Words Of Love

Richard Furnstein: "Words Of Love" is a cover of an innocuous yet revolutionary Buddy Holly song (surely the most innocuous yet revolutionary artist in music history). As a holdover from their time vibrating on sticky stages in bratwurst halls in Hamburg, it provides a handy key to the harmonic foundations of the group. Indeed, there's a gentle simple charm to how perfectly restrained the voices of Lennon/McCartney/Harrison are on the track as they simultaneously push their droning vocal lines (heeeeeeeeeeeear, truuuuuuuuuuuuuue). It's a light touch on the back and a drink of punch from a paper cup at the sock hop, so it's a genuine delight to imagine them delivering these angelic chords to methamphetamine-enhanced white power horndogs in a foreign land. You spilled some on your trousers, mate.

Robert Bunter: Well of course you're absolutely right, but the apparent simplicity and restraint actually conceal some characteristically inventive moves. The insistent eighth-note handclaps underlying almost the entire two minutes of the track's duration evoke the then-unheard texture of a scratched-up CD-R attempting to be read by your player, which strangely seem to line up with the beat regardless of the source material. The effect evokes the original version, which featured a similarly disorienting rhythmic figure caused by the primitive slapback echo on the acoustic guitar interacting with the understated mambo of Jerry Allison's horny tom-toms. The vocal harmonies (which the Beatles reproduced in full) eschew the luxurious stacked intervals of doo-wop in favor of low-register perfect fifths that give the impression of a chant or incantation. The overall mood is one of mature, adult serenity - more like a porcelain mug of espresso or a snifter of Grand Marnier than a paper cup of punch in my opinion. I hope I haven't been too confrontational here.

Richard Furnstein: Not at all, my dear old friend. I appreciate your frankness and am genuinely excited to talk about this song. It reminds me of so many late nights at Ramada Inns, discussing the hidden delights on Beatles For Sales with other attendees of the local Beatlefest. "Did you know that Ringo played a packing case on 'Words Of Love'?" "Of course I do! Is that like a wooden packing crate or just a common wooden box?" "Should we call my cousin? He lives outside of London and I'm sure he'd know. It's already 9:30 in the morning there!" Moments like this were like boldly opening a properly folded road atlas on the bonnet at the car park. A cuppa on the dash to fuel our adventures and a rucksack of crisps and sausage rolls in the boot. It almost didn't matter where our journeys would take us. We were just happy to engage in the sacred conversations of Beatle fandom, to solve the puzzles left for us by these faraway beings, to find a way to feel closer to our memories as the world around us became more certain. "There's A Place," indeed. And I feel a familiar tingle as we head there once again.

Robert Bunter: It's true, we had a lot of fun at BeatleFest. I get hungry just thinking about those sausage rolls. On the other hand, I get nauseated when I think about other humble British street foods like pie mash, jellied eels, smack barm pey wet, and Lancashire cockles. You have to eat some of those things really fast right out of the deep fryer or else in about five minutes you're going to have a greasy, inedible mess and you'll get fingerprints all over the picture sleeve of the Beatles For Sale (No. 2) EP that you just bought from Stan Panenka from his special under the counter box where he keeps the real goods.

Richard Furnstein: "Words Of Love" is a showcase for unique harmonies of the Beatles' singers. I've always thought Buddy Holly meant something unique to each of the boys. George always seemed inspired by the slashing open chords and leaned on some of the early rock simplicity in his pre-Rubber Soul offerings and frequently reverted to these tricks throughout his solo career. John loved that Buddy wore glasses and named his band as a nod to The Crickets. Paul tapped into the optimism of the lovelorn that defined so much of Buddy Holly's work. And lest we forget, Paul purchased the Buddy Holly song publishing catalog in the seventies. This resulted in the Denny Laine album Holly Days (produced by McCartney and a nice revenue stream for Paul after the ink was dry on the contract. Later, McCartney's business move inspired his friend Michael Jackson to buy out the Northern Songs catalog from Yoko Ono and McCartney, resulting in a lifetime of Beatles tunes used in unfortunate advertisements and a decrease in funds for the skinflint McCartney.

Robert Bunter: Maybe we're being too kind though. We can see the inclusion of "Words Of Love" on Beatles For Sale as a thoughtful homage to a primal formative influence, but it's no less true to label this track "exhibit A" in the case for this album as a slapdash, relatively uninspired cash-in. Robert Freeman's iconic cover portrait tells the story all too candidly. It's late '64, the boys are hungover and bone-tired after three straight years of nonstop running and screaming. The EMI honchos are howling for fresh product to feed the masses and nevermind if it's a greasy inedible pile of Devonshire craw urchins a few too many minutes out of the deep fryer. Trudge into the studio and crank out a few old chestnuts from the bar band days to pad out the tracklist, boys. I know we've covered this ground before, but in a better world they would have been given time and space to develop an LP's worth of the inspired acoustic folk rock that started side one off so promisingly ("No Reply," "I'm A Loser," "Baby's In Black"). Instead it's a bunch of goddamn shit like "Words Of Love."

Richard Furnstein: Crikey, you're right. This song is nothing more than a smear of HP Brown Sauce and some greasy scotch egg crumbles leaking through on the cafe grade paper plates. I want my five pence back, Doris. No hungry.

Sexy Sadie

Robert Bunter: The White Album is in large part about The Beatles themselves (as indicated by the record's actual title, which is The Beatles). Previous efforts certainly dealt with aspects of the group's real lives, leavened to a greater or lesser degree by poetic lyricism - "Taxman," "I'm Only Sleeping," "Fixing A Hole," even "Penny Lane" and "Strawberry Fields Forever." Still, the two LP's previous to this (Sgt. Pepper's and Magical Mystery Tour) both explored far-fetched alternate identities and messages of universal cosmic significance set in a colorful fantasy world populated by rocking-horse people and marshmallow pies. Now it's 1968 and all of a sudden we've got a stark view of these hairy men's real life backstage after the curtains fall. Plugged-in fans were startled to realize that these songs were about Paul's sheepdog, John's mom, Mia Farrow's sister, Eric Clapton's sweet tooth, and meanwhile Yoko's over here in the corner staring at me. The stripped-down production and minimalist greyscale cover text added to the dour mood. "Sexy Sadie," while graced with an utterly beguiling melody and emotionally affecting Lennon falsetto, remains at its core an airing of dirty, personal laundry.  

Richard Furnstein: Lennon is certainly more direct here than he was in the Technicolor swirl of the 1967 offerings. The stripped-down approach of the Esher Demos provided a dramatic shift from the Eggman filtration system of the psychedelic era. Break out the 120-grit and strip the careless swirls from your instruments. You were resplendent in that madcap frock, but the loose sand-colored hemp shirt and leather necklace suits you well in this new age. The change was welcomed by our beloved Walrus, as he produced his strongest and most unique batch of songs yet for The Beatles. You get the sense that John's songwriting explosion in Rishikesh was his attempt to refocus his creativity to become (if needed) a singular light for the group. All could drink and eat from his expanding mind and desperate claws. He found his muse in Yoko and finally had his fragile ego confirmed in a helicopter ride with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. To think, mankind was given the pure beauty of "Julia” (pay no mind to the creeping figures of Polythene Pam and Mr. Mustard) from fever dreams on a hard Indian cot. Take this brother, may it serve you well.  

 

Robert Bunter: That's a totally accurate description. I'm going to provide a bit of backstory at this point. The Beatles went off to India to study with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a giggling guru preaching a Westernized, user-friendly form of spiritual meditation for dilettantes and businessmen looking for shortcuts. Typically, John was the most ardent convert of the four, sitting cross-legged in his little hut for hours a day in a fugue state which he later described as a mental breakdown. Of course, being John, that was just his idea of a great time - remember, he'd spent most of the previous two years paralyzed by nightmarish acid-fueled visions. But as hard as he fell for Maharishi's line, it was only a matter of time before the bloom was off the rose for John, who spent most of his too-short life flitting from one God-figure to another (Presley, McCartney, Dylan, Leary, Maharishi, Janov, Rubin), only to renounce them after they failed to deliver what he really needed, which was his parents' love (I left Ono off that list, because that's a more complicated deal). There is no fiercer critic than a former apostle stung by betrayal, and when John got word that Maharishi might not be as high-minded as his sermons had implied (despite vows of celibacy, he was apparently making it with various female students during private "advanced meditation sessions"), he decided to pack up his trunk and storm out. On the car ride back to the airport with George he began to compose a stinging song in his head called "Maharishi," which George persuaded him to re-title "Sexy Sadie."

 

Richard Furnstein: "Sexy Sadie" is a surprisingly tame lyrical put down from the prickly one in the Beatles. Consider the misogynistic and seething tone directed at lovers on Rubber Soul, the contempt directed at the idiotic common people of "Good Morning, Good Morning" nervously scattering the streets playing their miserable roles as workers, and the more pointed loathing featured in the darker rooms in the Imagine LP. It's clear in each of the songs that Lennon was filtering his own self-loathing into a sarcastic and often times cruel view of others. The transgressions of the Maharishi are dismissed as mere technicalities ("you broke the rules" and "how did you know?") and the punishment for his actions are vague and inconsequential ("you'll get yours yet"). It's a much softer view than the arson-as-revenge fantasy interpretation of "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)."

 

The "one sunny day the world was waiting for a lover" part is the only time that Lennon really reflects on his own insecurity and his never-ending search for a guru who can show him the light. This songwriting trick was first mined in Lennon’s first golden period, the soundtrack to A Hard Day’s Night. As you ably tracked, Lennon was an orphaned soul searching for parental approval. Lennon is uncharacteristically guarded when he reflects on his pull to the Maharishi and his teachings, summarizing the arrival of the guru into his shattered world as an inevitability. An upper on a sunny day, ensuring all were sufficiently turned on. Who could resist the pull of this force? Lennon suggests they were all playing fools. He clearly hasn't learned a damned thing. 

 

Robert Bunter: Well I'll tell you one thing he'd learned - how to use the basic building blocks of the primal/crucial 1950s rock and roll chord changes which had ignited his childhood to construct something menacing and strange enough to suit the dark and complex man he'd grown into by 1968. The most obvious example is the terrifying "Bang-bang, shoot-shoot" coda on "Happiness Is A Warm Gun," but harmonically, "Sexy Sadie" is cut from the same cloth as "I'm So Tired." In both cases the chord changes are close enough to evoke the familiar, comforting yearning of straight doo wop, but John adds interest and malice with descending chromatic movements. Have you ever listened to Ronettes 45s while under the influence of mind-altering drugs? Well, John probably did, and "Sexy Sadie" is probably what they sounded like. 

 

Richard Furnstein: It’s interesting that John seemed most comfortable when he could lean on this teddy boy origins and toss a few joker chords around a well-worn Spector skeleton. Maybe he wasn’t the towering genius with clouds in his eyes and a blueprint for eternal peace. Perhaps he was nothing more than a wiry fiend, knocking out piles of amazing songs in the lingering flatulence of his Rishikesh tent because he couldn’t just goof out on zonk pills and stare at a television. Of course, Beatles experts (like me!) will tell you he was somewhere between the two extremes. Those same experts will then play you a demo version of “Out The Blue” from the Mind Games album and tell you it’s a disgrace that the Lennon Trust hasn’t released every second of music that this Godhead has created. Seriously, that tune could be on the White Album, Bunter!

Robert Bunter: The only "Lennon Trust" that I recognize is my trust that you will inevitably bring the conversation back to that soggy Lennon solo offering. Of course it sounds like it could have been on the White Album, poor John was reworking the moves he stole from Donovan. I've had to listen to you babble about that sadsack blues sludge for decades now. Welcome back to the blog, dear readers. I'm already tired of talking to this guy.