The Music of the Beatles will track the musical development of the band, starting from the earliest days in Liverpool and Hamburg, moving through the excitement of Beatlemania, the rush of psychedelia, and the maturity of Abbey Road. While the focus will be on the music, we will also consider how recording techniques, the music business, the music of other artists, and the culture of the 1960s affected John, Paul, George, and Ringo as they created the Beatles repertory. There is probably no band or artist that has had more written about their music than the Beatles. There are many good books on the band's biography, several insider accounts offering glimpses behind the scenes, books that interpret the meaning of the songs, and even books that catalog dates and people regarding the band. This course will try to synthesize much of that information into an account of the Beatles' development as musicians and songwriters.
Please Please Me
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來自 University of Rochester 的課程
披头士乐队的音乐
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從本節課中
Early Day and Success in the UK
The Beatles as pop craftsmen. Study of cover versions at Cavern and Hamburg shows, Please Please Me, With the Beatles, and the singles from this period.
與講師見面
John CovachProfessor of Music and Director
Institute for Popular Music
The Beatles' first full length album is Please Please Me and as
I mentioned in the last video was released in March of 1963.
Let's take just a minute to go back to what I
was talking about, the difference between the U.K. and U.S. versions.
There's a story I'll get into in more detail next week about, why
Capitol Records in the United States as not willing to release Beatles music?
Capital record is actually the sub city, sub
city or label of EMI in the United States,
this was a sub city label telling the parent
company we don't want to release the music anyway.
More involved story but the bottom line is they didn't want to release
the Beatles music, so George Martin Still wanted it released in this country.
And so he released a lot of the early music before 1964 and throughout 1963,
on Vee-Jay Records and then another single on Swan Records.
And so, Vee-Jay had the tape.
The tapes for Please Please Me and some of the singles surrounding it.
they, they brought out an album called Introducing the Beatles, which is
essentially Please Please Me without the song Please Please Me or Ask My Why.
It was originally scheduled to be released in the
summer of 1963, but for whatever reason it wasn't.
But when the Beatles started to have the hit with I Want To Hold Your Hand.
In January of 1964, Vee-Jay rushed the album out and, and had a hit
record on their hands, the Beatles had a hit record on their hands with Vee-Jay.
In fact, at one point they had, you know, two of
their own albums at the top of the charts on different labels.
Meet the Beatles which was their version, which
was the U.S. version of With With the Beatles.
Was on Capitol and this one introducing the Beatles on Vee-Jay.
And so the the reason why two the two tracks were cut off is look
look at the way Capitol did it, the original album had 14 tracks on it.
And Vee-Jay said that's too much, we only do six each, six tracks
a side in this country so they cut two tunes off made so
Please Please Me and Ask Me Why.
Were of course available as singles a and b side so
Was a, a quick comparison between the US and the UK version.
We're talking about the UK version here, on the UK version
there are six covers out of 14 songs on the album.
And if people knowing the history of the Beatles say, well gosh, that
is odd that there are as many as six covers on the album.
No.
That's not what's odd about this record.
What's odd about this record is that there are eight originals on the record.
Most other groups would have maybe gotten one or two songs
on the record but almost everything they did would have been covers.
What's exceptional here is the Beatles have so much
of their original music on the very first album.
But the six covers tell us a little bit more, as we
were talking before, about some of the influences on the Beatles' music.
We have Anna sung by John,
which was a song that had been originally done by Arthur Alexander.
We have Chains, a girl group song, that had been a
number 17 hit for the Cookies, that one sung by George.
Boys, another Shirelles, a girl group song, in fact it
was the B side of Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow.
That's a song for Ringo to sing.
Baby It's You, another Shirelles girl group song,
a number eight song, that one sung by John.
A Taste of Honey.
Which was a Bobby Scott tune from a soundtrack that Paul sings.
And Twist and Shout by the Isley Brothers sung
by John famously at the end of the session.
That became a number 17 hit after the Beatles success.
But famously sung at the end of the session because John was going to scream
it, and they knew after he sang Twist and Shout, there'd be nothing left.
Of course you're doing the album all in a day,
there was no chance of coming back the next day.
So they kept that one for the end.
And as
a lot of commentators like to say, you could almost hear.
Hear the vocal chords shredding as he's singing that tune.
Very, very energetic.
Look at how many girl group songs we have?
When you look at the early imaging of the Beatles, one of
the things that Brian Epstein did is, he got the Beatles Out
of all the kind of leather gear into matching suits, you know,
the, the Beatle boots, the hair cuts, all that kind of thing.
He really spiffed up,
the act and when they're presented live on stage, you see that the lead
singer is always at one mike And the two background vocalists are at another mic.
That looks very much like the way the girl groups where imaged at
about the same time, so Brian Epstein taking his cue from what was happening.
So, in [LAUGH] many ways I guess we should look for
girl group influence in the music of The Beatles, which is
not the way most people tend to think about that music,
but it's very much a part of who they were early on.
The eight songs here that are originals are
a mostly Paul song, I Saw Her Standing There.
We'll talk about that in the next video.
A mostly John song called Misery.
Another mostly John song called Ask Me Why.
A John song called Please Please Me which we'll talk about in
just the next video and a mostly Paul song called Love Me Do.
Eh, which we'll talk about in the next video.
In addition to that, there's P.S. I Love You, mostly written by Paul.
Do You Want To Know a Secret
was written by George to sing on. And There's A Place, another John song.
In most cases, almost all cases, except in the cases where John and Paul
have written a song, for one of the other Beatles, Ringo or George, to sing.
If it's a John song, John sings lead.
If it's a Paul song, Paul sings lead.
Doesn't always happen that way, there are Paul songs, where John sings lead.
But most of the time, if they wrote the song.
They sang the song and the other
guy sings the harmony.
What are some of the musical features that we can find that sort
of go across all of these songs, plus the singles from this era.
Well, the songs are short, arranged and very polished.
So distinguishing them from say, early Rolling
Stones singles where there's a kind of
rawness that they're actually trying to get
into the records because they, there, there,
they very much like.
The music of chest blues and the sort
of authenticity of sort of a rugged performance.
And so that's sort of where the Stones are.
The Beatles, more kind of a polished,
professional kind of recording kind of thing.
The songs are short, as I say, very much arranged,
and always falling around the two minutes to two minutes
and 20 second time line, which is perfect for trying
to get your song on the radio, it turns out.
Very much vocals up front.
Front.
So these are not songs that are led by like guitar licks or guitar solos.
It's all about the singing.
Any guitar solo is short and provided for contrast.
I would say George Harrison, one of the masters of the perfect pop guitar solo.
They're not fancy.
We're not talking Jimmy Paige or Jeff Beck or Richie Blackmore here.
You know, the, just the right thing to fit in
the tune in the context of what the Beatles [UNKNOWN].
Lot of emphasis
on harmony singing, especially the two-part vocals between John Lennon
and Paul McCartney, in many ways influenced by the Everly Brothers.
The two-part vocals singing that the Everly Brothers did especially since
it's not only two-parts, but sort of in a high range.
And so, lots of singing.
These Beatles records are essentially. Singing records.
If you're in a band and you're trying to cover Beatles tunes.
And, you haven't got singers.
You are really in trouble. Because, the songs really are
about the singing.
There's an extensive use of A, B, A form, in this early music.
And, we'll talk about that in the next
video when we talk about some specific songs.
But A, A, B, A form.
Is a very, very typical formal structure,
that appears in American ten pan hellen music.
It's not the only formal structure.
But it's very, very common.
And so when you see it happening in these early Beetle songs over and over again.
Probably 90% of the time you're loving at AABA
form or these tend, you know that the Beetles.
Must have been aware of their form, they
didn't just sort of keep happening onto it over
and over again like huh, what do you know this one's kind of like the other one.
No.
They knew what they doing, they knew what the form,
what the formula was, and what this does is it gives
us an idea that they, that they have studied the
music that they were playing when they were doing cover versions.
They had.
Figured out in their own language, I'm not saying that
they were music theorists to understand all
the tune, the term, terminology of music theory.
But what I am saying is they understood
how these songs were constructed, and they imitated that.
They modeled their music on that.
So in many ways, we could say that early Beatles
music is essentially American pop, or extremely influenced by American pop.
It acquires.
Much more Britishness as the Beatles careers develop, but early
on it is an imitation, it's an homage to American
popular music, and AABA form was one way in which we could see that play out.
It's simple instrumentation, a couple of guitars, base, some vocals, drums.
And in many ways the recording are a kind of auto snapshot.
That is there is no extensive dubbing and bring in
a guitarist or [UNKNOWN] string orchestra or things like that.
What you hear is essentially meant to be a snapshot of what you might
hear if the group was in front of you playing at that particular moment.
And when you compare.
These, these, recordings on the albums with the BBC recordings, which were in
fact done live, [LAUGH] they really do sound very much like each other.
These really are audio snapshots.
I mention that because that's going to change.
As we talk, as we go through the weeks, what we're
going to find is that Beatles records increasingly stop being audio snapshots.
Start to take advantage of the recording studio and the
various kind of things that are possible in a recording
studio, And we're going to want to sort of track that change
as we track the development of this album, but for now, it's audio-recorded.
Now, in the next video, I want to do what I call, song closeups, which is take a
little bit closer look at three of the songs
we've been talking about from that alb, from this album.
Love me do.
Please Please Me and I Saw Her Standing There.
