On 25/06/2025 9:48 am, Geoff wrote:
On 24/06/2025 11:39 pm, Norbert wrote:
.
In one of the verses, McCartney appears to start with "Oh, Johnnie."
Anyone else hear this?
As hard as I try, I just cannot hear that. What verse/time ?
Agree about the 'target' of the song though. As, in the other direction,
must have been 'Jealous Guy, despite various denials .
Posted by a 'Ron' on Quora.
__________________________________________________________________
"Behind the Beat": A Behavioral Study of the Beatles Mar 28
For ‘Abbey Road' fans… (and John Lennon fans in particular).
Based on a lot of research into Lennon's development from adolescence to 1980—including his reflective commentary, archival interviews, and
critical discussions about The Beatles—we can derive a nuanced
understanding of his psychological and interpersonal persona, even
without his verbatim statements on specific compositions.
Never mentioned, but according to George, there was a feeling that the
‘Abbey Road’ sessions would be the group’s last. The "medley" is comprised of bits of songs Paul and John hadn’t used elsewhere. During recording, it was dubbed "The Long One" when Paul and George Martin
blended the suite.
John opposed this format, preferring a return to album formats like
‘Sgt. Pepper, a possible reason John was sour on side two.
Lennon appreciated the songs on side one for their completeness,
enjoying the standalone nature of ‘Here Comes the Sun’ and ‘Because.’ He
reportedly dismissed the medley as "junk... just bits of songs thrown
together" (by the McCartney/Martin collaboration). Many things could
have come together (no pun intended) to create a “feel” for “Abbey Road,” and John’s feelings towards the album might’ve soured.
He called side two a “production gimmick.” It’s possible, too, that John felt his talents weren’t represented well on the medley. For instance,
John liked his “Polythene Pam” tune, but felt it was lost in that
medley. The same is true for “Here Comes The Sun King.”
The McCartney/Martin collaboration for the medley might’ve made John
feel he was being replaced. Not out of the question is a feeling of
jealousy, John and Paul
John was, in part, quick to trash the medley because Paul and George
Martin created the suite. I believe John was so self-critical and
insecure (yet convinced of his genius), he’d preemptively denigrate his songwriting, anticipating and justifying McCartney's perceived superiority.
‘Come Together’
JOHN: “It’s gobbledygook — ‘Come Together’ was an expression that Tim Leary had come up with for his attempt at being president or whatever he
wanted to be, and he asked me to write a campaign song. I tried and I
tried, but I couldn’t come up with one. But I came up with this, ‘Come Together,’ which would’ve been no good to him– you couldn’t have a campaign song like that, right? Leary attacked me years later, saying I
ripped him off. I didn’t rip him off. It’s just that it turned into
‘Come Together.’ What am I going to do, give it to him? It was a funky record — it’s one of my favorite Beatle tracks, or, one of my favorite Lennon tracks, let’s say that. It’s funky, it’s bluesy, and I’m singing it pretty well. I like the sound of the record. You can dance to it.
I’ll buy it! (laughs).”
‘Something’
JOHN: “I think that’s about the best track on the album, actually.”
‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer' (They all hated it, Paul loved it.)
JOHN: “I hated it. All I remember is the track – he made us do it a
hundred million times. He did everything to make it into a single and it
never was and it never could’ve been. But [Paul] put guitar licks on it
and he had somebody hitting iron pieces and we spent more money on that
song than any of them in the whole album.”
‘Oh! Darling’
JOHN: “Oh! Darling’ was a great one of Paul’s that he didn’t sing too well. I always thought I could have done it better – it was more my
style than his. He wrote it, so what the hell, he’s going to sing it.”
‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’
JOHN: “Simplicity is evident in ‘She So Heavy.’” A reviewer wrote: ‘He
seems to have lost his talent for lyrics, it’s so simple and boring.’
John, “When it gets down to it– when you’re drowning, you don’t say ‘I
would be incredibly pleased if someone would have the foresight to
notice me drowning and come and help me,’ you just scream.”
‘Here Comes The Sun’
JOHN: “It reminds me of Buddy Holly, in a way. This song is just the way he’s progressing, you know. He’s writing all kinds of songs and once the door opens, the floodgates open.”
‘Because’
JOHN: (songwriter): “I was lying on the sofa in our house, listening to
Yoko play Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’ on the piano. Suddenly, I said, ‘Can you play those chords backward?’ She did, and I wrote ‘Because’ around them. The song sounds like ‘Moonlight Sonata,’ too. The lyrics
are clear, no bullshit, no imagery, no obscure references.”
‘You Never Give Me Your Money’
JOHN: “That’s Paul. Well, that’s not a song, you know. Abbey Road was really unfinished songs all stuck together. Everybody praises the album
so much, but none of the songs had anything to do with each other, no
thread at all, only the fact that we stuck them together.”
‘Sun King’
JOHN: (songwriter): “That’s a piece of garbage I had around. We just started joking, you know, singing `quando para mucho.´ So we just made
up… Paul knew a few Spanish words from school, you know. So we just
strung any Spanish words that sounded vaguely like something. And of
course we got `chicka ferdy´ in. That´s a Liverpool expression. Just
like sort of– it doesn´t mean anything to me but (childish taunting)
`na-na, na-na-na!´ `Cake and eat it´ is another nice line too, because
they have that in Spanish– ‘Que’ or something can eat it. One we missed–
we could have had ‘para noya,’ but we forgot all about it.”
‘Mean Mr. Mustard’
JOHN: “In ‘Mean Mr Mustard’ I said ‘his sister Pam’ – originally it was
‘his sister Shirley’ in the lyric. I changed it to Pam to make it sound like it had something to do with it [‘Polythene Pam’]. They are only finished bits of crap that I wrote in India.”
‘Polythene Pam’
JOHN: (songwriter): “That was me, remembering a little event with a
woman in Jersey, and a man who was England’s answer to Allen Ginsberg,
who gave us our first exposure… I met him when we were on tour and he
took me back to his apartment, and I had a girl and he had one he wanted
me to meet. He said she dressed up in polythene, which she did. She
didn’t wear jackboots, and kilts, I just sort of elaborated. Perverted
sex in a polythene bag– Just looking for something to write about.”
‘She Came In Through the Bathroom Window’
JOHN: “He wrote that when we were in New York announcing Apple and we
first met Linda. Maybe she’s the one that came in the window.”
‘Golden Slumbers’
JOHN: “That’s Paul, apparently from a poem he found in a book, some eighteenth-century book where he just changed the words here and there.
Paul layered the strings on after we finished most of the basic track. I personally can’t be bothered with strings and things, you know. I like
to do it with the group or with electronics. And especially going
through that hassle with musicians and all that bit, you know, it’s such
a drag trying to get them together. But Paul digs that, so that’s his
scene. It was up to him where he went with violins and what he did with
them. And I think he just wanted a straight kind of backing, you know.
Nothing freaky.”
‘Carry That Weight’
JOHN: “That’s Paul. Apparently, he was under strain at that period. He’s singing about all of us.”
‘The End’
JOHN: “That’s Paul again, the unfinished song, right? We’re on Abbey Road. Just a piece at the end. He had a line in it [sings] ‘And in the
end, the love you get is equal to the love you give [sic],’ which is a
very cosmic, philosophical line. Which again proves that if he wants to,
he can think.”
‘Her Majesty’
JOHN: “We always have tons of bits and pieces lying around. I’ve got
stuff I wrote around Pepper, because you lose interest after you’ve had
it for years. It was a good way of getting rid of bits of songs. In
fact, George and Ringo wrote bits of it… literally in between bits and breaks. Paul would say, ‘We’ve got twelve bars here– fill it in,’ and we’d fill it in on the spot. As far as we’re concerned, this album is
more ‘Beatley’ than the double (White) album.”
--
geoff
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)