My Favorite Beatles Tune

Recently, Max who writes the excellent PowerPop blog, invited me to develop a post for a fun series he titled Beatles Week. His direction to contributors was “to either write about their favorite Beatles song…or write something about them.” Max and I share very similar opinions about music, including the longtime conviction The Beatles are the best band of all time, and sometimes I still believe we’re distant relatives – well, regardless, I feel like Max is my brother. Following is my contribution, which first appeared on PowerPop blog on March 15.

The Beatles are my all-time favorite band, so rejecting an invitation to write about my most beloved song or something else about the four lads from Liverpool simply wasn’t a possibility. I chose the first option. Thanks for the generous offer, Max!

So, what’s my favorite Beatles tune? That’s easy – all of them, except perhaps for number 9, number 9, number 9…Well, that doesn’t reduce the choices by much. Seriously, with so many great Beatles songs, it’s hard to pick just one! My first Beatles album was a compilation, Beatles 20 Golden Hits, released by Odeon in 1979. Below is an image of the tracklist.

While each of the above songs is great and would deserve a dedicated post, the album doesn’t include the tune I decided to highlight. If you follow my blog or know my music taste otherwise, by now, you may be thinking I’m going to pick another song The Beatles recorded after they stopped touring.

Perhaps gems like A Day In the Life, Strawberry Fields Forever or I Am the Walrus come to mind. In fact, I previously said if I could pick only one, it would be A Day In The Life. The truth is with so many great tunes to choose from, it also depends on my mood and the day of the week.

That said, one song I’ve really come to love only within the past five years was recorded by The Beatles while they still were a touring band: If I Needed Someone, one of George Harrison’s earlier tunes that made it on a Beatles album: Rubber Soul, except for North America where it was included on Yesterday and Today, the record that became infamous because of its initial cover showing The Beatles in butcher outfits with mutilated baby dolls.

According to his 1980 autobiography I, Me, Mine, as cited by Wikipedia, Harrison apparently didn’t feel If I Needed Someone was anything special. He compared it to “a million other songs” that are based on a guitarist’s finger movements around the D major chord.

True, it’s a fairly simple song. And yet I totally love it!

Music doesn’t have to be complicated to be great. In this case, a major reason why I dig this tune as much as I do is Harrison’s use of a Rickenbacker 360/12, a 12-string electric guitar that sounds like magic to my ears. Of course, when you hear Rickenbacker, one of the first artists who come to mind is Rickenbacker maestro Roger McGuinn who adopted the Rickenbacker 360/12 to create the Byrds’ signature jingle-jangle guitar sound.

There is an interesting background story. The inspiration for McGuinn to use the Rickenbacker 360/12 came after he had seen Harrison play that guitar in the Beatles film A Hard Day’s Night. Harrison’s If I Needed Someone, in turn, was influenced by the guitar sound McGuinn had perfectionated, especially on the Byrds’ rendition of Pete Seeger’s The Bells of Rhymney. The rhythm was based on the drum part in She Don’t Care About Time, a tune by Gene Clark, the Byrds’ main early songwriter.

“George Harrison wrote that song after hearing the Byrds’ recording of “Bells of Rhymney”, McGuinn told Christianity Today magazine, as documented by Songfacts. “He gave a copy of his new recording to Derek Taylor, the Beatles’ former press officer, who flew to Los Angeles and brought it to my house. He said George wanted me to know that he had written the song based on the rising and falling notes of my electric Rickenbacker 12-string guitar introduction. It was a great honor to have in some small way influenced our heroes the Beatles.”

Apart from the signature guitar sound of the Byrds, If I Needed Someone also is viewed as reflecting Harrison’s then-developing interest in Indian classical music by the use of drone over the main musical phrase and its partly so-called Mixolydian harmony. I’m basing this on Wikipedia and frankly don’t fully understand it.

Harrison wrote the song for English model Pattie Boyd whom he married in January 1966. There has been some discussion over the ambivalent tone of the lyrics. Does a guy who sings, “If I needed someone to love you’re the one that I’d be thinking of” really sound like he’s madly in love with the girl and wants to marry her? Or how about “Carve your number on my wall and maybe you will get a call from me” – “maybe” neither sounds very committed nor romantic, at least not in my book!

If I Needed Someone has been covered by various other artists. First out of the gate were The Hollies who released the tune as a single on December 3, 1965, the same day Rubber Soul appeared in the UK. Their rendition, which Harrison evidently didn’t like, peaked at no. 20 on the UK Official Singles Chart. Various other versions were recorded in 1966 by American bands Stained Glass, The Kingsmen and The Cryan’ Shames, as well as South African jazz trumpet player Hugh Masekela. Among additional covers that appeared later is a brilliant rendition by Mr. Rickenbacker maestro himself from 2004.

The Beatles – If I Needed Someone

The Byrds – The Bells Of Rhymney

The Byrds – She Don’t Care About Time

Roger McGuinn – If I Needed Someone

If Needed Someone

If I needed someone to love
You’re the one that I’d be thinking of
If I needed someone

If I had some more time to spend
Then I guess I’d be with you, my friend
If I needed someone

Had you come some other day
Then 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
If I needed someone
Ah, ah, ah, ah

If I had some more time to spend
Then I guess I’d be with you, my friend
If I needed someone

Had you come some other day
Then 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
If I needed someone
Ah, ah

Sources: Wikipedia; Songfacts; YouTube

On This Day in Rock & Roll History: January 21

Dare I say it, it looks like my irregularly recurring music history feature is becoming more frequent. But with nearly 300 dates left to cover, I still have a long way to go, so it’s safe to assume this series won’t end anytime soon. With that said, let’s take a look at some of the events in music that happened on January 21 over the past six decades or so. I would also like to briefly acknowledge the untimely death of operatic rock artist Meat Loaf, which was reported overnight. He was believed to have been 74 years old. The cause of death has not been revealed.

1963: Since nearly everything in my little music world starts or finishes with The Beatles, let’s get this bloody item out of the way. According to The Beatles Bible, the ultimate source of truth about the band, On this day The Beatles appeared on the EMI plug show The Friday Spectacular, at EMI House, 20 Manchester Square, London. They chatted to hosts Shaw Taylor and Muriel Young, and studio recordings of ‘Please Please Me’ and ‘Ask Me Why’ were played. The show was recorded before an audience of around 100 teenagers, and was broadcast live on Radio Luxembourg. The overwhelming crowd size tells you this was still pre-Beatlemania. Though their press officer Tony Barrow said that during the recording, “I was finally convinced that The Beatles were about to enjoy the type of top-flight national fame which I had always believed that they deserved.” Side note: Three years later on that same date, George Harrison married his first wife Pattie Boyd, with Paul McCartney serving as best man.

1966: The Trips Festival, a three-day landmark event in the development of psychedelic music, kicked off at Longshoreman’s Hall in San Francisco. According to Songfacts Music History Calendar, Produced by Ken Kesey, Ramon Sender, and Stewart Brand, the event is largely recognized as the first to bring together what would be called the “hippie” movement. The sold-out festival, which drew 10,000 people, featured the Grateful Dead, Big Brother and the Holding Company and Jefferson Airplane, among others. And some 6,000 people drinking punch spiked with LSD, who witnessed one of the first fully developed light shows of the era. I also found this trippy clip!

1978: Saturday Night Fever, the soundtrack album of the 1977 motion picture starring John Travolta, stood at no. 1 on the Billboard 200, the first of 24 weeks on top of the U.S. mainstream chart. It also reached no. 1 in Canada, the UK, Australia and many other countries. Saturday Night Fever became one of the best-selling albums in music history. With more than 40 million copies sold worldwide, it remains the second-biggest selling soundtrack of all time after The Bodyguard. But, as oftentimes is the case, what goes up must come down. Not even three years later, the Bee Gees, the group most associated with the soundtrack and disco, called it quits, finding themselves caught in the furious backlash toward disco including bomb threats – something you could sadly picture nowadays as well! I said it before and I’ll say it again: I don’t care whether you call Bee Gees music disco, R&B, disco-influenced or anything else – I dig it!

1984: British progressive rock stalwarts Yes hit no. 1 in the U.S. on the Billboard Hot 100 with Owner of a Lonely Heart. Co-written by band members Trevor Rabin (guitar, keyboards, vocals), Jon Anderson (lead vocals) and Chris Squire (bass vocals), together with co-producer Trevor Horn, the catchy pop rocker was first released in October 1983 as the lead single for the group’s 11th studio album 90125, which came out the following month. Owner of the Lonely Heart became Yes’s first and only no. 1 on the U.S. mainstream chart. It also did well in Europe, especially in The Netherlands where it peaked at no. 2. While earlier singles like Yours Is No Disgrace, Roundabout and And You and I are great songs as well, they simply weren’t radio-friendly. Yes, Owner of a Lonely Heart has a commercial ’80s sound, but it’s a hell of a catchy tune!

1987: Aretha Franklin, the “Queen of Soul”, was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame by Keith Richards during the Rock Hall’s second annual induction ceremony. Here’s what the Rock Hall posted on their website: Lady Soul. The first woman inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Aretha Franklin was an artist of passion, sophistication and command, whose recordings remain anthems that defined soul music. Long live the Queen. And here are The Rolling Stones guitarist’s live remarks from that night – let’s just say it was a classic Keith Richards speech!

Sources: Wikipedia; The Beatles Bible; Songfacts Music History Calendar; Rock & Roll Hall of Fame website; YouTube