Top 5 Beatle Songs: My contribution to the Normblog Poll .1. Rain (B-Side of Paperback Writer')
.2. Tomorrow Never Knows (Revolver)
.3. I Am The Walrus (Magical Mystery Tour)
.4. Helter Skelter (The Beatles, aka 'The White Album')
.5. Revolution 9 (The Beatles, aka 'The White Album')

Notes, justifications, ideas etc:

(a) I arrived at this Top 5 because it reflects the chronological arc of my favourite Beatles period, bookended by the super-heavy bronze hammer psyche-funk of Rain (1996) and the dark avant-garde cut 'n' paste-adelia of the White Album's Revolution 9 (1968). This self-imposed time frame made making my choices easier - I told myself I could only pick songs which fell between the recording of these two tracks, and I wanted to pick 5 songs which worked well together, back-to-back. As these lists are abitary anyway, (I'd probably pick 5 entirely different songs next week) it's fun to come up with a system like this.

(b) The list suffers from a predominance of what are largely Lennon authored tracks. With the exception of Helter Skelter, entirely McCartney's experiment, each of my choices are identified most closely with Lennon. Revolution 9 is almost exclusively a LenOno production, while Rain, Tomorrow Never Knows and I Am The Walrus are all quintessentially John, though of course each benefit from stunning contributions by the other Fabs - especially so in the case of Rain. (Lennon's dominance stretched even to my pre-Top 5 shortist, which included Strawberry Fields Forever (Anthology 2 Version) , Glass Onion, and I've Got A Feeling...but also Paul's Rocky Raccoon.)

(c) With due respect to I've Got A Feeling, Come Together, The Word, Sgt Pepper's Reprise, and Flying, two of my choices - Rain & Tomorrow Never Knows (both 1966) - are hands down the funkiest motherthumpers The Fabs ever laid down. Ringo excels on both tracks; Rain edges it for sheer heavy-bottomed fonk, while TNK's off-kilter groove has entranced dance producers for years (The Chemical Brothers having spent half their career trying to recreate it). Macca's bass on Rain is simply phenonemal, laying down the blueprint for every freakbeat group who bought wholesale into the Rain sound, and is still being ripped off regularly to this day. Both tracks are heavily lysergic, psyche masterpieces, but are included here to remind people that the hugely underrated McCartney/Starr rhthym section was capable of grooves as danceable and as influential as Clyde Stubblefield's break on James Brown's Funky Drummer.

(d) Helter Skelter has enjoyed something of a revival in recent years; when I was growing up, the general pop concensus was that Charles Manson's fave Fabs rave-up was an example of Macca over-reaching himself, attempting an unconvincing, uncharacteristic, Who-aping wig-out in the New Heavy Style, and not really pulling it off. Beatles scholar Ian MacDonald called it "ridiculous, McCartney shrieking weedily against a massively tape-echoed backdrop of out-of-tune thrashing." This critical attitude seems now to have been almost completely dropped, and Helter Skelter almost entirely rehabilitated, regarded as a White Album highlight, and a Macca live favourite.

(e) Wot, no Sgt Peppers? Sgt Pepper's Lonley Hearts Club Band has never been my favourite Beatles LP, and despite the fact that it falls slap-bang in the middle of my Top 5 chronology, I include no tracks from it here because I still think Peppers is a relatively weak collection when compared to Rubber Soul, Revolver and The White Album. I actively dislike With A Little Help From My Friends and Good Morning, Good Morning. The drumbreak at the beginning of '...Reprise' is pretty cool. And clearly A Day In The Life is a wonderful, wonderful song. But on the whole, I'm not a huge fan.

(f) I guess the most controversial choice here is Revolution 9. Partly I've included it because it worked in terms of my list, being the penultimate track on the White Album and thus bookending my self-imposed time-scale. Partly I've included it because I think it's a fascinating piece of music, and easily the the most extreme thing the Fabs ever put out. It's also pretentious, self-indulgent, silly and far less clever than it thinks it is...but nevertheless, the effort that went into its construction (Lennon said he spent more time on it than half the songs he wrote), its proto-hip-hop patchwork of samples and the fact that you can listen to it a million times and still hear something new make it, if not a favourite song, then certainly a highly rewarding listen.

Anyway, there you have it. I look forward to everybody else's lists...there are few things I enjoy more than a good ol' Beatles debate.

Labels: Beatles

  ¶ 12:20 PM