Monday Minutiae

On a Beatles forum I sometimes post on, there is a thread about our favorite "little things" from the songs. These are some of *my* favorites - if you want to read the whole thread, you can find it here .

1. In "Hey Bulldog" when they sing "big man" and Ringo says "Yup!"


2. The chatting and barking at the end of "Hey Bulldog".


3. After the third time Paul sings the line "Why Don't We Do It In The Road", when he says "hmm?" (maybe he's saying "mmm", but I like to picture him with a naughty face saying "hmm?")


4. Towards the end of "Why Don't We Do It In The Road" when Paul screams in a really high pitch "WHY don't we do it in the road?"


5. In "If You've Got Trouble" when Ringo says "Aw... rock on... anybody."


6. The count-in to "Taxman" when George counts slow, Paul coughs and John counts real fast in the background.


7. All the "hey la's" at the end of "Hello Goodbye".


8. In "What Goes On", Ringo sings "Tell me why" and you can hear someone say in the background (I assume it's John) "I'll tell you why!"


9. In "Obla-Di, Obla-Da" after Paul sings "...lets the children lend a hand" you can hear George saying "arm!" and John saying "foot!"


10. John's whistling at the end of "Two Of Us".


11. The way George sings "something", "lacking" and "whacking" in "Piggies".


12. George saying "One more time" at the end of "Piggies".


13. In "Don't Pass Me By", you can hear Ringo counting the beats until the drum fill - at the drum fill, he says "oop" and John says "Give it more".


14. Right after the opening of "Lovely Rita" when John goes "ahh".


15. The perverted moaning at the end of "Lovely Rita".


16. In "Dig A Pony", the part where they sing "because" in a really high pitch, then Paul sings "Woo!" and John goes "Ahh!"


17. On "I've Got A Feeling" - "Oh yeah (oh yeah) that's right!" Then right after that, "Oh no! (NO) Oh no!"


18. In "I've Got A Feeling" the whole verse of: "All these years I've been wandering around the world, Wondering how come nobody told me, All that I was looking for was somebody who looked like you." (Paul's voice in this part almost makes me love him even more than I love George, but not quite)


19. Then in the verse after that, when he sings "I've Got a Feeling" and it sounds like he's trying not to laugh.


20. Then of course, the last line in "I've Got A Feeling": "oh my soul... it's so hard."


21. In "For You Blue" when George very unenthusiastically says "go Johnny go" during John's solo.


22. In "For You Blue", George's little laugh after he says "Elmore James got nothing on this baby!"


23. The "She loves you, yeah yeah yeah" at the of "All You Need Is Love".


24. At the end of "I Feel Fine" you can hear Paul in the background barking like a dog.


25. John's background vocal in "Yellow Submarine", especially the line "in our yellow!" then his crazy laugh.


26. John's little "aahs" before the last two choruses in "Ticket To Ride".


27. That one "yeah" at the end of "It Won't Be Long" when Paul's voice cracks.


28. At the end of "Helter Skelter" when Ringo yells "I've got blisters on my fingers!"


29. In "Old Brown Shoe" - the two times during the song where John yells out "hey!"


30. John's vocals in "Twist and Shout" - I know it's because he had an awful cold, but it's sexy.


31. John's groan in "A Hard Day's Night".


32. John's "mmmm.." when he sings "A Hard Day's Night".


33. The way George says "Tchaikovsky" in "Roll Over Beethoven".


34. When John yells "Great!" in "Polythene Pam".


35. The "oh, look out!" at the beginning of "She Came In Through The Bathroom Window".


36. I love how Ringo's voice is the one that you hear above the rest in "Carry That Weight".


37. On the anthology version of "Something", when George sings "you're asking me will my love grow.. I don't know, I don't know.. da-dum dum dum dum dum".


38. John growling "come on, come on" the third time around on "Please Please Me".


39. Ringo's "ahh.. Rock on, George, one time for me" in "Honey Don't."


40. Paul laughing as he sings the line "writing 50 times" in "Maxwell's Silver Hammer".


41. The "ah-oh-hold me" in "Eight Days A Week".


42. John's desperate "Yeahhhhhhhh" in "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" followed by an almost inaudible shout by one of the other Beatles in the background, just before they launch into the final repeating riff.


43. In "Norwegian Wood", the chuckle right before "so I looked around and I noticed there wasn't a chair".


44. On "Good Day Sunshine" when Paul sings, "She feels good" it sounds like John says, "yes!" which makes Paul laugh slightly when he then sings, "She knows she's looking fine".


45. George's moans at the end of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps".


46. The "twist it" "what?" "twist it" "ah" "shake it" at the beginning of "Sgt. Pepper (Reprise)".


47. John saying "bye" as Paul is counting in on "Sgt. Pepper (Reprise)".


48. George saying "band.. band... bandband" at the end of "Sgt. Pepper (Reprise)".


49. George's accent on "Northern Song": "it doesn't really matter what clothes I wurr or how I furr or if my hurr is brown..."


50. "Got the wrong chord, f-ing hell" in "Hey Jude".


51. How you can tell Paul wants to laugh on the last couple of lines of "When I'm 64", right after he sings "mine forevermore".


52. John's deep voice during the line in "And Your Bird Can Sing": "When your bird is broken, will it bring you do-o-own.."


53. Anthology version of "Rocky Raccoon" - "Meantime, back on the table!" Paul making the gunshot sound, "sminking of gin" "however" - everything about that version, really.


54. Paul's "aaahh" right after he sings "of good Rocky's revival" in "Rocky Raccoon".


55. The way George says "secret" in "Do You Want To Know A Secret"


56. The humor in "Young Blood".


57. The way George counts "one, two" before beginning the last verse of "Within You, Without You."


58. Paul at the end of "I Want To Tell You": "I've got tiii-iiii-iiime"


59. I like how John's pick touches one of his guitar strings at the end of, "Act Naturally", causing the string to go, "Zzzzzing!".


60. When Paul almost fails a high note in the harmony of "If I Fell".


61. The laugh at the end of "Within You Without You".

And for those of you who made it this far, here is a video of the Beatles "Every Little Thing":

Monday Minutiae

In the Beatles movie "A Hard Day's Night" the word "Beatles" is never spoken.

Monday Minutiae

39 Working Titles of Beatles Songs

This Song - Started Out As:

• 
  
  Cry For A Shadow- Beatle Bop


• 
  
  I Saw Her Standing There- Seventeen


• 
  
  Thank You Girl- Thank You Little Girl


• 
  
  I'll Get You- Get You In The End


• 
  
  It's Only Love- That's a Nice Hat-Cap


• 
  
  I've Just Seen A Face- Auntie Gin's Theme


• 
  
  Yesterday- Scrambled Eggs


• 
  
  Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)- This Bird Has Flown


• 
  
  Think For Yourself- Won't Be There With You


• 
  
  Eleanor Rigby- Daisy Hawkins


• 
  
  Love You To- Granny Smith


• 
  
  She Said She Said- Untitled


• 
  
  Good Day Sunshine- A Good Day's Sunshine


• 
  
  I Want To Tell You- 1: Laxton's Superb 2: I Don't Know


• 
  
  Tomorrow Never Knows- 1: The Void 2: Mark 1


• 
  
  Penny Lane- Untitled


• 
  
  With A Little Help From My Friends- Bad Finger Boogie


• 
  
  Within You Without You- Untitled


• 
  
  A Day In The Life- In The Life Of...


• 
  
  Hello Goodbye- Hello Hello


• 
  
  Flying- Aerial Tour Instrumental


• 
  
  The Inner Light- Untitled


• 
  
  Only A Northern Song- Not Known


• 
  
  It's All Too Much- Too Much


• 
  
  Happiness Is A Warm Gun- Happiness Is A Warm Gun In Your Hand


• 
  
  Don't Pass Me By- 1: Ringo's Tune (Untitled) 2: This Is Some Friendly


• 
  
  Revolution 1- Revolution


• 
  
  Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey - Untitled


• 
  
  Long Long Long- It's Been A Long Long Long Time


• 
  
  Good Night- Untitled


• 
  
  Two Of Us- On Our Way Home


• 
  
  Dig A Pony- All I Want Is You


• 
  
  For You Blue- George's Blues (Because You're Sweet and Lovely)


• 
  
  The Ballad of John and Yoko- The Ballad of John and Yoko (They're Going To Crucify Me)


• 
  
  Oh! Darling- Oh! Darling (I'll Never Do You No Harm)


• 
  
  I Want You (She's So Heavy)- I Want You


• 
  
  Sun King- Here Comes The Sun-King


• 
  
  She Came In Through the Bathroom Window -Bathroom Window


• 
  
  The End- Ending

(from The Beatles Book of Lists by Stephen J. Spignesi)

Also, on this date in 1964, the Beatles held the top 5 spots on the American singles chart. 1 through 5 respectively were: Can't Buy Me Love, Twist and Shout, She Loves You, I Want to Hold Your Hand and Please Please Me.

The Beatles also have 15 songs in the Top 100, and positions 1 and 2 on the Billboard album chart.

The Beatles also become the only artists to have three consecutive No. 1 songs ("Can't Buy Me Love" took over the No. 1 spot from "She Loves You," which succeeded "I Want to Hold Your Hand.")

Yay Beatles!

Monday Minutiae

And of course, since it's Valentine's Day, I had to include a super sappy, lovey dovey George song:

Monday Minutiae

It's ironic that the anniversary of George's death would fall on "Monday Minutiae", as George always felt that human lives were really just a blip on the radar - short, temporary, just a stop along the road to someplace better.

I was going to call this entry "Mournful Monday" just this once, but George would have hated that. He embraced his death and was ready for it. He would want us to feel at peace with it too.

Monday Minutiae

On my John Lennon blog today, I wrote a brief entry about this amazingly talented guy who does 3D renders of different things relating to the Beatles. The pictures on that blog were of John's sunroom at Kenwood. But there is also a beautiful 3D render relating to George that actually got me a bit choked up. It was a combination of the soft, warm colors of the picture - you could almost feel the coziness, like you were standing in the room - along with the beautiful pictures he chose to frame and George's guitar right in the middle of it all. Outstanding. Here's the picture here:



You can see his blog and his other work here:

http://thebeatlesin3d.blogspot.com/

Monday Minutiae

* Note: Very rarely will I post the same entry to multiple blogs, but this particular entry will be on Paul, John and George's blogs today.

In 1960, the Beatles went off to Hamburg, Germany for the first time. George had to lie about his age in order to perform, as he was only 17 years old at the time.

They had been performing under less-than-ideal conditions at a place called the Indra and then later, when neighbors started complaining about the noise, at the Kaiserkeller- sleeping in a storeroom at the Bambi Kino, a nearby theater owned by Bruno Koschmider, who also owned the clubs the boys were playing at. As Paul describes it: "We lived backstage in the Bambi Kino, next to the toilets, and you could always smell them. The room had been an old storeroom, and there were just concrete walls and nothing else. No heat, no wallpaper, not a lick of paint; and two sets of bunk beds, with not very much covers—Union Jack flags—we were frozen."

John was equally unimpressed:
"We were put in this pigsty. We were living in a toilet, like right next to the ladies' toilet. We'd go to bed late and be woken up next day by the sound of the cinema(porn)show and old German fraus (women) pissing next door."

In addition, the boys' only option for washing and shaving was to use cold water from the urinals in the bathroom.

Having heard of a better club called the Top Ten, they began negotiations with the owner to perform there. According to George, the sound system was better, it looked nicer and it would pay a bit more.

The story goes that Koschmider, being less than thrilled at the boys breaking their contract with him, called the cops on George and reported him for being underage. The police arranged for his deportation shortly thereafter.

George says that he stayed up all night with John, teaching him his guitar parts before he was deported so that the Beatles could continue to play.

He wasn't alone back home for very long though. Bandmates Paul McCartney and Pete Best were soon deported as well. Going back to the Bambi Kino to gather their things, they grabbed a condom from their belongings, nailed it to the wall and set fire to it. No real damage was done, but they were reported to the authorities for attempted arson.


The Indra in the 1960's:


The Beatles on their first night at the Indra club (left to right: John, George, Pete, Paul and Stu in matching lilac jackets that Paul's neighbor made for them):


George, John, Pete, Paul and Stu later in the evening:


George, John and Paul:


The Indra as it looks today:


Grosse Freiheit in the 1960's (site of the Kaiserkeller club):


concert poster for the Beatles and Rory Storm (to date, no proven photos of either band playing there in 1960 have surfaced):


the Kaiserkeller today:


The Top Ten Club:


The Beatles at the Top Ten club (left to right: Pete, Paul, George, John and Stu):


The location of the former Top Ten Club as it appears today:


George in their room at the Bambi Kino:


Paul and John in their room at the Bambi Kino:


The boys at Harold's cafe in Hamburg, with an unidentified man who looks rather enamored with George (who could blame him?):


A scantily clad John on the street:


John was known to have said "I may have been born in Liverpool, but I grew up in Hamburg."

Monday Minutiae

The Traveling Wilburys, the supergroup that included our dear George in the 1980's was merely a "happy accident".

George was working on his Cloud Nine album and needed a b-side for his single "This is Love". George gathered up friends Roy Orbison, Jeff Lynne, and Bob Dylan to record a song together. Tom Petty was also included when George realized he left his guitar at Tom's house and had to retrieve it. They recorded the song "Handle With Care" which the record company rejected, saying it was too good to be used as an "album filler".

So they wrote a handful of songs together as a group, calling themselves "The Traveling Wilburys", "Wilburys" being a slang term that George and Jeff used in the studio to refer to various pieces of musical equipment lying about.

The first Wilburys album "The Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1" was recorded in a period of 10 days in 1988. Each member contributed to every song, making it a true collaborative effort, something George missed out on during his time with the Beatles.

The album was a huge success, both critical and commercial, going triple-platinum and winning a Grammy award for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group in 1989.

Monday Minutiae

A Hard Day's Night (the song) is significant for George in that it is one of the Beatles songs most quickly identified simply by the opening note - achieved by George on his Rickenbacker 360/12 12-string guitar.

A Hard Day's Night, the movie, was more significant, with George meeting Patti Boyd during filming. Patti was 19 and had hopes of becoming a successful model. She was cast as a schoolgirl for the movie and soon met George, who was all of 21. One of the first things he said to her was "Will you marry me?". She laughed and he asked that if she wouldn't marry him, would she at least go out with him? She had a boyfriend at the time and said she couldn't. She found herself enamored with George, however, so several days later when she had to be back on set and he asked her out again, she said yes, having broken up with her boyfriend since their first meeting.

They married in 1966 and divorced in 1974. Patti later married one of George's closest friends, Eric Clapton (she was his muse for "Layla", a song which he wrote for her when she was still married to George). George attended the wedding and even performed at the reception.

Monday Minutiae

The song "Something" was originally intended not as a love song for his wife but as a devotional to Lord Krishna. He changed the "he" in the original line "Something in the way he moves" to "she" so that listeners would not be confused and upset.

When writing the song, George was thinking of Ray Charles to sing it. He did end up recording his version of the song in 1971.

There have been at least 150 different versions recorded, (the song "Yesterday" is the only Beatles song with more recorded covers) including one by Frank Sinatra who called it "the greatest love song ever written." James Brown's version was George's favorite.