THE PEPPERLAND PERSPECTIVE - OhioLINK ETD Center

THE PEPPERLAND PERSPECTIVE:

A STUDY IN THE RHETORICAL VISION OF

THE BEATLES 1962-1970

Keith David Semmel

A Dissertation

Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

August I98O

Approved by Doctoral Committee:

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ABSTRACT

In recent years, the field of rhetorical criticism has begun widen­

ing its view of Subjects which merit rhetorical investigation in terms of

their suasory potential or persuasive effect. One such area of investi­

gation is the persuasive power of rock music. This study examined the

lyrical theme development and subsequent rhetorical vision of the Beatles

during their seven years of commercial popularity in America and around

the wor1d.

Using the works of Susanne Langer, James Irvine, Walter Kirkpatrick,

and Wilfrid Metiers as a basis, the study entailed a search for fantasy

themes, fantasy types and the overarching rhetorical vision using the

methodological construct proposed by Ernest Bormann in his 1972 article,

"Fantasy and Rhetorical Vision: The Rhetorical Criticism of Social

Reali ty."

Seven major themes were found.to dominate the Beatles' music catalogue.

These were categorized as Invitation to Love, Reaffirmation of Love, Love

Gone Bad, Entrapment, Celebration of the Rock Culture, Social Commentary,

and Fantasy Characterization/Narrative. These musical themes comprised

three larger fantasy types: Romantic Fantasy, Social Fantasy, and Expres-

sionistic Fantasy. These three fantasy types, in turn, made up the

rhetorical vision known as the Pepperland Perspective, a uniquely optimis­

tic vision in a reality of pessimism. It is this unique optimism of theme

and vision which helps to account for the Beatles' success during the 1960s.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This dissertation has been a work in progress since 1968. Along

the way many people have contributed to its realization. They have given

freely of their knowledge, imagination, friendship and love. Together

we have celebrated life and shared i n . i ts sorrow and happiness. Mostly

its happiness. They have helped me to realize the Beatle Dream on a day

to day basis. Thus, I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge

the co-authors of "The Pepperland Perspective."

^Allen, Paige. "The Giving of Rainbows." Learning from the Younger

Woman (1978-1980).

?Bal lard,Deborah. "A Shoulder to Cry On; A Friend to Lean On."

Yesterday1s Dreams (1976-1980).

3Benson, Lollie and Martha Terhune, Lynne Warfel, Megan Jones, and

Susie Wanderling. Days of Heaven: A Romantic Comedy in Five Acts (1968- 1976).

LBostdorff, Denise. "Listening To You I Get the Music." The Girl

Who Has Everything (1979-1980).

^Browne, Ray. "Encouragement Above and Beyond the Call of Graduate

School Representation." The Greatest (1977~1980).

^Clymer, James. "Encouraqinq Words and Barbecues." The Joy of Sharing

(1978-1980).

^Dacus, Donna. "Warm Heart; Fast Hands." Typing for Fun and Profit

(1977-1980).o ’

Dean, Kevin. "Good Intentions." Consumed (1979-1980).

9 Dunlap, Carlton Wayne. "Profiles in Determination." The Right Attitude (1979-1980).

’^Enholm, Donald K. "The Sharing of Knowledge and Wisdom." The King

of Rhetoric (1976-1980).

’^Feeney, Martin D. "Make Movies; Get Ph.D." The Fine Art of Every

Day (two volumes) (1976-1980).

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1 2 Keifman, Paul. "The Dream Is Never Over." Wisdom Beyond His Years (1976-1980).

1 3 Kelchner, Rodney. "An Introduction to Confidence and Courage." Support and Inspiration (1972-1980).

1A Leiboff, Michael D. "The Joy of Insanity." The Forensic Director as Life Hero (1972-1980).

'^Lester, Howard A.J. "Surviving the Blizzard and Other Snow Jobs."

One Party After Another (1976-1980).

'^Marsden, Michael. "A Genuine Concern and Caring." Inspi ration

Through the Teaching of Popular Culture (1977”1980).

’^McDonald, Kimba. "Simple, Honest Joy." The Apologia of John Lennon

and Other Adventures (1976-1980).

’^McNabb, Kathi. "Happy Trails." The Gift of Love (1978-1980).

1^Mummey,

in the Face ofRodney. "The Realization and Encouragement of Potential Mathematic Ignorance." Don't Give Up (1972-1980).

20O'Rourke, Daniel. "The Celebration of Life and Laughter." and Genny Cream (1979”1980).

Gen i us

21 Paules, John R. "Preparing the Doctoral Candidate Through the Teaching of High School Algebra." Growing Up (1966-1980).

22 Powell, Andrew. "Consubstantia 1ity Through Rock and Roll." 11 Ain't Persuasion i f You Ask Me (1976-1980).

2 3Reisch, Robert J. "The Meaning of Friendship." Don't Worry About It, You Can Pay Me Back Later (l977-1980).

2A Roesenthal, Rita and Robert. "Friendship Beyond Words." But Most of Them Were Gems Anyway (1976-1980).

25 Rubright, Judy and Mark. "Voices Raised in Praise of Rock and Roll. Late N i ghts and H i gh Volume (1976-1980).

26°Schobert, Fred K. and Steve Kotch, Dave Rutledge, James P. Quigel and John Heim. "All Together Then." Four Years in a State Institution (1972-1976).

27Wilcox, James R. "Care and Concern." Understanding in Dyads (1976-1980).

n OWilliams, John D. "Getting There Together." Shared Dreams (1972—

1980).

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29'" Young, Leslie. "The Care and Feeding of Fellow Graduate Students." Love and Understanding (1977-1980).

(vi)

DEDICATION

"The Pepperland Perspective" is lovingly dedicated to my family; to

my Mom and Dad, Jean and David Semmel, and my Grandmother, Florence Ward,

who taught me that all you need is Love years before the Beatles confirmed

the philosophy.

To Dr. Raymond Yeager. When I grow up, I want to be just like him.

And to Stephanie Fraim for the happiest days of my life.

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Table of Contents

Page

CHAPTER I ROCK AND ROLL AND RHETORIC: METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES

TO THE UNDERSTANDING OF THE POPULAR MUSIC FORM................................. 1

Justification of the Story ............................................................................... 2

The Rhetorical Dimension of Music ............................................................ 3

The Study of Musical Rhetors .......................................................................... 8

Critical Assumptions..................... . .....................................................................13

Methodological Considerations and Chapter Outline ....................... 14

References.........................................................................................................................20

CHAPTER II THE ORIGIN OF THE BEATLES AND EARLY THEME DEVELOPMENT 23

The Pepperland Perspective: An Overview ............................................. 23

Prelude to Pepperland: A Marginal History Tour of the BeatlesBefore the' Invasion ..... ...................................................................... 24

British Rock and Roll and the Organization of the Beatles . . 39

The Pepperland Perspective: A Fantasy Theme Analysis .... 44

Romantic Fantasy and the Invitation to Love Theme.............................46

Romantic Fantasy and the Reaffirmation of Love Theme .................. 50

Romantic Fantasy and the Love Gone Bad Theme.......................................... 52

The Social Fantasy Type and Celebration of the Rock CultureTheme............................................................................................................................ 54

The Express ionistic Fantasy Type and Entrapment Theme .... 56

References.........................................................................................................................68

CHAPTER III THE BEATLEMANIA YEARS AND THEME MATURATION ................... 74

Social Fantasy and the Social Commentary Theme ............................... 98

Expressionistic Fantasy and the Fantasy Characterization/Narrative Theme ........................................................................................................ 109

't .V U(

Page

133

142

148

148

149

149

150

150

151

151

152

152

153

154

191

206

206

211

References..................................................................... ...................... . ... .

CHAPTER IV THE STUDIO YEARS: RESOLUTION AND REBIRTH ........................

Act II. With a Little Help From My Friends .....................................

Act III. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds ................................................

Acti IV. Getting Better................................ ..................................................

Act V. Fixing A Hole ........................................................................................

Act VI. She's Leaving Home ..........................................................................

Act VII. Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite .....................................

Act VIII. Within You Without You ............................................................

Act IX. When I'm Sixty-Four .....................................................................

Act X. Lovely Rita ............................................................................................

Act XI. Good Morning Good Morning....................................................

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Reprise ................................

Encore "A Day in the Life" ..........................................................................

The Beatle Dream Medley ...................................................................................

CHAPTER V THE DREAM IS 0VER:C0NCLUSI0NS AND RESEARCH IMPLICATIONS

References ..................................... .....................................................................

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................

I

CHAPTER I

Rock and Roll and Rhetoric: Methodological Approaches

to the Understanding of the Popular Music Form

Do you remember when everyone began analysing Beatle songs —I don't think I ever understood what some of them were supposed to be about.

Ringo Starr

2They have been called "Divine Messiahs." Their career has been

3described as a "four-man cultural revolution." Their music has caused

even the most respected of musicologists to trade in their plagal subdomi-

4nants and flattened mediants in exchange for "magic" as a means of

explaining its popularity, influence, and longevity. There were "the most

remarkable cultural and sociological phenomenon of their time."^ They

were the Beatles.

The vast impact which the Beatles had on American culture is incalcu­

lable.

They were among the first major public figures of our time to break down the barriers dividing the sexes, with their long hair and vivid attire; champion the use of 'mind-expanding' drugs and the innovations in sound, design, language, and attitudes these substances inspired; and, in general, show the way to a life style that defied so many of the conventions taken for granted in 1963.

In retrospect, it is no exaggeration to suggest that for a great deal of

the 1960s, "the Beatles were possibly the most famous men in the world.

The Beatles burst on to a generation like Sun Gods. Their enormous dazzling presence blazed a trail that turned the course of music, and without the slightest exaggeration, the century. In their wake the attitudes, manners, and morals g of the young and many of their elders were radically changed.

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This study is a critical departure into a realm of rhetoric as yet

uncharted by contemporary theorists. It is an excursion into a world of

lonely hearts, crowded dance floors, and human celebration. It is an ef­

fort to balance contemporary rhetorical theory while on a helter skelter

ride through a kaleidoscope of fantastic heroes, villains and dream worlds.

The subject matter is a rhetorical vision which has its roots in myth and

magic. It is an attempt at understanding the Fab Four fantasies which

comprise the Pepperland Perspective; the rhetorical vision created by the

Beatles between 1962 and 1970.

Contemporary rhetorical theory abounds with insightful and innovative

methods for the analysis and criticism of rhetorical phenomena. The metho­

dological tool chosen for this analysis is the perspective offered by

Ernest G. Bormann in his 1972 article "Fantasy and Rhetorical Vision: The

gRhetorical Criticism of Social Reality." But before method and mop-top

meet, it is helpful to understand the nature of rhetorical communication,

its scope and function, and their application to this particular study.

Once such rhetorical groundwork has been laid, a clear justification for

the study of contemporary rhetoric in general, and the Beatles in particu­

lar, should become evident. Similarly, the choice of Bormann's perspective

for such study should be clearly justified.

Justification of the Study

The rhetorical analysis of the music of the Beatles finds its justi­

fication in three basic theoretical assumptions: (I) there is a rhetorical

dimension in music; (2) the study of contemporary rhetors, such as the

Beatles, merits our investigation; (3) contemporary rhetorical methodologies

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will offer the critic insight into the use of his tools as well as a fuller

understanding of contemporary communication phenomena.

The Rhetorical Dimension of Music

In 1971, “The Report of the Committee on the Advancement and Re-

finementof Rhetor ica1 Criticism" opened the doors for the study of an

ever increasing number of communicative acts which critics may discern

as possessing suasory potential or persuasive effect.

So identified, rhetorical criticism may be applied to any human act, process, product, or artifact which, in the cri­tic's view, may formulate, sustain or modify attention, perceptions, attitudes, or behaviors.

More spec i f.i cal ly, this effort to exapnd the scope of rhetorical cri­

ticism advised that

The rhetorical critic has the freedom to pursue his study of subjects with suasory potential or persusasive effects in whatever setting he may find them, ranging from rock music and put-ons, to architectur^and public forums, to ballet and international politics.

Having been given the freedom to choose his subject matter from such a

diverse cultural milieu, one might suggest that the rhetorical critic is

in danger of 1 osing his identity; however, as the Committee maintains:

. . . (the) psychologist, historian, sociologist, literary critic, each performs certain types of work that may or may not be relevant to the rhetorical critic's inquiry. We are arguing that any critic, regardless of the subject of his inquiry, becomes a rhetorical critic when his work centers on suasory potential or persuasive effects, their source, nature, operation, and consequences.'2

Using this critical assumption as a methodological base, both the busi-

ness and the magic of popular music become productive avenues for travel

by the rhetorical critic. It is important to point out at this juncture

that the musical form itself, devoid of its lyrical component, has been a

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topic of scholarly investigation for as long as the form itself has existed

Perhaps the most insightful survey of the controversy attending the musical

form's significance is to be found in the writings of Susanne K. Langer.

In Philosophy in a New Key, Langer offers a concise and knowledgable

overview of the historical debate over the significant form of music and

her own assertions regarding music's nature and import. Music is more

than a means of self-expression for Langer; music is a "formulation and

representation of emotions, moods, mental tensions and resolutions -- a

'logical picture' of sentient, responsive life, a source of insight, not

a plea for sympathy."'

The gist of Langer's theory is the establishment of the musical form

as a non-discursive, presentational form of symbolization. As she explains

Language in the strict sense is essentially discursive; it has permanent units of meaning which are combinable into larger units; it has fixed equivalencies that make definition and translation possible; its connotations are general, so that it requires non­verbal acts, like pointing, looking, or emphatic voice-inf1ections, to assign specific denotations to its terms. In all these salient characters it differs from wordless symbolism, which is non-discur- sive and untranslatable, does not allow of definitions within its own system, and cannot directly convey generalities. The meanings given through language are successively understood, and gathered into a whole by the process called discourse; the meanings of larger, articulate symbols are understood only through their relations within the total structure. Their very functioning as symbols depends on the fact that they are involved in a simul­taneous, integral presentation. This kind of semantic may be called "presentational symbolism," to characterize its essential distinction from discursive symbolism, or "language" proper.14

Langer incorporates the thoughts of Richard Wagner to further substan­

tiate her claims. As Wagner wrote:

What music expresses, is eternal, infinite and ideal; it does not express the passion, love, or longing of such-and-such an indi­vidual on such-and-such an occasion, but passion, love, or longing in itself, and this it presents in that unlimited variety of motivations, which is the exclusive and particular character­istic of music, foreign and inexpressible to any other language.

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In summary, Langer suggests that "the real power of music lies in the

fact that it can be 'true' to the life of feeling in a way that language

cannot."'6 Because the musical form is based in ambiguity and abstraction

it is more closely in touch with a listener's emotions. Music's intellec­

tual value should not be viewed in terms of reason or laws of logic, but

in terms of its "revelations."

If (music) reveals the rationale of feelings, the rhythm and pattern of their rise and decline and intertwining, to our minds, then it is a force in our mental life, our awareness and understanding, and not only our affective experience ....It is always new, no matter how well or how long we have known it, or it loses its meanings; it is not transparent but iridescent. Its values crowd each other, its symbols are inexhaustib1e.17

Langer concludes her discussion of the musical form by warning critics

against over-generalization based upon any philosophical construct. As

Langer quotes from the work of J.A. Huller, "Indeed, it is quite impossible

to name everything fascinating in music, and bring it under definite

headings. Therefore music has fulfilled its mission whenever our hearts

are satisfied.1’^

In the end, the musical form is clearly a symbolic form. Music is

1 9"an unconsummated symbol" ; it is "our myth of the inner life -- a young,

vital, and meaningful myth, of recent inspiration and still in its

20'vegetative' growth."

The purpose behind explicating Langer's philosophical perspective here

is to show that substantial work concerning the nature of the musical form

itself has already been undertaken. Such is not the concern of the inves­

tigation at hand. Although extremely important to an understanding of

music's tonal language, Langer's work does not deal with the inclusion of

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lyrics as they accompany the whole of the musical form as it relates to

popular or rock music. Critically, this study will center its attention

on the lyrical content of the Beatles' music, using the work of Langer and

qualified musicologists for insight into the musical qualities of the

popular music form.

Of particular importance to this study is a work by Wilfrid Mellers,

a British critic and musicologist. In 1973, Mellers published Twi1i ght

of the Gods: The Music of the Beatles, a deeply insightful, indeed

inspirational, analytical commentary on the Beatles musical catalogue.

The great majority of what is to follow concerning the purely musical

qualities of the Beatles' compositions is taken from Meller's enlightening

and informative prose opus.

The rhetorical dimension of the popular music form is further explica­

ted in the seminal writing of James Irvine and Walter Kirkpatrick, and

their 1972 article, "The Musical Form in Rhetorical Exchange: Theoretical

Considerations," which includes the theoretical and definitional foundation

on which this particular study is based. According to the authors, the

power and influence which is the rhetoric of music is based on five

theoretical assumptions. The first states that a musical artist is

engaged in a rhetorical activity since he manipulates a symbol system

which may include, sound, rhythm, tempo, and most importantly here, words.

This manipulation reacts to and modifies the dominant philosophical, poli­

tical, religious, and aesthetic values of both general and specific

aud i ences.

The second underlying assumption is that "the musical form operating

independently is capable of generating rhetorical impact to the extent that

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it influences the auditor in modifying judgements about dominant philoso-

21phical, religious, and aesthetic values."

Thirdly, the musical form transforms rhetorical messages giving them a

more diverse and more kinesthetic appeal. While the discursive form calls

for intellectual participation on the part of the receiver, the musical

form calls for and stimulates the entire body's capacity for sensation.

Fourth, the authors contend that because music has generally been

considered entertainment, "one is less prepared to argue in opposition to

the projected message. Listeners do not ordinarily anticipate persuasion

and, as a result, they are ready recipients of the rhetorical statement

22without being aware of its complete implications."

The fifth and final assumption set down by Irvine and Kirkpatrick

deals with the ethical stance of the musical artist or group. "As is the

case with the speaker as persuader, the credibility (ethical position) of

the musical artist influences the level of interaction between audience

23and the message."

Based on these five theoretical assumptions, the authors proceed to

posit a series of four communication models by which the "amplîficative

meaning" of the musical form may be examined. Again, while the four

models proposed are both innovative and insightful, a great deal of empha­

sis is placed upon the non-lyrical element of the musical experience and

as such these paradigms are of limited use to those critics untrained in

musicology. Similarly, the models are best applied to individual composi­

tions. Indeed, Irvine and Kirkpatrick repeatedly use songs recorded by«

the Beatles as points of reference and exapmple ("Lucy in the Sky with

Diamonds," "When I'm Sixty-Four," "Let it Be"); however, to analyze the

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vast Beatle library by such means would be at once methodical as well as

tedious. Similarly, the method proposed by Irvine and Kirkpatrick pays

limited attention to the social contextua1ization of the popular music

form; that is, little conern is shown toward music as a part of a given

historical period and vice versa. To best understand the vast influence

of the Beatle phenomenon from a wholistic perspective, a methodology is

needed which is both more encompassing and flexible than the Irvine and

Kirkpatrick construct.

The Study of Musical Rhetors

In Language Is Sermonic, Richard M. Weaver posits that "if we should

compile a list of those who have taught us most of what we ultimately need

to know, I imagine that scientists, for all the fanfare given them today,

would occupy a rather humble place and that dramatic poets would stand

24near the top." Weaver's thinking seems to be along the same lines as

the poet Shelley who has credited poets with being the unacknowledged

legislators of mankind. Irvine and Kirkpatrick view the role of the popu­

lar artist in a less poetic light, but neverteheless offer us insight into

the important role that such artists play in contemporary society when

they assert that "music, in contemporary culture, plays a key role in the

development and maintenance of attitudes and values held by various groups

25within the general population."

As Russel Nye points out in The Unembarrassed Muse, there is a paradox

in that popular music must be considered both as a business and as an art.

Nye explains:

(Music's) primary aim, obviously, is to be popular; its success is measured by the profit it brings in the market place. But it is also a form of art, one which furnishes an aesthetic experience for millions of people. Popular music must have

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somehow and somewhere within it, an indefinable something — which may be called art by some, artifice by others --that moves people to respond to it.¿6

Certainly, the influence of popular music is difficult to explain, but

it is even more difficult to ignore, and, as pointed out earlier, the role

that the Beatles played in shaping our culture through their music offers

the critic a wealth of critical departures through which we may better

come to understand the relationship between.life and art.

The Beatles not only influenced their audiences, but the music indus­

try itself, as well as inspiring their contemporaries in the field of

songwriting. "There were others in their wake more daring and iconoclastic,

but it is unlikely that the Rolling Stones or David Bowie, or even Bob

27Dylan, could have accomplished what they did without the Beatles' example."

Perhaps the most intriguing statement on the impact of the Beatles

was written by Jeff Greenfield in the New York Times Magazine: "They

28changed rock, which changed the culture, which changed us."

Methodological Implications

Finally, this study may be justified by its "experiential" approach

to the criticism of the popular music phenomenon. As will be demonstrated

later, this study will employ relatively new methods in an attempt to

understand the music of the popular artist in relation to its rhetorical

impact. It is in this manner that this examination hopes to make a con­

tribution to the field of rhetorical study.

Review of the Literature

A careful review of Dissertation Abstracts International since 1964

(the year in which the Beatles first became a commercial success) reveals

a scarcity of academic work concerning the field of popular music and an

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even greater scarcity of work concerning the music of the Beatles. In all

eleven dissertations have been written concerning popular music since

1964, two of which center specific attention on the Beatles.

While many of these works offer insight into the world of popular

music in general, many are concerned with time periods previous to the

1950s and with musical styles other than rock and roll. In addition, only

one approaches music from a communication point of view. Briefly summari­

zed, the nine dissertations which have been written on popular music in

general include: "American Popular Music: An Emerging Field of Academic

Study," by John W. Parker (1962), a look at ragtime, jazz, swing, and

be-bop as reflectors of social morality; "A History of Commercial Country

Music in the United States, 1920-196A," by Billy Charles Malone (1965),

which does exactly what its title suggests; "Popular Music: A Study in

Collective Behavior," by Howard D. Jolly (1967), an examination of the

popularity network (including juke boxes and disc jockeys) through which

popular ballads pass during a fad; "Love, Marriage and Family Themes in

the Popular Song: A Comparison of the Years 19^0 and 1965," by Jerry M.

Bucci (1968), it too speaks for itself; "Music and Social Groups: An

Interactionist Approach to the Sociology of Music," by Allan S. Rumbelow

(1969), an interesting examination of the triadic relationship between

the individual, music and society as well as the use of music in social

control; "Folk Consciousness: People's Music and American Communism," by

Ronald S. Denisoff (1970), a historical/sociological analysis of the role

of radical consciousness in a social movement; "Political Socialization,

Student Radicalism and American Political Science: An Analysis of Folk

and Rock Music and Changing Radical Attitudes at Florida State University,"

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by Stephen I. Levine (1971) argues that the political implications embed­

ded in art, music, and 1iterature are significant factors in the socializa­

tion process of campus radicals; "The New Music and the American Youth

Subculture," by James E. Harmon (1971), a content analysis of 1,000

Bill board hi ts (complete with five student "judges") in a search for« '

values; and "A Dialogue of Energy: Rock Music and Cultural Change" by

David M. Emblidge (1973), abstract unavailable at this time.

The two dissertations which look specifically at the Beatle phenomenon

include "The Beatles As Act: A Study of Control in a Musical Group," by

Larry R. Smith (1970) and "The Music of the Beatles from 1962 to 'Sgt.

Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band,'" by Terence J. O'Grady (1975). While

the latter focuses on the musical and harmonic innovations of the group

(ala Wilfrid Mellers), the former borders on a full-blown rhetorical

study, approaching the Beatles' career as a communication phenomenon and,

indeed, employing Kenneth Burke's dramatistic pentad as a method of analy­

sis. The emphasis here, however, is on narrative history, using Burke

for little more than categorization.

In addition, a survey of The Quarterly Journal of Speech, the Centra 1

States1 Speech Journal, the Western Speech Journal, the Southern Speech

Journal, Today's Speech (Communication Quarterly) and Communication Mono­

graphs reveals only a handful of articles concerned with the rhetoric of

popular song and none concerned with the work of the Beatles specifically.

In terms of the generic criticism of popular music from a rhetorical

perspective, the 1972 article by Irvine and Kirkpatrick is indispensable,

for it lays the groundwork for the consideration of music as part of rhe­

torical study. Many of the content analysis articles offer helpful

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guidelines toward the construction of methods for theme analysis and

categorization. One such article is Richard Cole's "Top Songs in the

Sixties" (1971) in which popular hits are divided into the following

thematic categories: Love-sex, Religion, Violence and Social Protest.

While such categorization is by no means the most complete, it offers the

critic a starting point from which to begin more thorough and sophisticated

analysis and criticism.

One source which is of outstanding worth regarding the justification

of popular music as an area of rhetorical investigation is the 1978 doc­

toral dissertation by Martin D. Feeney, "The Art of Rhetorical Criticism:

Toward the Twenty-First Century." In his chapter entitled "The Rhetorical

Dimensions of Rock Music: The Electrification of Rhetoric, Ritual, and

Symbolic Action, A Theoretical-Critica1 Perspective," Feeney presents a

concise, yet thorough survey of the scholarly writings concerning the

rhetorical dimension of music.

Feeney proposes that the popular musical form has become a means, as

Richard Weaver said about rhetoric, "by which a person achieves ethical 29

and emotional participation in a culture." Like Langer, Feeney's writing

offers the critic a series of perspectives from which the popular music

experience may be viewed. Similarly, his work does not espouse one metho­

dology by which criticism may be undertaken, but rather a number of

theoreti cal-critical paradigms which may be of use in the construction of

an overarching methodology.

Among the perspectives discussed are Brockriede's dimensions of

rhetoric, Burke's notion of symbolic action, Mehrabian's view of nonverbal

communication, Irvine and Kirkpatrick's discussion of the musical form,

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Fergeson's theory of music as metaphor, Whitehead's theory of concrescence,

Purnell's applicat ion of ritual to rock, Duncan's ideas about symbols and

society, Weaver's supposition concerning rhetoric and participation in a

given culture, the art and music theories of Susanne Langer and Roger

Sessions, Ervin Laszlo's theory of "Cybernetics of Musical Activity," and

Cecilia Ridgeway's article on "Affective Interaction as Determinant of

30Musical Involvement."

Additional books and articles of importance to this study are listed

in the "Selected Bibliography" at the end of this study. Due to the

nature of the subject under investigation, it should be noted that this

listing is by no means exhaustive. In particular, the overwhelming volume

of popular magazines and newspaper articles makes a complete listing

impractical, if not impossible, to compile and only a very select few have

been included herein.

Critical Assumptions

This proposed study is presented in an effort to show the applica­

bility of contemporary methods of rhetorical criticism toward the

understanding of the popular music phenomenon. Before a discussion of

specific methodology can be undertaken, several critical assumptions

concerning the nature of symbolic interaction and its criticism need to

be explicated. These assumptions serve as the rhetorical foundation upon

which the proposed study stands.

First, a clear definition of rhetoric needs to be addressed. For

the purposes of this study, rhetoric will be stipul atively defined as

"the study of symbols of persuasion and how men choose among them in

31'adjusting people to ideas and ideas to people."1

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Secondly, the scope of rhetoric is far-reaching. As contemporary

rhetorical theorist Kenneth Burke proposes, "wherever there is persuasion,

,32there is rhetoric. And wherever there is .'meaning,1 there is persuasion.

Thirdly, the rhetorical critic need not be overly concerned with the

so-called objective world, but rather should involve him or herself in

experiential criticism. At base, the critic-artist is contextually bound

by his or her immediate culture. Accordingly, critics offer "rhetorical

assertions about what they selectively perceive something to be, and what

33relative value and role they believe an event fulfills within a society."

Fourthly, rhetorical criticism may be defined to include the experi­

ential perspective. David Swanson's definition of rhetorical criticism

is best suited to the purposes of this study for Swanson maintains that:

"Epistemologically, all rhetorical criticism is best understood as an

interpretive activity involving the application of representational/con-

34stitutive schemas to rhetorical phenomena."

Such a definition of rhetorical criticism does not limit the critic

to one methodology, but rather offers him or her the freedom to choose

from that which he or she feels is most applicable toward a better under­

standing of the artifact. As Pauline Kael posits, pluralistic, or eclectic

criticism "is exciting because you must use everything you are and every-

35thing you know that is relevant . . . ."

Methodological Considerations and Chapter Outline

This dissertation is offered in an effort to analyze and evaluate

the rhetorical dimensions of the commercial career of the Beatles. The

time limiting this study is, roughly, the period between September of

(15)

1962 (the Beatles' first recording session at EMI) and April of 1970

(Paul's official announcement that the Beatles had disbanded). For the

purpose of this study, the rhetorical methodology created by Ernest Bor-

mann will be employed. Bormann first offered his critical perspective

in his 1972 article "Fantasy and Rhetorical Vision: The Rhetorical Cri­

ticism of Social Reality." To neatly summarize the thrust of fantasy theme

analysis in Bormann's words::

The composite dramas which catch up large groups of people in a symbolic reality (is called) a rhetorical vision .... A rhetorical vision is constructed from fantasy themes that chain out in face-to-face interacting groups, in speaker-audience transactions, in viewers of television broadcasts, in listeners to radio programs, and in all the diverse settings for public and intimate communication in a given society.3°

In his 1977 article, "Fetching Good Out of Evil: A Rhetorical Use

of Calamity," Bormann further explains the manner in which his paradigm

may be applied to criticism:

My critical methodology in discovering and evaluating the sig­nificant rhetorical pattern is that of fantasy theme analysis.The three significant concepts of the method are fantasy themes, fantasy types, and rhetorical visions, A fantasy theme is a dramatizing message or part of a message and includes characters (personae) in action within a given scene. A critic using the method searches the discourse under study first for the fantasy themes which are common and representative and then places similar themes together to discover the more general fantasy types.Finally a critic can reconstruct out of the composite dramas which catch up a large group of people a symbolic reality which I call a rhetorical vision .... The method provides a rationale for arguing that a fantasy theme or type of rhetorical vision is important on the basis of its frequent appearance in messages or on the basis of its appearance in qualitatively significant instances. The rationale comes from small group communication research in which important shared fantasies not only reappear but also are alluded to in shorthand ways as 'inside jokes' and so forth. When a fantasy type appears many times in eighteenth- century sermons and when it can be alluded to without full por­trayal in a qualitatively important message such as Lincoln's second inaugural address the presence and importance of the fantasy is supported. The method provides the critic with the drama in mainfest form but does not give a set of rules for the

(16)

critic to use in evaluting and criticizing the fantasies. Thus, several different critics might agree on the presence of a shared fantasy of importance but provide different interpreta­tion of its meaning.37

As Feeney concludes in his evaluation of the Bormann methodology:

Fantasy and Rhetorical Vision as a perspective encompasses reality assumptions which appear to explain the interactive, projective nature of our mass media culture. It is applica­ble to an analysis of fantasy themes in political communica­tion, popular magazines, comic strips, television news, movement rhetoric, recorded dialogue, and perhaps any artifact or process that can be analyzed in terms of the concepts Bormann provides. It is a method which enables the critic to hypothesize creatively within a vocabulary that is vivid, shaping a narrative style that is poetic, artistic within the flow of a critic encountering themes and visions ^gsignificant to the intellectual and social generation of ideas.

Further, in his original article, Bormann stresses the importance of

words and what the critic may hope to achieve through a fantasy theme

analysis. According to Bormann:

When a critic makes a rhetorical analysis he or she should start from the assumption that when there is a discrepancy between the word and the thing the most important cultural artifact for understanding the events may not be the things o< 'reality' but the words or symbols. Indeed, in many vital instances the words, that is, the rhetoric, are the social reality and to try to distinguish one symbolic reality from another is a fallacy widespread in historical and sociological scholarship which the rhetorical critic can do much to dispel.

A critic can take the social reality contained in a rhetorical vision which he has constructed from the concrete dramas developed in a body of discourse and examine the social relationships, the motives, the qualitative impact of that symbolic world as though it were the substance of social reality for those people who participated in the vision. If the critic can illuminate how people who participated in the rhetorical vision related to one another, how they arranged themselves into social hierarchies, how they acted to achieve the goals embedded in their dreams, and how they were aroused by the dramatic action and the dramatis personae within the mainfiest content of their rhetoric, his insights will make a useful contribution to understanding the movement and its adherents.39

(17)

Finally, Bormann explains how the critic may begin to undertake a

fantasy theme analysis:

The critic begins by collecting evidence related to the manifest content of the communication, using video or audio tapes, manu­scripts, recollections of participants, or his own direct obser­vations. He discovers and describes the narrative and dramatic materials that have chained out for those who participate in the rhetorical vision. When a critic has gathered a number of dramatic incidents he can look for patterns of characterization (do the same people keep cropping up as villains?) of dramatic situations and actions (are the same stories repeated?) and of setting (where is the sacred ground and where the profane?).The critic must then creatively reconstruct the rhetorical vision from the representative fantasy chains much as a scholar would delineate a school of drama on the basis of a number of different plays.

Once the critic has constructed the manifest content of the rhetorical vision he can ask more spec i f i c quest ions rela­ting to elements of the dramas. Who are the dramatis personae? Does some abstraction personified as a character provide the ultimate legitimization of the drama? God? The People? The Young? (What are young people really trying to tell us?) Who are the heroes and villains? How concrete and detailed are the characterizations? Motives attributed? How are the members of the rhetorical community characterized? For what are the insiders praised, the outsiders or enemies castigated? What values are inherent in the praiseworthy characters?

Where are the dramas set? In the wilderness? In the countryside? In the urban ghetto? Is the setting given supernatural sanction?

What are the typical scenarios? What acts are performed by the ultimate legit¡matizer? The neutral people? The enemy? Which are sanctioned and praised; which censored?What lifestyles are exemplified as praiseworthy?

' What meanings are inherent in the dramas? Where does the insider fit into the great chain of being? How does the movement fit into the scheme of history? What emotional evo­cations dominate the dramas? Does hate dominate? Pity? Love? Indignation? Resignation? What motives are embedded in the vision? Would the committed work for or resist legal action? Violence? Would they resign this life to get ready for an after 1i fe?

How does the fantasy theme work to attract the unconverted? How does it generate a sense of community and cohesion from the insider? .

How artistic is the development of the fantasy theme? How skillful the characterization? How artistic the use of language? How rich the total panorama of the vision? How capable is the drama to arouse and interpret emotions? .

(18)

A critic need not, of course, raise all of such questions for a given piece of criticism but for some in-depth critiques of a single message the critic might ask more questions and search for more details. u

Methodologically, then, the purpose of this study is to identify,

examine, and evaluate the music of the Beatles in an effort to define

the fantasy themes involved, the public fantasy chaining which occurred

and the rhetorical vision invoked. in order to examine the thematic

development of the Beatles' lyricism, the remainder of this study is

divided into four additional chapters as follows:

Chapter II: "The Origin of the Beatles and Early Theme Development

1962-63." This chapter focuses its attention on a brief history of

popular music in America and Britain, tracing the roots of rock 'n' roll

from the turn of the century. It also focuses on the organization and

early performances of the Beatles, their introduction to Brian Epstein

and the growth of Beatlemania prior to their arrival in America. The

themes under discussion include Invitation to Love, Reaffirmation of

Love, Love Gone Bad, Celebration of the Rock Culture, and Entrapment.

Chapter III: "The Beatlemania Years and Theme Maturation." This

chapter examines the career of the Beatles between 1964 and 1966 in an

effort to discern those themes which are new to the rhetorical vision in

development. The chapter also examines the manner in which the themes

already established mature along with the group and its audience. Inclu­

ded is a discus¡son of the Social Commentary theme, and the Fantasy

Characterizat i on/Narrat i ve theme.

Chapter IV: "The Studio Years: Resolution and Rebirth." This

chapter continues to trace the development of early themes as the group

(19)

moves into the studio completely and the age of psychedelia begins. It

studies the group in transition and through their ultimate decline and

d i sbandment.

Chapter V: "The Dream is Over: Conclus ions and Research Implications.

This chapter includes a final summary and evaluation of the rhetorical

vision and its constituant fantasy themes, as well as the implications

which such findings hold for the study of rhetoric in general and the

study of popular music specifically.

(20)

REFERENCES

Alan Aldridge, ed. The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics (New York: Dell Publishing Co., Inc., 1972} p. 38.

2Nicholas Shaffner, The Beatles Forever (Harrisburg: Stockpole Books,

1977) P. 71.

JRon Schaumburg, Growing Up with the Beatles (New York: Pyramid Books, 1976) p. 5- *

Wilfrid Meilers, The Twilight of the Gods: The Music of the Beatles (New York: Schirmer Books, 1973) F« 184.

^Schaffner, op. cit. p. 6.

6|bid.

7Robert Burt, The Beatles: The Fabulous Story of John, Paul, George and Ringo (London: Octopus Books Limited, 1975} pT 14. X

81bid., p. 15.

9Ernest G. Bormann, "Fantasy and Rhetorical Vision: The Rhetorical Criticism of Social Reality," Quarterly Journal of Speech 58 (December 1972) pp. 396-407.

'^Thomas Sloan, et al., "The Report of the Committee on the Advancement

and Refinement of Rhetorical Criticism," The Prospect of Rhetoric (Engle­wood Cliffs, 1971) p. 220.

Ib i d., p. 221.

12.. ..Ibid.

1 3JSusanne K. Langer, Philosophy in a New Key (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1942) p. 222.

1Sbi d., pp. 96-97.

15lbid., pp. 221-222. *

161bid., p. 243.

17lbid., p. 238-239.

18Ibid., p. 235.

191bid., p. 240.

(21)

?nIbid., p. 245.

21James Irvine and Walter Kirkpatrick, "The Musical Form in Rhetori­

cal Exchange: Theoretical Considerations," The Quarterly Journal of Speech October 1972, Voi. 58. p. 273-

22 Ibid.

23 Ibid.

24 Richard M. Weaver, "Language is Sermonic, Scholarshi p (Norman, 1963) pp. 49-64.

Pimens ions of Rhetor ica1

25 Irvine, op. cit. p. 272.

Ruse 11 Nye, The Unembarrased Muse: The Popular Arts in America (New York: The Dial Press, 1970) p. 358.

27Schaffner, op. cit. p. 6.

28 Donald Allport Bird, Stephen C. Holder and Diane Sears, "Walrus is Greek for Corpse: Rumor and the Death of Paul McCartney," Journal of Popular Culture, Summer 1976, Vol. 10, p. 110.

29 Donald P. Cushman and Gerard A. Hauser, "Weaver's Rhetorical Theory: Axiology and the Adjustment of Belief, Invention, and Judgement," Quarterly Journal of Speech, October 1973, p. 324.

30Martin D. Feeney, from the unpublished Doctoral Dissertation "The Art of Rehtorical Criticism: Towards the 21st Century," Bowling Green State University, August 1978.

3'|rvine, op cit.

32J Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives (Berkeley, California: Univer­sity of California Press” 1969), p. 172.

33 Jack W. Chesebro and Caroline D. Hamsher, "Contemporary Rhetorical Theory and Criticism: Dimensions of the New Rhetoric," Commun i cat ion Monographs, November 1975, Vol. 42. p. 316.

34 David L. Swanson, "A Reflective View of the Epistemology of Critical Inquiry," Communication Monographs, August 1977» Vol. 44 p. 212.

35 Pauline Kael from Methods of Rhetorical Criticism, ed. Robert L. Scott and Bernard L. Brock (New York: Harper and Row, 1972) p. 126.

36J Bormann, op. cit. p. 398.

(22)

27Ernest G. Bormann, "Fetching Good Out of Evil: A Rhetorical Use of

Calamity," Quarterly Journal of Speech, April 1977, Vol. 63. P- 130.

^Feeney, op. cit. p. 276.

39Ernest G. Bormann, "Fantasy and Rhetorical Vision: The Rhetorical Criticism of Social Reality," Quarterly Journal of Speech, Vol. 58 (December 1972) pp. 400-401.

40Ibid., pp. 401-402.

CHAPTER I I

The Origin of the Beatles and Early Theme Development

We were performers ... in Liverpool, Hamburg and other dance halls. What we generated was fantastic, when we played straight rock, and there was nobody to touch us in Britain.

John Lennon

The Pepperland Perspective: An Overview

In an effort to more fully understand the influence and persuasive

power of the Beatles' music, the following chapters will entail a study

of the fantasy themes which comprise even larger fantasy types, both of

which comprise the rhetorical vision under examination. In an effort to

make the step by step analysis a bit more clear, it may be useful to

consider the basic components of the rhetorical vision as they pertain

to this particular study of Beatle songs.

Fantasy Types

Throughout the Beatles' works there are three basic fantasy types

under which their songs might be catalogued: (1) Romantic Fantasy --

concerned with affairs of the heart, with ways of loving; (2) Social

Fantasy -- concerned with affairs of society and culture, with ways of

living; (3) Express ionistic Fantasy --concerned with affairs of the

mind, with attitudes, with ways of thinking or believing.

Fantasy Themes

Each of the three fantasy types mentioned above are comprised of

fantasy themes, dramatizations, patterns of thought. Every song, for

example, represents a theme of some sort. The themes involved in the

songs of the Beatles include:

(24)

Romantic Fantasy

1. Invitation to Love

2. Reaffirmation of Love

3. Love Gone Bad

(Referred to herein as the Love Theme Triology)

Social Fantasy

1. Celebration of the Rock Culture

2. Social Commentary

Express ionistic Fantasy

1. Entrapment theme

2. Fantasy Caricature/Narrative: those songs which employ a story

telling format or fantasy characters as the main vehicle for

theme portrayal.

These, then, are the seven fantasy themes which comprise the three fantasy

types, which in turn comprise the Rhetorical Vision known as the Pepper­

land Perspective. In the following chapters, an effort will be made to

identify their introduction, their development, and the effect they had

on the overall world view which resulted from their interaction.

Prelude to Pepperland: A Marginal History Tour

of the Beatles Before the Invasion

The story of the Beatles has been written hundreds of times, by

hundreds of authors, in hundreds of different ways. Official and unofficial

biographers have had their say. Comic books have been created and televi­

sion specials have been produced. Managers, ex-managers, producers, wives,

graduate students and assorted other hangers-on have all given us their

interpretation of the way it really happened, and while many of these are

(25)

fair and knowledgeable accounts of the group's rise from obscurity to

stardom, the task of sorting the myth from the matter-of-fact is, at

times, a bit diff¡cult.

The purpose of this chapter is to analyze and evaluate the music of

the Beatles during the height of their commercial success (1964-1970);

however, to undertake such a task without presenting the historical back­

ground which preceded their 1964 breakthrough would be virtually impossible

Thus, before Bormann meets the Beatles, here is yet another brief account

of the days of Elvis and the Everlies, of Liverpool and Hamburg, of America

before the fall of Camelot and of the fanfares proci aimi ng the quadrolith ;

a brief history of the origins of the Beatles (one more time). '

In order to understand the origins of the Beatles and their ultimate

success, it is necessary to understand the origins of the music known as

rock 'n' roll: its roots in America, its call and response with Europe,

and its historica1-socia 1 contextualization. American has given birth

to three distinct musical styles: Ragtime, jazz, and rock 'n' roll.

The evolution of these musical styles is a complex chronology which is

difficult to explicate to everyone's satisfaction; however, one of the

most succinct and accurate accounts of late is the one offered by Michael

Watts in his article "The Call and Response of Popular Music: The Impact

of American Pop Music in Europe." As Watts begins:

Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, of course, there had been European entertainers — fiddlers, yodellers, pianists, trombonists, and alJl sorts of musical and variety acts from every country -- traversing America with material generally embedded in traditional European music. But by the 1850s their popularity was overshadowed by that of the nigger minstrel shows, a hotchpotch of song, dance, and verbal patter dominated by the theme of white impersonation of blacks, a form which, however amiable, indicated early on the expanding pattern of black cultural exploitation by whites. . .

(26)

The earliest of these minstrel shows still drew heavily from the

European musical heritage, but as the minstrel show slowly began developing

into vaudeville, "a need became apparent for cheap, home-grown music, and

3soon song publishers moved onto the scene." It is at this juncture that

many writers, including Watts, consider the birth of popular music to

have taken place. As the century turned, popular music was beginning to

2|take shape "as a commercial response to public demand."

The publishers and songwriters of New York's Tin Pan Alley district

steadily churned out popular songs during this period and their efforts

enjoyed a widespread popularity. Indeed, the music of Tin Pan Alley enjoyed

international success as Britain began importing the more successful songs

for their own music halls.

This period also introduced a "tough, overtly sexual element into

popular music, reflecting the changed manners and mores of an urbanizing,

polyglot, acquisitive, and increasingly sophisticated society.One such

type of music was referred to as "coon songs." Coon songs were a hybrid

form of music derived from the white minstrel show and from the ragtime

songs in Negro honky-tonks, cabarets, and city night clubs. "The 'coon

song' suddenly became a nineties fad (some six hundred of them were

written between 1890 and I960) with one called 'Coon! Coon! Coon!' rep­

resenting the ultimate. Many had ribald, frankly sexual implications--

'I Got Mine,1 "You Don't Have to Marry the Girl,' "I Don't Like No Cheap

Man,1 "Pump Away Joseph,' or "A Red Hot Member' . . . .

But the most significant American music to emerge from this period

was ragtime. Equally a hybrid, ragtime borrowed elements from coon songs,

(27)

the Negro work song and minstrel show tunes. Because Negroes could not

obtain work in the white minstrel shows, they resorted to making their own

music in imitation, "using tunes and styles from the waterfront dives and

barrelhouses, Negro dances, and borrowed ballad tunes. The result was a

genuine, unique, black music called 'ragtime,' a slang term for syncopa­

tion."7

Ragtime crept into white music during the nineties under the leader­

ship of men such as Scott Joplin and within five years "practically allg

popular songs except waltzes and two-steps were rag-inf1uenced," and

Qalthough the critics labeled it "vulgar, filthy, and suggestive music,"

its freshness and vitality made it attractive to popular audiences.

Ragtime was equally appealing to audiences in Europe who were first

introduced to the music in Britain in 1912 via the touring American Rag­

time Octette. As Watts explained the phenomenon:

. . . ragtime was significant from a European point of view: its rhythms, considered quite extreme for that period, and its associated dance, the cakewalk, quickened the interest of a new, young audience anxious to discard Victorian formality as it entered the twentieth century; and simultaneously it alerted the emerging British music business to the musical upheavals across the Atlantic and the financial lessons to be learned from them. Thus the recurring twin elements of pop — youth and commerce -- were early revealed.

The second major musical style to develop in America was jazz.

Although the origins of the word itself are unclear, jazz as a musical

style "described the kind of popular music that developed in lower-class

Southern society (most visibly in New Orleans) out of French, Spanish,

African, Caribbean, and American elements."’’ Like ragtime, jazz was a

music which drew heavily from the popular music forms which preceeded it,

(28)

such as "marches, quadrilles, waltzes, polkas, hymns; from the European

heritage of formal music; from Afro-American work songs and gospel songs;

from minstrel shows and popular ballads; and especially from blues and

• ,,12ragtime music.

Although jazz remained both popular and influential through the 1920s,

it was becoming increasingly technical and its audience was soon to be

found beyond the mainstream of popular music. Consequently, various

"schools" of jazz began to evolve.

There was the more commercial, 'sweet' music of the (usually) white-controlled big bands with their singers, like the crooner Bing Crosby, a style which, simplified and reliant on the repe­tition of melodic lines, was known as Swing; and then the more abstract less accessible modes, more usually played by Negroes and pungently described as 'hot,' whose most complete rebellion against current tastes and commercialism resulted in bebop.

These were the major musical forms in popular music prior to the

arrival of rock 'n' roll. Equally important to the development of both

jazz and rock 'nJ. roll, however, were a number of distinct musical

styles which were developing simultaneously in American culture. One

such influential musical style was the blues. As Nye maintains, the

introduction of the blues into the mainstream of popular music was "the

14most important musical influence since ragtime." The interaction which

took place among and between these musical styles makes it difficult to

examine any one style without examining the others. For example, as

LeRoi Jones points out, "the emergence of classic blues and the populari­

zation of jazz occurred around the same time."’^

As Negroes began to migrate to the industrialized North following the

turn of the century, the blues began to take on the commercial trappings

(29)

of the "race record," commercial recordings aimed strictly for the expand­

ing Negro market. As Jones further explains:

The Age of Jazz can also be called the age of recorded blues and jazz because it was in the twenties that the great masses of jazz and blues material began to be recorded, and not only were the race records sold in great numbers but Americans began to realize for the first time that there was a native American music as traditionally wild, happy, disenchanted, and unfettered as it had become fashionable for them to think they themselves had become.'®

As influential as jazz and blues were to the development of rock 1n'

roll, there is one more distinct musical style which needs to be considered

in terms of its contribution to rock. Although it was late in achieving

commercial success, country music was equally significant as a force in

America's popular music tradition. Country music was a merging of English,

Irish, and Scottish folk songs with Protestant hymns and popular sentimental

ba 1 lads.

The sound of early country music was "predominantly Southern, rural,

vocal, and white.Although performers such as Fiddling Bob Haines

were making crude recordings in the early 1900s, country music was without

a commercial label until 1915 when the Okeh Record Company first dubbed

it "Old Time Records," primarily as a distinction from the Negro race ’

records. In 1926, Var iety labelled it "Hillbilly Music," but as sales

and popularity increased into the 1930s, the title of country music became

a fixture.

Jazz, blues, country, swing, bluegrass and the traditional ballad

continued to interact with and influence each other and remained the popu­

lar music forms through the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. In the 1950s, still

another hybrid music came into popularity. It was known as rhythm and

(30)

blues and it borrowed from all which preceded it:

(It was) a combination of older blues harmonies with a basic jazz beat — it drew from everywhere: from gospel, folk, country, and white and black popular music. It was less a new style than an amalgamation of many styles, but it derived most heavily from two major traditional sources ....Hundreds of artists were attracted to the new idiom and hun­dreds of recording companies sprang up to take commercial advantage ot it. It was tough music, going back to the beat-and-blues vocal style of older jazz, for rhythm and blues, with its strong vocalized solo line, either featured a singer.or implied one. It was urbanized, explicitly rhythmic blues, to which electric amplification and advanced recording techniques added new dimensions and effects. It was singable, danceable, participatory music, especially attractive to the younger generation. It was unrestrained and direct, aimeijlg at involving the listener physically and emotionally ....

The next hybrid to develop out of rhythm and blues was to become known as

rock 1n1 roll.

The impact of the popular American musical forms were having an

effect on Europe as well. Jazz had been introduced to Britain in 1919

when the Original Dixieland Jazz Band toured Europe. The development

of records and radio during this period, as well as the commercial success

of the juke box, brought American music across the Atlantic to an enthusi­

astic public tiring of the traditional auspices of the BBC. The arrival

of American soldiers in Britain during World War II brought with it trans-

AtlantfC' radio broadcasts of American popular music. Following the war,

America and Britain experienced new musical phenomena nearly simulatane-

ously.

So as Europe gradually compromised her own traditions and began to assume a 'mid-Atlantic' accent, an immense under­lying desire arose for new pleasures, for a modernity that symbolised a different post-war Europe. In Britain the music halls seemed tired and tattered -- above all, old fashioned -- when set beside the spruce, gleaming music-machine pulsa­ting from the United States, whose principal and most popular figure was Frank Sinatra, a ballad singer with a style more angular than the usual crooner, who captured the mass Imagi­nation to an extent hitherto unknown in popular music.

(31)

During the 1950s, popular music in America was about to metamorphose

into its most astounding and influential form -- rock 'n' roll. As Char­

les Gillett points out in his critically acclaimed Sound of the City:

It is surprisingly difficult to say when rock 'n1 roll 'started.1The term had been in use in blues songs to describe lovemaking long before it came to signify a dance beat. By 1948 it was being used in a number of songs to suggest both lovemaking and dancing -- in "Good Rockin' Tonight" (recorded by Roy Brown) and in "Rock All Night Long" (the Ravens and many others). In 1951 Gunter Lee Carr recorded a straight dance song "We're Gonna Rock," dropping the sexual implication, and a year later Alan Freed, the disc jockey who was to rise to fame on rock 'n' roll, named his show "Moondog's Rock and Roll Party." But as a kind of music, rock 'n' roll did not make its impact on the national popular music market until 1953, when "Crazy Man Crazy," a recording by Bill Haley and His Comets, became the first rock 'n' roll song to make the bestselling lists on Bill board1s national chart.20

Even more important to the national exposure of rock 'n' roll music

was Haley and the Comets' recording of "Rock Around the Clock," another

cover recording of a Rhythm and Blues original, released by Decca Records

in 1954. When it was original 1 yreleased, "Rock Around the Clock" enjoyed

only modest success with its American audience. It wasn't until the next

year that the song achieved overwhelming success when it was re-released

by Decca in connection with director Richard Brooks' film The Blackboard

Jungle.

During the mid-fifties, the movie industry was very influential in

helping to define the nature of the post-war 'baby boom' audience. In a

recent essay on "Rock Films," music critic Greil Marcus explains that

"the first rock and rol 1 movies had little or nothing to do with rock and

roll music, and everything to do with the rock and roll ethos -- with

defining teenagers as a dissatisfied self-consciously distinct group

.21within American society as a whole.

(32)

Predating the introduction of the 1950s rock 1n* roll musical form,

films such as Laslo Benedek's The Wild One (1953) starring Marlon Brando,

and Nicholas Ray's Rebel Without a Cause (1955) starring James Dean, were

beginning to define an American youth culture separate from American society's

mainstream. In retrospect, it may be seen that James Dean's mixed-up-kid-

as-existential-hero character stood for the rock 'n' roll listener.

If Brando symbolized the visceral power the first rock heroes would have to convey, Dean represented the deep and unfocused needs of the audience rock and roll would reach. Both men were crucial to defining what rock meant. As music, rock and roll would have taken shape without them; as culture, it very well may not have.22

The impact of the characters created by Brando and Dean is best

understood in terms of the commercial implications which the youth audience

represented to movie makers and record companies following World War II.

Before the release of Rebe 1 Without a_ Cause and The Wi1d One, this youth

culture had been practically ignored by the entertainment industries which

had failed to anticpate the post-war baby boom. Although young people

were usually at the front of popular entertainment forms, it was usually

the adult audiences who made the popular profitable. All this was to

soon change as young people raised on post-war affluence were fast becoming

a powerful buying public.

The film industry seems to have caught on earliest, for although the

plots in Rebel and Wi1d One were "clumsy, art i ficial, and morally compro-

23mised," they nevertheless represented an awareness on the part of Hollywood

to come to grips with the youth culture by offering it figures "with whom

the new teenagers could identify, figures whose style of dress, speech,

movement, facial expressions, and attitudes helped give shape and just ifi-

(33)

cation to unrealized feelings in the audience."

By representing and articulating the feelings of insecurity and impotent rage felt by so many in what was being billed as a secure and settled society, Brando and Dean allowed their audi­ences a sense of release. By identifying with them, the audience could organize its confusions. Be seeing their apparent recon­ciliation with society . . . their fans could experience the pleasure of both rebellion and reconciliation without the threat of having to be more than passive observers.25

Up until the mid-1950s, the youth market had generally been overlooked

by the recording industry as well. The second world war had created bands

and solo vocalists who dealt in escapism. Bing Crosby, the Andrews sisters

and Perry Como dominated the airwaves, along with Peggy Lee, Nat "King"

Cole, Dinah Shore and Frankie Laine. "Popular music was sung by adults

for adults in the forties. Was there anyone else who mattered in the for­

ties but adults? No one else was buying records, anyway, and that's what

mattered."26

All that was to change in 1955 when The Blackboard Jungle was released

with "Rock Around the Clock" as its anthem. Adapted from the novel by

Evan Hunter, The Blackboard Jungle centered around the experiences of a

teacher at a Bronx vocational high school. In perhaps the most significant

segment of the film, a teacher attempts to build a friendship with his

reluctant students by playing music for them which he has selected from

his personal collection. The choices include Bunny Berigan, Harry James,

Will Bradley, Ray McKinley and Ella Mae Morse. The students react violently,

ultimately throwing the teacher's treasured albums across the classroom.

The teacher weeps.

The scene accurately expressed the dislocation between the cul­tures of two generations .... The film version of B1ackboard Jungle was a large success and a much discussed movie. What

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the presence in it of the music of Bill Haley, rather than ofTony Bennett and Perry Como, helped to establish in the minds of both adolescents and adults was the connection between rock 1n1 roll and teen-age rebell ion.27

Again, "Rock Around the Clock" was the result of a noble heritage

since elements of Bill Haley's style had enjoyed minor success in the form

of black rhythm and blues and country music (e.g., Fats Domino's "Goin1

Home," Lloyd Price's "Lawdy Miss Clawdy," and B.B. King's "3 O'clock

Blues.") Nevertheless, "Rock Around the Clock," was the first real com-

merical success of the rock 'n' roll genre and it initiated musical

offsprings and a youth collective which were to change the face of popular

music. Ensuing performers and their music catered to this American adoles

cent block. Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, the Platters, the Coasters, Little

Richard, the Everly Brothers (originally a country act) and Lee Dorsey

performed and recorded songs glorifying the themes of teenage love, high

school trauma, misunderstanding parents, sock hops and automobiles.

Both the adult segment of the general public and the music industry

watched rock 'n' roll grow following 1955, and while the music establish­

ment was consoled by financial return, the more general adult population

felt uneasy about the growth of the musical form.

There were three main grounds for mistrust and complaint: that rock and roll songs had too much sexuality (or, if not that, vulgarity); that the attitudes in them seemed to defy authority; and that the singers were either Negroes or sounded like Negroes.This last charge was a matter of most open concern in the South.

It is interesting to note that as late as 1975, some exponents of

rock 'n' roll music still viewed their purpose in terms of the exclusive

youth audience of the 1950s. When asked to explain his definition of

rock 'n' roll music, singer-songwriter-guitarist Chuck Berry responded:

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"I would have to say that it's music that is, number one, danceable, num­

ber two, easy to play or listen to, and, number three, that tells a story

29of some walk of life in the category of younger people."

The emergence of ihe rock *n'rol 1 musical form of the 1950s might best

be explained in terms of a "pop explosion." Loosely defined:

A pop explosion is an irresistable cultural explosion that cuts across lines of class and race, and, most crucially, divides society by age. The surface of daily life (walk, talk, dress, symbolism, heroes, family affairs) is affected with such force that deep and substantive changes in the way large numbers of people think and act take place. Pop explosions must link up with, and accelerate broad shifts in sexual behavior, economic aspirations, and political beliefs.30

It has been argued by some social scientists that a pop explosion

merely turns revolt into style; however, some critics, such as Greil

Marcus of Rolling Stone, see such a phenomenon as having much more far

reaching ramifications. Marcus contends that ". . . in fact pop explosions

can provide the enthusiasm, the optimism, and the group identity that makes

mass political participation possible; a pop explosion is more than a

change in style even if it is far less than a revolution, though it can

31look like either -- depending on who is looking and when."

The pop explosion may have at its base any one, or a number of life-

themes, or fantasy themes as Bormann would label them. These may include

themes of frustration, desire, repression, adolescence, sex or ambition.

It appears that, indeed, all of these themes were at the base of rock 1n‘

roll's eruption in post World War II America and Britain.

The "status quo" created by Bill Haley and The Blackboard Jungle was

to be disrupted as quickly as 1956. (A pop explosion's "capacity for fad

32must be utterly profound.")J Although rock 'n' roll would temporarily

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"fad" itself beyond recognition, a number of significant changes took

place only one year after "Rock Around the Clock" climbed the charts.

Firstly, a chaining process was undertaken by the many film studios to

popularize and capitalize on the rock 'n' roll musical form. The success

of the Blackboard Jungle spurred a deluge of similar rock 'n' roll pro­

duct ions such as Rock Around the Clock (1956), Don11 Knock the Rock (1957),

Rock, Pretty Baby (1957), Rock Around the World (1957) and many more.

None captured the excitement or notoriety of the original and the majority

could be categorized as exploitation films, cranked out quickly to capi­

talize on what movie makers considered a short lived craze.

Secondly, 1956 saw the emergence of the most influential single per­

former in the history of popular music. Although the stage had been set

by men such as Bill Haley and the Comets, it was soon to be dominated by

the King of rock 'n' roll, Elvis Presley. Presley made his appearance in

the early part of 1956 and by May his "Heartbreak Hotel" was at the top

of the charts in fourteen different countries. Author Hunter Davis explains

the Elvis phenomenon in the following way:

In a way it was obvious that someone like Elvis should happen.You just had to look at Bill Haley in the flesh, podgy, middle- aged-looking and definitely unsexy, to realize that this new exciting music, rock and roll, had eventually to have an exciting singer to go with it. Rock was the music which excited all the kids. Elvis was the exciting singer singing the exciting songs .... He wasn't singing slushy, phoney ballads, with a nice smile or a quiet cry, for the ladies, but outright provocative, sexually exciting songs. Kids everywhere felt it was aimed at them.33

By 1956, rock 'n' roll music had been firmly established as a popular

art form and the rock *n' roll era was under way. A cultural chaining

process, a process of identification had been incorporated into American

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popular culture. In Presley, the youth audience found a culmination of

symbolization, encompassing the identities of Dean and Brando with the

musical power of Bill Haley, Chuck Berry and others. In many ways, rock

'n1 roll music was symbolic protest.

The first time Elvis Presley shocked viewers of the now defunctSunday night Steve Allen program, letters from indignant parents decried the corruption of youth. As observers argued in the fifties, Presley was the symbol of adolescent rebellion against the values of conformity.34

Finally, 1956 is of significance to the development of rock 'n1

roll musical form for one other important reason. In January of 1956,

Lonnie Donegan and his Skiffle Group, a group of British musicians,

released "Rock Island Line." This song became a hit in both the United

States and Britain, popularizing skiffle music as a vehicle by which

novices could create rock 1n1 roll. Instruments in a siffle group were

usually as follows: a guitar, a bass and a washboard.

This had little connection with the wild rock music ....For the first time, anyone could have a go, with no musical knowledge or even musical talent. Even the guitar, the hardest instrument in a skiffle group, could be played by anyone who mastered a few simple chords. The other instru­ments, like a washboard, or a tea-chest bass, could.be played by an idiot.35

Skiffle was soon to inspire a group of young would-be musicians to orga­

nize the Quarrymen. Their leader would be John Lennon.

By the end of the 1950s rock and roll had become big business.

Accordingly, primarily through the influence of the major record companies,

record producers and group managers had become a collection of shrewd

businessmen based in self-interest.

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Pop music's managers in the 1950s were not noted for their con­cern to prolong and advance artists' careers. When an artist or group was hot, most managers grabbed as many beans as possible and fled. They didn't give a damn if the public was fleeced and cared even less about servicing their clients. The less finan­cially secure msuicians were kept the harder they worked. In most cases a manager was a hardnosed manipulator, whose main concern was with percentages. Pop musicians by the thousands had piled up on the scrap-heap.’®

In a similar respect, music writing was eventually taken out of

the hands of individual artists and made the responsibility of music

corporation employees.

In the 1950s, most pop songs were written in music publishers' offices in New York (hit factories) by a task force of writers who were generally treated like assemb1y-1ine workers. With the most basic musical instruments, often only a piano and a wooden box for a drum, they would churn out a number of demon­stration discs, one of which might be selected by the record company for its latest, oily, teenage idol, because it had an attractive opening phrase about a goddess in high heels.37

Rock and roll, was becoming much more polite and proper which accounted

for the mock-rock successes of such men as Tab Hunter, Pat Boone,, Sonny

James and Rick Nelson. These performers, and many others like them, made

rock and roll a bit more respectable, especially to the adult audience,

but as Gillett comments,

Few of these singers wrote their own material, and few produced any worthwhile rock 'n' roll. But they served the industry's purpose, softening rock ’n’ roll into something that did not sound too aggravating inside suburban living rooms. Their heirs took the change one step further — a series of singers who rapidly lost all connections with the rhythm and spirit of rock ’n 1 roll, many of them from Italian sections of Brooklyn and Philadelphia that had produced the crooners. These performers —

Avalon, Fabian, Bobby Darin . . . Freddy Juniors, Bobby Vee, Dion and the Belmonts -- puppets, dutifully doing as their producers

Bobby Rydell, Frankie Cannon, Danny and the were little more than instructed

The novelty and controversy which had given rock and roll its initial

commercial success was beginning to subside. The strong regional accents

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which helped define the rock and roll genre of music were gone. Gone too

were the simple arrangements formerly executed by the most basic combina­

tion of guitar, sax, piano, and drums. These had been replaced by written

arrangements featuring full orchestras and large choruses. "The justifi­

cation was in sales, which kept climbing despite the elimination of the

music's character, and in the demise of the few companies, Specialty and

39Sun, that refused to make their product more 'sophisticated.'"

The success of this pop-rock indicated to both producers and artists

that the record buying public didn't really want their music to be quite

as rebellion inspiring as "Rock Around the Cock" had been just a short

time earlier. This attitude was generally upheld until 1963- Sophisti­

cation had layed American rock and roll dormant. The music of the late

1950s and early 1960s had little or nothing to do with further extracting

the youth culture from the mainstream of society. It would take the music

of the Beatles and the various Beatle-like bands of England to reinterest

American youth in rock and roll.

British Rock and Roll and the Organization of the Beatles

The earliest American rock and roll was to have a similar effect on

England as it had on the U.S. except on a smaller scale.

England in the Fifties never really enjoyed a rock and roll juvenile delinquent subculture on the scale of that in America; it was an older society, locked in by class and tradition, and what "rockers" the kids got from their own kind were groomed until pale and proper, calculated not to offend the older lis­teners of the BBC's Light Programme: Cliff Richard, Adam Faith,Tommy Steele. Also big with English pop audiences in the mid and late Fifties were skiffle -- a tame brand of pop folk music of which Lonnie Donegan's "Rock Island Line" was the most memorable example -- and trad (traditional jazz), a watered down recreation of New Orleans jazz displayed on such American hits as Mr. Acker Bilk's "Stranger on the Shore."^9

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The counterpart to America's juvenile delinquent was the English

teddy boy. This rebellious sub-culture was similar in appearance to the

image created by Brando in The Wild One. Complete with leather jackets

and boots, the teds greased back their hair and "fed on the images of James

Dean, Marlon Brando, and Elvis, and then of rock 'n' rollers like Chuck

41Berry and Little Richard."

In the early part of 1956, John Lennon was fifteen years old and

attending Quarry Bank High School near his Ajnt Mimi's home in Allerton,

Liverpool. Abandoned by his parents, Lennon had grown up under his aunt's

supervision and, despite her efforts to keep John on the straight and narrow,

the young boy had developed into quite a teddy boy himself. Heavily in­

fluenced by America's film images as well as American rock and roll and

British skiffle, Lennon organized his first band in the early part of 1956.

"They called themselves the Quarrymen, naturally enough. They all wore

Teddy-boy clothes, had their hair piled high and sleeked back like Elvis.

John was the biggest Ted of all. Most mothers warned their sons about him,

4once they saw him or even when they didn't see him but just heard stories."

On June 15 of that year the group was playing a church fete at

Wool ton Parish Church, near Lennon's home. At that performance, a mutual

friend (Ivan Vaughan) introduced John to Paul McCartney. McCartney was

later- to recall the meeting in this manner: "He kept putting his arm

around my shoulders. His breath smelt (of alcohol) but li.showed him a few

43chords he didn't know. I left feeling I'd created an impression."

McCartney soon became a member of the Quarrymen. He and Lennon also per­

formed occasionally as a duo known as the Nurk Twins.

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Paul eventually introduced a close school friend to John as a poten­

tial member of the Quarrymen. That friend was George Harrison. "Paul

appears to have been with the Quarrymen for at least a year before George

joined them, probably not until 1958. No one remembers the exact date,

44but the joining probably didn't happen immediately."

In 1959, all three musicians left their respective high schools.

Lennon began attending Liverpool College of Art in autumn of that year.

45"I was there instead of going to work." Before the end of the year the

Quarrymen had gone through a number of name changes (The Rainbows, Johnny

and the Moondogs). Stuart Sutcliffe, a talented art student and a close

friend of Lennon's, was eventually convinced that he should join the group

in the capacity of bass guitarist. By the end of the year, the group,

still without a permanent drummer, had settled on the name Silver Beatles.

The provision of a drummer was a more serious matter. They were badly let down by a stand-in for a vital Larry Parnes audition; another audition candidate, the locally prestigious Johnny Hutchin­son, stood in instead. Parnes, a well-known impressario, declined to offer them the Billy Fury backing-band engagement he was auditioning -- but was sufficiently impressed to send the embryonic group to Scotland on a short tour supporting another Parnes' artist, Johnny Gentle. They were now professional, and to prove it, hired a drummer, one Thomas Moore.

Upon their return from Scotland, the band played a number of local

Liverpool clubs, among them the Casbah Club. It was here that they met

Pete Best, the club owner's son and resident drummer. In August of that

year, Paul McCartney called Best and asked him to join the group. During

this year (I960), the group made its first journey to Hamburg, Germany.

This was the first of five such residencies that was to teach them the

endurance of all night performances given to local hoodlums. Hamburg's

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Indra Club required groups who were also visually exciting and the Beatles

were one of the best.

John Lennon marched in one night wearing just bathing trunks.Once, too, a toilet seat mysteriously disappeared from the club. Sure enough, John appeared with it round his neck like some wooden horseshoe. The boys didn't mind taking the risk of upsetting the local people. They'd ape Hitler and do the goosestep. And of course the local fans soon learnt to love them . . . .

Perhaps out of pure contempt for the dingy surroundings, Lennon and

Best set fire to the wallpaper in their hotel room. "For the wallpaper

incident John and Peter were deported, one day after George was similarly

'asked to leave' because of his age (seventeen), below the minimum (eighteen)

. 48required by West German law for public performances in bars and clubs."

Upon returning to Liverpool in 1961, the Beatles, as they were now

known, began playing some of the city's more respectable clubs. While

still performing many dates at the Casbah, their popularity spread to

Litherland Town Hall and the Cavern Club. Riots began concluding each of

their appearances, and the group was beginning to realize the effect they

had on an audience. By this time the Beatles had successfully resurrected

the rock and roll musical form. In April, they returned to Hamburg with

the now eighteen year old George.

On this trip, Astrid Kirchner, a German born photographer and friend

of the group, convinced Stu Sutcliffe that she didn't particularly care

for the group's greasy Teddy-boy hair style.

After a lot of persuading, Stu let Her do a special style for him. She burshed it all down, snipped bits off and tidied it up. Stu turned up at the Top Ten that evening with his hair in the new style, and the others collapsed on the floor with hysterics. Halfway through he gave up and combed his hair high. But thanks, to Astrid, he tried it again the next night. He was ridiculed again, but the night after, George

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turned up with the same style. Then Paul had a go, though for a long time he was always changing it back to the old style as John hadn't yet made up his mind. Pete ignored .q the whole craze. But the Beatle hair style had been born.

It was during the second Hamburg trip that the Beatles made their

first recording as the back-up group for the Top Ten's Tony Sheridan.

Before making the recording, Sutcliffe had left the group, the result

of an argument with Sheridan. When the Beatles returned to Liverpool

in July of 1961, Stu opted to remain in Hamburg, marry Astrid and go back

to art school.

Late in the year, one Raymond Jones entered Nems record store and

requested a copy of "My Bonnie" by the Beatles. The store's owner, Brian

Epstein, had to admit that he had never heard of either, but disturbed

by his lack of knowledge, went in search of the Liverpool band. On Nov­

ember 9, Epstein found the Beatles performing at the Cavern Club. Epstein

once recalled

They were not very tidy and not very clean. They smoked as they played and they ate and talked and pretended to hit each other.They turned their backs on the audience and shouted at people and laughed at their private jokes. But there was quite clearly enormous excitement. They seemed to give off some sort of personal magnetism. I was fascinated by them.50

On December 3, Brian invited them to his record store for a chat.

At the end of the chat, Brian Epstein was the Beatles' manager. Epstein

quickly set about arranging a recording audition for the group and on

51January 1, 1962 the group auditioned for Decca Records. Advised by

Brian to stick to the standards, the group did not audition any original

material. George sang "The Sheik of Araby," Paul sang "Red Sails in the

Sunset" and "Like Dreamers Do," and John sang "Please Mr. Postman." Decca

A and R (Artist and Repetory) man Dick Rowe commeneted "Groups of guitars

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are on the way out. Mr. Epstein -- you really should stick to selling

52records in Liverpool."

The Beatles returned to Hamburg for a third time, this time perform­

ing at the prestigious Star Club, destined to become the city's greatest

rock hall. A short time after beginning to work there, the group received

a telegram from Epstein back in Liverpool informing them that they'd won

an EMI Records audition. The group returned quickly to England where they

auditioned for George Martin, an A and R man for EMI Records. Martin

was sufficiently impressed and by the end of July he had arranged a record

¡ng contract for the Beatles with Parlophone Records.

On August 16, Pete Best was sacked in favor of Richard Starkey (Ringo

Starr) formerly the drummer for Rory Storme and the Hurricanes. "Ringo

had taken a sabbatical from Storme to play in the Star Band (the Hamburg

club's house outfit, fronted by Tony Sheridan), and so met the Beatles on

their third visit. Sometime between the arrival of Epstein's telegram and

the EMI audition the decision was taken — between John, Paul, and,

53notably George — to oust Pete Best."

On September 11, 1962, the Beatles recorded "Love Me Do" at EMI stu­

dios in London. The song took seventeen takes to perfect, during which

Ringo was often replaced on drums by Andy White (a session drummer chosen

by George Martin). The finished product released to the British public

on October 5, 1962 was chosen from among the few tracks on which Ringo had

played.

The Pepperland Perspective: A Fantasy Theme Analysis

The recording and release of "Love Me Do: on Parlophone Records in

October 1962 signalled the beginning of the Beatles' commercial success

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as a performing group. It should be noted that, indeed, their incipient

commercial force was responsible for the Beatles being at EMI in the first

place. .The public chaining process which would ultimately take the Beatles'

songs to the top of the charts around the world had been set in motion by

the enthusiastic fans who truly "discovered" the Beatles within the dark

walls of the Casbah Club, the Star Club and the Cavern.

When Raymond Jones' request for a recording of "My Bonnie" sent

Brian Epstein in search of the mysterious Beatles, the link was provided

which would ultimately lead to the chaining of Beatle fantasy themes which

would transcend age and nationality and, in retrospect, time. This is

where the Pepperland Perspective begins. It may be helpful at this point

to explain the chronology of the recordings to be examined below. For

the purpose of clearly viewing the Rhetorical Vision in its proper stages

of development, I have chosen to examine the lyrical content of the group's

54songs in accordance with their recording date, since major discrepancies

in regard to release dates have led many scholars to errors of ommission

or historical inaccuracy.

Nicholas Shaffner further explicates the problems of tracing the Beatle

discography based solely on release date information.

If you were an American Beat 1 emaniac, it is possible that you rate albums such as Beatles '65, Beatles VI, and Yesterday and Today among your favorites. Mention this to a British fan, however, and unless he is a seasoned collector, he might have little or no idea what you are talking about. None of those albums were ever released in his country.

He, in turn, may cite such unfamiliar titles (to Americans) as With the Beat 1es or Beatles for Sale; even should you agree on the respective excellence of, say, the Hard Days' Night or Revolver albums, you'll actually be talking about quite different compila­tions. Tell him your favorite tune on Rubber Soul is 'I've Just Seen a Face' and he may insist it's his favorite on Help! You would both be right, for until 1967 and Sgt. Pepper, when rock

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music started to receive serious acclaim as 'art' and albums as heterogenous works (and chopping them up suddenly began to seem somewhat crass, even to hard-headed American record executives), no British rock album could reasonably hope to survive the voyage across the Atlantic intact.-’"’

Schaffner further explains that the problem of constructing a complete

discography is compounded due to the international success of the Beatles'

record i ngs.

The Beatles recorded 102 songs in the years 1962 to 1966. InBritain these appeared on 8 L.P.s (including one anthology), 12E.P.s, and 13 singles. The very same selections were re-packaged for the American consumer into 11 albums, four E.P.s, and 20 Singles, no two sets feature the same contents!

Mexico, Japan and Canada boast yet different compilations, while in France there were no Beatle singles whatsoever, as that country still stubbornly and exclusively favored the four-song E.P, as the only civilized incarnation of the 45 rpm record, not succumbing to the two-song simple until "All You Need Is Love" in 1967.56

Thus, "Love Me Do," the first song recorded by the Beatles on their

own, serves as the historical point from which the reconstruction of the

Beatles' rhetorical vision may be undertaken.

Romantic Fantasy and the Invitation to Love Theme

"Love Me Do"

Love, love me do,You know I love you,I'll always be true,So please love me do, oh love me do.(Repeat)Someone to love, somebody new Someone to love, someone like you (Repeat opening twice).57

"Love Me Do" is archetypal in regards to the simplicity of lyric,

theme and musical form that was a hallmark of the earliest Beatle recordings

It embodies a fantasy theme which is recurrent throughout the group's

career, a theme which was responsible for the charm and innocence of the

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Beatle mythology,: the Invitation to Love. Often simplistic in its logic

and forever affirmative in its sentiment, the Invitation to Love is one

component of a larger Romantic fantasy type which permeates the entire

Beatle catalogue.

The pristine quality of the earliest Beatle recordings owed a great

deal to a number of American musical influences. As Greil Marcus has

wri tten:

(The Beatles') pop explosion, after all, was not kicked off simply by assassination (John Kennedy's) and PR. You could hear it, and what you heard was a rock and roll group that combined elements of the music that you were used to hearing only in pieces. That is, the form of the Beatles contained the forms of rock and roll itself. The Beatles combined the harmonic range and implicit equality of the Fifties vocal group (the Del 1-Vikings, say) with the flash of a rockabilly band (the Crickets or Gene Vincent's Blue Caps) with the aggressive and unique personalities of the classic rock stars (Elvis, Little Richard) with the homey this- could-be-you manner of later rock stars (Everly Brothers, Holly, Eddie Cochran) with the endless inventive songwriting touch of the Brill Building, and delivered it with the grace of the Miracles, the physicality of 'Louie, Louie,' and the absurd enthusiasm of Gary 'U.S.1 Bonds. . . . Rock, which in the course of the Fifties had changed from a personal inspiration and af­firmation to a process that allowed the most marginal of commit­ments, became, in the shape of the Beatles, a way of life.-*

In.regards to the understanding of the Invitation to Love theme,

one needs to look closely, for example, at the lyrical influence of the

Everly Brothers ("Bye Bye, Love" "Wake Up Little Susie," "Cathy's Clown")

Like the Beatles, the Everly Brothers were musical innocents. A recent

essay by Kit Rachlis helps us to understand the magic that was the Everly

Brothers and the nature of the Romantic fantasy in general and the Invita

tion to Love theme specifically. As Rachlis wrote:

. . . the Everly Brothers sang about love, always love, and always with ingenuous passion and conviction. They never hungered after sex and never sought revenge. Instead they were dreamers, seeking not the ideal woman, but the ideal --

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or perhaps more accurately, the idealized relationship. And it was in their wonderful harmonies, which glistened with such delicacy and moved with such buoyancy, that they found the perfect metaphor for that relationship.59

In very much the same sense, the Beatles' lyric in "Love Me Do" was

the manifestation of a romantic dream quest, one theme which comprised one

part of an idealized world view in which love provides the ultimate legiti-

matization for the participants in the rhetorical vision. The Invitation

to Love was one of the first emotional evocations to dominate the newly

born drama which would ultimately expand into the Pepperland Perspective.

In narrative terms, the Invitation to Love includes a number of

distinguishing characteristics. In this idealized drama, setting is of

relatively little importance. What is crucial to songs of this nature is

the attainment of love in a childlike sense of the word. These songs pre­

suppose the singer on his own, yet cognizant of the ultimate joy which

the love relationship embodies. Thus, in an effort for the love relation­

ship,to be realized, the singer employs an Invitat ion to Love, requesting

that the potential lover join with him in the celebration of togetherness

synonymous here with a state of shared love.

It should also be noted here that the lover (in all of the Beatles'

early songs the lover is a young girl or woman) is not defined specifically

(by name or appearance, for example) and when more than one singer is

vocalizing the Invitation, the singers "speak" in a collective first person

("I'll Always be true"). Both of these techniques were important to the

sense of community that the Beatles would soon come to symbolize as a group

These same qualities also point toward an interesting function within the

experiential realm of the popular music phenomenon, for they gave the

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music not only a bi-sexual appeal, but a universal appeal as well.

Perhaps largely as a result of Sinatra's popularity, a singer's image became as important to his style and its effectiveness as the words of a song. Audiences expected singers to project themselves (or what was publicly known of their selves), and each listener wanted to feel as if the singer were singing to her (or for him, if the listener was male) >0

This process of singer-1istener identification is central to an

understanding of the chaining process involved in the experience of popular

music in general and the music of the Beatles specifically. Mark Booth

offers the critic some insight into this chaining process which he describes

in terms of a ritual in which the "individual member of the audience enters

into a common pattern of thought, attitude, emotion, and achieves by it

concert with his society. When we hear song, we are the concert."6’

As Booth further explains, songs offer us testimony, values, and

beliefs which we may either accept or reject. Thus, "we do not identify

with a character in the song, but with the teller, with his implicit atti-

62tudes or his projected state." Of particular relevance to the Invitation

to Love is Booth's assertion that:

In a song where singer addresses second person (saying, in all probability 'I love you'), the audience identifies with the speaking voice, and this effect is so compelling as not necess­arily to respect even difference of sex . . . sweeping us past the fantasy that the words are directed to us.°3

While some might criticize the Invitation to Love theme for its nai­

vete, I would maintain that it was this theme and its sense for the quin­

tessence of the love relationship that was at the heart of the Beatles'

54earliest rhetorical power. What Mellers describes as Edenic, McCartney

described as simplistic: "You can't have anything simpler, yet more

meaningful than 'love, love me do.1 That's just what it means.This

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1166

then< was the inherent beauty and power of the songs which were formed

around the Invitation to Love theme and which partially comprised the

Romantic Fantasy type. To experience them, even today, is to imagine anew

"some simplification of life that is more or less in our possession already.

It was a rhetoric of reaffirmation. It was a celebration of innocence,

sharing, and love. It was a dream. And it was only a beginning.

Romantic Fantasy and the Reaffirmation of Love Theme

"P.S. I Love You"

As I ’write this letter, send my love to you, remember that I'll always be in love with you.Treasure these few words till we're together keep all my love forever.P.S. I love you, you, you, youI'll be coming home again to you loveuntil the day I do love, 6?P.S. I love you, you, you, you. . . .

On the same day that the Beatles recorded "Ldve Me Do," they also

recorded'h.S. I Love You." While both compositions may be viewed as part

of the overarching Romantic Fantasy type, they are significantly different

in terms of the fantasy theme on which they are based. Rather than an

Invitation to Love, "P.S. I Love You" is representative of the Love Reaf­

firmation Theme, the second major theme on which many later songs would

be constructed. As Walter R. Fisher explains in his article, "A Motive

View of Communication," "A rhetoric of reaffirmation describes a situation

in which a communicator attempts to revitalize a faith already held by his

.. -.68 audience.

In a narrative sense, the Reaffirmation of Love theme is the second

phase of the Romantic Fantasy type. This theme presupposes the establish­

ment of and involvement in the love relationship. "P.S. I Love You" and

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songs of this nature, are, in essence, an exhaltation, a reaffirmation of

the euphoria which is the experience of shared love. In these songs, the

gratification of heterosexual love is given a timeless, unending dimension

("remember that I'll always be in love with," "keep all my love forever").

Rather than centering attention on the dream quest, the Love Reaffirmation

theme embodies the realizat ion of the dream.

In "P.S. I Love You," the Beatles also establish the metaphorical

quality of "home" as the setting in which the fomanticdream is consumated

("I'll be coming home again to you love"). While the Invitation to Love

69may be viewed as initiation or "a ceremony of birth," the Reaffirmation

of Love theme is concerned with the experience of maturation, growth and

steadfastness.

The recording of "Love Me Do" and "P.S. I Love You" was released on

October 5, 1962 and it achieved minor success.

The fact that it reached number seventeen seemed an encouraging omen, as the Beatles were still virtually unknown throughout most of Britain. Most of the sales, predictably, came from Liverpool, where (Pete) Best's dismissal had apparently not dampened the ardour of most of their fanatical following.70

The dissemination of this record via the public airwaves helped to

quicken and broaden the public's participation in the fantasy chaining

which had begun as a local phenomenon in Liverpool and Hamburg. Schaffner

summarizes the mood of this early period when he writes:

Meanwhile, Epstein was exercising his considerable flair for theatrical presentation, and the Beatles' image began to take on a more all-around appeal. Brian, with the eager cooperation of Paul McCartney, persuaded the boys to clean up their act, to wash their mops more regularly, stop eating and swearing on stage, and retire the leather outfits to the closet. These last were replaced with well-tailored matching dress suits, until Epstein hit upon the grey collarless Pierre Cardin jackets that would become one of the Beatles' most striking visual gimmicks. . . . Rapidly changing into the cheery, cheeky, and

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relatively clean-cut moptops who would soon conquer the world, the Beatles consistently stole the show from the long-since- forgotten acts that headlined their non-stop British tours.Girls began to squeal, and the squeals turned to shrieks that by the end of 1963 would drown out every note their heroes might attempt to play. The Beatles' second single, "Please Please Me" -- far more energetic and distinctive than the first -- reached Number One on many of the British charts, and no lower than Number Two on the others.71

Romantic Fantasy and the Love Gone Bad Theme

"Please Please Me"

Last night I said these words to my girl I know you never even try girl Come on (come on) Come on (come on)Please please me, oh yeh, like I please you You don't need me to show the way love Why do I always have to say love Come on (come on) Come on (come on):Please please me, oh yeh, like I please youI don't want to sound complainingBut you know there's always rain in my heartI do all the pleasing with youIt's so hard to reason with you, oh yehWhy do you make me blue?72

The Beatles' third recorded song, "Please Please Me," was completed

on November 26, 1962 and was released in Britain on Parlophone Records on

January 11, 1963- Still representative of the Romantic Fantasy type,

"Please Please Me" stands as the archetype of the third phase of the love-

theme triology: Love Gone Bad. Although the underlying concern is still

with the attainment of the love dream, the Love Gone Bad theme deals with

the love relationship in flux, or, more specifically in crisis. "Please

Please Me" and songs of this nature are testimonies to love lost or love

in the process of becoming lost. Nevertheless, with only minor exceptions

during the early period, even such disastrous concepts as betrayal, infi­

delity, and loneliness are overcome by the Beatles' optimistic world view

which holds to the power of hope and the promise of a brighter future through

reconciliation with the loved one.

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In "Please Please Me" the reciprocal male-female relationship has

broken down for some unidentified reason and the singer calls for reconcilia

tion. The listener is lead to believe that such a reconciliation is being

prevented by the lover, since she is indicted : by the phrase "I know you

never even try girl." The striving to reconcile their differences (a sort

of re-Invitation to Love) is emphasized by the repetition of "Come on."

What is significant in this song, and others 1ike it, is that no matter

how the dream has been disrupted, the singer still calls out for a return

to balance, often in an almost overly polite fashion ("Please please me,"

"I don't want to sound complaining"). The fact that a negotiation of this

type is still worth pursuing points out the necessity for hope. Here,

through "reason" and the will to "try" reconciliation is still possible

and the idealized love dream may once again flourish.

In terms of analysis, the love theme trilogy: Invitation to Love,

Love Reaffirmation, and Love Gone Bad, are the most common and representa­

tive themes which comprise the earliest Beatle lyrics; indeed, it is

these three themes which continued to be a hallmark throughout the Beatles'

entire commercial career. From these themes we may construct the more

general Romantic Fantasy type which served as a mainstay of the overarch­

ing rhetorical vision under development between 1963 and 1970. New themes

were quick to develop and the commercial appeal of the group was soon to

have an explosive effect on the public fantasy chaining via an international

mass media.

Recorded and released with "Please Please Me" was another original

Beatle composition entitled "Ask Me Why." Like "P.S. I Love You," "Ask

Me Why" was built around the Reaffirmation of Love theme. Simplistic in

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its sincerity, "Ask Me Why" celebrates the love relationship in terms of

its eternal joy ("I know that I should never, never, never be blue," "I'll

say I love you and I'm always thinking of you"). Faced with the success

of this single, the tiny Beatle organization realized that the way to

maintain their popularity was to release an album, a major step in the

commercial chaining process, considering the Beatles were still widely

unknown in the major market places. George Martin, their studio producer

since he first heard their EMI audition tape, recalls the manner in which

their first album came into being.

The first album we made was a very quick one, because 'Please Please Me' had broken out in England -- this was way before they were ever heard of in America. We wrote the record late in 1962, and I knew that I would want an album to follow it up to cash in on the single. Which I wanted to call Please Please Me obviously. And the only way of getting an album out of them quickly was to take all the stuff they knew inside out — they were performing regularly at places like the Cavern -- and just record it. I told them, 'I want your rock & roll numbers, all the things you know.'7^

The album was recorded on February 11, 19&3 and included the introduc

tion of two new fantasy themes as well as a large dose of the Love theme

triology.

The Social Fantasy Type and Celebration of the

Rock Culture Theme

"I Saw Her Standing There"

Well, she was just seventeen,You know what I mean,And the way she looked was way beyond compare, So how could I dance with another,Oh when I saw her standing there.Well, she looked at me,and I, I could seethat before too long I'd fall in love with her she wouldn't dance with another, oh when I saw her standing there

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Wei 1 my heart went (boom) when I crossed that room, and I held her hand in mine.Oh we danced through the night,And we held each other tight,and before too long I fell in love with her,now I'll never dance with another,7I-oh since I saw her standing there.

With the recording of "I Saw Her Standing There," the Beatles intro­

duced both a second fantasy type and a fourth fantasy theme into the

development of their rhetorical vision. Unlike the Romantic Fantasy type

which preceeded it, the Social Fantasy type was less concerned with the

exhaltation of interpersonal relationships and more concerned with espousing

a particular societal viewpoint.

"I Saw Her Standing There" is indicative of the fantasy theme which

is a Celebration of the Rock Culture. As Wilfrid Mellers has observed

One couldn't claim that these words are oral poetry, in the sense that Dylan's songs -- even the earliest ones -- are: though in the course of time the Beatles grew into oral poetry, largely by way of Dylan's example. What these verses do have is an un­canny instinct for the ways in which people of the Beatles' gene­ration spoke and felt, rather than thought; and they're prepared to accept their inarticulateness rather than substitute for it the 'poetic' insincerities — the moon-June cliches -- of the previous generation's pop songs. The blundering phrases of 'uneducated' youth,. . . acquire a certain pathos, if not poetry: so when he tells us well she was just seventeen, we do indeed know what he means.76

At this stage in the development of the rhetorical vision, the concerns

of the Social Fantasy were those of the adolescent; the participation in

an eternally youthful drama filled with disc jockeys, dance floors, rock

and roll music, slang expressions, and, often, material possessions. In

later years, this fantasy would expand to include themes of consciousness

expansion and social commentary. But in early 1963, the mood of these

songs was as joyous and optimistic, and certainly as simplistic, as the

(56)

mood of the valentines which had preceeded it.

"I Saw Her Standing There" is an anthem of adolescence, steeped in

pubescent phraseology ("You know what I mean," the introductory "well")

and archtypal in its allusion to dance floor sexuality in which the ritual

of dance is united symbolically with the rituals of romance. The song is

suggestive of a fast paced vision of life, marked by urgency and a sense

of mystery. Here, mating, courtship and the consummation of love happen

as quickly as a look, a dance, and a pledge of devotion. A sense of com­

munity is simultaneously established between the Beatles and their audience,

as well as between the audience members themselves — the real life par­

ticipants in the rock culture which this fantasy theme idealizes. Again,

it is that sense of youthful innocence which lies at the base of this

theme's appeal during its early development. The drama suggested is enti­

cing in its simplicity and excitement. This characteristic made widespread

acceptance by a youth-oriented market nearly a guarantee and established

"I Saw Her Standing There" as a work of "timeless" importance.

The Express ionistic Fantasy Type and Entrapment Theme

"Chains"

Cha insMy baby's got me locked up in chains and they ain't the kind that you can see oh these chains out of love got a hold on me Cha i nsI can't break away from these chains Can't run around cause I'm not free oh these chains out of love won't let me beI want to tell you pretty baby I think you're fine I'd like to love youBut darling I'm imprisoned by these chains

(57)

Please believe me when I tell you Your lips are sweet I'd like to kiss themBut I can't break away from all of these chains Chains, chains of love, chains of love.78

With the inclusion of "Chains," the Beatles introduced a fifth fantasy

theme, as well as a third, and final, fantasy type into their rapidly

expanding rhetorical vision. The Expressionistic Fantasy type is the

broadest of the three fantasy types involved, since the themes which com­

prise it are often of a metaphysical nature, ambiguous in their meaning

and intent, and generally of a wholly subjective, intra-personal nature.

"Chains," for example, at first glance, appears to be another in the

series of Love Gone Bad themes; however, what is of importance here is

the total lack of any sort of Love Reaffirmation or chance for reconcilia­

tion. "Chains" is representative of the Beatles' dark side, depicting an

intra-personal drama in which love, hope, and optimism are replaced by

longing, fear, and frustration. This is the fantasy theme known as Entrap­

ment.

It is important to note that "Chains" is the first song to be examined

which is not an original Lennon-McCartney composition. As mentioned

earlier, the urgent need to release an album of Beatle music necessitated

the inclusion of "cover" songs, re-recordings of rock 'n' roll songs by

earlier performers. "Chains" is an example of such a cover recording,

the original having been written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King and recorded

by the Cookies in late 1962. Significantly, "Chains" is the exception

rather than the rule in terms of the major fantasy themes which shaped

the early rhetorical vision, since the Entrapment theme was not employed

again until late 1964, where it appeared once again I n a cover record ing.

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The Entrapment theme would not make its appearance in an original Beatle

composition again until early 1965-

Among the other songs recorded on February 11 for release on the

Beatles’ first British LP were three original Lennon-McCartney compositions

"Misery," an impassioned ode to Love Gone Bad in which reconci1iation Seems

doubtful until the lover realizes the error of her departure ("She'll

79remember and she'll be the only one, lonely one"); "Do You Want to Know

80a Secret," a Disney-inspired Lennon composition which is almost mocking

in its childlike Reaffirmation of Love in which the lovers whisper in each

81other's ears the words they long to hear — "I'm in love with you,"

naturally enough; and "There's a Place," an opus of self-reflection and

Love Reaffirmation on an intra-personal level in which personal recollec­

tions of the love experience fill the void created by depression and lone­

liness ("the things you do go 'round my head/the things you say/like I

82love only you/in my mind there's no sorrow/there'11 be no sad tomorrow") .

Along with "Chains," five other cover recordings were made and

included on the "Please Please Me" album. These works included: Arthur

Alexander's "Anna," a classic epistle of adolescent Love Gone Bad engen­

dered by the returning of the lover's ring; in which sacrifice is viewed

as the ultimate reaffirmation of true love ("I still love you so, but if

8he loves you more, go with him") ; "Boys," a Luther Dixon-Wes Farrell

composition, originally recorded by the Si relies, in which Love Reaffirma­

tion is expressed in physiological rather than philosophical terms ("I've

been told when a boy kiss a girl/take a trip around the world/my girl

. 84says when I kiss her lips/get a thrill to her finger tips") ; "Baby

It's You" a Hal David-Burt Bacharach-Barney Williams composition, also

(59)

recorded originally by the Shi relies, a complex drama of Love Gone Bad,

abandonment, infidelity, and gossip in which love triumphs against all

odds ("It doesn't matter what they say/1 know I'm gonna love you any oldO £“

way/what can I do/and it's true/don'.t want nobody/'cause baby it's you") ;

"A Taste of Honey,’" a Ric Marlow-Bobby Scott song which was an instrumental

hit for Martin Denny and was later recorded as a vocal by Lenny Welch,

a cliche-ridden Love Reaffirmation of wine-sweet kisses, similar to "P.S.

I Love You" in its sentiment and sincerity ("I will return/yes I will

86return/l'll come back for the honey and you") ; and "Twist and Shout,"

a Bert Russell-Phil Medley composition first recorded by the Isley Brothers

perhaps the most exciting and primitive Celebration of the Rock Culture

ever recorded by the Beatles or anyone else for that matter, in which

Lennon's electric vocal makes the symbolic connection between dance and

sexuality with a passion and conviction that is unmatched in recent popularQ *7

music for its attainment of "orgiastic frenzy" and communal sense of

well being ("You know you twist little girl/you know you twist so fine/

88come on and twist a little closer now/and let me know that you're mine") .

The "Please Please Me" album was a commercial success in Britain,

reaching the Number One position soon after its release and remaining

there for thirty weeks until another Beatle album arrived to replace it.

As Schaffner so aptly put it, Please Please Me proved to be just the

, 89shot of adrenalin the wimpy British music scene wanted." The next

Beatle song to be recorded, "From Me to You" was a return to the "innocu-

90 .ous sing-along-style" of "PiS. I Love You." The sentiment was based

on the most simplistic of Love Reaffirmation themes:

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If there's anything that you want,if there's anything I can do,just call on me and I'll send it along,with love from me to youI've got everything that you want1ike a heart that's oh so truejust call on me and I'll send it alongwith love from me to youI got arms that long to hold youand keep you by my side,I got lips that long to kiss you and keep you satisfied.9'

Although the song represented no radical departure in structure and

theme, it was nevertheless of great significance to the Beatles' public

performances.

The single did, however, introduce yet another Beatle trade­mark: the falsetto 'whoooooo's' linking the chorus and the verse. In performance the three front-line Beatles would, when they reached this part, lean toward the mikes, vigorously shaking their mop heads in unison to drive shivers up all the little girls' spines and insure that the next few bars would be drowned in orgasmic shrieks. The Beatles were fast learn­ing how to be cute.52

Their efforts did not go unrewarded. Public frenzy continued to

mount with every new record release. "From Me to You" backed by "Thank

You, Girl," similar to the former in its theme of Love Reaffirmation

("Thank you girl for loving me the way that you do/that's the kind of

9 3love that is too good to be true")J was recorded on March 4, 1963,

released on April 12 and was Number One on the Melody Maker charts by

May 4 where it remained for six weeks.

By the time the group next entered the studio (to record "She Loves

You" and "I'll Get You" as their next single release) Britain was experi

encing the first symptoms of full-fledged Beatlemania. Lyrically, "She

Loves You" included a twist in point of view, for the Love Reaffirmation

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here is delivered to a fictionalized second person giving the message a

direct route to its audience in a seeming advisory capacity:

She loves you, yeh yeh yeh She loves you, yeh yeh yeh She loves you, yeh yeh yeh YEH You think you've lost your love,Well I saw her yesterday It's you she's thinking of And she told me what to say She said she loves you And you know that can't be bad Yes, she loves you And you know you should be glad She said you hurt her so,She almost lost her mind,But now she says she knows,You're not the hurting kind. . . ~

You know it's up to you,I think it's only fai r Pride can hurt you too,Apolgise to her,Because she loves you,And you know that can't be bad,Yes, she loves you,And you know you should be glad.She loves you, yeh yeh yeh With a love like that,You know you should be glad.With a love like that,You know you should be glad.

The appearance of the famed Beatle trademark, "Yeh-yeh-yeh," gave the

song a greater sense of affirmation and romantic celebration than any song

had achieved to this point. As Carr and Tyler theorized in 1975:

If a future archivist were to select one single tune to characterize the Beatles' appeal and the stylistic devices for which they became world famous, he would be forced to choose "She Loves You."Apart from any other musical considerations, the 'hook' -­the famous 'Yeah, yeah, yeah' chorus — is so instantly appealing, even eleven years later, that the phenomenal success of this song (and of the Beatles themselves on the strength of it) is easy to understand.95

(62)

The B-side of "She Loves You" was a less distinctive Invitation to

Love entitled "I'll Get You" which proclaims a long felt romantic interest

and, rather matter of factly, concludes, "Well there's gonna be a time

when I'm gonna change your mind, so you might as well resign yourself to

me."^6 Although the song found its strength in many of the earlier musi­

cal and lyric techniques employed by the group, "I'll Get You" was practi­

cally ignored due to the furor which accompanied "She Loves You."

As the Beatles' sound continued to develop in distinctness, the public

chaining process continued to expand, drawing in larger and larger numbers

of fanatical followers.

'She Loves You' presented, for the first time, all the ingredi­ents of the unique Beatle sound churning in the mix: Ringo's triumphant drum fills; the boosted level of the electric instruments -- especially the bass — that made it difficult for listeners to resist giving the volume controls a healthy nudge; and the music that was still rock 'n1 roll yet now distinctly British.

By the time of the disc's September 1963 publication, even big American stars such as Roy Orbison had to settle for second-billing on the Beatles' British tours. Teenagers would wait in line on the street with their sleeping bags and um­brellas for forty-eight hours to get tickets, then storm the box-office like revolutionaries at the Bastille when tickets finally went on sale. The Beatles no longer dared venture out in public without bodyguards or policemen, for fear of getting torn to pieces by their maniacal following. When they appeared on stage they were pelted by jelly babies — once their favorite candy, but not for long -- as well as gifts and articles of female clothing.

For months the Beatles had been front-page fodder for British music papers such as Melody Maker and New Musical .Express, and dozens of unauthorized fan-magazines had begun glutting the market in competition with the 'official' Beatles Monthly Book, which was founded in April, 1963, and whose circulation would pass 300,000 by December. Membership rolls in the Liverpool fan club, which would soon boast chapters in 50 nations, were approaching 100,000. But it wasn't until October 13 — when the pandemonium erupted right under Fleet Street's nose with a televised performance at the London Pal­ladium accompanied by hysteria in the theatre and riots on the street -- that the word 'Beat 1 emania' arrived on page one of all the national dailies. But once it got there, it stuck.

(63)

Responding to the ever-increasing popularity of their music, the

Beatles returned to the studio on July 15, 1963 to record fourteen new

songs for release as singles, E.P.'s and for inclusion on their second

British L.P., "With the Beatles." This collection of songs included eight

original Beatle compositions and only six cover versions of previously

recorded songs.

In regards to fantasy types and fantasy themes, this collection of

songs really offered nothing in the sense of innovative departure, rather

they served to reaffirm the attitudes and beliefs which had been so

artisitica11y developed in the preceeding recordings. The list of origi­

nal Beatle compositions from this recording session include: "It Won't

Be Long," which describes the loneliness of separation ("since you left

me, I'm so alone. . . every night the tears come down from my eyes/every

day I've done nothing but cry") and the Reaffirmation of Love which is

the bliss of the realized love dream contingent upon the absentee lover's

return "home"; "All I've Got to Do," a song described by Mellers as a

"love spell" in which the steadfastness ofthe^love dream is restated in

terms of reciprocity of caring between the lovers in the drama ("Whenever

I want you around, all I've got to do is call you on the phone and you'll

come running home. . . And the same goes for me whenever you want me at

all, I'll be here, yes I will, whenever you call")'^ and the recurring

linkage of "home" with the love dream itself; "All My Loving," a testimony

to fidelity in which the singer reaffirms his love to a "home" and lover

which he must temporarily leave ("Remember, I'll always be true and then

while I'm away I'll write home every day, and I'll send all my loving to

you")10'; "Don't Bother Me," (George Harrison's first Beatle composition)

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a.: request for temporary solitude until the lover returns 'home11 to correct

the Love Gone Bad situation ("I'll let you know when she's come home/until

that day don't come around, leave me alone, don't bother me"); "Little

Child," predominantly an Invitation to Love with a minor premise in the

Celebration of the Rock Culture ("Little child, won't you dance with me?/

I'm so sad and lonely, baby take a chance with me"); "Hold Me Tight,"

a Reaffirmation of Love proper with an internal Invitation to Love as

direct and simplistic as the song's title itself; "I Wanna Be Your Man,"

an Invitation to Love which is almost desperate in its sentiment and repe­

tition ("Tell me that you love me baby, let me understand/Tel1 me that

you love me baby, I wanna be your man/l wanna be your lover baby, I wanna

104be your man/l wanna be your lover baby, I wanna be your man") suggesting

that an Eden is envisaged but we haven't reached it; and "Not a Second

Time/" a straight forward tribute to self-reliance which approached the

Love Gone Bad theme with a newly acquired sense of defiance ("You hurt me

then/You're back again/No no no, not a second time").’^

The six cover songs which round out With the Beatles include: "Till

There Was You," a Meredith Willson composition from the musical The Music

Man (originally a hit single for Anita Bryant) which Reaffirms love as the

key to unlocking the gates of Eden ("There were bells on a hill, but I

never heard them ringing/there were birds in the sky, but I never saw

them winging/there was love all around, but I never heard it singing/no,

I never heard it at all till there was you"),’^8 "Please Mr. Postman,"

by Brian Holland, Robert Bateman, and Berry Gordy, originally performed

by the Marvellettes, a powerfully flowing anthem of Love Gone Bad which

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goes beyond anxiety and loneliness to the point of panic and near hysteria,

owing mostly to Lennon's frenzied vocal attack and the group's madly

inspired background chorus ("Deliver the letter, the sooner the better/Ya

gotta wait a minute, wait a minute, oh yeh/wait a minute, wait a minute/

Ya gotta wait a minute, wait a minute, oh yeh/Ya gotta wait a minute, wait

a minute . . . (SCREAM)")'^; "Roll Over Beethoven," written and recorded

originally by Chuck Berry, a heart and soul Celebration of the Rock Culture

which rivals "Twist and Shout" for its delirious enthusiasm and joyous

108sentiment, "the very t i tle of which is a reject ion of Western civilization"

("You know my temperature's rising/and the juke box blows a fuse/my heart

beatin' rhythm/and my soul keeps a-singin' the blues"); "You Really

Got a Hold On Me," a William "Smokey" Robinson composition first recorded

by the Miracles, describing a sensual ode to romantic obsession which

finds its Invitation to Love in the acquiescent refrain "I love you and

all I want you to do is just hold me, hold me, hold, hold me");''^ "Devil

in Her Heart," originally a hit for the Donays and written by Richard B.

Drapkin, which reveals a fascinating excursion into the ca11-and-response

technique of popular rock vocals in which a chorus of voices proclaims the

loved one to be unworthy, indeed in alliance with the Devil, only to be

overcome by the triumphant solo voice of the lead singer proclaiming his

Reaffirmation of Angelic Love: "Chorus: 'She's got the devil in her heart'/

Solo: 'No, no this I can't believe'/Chorus: 'She's gonna tear your heart

apart'/Solo: 'No no nay will she deceive'";''' and finally Berry Gordy

and Janie Bradford's "Money," originally recorded by Barret Strong, a

cynical Celebration of that which makes even the Rock Culture go 'round,

(66)

in which the group parodies their own rhetorical vision of the world

("money don't get everything it's true, what it don't get I can't use/

1 12your lovin' gives me a thrill, but your lovin' don't pay my bills").

Many critics believe that the above collection of songs was one of

the most significant groupings' recorded by the Beatles in terms of its

vitality and collective point of view. For example, Carr and Tyler main­

tain,

This is the only LP from the primitive early sixties that,well over ten years later, still retains all the freshnessand breadth of musical vision that was instantly apparenton the day of issue. It was a.simply staggering achievementfrom every point of view, a landmark par excellence, and oneof the four best albums the Beatles ever made."113

Four days after the Beatles completed recording the songs for Wi th

the Beatles, they recorded two songs which were destined to become crucial

ingredients of the group's mythology: "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and

"This Boy." "I Want to Hold Your Hand," is, in essence, one of the sim­

plest Invitations to Love the Beatles ever recorded. But it is much more.

It simultaneously evokes a child-like fascination with the adventure,

mystery and romance of the boy-girl relationship. And in i.ts purity the

listener experiences a sense of awe for the unspoiled innocence of youth

and the exhil¡rating happiness which is the province of ideal love.

Not unlike their earlier recording of "Anna," "This Boy" describes

a situation of Love Gone Bad in which the singer places his lover's

happiness above his own. While reconciliation is certainly hoped for

and requested, self-sacrifice serves as the ultimate 1 egitimazation of

the drama ("This boy wouldn't mind the pain, would always feel the same,

1 14if this boy gets you back again").

(67)

The single of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "This Boy" received

record-breaking advance orders in Britain and skyrocketed to the top of

the British charts with ease; however, this single is of particular signi­

ficance for still another reason. It was the "deliberate stumble of the

opening time-signature"’’which introduces "I Want to Hold Your Hand"

that would ultimately serve as the fanfare proclaiming to America that

the Beatles had invaded.

In summarizing the rhetorical vision created by the Beatles during

this time period, one discovers an Edenic world view under construction.

The vision here is characterized by a simplicity of lyric and logic which

greatly accounts for the charm and seeming innocence of these early songs.

Throughout the Love-theme triology, one notes a mood of optimism and hope;

it is an affirmative world view in which Love serves as the ultimate 1 eg it i-

matization. The quest for that Love Dream is crucial, for even concepts

such as betrayal, infidelity, and loneliness can be overcome through

reconci1iation.

While setting is of relatively little importance here, the Romantic

and Social Fantasy types place a great deal of emphasis on sharing and

togetherness in an idealized world of young heroes and villains who cele­

brate life, love, dance and song with childlike exuberance. Home is where

love can be found, and all around it is a world of disc jockeys, dance

floors, slang expressions and potential romance. It is the world of the

young Beatles; a world that was quickly growing up.

(68)

References

'Barry Miles, Beatles In Their Own Words (New York: Quick Fox Press,

1978) p. 17.

2C.W.E. Bigsby, ed. Superculture : American Popular Culture and Europe

(Bowling Green: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1975) p. 124.

3lbîd.

41 bi d.

^Russel Nye, The Unembarrased Muse: The Popular Arts in America

(New York: The Dial Press, 1970) p. 317«

& I b i d.

71 bid. , p. 318.

81 b i d.

9lbid., pp. 318-19.

'%igsby, op. cit., p. 126.

''Nye, op. cit.,pp. 331-32.

’2lbid., p. 332.

13 Bigsby, op. cit.

14 Nye, op. cit., p. 322.

'9LeRoi Jones, Blues People (New York: Wi11iam Morrow and Company,

1963) p. 93.

l6lbid., p. 100.

'^Ney, op. cit., p. 342.

l8lbid. , p. 349.

1 9̂Bigsby, op. cit., p. 128.

20Charlie Gillett, The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll (New York: Outerbridge and Dienstfrey, 1970) p. 1.

21 Jim Miller, ed., The Rolling Stone I 11ustrated H¡story of Rock and Roll (New York: Random House, 1976) p. 350.

(69)

22 Ibid.

23JGillett, op. cit., p. 19-

Ibid., pp. 18-19.

25 Leo Braudy, The World in a Frame: What We See in Films (New York Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1976) p. 241.

26 Lillian Roxon, Rock Encyclopedia (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1969) p. 31.

27Gillett, op. cit., pp. 20-21.

28|bid., p. 21.

29 Chuck Berry, from a television interview with David Frost on ABC Television's "A Salute to the Beatles," 1975-

30Miller, op. cit., p. 175.

31 Ibid.

32 Ibid.

33Hunter Davies, The Beatles: The Authorized Biography (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 19683 ï~9.

34 R. Serge Denisoff, "Folk-Rock: Folk Music, Protest, or Commercia lism?," Journal of Popular Culture Vol. 3 (Fall 1969) p. 219.

35 Davies, op. cit.

Peter McCabe and Robert D. Schonfeld, Apple to the Core: The Unmaking of the Beatles (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972) p. 18.

97|bid., p. 65.

nOGillett, op. cit.,?p. 57.

39"Ibid., p. 50.

40Mi 11er, op. cit., p. 164.

211 Ibid.

42 Davies, op. cit., p. 20.

^Roy Carr and Tony Tyler, The Beatles: An Illustrated Record (New

York: Harmony Books, 1975) p. 5.

(70)

44 Davies, op. cit., p. 44.

45"’ibid. , p. 47.

46Carr, op. cit., p. 7.

47Robert Burt, The Beatles: The Fabulous Story of John, Paul , George,

and Ringo (London: Octopus Books Limited, 1975) p. 10.

48_ «Carr, op. cit., p. o.

49Davies, op. cit., p. 103.

501 bid., p. 124.

^The Decca Audition Recordings, as well as much of the music of the

Beatles prior to the release of "Love Me Do" on October 5, 1962, presents the critic with a technical complication. Originally, this study was to include a fantasy theme analysis of the Decca Audition recordings; however, after a great deal of research and countless efforts to verify the songs which comprised this audition through cross referencing, an accurate appraisal seemed impossible. Nearly every "authoritative" source lists a conflicting collection of songs which are thought to be the authentic Decca Audition recordings.

For example, in his 1975 doctoral dissertation, "The Music of the Beatles From 1962 to Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," Terence O'Grady concluded that there were fourteen songs recorded during the Decca Audition which have appeared on numerous bootleg albmus over the years. Nevertheless, many more songs were performed at the audition, and O'Grady ultimately makes reference to thirty titles which were in some way thought to have been performed. Even O'Grady has his doubts about some.

In The Beatles: The Authorized Biography by Hunter Davies, the author states that "they didn't try any of their own compositions, although they had scores they could have done. Brian (Epstein) advised them to stick to standards." (p. 131). This particular account conflicts with O'Grady's listing which includes "Hello Little Girl," "Like Dreamers Do," "Love of the Loved," and "From Us to You," all of which are Lennon-McCartney com­positions.

More recently, Strawberry Fields Forever, one of the last surviving Beatle fan magazines, offered its subscribers a series of fourteen 45 rpm recordings on seven singles which, similarly, are said to be the authentic Decca recordings. This set too includes three Lennon-McCartney compositions ("From Us to You" is excluded) but it does not, for example, include Paul's rendition of "Red Sails in the Sunset" which nearly every other source includes among the audition material.

Equally frustrating, from a critical perspective, the continuing interest in Beatlemania which has grown steadily through the 1970s has inspired a number of enterprising record labels to release performances by the Beatles predating their studio work with Tony Sheridan. While

(71)

these crude early recordings are a joy for the collector and avid Beatles fans, their sporadic appearances and disappearances, as well as their sometimes questionable authenticity via bootleg recordings, makes a truly complete discography nearly impossible. It is for the above reason that this study centers its attention on the commercial career of the Beatles, leaving the pre-commercial, pre-Ringo, pre-studio days to perhaps another study.

52 Carr, op. cit. , p. 14.

331 bi d., pp. 10-11.

54All information concerning recording dates is taken from A11 Together

Now: The First Complete Beatles Discography 1961-1975 (New York: Ballan­tine Books, 1975) by Harry Castleman and Walter J. Podrazik.

"Nicholas Schaffner, The Beatles Forever (Harrisburg: Stockpole Books,

1977) p. 202.

561 bid.

3^The Beatles Lyrics Illustrated (New York: Dell Publishing Co.,

1975) p. 13.

58Miller, op. cit., p. 178.

"ibid. , p. 74.

8°Gillett, op. cit., p. 5.

61 Mark W. Booth, "The Art of Words in Songs," Quarterly Journal of Speech October 1976, Vol. 62, p. 247.

62|bid.

"ibid.

64Wilfrid Mellers, The Twilight of the Gods: The Music of the Beatles (New York: Schirmer Books, 1973) p. 36.

6 '’Alan Aldridge, ed. The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics (New York: Dell Publishing Co., Inc., 1972) p. 92.

66 Booth, op. cit., p. 246.

67'The Beatles Lyrics Illustrated, op. cit., p. 14.

68Walter R. Fisher, "A Motive View of Communication," Quarterly Jour­nal of Speech Vol. LVI (April 1970) p. 134.

(72)

69

70

Mellers, op. cit., p. 43.

Schaffner, op. cit., p. 21,

71 Ibid.

72

73

74.

The Beati es Lyrics 111ustrated, op. ci t., p. 12.

Ibid., p. 11.

Chris Hodenfield, "George Martin Recalls the Boys in the Band,1 Rolling Stone (July 15, 1976) p. 9.

75

76

77

The Beatles Lyrics Illustrated, op. cit., p. 9.

Mellers, op. cit., p. 34.

Carr, op. cit., p. 18.

78,, Chains" by Gerry Goff in and Carole King, copyright (1962?) BMI.

79.

80r

The Beatles Lyrics Illustrated, op. cit., p. 10.

Barry Miles, Beatles in Their Own Words (New York: Omnibus Press, 1978) p. 79.

8lThe Beat 1 es Lyrics I 11ustrated, op. cit., p. 15.

821 bi d. , p. 16.

88"Anna" by Arthur Alexander, copyright (1962?) BMI.

84"Boys" by Luther Dixon and Wes Farrell, copyright (i960?) BMI.

Or

"Baby It's You" by Hal David, Burt Bacharach, and Barney Williams, copyright (1961?) ASCAP.

86"A Taste of Honey," by Ric Marlow and Bobby Scott, copyright

(1960?)ASCAP.

87

88,

Mellers, op. cit., p. 27.

"Twist and Shout" by Bert Russell and Phil Medley, copyright (1962?)BMI .

89Schaffner, op. cit.

90 Ibid.

(73)

91 The Beatles Lyrics 111ustrated, op. cit., p. 17.

92 Schaffner, op. cit., pp. 21-22.

93JThe Beatles Lyrics Illustrated, op. cit., p. 18.

94 Ibid., p. 22.

95 Carr, op. cit., p. 20.

96 The Beatles Lyrics I 11ustrated, op. cit., p. 23.

97 Schaffner, op. cit., p. 22.

98The Beatles Lyrics Illustrated, op. cit., p. 26.

99Mellers, op. cit., p. 35-

’O^The Beatles Lyrics Illustrated, op. cit., p. 27.

101 Ibid., p. 28.

] 02 "Don't Bother Me," by George Harrison, copyright (1963) by Northern Songs, Ltd.

103

104

105

106,

The Beatles Lyrics Illustrated, op. cit., p. 29.

Ibid., p. 31.

Ibid., p. 32.

"Till There Was You" by Meredith Wilson, copyright (1957?) ASCAP.

’°7"Please Mr. Postman," by Brian Holland, Robert Bateman, and Berry

Gordy, copyright (1961?) BMI.

’O^Mellers, op. cit., p. 27.

’O^iiroH Over Beethoven," by Chuck Berry, copyright (1956) BMI.

’’0"You Really Got a Hold on Me" by William Robinson copyright (1962?)

BMI .

’’’"Devil in Her Heart" by Richard B. Drapkin, copyright (1962?) BMI.

1 1 2 "Money" by Berry Gordy and Janie Bradford, copyright (1959) BMI.

113r „Carr, op. cit., p. 22.

11 4The Beatles Lyrics Illustrated, op. cit., p. 34.

115 Carr, op. cit., p. 21.

?Y

CHAPTER III

The Beatlemania Years and Theme Maturation

Personally, 1 think you can put any interpretation you want on anything, but when someone suggests that "Can't Buy Me Love" is about a prostitute, I draw the line.l

Paul McCartney

While plans were being made for the conquest of America, the Beatles

and their producer, George Martin returned to EMI studios to produce a

recording which Martin felt would help to secure a large part of the

European audience beyond England. In his autobiography, Al1 You Need Is

Ears, Martin recalls, with a sense of amusement, the recording session

that was to produce two of the strangest Beatle recordings every committed

to vinyl:

By the end of 1963, we had conquered England, musically at any rate. Now, as well as America, we were trying to make it big on the Continent. The EMI people in Germany, fired— who knows? -­by some patriotic fervour, had insisted that the Beatles would get no big sales there unless they had a record sung in German. The boys thought this was nonsense, and I didn't believe a word of it myself, but equally I did not want to give the German EMI peo­ple any excuse for not selling Beatle records.

So, after some argument, I had persuaded John and Paul to rerecord 'She Loves You' and 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' in German. The lyrics were provided by a German, who turned up at the recording to make sure their accents were all right. I didn't know about the accents, but I could see that the words were almost literal translations. 'Sie liebt dich, ja ja ja' sounded just like the sort of send-up Peter Sellers would have done. . . . Never again did they make a record in a foreign language.2

For the sake of analysis, one can only hope that George Martin's

assumption concerning the literal translation of the song is correct,

for the resulting supposition here is that "Sie Liebt Dich" and "Komm,

Gib Mir Deine Hand" respectively Reaffirmed and Invited Love for a

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German audience in the same manner as their English counterparts had done.

Nevertheless, it is amusing to consider the observation made by Hugh

Fielder of Sounds magazine: "Knowing John's sense of humour at the time

3I just hope somebody checked the translation.

The chaining process, now firmly established as Beatlemania proper,

continued to expand in Britain with fingers reaching into every social

corner of the United Kingdom, transcending "the barriers of class and even

4age." The clergy, politicians, psychologists, sociologists, teachers,

and journalists scrambled to board the Beatle bandwagon "endorsing, condemn­

ing, analyzing, or dismissing the phenomenon."3 Even Britain's Royal

Family was not immune to the charm of the Beatle epidemic, and the group

was soon invited to appear on the Royal Variety Show before the Queen

Mother and Princess Margaret. It was at the conclusion of this Command

Performance that John Lennon's introduction to "Twist and Shout" firmly

established the good-natured flippancy of the Beatles' corporate persona:

"For our last number," Lennon began, "I'd like to ask your help. Would

the people in the cheap seats clap your hands? And the rest of you — if

you'd just rattle your jewelry."^ "They are so fresh and vital," remarked

the Queen after their performance, "I simply adore them."^

With the admiration of the British public, the press and the Royal

Family secured, Epstein and the Beatles turned their attention full force

toward America. The United States symbolized a hurdle few British super­

stars had ever managed to clear. Since America was the home of rock 'n'

roll to begin with, the Beatles themselves were skeptical regarding an

outsider's chances for acceptance, let alone commercial success. And their

fears were not unfounded. Capitol Records, the American subsidiary of

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EMI had earlier refused the production and sale of the Beatles' recordings

In desperation, Epstein turned first to a tiny recording outfit called

V-J Records (the record company that had once launched the career of the

Four Seasons, at the time one of America's hottest recording groups). V-J

released "Please Please Me" and "From Me to You" stateside along with an

LP entitled "Introducing the Beatles." In a word, failure — although

"From Me to You" sputtered briefly as Bill board1s Number 116.

Epstein next turned to an even shakier outfit known as Swan Records,

which released "She Loves You" as a single. This time there wasn't even

a sputter. But the mood of America was soon to change drastically in the

Beatles' favor, for it is at this juncture in history that the Beatles'

story becomes steeped in media-induced mythology owing to the tragic loss

of President John F. Kennedy.

The Kennedy-Beatle myth is a widely accepted explanation for the

phenomenal power that the Beatles would soon wield over their American

audiences. Authors Peter McCabe and Robert D. Schonfeld summarize the

theory in the following manner:

While British teen-agers were revelling in Beatle-induced eu­phoria, their American counterparts were slowly recuperating from the grievous loss of their short lived idol, John Kennedy.The image of the glamorous "New Frontier," on which they were to have patterned their lives, had been obliterated, only to be replaced by a sourfaced, drawling Texan. As Lyndon Johnson intoned his political program, the gloom deepened. American youth, alienated by this patronizing style, became morbidly preoccupied with the future of its country. It would have clutched at any charismatic personality who offered a harmless diversion. In this case, (the arrival of the Beatles), the personality materialized in quadruplicate.

In suggesting the heroic/mythologica1 nature of theory, I do not mean

to slight the insight which it gives us into the sociological climate of

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America during this period. Rather, I refer to the theory as myth-making

since it endowed the Beatles early on with a bigger-than-1ife quality and

helped to shape the rhetorical vision as a fantasy of messianic rebirth.

A theory of equal import to an understanding of the Beatles' initial

impact, is the theory of demographics also explicated by McCabe and

Schonfeld:

... in 1964, seventeen-year-olds became the largest single age group in the United States for the first time in centuries.The phenomenon was the result of the sudden surge in the birth rate in the U.S. immediately after the Second World War. It meant that teenagers, and specifically seventeen-year-olds, would become the center of population gravity for the seven years beginning in 1964.

Now that teen-agers were topping the demographic charts, they were bound to exert a much greater impact on the nation's tastes. Furthermore, almost half of them were still in school, outside adult society and without adult responsibility. They had lots of money to spend, most of it on leisure-time activi­ties. By virtue of sheer numbers and spending power, American teenagers now were more easily able to diffuse their causes, ideas and adolescent enthusiasms among other age groups. The timing of the Beatles' arrival in New York could not have been better.°

Soon after the Kennedy assasination on November 22, 1963, America's

news weeklies started to pick up on the strange rumblings from across the

Atlantic, but they still regarded the quakes with only amused curiosity.

American concert promoter Sid Bernstein took more than just a passing

interest however. Fascinated by English newspaper accounts of Beatlemania,

Bernstein phoned Epstein in the fall of 1963 and set up a Carnegie Hall

debut for the Beatles. Soon afterwards, in November, Epstein flew to

America where he persuaded Ed Sullivan to give his group top billing on

his show. Although Sullivan had experienced Beatlemania first hand on a

recent trip to England, he was still unconvinced that any British group

(78)

could achieve equal success in America. Epstein held out for top billing

The trivial sum of $2,400 which the Beatles were to receive for each appearance on the TV host's show, was less important to Epstein than the opportunity for the Beatles' visual image to appeal to huge numbers of people, not just teenagers. It was the decisive maneuver in his plan to capture a market no less modest than the world.

One final factor (considered by some to be the ma jor factor) was

responsible for practically guaranteeing the Beatles' success in America.

Someone at Capitol Records reconsidered the company‘s opt ion on the

Beatles, opting, this time, in the group's favor, and setting into motion

an unprecedented $50,000 "crash publicity campaign." The campaign was

centered in trend-and-taste-setting New York City, although the hoopla

extended nationwide. Capitol Records possessed a unique talent for gim­

mickry which found fruition in the Beatle campaign. Among the devices

employed were:

1. Beatle wigs for balding Capitol executives to be worn as conspicuously as possible.

2. Free Beatle Haridos for all Capitol employees (who were "encouraged" to take advantage of the deal).

3. Some five million stickers proclaiming "The Beatles Are Coming" for public display across the fifty states.

4. A grand supply of Beatle newsletters.

5. An equally grand supply of Beatle buttons.

6. A cleverly constructed "open-ended" interview with the Beatles, allowing any two-bit disc jockey the means of conducting a trans-Atlantic rap-session with the Fab Four.

7. An overkill promotional campaign for Capitol's first Beatle release "I Want to Hold Your Hand"/"l Saw Her Standing There." New York's AM radio stations devoured i t.

8. A similar campaign for their first Capitol LP, Meet the Beatles.

(79)

On January 3, 1964 a film clip of the Beatles performing "She Loves

You" was aired on the Friday night Jack Paar show. The audience laughed.

When the Beatles arrived at Kennedy Airport on February 7, only three

weeks later, the laughter had ceased and the screaming had begun.

. . . ten thousand teenagers were so wound up that they cut school and stampeded out to Kennedy Airport with banners and buttons, to greet four very nervous Beatles. The TV cameras chased after the kids. Capitol's hype had succeeded beyond the company's wildest expectations, but the new teenage masses were deciding what was going to be in the news. Whether the kids were brainwashed, or whether they made up their own minds, the youth decade was open for business.’’

For the remainder of February, Beatlemania swept America off its

feet time and time again. Their appearance on the Ed Sullivan show drew

50,000 applicants for 728 available seats, and it is estimated that : <X

73,000,000 people watched the historic broadcast. The Beatles performed

live to sellout crowds across the country, including two sell-out perfor­

mances at Carnegie Hall. Beatle recordings on Capitol, V-J, Swan, Atco,

and MGM jammed America's record store racks and sold with unprecedented

speed and incalculable volume. Every new American release soared to the

top of the Top Forty play lists and the airwaves sagged under the weight

of massive Beatle broadcasts.

The Beatles returned to England, where they quickly recorded, "Can't

Buy Me Love," an exuberant Reaffirmation of Love which was as fast-paced

and up-tempo as the swing their career had suddenly taken. Ironically

recorded at a time when the group was at a commercial zenith, the Love

Reaffirmation becomes almost a self-parody, thus helping to mold their

emerging public persona ("Tell me that you want the kind of things that

money just can't buy/I don't care too much for money, money can't buy me

i m 12love ) .

(80)

The flip side of "Can't Buy Me Love" was a song entitled "You Can't

Do That," which took the Love Gone Bad theme in new directions. Mellers

has described the song as simultaneously generating "a kind of joy from

13 14the recognition of betrayal," liberating "negative emotions" and assert

ing the singer's identity with a sense that is "perversely ecstatic."'3

The quest for reconciliation is still in evidence, but it is expressed

with a new sense of independence: "So please listen to me if you wanna

stay mine/l can't help my feelings/l'11 go out of my mind/l'm gonna let

you down and leave you flat/because I told you before, oh you can't do

that."16

When Capitol announced that "Can't Buy Me Love," was being made

available for release on March 16, the company was flooded with over two

million advance orders, another record breaking achievement. During this

period, it seemed as though the Beatles were as good at breaking records

as they were at selling them. During the week of April 4, 1964, for

example, Bill board1s top five songs were as follows: (1) "Can't Buy Me

Love," (2) "Twist and Shout," (3) "She Loves You," (4) "I Want to Hold

Your Hand," (5) "Please Please Me." Similarly, the Number One and Two

album slots were filled by Meet the Beatles and Introducing the Beatles

respectively. "One week later, fourteen of the Hot Hundred singles were

Beatle tunes. Nobody has ever come close to matching that feat either

before or s ince."'

By late February, the group was back in the studio to record four

newsongs: "Long Tall Sally," "I Call Your Name," "Slow Down," and

"Matchbox." The first two songs would make their American debut on

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The Beatles' Second Album (released on April 10, 1964), while all four

would debut in Britain in the form of the E.P. "Long Tall Sally" (released

on June 19, 1964). "Long Tall Sally" was another in the series of cover

recordings made by the Beatles. The song was originally written by Enotris

Johnson, Richard Penniman and Robert Blackwell -- composer Richard Penniman

being Little Richard for whom the song was initially a hit. It has been

suggested that McCartney's vocal and Harrison's slashing guitar work abso-

1 8lutely "shreds the original to fragments," and while this may well be

the case, much of the song's savage beauty is found in its concluding

Celebration of the Rock Culture which McCartney delivers with maniacal

conviction and jubilation: "We're gonna have some fun tonight/have some

fun tonight/oooh! Everything's all right/Have some fun tonight/have some

1 9fun yeh! yeh! yeh!"

"I Call Your Name," a Lennon composition, describes a Love Gone Bad

drama which celebrates dependence on the love relationship to the extreme

that "You Can't Do That" celebrated independence from it. Here the singer

is destitute in his loneliness to the point of questioning his own sense

of fairness. The loss of love has brought a halt to his very sense of

survival ("I can't sleep at night/l can't go on/Don't you know I can't take

20it/l'm not gonna make it"). Indeed the only shred of hope which dis­

tinguishes this song from Entrapment is the need to Re-Invite the lover

home through the nocturnal ritual of calling her name.

"Slow Down," originally written and recorded by Larry Williams, is

a straight forward attempt at salvaging a Love Gone Bad relationship:

"C'mon pretty baby give me one more chance/try to save our romance/Slow

down!1,2'

(82)

In "Matchbox," originally written and recorded by Carl Perkins, the

Love Gone Bad theme is treated not only with optimism,but, for the first

time, with humor. Through a series of humorous reversals and sexual

euphemisms, the singer confronts the fickle female with a light-hearted

pragmatism that is at once suggestive of self-reliance and self-doubt:

"If you don It want my peaches honey, please don't shake my tree" and

"Let me be your little dog till your big dog comes/oh when your big dog

22gets here, watch how your puppy dog runs."

It is extremely difficult to catalogue the farreaching effects of

Beatlemania during this period in history, but in order to understand

the public and media chaining process as it pertains to the dissemination

of the Beatles' rhetorical vision, it is helpful to note a few of the more

dominant cultural implications. For example, as Schaffner-exola ins:

With the Beatles' conquest of the States, Britain and everythingBritish became instantly fashionable. As American fan magazines like 16 printed up crash courses in hip English slang, and teen­agers all over the colonies adopted on cue such young-Liverpud­lian expresions as 'fab' and 'gear' (both synonymous for \'terrific'; the Beatles themselves were christened the Fab Four), the mother country, no longer disparaged as stuffy and out-of-date, found itself in the unaccustomed position of setting American trends instead of following them. Especially in the interrelated areas of fashion and pop music.23

A flood of Beatle-inspired musical groups migrated hastily to American

shores in hopes of cashing in on the gold mine their predecessors had so

recently unearthed. A few of the more conventional, media-inspired "stuffed

teddy-bear" bands included Gerry and the Pacemakers, Freddie and the

Dreamers, Herman's Hermits, and the Dave Clark Five, whose "Glad All Over"

temporarily dethroned the Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand" on the

British charts. Of greater significance here, is the fact that the Beatles'

(83)

American success paved the way for many talented and influential groups

such as the Animals, the Yardbirds, the Kinks, the Who, and the Rolling

Stones.

_ By March of 1964, commercial exploitation of the Beatles was on the

rampage with merchandise including, among other things, Beatle harmonicas,

towels, jewelry, pillows, bow ties, talcum powder, stamps., buttons, bub­

ble gum cards, Halloween costumes, coloring books, plastic models, toy

guitars and drums, pens, balloons, inflatable dolls, table cloths, trays,

scrap books, statuary, books, magazines, records, Beatle wigs, Beatle

liquorice, Beatle boots, Beatle-nut ice cream, board games, bubble bath,

stationery, posters, key chains and lunch boxes. "The value of the world

market for Beatle products was estimated at nearly $100 million. The Wa11

Street Journal predicted that Americans alone would spend $50 million on

such goods. In retrospect, these figures were probably conservative esti-

„ ..24mates."

Needless to say, perhaps, the Beatles were not without their hostile

critics during this period. A New York World Telegram editorial described

their music as "a haunting combination of rock 'n' roll, the shimmy, a

25hungry cat riot, and Fidel Castro on a harangue." Still another fasci­

nating fantasy, which many Beatle critics firmly believed, was the

Beat 1es-as-Communist-Conspiracy theory explicated by such men as David A.

Noebel:

Psychopoliticians are using the Beatles' music and other innocuous sounding rythms [sic] to hypnotize American youth and prepare them for future submission to subversive control . . . part of a systematic plan geared to making a generation of American youth mentally ill and emotionally unstable.

They'jwere serious.

(84)

Always with an ear to understanding, Dr. Billy Graham was less severe

in his noted sociological analysis: "The Beatles -- they're a passing

phase: symptoms of the uncertainty of the times and the confusion about

us."27

In March of 1964, John Lennon made the jump from plastic to print with

the publication of In His Own Write, a collection of Carrollian and Joycean

wordplay which bespoke Lennon's sharp wit and sense of the absurd that

would soon become a characteristic of his songwriting. In His Own Write

earned John the prestigious Foyle Literary Award, one of the first indi­

cations that a Beatle was worthy of praise by the "intelligentsia" who

within a number of years would be falling over themselves in an effort

to praise and analyze Beatle lyrics.

Also in March, the Beatles began work on the film that would legiti­

mize the Beatle phenomenon for millions of world wide viewers and critics

and consummate the birth of the Beatles' rhetorical visions: A Hard Day's

Night. Critically acclaimed for its quality production and Marx Brothers

sense of comedy, the film was a success with young and old audiences alike.

It is important to understand the lyric development that occurred in the

songs written for inclusion in A Hard Day's Night.

Between the months of March and April the group was once again at

work in the studio creating the songs to be included in their first fea­

ture film. The collection of songs which resulted from these sessions

included "A Hard Day's Night," "Tell Me Why," "I'll Cry Instead," "I'm

Happy Just to Dance with You," "I Should Have Known Better," "If I Fell,"

and "I Love Her." ("I'll Cry Instead" was not included at the insistence

(85)

of the film's ¡American director, Richard Lester.)

Between June 1 and 3, they returned to the studio to record the songs

which would round out the film selections to be included on the Parlophone

LP "A Hard Day's Night." These Songs included: "Anytime at All," "Things

We Said Today," "When I Get Home," and "I'll Be Back."

The eleven new recordings in this collection (as well as "Can't Buy

Me Love" and "You Can't Do That" which were also included on the British

LP) make use of the love-theme trilogy almost exclusively; there is one

Celebration of the Rock Culture included. However, the love songs in this

grouping mark a sense of new direction in the development of the rhetorical

vision. Specifically, these songs usher in a series of dramas concerned

with a sense of growth, maturity and responsibility in contrast to the

majority of their previous recordings' implicit- innocence.

28"A Hard Day's Night" has been called the most "overtly romantic"

Beatle song ever recorded with a sense of naivete which is "wholly posi-

29tlve." The song is a Reaffirmation of Love which celebrates the love

relationship not as oasis from loneliness, but rather as a departure from

a world of work and responsibility to a Home once again symbolic of shared

love. Mellers points out the absence of "youthfully abstract jargon" and

concludes that "the song sees innocence and experience as interdependent;

the freedom couldn't be so lovely were it not for the tedium." (". . .

I've been working like a dog/but when I get home to you, I find the things

31that you do will make me feel all right.")J

Despite romantic interpretation, there is a thread of creeping cyni­

cism sewn between the lyric lines of "A Hard Day's Night." As if to

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counter the sentiment of "Can't Buy Me Love," the song hints at an impli­

cit exchange of material goods for the lover's good materials: "You know

I work all day to get you money, to buy you things/And it's worth it just

32to hear you say you're gonna give me everything."

"Tell Me Why" showcases the Love Gone Bad theme with the singer in

a state of desperation and self-doubt and a searching refrain which evokes

a sense of weakness, if not a sense of groveling: "Well I beg you on my

bended knees, if you'll only listen to my pleas, is there anything I can

33do?/cause I really can't stand it I'm so in love with vou."

The Love Gone Bad theme continues in "I'll Cry Instead." This song

is a mixture of emotions; it begins in sadness, bypasses reconciliation,

and triumphantly reaffirms self-reliance. If the song ended there, it would

be of no particular import to the development of the rhetorical vision;

however along with the strength of self-reliance comes a newly acquired

vendetta: the promise of revenge. Not only does the singer wish to make

his lover "sad, somehow," he projects his anger to womankind in general:

". . . you better hide all the girls, I'm gonna break their hearts all

34 .round the world." In the end, despite the reaffirmation of self, "I'll

Cry Instead" is a self conscious exercise in bitterness which is peculiar

to a very select number of Beatle compositions. One realizes why Richard

Lester might have objected to its inclusion in their premier movie outing.

As if to apologize for the momentary emotional lapse in "I'll Cry

Instead," the remainder of the collection is reassuringly positive in

sentiment. For example, "I'm Happy Just to Dance with You," a Ce lebrat i on

of the Rock Culture in the purest sense, may be described as The Ballad

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of the Noble Lover, pure in his intent and purpose, in quest of idyllic

love in the Kingdom of Dance: "I don't need to hug or hold you tight, I

35just want to dance with you all night." Self consciousness is disregarded

here and amiable self confidence triumphs: "If somebody tries to take my

36place, let's pretend we just can't see his face."

"I Should Have Known Better" is a rousing Invitation to Love in which

the discovery of a hitherto unknown joy of love is realized and its con­

summation anticipated with ecstatic confidence: ". . . when I tell you

that I love you, you're gonna say you love me too, and when I ask you to

37be mine, you're gonna say you love me too."

Like "A Hard Day's Night," "If I Fell" is a song of love and mutual

responsibility in maintaining the love relationship. It is an Invitation

to Love born out of prior pain which begins where "I Want to Hold Your

Hand" left off: "I've been in love before and I found that love was more

38than just holding hands." A sense of maturity is exhibited by the

singer who no longer initiates the Invitation based solely on emotional

impulse. Instead, "If I Fell" is a careful weighing of alternatives,

romantic in its intent, yet pragmatic in its premeditated caution: "If

I give my heart to you, I must be sure from the very start, that you would

39love me more than her."

"And I Love Her" is among the first of the dance band standards which

Paul McCartney would soon begin turning out with regularity. It is simply

the most haunting Reaffirmation of Love the group would ever record, a

vision of dazzling purity, complete in its romantic ideals. It is a

momentary glimpse at a Romantic Utopia ordered by devotion, fidelity,

security, sharing, sensuality, and timelessness: "She gives me everything,

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and tenderly, the kiss my lover brings, she brings to me, and 1 love

, n2*0her."

"Anytime At All" is similar to the earlier "All I've Got To Do," but

while the latter reaffirms love in terms of mutual dependability, the

former is more correctly an Invitation to Love stressing the reliability

of the first party to be there whenever needed. In terms of thematic

growth, it is interesting to note that "Anytime At All" offers the lover

promisory consolement in addition to the more traditional romantic

involvement, again evoking the darker side of the love dream: "If you're

feeling sorry and sad /if the sun has faded away/if you need a shoulder

41to cry on/all you gotta do is call and I'11 be there."

The most complex Reaffirmation of Love in this early period makes

its appearance in "Things We Said Today," which alternates between anti­

cipating the fulfillment of the future and rejoicing in the present: "Some­

day when welre dreaming, deep in love, not a lot to say, then we will

42remember things we said today." Significant here, is the growing

tendency toward word-play which nearly parodies the Reaffirmation theme

43("Love to hear you say that love is love") and the introduction, expli­

citly,,of a growing regard for dreaming. Dream sequences will later

become a major rhetorical device in Beatle songs of a more metaphysical

nature.

It is only natural that the ultimate Home song would be entitled

"When I Get Home." (A sense for the obvious is one of the critic's

greatest gifts.) To be sure, the theme is a Reaffirmation of Love;

however, it is love reaffirmed in the face of conflict brought on by

that creeping sense of maturity which dictates vulnerability through

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responsibility. Here the lover fights innumerable odds and "trivialities"

in a push and shove journey Home where he's got "a girl who's waiting" to

44love him 'till the cows come home." Indicative of a growing sense of

frustration is the fact that the singer will quickly be on his way "out

45that door again." Here Eden is envisaged but the stay is only temporary

owing to the urgency of outside demands.

The final song in this series is an attempt at mending a Love Gone

Bad entitled "I'll Be Back." Unlike the singer in "You Can't Do That"

or "Not a Second Time," the hero of this drama, faced with the possibility

of betrayal a second time finds himself unable to break away from the

cause of his passion and heartbreak. He has said goodbye once before,

46"but I came back again." Maturity has taken a swipe at the childlike

belief that things will mend themselves if you run away from them: "I

thought you would realise, that if I ran away from you, that you would

47want me too, but I got a big surprise." Confronted by failure on both

sides, the vision is one of a man in crisis, whose Reaffirmation of Love

is in jeopardy of being ignored. Temporarily in transition, he is without

direction should belief in love abandon him. Like the Beatles' music

during this period, he is at a crossroads between innocence and experi­

ence, but while the song leaves us with a vague sense of frustration

regarding its eventual outcome, the Beatles themselves were definitely

moving on in newer and newer directions.

Between June 4 and November 10, 1964, the Beatles embarked on a world

tour that took them to over 50 cities on four continents. On August 18,

they returned to the United States to begin a 15,000 mile tour with 26

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concerts in 18 states. Fired by the overwhelming success of "A Hard Day'

Night" a short time earlier, Beatlemania was still at a zenith with media

coverage that rivalled the Johnson-Goldwater campaigns. The Beatle mysti

que was becoming mythical in its madness. One of the most bizarre and

tragic manifestations of Beatle worship was later described by Lennon

to Rolli ng Stone:

Wherever we went on tour, like in Britain, or wherever.we went, there's always a few seats laid aside for cripples and people in wheelchairs, like that. Because we were famous, we were supposed to have . . . people, sort of epileptics, and whatever they are were in our dressing room all the time ... we were suppose to be sort of good. You want to be alone and you don't know what to say, because they're usually saying 'I've got your record,' or they can't speak and just want to touch you. And its always the mother or nurse pushing them on you. They would just say hello and go away but they would push them at you like you were Christ or something, as if there were some aura about you which will rub off on them.It just got to be like that.

We were very sort of callous about it. It was just dreadful. You would open up every night and instead of seeing kids there you would just see a row full of cripples along the front. It was just like that. When we would be running through, people would be lying ... it seemed that we were just surrounded by cripples and blind people all the time, and when we would go through the corridors they would all be touching us. It got like that, it was horrifying.^

On a lighter side, advocates of "Ringo for President" staged a mock

convention in New York City, while two radio station employees from

Chicago were busy buying up the sheets and pillow cases on which the

Beatles had slept during their stays at the Whittier Hotel in Detroit

and the Muehlback Hotel in Kansas City. The bedding was purchased for

$1,150 and cut into 150,000 square inch blocks and mounted on parchment.

Each momento identified who had slept on it and came complete with a copy

of aimaffadavit signed by the hotel managers attesting to the linens'

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authenticity. The idea, however, was a total wash out.

Following their tour of America, the group returned to England where

they recorded a new LP and single before completing their tour in their

homeland. The songs recorded during this period included: "I Feel Fine,"

"She's A Woman," !'No Reply," "I'm A Loser," "Baby's in Black," "Rock and

Roll Music," "I’ll Follow the Sun," "Mr. Moonlight," "Kansas City," "Eight

Days a Week," "Words of Love," "Honey Don't," "Every Little Thing," "I

Don't Want to Spoil the Party," "What You're Doing," and "Everybody's

Trying to be My Baby."

"I Feel Fine," which introduced the feedback guitar to the popular

music form, is a Reaffirmation of Love with a point of view similar to

"A Hard Day's Night" in its spirit of joy and its teasing skepticism.

It rejoices in the love relationship while hinting at a trace of gold

digging: "I'm so glad that she's my little girl, she's so glad she's

telling all the world, that her baby buys her things, you know he buys

49her diamond rings."

Released as a single, "I Feel Fine" was backed by still another Love

Reaffirmation entitled "She's A Woman." If "I Feel Fine" hinted at a

growing sense of materialism, "She's A Woman" reaffirms the love dream in

its purest sense. Here the love relationship evokes a sense of mutual

sharing, not in material gifts ("my love don't give me presents"),but

in the gift of love and understanding: "She's a woman who understands,

she's a woman who loves her man."9'

"No Reply" is another in the series of Love Gone Bad by way of be­

trayal. Here, Home begins to take on slightly different connotations

which would ultimately reach fruition in "She's Leaving Home." Rather

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than the setting for the love drearp, Home is viewed here as a barrier, a

hiding place from which the lover peeps in fear of discovery by the singer,

who has layed seige somewhere outside. He has watched her walk “hand in

. 52hand with another man," seen her return home but is told she is absent

when he phones. Faced with rejection, Beatle optimism shines through

defiantly in the song's reaffirmation of love and forgiveness: "If I

were you, I'd realize that I love you more than any other guy, and I'll

• 53forgive the lies that I heard before when you gave me no reply."

John Lennon has been described as "an uncompromisingly honest man who

felt uncomfortable with the notion that pop stars should radiate non-stop

mindless good cheer," and in "I'm A Loser," a number of cracks in the

Beatle facade make their first appearance. Although the song's prescrip­

tive ending leaves one with a sense of optimism, ("I'm telling you so that

54you won't lose all"), the body of the work depicts a drama filled with

loss, deceit, sorrow, confusion, regret and despair. We are told with a

sense of urgency, to look beneath the surface of the singer's carefree

exterior. Although the song helps us to better understand the growing

complexity of the love relationship, lyrically it helps us to better

understand the quickly developing talents and fears of its composer and

performer: "Although I laugh and I act like a clown, beneath this mask

55I am wearing a frown."

More than a sense of maturity, "Baby's In Black" suggests a strange

sense of morbidness. It is essentially a dark portrait of Love Gone Bad

in which the lover is "grieving for a lost lover who won't come back."^

Despite this seeming preoccupation with lost love, the singer asserts his

longing for the day when the lover will see "the mistake she has made"^7

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and turn to him for consolation and ultimately his deep felt love for her.

Thus, while the song is one of the gloomiest compositions to date, it is

not without an air of optimism.

At the opposite end of the spectrum from "Baby's In Black," is the

cover recording of Chuck Berry's "Rock and Roll Music," a remarkable

tribute to popular music in the finest sense of the Celeberation of the

Rock Culture. It is an enthusiastic testimony to the beauty and power of

the musical form itself and the musicians who perform it. The song leaves

us with a renewed sense of community which finds its identity through the

ritual of Dance; and of course it's "gotta be rock and roll music, if you

58wanna dance with me."

Mellers offers us insight into McCartney's beautiful ballad, "I'll

Follow the Sun," a song which ushers in the use of Nature metaphor which

would become a frequent rhetorical device in later Beatle recordings.

The drama is based on a Love Gone Bad, but as Mellers notes, the singer

is leaving his lover "of his own volition, and since he's following the

59sun away from the rain, the loss is presumably also gain -- a move upwards."

Ironically, this song is followed by its celestial counterpart, a Reaffir­

mation of Love entitled "Mr. Moonlight." Originally recorded by, believe

it or not, Dr. Feel Good and the Interns, this Roy Lee Johnson composition

is a painfully romantic doxology to the moon-god which has made all things

possible for the lovers involved: "From above you sent us love/On the

night you don't come my way, oh I pray and pray more each day, cause we

love you, Mr. Moonlight."^ Nearly primitive in its innocence, "Mr.

Moonlight" serves as a somewhat humorous counter in relationship to the

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growing sophistication of the Beatles' rhetorical vision. It similarly

reminds us that the Beatles were never above poking fun at their own

image of importance and relevance; an image which they continually denied

in interviews.

Equally optimistic in its dealing with the Love Gone Bad relationship,

is the Beatles' cover version of the Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller classic

“Kansas City." Recorded in medley with Little Richard's "Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey,"

the song declares the singer's intention to journey to Kansas City and

61“get my baby back home." Again, this song is comparatively simplistic

in relation to the original Beatle compositions of the period, but it

nevertheless speaks with a determination that is at once uplifting and

convi nci ng.

“Eight Days a Week" is equally a reversion to a more simplistic

development in theme. Its concern is with devotion and the steadfastness

of love which articulates the Love Reaffirmation theme's implicit demand

for dedication in the love relationship. Positive in its declaration, if

not redundant in its sentiment, “Eight Days a Week" intones the singer's

intentions with a spirit of happiness that is as inspired as the song's

punning title would suggest.

If you liked “Do You Want to Know a Secret," then the appeal of "Words

of Love" (a Buddy Holly original) should be apparent. Like its predecessor,

"Words of Love" is similarly suggestive of a nearly chi Id —1 ike infatuation

with the whispering of a "soft and true" Love Reaffirmation, and with being

held tightly by one's true love. While the song is by no means profound,

in the sense that "I love you" is not indicative of lyrical development,

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the song serves to reaffirm a basic tenet of the Pepperland Perspective

which would later flower as the first commandment of the rhetorical vision

— "All You Need Is Love."

"Honey Don't," a Carl Perkins original, is a playful interpretation

of the Love Gone Bad theme which confronts the lover with her own contra­

dictions and indiscretions: "Well how come you say you will when you won't/6 3

Say you do baby, when you don't." Sung by Ringo Starr, the Beatles' comic

persona, and delivered in a free-wheeling country-western style, "Honey

Don't" creates a mood of good-natured toleration colored by the ever

faithful underlying premise that the singer honestly loves his woman despite

her temporary flights of promiscuity: "I love you baby, and you ought to

know ... ."6^

"Every Little Thing" echoes the sentiment of "She's a Woman" in its

Reaffirmations of the joy of togetherness and the steadfastness of love:

"When I'm with her I'm happy, just to know that she loves me/There is one

thing I'm sure of, I will love her forever, yes I know love will never

die."65 And like "Words of Love," the feeling generated is one of content­

ment; assurance in the fact that "Every little thing she does, she does

, ,,66for me."

The overtly self conscious "I Don't Want to Spoil the Party" laments

the Love Gone Bad drama with a reemphasis on the singer's dependence on

the unfaithful lover. The power of love is found manifest in the testi­

monial refrain of selfless forgiving: "Though tonight she's made me sad,

I still love her, if I find her I'll be glad, I still lover her."^7 "What

You're Doing," in contrast to forgiving, confronts the lies of the lover

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with a biting sarcasm which suggests that the end of patience is at hand:

68"Would it be too much to ask of you what you're doing to me?" Neverthe­

less, as in "1 Don't Want to Spoil the Party," the singer's motivation is

to be found in the fact that he is truly in love with the source of his

bewilderment: "I've been waiting here for you, wondering what you're

69gonna do, and should you need a love that's true, it's me."

The final song in the series signals the return of the long absent

Entrapment theme established in the recording of "Chains." Like its pre­

decessor, "Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby" is a cover recording (another

CarlPerkins original) but unlike its former the Entrapment involved is

of a comic nature. As the title suggests, this is no Love Gone Bad situa­

tion, but rather love gone crazy: "Woke up last night, half past four,

fifty women knocking on my door."7^ Due to the absurdist nature of the

song's lyrics, the song serves less as a serious threat to the Beatle

Love Dream and more as a quick dose of musical comedy relief. One cannot

help but consider the recording a work of self-parody, a light-hearted jab

at the overly zealous ladies in the Beatles' rapidly expanding public

aud i ence.

Schaffner offers us insight into the public chaining process at work

following the release of this collection of songs in America:

The demand (for the single of "I Feel Fine" and "She's a Woman") was unprecedented, particularly in America, where five major albums and 16 45s had been issued in rapid succession over the first seven months of the year, making the ensuing gap seem like forever. All Beat 1 emaniacs were kept glued to their transistors during the ¡agonizing 10 days between the songs' first appearance on the airwaves and their arrival in the shops, a ritual that would be re-enacted every time the Fabs came out with another record, and one that in the Beatles' more cosmic incarnations came to resemble that of disciples awaiting the latest Word.

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The D.J.s quickly caught on to this fanatacism, and would keep us on edge -- and tuned in to their station — with hints that the new songs might be aired any minute.71

1965 began in much the same manner that 1964 ended, with Beatlemania

in full flower and the group returning to the studio to record a collection

of songs that would be included on the soundtrack of their forthcoming

second feature film, Hel p! The catalogue of songs recorded between early

February and early March, 1965 included: "Ticket to Ride," "Yes It Is,"

"The Night Before," "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away," "I Need You,"

"Another Girl," and "You're Gonna Lose that Girl." The title song to

He 1p would be recorded on April 13-

The misogyny which first filtered into the Beatles' lyrics in "No

Reply" makes its appearance full force in the group's most musically ambi­

tious recording to date, "Ticket to Ride." This song is a classic in

every sense of the Love Gone Bad theme, with a female protagonist you love

72to hate since her fatal flaw is: "She don't Care!" In particular, she

doesn't care to share in the singer's love for her, discarding him, to go

away and find new freedom. Resentment and a sense of fair play are the

foundation on which the singer constructs his own sense of indignation

and pride in the song's self-affirming refrain: "I don't know why she's

riding so high, she oughta think twice, she oughta do right by me, before

she gets to saying goodbye, she oughta think twice she oughta do right by

me."73

"Yes It Is" marks the introduction of the Entrapment theme in an

original Beatle composition. It is an indication of the growing tendency

for Lennon and McCartney to become more subjective and somewhat autobio­

graphical in their lyricism, a defining characteristic of the Expression-

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istic fantasy type into which this song fits. The concern here still

focuses on affairs of the heart but it is, in a manner of speaking, an

anti-love song in which Pride imprisons the singer, thus preventing the

realization of the love dream: "I could be happy with you by my side, if

74I could forget her, but it's my pride, yes it is, yes it is." The

memory of past love that was to sustain future happiness in "Things We

Said Today" here evokes a ghost-like spectre of lost love which makes

all things romantic impossible.

Questions and uncertainty are central to the mood of "The Night

Before" a song of Love Gone Bad in which the love dream has been abandoned

("We said our goodbyes the night before").78 Seemingly content with his

part in the decision to part ways, the singer now discovers that the lover

has reconsidered: "Now today I find, you have changed your mind."78

Although the issue is never resolved, one is left with a sense of recon­

ciliation primarily through the singer's re-Invitation to Love and his

suspicion that the sincerity of the love expressed at their parting will

be enough to reconstruct the love dream. In effect, they should never have

parted in the first place. The dream remains intact.

Social Fantasy and the Social Commentary Theme

In "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" the nightmare begins. Strongly

influenced by his contemporary in popular music, Bob Dylan, Lennon's lyric

here is introverted, mocking, and, in a sense, frightened. As Mellers

accurately points out, "John (the singer) hides his love away, becoming

a holy fool,,or clown because the wor1d destroys truth."77 As Lennon him­

self explained in a discussion of the song, "I started thinking about my

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own emotions . . . instead of projecting myself into a situation I would

just try to express what I felt about myself ... I started being me■yQ

about the songs, not writing them objectively, but subjectively.'1

What begins as an indictment of the Love Gone Bad experience ("If

79she's gone I can't go on"), quickly evolves into a larger indictment of

society and its inability to embrace the dreamer: "How can I even try,

80I can never win, hearing them, seeing them, in the state I'm in." In

the end, lover and society merge as the slayers of the Romantic dream,

leaving the listener with a sense of hopelessness, and perhaps guilt,

that is hitherto unknown in any Beatle song, and thus is born, by way of

the Love Gone Bad Theme, the Social Commentary Theme which would figure

heavily in the future development of the rhetorical vision: "How could

she say to me, love will find a way/gather round all you clowns, let me

81hear you say, Hey! you've got to hide your love away."

While John's writing began to take on the qualities of a sophistica­

ted "oral poetry," George Harrison began to make his composing skills a

more prominent part of the Beatle catalogue. "I Need You" is one of his

earliest works, so it is not surprising that the song reflects an inno­

cence which was, only a short time before, a defining characteristic in

Lennon-McCartney compositions. This number is a prime example of Love

Gone Bad complete with an internal reinvitation to Love: "Please come back

82to me, I'm lonely as can be. I need you." At this juncture it may be

helpful to note that no matter how sophisticated or surrealistic the

group's compositions were to become, they would never completely turn their

backs on the love theme trilogy which was so basic to their early success

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and crucial in understanding the eventual world view of the Pepperland

Perspect i ve.

In "Another Girl," McCartney addresses the Love Gone Bad situation

with a philosophy which suggests that turnabout is fair play. Rather than

running away, crying, waiting or hoping (the traditional responses to

Love Gone Bad) the singer here merely substitutes a new lover: "I ain't

8 3no fool, and I don't take what I don't want, for I have got another girl."

In contrast to "I'll Be Back," it is interesting to see who's currently

handing out the big surpises. Mildly comical in its philosophy, "Another

Girl" is uncompromising in its sense of fair play and self-assertiveness.

The dream continues.

In still another incantation of fair play, Lennon indicts the male

of the species as well on counts of Romantic neglect. "You're Gonna Lose

That Girl" is at once a verdict, threat, and promise for dealing with a

second party's Love Gone Bad. It is, in reality, a Reaffirmation of Love

on the part of the singer who has obviously been awaiting the appropriate

moment to declare his intentions if not his inner-felt love: "I'll make

a point of taking her away from you, watch what you do, the way you treat

84her what else can I do?" Indeed, what else?

John Lennon once commented that if the Beatles would ever perform

again, he would like to sing "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "Help!"

Interestingly enough, the two songs are greatly similar in their sense

of sincerity and urgency. "Help! ," recai 1s Lennon, was an honest, biographi­

cal song: "I meant it -- it's real. The lyric is as good now as it was

then. It is no different, and it makes me feel seture to know that I was

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8sthat aware of myself then. It was just me singing 'Help!' and I meant it,"

"Help!" is a monumental Invitation to Love, but it is equally a testi­

mony to growing up and into the need of a lover. It is a confessional as

much as it is an urgent plea. Gone are the tributes to self-reliance,

revenge, and distrust, replaced by an .admittance of dependency and the

quest for the idealized spirit of shared love so prevalent in the Beatles'

early work: "And now my life has changed in oh so many ways, my indepen­

dence seems to vanish in the haze, but every now and then I feel so insecure,

86I know that I just need you like I never done before." It is direct

and nearly awkward in its sincerity, but the beauty of "Help!" is its

vulnerabi1ity. In it, we confront ourselves.

On June 12, 1965, the British Establishment officially succumbed to

Beatlemania when Queen Elizabeth II granted the Beatles the prestigious

Member of the British Empire award, an honor formerly reserved for British

war heroes. The event was front page news, naturally enough, and reaction

was not wholly affirmative. A number of former recipients returned their

awards in symbolic protest of their disgust, preferring not to be consid-

87ered "on the same level with vulgar nincompoops." Nevertheless, the

drama succeeded in elevating the role of the popular musician to a new

height of respectability before a world audience. The Beatles themselves

reacted with characteristic style:

Ringo: There's a proper medal as well as the letters, isn't there?I will keep it to wear when I'm old. It's the sort of thing you want to keep.

John: I thought you had to drive tanks and win wars to win theM.B.E.

George: I didn't think you got this sort of thing for playing rock ' n' roll music.

Paul: I think it's marvelous. What does this make my dad?

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Twelve days after the awarding of the M.B.E.s, John's second book,

A Spainiard in the Works was published. Although "the word play was richer,

the satire more pointed, and the stories unabashedly (and hilariously)

89bawdy," the book received far less publicity and critical acclaim than

his debut publication, perhaps understandably. Similarly, their second

motion picture, Help! , which premiered in Britain on July 29, met with less

critical acclaim than A Hard Day's Night had a year earlier. Nevertheless,

Help! was every bit the financial success of its former suggesting that

although the nove 1 ty may have been wearing out, the public enthusiasm

was not. The viability of Beatlemania was to explode into the media's

view once again when the Beatles returned to America for the summer tour

of 1965.

During the month of May, before embarking on that history making tour,

the group recorded a series of nine new songs which would find their way

onto dozens of Beatle albums, singles and LPs during the summer of 1965

and round out the recordings scheduled to appear on the Help! soundtrack.

These nine new songs were: "You Like Me Too Much," "Bad Boy," "Dizzy

Miss Lizzie," "Tell Me What You See," "I'm Down," "Act Naturally," "It's

Only Love," "I've Just Seen a Face," and "Yesterday." Notably, this is

the last collection of recordings to include non-original compositions.

With the release of "Rubber Soul" at the end of 1965, cover recordings were

to become a thing of the past.

"You Like Me Too Much" is another early Harrison composition; a

Reaffirmation of Love which finds its strength in the assuredness of the

Love Dream's give and take, its mutual sharing, forgiveness, and caring:

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"Though you've gone away this morning, you'll be back again tonight/if you

90leave me, I will follow you and bring you back where you belong." Signi­

ficant here is the singer's admission that he is probably not truly deser­

ving of his lover's caring: ". . . you haven't got the nerve to walk out

91and make me lonely which is all that I deserve." Nevertheless, true love

ultimately wins out as the crucial ingredient for maintaining the relation­

ship: "I wouldn't let you leave me 'cause it's true, 'cause you like me

92too much and I like you." And the parallel Reaffirmation of Like, we are

lead to believe, can only lead to bigger and better things.

"Bad Boy," another Larry Williams original, is a comical parody of

the young rock 'n' roll addict, appropriately interpreted by John, which

Celebrates the Rock Culture through an absurd portrait of Junior, a

hopelessly irreverant youth who spends his last dime on "every rock and

93 . 94roll book on the magazine stand" and support of "the juke box man."

95Like the Coasters' Charlie Brown, this kid just "won't do nothin' right"

much to the chagrin of his elders, ironically intepreted here by the singer

96himself in the exasperating refrain, "Now junior, behave yourself!"

The implicit sentiment of the song, of course, is that Junior really isn't

such a bad guy as the adults make him out to be. What else can one con­

clude from a rock 'n' roll song about a kid who "just sits around the

97house and plays that rock ’n! roll music all night?"

The female counterpart to Junior is found in the person of Larry

Williams' "Dizzy Miss Lizzie," a veritable Typhoid Mary of the dance floor.

This lover not only invites romance, as did the lovers in "I Saw Her Standing

There" and "I'm Happy Just to Dance With You," she nearly inspires a

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nervous breakdown in the singer: "You make me dizzy, Miss Lizzie/Come on

98give me fever/You're driving me insane." Indeed, the power of this

particular dance floor Siren is so overwhelming that for the first time

in Beatle history, rockin' and rollin' inspires the singer to propose mar­

riage to the lover. This is one of the extremely rare moments in which

the holy state of matrimony is substituted as a pseudonym for the Love

Dream proper.

"Tell Me What You See" is a romantic call to awakening, more precisely

an Invitation to Love in which the singer strives to communicate his love

to a girl who won't seem to look at or listen to his romantic overtures:

"Listen to me one one more time, how can I get through? Can't you try to

99see that I'm trying to get to you?" In traditional Beatle style, the

solution to the problem is relatively simple: "Open up your eyes now, tell

. . . . > • „100 . , , , me what you see, it is no surprise now, what you see is me." Included

with this discovery, of course, is the promise of a fulfilled Love Dream

which is guaranteed to chase away the big "black clouds" of loneliness

and "make bright" the lover's days. The forecast: dark and lonely followed

by trust and commitment.

Although it was only every released as the flip side of the "Help!"

single, "I'm Down" must be regarded, above all else, as one of the greatest

rock 'n' roll numbers the Beatles ever recorded. It is a gut-level inter­

pretation of the Love Gone Bad drama which is extreme in its sentiment

and lyric; it is without a doubt the crowning achievement in the Beatles'

tributes to misogyny. This girl does for women what Beatle-nut ice cream

did for gourmet dining. The singer's attempts at salvaging their relationship

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(the song's only attempt at Reaffirmation of any kind) are all in vain,

for here he is faced with a woman who tells lies, laughs at him, throws

away his ring, and moans "keep your hands to yourself."'^' The Love Gone

Bad theme reaches new lows of depression here with the singer "down on the

102ground." With him, Beatle optimism lapses, again a sign of growing

skepticism and experiential maturity. The dream trembles.

Often identified as the true star of A Hard Day's Night and Help!,

Ringo's country-influenced crooning of "Act Naturally" (a former Buck

Owens hit written by Johnny Russell and Vonnie Morrison) reintroduces the

comical perspective on the Entrapment theme. The singer finds himself

entrapped by his own fame and success which tends to give the song an equal

sense of self-parody. There is a peculiar sense of pathos in all of this

as well, since the singer admits that in order to play a part "about a man

103who's sad and lonely," all he has to do is act naturally. What one

feels in the end, is less a sense of comedy than it is a sense of irony.

The song is so characteristically Ringo's that we are left with an under­

standing that even clowns experience sadness and self-doubt. "Act

Naturally" thus gives us a glimpse at a portrait of "the biggest fool that

104ever hit the big time" and a hint that even Ringo was conscious of

the creeping Beatle maturity.

The relationship between love and responsibility is showcased in Len­

non's "It's Only Love." Here the singer confronts the paradoxical nature

of the Love Dream, realizing that its maintenance is indeed less than

dreamlike in nature: "It's only love and that is all why should I feel

the way I do, it's only love and that is all but it's so hard loving you."'^

The song artfully articulates the maturation process, a growing out of

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innocence. While the singer clutches to his romantic ideals ("I get high

when I see you walk by/Just the sight of you makes night time bright"),'^8

they are simultaneously juxtaposed to the harsh realities of experience

("Is it right that you and I should fight every night? Haven't I the

right to make it up girl?").'^7 The luxuries of the love experience here

are no longer rights, but privileges adding a new dimension to the signi­

ficance of the Love Gone Bad theme.

"I've Just Seen a Face" is far more simplistic Invitation to Love

which celebrates love at first sight. Like the more traditional songs of

its kind, it too is wholly optimistic and joyous over the discovery of new

love and the emergence from loneliness. The lyric is boastful and bright,

while the song is fast paced and uplifting; with an explicit affirmation

of the Love Dream proper: ". . . she's just the girl for me and I want

1 08all the world to see we've met/As it is I'll dream of her tonight."

While ‘.'I've Just Seen a Face" glorifies the rituals of initiation,

"Yesterday" is perhaps their greatest tribute to Love Gone Bad. The song

evokes a sense of loss and of being lost simultaneously. Time is the

pivotal feature here, for at first "Yesterday" seems to sybmolize the

embodiment of the Love Dream in its purest sense when "all my troubles

seemed so far away." More precisely, one learns that with the passing

of time, "Yesterday" comes to symbolize the Love Dream as pure Memory:

"Oh, Yesterday came suddenly."''^ The essence of that Memory is then

clearly articulated: "Love was such an easy game to play."''' In the end,

we are left not with a reaffirmation of the Love Dream itself, but with

1 1 2a reaffirmation of Memory: "I beljeve in Yesterday." The distinction

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is fine, but its presence here accents that sense of maturity; that growing

up into a world of "shadow" in which an act as simple as saying "something

wrong" can usher in a dark new world of lost love and unknown loneliness.

One is left to face this world with nothing but memories.

"Yesterday" is of particular importance to the development of both

the Pepperland Perspective and the public fantasy chaining involved for a

number of reasons. It was one of the most musically influential and

commercially successful songs the Beatles ever released, although McCartney

was solely responsible for its writing and performance on record. As

Schaffner explains:

It may not have been the first appearance of a string quartet on the planet, but for an English pop group to use one, espe­cially in so baroque a manner, was a rare departure. What's more, if songs like "And I Love Her" had not, convinced non­rockers that Paul McCartney was as facile a composer of haunt­ing pop melodies as any, "Yesterday" certainly turned the trick.Little old ladies of all sexes lapped it up ("maybe there's something there after all") and all those countless starry-eyed hopeful Mrs. McCartneys were not disappointed to hear their angel-faced dream-date in so sentimental a mood. Within the next decade, over a thousand recording artists around the world released versions of the tune, which not only makes "Yesterday" easily the most frequently "covered" song in Beatledom, but also one of the most oft-recorded tunes ever composed by anyone. . . Perhaps the success of "Yesterday" hastened the day when the Beatles would augment their increasingly electric music with so many other musicians' horns, strings, woodwinds, and various hard-to-pronounce Indian instruments -- often minus one, two, or even three Beatles -- that any attempt at reproducing the results in person became out of the question.’’*1

On September 15, 1965, the Beatles began their third tour of America

with the history making concert at Shea Stadium in Flushing, New York.

Attendance records and profit records were smashed at the sell-out per­

formance. Never before in the history of concert entertainment had there

been an audience as large as that at Shea; it is estimated that over 60,000

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fanatic followers. "The mere fact that it was a Beatle concert made it

an Event that over 50,000 fanatics had united to celebrate. They were the

l k n116 real show.

From mid-October to early November, the group once again adjourned to

the studio where they recorded "We Can Work It Out" and "Day Tripper" for

release as a single. During this same period, they recorded the catalogue

that would be released in Britain as the highly influential and critically

acclaimed LP "Rubber Soul." The songs released on the British version of

"Rubber Soul" included: "Drive My Car," "Norwegian Wood," "You Won't See

Me," "Nowhere Man," "Think for Yourself," "The Word," "Michelle," "What

Goes On," "Girl," "I'm Looking Through You," "In My Life," "Wait," "If I

Needed Someone," and "Run for Your Life."

The give and take nature of the love relationship is highlighted in

"We Can Work it Out," another in the series of searches for reconciliation

in the Love Gone Bad affair. Rather than eliciting an idealized sense of

eternal happiness, the singer pragmatically reminds the lover that "life

is very short, and there's no time for fussing and fighting."''7 This

tactic evokes a new sense of urgency for reconciling the problems of the

Love Dream, and in its recognition of mortality, it implies the value of

living and loving the here and now with a conviction which few songs to

date have achieved. Equally convincing is the assertion of self in the

drama at hand. The singer here is the Dreamer, knowledgeable of the ways

of love, uniike the lover, who insists on seeing things her way — the ob­

stacle to reconciliation: "While you see it your way, run the risk of

118knowing that our love may soon be gone." Self-affirming and optimistic

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in its viewpoint, "We Can Work It Out" is one of the better blendings of

innocence and maturity in the Beatle catalogue.

"Day Tripper" is less optimistic in its portrayal of the Love Gone

Bad relationship and the woman responsible for its sorry state of affairs.

The lover here is not only uncaring, she is downright deceitful: "She's

1 1 9a big teaser, she took me half the way there." As this lyric suggests,

there is more going on here than holding hands. The ambiguous, indeed,

sometimes cryptic lyric which begins to rapidly filter into the Beatles'

recordings during this period, is once again suggestive that a new sense

of maturity was beginning to find expression in their work. The transition

from innocence to adulthood, and from Love to Sex is firmly rooted in the

playful vocabulary of "Day Tripper": "Tried to please her, she only

120played one night stands." Even the reaffirmation of realization in

121the songs refrain ("I found out") cannot atone for the fact that this is

knowledge bred of pain. The Beatles' songs, and their audience as well,

were facing harsher and harsher realities with each recording.

Express ionistic Fantasy and the Fantasy of Characterization/

Narrative Theme

The songs released on "Rubber Soul" mark a new sense of direction

in Beatle lyricism. It has been observed that

'Rubber Soul' is the Beatles' first step into the mystic and, although subsequent albums seemed to extrapolate these visions much further, the insight and cutting social comment — showed that the group had ditched the jelly babies forever ....The title of the album was reportedly dreamed up by McCartney as a punning comment on the then-growing British infatuation with soul music. But 'Rubber Soul' was no slice of plagarism: it represented a major turning point for the Beatles and for the standard of longplaying records in general. ... It was

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obvious that the group were no longer concerned with their public image as 'lovable mop tops' etc. They were Artists and, like Artists, they wanted things doen their way (for the sake of Art). 'Rubber Soul' was.’22

In "Drive My Car," the Beatles introduced the last of the seven fan­

tasy themes which comprise their work. Ironically in relationship to the

nature of this study, this theme might loosely be referred to as a fantasy

fantasy theme. More precisely, it shall be referred to as the Fantasy

Characterization/Narrative theme; songs which employ the use of fiction­

alized personae or story telling for the purpose of expressinga particular

stylized attitude, value or belief. Along with the Entrapment theme,

this theme completes the nature of those songs to be included under the

Express ionistic Fantasy type. Unlike the Romantic Fantasy Type (inclusive

of the love theme trilogy) which expresses a way of loving, or the Social

Fantasy Type (inclusive of the Celebration of the Rock Culture and the

Social Commentary theme), the Express ionist ic Fantasy Type is concerned

with intra-personal experience, with ways of thinking and being.

"Drive My Car" is a song of wistful cynicism in which the singer

meets an opportunistic Day Tripper. As the Narrative opens, one discovers

1 23the lady in mention wants "to be famous," a star of the screen." One

senses a comical sexual Innuendo, when the star-struck girl offers the

singer a chance to become involved with her climb to the top: "Baby, you

can drive my car, yes I'm gonna be a star, baby you can drive my car and

124 . •maybe I'll love you." There is certainly no sense of Romantic commit­

ment evidenced in her attitude. Rather, the temporal happiness of love-

for-the-fun-of-it (if not sex-for-the-fun-of-it) is expressed in the lady's

declaration "Workin1 for peanuts is all very fine, but I can show you a

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125better time." The narrative concludes on a somewhat farcical note

when we discover that, in fact, the story's heroine is without a car to

begin with: "I got no car and it's breaking my heart, but I've found a

1 26driver and that's a start.1' The moral: Beware of others' ego or you

may end up chauffering their insecurity. We've come a long way from "love,

love me do."'27

Lennon's lyric in "Norwegian Wood" continued the Fantasy Narrative

theme, but it was not until much later that Lennon divulged the reasons

for its ambiguity of meaning. As Lennon later revealed, "I was trying to

write about an affair without leTtingme wife know I was writing about an

128affair, so it was very gobbledegook." Given its autobiographical

nature, "Norwegian Wood" is one of the most bizarre excursions into the

self-conscious the group would ever record. Like "Drive My Car," it is

in essence, an anti-girl, anti-love song, with a protagonist who rivals

her predecessor in her pretentiousness. As Mellers observed, "there's a

hint of class consciousness in the irony . . . the girl in her elegant

Norwegian-wooded apartment is strong on social, weak on sexual, inter-

,,129course.

As the narrative develops, the singer arrives at the girl's flat

1 30("She showed me her room, isn't it good Norwegian wood"). After

131 •biding his time, "drinking her wine" and talking with her late into

the evening, the sexual moment of truth arrives, but she laughingly

. 132declines by explaining that she "worked in the morning." After a

133 .frustrating evening alone "in the bath," he awakes to find "this

1 34bird had flown." J The song vividly dramatizes a sense of frustration

and a cynicism come of age. More than a feeling of bitterness, the song's

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concluding line suggests that there is even something sinister resulting

135from this betrayal: "So I lit a fire, isn't it good, Norwegian wood."

By way of this defiant ending, a new sense of distrust for the Establishment

and its material trappings is vocalized. Interestingly enough, the song

was later embraced by just that establishment and its lyric was among those

1 36works enclosed in an anthology of "classic British poetry."

There is equally a new sense of defiance concerning the Love Gone Bad

theme in "You Won't See Me." The quest for reconciliation-, is affirmed

with the same sense of urgency expressed initially in "We Can Work It Out."

1 37Here the singer exclaims "we have lost the time that was so hard to find,"

a reaction to the growing realization of Time's harsh reality: "Though

1 3ftthe days are few, they're filled with tears." Rather than a gentle

Invitation to Love, the singer seeks reconciliation by verbally slapping

his lover in the face: "I have had enough, so act your age/Time after

139time you refuse to even listen."

The Fantasy Characterization of Lennon's "Nowhere Man" is a stunning

portrait of mankind lost within itself. A modern sense of introversion,

confusion, non-commitment and closed mindedness finds its personfication

in the symbolic "Nowhere Man, sitting in his nowhere land, making all his

140 . . I4l .nowhere plans for nobody." He is without "a point of view," without

1 42a sense of direction since he "knows not where he's going to," and

blind to the world and people around him for "he's as blind as he can be,

143just sees what he wants to see." But most importantly, the singer

suggests that if we look close enough, the "Nowhere Man" is in each of] ¿ill

us: "Isn't he a bit like you and me?" Still more importantly, the song

is a Reaffirmation of compassion and caring, with the singer in the role

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Dreamer, attempting to extract the "Nowhere Man" from the isolation of his

nowhere land, and encouraging him to celebrate his being in a world that

can be conquered through assuredness. The explicit message here is, Awake

145and Rejoice for "the world is at your command." It is the first

original composition to ignore the boy-girl relationship.

Quickly developing in his lyric sense of maturity, Harrison offers us

a neat anthem to independence in his "Think for Yourself." Employing the

Love Gone Bad theme ("you're telling all those lies about the good things

that we can have if we close our eyes/l know your mind's made up, you're

146gonna cause more misery"), the singer flatly proclaims that he will have

no part in the distorted Love Dream, "the ruins of a life that you have

in mind." Rather than closing his eyes to pain, the singer makes his escape

to greener pastures, leaving the lover to fend for herself: "Do what you

want to do, and go where you're going to, think for yourself 'cause I

147won't be there with you." The song is tough-minded, to say the least,

but eloquently maintains the Love Dream through its reaffirmation of self

and its conclusive return to the search for truer love. Even the lover

is left with a chance for redemption: "the future still looks good, and

you've got time to rectify the things that you should." Of course she

will have to do it on her own. Beatle hope springs eternal.

"The Word" is an Invitation to Love unlike any other which preceded

it. In this composition, Love is given its most runic definition to

date. It is an explicit proclamation of love's power and an Invitation

to partake of its mythology. "The Word" we are told is the Way: "It's

148so fine, it's sunshine/say the word and you'll be free." As if to

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consciously discard their past Romantic infatuation with "The Word" in

lieu of its metaphysical qualities, the singer proclaims, "In the beginning

1 49I misunderstood, but now I've got it, the Word is Good."

There is a prophetic quality about all of this, and the Beatles have

no qualms concerning it. In fact, they are quick to assert that it is

indeed their mission to make the world as aware of Love's Magic as they

themselves are aware: "Say the Word and be like me/Now that I know what

150I feel must be right, I'm here to show everybody the Light." One

can only hope that there is a sense of self-parody in this self-proclaimed

prophetic power, but the song leaves us, in the end, with a sense of sin­

cerity, not deity. We are left with a new understanding of the Love Dream

and a mystical sense for the Beatles as Dreamers.

As mentioned earlier, the Beatles would never completely abandon the

love theme trilogy which was responsible for the charm and popularity of

their earliest songs. "Michelle" is proof to that assertion. It is a

straight forward Reaffirmation of Love, with love and needing at its focus.

Perhaps in an effort to enhance the sentimentality of the song, McCartney

proclaims his love in French as well as in English: "Sont les mot qui

1 51vont tres bien ensemble" or "These are words that go together well."

Here the words are "Michelle" and "ma belle," but one is left with the

understanding that the word is still Love: "I love you, I love you, I

1 52love you, that's all I want to say, until I find a way . . ." In

"Michelle," the way is found.

The romantic counterpoint to "Michelle" is found in the hopelessness

of "What Goes On." The song is a bleak drama of Love Gone Bad with only

an implicit quest for reconciliation found in the singer's pleas for

153understanding: "What goes on in your heart? What goes on in your mind?"

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The lover is once again viewed in a rather harsh light, as her unkind

actions (infidelity and lies) are emotinally "Tearing (the singer) apart.

For the singer, all that remains is a broken heart and his tears; all that

reamains is a feeling of love betrayed. As mentioned earlier, in the

definition of the Love Gone Bad theme, there are moments when even faith

and optimism will not sustain the Love Dream. "What Goes On" is one

of those exceptional moments, a casualty of the Beatles' deepening sense

of "reality" which characterizes this period.

Like the earlier Lennon composition, "You've Got to Hide Your Love

Away," "Girl" is at once a drama of Love Gone Bad and Social Commentary,

the former theme allowing a bridge to the latter, but here the emphasis is

on the Romantic Fantasy, thus its title. Similar to "What Goes On," "Girl"

paints a rather bleak picture of a man helplessly devoted to an uncaring

lover. His desperation is clearly apparent from the song's opening lyric:

1 55"Is there anybody going to listen to my story?" Paradoxically, there

is a semblance of pleasure among this pain: "She's the kind of girl you

want so much it makes you sorry, still you don't regret a single day."'^

It is the only brief glimmer of hope in the drama, for the singer proceeds

to reveal the causes of his predicament: "She's the kind of girl who puts

you down when friends are there, you feel a fool."'57 Despite his many

attempts to leave her, the singer continually returns. What is crucial

here is the relationship of pain and the Love Dream, and the suggestion that

the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive, as past Romantic Fantasies

had lead us to believe.

Having established this paradox, the song takes a sudden turn toward

social criticism, suggesting that the lover may owe her coolness and inability

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to embrace the Love Dream to a social order which dictates that such is the

way of "reality1: "Was she told when she was young that pain would lead

to pleasure, did she understand it when they said that a man must break

his back to earn his day of Leisure, will she still believe it when he's

1 ^8dead?" Once again, Romance bows to Reality.

It is interesting, in light of the above analysis, that, years later,

Lennon would explain that "Girl" was meant as a cryptic indictment of

Catholicism and Christianity. "I'm only saying that I was talking about

‘pain will lead to pleasure' in "Girl" and that was sort of the Catholic

Christian concept — be tortured and then it'll be alright, which seems

to be a bit true but not in their concept of it. But I didn't believe

in that, that you have to be tortured to attain anything, it just so hap-

1 59pens that you were."

"I'm Looking Through You" is less complex in its development, but

similarly expresses a mood of growth and change within the Love Gone Bad

format. In it the singer painfully acknowledges that "love has a nasty

habit of disappearing over night."’8® Time is once again introduced as a

key factor in the Romantic Fantasy. Once secure in his love, the singer

is surprised by the sudden change in his lover whose gamesmanship has sud­

denly become clearly transparent: "I'm looking through you, where did

you go? I thought I knew you, what did I know?"’8’ Crucial to the lyric

is the singer's recognition of love's temporal quality and the nature of

162its rules: "I've learned the game." Self reliance is once again

affirmed but at the expense of thickening the gloom surrounding the Romantic

Love Dream.

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"In My Life" may well be the most beautiful love song John Lennon ever

composed for the Beatle catalogue. It is a Reaffirmation of Love in the

purest sense. It embraces life and death, permanence and change, friends

and lovers. It has one foot in reality and the other firmly set in the

Love Dream proper; it is uncompromising, nevertheless in its spirit of

joy.

"In My Life"

There are places I'll remember all my life, though some have changed some forever, not for better, some have gone and some remain

All these places had their moments with lovers and friends I still can recall, some are dead and some are living, in my life I've loved them all.

But of all these friends and lovers there is no one compared with you and these memories lose their meaning when I think of love as something new.

Though I know I'll never lose affection for people and things that went before I know I'll often stop and think about them, in my life I'll love you more.'53

"Wait" reintroduces the long journey from loneliness to Home in a

drama of Love Gone Bad suggested by the promise that "we'll forget the

164tears we cried." It is equally a promise of fidelity which is, ironi­

cally, at least 33% pure: "I feel as though you ought to know that I've

been good ... as good as I can be."'83 It is equally a plea to hold on

to the Love Dream as long as possible whi1e the lovers are separated.

Yet it is oognizant of the lover's weakness as well: "But if your heart

breaks, don’t wait, turn me away, and if your heart's strong, hold on, I

won't delay."'88 Despite its technical difficulties, "Wait" is a song of

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reconci1iation, understanding and forgiveness which leaves us with a sense

of well being and optimism over the vanquishing of loneliness and the

return Home to the Love Dream.

"If I Needed Someone" is an interesting Reaffirmation of Love which

occurs rather indirectly; the result of rejecting a second lover. It

simultaneously declares devotion while never losing sight of the moral

established in "I’m Looking Through You" -- "Love has a nasty habit of

disappearing overnight."'^ While it may not be the most ethically uplift

ing lyric, it is comically pragmatic in its perspective of the love

relationship's tentative nature. It is in this sense of healthy maturity

that "If I Needed Someone" finds its strength and its ability to embrace

both romance and reality with equal zeal: "Had you come some other day

babe, it might not have been like this, but you see now I'm too much in

love. Carve your number on my wall and maybe you will get a call from me,

. r | . , ,, 168if I needed someone."

While "I'll Cry Instead" promised to get even with all the women in

the world and "Norwegian Wood" implicitly smacked of arson, "Run For Your

Life" poses the greatest threat to ever emanate from any Beatle song in

the direction of the Romantic Fantasy's lover: "Well I'd rather see you

dead little girl than to be with another man/You better run for your life

if you can little girl/Catch you with another man, that's the end, little

girl."'k9 This is more than a theme of Love Gone Bad, this is Love Gone

Berserk. It is difficult to account for the psychotic nature of this song

or the effect it would have on the rhetorical vision during this period

of maturation. At best, it may be viewed as a satirical look at the

obsessive nature of people in the love relationship or as still another

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example of self-parody of the band that was concurrently here to show every­

body the Light. Regardless, “Run For Your Life" is unique in its point

of view and indicative of the fact that hatred was as much a part of reality

as was Love. John Lennon's epitaph on the song is insightful "I always

hated 'Run for Your Life."1’78 Mistakes happen, the Dream continues.

There is one last note of interest concerning "Rubber Soul": the

influential album cover which accompanied it.

Everything about the album showed the Beatles being consciously arty for the first time. Bob Freeman's front cover shot was daringly surreal for its day, with the Beatles' unsmiling faces distorted as though reflected in water (all ears but Paul's now completely obscured by that creeping hair), and the by-now gratuitous label 'Beatles' nowhere to be seen. This and the Beatles' subsequent LP covers effected quite a revolution in album artwork, which had heretofore been as cheap and unimagi­natively garish as that on noodle boxes. Henceforth we would rarely be insulted with those dumb-dumb blurbs and liner notes, written in that hyped up language whose only article of punctua­tion seemed to be the exclamation mark.’71

The year 1966 began in relative calmness, but it was to be a year

marked by controversy and innovation, both in public and in the recording

studio. On April 13 of that year the Beatles recorded "Paperback Writer"

for release as a single ¡n America and Britain. This Fantasy Narrative

is a satirical look at sensationalism and commercialism told from the per­

spective of a hackwriter's coyer letter to a potential publisher's office.

The letter has been sent with a manuscript that's "a dirty story," of a

1 72dirty man" — a sensational little story that smacks of exploitation,

’ 73if not plaginsm since it's "based on a novel by a man named Lear."

For all his shortcomings as a literary figure, one experiences a

sense of pathos for the "Paperback Writer." Actually he would gladly com­

promise his 'artistry' at his publisher’s request ("I can make it longer

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1 74if you like the style, I can change it 'round . . in the end we sense

that this 'bastardization' of his art is the only means of survival left

open to him by the commercial cruelty of the business world. After all,

it took him "years to write it"'73 and he needs a break . . . desperately,

one concludes. The song then is suggestive of internal conflict, a

struggle between self-worth and survival, a fantasy portrait with morality

as its focus. Given the song's historical context, its appeal is under-

standable.

The flip-side of "Paperback Writer" was a Lennon composition entitled

"Rain" (recorded in late April). An archetypal Social Commentary, "Rain"

expresses a philosophy in which "the outward manifestations of the material

world are all nothing more than 'a wall of illusion.'"'78 The song

ushers in the retun of the Prophet-Dreamer who decries a vision of society

which is comprised of a 'fair weather' citizenry. When times are bad, we

are told, these people withdraw out of complacency or fear: "If the rain

comes, they run and hide their heads."'77 When the social climate has

stabilized, they reappear, prospering once again in their materialism:

1 78"When the sun shines, they slip into the shade and sip their lemonade."

The Dreamer, conscious of Life's true meaning, or, at least, a truer sense

than the non-dreamers have, proclaims that these people are immune to any

179conception of a deeper spiritual life and "might as well be dead."

Commentary completed, he proceeds to put us in touch with a deeper

sense of living, explaining that such changes in social climate are illu-

1 80sions, more specifically, a collective "state of mind." Content in

his assertions, he defies society's illusions to move his inner sense of

(121)

181being: "Rain! I don't mind. Shine! The weather's fine." "Rain" was

never included on an immediate LP and would not make its appearance again

until 1970 as part of an American compilation LP entitled "The Beatles

Again." It's failure as a "hit" single may be accountable to its difficult

lyric and high minded philosophical statement -- it was still 1966 and rock

philosophy was not yet the vogue. Songs like "Rain" would soon make it

so.

Between late April and mid-June of 1966, the Beatles were in and out

of the studios at EMI (studios they were quickly coming to master as wel1 as

or better, than George Martin) recording a fourteen song collection to be

divided between the Amer¡canKcompi1 at ion "Yesterday and Today" and the

British release of an LP called "Revolver." The first three of these

songs, "I'm Only Sleeping," "Dr. Robert," and "And Your Bird Can Sing,"

would be featured on both LPs. The remainder of the U.K.'s "Revolver"

would include: "Taxman," "Eleanor Rigby," "Love You To," "Here There and

Everywhere," "Yellow Submarine," "She Said She Said," Good Day Sunshine,"

"For No One," "I Want To Tell You," "Got to Get You Into My Life," and

"Tomorrow Never Knows."

The dream sequence, which first became apparent in "Things We Said

Today" serves as the basis for "I'm Only Sleeping," a Fantasy Narrative

182"balanced between the reality within the reality outside the mind."

The vision here fluctuates between waking and sleeping: "When I wake1 O *3

up early in the morning," and "When I'm in the middle of a dream."

184Given the choice of facing "the world going by" his window or remaining

185in bed where he might continue to "float upstream," the Dreamer,

naturally enough, chooses the latter. Given the options, his choice seems

(122)

to be the wisest.

186The Dreamer is no fool. He has been "keeping an eye" on the real

world from the security of his Dream room, and he describes it as filled

with "crazy" people, "running everywhere at such a speed." Although it

is of less philosophical nature than "Rain," "I'm Only Sleeping" equally

presents the listener with an alternative lifestyle, one which confronts

the break-neck pace and skepticism of 'without' with the serenity and

clear thinking of the Dream world 'within.' Equally important to the

somewhat mystical power of "Rain" and "I'm Only Sleeping" were the Beatles'

experiments in sound. "Rain" concludes with its vocal overdubbed back­

wards -- the effect is an eerie one which is mildly suggestive of Gregorian

chants — while "I'm Only Sleeping" incorporated the use of reversed tape

1 87loops to effect "the extraordinary between s1eeping-and-waking" mood

of the music.

"Dr. Robert" is a Social Commentary in which the Beatles satirize

society's dependence on the mind-expanding and body-relaxing wares of

the medical profession. As Paul McCartney explained:

Well, he's like a joke. There's some fellow in New York, and in the States we'd hear people say; 'You can get everything off him; any pills you want.' |t was a big racket, but a joke too about this fellow who cured everyone of everything with all these pills and tranqui1isers, injections for this and that; he just kept New York high. That's what 'Dr. Robert' is all about, just a pill doctor who sees you right.’88

Despite the Beatles' growing interest in hallucinogenic drugs such as

LSD during this time, the conflict between self and society is once again

articulated in "Dr. Robert's" implicit statement, as well as in its

189explicit warning: "Don't pay money just to see yourself with Dr. Robert."

(123)

"And Your Bird Can Sing’1 is another in the series of Social Commentary

songs which strike out against materialism. The Dreamer returns to warn

us.that we may well have everything we want, but in the process of obtain­

ing our material goods we may have lost ourselves. The Dreamer will have

no part of the material world, but reminds us that he will always be there

to help us find a better way, when we have grown weary of our material

wealth: "When you prize possessions start to weigh you down, look in my

. 190direction, I'll be 'round." Again, the song offers the listener

alternatives in lifestyles; a choice between embracing humankind or its

material trappings.

At the opposite end of the philosophical spectrum, is George Harrison's

comical Social Commentary "Taxman," The song is an ode to the "inevitable

191and eternal battle between Tqxman-Establishment and Me." The song is

told from the viewpoint of the Taxman himself, which helps to heighten the

sardonic wit of Harrison's lyric, creating a portrait of a monetary tyrant

proclaiming his fiscal policy to a helpless public: "If you drive a car,

I'll tax the street. If you try to sit, I'll tax your seat, If you get too

192cold, I'll tax the heat, If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet."

This is the Big Brother of Financial Affairs, capricious in his policy ma­

king ("Don't ask me what I want it for, if you don't want to pay some

193more") and escapable only through death, or, at least, nearly escapable

\ 194("Now my advice for those who die, declare the pennies on your eyes").

Despite its mundane philosophy, "Taxman" is a clever assault on Establish­

ment and richly suggestive of the social parody which was becoming an

increasing concern of the rhetorical vision in development.

(1 24)

"Eleanor Rigby"

Ah, look at all the lonely people Ah, look at all the lonely people

Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church Where a weeding has been Lives in a dream Waits at the window,Wearing a face that she keeps in a jar by the door Who is it for?

CHORUSAll the lonely people, where do they all come from?All the lonely people, where do they all belong?

Father McKenzie, writing the words to a sermon that no one will hear No one comes nearLook at him working, darning his socks in the night when there's nobody there What does he care

CHORUS

Eleanor Rigby died ¡n the church and was buried along with her name Nobody cameFather McKenzie, wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave No one was saved.

1 95CHORUS ”

"Eleanor Rigby" may well be the most memorable Social Commentary the

Beatles ever recorded. It is a monumental recording unique in its values,

sense, feeling, tone and intention. It is an expression of total, absolute

loneliness. The major characters are immersed in solitude; their lives

characterized by waiting, dreaming and uninspired conscription to work.

The experience here is hopeless loneliness; a loneliness which becomes a

1 96way of life, inescapable even through death: "No one was saved."

As Mellers observed, "Eleanor Rigby is pro-love, though its not a

love song in the sense that the majority of early Beatle songs were. It's

(125)

197about compassion, loneliness and implicitly about the generation gap . . ."

It is a stark drama of confinement, ironically within the setting of church

grounds. The chorus is nearly desperate in its searching, awakening the

listener to a social reality, rather than prescribing action to be taken./

The thrust is towards attitude. "Eleanor Rigby" is not doctrine, but a

cry for compassion and love. Again, given the socio-political nature of

the United States and Britain during the mid-1960s, such a plaintive cry

was difficult to ignore.

"Love You To" neatly summarizes the Beatle philosophy during this

period of lyrical growth. Overall, it's theme is one of the Social Com­

mentary, but it incorporates a notion of the Dream which is characteristic

of the Express ionistic Fantasy type. The rhetorical world view here may

be viewed in its five component parts: (1) Life is temporal: "Each day

just goes so fast, I turn around it's past;" (2) Materialism is the root

of all misunderstanding: "A lifetime is so short, a new one can't be

bought;" (3) Love is to be understood in a spiritual sense and expressed

in every action: "Make love all day long, make love singing songs;" (4)

Society is filled with people unable to embrace the Dream: "There's

people standing 'round, who'll screw you in the ground, they'll fill you

in with all those sins;" and (5) the Dreamer is always prepared to show

the true Way to Love and understanding: "I'll make love to you, if you

want me to.

"Here There and Everywhere" returns to earth with a Reaffirmation to

Love that is expressive of Love's magic ("Changing my life with a wave of

199her hand") and the total joy of sharing in the heterosexual love rela­

tionship (". . . to love her is to need her everywhere, knowing that love

is to share").288 The song is refreshingly innocent and affirmative in

(126)

spirit, once again reminding us that past philosophies of Romance are by

no means outdated or replaceable by mysticism.

Even less mysterious is the archetypal Fantasy Narrative of escapism

"Yellow Submarine." It is a fairy tale, pure and simple, a song written

by McCartney in hopes that it would become a children's song. "I just

loved the idea of kids singing it," McCartney revealed. "With 'Yellow

Submarine' the whole idea was "If someday I came across some kids singing

201it, that will be it.'" That wasn't it. Scores of listeners and cri­

tics began to analyze "Yellow Submarine" for submerged meanings J perhaps

a natural result of the Beatles' growing tendency for recording songs of

a philosophical or ambiguous nature. "Yellow Submarine" has been interpre­

ted as everything from a fantasy of the nuclear apocalypse, to drug

addiction.

More precisely, "Yellow Submarine" is a celebration of every child's

innocence, imagination and fantasy. At best, it can be interpreted as

the Beatles' plea for us to hold tight to childhood, for it is only such

a liberation from the mundane realities of the adult world that will allow

us to understand our inner beauty. The "Yellow Submarine" is our vehicle

to the Dream.

The reply to "Yellow Submarine" is to be found in Lennon's "She Said

She Said," a Fantasy Narrative depicting a baffling conversation between

the singer and an unidentified woman. Certainly, it is an adult conversa­

tion, a bizarre bit of black humor in which the lady tells the singer "I

202know what it's like to be dead, I know what it is to be sad," suggesting

that here is a fleshand blood member of the society indicted in "Rain,"

(127)

"Eleanor Rigby," and "Love You To." Taken back by the comment, the singer

asks "Who put all those things in your head, things thatmakeme feel that

203I'm mad?" What is articulated here is the confrontation between inno­

cence and reality, the former represented by the singer, the latter by the

unknown woman. Significantly, the chorus returns us to the singer's memories

of childhood in an effort to reconcile the interpersonal exchange with his

intrapersonal confusion at lack of understanding: "When I was a boy,

204everything was right." The song, then, is an expression of the passage

from childhood to maturity, a theme formerly confined to Romantic affairs.

It is at once a song of initiation, attitude and decision, and while it

does not wholly embrace society proper, it exposes us to its reality.

Love Reaffirmation returns in the most celebrant Sun Song to date,

McCartney's "Good Day Sunshine." Notably, it is the sharing of love

which brings on the sunny day at hand: "I feel good, in a special way,

205I'm in love and it's a sunny day." The song rejoices in the love

206relationship's reciprocity: "I love her and she's loving me." The

Romantic Love Dream remains intact, "Good Day Sunshine's" counterstatement

follows in the traditional Love Gone Bad composition "For No One." Descri­

bed as "oral poetry that extracts pathos from the very bareness of its

statement," the song is a portrait of loss that parallels "Girl" in

its mood and sentiment, sans political or religious commentary. The

Love Dream is over and yet the singer helplessly clings to hope: "You

want her, you need her, and yet you don't believe her when she says here

208love is dead, you think she needs you." Interestingly, here the

drama is told in second person, thus giving it a dydactic nature similar

(128)

to "She Loves You." The lesson, of course, is one of growing up and out

of Romantic infaturation: Love is temporal, memories are left to sustain

us: "There will be times when all the things she said will fill your head,

209you won't forget her."

The Entrapment theme returns in "I Want to Tell You," an intra-personal

expression of logic verses emotion. It is, ironically, an articulation of

the singer's inability to articulate his feelings to his lover: "My head

is filled with things to say, when you're here, All those words -- they

fl 0 Compelled to speak out of love, but entrapped by

his suspicions of his lover's insincerity ("When I get near you, the games

21 1begin to drag me down," the strength of the song is found in its sincere

quest for understanding: "Sometimes I wish I knew you well, then I could

212speak my mind and tell you, maybe you'd understand." The singer here

is equally the Dreamer, understanding and patient of the lover's misgivings:

213"I don't mind, I could wait forever, I've got time."

McCartney has no such problem articulating his feelings in the spiri­

ted Invitation to Love, "Got to Get You into My Life." The lyric is a

confident expression of the rebirth, consummation and steadfastness of

the Love Dream. It quickly moves through these stages with an urgency

suggested by its title: "I was alone, I took a ride, I didn't know what

I would find there/then I suddenly see you, did I tell you I need you--

214every single day of my life."

Musically and lyrically, "Tomorrow Never Knows" firmly establishes

the Beatles as the archtypal purveyors of recorded psychedelia. While

earlier songs had incorporated the use of Eastern musical motifs and

instrumentation ("Love to You," "Norwegian Wood") and had begun to rely

(129)

strongly on studio special effects (“Paperback Writer," "Yellow Submarine,"

"Rain," "I'm Only Sleeping"), "Tomorrow Never Knows" incorporates both,

providing an eerie backdrop which eventually consumes the philosophy being

sung.

While many have labelled this the Beatles' first significant narcotics

song, it is more properly, here, a restatement of philosophy; a Dream

Manifesto, as it were, similar in scope to Harrison's "Love You To."

"Tomorrow Never Knows"

Turn off your mind relax and float down streamIt is not dying, It is not dyingLay down all thought surrender to the voidIt is shining, It is shiningThat you may see the meaning of withinIt is being, it is beingThat love is all and love is everyoneIt is knowing, it is knowingWhen ignorance and haste may mourn the deadit is believeing, it is believingBut listen to the color of your dreams,it is not living, it is not livingOr play the game existence to the endof the beginning, of the beginning.2!^

Less explicit than "Love You To" and without a direct notion that the

singer will lead the Way, the song nevertheless expresses the dichotomy

between the world of the mind and the world around us. Loosely, one might

define the song as Fantasy Narrative, in that it sequentially lays down

the means by which the listener might come to know his inner self. In

"Tomorrow Never Knows" we discover Beatle mysticism at its zenith.

Many Beatleologists, consider "Revolver" to be the greatest Beatle

LP ever recorded. As Carr and Tyler conclude:

This almost flawless album can be seen as the peak of theBeatles' creative career. They were later to undertake more ambitious projects which would be crowned with equal critical acclaim, but 'Revolver' is the kind of achievement which any

(130)

artist would be more than satisfied to regard as some kind of culmination to his career. No less than that .... The overall effect of 'Revolver' is majestic.216

The spirit of the Beatles as happy-go-lucky mop tops faded quickly

with each new release of a single or LP; however, prior to the release

of "Revolver" in Britain, Capitol issued an LP of previously recorded

songs entitled "Yesterday and Today." As mentioned above, three new songs

made their appearance on this LP and were rounded out by singles and songs

previously unreleased in album form stateside. Such was a common practice,

but what was not common was the album's original cover photograph: a group

portrait of the Beatles in white butcher smocks, covered here and there

with chunks of raw meat, and clutching the heads and bodies of decapitated

baby dolls. The album was nearly instantly recalled, based on overwhelming

objections todisc jockey copies alone. And the album made its official

appearance in American record stores with a much-subdued cover portrait.

While the butcher cover affair was a near disaster, it was mild in

comparison to what would happen next. In February, during an interview

with the London Evening Standard, John Lennon made his now infamous state­

ment concerning the status of rock 'n' roll and Christianity:

Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needen't argue about that, I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus Christ now. I don't know which will go first, rock 'n' roll or Christ¡anity.217

Britain ignored the comment, but America exploded. A few days after

the American release of "Revolver" in August, the comment reappeared in

the American teen magazine Datebook. As T i me magaz i ne reported, "all

218hell fire broke loose." Outrage, especially in America's Bible belt,

threatened to disrupt the group's summer tour of America. Dozens of

(131)

radio stations banned Beatle music and numerous demonstrations were held

throughout the South where Beatle albums and memorabilia were burned along

with effigies of the not-so-Fab Four. After numerous public apologies by

Brian Epstein and Lennon himself, public outrage was calmed and the Ameri­

can tour proceeded without major incident. The dream, although shaken,

remained intact.

It was the last tour the Beatles would make. With the release of

"Revolver," the Beatles had become a studio band proper, unable, and more

exactly, unwilling to perform their music publically with any remote simi­

larity to what was on their records. On August 29, the Beatles performed

live for the last time in San Francisco's Candlestick Park. "For them,

219at least, the screaming was over."

In summarizing the development of the rhetorical vision through this

point in the group's history, it is clear that Love still serves as the ul­

timate legitimatization for those caught up in the composite dramas. What

is significant during this period is the growing recognition of maturity

and responsibility. The dramas here are concerned with growth; with the

realization that hatred and pain are a part of Love. The Pepperland Per­

spective is at the crossroads between innocence and experience, love and

sex, emotion and logic. There is less of an emphasis on dependence and

a new sense of independence and self-reliance.

Along with this new sense of maturity comes a cynicism bred of respon­

sibility and mistrust. Revenge and bitterness are often the emotional

evocations which result. But equally, there is a refreshed sense of opti­

mism and humor in many of the songs of this period. Human frailty is

not only recognized but embraced. Setting remains of little importance,

(132)

but Time and the temporal quality of life and love are firmly established.

Finally, during this stage of development, indictments of self and

society become a common theme. To counter these indictments however, Love

begins to take on mystical, magical powers and the Beatles themselves

become more and more prophetic dreamers. We experience worlds of destroyed

truth, absolute loneliness, hopelessness and guilt. The villains are a

society of material non-dreamers, introverted and incapable of love. The

world is a struggle of life and death, permanence and change, self-worth

and survival. Only through Love and compassion can the hero-Dreamers hope

to save the world. By discovering the world of love within, the world of

illusion without can be conquered and the true potential for the love all

around us realized. Although less overtly romantic in mood, this period

continually recalls an earlier sense of joy through the sharing of love

and the need for childlike innocence in the face of harsh reality.

(133)

References

^Barry Miles, Beatles In Their Own Words (New York: Quick Fox Press,

1978) p. 80.

2George Martin and Jeremy Hornsby, Al 1 You Need Is Ears (New York:

St. Martin's Press, 1979) P- 12-13.

3Hugh Fielder, Liner Notes from the Parlophone LP "The Beatles 'Rari­

ties'" (1A 038-06867) Distributed by E.M.I.Z,Nicholas Schaffner, The Beatles Forever (Harrisburg: Cameron House,

1977) p. 22.

51 b i d .

8John Lennon, transcribed from recording made in England on November

4, 1963; (Vewy Queen Weccords) PRO 1108-A.

^Schaffner, op. cit.

gPeter McCabe and Robert D. Schonfeld, Apple to the Core: The Unmaking

of the Beaties (New York: Simon and Schuster, 197^7 p. 47.

91 bi d . , pp. 48-49

'01bid., p. 48.

'' Ibid. , p. 49.

1 2The Beatles Lyrics Illustrated, (New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1975) P. 48.

1 3"^Wilfrid Mellers, The Twilight of the Gods : The Mus i c of the Beati es (New York: Schirmer Books, 1973) p- ^9.

14Ibid.

15lbid., p. 50.

'8The Beatles Lyrics I 11ustrated , op. cit. p. 53 •

'^Schaffner, op. cit., p. 25.

1 ft°Roy Carr and Tony Tyler, The Beatles: An Illustrated Record (New York: Harmony Books, 1975) p- 29-

'9"Long Tall Sally" by Enotris Johnson, Richard Penniman, and Robert

Blackwell, copyright (1956) BMI.

(134)

20The Beatie Lyrics 111ustrated, op. cit., p. 40.

2'"Slow Down" by Larry Williams, copyright (1958) BMI.

22"Matchbox" by Carl Perkins, copyright (1957) BMI.

23 Schaffner, op. cit.

24McCabe, op. cit. p. 53.

25 Schaffner, op. cit., p. 10.

26Frank Friedman, ed. The Beatles: Words Without Music (New York Grosset and Dunlap, Inc., 1968) p. 53-

27-Carr, op. cit.

281bid. , p. 30.

291 bi d.

30Mel 1ers, op. cit., p. 43.

31 The Beatles Lyrics Illustrated, op. cit., p. 42.

32lbid.

33lbid., p. 47.

34 Ibid., p. 50.

331bid. , p. 45.

361b i d.

37lbid., p. 43.

381bid., p. 44.

391b id.

/inIbid., p. 46.

Ibid., p. 49.

42Ibid., p. 51•

/|3lbid.

44 Ibid., p. 52.

45lbid.

(135)

46

47

Ibid., p. 54.

Ibid.

48 Jann Wenner, ed., Lennon Remembers: The Rolling Stone Interviews (New York: Popular Library, 1971) p. 16.

49

50

51

The Beatles Lyrics 111ustrated, op. cit., p. 58.

Ibid., p. 59.

Ibid.

52 Ibid., p. 62.

53

54

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 61.

55 Ibid.

56Mellers, op. cit., p. 50.

57The Beatles Lyrics 111ustrated, op. cit., p. 65.

58,.Rock and Roll Music" by Chuck Berry, copyright (1957) BMI

BMI

BMI.

59

60

61

Mellers, op. ci t. , p. 51•

"Mr. Moonlight" by Roy Lee Johnson, copyright (1962) BMI.

"Kansas City" by Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, copyright (1959)

82"Words of Love" by Buddy Holly, copyright (1957) BMI.

88"Honey Don't" by Carl Perkins, copyright (1956) BMI.

Ibid.

The Beatles Lyrics Illustrated, op. cit., p. 66.65

66

67

68

69

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 63.

Ibid., p. 67.

Ibid.

78"Everybody's Trying to be My Baby" by Carl Perkins, copyright (1958)

(136)

71

72

73

74

Schaffner, op. cit., p. 39-

The Beat 1es Lyrics 111ustrated, op. cit., p. 75 ■

Ibid.

75

Ibid., p. 68.

Ibid., p. 71•

77

78

79

Mellers, op. cit., p. 54.

Miles, op. cit., p. 80.

The Beatles Lyrics Illustrated, op. cit., p. 72.

80lbid.

81 Ibid.

82

83

84

"I Need You" by George Harrison, copyright (1965?) BMI

The Beatles Lyrics Illustrated, op. cit., p. 73-

85

Ibid., p. 74.

Mi 1es, op. cit.

86

87

The Beatles Lyrics 111ustrated, op. cit., p. 70.

Schaffner, op. cit., p. 40.

88Miles, op. cit., p. 27-

89Schaffner, op. cit., p. 41.

""You Like Me Too Much," by George Harrison, copyright (1965) BMI

91 Ibid.

92 Ibid.

""Bad Boy" by Larry Williams, copyright (1959) BMI

94,Ibid.

95 Ibid.

761 b i d.

961bid .

(137)

97

98

Ibid.

"Dizzy Miss Lizzie" by Larry Williams, copyright (1958) BMI.

99The Beatles Lyrics 111ustrated, op. cit., p. 77•

100,Ibid.

101 Ibid., p. 69.

'“ibid.

103 "Act Naturally" by Johnny Russel 1 and Vonnie Morrison, copyright (1963) BMI.

104,Ibid.

105

106

107

108

The Beatles Lyr i es I 11ustrated, op. cit., p. 76.

Ibid.

Ibid.

109

Ibid., p. 78.

Ibid., p. 79-

110 Ibid.

1 11 Ibid.

112 Ibid.

113

114

115

116

Ibid.

117

Schaffner, op. cit., pp. 47-49-

Carr, op. cit., p. 46.

Schaffner, op. cit., p. 44.

The Beatles Lyrics I 11ustrated, op. cit., p. 85.

118 Ibid.

119 Ibid., p. 84.

120 Ibid.

121 Ibid.

(138)

122Carr, op. cit., pp. 48-50.

123The Beatles Lyrics Illustrated, op. cit., p. 86.

1 241b i d.

125lbid.

1281 bid.

127 Ibid., p. 13.

128Miles, op. cit.

129Mellers, op. cit., p- 59-

13°The Beatles Lyrics 111ustrated^ op. cit., p• 87.

131lbid.

132lbid.

133lbid.

13\bid.

1351b i d.

138Schaffner, op. cit., P- ^9-

137lbid., p. 88.

138lbid.

139lbid.

l40lbid., p. 89-

141 Ibid.

l42lbid.

l43lbid.

l44lbid.

l45lbid.

l46lbid. , p. 90.

l47lbid.

(139)

148

149

150

151

152

153

154

155

156

157

158

Ibid., p. 91

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid. , p. 92.

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 93.

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 94.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

159

160

Wenner, op. cit., p. 130.

The Beat 1es Lyrics 111ustrated, op. cit., p. 95•

161 Ibid.

162

163

164

165

166

167

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 96.

Ibid., p. 97-

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 95-

168

169

"If I Needed Someone" by George Harrison, copyright (19^5) BMI

The Beat 1es Lyrics 111ustrated, op. cit., p. 98.

'"Miles, op. cit., p. 82.

'7'Schaffner, op. cit.

The Beatles Lyrics Illustrated, op. cit., p. 100.172

173 Ibid.

174 Ibid.

(140)

175lbid.

1761 b¡d., p. 101 .

,77lbîd.

178lbid.

179lbid.

180,

181

Ibid.

Ibid.

,82m 1,Meilers , op. cit.1 O Q

'’The Beatles Lyric

P- 73.

I 11ustrated, op cit., p. 104.

184

185

186,

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

1 87'Meilers, op. cit

188M.,Miles, op. cit.,

189JThe Beati es Lyric

19°lbid., p. 110.

191 Mei 1 ers, op. cit.

192The Beatles Lyr ic

193lbid.

194Ibid.

195lbid., p. I03.

196lbîd.

197Mellers, op. cit.

'98The Beatles Lyr î c

p. 192.

88.

111ustrated,

p. 69.

I 11ustrated,

p. 70.

111ustrated,

op

op

op

cit., p. 112.

ci t., p. 102.

cit., p. 105.

l99lbid., p. IO6.

200 Ibid.

(141)

201 Miles, op. cit. , p. 82.

202The Beatles Lyrics Illustrated, op. cit., p. 108.

2°3lbid.

204lbid.

205lbid., p. 109.

206lbid.

287Mellers, op. cit., p. 79.

2 08The Beatles Lyrics Illustrated, op. cit., p. 111.

2°9lbid.

210,... ,,,Ibid., p. 113-

21 1 Ibid,

Ibid,

Ibid.

212

213

214 Ibid., p. 114.

215lbid. , p. 115.

2'8Carr, op. cit., pp. 54-8.

2'7Schaffner, op. cit., p. 57.

21^"According to John," Time (August 12, 1966) p. 38.

2'9Schaffner, op. cit., p. 59-

CHAPTER IV

The Studio Years: Resolution and Rebirth

We haven't really started yet. We've only just discovered what we can do as musicians, what thresholds we can cross. The future stretches out beyond our imagination.

George Harrison

In December, the group recorded "Penny Lane" and "Strawberry Fields

Forever" for release in early 1967- It is nearly impossible to suggest

exactly what the lyrics to "Penny Lane" mean specifically. Paul McCartney

has explained that such a place really does exist: "Penny Lane is a bus

roundabout in Liverpool. It's part fact, part nostalgia for a place which

is a great place, blue suburban skies as we remember it, and its still

there." Like its predecessor, "Yellow Submarine," "Penny Lane," is a

Fantasy Narrative told from a child-like perspective, with a wide-eyed

fascination for characters that seem somewhat bigger than life. Here

the singer points out the characters in the scenario explaining, as it

develops, what we are indeed 'seeing.' "In Penny Lane the barber shaves 3

another customer, we see the banker sitting waiting for a trim. ' Upper­

most, we are periodically reminded that all of this is memory by the

lyrical interruption "Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes, there beneath It

the blue suburban skies, I sit and meanwhile back . . . ." And back we

go to a new segment of the narrative. Equally significant to the drama is

the pretty nurse selling poppies in the middle of the roundabout. She

herself is mindful that she is, indeed, a memory: "And though she feels

as if she's in a play, she is anyway."5 While "Yellow Submarine" suggests

that we should not lose our childish imagaination, "Penny^Lane" suggests

that we should not let go of our childhood memories, for they are what

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keep us young, unhardened to the ugliness of the real world, and make us

capable of embracing the Love Dream.

Like "Penny Lane," "Strawberry Fields Forever" has one foot in reality

Strawberry Fields was a Salvation Army School, which John visited annually

in his youth during its garden party and ice cream social. It is a Fantasy

Narrative which depicts a place beyond time and space; the Eden of the Love

Dream. The chorus presents the Dreamer and his invitation to follow him

out of the confusion and frustration of the real world: "Let me take you

down cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields, nothing is real and nothing to

get hungabout — Strawberry Fields Forever." The real world then is jux­

taposed to the Dream in the three verses which complete the song. Verse

one is suggestive of the struggle for self which dominates reality: "It's

getting hard to be someone," Verse two, of the Realists' inability to

embrace the Dream: "That is you can't you know tune in," and Verse three,

of the helplessness posed in confronting society's demands- "I think, I

know, I mean a 'Yes' but it's all wrong, that is I think I disagree."7

Equally expansive in its use of bizarre studio effects, many people

regarded "Strawberry Fields Forever" as the manifestation of one too many

acid trips by its creator John Lennon. More precisely, the song expresses

a way of thinking; a way of looking at the world and a way of coping with

what you see. It is creative fantasy which stimulates both the thinking

and the imagination, and although we may never actually arrive in the Edenic

Dream World it portrays, it serves a commendable purpose in helping us to

imagine it.

Before 1966 had ended, the Beatles would record "When I'm Sixty-Four"

which would be released on their pop music landmark "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely

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Hearts Club Band." For the purpose of viewing the impact of "Sgt. Pepper"

who 1istica11y, the analysis of "When I'm Sixty-Four" will be included with

the songs which accompanied it on the LP itself.

Between the months of January and April of 1967, the Beatles were

hard at work on the songs which would result in the "Sgt. Pepper" LP. But

in order to understand the impact and influence that this album would have

on the American public, it is important to understand the mood of the

nation at this point in history. It is nearly cliche, at this point in

time, to view the Beatles' most avid fans as comprising a Sixties' counter­

culture. The idea of counterculture itself now seems as dated and somewhat

laughable as nehru jackets and dayglo flower power posters. All of this

was a commercial bastardization of America's mood; especially the mood of

its young adults. The dawning of the age of Aquarius was contrived, the

Vietnam war was real. More than any other force, the war in Vietnam

shaped the face of America during the 1960s. As one young writer put it:

The world we inherited from our elders was an unsettling one to begin with; we were the first generation to grow up haunted by nightmares of mushroom clouds that could wipe the earth out in a day. Just as rock music was evolving into so influ­ential a medium, the U.S. was busy 'escalating' its devastation of an obscure country 6,000 miles away; and nobody could convincingly explain why. The endless magazine covers and T.V. newsreels of ruined villages and napalmed babies made quite a few of us question whether there might be something incredibly twisted about our society's values. The ultimate horror for young American men was the draft, through which they were being compelled to kill --maybe even die -- for the government's misadventures. The Vietnam war became a symbol of everything perceived as barbaric and grotesque about the Establishment; it played a tremendous part in turning millions of teenagers and young adults off 'the system.'8

At the very least, it appears safe to assume that a great many Ameri­

cans were in search of alternatives from a world which seemed to be on

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the edge of its own destruction. Drugs were certainly one alternative.

But popular music was a much safer and more easily accessible alternative^—

for juxtaposing order on the chaotic world at hand. Enter the "summer

of love" and "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."

Public fantasy chaining in the form of Beatlemania reached its height,

and perhaps its effective end in the days prior to and following the

release of "Sgt. Pepper" in June of 1967- Since the early months of that

year, the media had been filled with rumors that the Beatles were at work

on their musical masterpiece, "a project that would sum up, and transcend,

all that had been accomplished in the previous four years." The release

of "Penny Lane" and "Strawberry Fields Forever" were a hint as to the

phenomenal nature of the mother ship to follow. Soon after their release,

tapes of the Masterwork leaked out in the form of a bizarre recording

called "A Day in the Life Of."

The song received widespread airplay and was then quickly withdrawn

from public. "Tension and speculation grew. It was said (correctly)

that the new LP had taken 700 hours to record, as opposed to 12 hours for

the Beatles first."'8 There was talk of new experiments with electronics,

full piece orchestras and 100 voice choirs. Trade magazines, pop music

periodicals and daily papers all began to print 'the inside story.' "The

record, unheard, was everywhere."''

The record was released for airplay one week before it was to

appear in record racks. Air time was pre-established as Midnight Sunday

night and stations were warned that if the LP was previewed prior to

midnight, future pre-lease rights would be discontinued. The stations

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complied, many staying on the air past their scheduled sign off time just

to be a part in the Event.

They played the record all night and all the next day, vying to see which station could play it the longest, putting in calls to John and Paul, in London that never went through, tracking every last second of the endless chord of "A Day in the Life"(no "Of," as it turned out), generating an unprecedented sense of public euphoria, excitement, satisfaction, and joy. . . .The music was not great art; the event, in its intensification of the ability to respond, was. 'The closest Western Civiliza­tion has come to unity since the Congress of Vienna in 1815 was the week the "Sgt, Pepper" album was released.'"12

One song recorded during the "Sgt. Pepper" sessions was not released

on the historic LP. "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)" is a bizarre

recording which moves from its hard rock introduction into a musical

Fantasy Narrative which takes place in a hoaky dinner club called Slagger's,

which features an even hoakier singer named Dennis O'Bell. From there,

the song moves us into a musical mad house filled with bird whistles,

bongo drums, assorted background noises and falsetto voices. From there

it moves into a slow jazz instrumental, with a voice speaking absolute

gibberish on top of everything else. The only lyric spoken throughout

the first three movements is the title of the song itself.

Less than progressive in terms of lyricism, "You Know My Name" was

suggestive of the bizarre sense of humor that would come to be an important

part of future Beatle recordings. It would not be released until 1970

as the flip side of the "Let It Be" single.

Those songs which did appear on the "Sgt. Pepper" LP included "Sgt.

Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," "With a Little Help From My Friends,"

"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," "Getting Better." "Fixing a Hole," "She's

Leaving Home," "Being for the Benefit of Mr, Kite," "W?th?n You Without

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You," "When l‘m Sixty-Four," "Lovely Rita," "Good Morning Good Morning,"

"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Reprise," and "A Day in the Life."

Despite the claims that "Sgt. Pepper" was a departure from all which

preceeded it (musically this is certainly the case), the lyrical themes

were greatly reminiscent of those which had come before. The title selec­

tion is an explicit Celebration of the Rock Culture, specifically a

celebration of concert. As if to mock their own dependence on the record­

ing studio, the song begins with recorded crowd noises and the preparatory

sound of tuning instruments. An electric fanfare proclaims the arrival of

the band and the show begins:

It was twenty years ago todaySgt. Pepper taught the band to playThey've been going in and out of styleBut they're guaranteed to raise a smileSo let me introduce to youThe act you've known for all these years,Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. 13

More than an intriguing Fantasy, the metaphorical stage has been set

for the arrival of the Beatles themselves. The crowd cheers a subdued

Beatlemania welcome, and a brass band interrupts the electronic overture

to reveal the trick of the deceptive introduction, the crowd bursts into

laughter in recognition of the deception. "We're Sgt. Pepper's Lonely

14Hearts Club Band," the Beatles announce. Of course! The act we've

known all these years. They invite us to "sit back and let the evening

go";’8 to let go of reality momentarily and enjoy the "show" they have

prepared for us. We soon come to realize, perhaps to our dismay, that

we are the Lonely Hearts Club for which the Band has been formed; we are

the lonely people of "Eleanor Rigby's" wasteland and the Band is here "to

take us Home" with them. The show, as it were, begins to sound suspiciously

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like the Dream. But.before the show continues, the singer stops to encourage

our participation in the song to follow: "we want you all to sing along."'8

Thus, our participation in the Love Dream is simultaneous1y elicited. With

that, the singer reintroduces the Band and its vocalist, Billy Shears. This

time we are not so easily fooled.

Act II. "With A Little Help From My Friends"

The song is a Reaffirmation of Love, but new here is its redefinition

as brotherly love, as friendship. It is a song of sharing love; not only

Romantic love but love of Humanity, for when the singer's Romantic lover

is "away," he is not saddened but finds consolation in Friendship: "I

just need someone to love."'7 It is equally a song of acceptance; of

looking past a person's shortcomings and discovering the individual inside:

"What would you think if I sang out of tune" and "would you believe in a

18love at first sight -- yes, I'm certain that it happens all the time."

Compassion is all we need to get by.

Act III. "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"

As Spiro Agnew would later confirm, this is perhaps the greatest of

the Beatle Drug songs, and despite continual denials to the contrary, the

silent majority of people could not be convinced that such was not the

case. As Paul McCartney recalled, "People came up and said, very cunningly,

'Right, I get it. L-S-D' and it was when all the papers were talking about

19LSD, but we never thought about it." In less conspiratorial terms "Lucy

in the Sky with Diamonds" picks up where "Strawberry Fields Forever" left

off. It too is a revocation of a dreamworld of childhood, a Fantasy

Narrative rich in its sense of lyric poetry and Carrollian imagery. It is

a journey through a vision of "tangerine trees and marmalad skies, Cello-

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phane flowers of yellow and green, rocking horse people, newspaper taxis,

20and plasticine porters with looking glass ties." It is indicative of

the Dreamer's call to hold fast to childhood which manifests itself in his

requests to "picture yourself" in the fantastic setting he describes. If

you can, one concludes, there is still Hope.

Act IV. "Getting Better"

In previous songs, such as "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" and

"Girl" what began as Romantic Fantasy concluded in Social Fantasy. In

"Getting Better," the converse is true. The song begins as an indictment

of society's public education system: "I used to get mad at my school,

the teachers that taught me weren't cool, holding me down, turning me

22'round, filling me up with your rules." It is a portrait of an "angry

23young man" who is saved when he is given the "word" (the Word, you'll

recall is Love). Thus, it concludes as a Reaffirmation of Love in the

24Romantic sense, "It's getting better, since you've been mine." A few

new acts, a few reruns.

Act V. "Fixing a Hole"

"Fixing a Hole" is a bit of metaphysical carpentry; a Fantasy Narra­

tive in which the singer discovers a new sense of self by shutting himself

off to the world around him: "I'm fixing a hole where the rain gets in

and stops my mind from wandering." Dissatisfied with a world of "silly

26people" "who disagree and never win," the singer seeks refuge in his

mind. In this world, even if he's wrong, he's right because he is in tune

with a world where he belongs. It is a song of initiation to being with

echoes as far back as "There's a Place," and like its Express ionistic

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forefather, it is wholly optimistic and affirmative in its assertion of

independence and self reliance.

Act VI. "She's Leaving Home"

When critics claim that "Sgt. Pepper" addresses the Generation Gap,

this is the song they're talking about. It is a Social Commentary which

borders on the melodramatic. It is the Beatles' one and only soap opera;

the "Can't Buy Me Love" of the Social Fantasy type. Of some importance

here is the fact that the young girl leaving home and her family are of

no discernable social class, seemingly an attempt to elicit the pathos of

27commonality. There is a hint of upper class in the use of "dressing gown"

but as the song concludes, the parents exclaim "we stuggled hard all our

28lives to get by," although even this may be meant ironically. Regardless,

it's another song about loss; about failure of both sides of the generation

gap. Interestingly, the girl here flees home not so much in search of

Love but in search of Freedom. Notably the moral to this narrative is:

29"Fun is the one thing money can't buy." Freedom then is exhalted above

family, presuming that family represents repression.

Act VII. "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite"

This song takes the Fantasy Narrative in a slightly new direction in

terms of simplicity in statement. To be sure, it is a call to childish

innocence in the tradition of "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Lucy in the

Sky with Diamonds," but it is far less esoteric in its method. Here the

listener is not confronted with a Dream world, per se, but a Circus world

30of calliope music, trampolines, "men and horses hoops and garters" and

a horse named Henry — he waltzes. Here there is no need for the Dreamer

to request that we picture ourselves in the scenes described. It happens.

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And in it happening, we might come to reexperience a sense of innocence

once thought gone for good.

Act VIII. "Within You Without You"

As the title suggests, this ground, or rather this time and space has

been covered before. It is still another proclamation of the Love Dream,

complete with droning sitars and the five major premises firmly intact:

(1) Life is temporal: "It's far too late when they pass away"; (2) Ma­

terialism is the root of all misunderstanding: "people who gain the world

and lose their soul"; (3) Love is to be understood in a spiritual sense

and expressed in every action: "With our love, we could save the world";

(4) Society is filled with people unable to embrace the Dream: "people

who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion -- never glimpse the truth";

and (5) the Dreamer is always prepared to show the true Way to Love and

31understanding: "Try to realize it's all within yourself."

Act IX. "When I'm Sixty-Four"

The idea that life is temporal finds its way into McCartney's charming

little lyric of Time and Love, with a Romantic sense that if we can grow

old together, then Love can conquer Time. Set to a musical background sug­

gestive of the 1920s, this Reaffirmation of Love moves the boy-girl

relationship through time, with one ear to the mundane and the other to

the whisper of the Love Dream. The song paints a somewhat comical portrait

of what the Love Dream will come to symbolize in approaching years: fuse

mending, sweater knitting, rides on Sunday morning, gardening, weeding,

and vacationing on the Isle of Wight with the grandchildren ("Vera, Chuck,

32and Dave"). Indeed, if Love remains with us throughout our lives, "Who

33could ask for more?"

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Act X. "Lovely Rita11

The lyric here is suggestive of the belief that sometimes in life, the

pursuit of happiness is more fulfilling than its attainment. In any case,

it's more fun. The quest here takes the form of a Fantasy Narrative of

comica11y unrequited love. The object of the singer's infatuation is

"lovely Rita: Meter Maid," an illusive young lady of strong moral character

with a hint of promiscuity. One day, while "standing by a parking meter," 3^

naturally enough, the singer catches a glimpse of Rita "filling in a ticket

35in her little white book." She accepts an invitation to dinner, where the

singer tries to win her over. Seemingly unimpressed with chivalry, when

the bill arrives, Rita pays it. Moments later they are seated on the

sofa at Rita's home where the singer's love is nearly requited, were it

36not for the interference of a "sister or two." End of story. Almost.

The final chorus proclaims that despite it all, the singer would be lost

without her, a testimony to the belief that love can be fun (perhaps the

type of fun sought in "She's Leaving Home"). Perhaps too there is a second

message to be found in Rita's underlying assertiveness, a recognition of

changing sexual roles, parodied by the singer's originally mistaking Rita

37for a "military man."

Act XI. "Good Morning Good Morning"

This is one of the few songs which suggests that society is ofi any

redeeming social value. It is a Fantasy Narrative which suggests that one

must make the best of what he's got. The song and lyric working together

create an aural sense of society's machinery at work with a pounding rhythm

and low growling brass providing the backdrop to Lennon's snippets of

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work day conversations and drudgery. A rooster crows awakening us to the

work day about to start. The drama begins in darkness, uncaring and bore­

dom: "Nothing to do to save his life, call his wife in, nothing to say but•3 o

what a day, how's your boy been?" Small talk to which the singer has

39"nothing to say." He begrudgingly goes to work, but it is on his return

trip home that he begins to wander and finds himself in town where things

40are equally bleak: "everything is closed -- it's like a ruin."

In mid-song the mood changes. Perhaps inspired by his walk by "the

41old school where "nothing has changed," the singer and his surroundings

suddenly spring to life: "People running 'round it's five o'clock/everyone

42you see is full of life." When a young lady innocently asks the time,

the singer promptly begins to flirt and conveniently forgets about the

appointment he has with his wife for tea. He goes to a show instead, hoping

the lady will follow. Easily not one of Lennon's more philosophical

statements, the song nevertheless is suggestive of decision making, of

making a choice and taking a stand. It turns a deaf ear to Institutional

responsibility and seeks fulfillment elsewhere. Despite the fact that the

choices made here are not the most morally uplifting possible, the song

finds its strength in principle.

Finale: "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Reprise"

Suddenly, out of the din of animal noises that concludes "Good Morning

Good Morning" the guitar and drums of Sgt. Pepper's Band proclaim that the

Beatles are back on center stage. Here they are telling us that the Show

is about to end and that they hope we have enjoyed it. They extend their

thanks for listening and depart in a postlude of electric guitars and crowd

cheers. However, in the process of signing out their assumed identity,

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they make certain to emphasize its part, rather than its whole ". . . we're

sorry but it's time to go, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely,

43Sgt. Pepper's Lonely, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely . . . ."

This device makes interesting use of the Celebration of the Rock Cul­

ture by suggesting the very vulnerability of the performers themeselves.

Show biz, we are told is illusion.

Encore: "A Day in the Life"

As the crowd cheers quickly fade following the Band's less than tri­

umphant return, they are consumed by the smooth strumming of a guitar, a

much gentler fanfare, proclaiming the return of the Dreamer in the albunls

most pointed satire and Social Commentary. It is a search for Truth in a

world that has become crassly immune to its own technological suicide.

The Dreamer recalls, with a mood of despair, the day's atrocities:

I read the news today, oh boy about a lucky man who made the grade and though the news was rather sad, well I just had to laugh,I saw the photographHe blew his mind out in a carHe didn't notice that the lights had changedA crowd of people stood and staredThey'd seen his face beforeNobody was really sure if he was from the House of Lords.

This recollection indicts society on two specific counts. The sensa­

tionalism of its media is clearly evidenced in the acquisition of notoriety

through violent death, complete with photograph. The horror of society's

immunity to such violence is decried in their gawking curiosity to deter­

mine if this was indeed someone worth knowing about. The Dreamer continues:

1 saw a film today, oh boy The English Army had just won the war A crowd of people turned away But I just had to lookHaving read the book2^

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Here the Dreamer depicts the tragedy of a society which blindly

absorbs what its media tells it to absorb without question or a concern

for what might really be the truth. Truth is crucial and we need to under­

stand what the world is really about. The Dreamer hopes to point the way:

46"I'd love to turn you on."

Thus spoken, a whirlwind of strings consumes the Dreamer, an alarm

clock rings and we arrive in Reality:

Woke up.Fell out of bed.Dragged a comb across my head.Found my way downstairs and drank a cup and looking up I noticed I was late Found my coat and grabbed my hat Made the bus in seconds flat Found my way upstairs and had a smoke Somebody spoke and I went into a dream

Reality is rushing, staying alive and awake through artificial stimulation,

but not beyond saving itself. The Dreamer returns:

I read the news today, oh boy Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire And though the holes were rather small They had to count them all.Now they know how many holes it takes To fill the Albert Haling I'd love to turn you on

Aghast at society’s penchant for media-induced stupidity, the Dreamer

makes a final offer and departs amidst the cyclone of brass and strings

which spins madly until the apocalypse and then fades in the void left in

the wake of mankind's destruction. More than a dream, "A Day in the Life"

embraces the human nightmare -- and calls for us to save ourselves while

we still have a chance.

Critical reaction to "Sgt. Pepper" was one of widespread acclaim.

It was heralded as revolutionary, a visionary portrait of "loneliness,

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49friendship, sex, the generation gap, alienation, fear (and) nightmare." ?

Sgt. Pepper seemed to say it all, to capture everything that had been emerging -- in part because of what the Beatles had done before — in the isolated pockets of university towns and hippie ghettos. It helped to bring millions in touch with the new developments; and the lives of those who had already, in Dr. Timothy Leary's famous phrase, 'turned on, tuned in, andp_ dropped out' couldn't have had a more apt soundtrack. . . ."

Given its historical context, "Sgt. Pepper" seemed to offer American

culture a note of optimism among the deepening social gloom. It was a

positive refraction of life, rather than an accurate reflection. It

expressed compassion, a sense of childlike innocence, a spirit of Romantic

Love, independence, self reliance, freedom, comedy and timeless Love.

The album's music and cover art (specualated to be "the costliest album

sleeve ever")3' would be emulated by musicians and audience members for

many years to follow.

In August of 1967, the Beatles, influenced greatly by Harrison's

growing interest in Transcendental Meditation, travelled to a weekend

conference of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's Spiritual Regeneration League

in Bangor, Wales.

Typically, that expedition was transformed into a carnival by the media. Hundreds of reporters, photographers, and fans — and bobbies to keep them in line -- turned out to watch the Beatles board the train to Bangor. Many who had never heard of the destination clambered aboard in order to be within reach of their idols.52

T.M. experienced a great surge of popularity during the mid-sixties,

largely by way of the Beatles' and other rock music celebrities' examples.

It too offered an alternative. But the Beatles' stay in Wales was cut

short by the announcement of Brian Epstein's death by a bromide overdose

on August 27. Epstein was the first major casualty of the rock era he

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was so instrumental in bringing about. Many observers maintain that the

death of the Beatles as a creative entity was ushered in by the death of

Brian Epstein; Epstein being viewed as the man who maintained the business

of Beatlemania, allowing his band the artistic freedom they needed. The

Beatles did not seek a new manager at first -- McCartney assumed the

responsibility of keeping an eye on Beatle business while simultaneously

guiding the direction that the group would take artistically.

Their first project fol1owing Epstein's death would prove to be the

group's first artistic failure, That project was a one-hour color tele­

vision movie entitled "Magical Mystery Tour." For a critical look at the

music which comprised the accompanying LP of the same name, it is first

necessary to backtrack a bit.

In May of 1967, prior to Epstein's death, the group had recorded

"Baby You're a Richman" which was to serve as the flip side for the Summer

of Love's spiritual national anthem: "All You Need Is Love" (recorded on

June 25). "Baby You're a Richman" is surprisingly mocking Social Commen­

tary in which the singer confronts the Flower Power generation with its

own sense of hypocrisy. In an interesting interpretation of musical call

and response, a chorus of Beatle voices question "How does it feel to be

53one of the beautiful people?" Lennon's solo voice offers responses to

the inquisition.

Q: How often have you been there?A: Often enough to know.Q: What did you see when you were there?A: Nothing that doesn't show.54

Unsatisfied with the responses, Lennon joins the chorus in denouncing

the insincerity of the pseudo-believer: "Baby, you're a richman, baby,

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you're a richman too, you keep all your money in a big brown bag Inside a

55zoo . . . Like "A Day in the Life," this song.articu1 ates a quest for

Truth, or at least honesty while neatly poking holes in the commercializa­

tion of the countercu1ture. It is a search for identity.

"All You Need Is Love" is the ultimate statement of Love Reaffirmation,

transcending Romantic Love and embracing a Love of Humanity that makes all

things possible: "There's nothing you can do that can't be done, nothing

you can sing that can't be sung . . . Nothing you can do but you can learn

56how to be you in time. It's easy." The song is optimistic and affirma­

tive but not without a hint of sadness. As the song concludes, in a

lengthy fade-out effect fast becoming a Beatle studio favorite, we hear

the voice of Paul McCartney rise above the celebration singing "She loves

57you, yeh yeh yeh, she loves you, yeh yeh yeh." This ghost voice from

the past points up the total irony of the song: "All You Need Is Love."

Sadly, after all these years of Beatle insistence, we are still without it.

During this same time period, the Beatles recorded two songs which

would eventually become a part of the soundtrack to yet another Beatle

film Yellow Submarine. The songs were "All Together Now" and "It's All

Too Much." An evaluation of their lyrics follows shortly in an examination

of the collection of songs from the movie soundtrack.

Between September and November, following the death of their manager,

the group was hard at work on the songs which would comprise the "Magical

Mystery Tour" soundtrack and round out the LPs B-side in conjunction with

"Penny Lane," "Strawberry Fields Forever," "Baby You're a Richman," and

"All You Need Is Love." The songs from "Magical Mystery Tour" include:

"Magical Mystery Tour," "The Fool on the Hill," "Flying," "Blue Jay Way,"

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"Your Mother Should Know," "1 Am the Walrus," and "Hello Goodbye," the last

of these to be released as a single, backing "1 Am the Walrus" from the

soundtrack proper.

"Magical Mystery Tour" is Fantasy Narrative which evokes a drama

similar in scope and mood of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." It

is an invitation to participate freely in the Beatle Dream; however, instead

of inviting us to relax and watch the show, we are addressed here with a

more urgent request to take our seat aboard the "Magical Mystery Tour"

58which, like the "Yellow Submarine," is "dying to take you away" to the

Beatle Dream, which soon unfolds before us.

The first stop on our journey is a meeting with "The Fool on the Hill."

Schaffner offers the critic a wealth of insight into this extremely

popular McCartney Fantasy Caricature:

The notion that a fool, in his simplicity, might be far wiserthan the sophisticates who scorn him has always touched people;it can be traced back to numerous fairy tales, and accounts ofkings, who valued the counsel of their court fool above allothers, through Dostoevski, whose Prince Myshkin (The Idiot)is one of the most beloved characters in 1i terature.59

Similar to the conclusion drawn above concerning songs such as "Yellow

Submarine" and "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite," Schaffner concludes

that the appeal of "The Fool on the Hill" lies in the fact that "a growing

segment of the population . . . was trying to recapture a sense of child­

like innocence."88 Above this, its appeal is sensed in its plaintive call

for compassion: "He never listens to them, he knows that they're the

fools. They don't like him."8'

The tour takes an unexpected detour upwards in the very first instru­

mental composition of the group's commercial career, "Flying." Wi thout

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words, the music is of a wistful, ethereal mood, suggestive of departure

into dreams, with al1 four Beatle voices providing a backdrop of mystical

incantation. The mood of the tour is maintained.

"Blue Jay Way" returns us to earth with an eerie Fantasy Narrative

62of friends lost in "a fog upon L.A." (the real life location of the

equally real Blue Jay Way where Harrison temporarily resided). While the

narrative may simply be a musical recollection of a non-fiction event, one

cannot help but suspect, based on Harrison's past penchant for didacticism,

that "Blue Jay Way" is of a higher calling. Here the Dreamer intones

63"Don't be long" for life is temporal and the sooner his friends extract

themselves from the fog of the material world, the better.

"Your Mother Should Know" is a whimsical interpretation of the Cele­

bration of the Rock Culture theme, with a twist. Instead of rejoicing in

rocking and rolling or reeling and strolling, the singer suggests "Let's

all get up and dance to a song that was a hit before your mother was born,

64though she was born a long, long time ago, your mother should know."

Mellers compares the song to McCartney's previous Time ballad "When I'm

Sixty-Four" which is similar in its "fusion of wit and nostalgia."88

While it mildly suggests a self-parody of the Beatles' interest in 1920s

musical motifs, it is more strongly suggestive of a call for understanding

between the generations, comically insinuating that, honestly, she wasn't

really born that long ago.

The Beatles' Tribute to Ambiguity is found in the maddening Fantasy

Narrative "I Am the Walrus." The lyric has been described as a collection

of In Beatle sayings: jokes and expressions shared between the band's

membership. It has also been suggested that due to an ever increasing

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Interest in the hidden meaning of Beatle songs, particularly drug referen­

ces, Lennon constructed the modern day Jabberwock in an effort to drive

clue seekers off the deep end.

Thus, what follows is purely conjecture in terms of explicit meaning,

and offered as an attempt to interpret the song's mood. John Lennon had

long proclaimed his admiration for the poetry of Lewis Carroll and its

strong influence on his poetry and song writing. As grade school students,

many of us are exposed early on to Carroll's stylish word play in such

classics as "Alice in Wonderland," "Jabberwocky" and "The Walrus and the

Carpenter." Of particular note here is the last of these. We remember

the Carrollian walrus as a deceitful type, who spoke in nonsense verse

and lured a society of oysters from the safety of the sea only to turn on

them and devour each and every one. There is something equally sinister

at work in Lennon's "I Am the Walrus." Here we do not experience the

66pleasantry of "tangering trees and marmalade skies" as found in "Lucy

in the Sky with Diamonds" but rather a collage of dark and cruel word

play such as "yellow matter custard, dripping from a dead dog's eye,"

"stupid bloody Tuesday," "if the sun don't come you get your tan from

standing in the English rain," and "see how they smile, like pigs in a

sty."67

The world view imparted here is one of pessimism. Much like Carroll's

walrus, Lennon's walrus-society is a monster, filled with sadness ("Man,

you been a naughty boy you let your face grow long"), pornography ("boy

you've been a naughty girl, you let your knickers down") and worldly

68addictions ("expert texpert choking smokers").

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69Finally, the Dreamer paradoxically proclaims that he is "the egg man"

before proclaiming "I Am the Walrus."78 Similarly, he questions the

inhabitants of the walrus-society: "Don't you think the Joker laughs at

you?"7' The Joker may easily be Fate or Death or perhaps a new manifesta­

tion of the Fool. Whatever the case, one is left with a disquieting

notion that it is Society, rather than the Dreamer who is warning us "I

72 73am the Walrus." The Dreamer responds: "I'm crying."

While these six songs appeared as an EP in England, their American

release was accompanied by "Hello Goodbye," which similarly graced the

flip side of "I Am the Walrus." in its si ng 1 e manifestat ion in Britain and

Arne r i ca.

"Hello Goodbye" is a nursery rhyme approach to the Love Gone Bad theme

which in nearly banal in comparison to the lyric content of the Beatles

songs of the period.

You say yes I say no You say stop And I say go go go Oh noYou say goodbye...And I say hello

While Lennon may have constructed "I Am the Walrus" to confuse the

Beatles' message seeking audience, McCartney's composition here is its

diametric opposite. Notably it is the singer who says hello in this musical

debate, reaffirming the desire for reconciliation with an implied Romantic

Lover (although the identity of the opposing viewpoint is neutered allow­

ing for the possibility of Social Commentary). As if to belabor the song's

simplicity, after a false conclusion, a musical addendum is attached which

repeats the nonsense verse "hey-la, hey-ba-hey-lo-ah"73 over and over until

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the record's fade out Is affected. Interestingly enough during this period

of social upheaval on the American social scene, "Hello Goodbye" was a

Number One song for three weeks, remaining in the Top Ten for eight weeks.

Before embarking on a return visit to the Maharishi's Indian retreat

on February 21, 1968, the Beatles recorded four new songs: "Only a North­

ern Song" and "Hey Bulldog" which were shelved for inclusion on the Yellow

Submarine, "Lady Madonna," and "The Inner Light," the latter two recordings

making their appearance in America and Britain as a single in March.

In the history of Beatle lore, there is no question more perplexing

than the still unanswered: 'Who is "Lady Madonna"?' Like "I Am the

Walrus," the song seems to go in many directions at once, with correspond­

ingly diverse popular interprétât ions, ranging from an indictment of

Catholicism, to a black comedy of protitution. Equally similar to "I Am

the Walru^'by way of critical insight, the song suggests rather than

explicitly means. It is a Fantasy Narrative frozen in Time and yet indica­

tive of the real world's mundane and cyclic entrapment. It is a return

journey into the hopeless side of loneliness first envisioned in the

bleak church courtyard which imprisoned "Eleanor Rigby." It's message is

survival based on se1f reliancebeyond the assistance of the Spiritual,

mockingly vocalized in the singer's query: "Who find the money, when you

pay the rent? Did you think that money was heaven sent?"78

Beset by responsibility and a conscription to material survival, we

come to sense the pathos of the composition in "Lady Madonna's" martyrdom.

Prostrate on her bedroom altar, celebrating self ("Lady Madonna lying on

the bed, listen to the music playing in your head")77 her litany is with

reality. Haunted by the dogged spirits of Monday, Tuesday, and their

brethern in Obligation, "Lady Madonna" survives. It is a noble statement.

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"The Inner Light" continues the celebration of mind and self begun

in songs such as "Love You To" and "Within You Without You," It is a

peculiar Fantasy Narrative which describes the Dreamer's journey through

life, a journey which is accomplished through the realization of self,

allowing one to "arrive without travelling, see all without looking, do •7 o

all without doing." This is a simpler statement that those which pre­

ceeded it, for the explicit attacks on society are gone, resulting in a

stronger emphasis on self-reliance. The message is more subdued, relaxed

and confident. It is more a statment of belief than a lesson to be

learned. Still scornful of the material world, it is an unassuming state­

ment of philosophy. It is gentler in its approach" "Without looking out

of your window,, you can know the ways of Heaven, the farther one travels,

79the less one knows."

Meanwhile back at the Maharishi's retreat, all four of the Beatles,

their wives and numerous celebrities, such as Mia Farrow, the Beach Boys'

Mike Love and singer Donovan, continue their search for their own inner

light. It was during this visit that the Maharishi himself allegedly

80"tries his luck and gets 1ess-than-holy with Mia Farrow." Painfully

disillusioned by their Guru's lapse in holiness, the Beatles migrate home

to England where they begin their plans for a business dreamworld that would

eventually prove their biggest nightmare: Apple Records.

After making arrangements for Capitol and E.M.I. to distributeApple records in, respectively, North America and the Rest of the World -- thereby satisfying their contractual obligations to the twin labels -- John Lennon and Paul McCartney winged to New York to unveil their plans on a Chinese junk in the Hudson River. Describing the philosophy behind Apple as 'Western Communism,' (John) told the assembled reporters and businessmen:'We want to set up a system where someone doesn't have to go on his knees in someone's office -- probably yours.'8'

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than to stimulate motion."

More than just a record company, the Apple Mecca also offered to assist

would-be writers, film-makers, and even inventors. The reaction to the

Beatles' press conferences and newspaper advertisements, proclaiming that

Apple was open for business, was overwhelming. Thousands of tapes, manu­

scripts, films, and inventions flooded the Apple offices. As George

82Harrison would later comment, "Apple just became a lunatic asylum."

Despite ensuing disasters, Apple records did manage to give a number of

talented musicians their start in the industry. Under the direction of

Paul and George in particular, Apple introduced the world to Mary Hopkin,

Billy Preston, James Taylor, and Badfinger. But for the most part, Apple

was a financial disaster of mismanagement. "People were robbing us and

living on us to the tune of eighteen or twenty thousand pounds a week

ft 3(that) was rolling out of Apple and nobody was doing anything about it."

Between May 30 and October 14, 1968, the Beatles were kept busy

recording a collection of songs which would yield their first Apple LP "The

Beatles" (commonly referred to as "The White Album") and their biggest

ever hit single, in fact the second highest selling single of all time,

"Hey Judy"/"Revolution." But before either of these were released, their

third feature length film Ye 1 low Submarine premiered in London. At the

London premiere, the Beatles were beseiged by hysterical mobs for the

last time. Although, the full-length animated cartoon received mixed

reviews in Britain, America's response was nearly unanimously favorable.

It was applauded as the Fantasia of the 1960s, a psychedelic "Alice in

Wonderland," and a revolution in animation magic.

As Time magazine reported, the film chose to "seize attitudes rather

84 Artistically the film combined

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every trick and treat of film animation with a dazzle of take offs on schools and styles of art. Picassoesque monsters complete with gentle grotesques from Dr. Seussland. Graham Sutherland!sh plants burst in and out of bloom. Plump Edward- ians wander with suave decadence out of Aubrey Beardsley's world, and creatures consume themselves with Steinbergian detachment. There are silk screens from Warholvilie and num­bers from Indiana. Psychedelia explodes and art nouveau swirls in the most unexpected places.85

Briefly summarized, the plot of Yellow Submarine is as follows: a

pleasant place called Pepperland is invaded by a tribe of amorphous music

hating monsters called the Blue Meanies, who launch a devastating attack

with splotch guns, which drain their victims ofcolor, and a ferocious

Flying Glove, with jet propulsion and a sinister intelligence of its own.

The Meanies* ranks also include the Apple Bonkers (who drop big green

apples on people's heads) and Snapping Turtle Turks with sharks' mouths

for stomachs. One Pepperlander manages to escape. White-mustachioed

Old Fred climbs into the Yellow Submarine (which is inexplicably parked

on the summit of an Aztec pyramid) and takes off to bring somebody -­

anybody -- to help. He ends up in Liverpool and finds the Beatles. Afte

a voyage through some indeterminate fantasy lands of Outer Space and Sea

Bottom, inhabited by terrors, demons, and malevolent monsters, they make

it back to Pepperland and vanquish the Meanies with Beatle music and LOVE

Yellow Submarine turned the Beatles* music into visual poetry.

On August 26, 1968, “Hey Jude" arrived in America.

"Hey Jude"

Hey JudeDon It make it badTake a sad song and make it better Remember to let her into your heart Then you can start to make it better

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Hey JudeDon11 be afraidYou were made to go out and get her The minute you let her under your skin Then you begin to make it better

And anytime you feel the pain Hey Jude, refrainDon't carry the world upon your shoulders For well you know that it's a fool who plays it coolby making his world a little colder

Hey J udeDon't 1et me downYou have found her, now go and get her Remember to let her into your heart Then you can start to make it better

So let it out and let it in Hey Jude, beginYou're waiting for someone to perform with And don't you know that it's just you Hey Jude, you'11 doThe movement you need is on your shoulder

Hey JudeDon't make it badTake a sad song and make it better Remember to let her under your skin Then you begin to make it better.86

There is a charm and a sense of magic in "Hey Jude" which is unique in all

of Beatledom. It is an Invitation to Love which transcends all that have

gone before in its sense of the joy of love and its recognition of the pain

which, of necessity in a world of non-Dreamers, must exist simultaneously.

It is a call to celebration of self which acknowledges doubt, but exhalts

the triumph of confidence. Let love out and love shall be returned.

Like the "Nowhere Man" of earlier dreams, "Jude" is in each of us.

Here, we find a plea for his awakening and in turn the realization of his

potential in all of us. With a simplicity unmatched since "Love Me Do,"

"Hey Jude" articulates the Beatle Love Dream with a sense of assuredness

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and optimism which is difficult to resist. In it we discover a renewed

faith in our ability to move mountains, if necessary, in our hopes of

taking a sad song and making it better.

"Revolution" marks the Beatles' introduction of overtly political

statements; specifically anthems of non-violence or pacificism. The title

is, in fact, slightly deceptive since the explicit statement of "Revolution

is anti-revolutionary. The singer admits that ideally "We all wanna changeO ~i

the world," but when violent means are suggested his reply is "Don't

88you know that you can count me out." But more than just expounding a

philosophy of non-violence, the song takes parodistic jabs at left-wing

activists and the idealism of their platform: "You say you got a real

89solution, well you know, we'd all love to see the plan." It is a spiri­

ted indictment of fashionable radicalism which is at once biting ("if

you want money for people with minds that hate, all I can tell you is,

90Brother you'll have to wait") and mocking ("if you go carrying pictures

91of Chairman Mao, you ain't gonna make it with anyone anyhow"). For all

of its political trappings, the song remains a tribute to Beatle optimism

in the face of adversity, pausing here and there to assure us that "it's

92gonna be allright." Social commentary in full swing, the group would

still resist the chance to abandon hope as a political weapon.

The release of "The White Album," so called because its cover was

exactly that — plain white with "The Beatles" embossed on the original

copies, marked the end of the Beatles as a group per se. The songs inclu­

ded on the double LP were indicative of each individual member's divergent

musical interest and style. More and more, three of the Beatles would take

turns as sidemen for each others' compositions. At this point, the Beatles

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were rarely seen together in public. Widely publicized accounts of John's

infatuation with avant garde artist Yoko Ono, Ringo's involvement in the

motion picture trade, George's deepening involvement with Eastern religion

and music, and Paul's concern with the business of the sour Apple Corps

Ltd., all communicated to the group's public that the Summer of Love and

the corporate identity of the Beatles were a thing of the past.

There is, equally, a dark mood to the thirty songs which comprise

the "White Album." One comes away from listening with an unsettling sense

of longing and melancholy, even a sense of fear. The album is not without

its share of optimism and fantasy, but the optimism seems somewhat desper­

ate and the fantasies are often of a somber, black comedy nature.

The album begins on a high note, with McCartney's classic Beatle

rocker "Back in the USSR." Most notable for its infectious musical blending

of Chuck Berry and Beach Boy motifs, it^ comica 1 Fantasy Narrative of return­

ing home to the Motherland, the cultural counterpart to the Beach Boys'

"California Girls": "Well the Ukraine girls really knock me out. They

leave the West behind. And Moscow girls make me sing and shout, that

93Georgia's always on my mind." It is an anthem of philosophical detente

which suggests, more than anything else, Home is where the heart is, rather

than Home is where your political ideology is ingrained.

John's "Dear Prudence" is haunting, nearly frightening Fantasy Narra­

tive. The passage from sexual innocence to maturity is invoked by the

singer who calls to Prudence: "Won't you come out and play? Dear Prudence,

94greet the brand new day." The childlike incantation is at once alluring

yet saddening, expressing the idea that our loss of childhood is perhaps

our greatest loss in life, and the singer's attempts to cheer us seem

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almost desperate as a result: "Dear Prudence, let me see you smile,

95Dear Prudence, like a little child."

"Glass Onion" is a Beatle retrospect, a Fantasy Narrative, which

angrily smashes past Beatle fantasies: "I told you ‘bout Strawberry

Fields/I told you 'bout the Walrus and me/1 told you 'bout the Fool on

96the Hill." Strawberry Fields are replaced by bent black tulips, the

monster walrus becomes Paul McCartney and the Fool on the Hill is eternally

alone because he will not face reality. Only the desperation of Lady

97Madonna is embraced here for she stands on the "cast iron shore" of the

real world. It is a desperate call for listeners to discount fantasy

and face facts. The Dream not only trembles, it is denounced.

It is rescued by McCartney in a whimsical Fantasy Narrative entitled

"Ob La Di, Ob La Da." It tells the story of the life and love of Desmond

and Molly Jones who meet, court, marry, build a home, raise a family and

98live "happy ever after in the market place." It is a fairy tale proper,

99whose moral is no more complicated than its narrative: "Life Goes On."

"Wild Honey Pie" is exactly what the title suggests. For 53 seconds

the group half-sings, half-yells "Honey Pie"'^ in falsetto voices over

twanging acoustic guitars and pounding drums. The phrase is repeated eight

times and someone declares "I love you, honey pie."'O' Quite simply, it

is the most bizarre Reaffirmation of Love.the Beatles, or for that matter,

anyone else has ever recorded.

In "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill," Lennon takes a pot shot

at machismo with a satire that is as much a Social Commentary as it is

Fantasy Caricature. John Wayne and Clint Eastwood are forced to take a

back seat in this minor epic of a big game hunter named Bungalow Bill who

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goes out tiger hunting, but takes his mother along "in case of accidents.“

Rather than applauding their trigger happy hero for his acts of violence,

103“all the children sing, hey Bungalow Bill what did you kill?" Described

104as “the Al1-American, bullet-headed Saxon mother's son," “Bungalow

Bill'1 is a scathing commentary on America's need for violent heroes. As

John Williams has written, “We look to our heroes for a vicarious release

of that violence which society demands we contain. And for this reason,

the violence in our art forms from film to literature and even music will

be forever condemned, and exceedingly necessary.“’88 “Bungalow Bill" is

such a condemnation.

“While My Guitar Gently Weeps" is a mournful Social Commentary by

Harrison that laments society's inability to learn from its mistakes. “I

look at you all, see the love there that's sleeping, while my guitar gently

weeps.H’88 It is the return of the Dreamer in a less optimistic mood than

when he last appeared in "The Inner Light." He is saddened and confused

by people unable to embrace Love and the song is more of a reprimand than

an implicit statement of philosophy. It is a statement of direction to a

society "diverted" from the path of Enlightenment.

"Happiness is a Warm Gun" is a bizarre three-part composition which

switches from a second person Fantasy Caricature to comically erotic Love

Reaffirmation, which ultimately leaves us as Caricature of the love song

itself. The opening third of the song is dark caricature of a woman who's

“Well acquainted with the touch of the velvet hand like a lizard on a

window pane.“’87 Next the singer describes "the man in the crowd with the

multi-colored mirros on his hobnail boots, lying with his eyes while his

108hands are busy working overtime." Both characters are a Freudian field

day for interpretation, but suffice it to say here that they are suggestive

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of love's darker side. The way in which they employ their particular

guns is left to the imagination.

The second third of the song provides the bridge between voyeurism

and first hand knowledge: "I need a fix cause I'm going down." The

fix, as it were, is found in the singer's comically erotic Reaffirmation

of Love: "When I hold you in my arms, and I feel my finger on your trig­

ger, I know nobody can do me no harm."''8 We are left with the feeling

that "love" is in the hands of the beholder. We define our sense of it

and it is of little consequence as to the peculiarity of our definition.

As long as it makes you happy.

Once again the master of simplicity, McCartney offers us his Reaffir­

mation of Love in "Martha My Dear." The song is an ode to a "silly girl"'''

who is seemingly unaware of how much she is cared for by the singer. The

message is simple: come out of loneliness and "help yourself to a bit of

1 12what is all around you." Love, determination and hope are reaffirmed

by the singer. All this, only to find out, years later, that the song

was written for McCartney's sheepdog.

Love Gone Bad has caused the singer to drink, chain smoke, and lie

awake nights in "I'm So Tired." Confused by his predicament and ways of

dealing with it, the singer suggests to us that without love, we are

without hope and that only through reconciliation may we come to find "peace

, • a ..113of mind.

"Blackbird," one of McCartney's best ballads was instantly interpreted

as a sympathetic gesture to the emerging Black Power movement in 1968.

Indeed, it is easy to see why since "Blackbird" is a statement of rebirth *

through the exercise of freedom. Equally the song is suggestive of confi-

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dence and determination; a faith in the ability to start over having

1 14experienced failure: "take these broken wings and learn to fly." And

finally it is a song of faith and the patience to hold out for the reali­

zation of our wishes: "All you life, you were only waiting for the

moment to arise."''5

Seemingly not content with his lament on society in "While My Guitar

Gently Weeps," Harrison gets nasty for the first time since "Taxman." The

result is his abusive Social Commentary, "Piggies." The song describes

society in the glut of materialism and complacency as "little piggies

crawling in the dirt,"''8 and despite the fact that "life is getting worse,"''7

they don't really seem to care since they've always had dirt "to play

„118The rulers of society are, of course, "bigger piggies in

„119

around in.1

1 19their starched white shirts." By occasionally stirring the dirt, these

larger swine are able to keep themselves well supplied with clean shirts.

The concept that society must eventually destroy itself from within ("I Am

the Walrus," "A Day in the Life") is expressed in the song's horrid con­

clusion which finds the piggies out to dinner "clutching forks and knives

1 20to eat their bacon." More than spiritual enlightenment, society needs

121a "damn good whacking," which Harrison cleverly delivers within.

In "Rocky Racoon" we learn to leave well-enough alone. The song is

a Fantasy Narrative, a romantic farce of sorts, in which an unlikely hero

named Rocky Racoon pursues the woman he loves from the black mountain hills

of Dakota into town where he confronts Dan, the evil lover who has stolen

Nancy away from him, not to mention punched him in the eye. But Rocky's

plans for revenge are foiled when Dan plays dirty and shoots him. Fortu­

nately it is only a flesh wound and Rocky is soon on his way to recovery

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aided by the town's alcoholic, but kindly doctor. Moral: Hell hath no

fury 1ike a woman scorned or a boyfriend with a loaded revolver. The end.

Ringo Starr makes his debut as a solo composer in “Don't Pass Me By"

a Love Gone Bad ballad in which reconciliation is reaffirmed as the cure

to loneliness and the way to true happiness. The song offers us little

variety in terms of thematic development of the rhetorical vision, but is

a positive reemphasis that through the maintenance of love, life can be

joyous.

“Why Don;t We Do It in the Road" nearly speaks for itself. With the

1 22exception of an occasional “no one will be watching us," the song's

title is also its complete lyric. It is a gutteral Invitation to Love,

which is again suggestive of love's darker sexual manifestations. It's

laughability is found in our ability to acknowledge it as such, thus

reaffirming our belief in the Romantic Love Dream.

Described as a parody of earlier Beatle music and lyricism, “I Will,"

is the Romantic rebuttal to “Why Don't We Do It in the Road." This invi­

tation to Love echoes the sentiment of many early Beatle recordings in its

straightforward Romantic philosophy of life. Love is patient: “Will I

123wait a lonely lifetime, if you want me to I will." Love is steadfast:

124“Love you forever and forever, love you with all my heart." Life's

125joy is in Love shared: "Make it easy to be with you." It is one of

the “White Album's" purest Dreams.

Pure love is also the focus of “Julia" a Reaffirmation of Love whichk

is striking in its artistic use of Nature metaphor. The singer begins by

admitting that his words are unable to fully express his true love: “Half

of what I say is meaningless." Because his Love is beyond Time and

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'reality;1 his expression of that love must be similar in feeling. "Julia"

1 26is more than mortal here; she is an "ocean child," with "sea shell eyes,

127windy smile" and hair which is "a floating sky . . . shimmering, glim-

1 28mering in the sun." More precisely, we sense that because of his deep

love, the singer finds his lover's presence in those things which are

beautiful in nature not only in mind but in the real world itself. It is

a beautiful ballad to the magic of love. Julia was killed in an auto

accident in 1958. She was John's mother.

The Celebration of the Rock Culture returns full force in the high

powered rocker "Birthday." The song suggests that rock 'n' roll is not

only inherently Romantic ("I Saw Her Standing There," "Twist and Shout"),

it is magical, a means of rejuvenation and simultaneous Rebirth. "You

say it's you Birthday, It's my birthday too, yeh! „129 But as one might

expect, all of this is secondary to a higher calling: "I would like you

130to Dance, take a cha-cha-cha-chance." It may not be the key to inner

1 31peace, but they guarantee, "We're gonna have a good time."

The Entrapment theme returns in its most brutal form in Lennon's

"Yer Blues." It is a deeply serious, autobiographical song in which

loneliness is unconquerable and infuriating. It is perhaps the most

frightening expression of self-doubt and solitude the group would ever

record: "Black cloud crossed my mind, blue mist 'round my soul, feel so

1 32suicidal even hate my rock 'n' roll." In terms of thematic development,

the song is unique in its graphic portrayal of emotion, putting one in

touch with a new sense of reality and the fears it holds for the unloved.

On the other extreme from "Yer Blues" is McCartney's "Mother Nature's

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Son" a stunning Fantasy Narrative which expresses the deep joy to be

experienced through coming into touch with one's own feelings and their

place in the world around them. The pastoral quality of the work lends

itself to a new sense of the joy all around us, should we take the time

to notice: "Sit beside a mountain stream, see her waters rise, listen to

1 33the pretty sound of music as she flies." The reality beyond the mind

here is not one of corruption, suffering and pain, but of beauty and song.

It is an optimistic statement of hope: faith that our world might sus­

tain us long enough for us to enjoy its beauty.

With the public's infatuation for finding hidden "drug" meanings in

popular music running rampant at this time in history, it is fascinating

to note that little has ever been made public concerning "Everybody's

Got Something.to Hide Except Me and My Monkey." All of the clues are

there: "The deeper you go the higher you fly/Your inside is out and out

134outside is in." Who could ask for more? More precisely, the song is

suggestive of a celebration of the human condition, a Fantasy Narrative

which closely parallels the Celebration of the Rock Culture in theme.

It is a call to experience life, to look beyond ego and conscripted social

roles and rejoice in our sameness. "We're all in this together anyway," the

lyric suggests. "We might as well make the best of things." ("Come on

1 35let's make it easy, take it easy.") We really can't hide who we are;

me and the monkey, our common denominator, are sure of it.

We have met "Sexy Sadie" once before in 1965. Back then she was

1 36called "Day Tripper," the "bogus lover everyone is waiting for." In

this Fantasy caricature, she continues to make a fool of everyone on her

1 37rise to notoriety, convinced that the "world is waiting" ; just for her.

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And it continues to wait. Everyone except the singer who has seen past her

1 38charm at some point where she "broke the rules" and "Laid it down for

1 39all to see" that she is not who she pretends to be. The song is opti­

mistic in its hope that everyone can eventually catch on to pretentions

such as Sadie's and that justice will somehow triumph: "You'll get yours

140yet, however big you think you are." It is a moral statement of sorts,

which denounces phoniness and a faith in our ability to recognize it and

act accordingly.

While not the equal to "Why Don't We Do It in the Road," "Helter

Skelter" is one of the stranger Invitations to Love the Beatles ever per­

formed: "Tell me, tell me, tell me, come on tell me your answer. Well,

141you may be a lover, but you ain't no dancer." The lyric is a frantic

search for the lover which becomes ever more frantic in its metaphorical

use of a helter skelter (an English amusement park ride down a long cur­

ving sliding board) as the vehicle for the singer's feelings: "Cornin'

142down fast from miles above you." In its original state, "Helter Skelter

was an amusing interpretation of the dizzying qualities of Romance and

there was a sense of humor in its' juxtaposition of Love and hard rock

music.

That sense of comedy would be totally obliterated a year later when

Charles Manson interpreted the song as a divine message which would

inspire the Sharon Tate killings.

To Charles Manson, ‘Helter Skelter' . . . meant the black man rising up and destroying the entire white race; that is with the exception of Charles Manson and his chosen followers, who intended to escape from Helter Skelter by going to the desert and living in a bottomless pit. . . .1^3

"Long Long Long" is Harrison's contribution to Love Reaffirmation on

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the "White Album." It is a delicate portrayal of loneliness and the rise

from sorrow to happiness which is the province of the Love Dream: "It took

144a long long long time, now I'm so happy I found you, how I love you."

Equally, it is suggestive of the waste of a life spent in solitude: "So

145many tears I was searching, so many tears I was wasting."

To understand the appeals of "Revolution I," one need look no further

than it's prior release as "Revolution'.' on the flip side of "Hey Jude" a

few months earlier. The lyric is identical, with one minor exception. On

the original recording, in response to violent revolution, the singer

146states "Don't you know that you can count me out." On this reincarna-

1 47tion the response is "Don't you know that you can count me out, in."

With the inclusion of this tiny word, the meaning if not the sincerity

of the original comes into question. As Lennon explained, "it's a yin-

148yan thing. We all have a streak of violence underneath." What the

inclusion of "in" suggested was a sense of indecision, the difficulty of

choosing among philosophies. It presented options.

"Honey Pie" is far less confusing in its point of view. Confronted

with Love Gone Bad, through the loss of his working class lover to America's

silver screen, the singer strives for reconciliation. His loss is, in the

finest traditional style, driving him crazy, making him frantic; his posi­

tion is tragic and he longs for the day that she will return: "Will the

wind that blew her boat across the sea kindly send her sailing back to

149me?" ‘ Again incorporating musical motifs from the 1920s and delivered

in McCartney's best Rudee Vallee persona, the simplicity of "Honey Pie's"

statement assures us that things will work out for the best.

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Harrison's final contribution to the "White Album" is his comical best.

Here he discards his "Piggies" metaphor and replaces it with the battle

between fatteningly rich foods (the symbol of society's gluttony and materi­

alism) and the ever healthful "Savoy Truffle." Things may be fine on a

diet of "cream tangerine and montelimat"'58 but "when the pain cuts through

you're gonna know and how."'5' The singer is quick to point an accusing

finger at the society of cool cherry cream and . . . coconut fudge, remind­

ing them that "what you eat you are, but what is sweet now turns so sour

1 52. . . can you show me where you are?" The message of this Social Com­

mentary may not be new, but its delivery here is so original that it makes

the point that much more palatable.

Even the Royal Family is not spared from the jabs of Beatle-inspired

Social Commentary. In "Cry Baby Cry" Lennon creates a pointed nursery

rhyme which gives us a glimpse of a day in the life of the King and Queen

of Marigold and their Royal Family of incompetents who spend their time

in childlike recreation. The King cooks breakfast for the Queen who is

busy playing piano for his children. From there he goes to pick flowers

for a visitor while the Queen paints pictures for "the children's holiday."

The housewife King and the nursemaid Queen are soon joined by the Dutchess

of Kircaldy whose role in govenment is to smile and show up late for tea

154parties. Her husband meanwhile is in a local pub "having problems."

Lennon's style here is more suggestive of amusement rather than anger and

the message imparted seems to indicate that we can get along with the

ruling class, but things would not be radically different if they went on

153

vacation permanently.

John's "Revolution 9" is really more a conceptualization than a song

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in the strictest sense. As Lennon explained:

Revolution #9 was an unconscious picture of what 1 actually think will happen when it happens: that was just like a drawing of revolution. All the thing was made (of was) loops. I had about thirty loops going, fed them onto one basic track. I was getting classical tapes, going upstairs and chopping them up, making it backwards and things like that, to get the sound effects. One thing was an engineer's testing tape and it would come on with a voice saying 'This is EMI Test Series #9.' I just cut up whatever he said and I'd number nine it.’55

The result was eight minutes and fifteen seconds worth of pure sound.

A stream of conscious collage of mumbles, crashes, whispers, strings, snip­

pets of classical works, cymbals, disjointed monologues, crowd noises,

laughter, baby noises, screams, bells, horn blasts, and the ever present

156declaration "Number 9." It's an acquired taste, or dogged curiosity

that is truly appreciative of "Revolution 9" and while Lennon maintains

it is Social Commentary, it is surely open to interpretation.

With "Goodnight," Lennon reminds us that, when he wants to be, he can

be McCartney's equal in pure Romanticism. Essentially a Reaffirmation of

Love to an implied lover, "Dream sweet dreams for me, dream sweet dreams

for you," the song concludes with Ringo whispering "Goodnight everybody,

158everybody everywhere," which confirms that the Love Dream is certainly

intended for all of us. Ironically, this song, which concludes the "White

Album" was, perhaps unconsciously, a signal that the Beatle Dream was

drawing to a close as well.

On January 13, 1969, nearly six months after the premiere of the film

itself, the soundtrack to Yellow Submarine was released. Side one of the

LP featured "Yellow Submarine," "Only a Northern Song," "All Together Now,"

"Hey Bulldog," "It's All Too Much," and "All You Need Is Love." In lieu

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of even more rereleases, the B-side of the album featured instrumental music

from the film composed by George Martin.

"Only a Northern Song" seems to suggest self-parody once again. The

message of this Fantasy Caricature (a caricature of the Beatles themselves)

seems to debunk the notion that the Beatles and their music had anything

to do with divine inspiration. Most assuredly, Harrison suggests here, the

Beatles' music is strictly earth bound (as the reference to their publish­

ing firm Northern Songs Ltd. suggests) and as such should not be taken all

that seriously: "It doesn't really matter what chords I play, what words

159I say or time of day it is, As it's only a Northern song." It is also

a light-hearted spoof of the group's experiments with electronic sounds,

which Harrison admits may be a bit unsettling to the novice ear: "You may

think the band are not quite right, but they are, they just play it like

16 0that." The song presents a way of dealing with the Beatles' music and

the message is the same as it was in 1964 -- don't take it too seriously.

"Hey Bulldog" seems to be somewhat a self-parody of Lennon's younger

days as a Teddy Boy. It is essentially a Fantasy Caricature of an angry

young man which recognizes the pain and fear which often dwells under his

hardened exterior: "Child-like, no one understands, jack knife in your

sweaty hands" and "Big man walking in the park, Wigwam frightened of the

161dark." Primarily the song is a call to understanding, to once again see

below the masks that people wear and consider the real people who exist

beneath those facades.

"All Together Now" is another in the series of Beatle nursery rhymes

which extols the basic simplicity of the Love Dream, although here we

sense a tint of desire: "Black, white, green, red, Can I take my friend

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162to bed?" and "One, two, three, four, Can I have a little more?" But

through it all, the gist of the message remains as direct and simple as "I

Want to Hold Your Hand." Love is Reaffirmed in technicolor: "Pink, brown,

163yellow, orange, and blue, I Love You."

"It's All Too Much," Reaffirms the Love "that's shining all around"

us.'8i| Love is eternal "floating . . . from life to life"'8^ anj only

through a recognition of.self can we come to embrace the love of life it­

self. Less dydactic than many of Harrison's previous recordings, this

song is more properly a call to celebrate our existence and share in the

continual rebirth of love which surrounds us: "All the world is birthday

166cake, so take a piece, but not too much." The song neatly summarizes

the Romance principle which would come to be the group's parting comment:

167"The more you give, the more you get."

Throughout the month of January 1969, the Beatles worked on filming

and recording their swan song film and soundtrack Let It Be. It is impor­

tant to pause here briefly and explain the chronology of the analysis to

follow. The soundtrack to Let It Be was recorded in early 19^9 but due to

a great many artistic and business problems, it would not be released until

May 8 of 1970 in conjunction with the film itself. During this interrim,

the group would record and release their final work together as the Beatles

-- "Abbey Road." Thus, in order to gain an understanding of how the

rhetorical vision concluded, it is important to look first at the collection

from "Abbey Road." This reversal in release dates would confuse matters

signifcantly regarding the public's impression of the group's demise, an

issue which will be addressed in the concluding comments following the

analysis of their final two works.

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During the January 1969 sessions which resulted in the Let It Be

soundtrack, twelve new songs were recorded by the group. This collection

included: "Two of Us," "1 Dig a Pony," "Across the Universe," "I Me Mine,"

"Dig It," "Let it Be," "Maggie Mae," "I've Got a Feeling," "One After 909,"

"The Long and Winding Road," "For You Blue," "Get Back," and "Don't Let Me

Down.11

Mellers maintains that "Two of Us" is centered in on the relationship

168of "pals" perhaps because there is no explicit mention of gender or love

Nevertheless, there is an implicit theme of Love Reaffirmation here, for

the "Two of Us" are on a journey Home and the journey's end is as much a

part of the song as is the nature of the relationship between the travel­

lers. Admittedly, the song then is as much an affirmation of companionship

as it is a song of shared love, but the continual refrain, "We're on our

169way home, we're on our way home, we're going home," suggests that the

Love Dream is still firmly rooted in the rhetorical vision.

"I Dig a Pony" is a cryptic celebration of self which cuts across

political platforms and philosophical ideals to proclaim that being your­

self is a worthy enough goal in itself. Essentially a Social Commentary

on 'affiliation,' the singer acknowledges that "You can celebrate anything

you want/you can imitate everyone you see."’78 The crucial point of view

to the song is in the singer's search for the individual: "All I want is

you, everything has got to be just like you want it to."’7’ This lyric,

in particular marks a beginning in 'hands off' Beatle policy. From this

period on, the group would rely less on doctrine and revert more fully to

the themes which inspired their earlier popularity.

"Across the Universe" marks John Lennon's final excursion into the

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mystic. It is the Dreamer come of age in a world of reality. While the

singer remains cognizant of the "limitless undying love which shines around

112.(Him) like a million suns," he has resolved himself to the fact that

"nothing's gonna change (his) world." Content with his belief, he

remains a Dreamer, aware of something beyond his total comprehension but

nevertheless something beyond mortality: "Images of broken light which

dance before me like a million eyes, that call me on and on across the

1 74universe." One senses a new mood of maturity here, less idealistic

but compassionate and eterna11y optimistic. It is perhaps Lennon's

finest poem. The Fantasy Narrative has grown up.

The Entrapment theme returns in George's autobiographical documentary

of the decline of Apple, "I Me Mine." Here the singer is entrapped by

the greed of the people around him: "All I can hear -- I Me Mine, I Me

Mine, I Me Mine!1'73 More than just an indication that all was not well

inside the Beatle empire, the song is suggestive of earlier Harrison themes

which satirized or bemoaned society's obsession with materialism. There

is a new sense of desperation in the simple repetitive lyric: "All

1 76through the day, I Me Min^All through the night I, Me, Mine." The

song expresses a disquieting sense of haunting in its lament for the sing­

er's seemingly hopeless situation. As much an indictment of the parties

involved, we sense a cry for help, from the Beatle who was always so quick

to offer his insight to others.

"Dig It" is a Fantasy Caricature of the 'message' song itself complete

with borrowed phrases from Bob Dylan: "Like A Rolling stone."'77 What

follows is a stream of conscious barrage of bureaucratic abbreviations

1 78("Like the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. and the B.B.C. . .") followed by Doris

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Day and Matt Busby. In defiance of our understanding this one, the singer

1 79concludes by suggesting "dig it, dig it, dig it . . ." The fact that

we probably can't, I suspect, is the point.

The mood of resolution expressed in "Across the Universe" is once again

manifest in McCartney's pop hymn "Let It Be." The explicit religious mes­

sage is difficult to discount, although it would later be revealed that the

180Mother Mary who is "speaking words of wisdom" here was in reality

McCartney's mother, Mary. Regardless of religious interpretations, there\__

is a sense of calm in this song which is suggestive of hope and optimism

for the world the Beatles so often satirized. It is a new hope capable of

transcending the terror of an "Eleanor Rigby" hoplessness: "And when the

broken hearted people living in the world agree, there will be an answer

181let it be." It is a plea for the world to strive for harmony and under­

standing so that the Love Dream might be realized. Specifically, "Let It

Be" might easily be viewed as the request and as the answer sought by

the Dreamer in each of us. The duality of the Fantasy Narrative communicates

a new sense of maturity for the Pepperland Perspective.

"Maggie Mae" is less a song than it is a 37 second pièce of a song.

It is a Fantasy Narrative of a lady of questionable virtue who has been

1 82judged guilty of "robbin1 the homeward bounder" and is taken away.

Just that quick the story is over, but the singer remains long enough to

tell us that it happened in a part of Liverpool where he lived a few years

past. Memories not only sustain us, they help us appreciate our present

state, as is evidenced in this brief encounter with the shady past when

,, □ , u ..183two pound ten a week there was my pay.

Although it is difficult to specify the exact meaning of "I've Got

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a Feeling," its language is suggestive of rebirth, of renewed confidence

1 84and happiness following "a hard year." One experiences a sense of

Love Reaffirmation in the singer's discovery that after years of "wandering

185around" seemingly lost and lonely, "all that I was looking for was

186somebody who looked like you." One leaves the song with a notion that

the feeling under discussion is the realization of the Love Dream.

"One After 909" is a song written by John Lennon when he was seventeen

years old. It is not surprising then that the song should express the

Love Gone Bad theme with a style and.humor much akin to the earliest

Beatle recordings. The quest for reconciliation is humorously portrayed

in the plaintive request: "Move over once, move over twice, c'mon baby

] 87don't be cold as ice." Abandoned by his lover, who's leaving town

on the train, the singer desperately tries to follow but proceeds to get

188the train numbers confused and ends up at the ''wrong location." This

comic scenario neatly crystallizes the confusion of lost love and the

desperate desire for its return. It equally returns a sense of amused

optimism to the Love Gone Bad theme at this late stage in the rhetorical

vision.

Like "Two of Us," "The Long and Winding Road" is a song of the

journey home. Essentially woven around a theme of Love Gone Bad in which

the lover has left the singer standing alone, the song reflects a sense of

longing and sadness over the difficultiesj of reconciling the Love Dream.

The pathos of the song is most accurately expressed in the singer's feeling

of neai—hoplessness: "Many times I've been alone and many times I've

1 89cried, many ways you'll never know but many ways I've tried." And yet,

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as is usually the case, the Beatle optimism once again triumphs in the

1 90words "Don't leave me waiting here, lead me to your door." For the

Beatles, you can always go Home again.

"For You Blue" nearly rivals "All Together Now" in its simplicity

of statement regarding the Love Reaffirmation Theme. The song marks a

drastic reversal in songwriting for George Harrison, the group's most

persistent mystic. In fact, the song does nothing else but extoll the

joy of the heterosexual Romance: "Because you're sweet and lovely girl,

191I love you/l love you more than ever girl, I do." Who could ask for

anything less?

"Get Back" goes for the jugular of pretention in much the same way

that "Sexie Sadie" did earlier. Similarly, through the use of Fantasy

Caricature (here in the person of Jojo and sweet Loretta Martin) the singer

does more than simply warn the characters that they'll get what's coming

to them. He gives it to them: "Get back home Loretta. Your mother's

waiting for you. Wearing her high heel shoes and her low neck sweater,

get on home, Loretta. Get back, get back. Get back to where you once

belonged." Far more parodistic than angry, the song serves as a pointed

reminder that you can't fool all of the people all of the time. Similarly,

a satire of teenage runaways the song serves as a reminder that the Beatles

were able to parody their audience as well as themselves.

The Let It Be collection is representative of the group in transition

-- it is at once a step backward

into resolution and ambivalence.

mood of the "White Album." With

Home would end.

to an earlier innocence and a step forward

But it is a step away from the cynical

the release of "Abbey Road" the journey

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One of the songs recorded during the Let It Be sessions which was not

included on the LP was "Don't Let Me Down." "Don't Let Me Down" is an

expression of Love Reaffirmation which encompasses both the joy and fear

of the Beatle Love Dream. While the Love Gone Bad theme generally will

elicit some sense of a happy ending, never before has the Love Reaffirma­

tion theme included so prominent a sense of fear and doubting. Optimism

and pessimism collide in mid-song here: "I'm in love for the first time,

don't you know it's gonna last, it's a love that lasts forever, it's a

193love that has no past, don't let me down." This seeming contradictory

message is indicative of the Love Dream's maturity for now Romance and

Reality intermingle as equals in the rhetorical vision.

On March 20, while on holiday in Paris, John and Yoko Ono travelled

to Gibraltar and were married. While honeymooning at the Amsterdam Hilton

the couple decided to stage a Bed-in for peace. The world press was noti­

fied that the Lennons would be spending seven days of their honeymoon in

bed for peace as a protest against all forms of violence.

For seven days, from ten in the morning until ten in the evening, John and Yoko talked non-stop about peace. Planeloads of journa­lists flew in to cover the event and were for the most part skep­tical. Half of them expected to see the couple making love in front of the cameras; when they were confronted with a barrage of serious peace slogans they were disappointed. The attitude of the British press in particular was harsh and critical, and the way in which they hurled abuse, mercilessly lampooning John and Yoko, was unnecessary and deliberately hurtful. Nevertheless, John's message did get printed, most often with a large amount of space given to photographs accompanied by the gist of his con­versation . 1 94

The Amsterdam Bed-In was a testing ground for the couple's hard-sell

peace campaign, and because of the world-wide publicity they received, they

felt it was a successful approach. "For John it was the start of a spira­

ling manic devotion to the peace cause, which led him into frenzied attempts

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195at all-out media saturation." On May 30, the Beatles released '.‘The

Ballad of John and Yoko: a musical version of the events in Amsterdam and

their return to England. The song is a Fantasy Narrative of sorts, which

made Lennon out a martyr for his beliefs and made the press out to be

his persecutors. The chorus of the song neatly summarizes the mood of the

song: "Christ! You know it ain't easy, You know how hard it can be,

196the way things are going, they're gonna crucify me." Unfortunately,

due to the nature of the language involved, this message received less

airplay than past recordings. It was the first and last record of its kind

The flip side of "The Ballad of John and Yoko" was a George Harrison

composition entitled "Old Brown Shoe," an Invitation to Love in which the

passage from past loneliness to Love's fulfillment is represented as

197"stepping out of this old brown shoe." While George has been more

clever with words in the past, the song still manages a clear articulation

of the Invitation to Love theme and its accompanying happiness: "I'm so

198glad you came here, it won'.t be the same here now, I'm telling you."

Between early June and mid-August 1969 the Beatles were together

again to complete "Abbey Road" which would be their final studio album

together as a performing group. The LP begins with Lennon's less abra­

sive autobiography "Come Together." This Fantasy Caricature features

Lennon lyricism at its cryptic best: "Here come the old flat top, he come

,199groovin' up slowly, he got joo joo eyeball, he one holy roller.' The

self-portrait might easily have gone unidentified had it not made mention

of bag productions, the walrus and Yoko Ono. Obviously meant as a dead

giveaway of the song.'s comic star, the song was consistent with Lennon's

belief at the time that by drawing attention to himself through bizarre

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means he could better make his message of peace widely known. "We are

humorists ... we stand a better chance under that guise. Cause all the

serious people like Martin Luther King and Kennedy and Gandhi got shot.

We're willing to be the world's clowns."288 This philosophy helps us

understand the real thrust of the song: "Come together now, right now,

,,201over me.

Continuing the tradition of straight forward Love Reaffirmation

which he began on "For You Blue," Harrison's "Something" proved to be one

of the group's biggest selling hits, coming in third in the United States

behind "Hey Jude" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand."

"Maxwell's Silver Hammer" is a different story completely. As McCart­

ney once explained, "This epitomizes the downfalls in life. Just when

everything is going smoothly 'bang bang' down comes Maxwell's silver hammer

202and ruins everything," This bizarre little black comedy makes "Run

for Your Life" sound like a day in the country. It is a Fantasy Narrative

proper which ultimately seems to negate its own fantasy. Unfaithful lovers,

sure. Walrus metaphors, certainly. Yellow submarines, why not? But

psychopathic murders, never. Nevertheless, here is Maxwell, who in the

span of a three minute and forty-five second song, managed to wipe out his

girl friend Joan, his teacher and a judge who is just about to declare

him guilty. This weird scenario manages to take the Fantasy Narrative

places it has never gone before, and places it will never be again. More

precisely, it expresses a pessimism that is new to the rhetorical vision

this late in its development. Moral: Watch out for the other guy, the

world is deadlier than we think.

As if to atone for his brief excursion into melodrama, McCartney quickly

(19Q)

offers us "Oh! Darling" which attacks the Love Gone Bad theme with intense

passion suggesting that the only thing that can really threaten to kill

us is the loss of our lover: "When you told me you didn't need my any-

203more, well you know I nearly broke down and died." People at EMI

studios recall that McCartney would show up at the studio early and sing

himself hoarse to get the proper vocal intended for the recording of

"Oh! Darling." The urgency of the call for reconciliation is thus empha­

sized with a sincerity which may not be new to the Love Gone Bad theme,

but certainly makes it difficult not to notice.

Ringo's "Octopus Garden" is a Fantasy Narrative which heralds the

return of childhood philosophy with a charm and wit seldom seen since

"Yellow Submarine." Like its aquatic predecessor, this song describes

a child-dream fantasy world of escape from responsibility and celebrations

of pure joy: "We would sing and dance around, because we know we can't

be found/we could be so happy you and me, no one there to tell us what

204to do." It is the type of fantasy so pure in its simplicity and inno­

cence, that to deny it is to admit one has grown old.

"I Want You (She's So Heavy)" is a Reaffirmation of Love which reduces

feelings to a new level of desire. Just as "Don't Let Me Down" exchanged

joy and fear, this song is desperate in its bare compassion. The total

lyric includes: "I want you/I want you so bad/l want you so bad it's

205driving me mad/she's so heavy." The verses are interwoven with a

wrenching electric guitar solo which may well be the best in Beatle history

The song concludes in a similar fashion with the electronic distortion

nearly consuming the original guitar line suggesting a mind consumed by a

similar passion. The endless finale makes this the second longest Beatle

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'song1 ever recorded clocking in at seven minutes and forty-nine seconds

-- the point is well made.

Perhaps the finest of the Beatle sun-songs is Harrison's delicate

Reaffirmation of Love "Here Comes the Sun." The song is a joyous announce­

ment of rebirth; of the return from loneliness ("a long cold lonely winter"

to the warmth of human smiles and the dazzle of the Beatle Love Dream which

207assures us "it's alright."

Rebirth and awakening totheJove that shines all around us is also the

focus of attention in "Because," a Reaffirmation of Love which is powerful

in its Edenic purity. Through love, the song explains, we awake to a new

sense of the world around us: "Because the world is round it turns me on/

Because the wind is high it blows my mind/Because the sky is blue it makes

208me cry." The song reduces the Romantic Fantasy type to its lowest corn-

209mon denominator: "Love is old love is new, love is all love is you."

The Beatle Dream Medley

"You Never Give Me Your Money" is a two-part Fantasy Narrative which

moves us from breakdowns in financing and communication to a renewed sense

of freedom and adventure. It is of the novel mind that in the loss of

21 0money ("Out of college money spent, see no future, pay no rent") and

interpersonal relationships ("in the middle of negotiations you break

211down") we find, at least temporarily, a form of freedom ("oh-that magic

212feeling — no where to go/one sweet dream came true today"). It is a

resurgence of Beatle optimism which finds cause for celebration in even

the most seemingly desperate situations.

The Love Sun is childishly exalted in "Sun King," a Reaffirmation of

Love which begins in the language of the Dream "everybody's laughing,

206

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21 3everybody's happy" and moves into a comic language of international

nonsense verse which concludes "Cuesto obrigado tanta mucho que can it it

214carousel." On originality alone, one is taken.

The Dream is temporarily interrupted by the introduction of "Mean

Mr. Mustard" a Fantasy Caricature that makes Scrooge sound angelic.

"Mean Mr. Mustard sleeps in the park, shaves in the dark trying to save

215paper/keeps a ten bob note up his nose." The old boy's sister, herself

216 217"a go getter" will occasionally take him "out to look at the Queen"

but his penchant for shouting obscenities tends to keep him indoors a

great deal. Certainly not the most biting indictment of materialism, the

song nevertheless is inspirational in its humor.

Contemporary fashions are next to bite the dust in Lennon's sardonic

Fantasy caricature "Polythene Pam." Pam's tragic flaw seems to be that

21 8she is so fashionable '.'she looks like a man." She is a tribute to soft

pornography ("She's the kind of girl who makes the news of the world, yes

21 9you could say she was attractively built") and as such serves as Len­

non's ambiguous statement of her worth. We are left to choose.

"She Came in through the Bathroom Window" is a Fantasy Narrative in

which a "Sexy Sadie" finally does get hers. She is unable to make it in

the real world despite her claims of 'experience.' Raised in affluence,

220"protected by a silver spoon," she is a real world failure and despite

the singer's attempts to help her make it, he knows she will never change:

221"She could steal but she could not rob."

The Dream Medley begins to pass by with increasing speed as side two

of "Abbey Road" concludes. "Golden Slumbers" Reaffirms Love in the form

of a Romantic lullaby which confirms the Love Dream as the means for

(193)

returning Home: “Once there was a way to get back home, sleep pretty

222darling do not cry and I will sing a lullaby." The lullaby is abruptly

interrupted by the Love Gone Bad theme "Carry That Weight" which quickly

223suggests that lonely is "a long time." A second later the trumpets

and guitar fanfare that introduced us to "Sgt. Pepper" announce to us

that Freedom is found at the strangest junctures with a refrain of "You

Never Give Me Your Money." "Carry That Weight" returns undaunted only

to be swept away by a piercing guitar solo and "The End" begins. The

Beatles chant in unison: "Oh, yeh, all right, are you gonna be in my

224dreams tonight? and the Invitation to Love is underway.

A forceful ten second drum solo serves as the countdown to a ser­

pentine battle of electric guitar solos which grow more frenzied with

each passing measure. Above the chaos rises the three Beatle voices

225fighting to be heard: "Love you," is the barely audible Reaffirmation

of Love heard above the din. Suddenly all is silent save a child-like

piano chord which remains steadfast. And the Pepperland Perspective is

proclaimed in an Invitation to Love of quintessential Beatle harmony:

226"And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make."

With iòne final uplifting chord of voices, the Beatles are silent and the

orchestra fades into the void that once consumed "I Am the Walrus," "All

You Need Is Love," "A Day in the Life," and "Hey Jude."

Now there is silence, but from somewhere on board a "Yellow Submarine"

drifting slowly toward "Strawberry Fields" a voice returns to us: "Her

majesty's a pretty nice girl, but she doesn't have alot to say, her majesty's

a pretty nice girl, but she changes from day to day, I wanna tell her that

I love her a lot but I gotta get a belly full of wine, her majesty's a

(194)

pretty nice girl some day I'm gonna make her mine, oh yeh, some day I'm

227gonna make her mine." The song is a child's song and the solo acoustic

guitar accents its simplistic Reaffirmation of Love. It is as a child's

voice. The Beatles had returned Home.

Of course, back in the real world, matters were not quite so romantic.

Fierce battles began among the group concerning their management and the

state of Apple records. Lennon immersed himself in his campaign for peace,

Ringo continued making films such as The Magic Christian with Peter Sellers,

George began producing more and more Indian influenced groups and McCartney

and his new wife, Linda Eastman, retired to Paul's Scottish farm.

On April 19, 1970 Paul McCartney announced to the.press that he had

left the Beatles and it was all over but the lawsuits. By the time that

Let It Be and the accompanying soundtrack were released in May it was

public knowledge that the history making band was now history itself.

Ironically the "Let It Be" LP became the group's final release and cast

a shadow of disappointment over the otherwise brilliant finish that was

"Abbey Road." As one critic observed, "If the Beatles' soundtrack album

'Let it Be' is to be their last then it will stand as a cheapskate epitaph,

a cardboard tombstone, a sad and tatty end to a musical fusion which

22dwiped clean and drew again the face of pop music."

The motion picture Let It Be was equally a poorly timed release. The

original idea behind the film was to show the Beatles at work in the

studios producing their great works. However, as Carr and Tyler point out,

"it was already too late. Internal disagreement and consequent lack of

morale invaded the 'Let It Be' project from the very beginning. Viewed

with hindsight, it is as accurate a documentary of the final disintegration

229of the Beatles as could be wished for."

(195)

At the conclusion of the film, the Beatles are atop the Apple Record

studios performing live for the cameras. As they complete their closing

number amidst feeble applause, John Lennon comments "I'd like to say

thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves, and I hope we passed the

230audition." As the group begins to disband, the frame freezes. One

comes away with a sense that the audition was easy. It's the final curtain

which is the most difficult to experience.

During the studio years, the rhetorical vision continued to grow out

of innocence without abandoning childhood fantasy or Romantic notions of

Love. The maturity achieved during the Beatlemania years similarly con­

tinued to be a defining characteristic of the songs during this concluding

period. Indeed, during this period in particular the innocence of youth

and the realities of age intermingle in dramas of Romantic and timeless

love, friendship, self, compassion, and survival.

But most importantly, this period marks a growing into skepticism

and resolution represented by the White Album and "Let It Be." The settings

become dream worlds — imagined and real -- in which the conflict between

the world without and the world within are not only recognized but attacked,

and later, taken in stride.

And yet, through it all, Love continues to serve as the ultimate

1 egitimatization for those listeners caught up in the composite dramas.

The heroes and villains may become more fantastic as the Pepperland

Perspective develops (Lovely Rita, Bungalow Bill, Sexy Sadie, Jojo and

Sweet Loretta Martin), but by the time that "Abbey Road" has concluded

the Beatles have returned Home to the innocence and optimism which began

with "Love Me Do."

(196)

References

'ßarry Miles, Beatles in Their Own Words (New York: Quick Fox Press,

1978) p. 32

2 Ibid., p. 88.

3The Beatles Lyrics Illustrated, (New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1975)

p. 116.

41 b i d.

51 b i d.

Ibid., p. 117-

71 b i d.

^Nicholas Schaffner, The Beatles Forever (Harrisburg: Stockpole Books, 1977) p. 73.

qJim Miller, ed., The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and

Roll (New York: Random House, 1976) p. 176.

10 Ibid.

1 1 Ibid.

12Ibid.

13The Beatles Lyrics 111ustrated, op. cit., p. 118.

14.,Ibid.

15 Ibid.

Ibid.

17 I bid.

Ibid.

'9Miles, op. cit., p. 89.

20The Beatles Lyr i cs I 11ustrated, op. cit., p. 120.

21 Ibid.

22 Ibid. , p. 121 .

23 Ibid.

24 Ibid.

25lbid., p. 122.

26... ,Ibid.

271bid., p. 123.

28 I bid.

29 Ibid.

38 Ibid., p. 124.

3’ I b i d. , p. 125.

32 I bid., p. 126.

33 I bid.

34 Ibid., p. 127.

35 Ibid.

361b i d.

371bid.

38 Ibi d., p. 128.

391 bi d.

2+01 b i d.

Ibid.

42Ibid.

431 bid., p. 129.

44Ibid., p. 130.

451bid.

46 Ibid.

47lbid.

48,Ibid.

49Wi1frid Mellers, Twi1ight of the Gods: The Music of the Beatles

(New York: Schirmer Books, 1973) p. 86.

(198)

50 Schaffner, op. cit., p. 82.

'Ron Schaumburg, Growing Up with the Beatles (New York: 1976) p. 74.

51

' P

52

Pyramid Books,

53

54

55

56

57

58

59

60

Schaffner, op. cit., p. 87.

The Beatles Lyrics Illustrated, op. cit., p. 132.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 131.

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 134.

Schaffner, op. cit., p. 91.

Ibid.

61

62

63

64

65

The Beatles Lyrics Illustrated, op. cit., p. 137.

Ibid., p. 138.

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 135.

Mellers, op. cit., p. 107.

66

67

68

69

70

71

72

73

74

75

76

The Beatles Lyrics Illustrated, op. cit., p. 120.

Ibid., p. 136.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 133.

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 139.

(199)

York

77

78

79

80

81

82

83

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 140.

Ibid.

Roy Carr and Tony Tyler, The Beatles: An Illustrated Record (New Harmony Book, 1975) p. 72.

Schaffner, op. cit., pp. 102-3.

Ibid., p. 103-

Ibid., p. 99.

84,

85

86

87

88

89

"New Magic in Animation," Time Vol. 92(December 27, 1968) p. 47.

Ibid.

The Beatles Lyr i es 111ustrated, op. cit., p. 145.

Ibid., p. 146,

Ibid.

Ibid.

90 Ibid.

91 Ibid.

92

93

94

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 147.

Ibid., p. 148.

95 Ibid.

96 Ibid., p. 149.

97 Ibid.

98 Ibid., p. 150.

"ibid.

100,Ibid.

101Ibid.

102 Ibid.

p. 151.

p. 152.

(200)

103 Ibid.

104 Ibid.

’88John D. Williams, A Rhetorical Analysis of the Wayne Persona in

Film (unpublished Master's Thesis, Bowling Green State University, 1980)P-193 •

’88"While My Guitar Gently Weeps," by George Harrison copyright (1968)

Northern Songs Ltd.

107,The Beatles Lyrics Illustrated, op. cit., p. 153.

108 Ibid.

109 Ibid.

110 Ibid.

Ibid.

112 Ibid.

113

114

115

116

117

118

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

119

120

121

122

I23

154.

155.

156.

"Piggies" by George Harrison, copyright (1968) Northern Songs Ltd.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

The Beatles Lyrics Illustrated, op. cit., p. 158.

Ibid., p. 159

11 1

124■Ibid.

125 Ibid.

126 Ibid., p. I60.

(201)

127

128

129

130

131

132

133

134

Ibid

Ibid

Ibid

Ibid

Ibid

Ibid

Ibid

Ibid

, P

> P

, P

, P

161 .

162.

163.

164.

135

’36

137

138

139

140

141

142

143

Ibid.

Mellers, op. cit., p. 131.

The Beatles Lyrics Illustrated, op. cit., p. 165.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 166.

Ibid.

Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry, Heiter Skelter (New York: Ban­tam Books, 1974) p. 424.

'^"Long Long Long" by George Harrison, copyright (1968) Northern

Songs Ltd.

"Slbid.

146The Beatles Lyrics 111ustrated, op. cit., p. 146.

'^"Revolution 1" by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, copyright (1968)

Northern Songs Ltd.

148

149

Schaffner, op. cit., p. 109-

The Beatles Lyrics Illustrated, op. cit., p. 167.

'58"Savoy Truffle" by George Harrison, copyright (1968) Northern Songs

Ltd.

(202)

151 Ibid.

152 Ibid.

153

154

The Beatles Lyrics Illustrated, op. cit., p. 168.

Ibid.

'33Miles, op. cit., p. 98.

1 963 "Revolution 9" by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, copyright (1968) Northern Songs Ltd.

'37The Beatles Lyrics Illustrated, op. cit., p. 168.

158.j . ,Ibid.

159lbid., p. 170.

160 ., . ,Ibid.

161 Ibid., p. 172.

l62lbid., p. 171.

163 I bid.

,64lbid., p. 173.

161

162

16]

164

165

166

167

168

169

170

171

172

173

174

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Mellers, op. cit., p. 139.

The Beatles Lyrics 111ustrated, op. cit., p. 197.

Ibid., p. 198.

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 199.

Ibid.

Ibid.

'73"l Me Mine" by George Harrison, copyright (1969), Harrissongs Ltd.

176.. ..Ibid.

’77The Beatles Lyrics Illustrated, op. cit., p. 200.

178lbid.

179lbid.

l8°lbid., p. 201.

181 ,Ibid.

182"Magc/ie May" credited to P.D. (no copyright or publisher listing)

,83lbid.

184The Beatles Lyrics Illustrated, op. cit., p. 202.

185.. ..Ibid.

186.. . .Ibid.

l87lbid., p. 203.

188ik^Ibid.

189 Ibid., p. 204.

19°lbid.

1 91 "For You Blue" by George Harrison, copyright (1969) Harrissongs LTD.

192 The Beatles Lyrics illustrated, op. cit., p. 205.

193lbid., p. 175-

194 /Anthony Fawcett, John Lennon: One Day at a Time (New York: GrovePress Inc., 1976) p. 49.

195lbid., p. 53.

1 oAThe Beatles Lyrics Illustrated, op. cit., p. 176.

197"Old Brown Shoe" by George Harrison, copyright (1969) Harrissongs Ltd.

198lbid.

1 99 The Beatles Lyrics Illustrated, op. cit., p. 179-

288John Lennon, from the Beatle Tapes: The David Wigg Interviews,

copyright (1976) Polydor Records.

(204)

201

202

203

The Beatles Lyrics 111ustrated, op. cit.

Miles, op. cit., p. 102.

The Beatles Lyri es I 11ustrated, op. cit., p. 181

204,

: Lt

205

’"Octopus's Garden" by Richard Starkey, copyright (1969) Startling Music Ltd.

The Beatles Lyrics Illustrated, op. cit., p. 182.

'..'Here Comes the Sun" by George Harrison, copyright (1969) Harris- songs Ltd.

207,

208

Ibid.

The Beatles Lyrics Illustrated, op. cit., p. 183.

209 Ibid.

210 Ibid., p. 184.

211 Ibid.

212Ibid.

213

214

215

216

217

218

Ibid., p. 185.

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 186.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid., p. I87.

219 Ibid.

220 Ibid., p. I88.

221Ibid.

222

223

224

225

226

Ibid., p. I89.

Ibid., p. I90.

Ibid., p. I9I.

Ibid.

Ibid.

(205)

227lbid., p. 192.

228. 8-7Carr, op. cit., p. o/.

2291bid., p. 90.

230 From the LP Let It Be, copyright (19&9) Apple Records, England.

CHAPTER V

The Dream Is Over: Conclusions and Research Implications

The Beatles created a symbolic reality of a unique nature. The

rhetorical vision evoked was, overall, an optimistic portrait of human

existence which recognized its hardships but refused to abandon the human

potential. In retrospect, it is interesting to note the way in which the

Pepperland Perspective developed. It began in innocence; in a childhood

reborn, governed by love and concerned with the most basic, life-affirming

ideals; love, togetherness, and happiness. From here the vision matured

into its young adulthood allowing for skepticism and cognizant of a ma­

turity which entailed not only love and togetherness but work and respon­

sibility. Sadness and love are no longer mutually exclusive. With maturity,

however, comes a renewed sense of idealism and faith in one's self to

overcome all odds. In a world governed by mistrust and moved through

hatred, the Beatles sang on for dear life.

From idealism the rhetorical vision moved into cynicism which mocked

hatred and greed while allowing for its permanence. From cynicism the

vision moved to resolution and a resigned attitude toward the world and

the people in it. The mood here was less didactic and more reflective,

taking the world on its own terms yet optimistic that things would work

out for the best. But, perhaps most importantly, the vision concluded

in second childhood with a renewed faith in those same ideals of love,

togetherness and happiness which had sustained it throughout its growing

pains.

(207)

In the animated fantasy feature, Yellow Submari ne, you'll recall,

the hero Beatles triumph over opposing odds to again restore the pleasures

of color and music and all that's beautiful to the beseiged Pepperland,

a restoration "which permits bigger and better glorias to be sung to the

reigning god of Pepperland addressed as Love."' This triumph was easily

seen in the world which the real Beatles conquered and entertained for

many years. They offered their audience a vision of a world in which

fantasy and reality confronted each other face to face and fantasy was

proclaimed victor.

As Peter Burke points out:

The individual may invent, but the community selects. If the individual produces innovations or variations which the com­munity likes, they will be imitated and so pass into the common stock of tradition. If his innovations do not meet with appro­val, they will perish with him, or even before. Thus successive audiences exercise a ‘preventative censorship' and decide whether a given song or story will survive, and in what form it will survive. It is in this sense that people participate in the creation arid, transformat ion of popular cul ture, just as-they par­ticipate in the creation and transformation of their native language.2

You wi 1 1 not find Pepper 1 and by 1ooking for it. It's a country that

must be listened for. The Beatles sang. We heard. This study has been

an effort to understand what exactly it was that we heard and account for

the possible reasons why what we heard was so firmly embraced. Certainly,

it is difficult to label any one factor as the cause for the Beatles'

phenomenal success. The loss of John F. Kennedy, the demographic balance

which hung in their favor, the wide spread commercial hype which preceeded

their arrival in America, and the sheer physical power of their music and

appearance were certainly all partially responsible for the birth of

Beatlemania.

(208)

But more importantly here, the Beatles grew out of Beatlemania, and

grew as songwriters and performers. Many bands which rode in on their

coattails were unable to do so and quickly faded following 1964. The

Beatles and America as well as the rest of the world grew up together

during the 1960s, Pepperland replacing Camelot. Rather than argue that

life imitates art or vice versa, I prefer to view the Beatle phenomenon

as a reciprocal give and take, with the Beatles, admittedly giving a

great deal more than many other popular entertainment forms have given.

As I've mentioned, the Beatles were instrumental in establishing the

notion that the writing and performing of popular music was an art form.

Through their example, "rock became credible with intellectuals, because

even the most highbrow music critic had to admit that the Beatles' songs

were good. Hit records could no longer be denigrated simply because they

3were successful products."

This study has shown the important role that theme development and

maintenance plays in terms of the persuasive power of popular music.

Through the incorporation of Bormann's ideas on fantasy theme analysis

and rhetorical vision, it has tried to show that the success of the

Beatles was the result of many inter-related factors, while emphasizing

that lyrical development and maintenance in many rhetorical situations

was crucia 1.

Rather than establishing still another methodology for the examina­

tion of rhetorical phenomena, this study has been an attempt to show the

viability of existing methodologies in understanding our contemporary

culture. Specifically, I believe it has demonstrated the usefulness of

Bormann's perspective for the analysis and evaluation of rhetoric beyond

the province of its traditional manifestations.

(209)

There is a wealth of rhetorical phenomena that exists and plays a

crucial role in the development of attitudes, beliefs, and values in our

world. All are worthy of our study, for in understanding these phenomena,

we come to better understand our culture and ourselves. This study has

been a look back at our recent past in an effort to understand what made

us what we are today. If it has succeeded in bringing one part of that

past into clearer focus, then it has been worth the effort. Much more

remains to be done. Bormann's perspective on rhetorical phenomenon is one

way of beginning.

While this study has centered its attention on Bormann's concepts

of rhetorical vision, fantasy type and fantasy theme, minor emphasis has

been placed on the concept of public fantasy chaining. This study relied

heavily on the use of secondary sources in examining the chaining process,

but perhaps one direction that might be suggested is the use of oral

histories in reconstructing the public chaining that took place during the

Beatles' climb to success.

(210)

'From the LP Yellow Submarine liner notes, copyright (1968) Apple

Records, England.

¿Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1978) p. 115.

Peter McCabe and Robert D. Schonfeld, Apple to the Core: The Unmaking of the Beatles (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972) p. 65.

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