to tell you the truth, it's probably the
tape piece of all tape pieces produced in the 60s by, you know, classical composers
who did tape pieces, you know, art music Avant-Garde composers.
Nobody can rival Revolution number.
No other piece can, can rival Revolution number
9 for the number of listeners it's had.
Now many of those people may have only listened to it once.
[LAUGH] Or maybe not even listened to it all
the way through, because it wasn't their cup of tea.
But it pretty clearly is.
An Avant-Garde kind of piece.
Some of the people in the Beatles camp didn't
even think it should be on the White Album.
They were like, John, do your own solo
record if you're going to do this kind of thing.
Beatles fans are never going to go for it.
But it was on the White Album and it probably is the, the, the most often
heard piece of electronic composition from the 60s that there
is So as a piece of electronic compen- composition it really has to
be thought of, really according to a different set of criteria than we
usually think of.
For us it's important because it, it, it's, it's almost taking
the song part of what the Beatles do entirely out of it.
And just going for the experimentations and effects of isolating that out.
And we've seen a progression up to the point
when Revolution number 9 happened, it's not like it all
of sudden pops up and you think huh I
didn't know they were interested in that kind of thing.
No, it's been mounting for the past couple of years.
And finally a song written especially for Ringo to sing.
Remember with a little
help from my friends was one of those.
A song that was written for Ringo to sing on Sergeant Pepper.
This one called Good Night which John Lennon thought of as being in the
style of a song from one of the classic Disney animated features.
And then another one, to kind of end the album.
With a smile.
It's an AABA form, very traditional kind of tune, but
very traditional kind of movie music, sort of strings with Ringo
singing and then speaking over the top of it.
Think of how many of these Beatles records end with some kind of informality that
defeats all of the other kind of Heavy duty seriousness.
I mean, think of the end of Revolver with
After Tomorrow Never Knows, the song just kind of
sort of doesn't exactly fade out.
It's just all the parts just sort of stop
playing and it's a very sort of informal ending.
It's unedited at the very end.
We get to the end of A Day in the Life Sergeant Pepper and
you get, after the big dramatic chord, you get that inner loop music, right?
And then we get to all these songs on the way
out, you get to the end of the record and then you
get Ringo [LAUGH] singing a song that sounds like it could be
from Sleeping Beauty [LAUGH] or Snow White or something you know so,
it, there really is a Beatle attempt to
diffuse any sense that they're taking themselves too seriously.
After all, they might have had a little bit, they might
have aired a little bit in that direction with Magical Mystery Tour.
Nobody was eager to go back there again.
So having talked about the John songs in a general way on the White Album.
Let's dig in, to three of them, in the
next video," Revolution,"" Happiness Is a Warm Gun," and" Julia."