KEY A Major METER 4/4 FORM Intro -> Verse -> Verse -> Bridge -> Verse -> Verse -> Bridge -> Verse (Guitar solo) -> Verse -> Outro
GENERAL POINTS OF INTEREST
- I'm pausing in our otherwise order-driven studies to acknowledge and celebrate the extraordinary events of this past week. Can you dig it? -- new Beatles songs! In spite of all the hype, I wouldn't allow myself to quite prepare for this eventuality until it actually came to pass. Even then, it took me a few days and more than a few listenings to relax and open myself up sufficiently to the point where, beyond gentle and passive enjoyment, I was really *hooked*. Alright then, so *you* got off on it right away; and maybe I'm just a jealous guy :-)
- At any rate, this deliberately slow and serious anthem cast in neo-classically pop music terms and form is apparently not what some people were expecting or hoping for. But heck, it's a Beatles song, no question. Look at how it is replete with so many familiar compositional trademarks of the group:
- "Creative derivation" is an important, operative phrase here. Adding novel twists to familiar patterns or nouvelle-cuisine-like combining of disparate stylistic ingredients were always a hallmark of the Beatles. In the case of FAAB, I am particularly impressed by the way in which they spike up the form, the chord progressions and the key schemes. And here, as always, they throw in these mold-breaking variations so effortlessly and casual like; more often than not, serving subtly expressive, not merely clever, ends.
- The form is capcious:
- It is also somewhat complex:
- The harmony is unusual on the micro level:
And on the macro level as well:
- The song divides into three major sections: the first four verses, the two bridges which overlap them, and the guitar solo plus final verse and outro. And these sections complement and contrast with each other exquisitely in terms both music and words. With its cyclical, downward chord progression, the early verses convey a sad droopiness which conjurs for me such visual images as Dali's melting clocks and musically enervated echoes of "I'm Only Sleeping." By contrast, the bridge features a upward-bound, potentially open-ended chord progression that conveys optimism strongly guarded if not undermined by serious uncertainty. The guitar solo and final verse, while obviously a direct variation on the opening verses, demonstrate how sadness is transfigured sometimes by deeper understanding.
- The tune stays within a narrow range. Although the verse eventually spreads out over a full octave, it is characterized in your mind by its much repeated opening phrase which sits within a very small melodic space. The manner in which the first note of the melody is sustained all the way into the second measure before showing any sign of movement reminds me very strongly of "I Should Have Known Better."
- In context of the A Major home key, that opening phrase (E-F-G-E) sounds heavily inflected by the mode of the natural minor scale. When the guitar solo gets its turn with the tune, the song has momentarily modulated to the key of C Major, giving a very different feel to the otherwise identical phrase. Brahms (not bombs) plays a very similar trick in the second movement of his 4th symphony with the exact same melodic phrase on E! (Check it out -- he plays the game between the keys of E and C.)
- Harmonically, the song is characterized by a tricky variation upon one of the most hackneyed chord progressions of rock and roll. You're used to hearing a Major IV chord as the third one in the I-vi-IV-V series, but here the Beatles consistently break the rule by placing one of the following in its place: either the *minor iv* chord ([this is] d), or a Major chord on the flat VI'th degree (F Major).
- The d and F chords provide an ongoing measure of pathos to the song, and on a technical level, they set up the possibility for easy pivoting over the key of C Major parallel minor. The G Major chord also serves a pivotal role; being both the V chord of C Major and the flat-VII of the A Major home key.
- Yes, the thick backing track of acoustic and electric guitars combined with steady mezzo-forte drumming DOES sound a lot like the Travelling Wilburys. But then again, didn't you used to say that the Travelling Wilburys sounded a lot like the Beatles for the same reason? As much as you might complain that Jeff Lynne placed too heavy a thumb on the scale, I think there's also an element at work here of "what goes around comes around." So stop complaining, would ya'!
- John's ethereal vocal is a great example of how to make a poetic virtue out of a logistical necessity. No slight at all is intended by my putting it this way.
- The tight harmonies of the other three pick right off where "Because" left off, so nice to hear again. The stereo mix of their singing is extremely wide and separate as if, unlike those '63/'64 concert performances of "This Boy," they no longer cared to huddle around a single mike. The switching of George for Paul in the second bridge is a nice example of avoiding foolish consistency.
- A small touch of the typical Beatles layering is found in the addition of an arpeggio-playing guitar part in the middle pair of verses.
- The intro exposes the entire chord progression of the verse and sets a measured pace for the outspread form that will develop. The steady harmonic rhythm of two chords per measure so strongly reinforces the deliberate pace that the final measure, with its 4->3 suspension over a single chord, feels very long, indeed:
|A f# |F E |A f# |d E | A: I vi flat VI V I vi iv V |A f# |d G |C a |E | I vi iv i V C: ii G I vi 4 ---> 3
- The verse contains an extremely short-lived modulation to the key of C which returns back to the home key at the beginning of the next verse via the parallel minor key of a. Given the several iterations of this section, I poetically react to the gesture toward C Major as the momentary raising of hope or yearning that "things" might change, only to have such hope dashed by the immediate reassertion of the not just the home key, but first its infinitely sadder parallel minor. And, as in a good detective novel, such early appearing and seemingly inconsequential details bear watching for in the later going.
- Two loud drum shots call you to attention, as if you needed it; and be honest -- you did. George's singing slide work deserves an honorable mention and is applied sparingly; besides the intro, it is appears elsewhere only in the solo section and during the outro.
- The verse is eight measures in length and features two rougly parallel phrases of equal length.
- In true Beatles style, the many repetitions of the verse feature a pattern of some variation at the detailed level. The second of each paired vocal verses features a ornamented flipping figure at the beginning of the tune. The second appearance of this flip (in the fourth verse) provides variation on top of variation -- John sings the flip and one of the other Boys echoes him. The later verses, starting with the guitar solo to the end, feature a significant change to the chord progression; you'll see.
- The second bridge is setup by a variation in the chord progression of the verse which precedes it; this allows the second bridge to be entered more directly and naturally than via the deceptive cadence used for the first bridge. That augmented chord on A-flat doesn't get an Roman numeral, by the way; think of it as the a minor chord sustained but with the bassline slipping in a chromatic passing note on the way down to G.
|C a |A-flat G | I vi Augmented C: V
- The phrasing of the first bridge is very similar to that of the verse, but the harmonic shape makes an enormous difference. In spite of the chromatic trick with the minor chord, the verse section remains tonally crystal clear. Tonality wise, the bridge is extremely unsettled. The first bridge, especially, is entered by way of a so-called deceptive cadence (i.e. the V of A resolving to its flat-VI chord instead of I):
|F |f#-dim. |G |A | flat-VI vii-of-flat-VII flat-VII I (?) |F |f#-dim. |G |E | flat-VI vii-of-flat-VII flat-VII V 8 --> 9 -> 8 4 --> 3
- This chord progression has the positive-feeling virtue of being on the rise, but it really gives you *NO* clear feel of home key until perhaps the V chord at the end sets up the obvious return to the home key, and this lends a positively unsettled anxious feeling to it. My choice of Roman numerals for the chords is somewhat arbitrary. It might be more honest to describe the progression as the harmonization of a rising chromatic baseline on its way toward some key not yet clearly determined.
- The best proof of how unclear your sense of home key is during this bridge is the extent to which the A Major chord at the end of the first phrase does not sound convincing at all as a I chord; indeed, that A Major chord, sitting under the question left hanging, "can we really live without each other?" is the most extreme moment in the song. Think of it as the ironic paradox of you're being literally "at home" in one sense yet not being able to feel that way at all! This sense of mounting suspense and anxiety is heightened by the slower harmonic rhythm of the bridge compared with the verse.
- The repetition of the bridge is half the length of the first one. Musically, it is built out of the second phrase, though in terms of lyrics, it splices together the first half of the first bridges first phrase with the second half of its second phrase. Beyond just clever, it importantly lowers the anxiety quotient of the second bridge by eliminating the most trying of both the chord and lyrics.
- Yet another example of consistency-avoiding variation is the way that George places just a tad more body English on his E9-making vocal flip than Paul does the first time.
- The guitar solo fills a verse-like section, but its opening is cast as a full fledged arrival in, and celebration of the key of C Major. Musically and poetically, this provides a critically needed affirmation that the earlier, incompletely sucessful yearnings in this direction CAN indeed be fulfilled:
|C a |A-flat G |C a |f G | C: I vi flat-VI V I vi iv V |C a |f G |A I vi iv V A: flat-VII I
- Visually speaking as an avid hiker of New Hampshire's taller Whites, I experience this moment of the song the same way I do that moment when, after arduously trekking upward through thick forest for 3 or 4 hours with only an infrequent tentative open view to the surroundings, I come suddenly out of the scrub face to face with the 360-degree glory of the summit's view. The eighth-note movement in the backing voices in this section nicely enhances the feeling of ecstasy over-brimming.
If you'd like an more musically oriented analogy, compare this to the way JS Bach in a fugue that is otherwise in a very deep minor key somewhere late in the proceedings introduces the subject for the first time in a Major key.
- In light of this understanding, the shortening the second bridge is more than a clever compositional hack. Rather it can be seen as motivated by a desire to most properly set the stage for the wonderous climax which follows it; i.e. the half-length bridge steps around what was in the first bridge the strongest moment of doubt in both lyrics and music.
- This section is destined, alas, to return eventually to the home key of A, but this time it's NOT via a minor; instead, it uses the G chord to pivot directly from C Major to A Major as a flat-VII chord. Technically, in order to make this work, the guitar solo verse is shortened by two measures.
- The substitution of the flat-VII -> I in place of the erstwhile pass toward C Major with return via a minor is continued in the final verse and all ther way through to the outro. This variation makes the end of these sections feel not just less sad but serenely, even optimistically accepting of how things are after all because things are seen differently now in light of the emotional ground traversed over the course of the song.
- The first part of the outro is cast in a classically Beatlesque once-twice-three-times reprise of the final phrase eventually coming to a clean, complete ending:
- last 2 measures of final verse - - and outro - |A f# |d G |A |- | I vi iv flat-VII I
- As the final A Major chord fades away, you hear as though for the first time that an organ sits on one of the foundation layers of the backing, and wonder if it's been there all along and you didn't notice it, or if perhaps, that's only an illusion.
- The outro features a uniquely appropriate instant in the song where John, George, and Paul perform in some kind of euphonious counterpoint. Throughout the rest of the song they either appear singing or playing solo, or singing in block harmony. Here, at the very end, John's lead vocal is heard simultaneously with George's lead guitar licks and an almost sotto-voce scat lick from Paul. Come Together, indeed.
- The second part of the outro with its rising sounds of indeterminate pitch followed by the ukelele finish in D Major, and the backwards message from John, all played over a fading out vamp over the A Major chord is suggestive of many another "experimental" ending from earlier Beatles songs, but this one is also quite tentative and not fully formed. This reminds one, after all, that these kinds of endings were very much John's provence, and the sketchy stage in which this one is left is as though Paul, George and Ringo were willing to rough it out but still left it for John to complete when he returns from "holiday".
SOME FINAL THOUGHTS
- This same preoccupation with the keys of A Major, a minor, and C Major turns out to be a conspicuous factor in (and you should not be at all surprised by this) the Abbey Road Medley, and this bears some scrutiny.
- Five of the eight tracks running from "You Never Give Me Your Money" through "The End" are in one or more of the three keys mentioned above; the three that are not ( "Sun King," "Mean Mr. Mustard," and "Polythene Pam") are all in the key of E Major -- i.e. the V of both flavors of A. (They are also presented in a straight sequence and they're all obviously songs by John, but that's a separate issue.)
- Furthermore, note the extent to which those 5 tracks with the three keys, both internally and with respect to the overall sequence of songs:
"YNGYM": a minor -> C Major -> A Major "SCITTBW": A Major -> C Major -> A Major -> C Major -> A Major "GS": C Major "CTW" C Major -> a minor -> C Major "TE": A Major -> C Major
You can get a feeling of what I'm driving at by, instead of listening to the actually medley, listen to just the sequence of the chords as I've layed them out above; the medley stripped down to its stick-figure outline.
- You'll note how the medley ends literally in a different place from where it begins; it is worthy somehow or destined to end in the blazing sunshine of C Major after having started out in the melancholy key of a minor. After shuttling in around some of the same keys traversed by the medley, FAAB ends up in exactly the same place it started, A Major, though the way the music is fashioned, that same A Major feels somehow different than it did at the beginning. Compared to the medley, you might say FAAB is not as lucky in some respects, though I dare say in most other respects it is infinitely more wise.
Regards, Alan (firstname.lastname@example.org) --- "You were only waiting for this moment to be ..." 112895#194 --- Copyright (c) 1995 by Alan W. Pollack All Rights Reserved
Click here to return to AWP's index.