For this week’s Mindlovemysery’s Menagerie Friday Faithfuls challenge, Jim Adams asks us to write anything about magnetic fields on the Sun, or if you are worried about an upcoming solar apocalypse, or write about whatever else that you think might fit.
So, I know nothing about the magnetic fields on the Sun, other than what Jim wrote about them in his post. I’m not worried a solar apocalypse, either. And, with chest congestion, sinuses full of snot, a hacking cough, a muddled head, and a low-grade fever, I decided to keep my response simple by presenting one of my favorite tracks from my personal favorite Beatles album, Abbey Road. The song is “Here Comes the Sun.”
“Here Comes the Sun” was written by George Harrison. He composed the song in early 1969 at his friend Eric Clapton’s country house. Harrison skipped a meeting at the Beatles’ Apple Corps organization to write the song. The lyrics of the song express his joy on the arrival of spring and the break he got from the band’s business affairs.
For this week’s Thursday Inspiration prompt, Jim Adams has asked us to respond to this challenge by using the prompt word “chemicals” or going with the above picture.
My first thoughts went to the Beatles song, “Polythene Pam,” which is, without break, sandwiched between “Mean Mr. Mustard” and “she Came in Through the Bathroom Window” on the Abbey Road album.
Polythene is a British term for polyethylene, a plastic polymer used in containers, insulation, and packaging. Written by John Lennon, the song is based on two people. One was Patricia Hodgett, who was a Cavern Dweller (someone who hung out at the Cavern Club, where The Beatles used to play). Pat used to actually eat polythene! They started calling her “Polythene Pat.”
The other woman was named Stephanie, and she was the girlfriend of John’s good friend, the poet Royston Ellis. John was with Ellis and Stephanie in the Channel Islands and they all had a three-way sexual experience with her wearing an outfit made from polythene. Ellis said, “We’d read all these things about leather and we didn’t have any leather but I had my oilskins and we had some polythene bags from somewhere. We all dressed up in them and wore them to bed.”
Lennon sang this in a thick Liverpool accent. Like the other Beatles, his regular singing voice sounded very American because he grew up listening to U.S. artists.
In the line, “She’s the kind of a girl that makes the News Of The World,” The News Of The World is a tabloid newspaper that specializes in risqué news reporting.
Here are the lyrics to “Polythene Pam.”
Well, you should see Polythene Pam She's so good-looking but she looks like a man Well, you should see her in drag dressed in her polythene bag Yes, you should see Polythene Pam Yeah, yeah, yeah
Get a dose of her in jackboots and kilt She's killer-diller when she's dressed to the hilt She's the kind of a girl that makes the "News of the World" Yes, you could say she was attractively built Yeah, yeah, yeah
For this week’s Song Lyric Sunday, Jim Adams asks us to find a song that made a great closing track on an album. One of my all-time favorite albums is Abbey Road from the Beatles. One of the interesting aspects of that album is that there was a perfect song that was meant to end that album, and its fitting title was “The End.” However, due to a miscommunication, it ended up not being the very last track on that album. More on that later.
“The End” was composed by Paul McCartney and credited to Lennon–McCartney. It was the last song recorded collectively by all four Beatles and is the final song of the medley that constitutes the majority of side two of the 1969 album.
The song starts over the end of “Carry That Weight.” The line “In the end the love you take is equal to the love you make” is essentially the Beatles’ closing statement. It is the last lyric on the last album they recorded. Let It Be was the last album they released, but it was recorded earlier.
Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison took turns doing guitar solos, This was the only time in the Beatles’ history that they traded riffs. a rotating sequence of three, two-bar guitar solos. The idea for a guitar instrumental over this section was Harrison’s, and Lennon suggested that the three of them each play a section. The solos begin approximately 53 seconds into the song.
Geoff Emerick, the Beatles’ recording engineer, later recalled: “John, Paul, and George looked like they had gone back in time, like they were kids again, playing together for the sheer enjoyment of it. More than anything, they reminded me of gunslingers, with their guitars strapped on, looks of steely-eyed resolve, determined to outdo one another. Yet there was no animosity, no tension at all. You could tell they were simply having fun.”
The first two bars are played by McCartney, the second two by Harrison, the third two by Lennon, and then the sequence repeats twice. Each has a distinctive style which McCartney felt reflected their personalities. Immediately after Lennon’s third solo, the piano chords of the final line, “And in the end …” begins. Then the orchestration arrangement takes over with a humming chorus and Harrison playing a final guitar solo that ends the song.
Another first in the last song they recorded together was that it contains the only drum solo Ringo Starr ever performed as a Beatle. He hated solos and had to be persuaded to do it, with McCartney convincing him that the drum fill was necessary as a transition. Ringo later said that he could never re-create the solo if he tried.
So, remember when I said that this was supposed to be the last track on the album? Well, if you’re familiar with the album, then you know that the last song on the album is the 23-second song, “Her Majesty.”
“Her Majesty” was intended to be an actual tribute to the Queen of England. It was supposed to be placed in between “Mean Mr. Mustard” and “Polythene Pam” on the side two Abbey Road medley, but Paul McCartney, who recorded it before the other Beatles arrived in the studio, had it removed because he didn’t like it.
Abbey Road studios engineer John Kurlander said, “We did all the remixes and cross-fades to overlap the songs, Paul was there, and we heard it together for the first time. He said ‘I don’t like ‘Her Majesty,’ throw it away,’ so I cut it out, but I accidentally left in the last note of the song that was originally supposed to come before it. Paul said, ‘It’s only a rough mix, it doesn’t matter.’ In other words, don’t bother about making a clean edit because it’s only a rough mix. I’d been told never to throw anything away, so after he left, I picked it up off the floor, put about twenty seconds of red leader tape before it and stuck it onto the end of the edit tape. The next day, down at Apple, Malcolm Davies cut a playback lacquer of the whole sequence and, even though I’d written on the box that ‘Her Majesty’ was unwanted, he too thought, ‘Well, mustn’t throw anything away, I’ll put it on at the end.’ I’m only assuming this, but when Paul got that lacquer he must have liked hearing ‘Her Majesty’ tacked on the end… We never remixed ‘Her Majesty’ again, that was the mix which ended up on the finished LP. This is why ‘Her Majesty’ doesn’t have a final guitar chord. It lays unheard, at the beginning of ‘Polythene Pam.’ And the jarring electric guitar chord that begins ‘Her Majesty’ is actually from the end of the original ‘Mean Mr. Mustard.'”
For this week’s Song Lyric Sunday theme, Jim Adams has asked us to find a song that incorporates the Bakersfield Sound. Once again I’m at a loss. Jim described the Bakersfield sound as songs that have a real hillbilly heart. He said that the sound “is defined by its influences of rock and roll and honky-tonk style country, and its heavy use of electric instrumentation and backbeats driven by the piano, steel guitar, and of course the Telecaster guitar.” I Googled the Bakersfield Sound and got a list of country music artists who are known for embracing the Bakersfield sound. I’ve heard of a few of the artists, but the only song that I’d ever heard of was “Act Naturally” by Buck Owens and the Buckeroos. But it was only because of The Beatles’ cover of the song that I recognized it.
“Act Naturally” was written by Johnny Russell and Voni Morrison. Russell was a prolific country music songwriter, and Morrison was a member of Owens’ backup band. Russell’s lyrics were inspired by what he told his girlfriend when she asked why he went to Los Angeles: “They’re gonna put me in the movies, they’re gonna make a big star out of me.”
Owens recorded “Act Naturally” on February 12, 1963, and the song was released on March 11 as a non-album single. It entered the Billboard country charts on April 13, 1963. In all, it spent 28 weeks on the country charts. It was Owens first number 1 country hit and it remains one of his most popular songs.
It’s an upbeat song with a honky-tonk vibe, but the lyric is self-effacing and despondent, as Owens sings about how, if they made a movie about a man who is sad and lonely, he’d be perfect for the part, since he could just act naturally. The uptempo rhythm and buoyant delivery find him acting in a way, as he is clearly masking his pain.
The Beatles released a popular version of this song in 1965 that reached number 47 on the U.S. Hot 100. It was one of their few songs where drummer Ringo Starr — a fan of country music — sang lead, and it became his showcase song.
Here are the lyrics to “Act Naturally.”
They're gonna put me in the movies They're gonna make a big star out of me We'll make a film about a man that's sad and lonely And all I gotta do is act naturally
Well, I'll bet you I'm gonna be a big star Might win an Oscar you can never tell The movies gonna make me a big star 'Cause I can play the part so well
Well, I hope you come and see me in the movies Then I'd know that you will plainly see The biggest fool that ever hit the big time And all I gotta do is act naturally
We'll make the scene about a man that's sad and lonely And beggin' down upon his bended knee I'll play the part but I won't need rehearsing All I have to do is act naturally
Well, I'll bet you I'm gonna be a big star Might win an Oscar you can never tell The movies gonna make me a big star 'Cause I can play the part so well
Well, I hope you come and see me in the movies Then I know that you're gonna plainly see The biggest fool that ever hit the big time And all I gotta do is act naturally
We'll make a film about a man that's sad and lonely All I have to do is act naturally Two, three, four All we have to do is act naturally Woo
Here’s The Beatles cover:
And here’s a duet with Buck Owens and Ringo Starr from 1989:
This, That, and the Other 