A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that George Martin died. I came across an article sharing some details about how he helped shape many of The Beatles' songs. Here are a couple of others mentioned in the story.
‘Yesterday’
Mr. McCartney first played Mr. Martin his classic torch song during the group’s Paris residency in January 1964, so the producer had plenty of time to mull how to handle it. The group may have considered it, at first, as simply a ballad that would get the full-band treatment. But when Mr. McCartney decided to record it, during the “Help!” sessions in 1965, Mr. Martin proposed that Mr. McCartney accompany himself on an acoustic guitar, with a string quartet taking the place of the other Beatles. Mr. McCartney had his doubts: In his view, string arrangements on rock records were suspect. But Mr. Martin played him some recordings and sat him down at the piano to show him what could be done. In the end, Mr. McCartney was convinced, and Mr. Martin — typically open to the group’s ideas — worked out his quartet arrangement with Mr. McCartney present. Mr. Martin has said, in fact, that one of the arrangement’s highlights — the descending cello line, after the lyric “I’m not half the man I used to be” — was Mr. McCartney’s idea.
‘Strawberry Fields Forever’
“Strawberry Fields Forever,” the first song recorded for the sessions that produced the “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” album, had as difficult a birth as any song the Beatles and Mr. Martin created. Lennon wrote this psychedelic dreamscape while filming “How I Won the War” in AlmerÃa, Spain, and recorded demos of all kinds — on acoustic guitar, electric guitar, with and without keyboard overdubs — before taking it to Abbey Road on Nov. 24, 1966. That night, the Beatles recorded a simple, short version with harmony vocals and a Mellotron approximation of a slide guitar, but they junked it two days later and started again, recording a tougher, tighter version with Mr. McCartney playing a fluty Mellotron introduction.
Lennon didn’t like that one either, and asked Mr. Martin to write an orchestral score. Mr. Martin responded with a hard-driven chamber score for brass and cellos. He sped the piece up, and moved the song to a higher key so that he could use the vibrant sound of the cello’s lowest open string. On Dec. 8, the band and its symphonic friends recorded this third version, which also boasted a raucous timpani part, played by Mr. McCartney, and an Indian zither, played by George Harrison.
Lennon liked it, briefly, and then he didn’t. He told Mr. Martin that he enjoyed both the band’s version and the chamber version, and envisioned a combination. Mr. Martin protested that the two were in different keys and at different tempos, but Lennon knew the extent of his producer’s magic, and said, “You can do it, George.” As it turned out, the key and tempo changes worked to Mr. Martin’s advantage: by slowing down the orchestral version and speeding up the band take, he found common ground without making either sound too unnatural. If you listen closely, you can spot his splice exactly one minute into the song.
‘A Day in the Life’
The song that closes “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” and is, for many listeners, the most astonishing track on an astonishing album, actually began as a pair of unrelated songs: The melancholy outer verses were Lennon’s, the brighter central section was Mr. McCartney’s. What transformed these fragments into a cohesive whole is a touch of avant-garde string scoring by Mr. Martin. By the time the Beatles set to work on the track, on Jan. 19, 1967, they and Mr. Martin had mapped out its structure. Two of Lennon’s verses would open the song, followed by Mr. McCartney’s verse, which would lead back to final thoughts from Lennon. Between the two composers’ sections, though, the band would vamp for 24 bars, and there would be another long vamp after the closing verse. How these would be filled — well, Mr. Martin would figure that out later.
For several weeks, the group tweaked the main parts of the song, polishing the vocals, drums and bass, adding extra percussion parts, and trying to imagine what should occupy those long vamped sections. Mr. McCartney thought an orchestral section would be good, but left the question of what that should entail to his producer. Mr. Martin’s solution was to take a page out of the playbooks of classical composers like John Cage and Krzysztof Penderecki, who at the time were creating works in which chance played a role. Mr. Martin hired 40 symphonic musicians for a session on Feb. 10, and when they turned up, they found on their stands a 24-bar score that had the lowest notes on their instruments in the first bar, and an E major chord in the last. Between them, the musicians were instructed to slide slowly from their lowest to highest notes, taking care not to move at the same pace as the musicians around them.
The sound was magnificently chaotic, and it became more so once Mr. Martin combined the four takes he recorded (some with Mr. McCartney on the podium, some conducted by Mr. Martin himself). It was a brilliant solution: as Lennon’s voice faded into the echoic distance, the orchestra began its buildup, ending sharply on the chord that begins Mr. McCartney’s section.
A couple more ideas on renaming things from Twitter users.
I was very young when the first wipers started to appear on cars in 1902. Early car companies felt that windshield wipers felt that 'the wipers had no practical value, would be distracting to drivers and were worth nothing monetarily.' They became standard issue in 1913. Read more about those early days here.
Chalk Art time again.
A clever defaced sign....
Check out these t-shirts and then we'll talk.
OK, what did you think? Do you want to buy one, like, yesterday? Think they look kind of fun? Amazing how they blended the color of the shirt so well with the shirt? Notice anything odd, though? Look at the wrinkles in the shirts. They are all the same. So, this is a digitally produced version of the shirt. Who knows how good the real ones will look. Disappointing, at least to me. Why not take the extra 45 seconds and photo each of the shirt designs?
I was thinking of The Beatles' song I'll Cry Instead in the shower this morning. Why? I'm not sure. Maybe because I had to get up early and go to work?
The other day, the group of us up in NYC were saying the titles of songs that come to mind about NYC, MBH and I chose the song I mentioned yesterday, Theme from New York, New York. SS and D-I-L picked Empire State of Mind by Jay Z and Alicia Keys. I don't think the GRANDS had a song. What song would you first think of? NYC is 352 years old, having been renamed from New Amsterdam back in 1664. As you can imagine, I was very young back then. BTW, this photo is not mine. I just liked its grittiness and B&W.
Here is the backdrop we saw looking toward the stage as we waited for the musical to begin the other day.
And here is the view of the theater looking behind us. It is now a very big place, so everyone should have had a great seat.
This is the view if you looked down towards the orchestra pit. What is it? The cross-hatching is actually a net so that nothing would fall down on the orchestra. The image in the center is the view of a camera so the orchestra and see the conductor. They are completely under the stage, and so, when he is watching the action on stage and directing, not all the orchestra and see his baton. This monitor lets them watch him. Still cannot see it? You can see his left arm in the monitor on the left side.
Oh, I am way late finishing today's post. I will end with today's CoV.
Thanks for sticking with it to the end.
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