target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_1b58be9b-7383-55ad-901e-ac97a48466be">3 That phrase, “pie in the sky,” was coined by Joe Hill in his song “The Preacher and the Slave.” Hill, another honorary godfather of the folkie protest song, was executed for a murder he didn’t commit.
4 Although Guthrie wrote 174 “Woody Sez” columns for The Daily Worker, he was never an actual Communist Party member. I don’t know why I bothered to include that as a footnote; I think it’s just a knee-jerk reaction for a kid of the fifties to note whether an individual was, or had ever been, a member of the Communist Party.
5 Lomax was the son of pioneering musicologist John Lomax, and had travelled widely with his father recording authentic folk music. At the Angola Prison Farm, the Lomaxes encountered a man who was physically intimidating and immensely popular with his fellow inmates for the songs he sang. They recorded hours of this fellow, then sent the warden a request for clemency, including a recording of this fellow’s most popular song, “Good Night, Irene.” Huddie Ledbetter—Leadbelly, as he was better known—was pardoned.
I HAVE ONLY a handful of vivid childhood memories, and here’s one of them: I was on a sleepover at my friend Kenny’s house. I was in the top bunk normally occupied by his brother, because his brother was out somewhere, and we were watching television late at night, because, well, I became a television addict early on in life, and Kenny was more addicted than I. We had managed to pull in an American signal—not always possible in those days of rabbit ears—and were watching The Jack Paar Show. I don’t suppose the show interested us much, for the most part, but it was American and therefore superior to anything the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation might put on the airwaves.
Jack Paar said something about something being a sensation in Britain, and our ears perked up. The television screen filled with the image of four young men, similarly suited. All four men sported “Buster Brown” haircuts, a term I use because that is what I read subsequently, somewhere in the thousands of pages of Beatles-related material I ingested. I associated that particular hairstyle with Moe Howard, the nasty, eye-poking leader of the Three Stooges.
That T V event heralded a trip we all went on back then, one that took us to England, and to India, and to recesses of our minds no doubt better left untouched. Not a lot of that is germane here. The important thing to note is, we all started forming groups.
I don’t suppose I’d be a songwriter today if it hadn’t been for Paul McCartney and John Lennon. Their songs appeared in my life one by one—each wondrous, almost miraculous, each announcing itself boldly as a Lennon/McCartney composition. Lennon/McCartney, as an entity, seemed to be the most creative force ever unleashed upon the face of the earth. Of course, we eventually learned that Lennon/McCartney didn’t really exist, that it was a label of convenience. If John wrote a song, he credited it as Lennon/McCartney. Paul did likewise. I recently heard a rumour that Sir Paul is trying to change the order of the names, to alter the designation legally to McCartney/Lennon. It might seem a bit small-minded, but I say, hey, he’s the living one, he’s survived hellish marriages and kept playing music, so he should get the credit he deserves.
I must admit I don’t have much to say about individual Lennon/McCartney songs. I enjoy “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away,” and often introduce it into impromptu sing-alongs, but that’s largely so that I can shout “Hey!” at (or around) the appropriate time. (I think this also reflects my attraction to the point of view adopted by Lennon in the song, the stance of surly self-centredness.) “Here, There and Everywhere” is a very beautiful song, and it has what we might call “sophisticated chord changes,” which means that as teenagers we were baffled and unable to work them out. There is, if you’ll allow me to get technical, a modulation to the bridge in that song, and at those same singalongs, you might notice that with the words “I want her everywhere,” the bottom usually drops out of the accompaniment bag, leaving the singers crooning eerily on their own.
The assertion that pop music, rock’n’roll, is informed by a mere three chords is a myth propagated largely by non-musicians. The statement correctly points to a simplicity, an eloquence, in some of the music, but there are surprisingly few songs that the young, aspiring guitarist can actually execute with just three chords.1 “Summertime Blues,” that’ll work. That’s actually a song wherein knowing more than three chords might prove a detriment. And Van Morrison’s classic “Gloria” can be played with three chords, but they aren’t the usual three chords. Rock’n’roll’s three chords are the tonic, the sub-dominant, and the dominant. The sixteen-year-old Morrison was thrashing away at the tonic, the flattened seven, and the sub-dominant. “Gloria” also contains a little guitar fill that seems to follow these changes with a logic born on the fretboard. In reality, there is a fingering change that must be made. As teenagers we usually pretended that wasn’t the case, and many of us still do, just in case you’re wondering why that instrumental part always sounds like crap when your buddy plays it. As a young lad, I spent thousands and thousands of hours trying to work out changes—to “figure out the chords”— so believe me about this three-chord business. Even a seemingly simplistic ballad from the fifties—“You Send Me,” for example—has four chords.
Paul McCartney’s “Yesterday” was a Gordian knot, an impenetrable puzzle. I sat in my bedroom for days on end trying to work it out, intuiting that the ability to play and sing “Yesterday” would increase my chances of getting laid. (Or getting kissed, or fondling a breast, or even remaining in reasonably close proximity to a female human being for more than a few seconds.) There are chords, as you may know, made by stopping some strings and leaving others free to vibrate. These have the pleasing name of “open chords.” Other chords—“bar chords,” we call them, although “closed chords” conveys the right impression—require that all the strings be dampened, usually by a flattened index finger. This is not the easiest skill to acquire, in terms of either dexterity or strength, because it’s hard to slam all six strings down with a single finger and still have them sound boldly. “A” is a great key, because most of the important chords (the fourth, the fifth, even the “Gloria” flattened seven) are open chords. It’s a great key on the guitar, that is; saxophonists don’t care for it. If the guitar player is playing in A, then a tenor saxophonist has to transpose (the instrument actually sounds a tone lower than the written note) to the key of B, which has five sharps. Five sharps represent a lot of cowflaps in the musical pasture, if you see what I mean. It is for this reason that the sax player is always the best musician in the band.
But, getting back to “Yesterday.” The first chord on the recording is an F, a bar chord. Some people play F in a manner necessitating that the index finger be bent at the first joint, that the thumb wrap around and stop the low bass string. As complicated as that sounds, it’s often preferable to trying to pull off the infernally difficult F bar chord.2
Despite all this whining on my part, “Yesterday” is the most recorded song ever. There are something like three thousand covers. One way of explaining this is that while the song may lack “guitar logic,” it makes a lot of musical sense.3 Indeed, it makes so much musical sense that apparently Paul McCartney was initially unsure that he had truly composed the music. He was afraid he had inadvertently pilfered some standard.
BEFORE WE continue with our story, here’s a little aside. You’re probably wondering, if he’s stopping the proceedings to make an aside, then what are all those footnotes about? Well, you don’t have to read the footnotes if you don’t want to, but you should pay attention to these asides. I might be introducing characters, new players in the scenario, which is the case here.
Michael Burke was a fellow I met around this
