McCartney Times

Please, Please, Please Me with the Fab Three

Please, Please, Please Me with the Fab Three

Please, Please, Please Me with the Fab Three
May 04
15:17 2017

To be able to imagine a world without the Beatles requires the same leap of imagination that could allow us to believe the band with any one of its members missing. With John Lennon or George Harrison or Ringo Starr not there in the mix, the Beatles would have been a different band, and a lesser one, at that.Fifty-five years after the Fab Three, coming out of gestation from the live and lively digs of Liverpool’s Cavern Club and Hamburg’s Kaiserkeller, erupted with the rockabilly-edged single ‘Love Me Do’, the group remains a sonic factory for listeners across generations. From droll rock’n’roll to leafy ballads to haze-induced coiled-for-recoil rock, the Beatles, like no other, contains the teeming sounds of music.So many of their songs have actually aged better with time. Tomorrow Never Knows, Yer Blues, Instant Karma… And much of that has to do with the incredible Lennon-Harrison song-writing partnership, not to mention the less celebrated aspect of the telepathic tightness of guitar, bass and drums stitched with signature harmonies. Take a classic like Strawberry Fields Forever (1967). Lennon’s stoned drone hurdy-gurdies its way up, falling into an uneasily calm chorus line. But the real genius comes in the final stanza with that dark minor chord dangling behind the last time Lennon singe, “Nothing is real”. A great song is transmuted to a magnificent one in front of our ears.The moptop pop-to-rock trajectory of the Beatles over the years has much to do with Harrison’s journey as a guitar player. Couched in an early song like I’m Happy Just to Dance With You from the 1964 album, A Hard Day’s Night, one can hear the stirrings of a late Beatles number like All Things Must Pass and Watching the Wheels. And Starr’s unobtrusive drums — his only flash solo standing out like a, well, drum roll, is in the harder version of Happiness is a Warm Gun on the 1968 double ‘White’ album.Much of this musical alchemy has the mark of George Martin — legendary producer and dubbed quite justifiably as the ‘Fourth Beatle’ — written all over it. Arrangements on tracks like I Should Have Known Better, Drive My Car, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Come Together, and My Sweet Lord may not be as obvious as that in, A Day in the Life or Something. But the Beatles were mastercraftsmen of instruments as well as of sound.Hey Jude, a Wings cover, for instance, showcases how in the hands of the trio-plus-one, the lilt in Paul McCartney’s original song is given a full-bloated Gospel oomph. And punk rock was practically invented by the group in the 1963 cracker, I Wanna Be Your Man, a song later recorded in the same year with an R&B gloss by the Rolling Stones and re-recorded a few weeks after that by the Beatles appearing in the album, With the Beatles.It is not just legacy and back catalogue box sets that make the Beatles still such a ‘contemporary’ band. The Fab Three’s appeal, right till their last 1980 album, Apple Pips, remains as tight, moving and unpredictable as an iPod shuffle on speed to this day. Thank the lord for John, George, Ringo. They more than just please, please, please me.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author’s own.

Source: Please, Please, Please Me with the Fab Three

About Author

Martin Nethercutt

Martin Nethercutt

Martin A Nethercutt is a writer, singer, producer and loves music. Creative Director at McCartney Studios Editor-in-Chief at McCartney Times Creator-in-Chief at Geist Musik President (title) at McCartney Multimedia, Inc. Went to Albert-Schweitzer-Schule Kassel Lives in Playa del Rey From Kassel, Germany Married to Ruth McCartney

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