Yer Blues

Richard Furnstein: A cry from the bottom of a well. John set "Yer Blues"--his exorcism of the unholy spirits that were increasingly consuming his hairy figure--in the leaking swamps of the Mississippi Delta. Sure, he could downplay this brutal testament of self-loathing and suicidal thoughts as nothing more than a Clapton-infused bit of searing blues, but the truth was closer to a drooling hellhound that greeted Lennon in each of his junkie dreams. John and the boys ambled into the closet-sized EMI Studio 2 Annexe to record "Yer Blues." While it's easy to construe this as an effort to instill unity into the fractured and independent White Album sessions, I think the Annexe was chosen to limit the external energy in the recording session. The Devil can't sit in on mouth harp if he can't fit in the room. Barghest himself can't beg for the crumbs of Lennon's shattered soul in such conditions.

The listener conjures a mental image of a wracked, tortured man writhing on the floor while his erstwhile buddies stare blankly ahead and plod their way through this ponderous dirge, not even acknowledging the situation.

Robert Bunter: If you look at the rapid arc of the Beatles’ career with hindsight, their startlingly accelerated rate of development seems obvious. In a mere two years they’d taken the quantum leap from “I’m Happy Just To Dance With You” to “Tomorrow Never Knows,” for example. A closer look, however, reveals an unsettling parallel side development: the harrowing, rapid descent of the John-figure into hell. Recall that “Yer Blues” appeared in 1968, a mere four years after most of the world had met the man. He’d always seemed kind of intense; even his early love songs were uncomfortably raw. Seemingly seconds later, his insecurities were illustrated more vividly during his 1965 Dylan phase as he sings about being a loser with “a chip on my shoulder that’s bigger than my feet.” During the psychedelic period his demons seemed to have been temporarily stoned into submission by the shifting perspectives and blurry colors of chemically-expanded mind-dreams, but even here, the despair and dementia were never far from the surface on tracks like “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “A Day In The Life.” A year later, we’re confronted with lyrics like “The eagle picks my eye / the worm he licks my bone” and “black cloud crossed my mind / blue mist surrounds my soul.” Makes Robert Johnson sound like Keanu Reaves!

 Richard Furnstein: Great point. Lennon went from harmless self-pity ("I'm A Loser") to actually admitting suicidal thought. It's just startling that Lennon would sink to the worm-lickin' depths of loneliness in the lilac gardens of India after finding his true love. His gentle moping on Beatles For Sale or Help! suggested a sensitive man going through an identity crisis--caught between the boredom of his house husband phase and the relentless mania of The Beatles' touring life. As usual, Lennon blames his dark mental state on childhood woes. He presents his parents as the angel and devil on his shoulders. His mother was an angelic spirit "of the sky" while his loathsome father, hapless seaman Freddie Lennon, was vulnerable to earthly temptations and sins. Lennon cast himself, the product of this failed union, as "of the universe." Where he once lamented that no one was in his tree, now John is floating alone in the cosmos. But wait, John realized that his best friends in the world were there with him. Lovable and shouty Paul, reliable and handsome George, and loyal and funny Ringo were there to help him through this rough patch. That's the beauty of "Yer Blues." John assembled his best friends in the world into a tiny closet to grunt out a searing rock number. Maybe he even fit a stool into the room for pie-faced friend Mal Evans! Do you guys want to grab a pint and some chips after this one? It's like the old days. Woops, sorry I bumped your ride cymbal, Ringo. It's like being back in the Cavern!  

Robert Bunter: Yeah, you’d think so. But that’s what makes the line “Feel so suicidal / even hate my rock and roll” so devastating. The cathartic, soul-cleansing power of music which was once redemptive for John has soured; he looks at the three other faces in the cramped studio closet and tries to see his rockin’ buddies from the leather jacket days, but his fevered mind can’t focus the image. There’s Paul with his dumb eyebrows and stupid Ob-La-Di song, George’s pocked skin and offensive moustache stinking up the room with curry breath; even Ringo’s hangdog mug seems distorted and offensive. The tiny recording space mirrors the desperate psychic box that John finds himself in; there’s no escape. The effect is heightened when he screeches the reprise of the verse off-mic; the listener conjures a mental image of a wracked, tortured man writhing on the floor while his erstwhile buddies stare blankly ahead and plod their way through this ponderous dirge, not even acknowledging the situation. This is the moment where the Beatles broke up. Finally, the gentle, fresh acoustic breeze of Paul’s “Mother Nature’s Son” wafts softly in as the cramped, stinky room of “Yer Blues” fades into silence. Abbey Road boasts a similar moment, when George’s airy “Here Comes The Sun” warms the horrifying frozen tundra wind-blast of the “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” fade at the end of side one.  

Richard Furnstein: You caught me. I was trying to put on a brave face. Of course, it was all over. The Hand of Death had long guided The Beatles, providing closure to their early scrappy days with the passing of Stu Sutclliffe in April 1962 and closing out their identity as comfortable idols with Brian Epstein's death in August 1967. Perhaps Lennon was trying to coax the reaper into his life once again with "Yer Blues." Take another soul, dear reaper. Let us run wild into the world without the burden of The Beatles. Lennon didn't have the guts to follow through on the threat of suicide, much like he could never effectively put an end to his rock group. His frequent calls to action (romanticized in his posthumous image as a peace merchant) never overcame his drug-addled daydreams.

Robert Bunter: It's bad, man. Real bad. How the hell are we going to break the news to Ringo?

I Want You (She's So Heavy)

Richard Furnstein: This is a new phase John Lennon song. The jabberwocky of "Glass Onion" and the blurry poetry of "Strawberry Fields Forever" have been replaced by Lennon The Straight Shooter. "Don't Let Me Down" was one of the first Lennon songs to utilize this new approach, and he would take it to new levels of heavy on Plastic Ono Band. "I Want You" is Lennon writing about Yoko Ono in the style of Yoko Ono. There's a direct line from John bleeding his love all over the floor in fourteen words or less in this song and Yoko's bleating and pleading on "Why?" (a single word chant on her Plastic Ono Band) or "Don't Worry, Kyoko" (a startling two words, "Cold Turkey" b-side). Let's get down to the heart of the matter. It's all S.O.S. or "I love you" when the day is done.

Robert Bunter: It's one of the most overused words in my Beatles vocabulary, but this track is primal. John wants his mother's love, and he believes he's finally found it in Yoko and heroin. The various Lennon masks lay discarded on the floor of his squalid Montague Square flat (on loan from Ringo while John gets Tittenhurst painted completely white) - there's the grinning moptop, the Joycean punster, the Dylanesque sophisticate, the acid prophet, the youth culture sloganeer, the political rabblerouser - all tossed haphazardly aside like so many nickels and dimes. Behind all the personas, there's a terrifying snakepit of madness, hurt, anger and need. "She's So Heavy" evokes this with horror-movie organ chords, moog-generated howling wind noises, hypnotic stupor-inducing length and repetitiveness. By the time this thing ends with a sudden silence, the listener feels like they've spent a year trudging through a frozen tundra. The effect is heightened by the clever sequencing of "Here Comes The Sun" as the next track when you flip the record over. George leads us out of the cold and warmly sets the table for the exhilarating rocket ride of Abbey Road's second side. But as we step on the gas and wipe that tear away, we glance at the rear-view mirror and see a screeching, bearded madman in a pure white funeral suit with bloodshot eyes, his extremities starting to go numb from cold snow and worse things. Jesus!

Richard Furnstein: The Nordic howl and the shivers of cold metal entering your arm. It's a medical condition. "P.S. I Love You." John manages to outdo the lunkhead grooves and hairfaced sleaze of the heavy British bands of the day. Ten Years After couldn't even change the oil in John's bluesmachine. Like most of the songs on Abbey Road rest of The Beatles play their part perfectly. Paul almost steals the show with an hyperactive bass part. George is a master of steely tension and liquid drip guitar riffs. Ringo is yet again the master; he even brought along the congas to spice up the party! And the windchill at the end of the song? That's the sound of all of us entering the void that is tomorrow. Snow blind and kept alive through a precious combination of drugs, food, and love. Will there be enough to get us through the next day? God, I hope so.

John wants his mother's love, and he believes he's finally found it in Yoko and heroin. The various Lennon masks lay discarded on the floor of his squalid Montague Square flat.

Robert Bunter: In an interview, Lennon said "When you're drowning, you don't say 'I would be incredibly pleased if someone had the foresight to notice me drowning,' you just scream." It's interesting that the closest metaphor he can devise for his love for Yoko is drowning; she's "driving me mad" because "she's so heavy." This is not the same figure who celebrated the youthful joy of love ("She Loves You"), slowly grew to understand it's more sophisticated shadings and nuances ("If I Fell,") or universalized it as a prime focus of human existence ("The Word," "Tomorrow Never Knows," "All You Need Is Love"). The Lennon of "She's So Heavy" finds love has become a ten ton burden instead of a life preserver. The minimalist lyrics are delivered to two listeners. He tells Yoko "I want you so bad," while declaring to the other Beatles and the rest of the world that "she's so heavy." That's pretty much all he had to say at this point, other than "could you please get me more heroin?" and "I want a divorce. I'm splitting up the group." Pretty grim.

Richard Furnstein: Sure, it's grim, but that's life. "You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead," is mighty grim, too. It's all coming to an end. Lennon wasn't taking the stability of a little woman love for granted. He had seen that it could go away in an instant. A drunk police officer could run over your mother or your wife could be a minute late for the train to India. Humans just have to dodge and sway the obstacles of life and hope they wind up living out their final days in a lovely cottage on the Isle of Wight. Lennon is screaming at us to live and love now. The abrupt ending was the result of John telling Geoff Emerick to "cut it right there." John was playing God, quickly lowering the curtain on the first act of the final play. The Beatles' catalog was full of these moments of happy accidents. They dialed past a performance of King Lear that was broadcast on the BBC, providing gravitas to the absurd death dance of "I Am The Walrus." "Revolution 9" was almost entirely composed of these blink and you miss it moments that define creativity. "Cut it right there" says everything about Lennon's head circa 1969. The song was long enough already. They could have maintained the ritual of the lurching riff forever but they eventually had to snip the tape.

So heavy.