Recently, thanks to the Purple Chick remasters, I've been listening to the Beatles a lot. I heard them in my childhood but never seriously listened to them until the recent Love album. I have an early memory of hearing songs like Rocky Raccoon and Piggies, thinking they were really about animals.
I'm more of a Pink Floyd guy - more instrumentals, more keyboards, more earnest lyrics - but there's no doubt that the Beatles were the best at what they did. Their humor often surprises me. I tend to take music at face value, so I don't immediately notice when a song is supposed to be a parody(I thought the strings in Good Night were lovely rather than comically over-the-top). Pink Floyd's humor tended to be either acidic or incomprehensible.
I think that Come Together is my favorite Beatles song, because it accomplishes so much with a cool rhythm and a small selection of modal chords, and the lyrics are so wonderfully surreal. Other times I'm more attracted to Because for opposite reasons, but the two are definitely top of my list.
One of the great things about the Beatles is that so many of their songs are one of a kind - unique within their catalog and elsewhere - and yet, if you had only the one song to go on, you might think that the band sounded that way all of the time, because they make it seem so natural and practiced. It's fun to imagine parallel universes where, for example, a song like Because might have been the basis for an entire album. I'd really like to visit those alternate worlds and bring back those albums. But then, maybe it's better to leave them to the imagination.
No comments:
Post a Comment