Beatles FAQ

Tamla Motown was a key influence on the early Beatles sound.  They covered Tamla tracks like PLEASE MR POSTMAN and wrote songs in a similar style. THIS BOY (1963) for example is what George Harrison called 'John doing Smokey'. GOT TO GET YOU INTO MY LIFE (1966) is a later homage, first released on Revolver. It is one  of Paul McCartney's most joyful and exuberant compositions, and perhaps The Beatles most danceable recordings. Even the hard-to-please Mr Lennon hailed it 'as on of Paul's best songs.  Early studio versions, however, lacked energy and punch.  It was the introduction of Memphis Stax-style horns that gave the song a new drive.  Earth, Wind and Fire pick up on this dynamism in their 1978 cover. They give it the song treatment, amplifying the horns and harmonies in an exhilarating arrangement. Memphis or Haight Ashbury Wisely, they do not draw attention to the writer's revelation that the 'she' in the lyric is marijuana. "It's actual...

By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8063909 The best known interpretation of a Beatles song, performed in sensational fashion at Woodstock in 1969. On Sergeant Pepper With a Little Help From My Friends is a charming sing-along, ideally suited to Ringo's vocal range. Joe Cocker takes it to a different place.  Paying tribute to the late Sheffield singer Paul McCartney said:   I remember him and [producer] Denny Cordell coming round to the studio and Saville Row and playing me what they recorded. It was just mind-blowing. He totally turned the song into a soul anthem, and I was forever grateful to him for doing that."

There have several thousand covers of Beatles songs but a short list of those which work well. Twist my arm and I’d go for George Benson’s interpretation of Golden Slumbers   from his extraordinary The Other Side of Abbey Road (1971) Benson was a young jazz guitar prodigy at a time when the form appeared to have hit the buffers. To purists, his attempt to take on The Beatles was the first in long series of contemptible sellouts. His musical peers saw it differently, with Herbie Hancock, Freddie Hubbard, and Sonny Fortune all contributing to what was essentially a new take on the a tradition pioneered by the Ella Fitzgerald Songbooks. Golden Slumbers is a highlight that draws on the unusual genesis of the original. This was famously inspired by  Paul McCartney coming across his step-sister's sheet music for a piece called Cradle Music left on the piano at his father's house in Liverpool. Intrigued, but unable to read the 'black dots on the page' Paul invented a melody an...

Even at the height of his fame, Paul McCartney enjoyed writing songs for other artists, especially female singers. Often, he did this unbidden, offering Cilla Black Step Inside Love for her first TV show, for example. He was also the most musically adventurous of The Beatles - and eclectic in his taste.  He first heard Those Were the Days in The Blue Angel club in London. The singer was Gene Raskin, a New York-based folk singer with Russian roots. McCartney liked the song and offered to produce a recording by Mary Hopkins, a young Welsh folk singer recently signed by the new Apple label.  Copyright McCartney assumed that  Those Were the Days  had been written by Raskin. In fact, the copyright situation was complex and would become the subject of a legal battle.  The tune is that of the  Russian romance song "Dorogoi dlinnoyu" [ ru ]("Дорогой длинною" Tr: "By the long road").  This may be considered tradtional, though it is sometimes credited to Boris...

Wimpole Street  “I woke up with a lovely tune in my head.  I thought, ‘That’s great, I wonder what that is?’  There was an upright piano next to me, to the right of the bed by the window.    I got out of bed, sat at the piano, found G, found F sharp minor 7th – and that leads you through then to B to E minor, and finally back to E.  It all leads forward logically.  I liked the melody a lot but because I’d dreamed it I couldn’t believe I’d written it.