The Beatles Sheet Music
The Beatles
„Strawberry Fields Forever“
Is the 1967 song „Strawberry Fields Forever“ really about strawberries?
And what is it about the diamonds of ‚Lucy‘ floating in the sky? Is „Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds“ possibly about drugs?
And last but not least (because I would still have a few questions): Why is the world's most famous song of the Beatles actually not called ‚Scrambled Eggs‘ (‚scrambled eggs‘), but „Yesterday“?
Well, these questions the four ‚mushroom heads‘ (engl.: ‚moptops‘) asked at a press conference (and I can imagine that they were asked), the answers of the Liverpool musicians would certainly have been as cryptic and ironic as John Lennon's response to a U.S. reporter's question: „How did you find America?“ – „We turned left at Greenland.“
Many legends and conspiracy theories entwine around the four musicians from England, who actually wanted nothing more than to make good music. Why, for example, Paul McCartney runs barefoot across the crosswalk on the famous album cover of „Abbey Road“ and, moreover, is the only one with his right foot in front and not his left? Is there a secret message hidden here, as in some song lines recorded backwards?
In fact, the photo for the record cover had to be taken only under a certain time pressure, and the four Beatles therefore simply walked up and down the street in front of Abbey Road Studios for half an hour after a spontaneous idea – ready was the image that was to provide so much speculation. (Look for the synopsis of the 2000 feature film „Paul Is Dead“; this film brings all the crude theories together – glorious!)
Myths and rumors about the Beatles - and the facts?
Take a music-loving, very clearly structured and strict 16-year-old guitarist (John Lennon) at the end of the 50s, let him form a school band with a changing line-up, add a talented 15-year-old rhythm guitar player (Paul McCartney, who later took over the bass guitar), and finally kick out all remaining band members in favor of a 14-year-old lead guitar player (George Harrison). Have a man appear to John Lennon in a vision in 1960 on a burning cake, telling him they were now the ‚The Beatles‘ (this explanation had to suffice for reporters in later inquiries).
One sends the boys for a few years of apprenticeship to Hamburg and let them play in shady clubs nine hours a day beat music, push off their horns, cut their hair to ‚moptops‘ after the example of Jürgen Vollmer (Hamburg photographer), finally expel themselves from Germany for various reasons and return to Liverpool; one lets them perform successfully there and the manager Brian Epstein become aware of them, who ‚The Beatles‘ 1962 finally brought together with record producer Georg Martin. Now one exchanged largely without explanation the previous drummer Pete Best against a probably better or better fitting drummer (Ringo Starr) (well, one annexed him quasi, he was actually a member of another group) and let the ‚Fab 4‘ now for the first time in this final line-up in the Abbey Road Studios record a record and on 18 August 1962 play the first concert together. August 1962 play the first concert together.
This is how stars are made.
And what is the unique selling point of the Beatles?
You are right, this could be the short biography of any x-any pop group that, after all, was not ‚cast‘. But the ‚The Beatles‘ were different.
Born out of a skiffle group, the four Liverpool boys developed a style of music that, influenced by the rock 'n' roll of the 50s, found its very own direction; the beat music, guitar-heavy, in the 4/4-beat, fast. With this, the Beatles were to clearly set themselves apart stylistically from the USA and give the British nation a foundation of its very own pop and rock music cultural development. The ‚Britpop‘ would certainly not be conceivable in its present form without the Beatles. And even if the mothers of the 60s were horrified by the cult of the four ‚mushroom heads‘ were horrified by the cult of the four mushroom heads (some later Beatles concerts were characterized by the fact that the band's music was simply inaudible due to the infernal shrieking of the thousands of female fans present), in the end Messrs. Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr always appeared in their characteristically tight, dark suits and thus showed that a well-groomed appearance and wild music were not mutually exclusive. Here, too, the Beatles certainly paved a way for further generations.
Much more decisive for the Beatles' unique selling point, however, is that they certainly did not allow themselves to be pigeonholed in terms of musical style. The Beat was only the beginning.
Were lyrics and song structures at the beginning still relatively simple and harmless, so the Beatles went through a dynamic development over the years, which made their songs more sophisticated and personal. Here are just a few examples:
- Indian sitar sounds found their way (plucked by George Harrison) into the 1965 song „Norwegian Wood“.
- The global hit „Yesterday“ was accompanied solely by McCartney's guitar and a string quartet.
- Also becoming a global hit -and especially popular in choirs- was the English-French ballad „Michelle“ penned by Paul McCartney.
- The Irish rock band ‚U2‘ released the highly successful album „Rattle and Hum“ in 1988, on which the hit „Helter Skelter“; a cover of the Beatles' rock track released 20 years earlier: The song that marked away hard rock had been written in response to journalistic claims that the rock group ‚The Who‘ had written the hardest and loudest rock song of all time. The Beatles proved that it goes even louder and harder.
It is therefore not enough to reduce the Beatles to the song line „She Loves You (Yeah Yeah Yeah)“, even if the success of this 1963 published single speaks for itself: With 1.3 million copies sold, it was the most successful publication 1963 in Great Britain at all. There it sounds almost presumptuous to say, ‚The Beatles could do more‘; but that the rock-pop quartet could do more, they proved by their fantastic diversity and their talent to serve the most diverse styles (country and folk, blues, psychedelic rock, classical music, to name just a few), to win for themselves and even to be able to advance – and that without losing their distinctive personal style. In addition, the Beatles used all the technical means of the recording studio available at the time, such as ‚overdubbing‘ (adding audio after the fact), passages played backwards, sound effects, slowed down or sped up sound elements to achieve unique sound results. The Beatles also drew inspiration from the experimental music of John Cages: The 1967 track „A Day In The Life“ is testimony to this; from 3’50” of the radio-ready five-minute (and 12-second) piece, the 41-piece London Philharmonic Orchestra nearly spins out of control in a cluster-like, rhythmic crescendo rising to a one-second general pause with a Rachmaninoff-like grand piano chord in E major over the remaining 50 (!) seconds of the piece to fade away quasi mortando. Since the composition is among other things about 4000 officially proven potholes of the roads of two counties (the newspaper reported in an absurd statistic that purely arithmetically for 26 inhabitants a hole would come), John Lennon has expressed himself later in his typical-ironic way, now one also knows how many holes it would take to fill the Royal Albert Hall. 36 hours were needed for the elaborate production – and in the end this song itself should become an inspiration; for Prince, who named „A Day In The Life“ as one of 55 sources of inspiration.
By the way, with around 3000 cover versions, „Yesterday“ is the most covered song ever. And why it's not called ‚Scrambled Eggs‘? Well, Paul McCartney initially gave the song this working title after he came up with a brilliant melody during a sleepover at a friend's house and captured it while scrambling eggs. Since the song meant a lot to him and it is about a serious and sad love story in which the abandoned ultimately longs for the intact past („Yesterday“), it was clear that it could not remain with the working title. When the single was released in the UK in 1966, the ballad stayed at #1 on the charts for two months. Worldwide, 2.5 million records of „Yesterday“ sold in the same year.
A wonderfully serious song about the loneliness of people is this song by the Beatles, from 1966: „Eleanor Rigby“.
Listen to the song once on Youtube. From the concept album Yellow Submarine (incidentally, the first concept album ever in pop/rock history; again, the Beatles were innovative!), this song was penned by McCartney and inspired by an old, single lady who was occasionally visited by McCartney to have her tell stories.
And what has it now with ‚Lucy‘ and the diamonds on it?
Lucy O'Donnell was a classmate of John Lennon's son Julian. This brought one day a drawing with home. On it, he explained, Lucy was to be seen in the sky, with diamonds.
„Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds“ was born.
The content of the song is based on stories and images of Lewis Carroll's „Alice in Wonderland“; who knows this fantastic dream journey of the girl Alice, may judge for themselves whether there were not drugs (at least with the author L. Carroll) in the game, just think of the mushroom, the -je from the right or from the left nibbled Alice grow or shrink. John Lennon himself always rejected a connection of the song to psychotropics. Paul McCartney, on the other hand, said in an interview in 2004 that the title of the song was actually about the hallucinogen LSD. Well, the complete truth will remain hidden, because it was taken to his grave by song creator John Lennon.
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Ach, and by the way, as they say in new German; The „Strawberry Fields” were not. As a child, John Lennon often played on the grounds of a nearby orphanage with the beautiful name „Strawberry Fields” – again, a simple inspiration. Nothing more, nothing less.