i've been reading 'revolution in the head' by iain macdonald. i think it's the 3rd time i've read it now. it's by far and away my favourite book on the beatles. this time, however, i'm listening (closely) to each track as i read about it. it has me thinking...
one of the things macdonald brings out is that for a long time, the beatles were wholly unconcerned with lyrics. they dealt in complete clichés. and, when you listen through, right up until 'help' (with the possible exception of 'there's a place' on the 'please please me' album), the lyrics are rather unimpressive. not only are the lyrics all clichéd derivatives, they are outdated clichéd derivatives. so why does the music still have such potency now?
my feeling is that lyrics, for the early stage of the beatles' career, functioned in much the same manner as faces or still life settings did for picasso in the early stages of cubism. he just used subject matter as something to push around the canvas. the real point was not the subjects he was painting, but the way the paint looked on the canvas when he finished. the subjects were something the audience could kind of grab onto in the midst of rather abstract notions of image. for the beatles, i think the same applies. they were pushing music around into such new and distinct places, but the lyrics were there to help the audience be able to attach themselves to what was, fundamentally, fairly abstract sonic ideas at the time. the music still works well now because, in spite of one aspect of it being relatively dire, other aspects - musical form, production ideas etc etc - are, even today, continually surprising and, well, good.
to demonstrate, listen to some of the recordings of cover songs from the 'beatles for sale'/'help!' era. musically, things like 'dizzy miss lizzy', 'slow down' or 'everybody's tryin to be my baby' are sonically years behind 'i feel fine', 'ticket to ride' or even 'yesterday' - original songs they were recording at the same time. the lyrics rely on the same clichés, but the sounds framing the lyrics have been pushed around significantly. they actually sound rather at odds with each other, being played on the same albums. the point being that this helps show how the beatles used lyrics as a foothold. to complain about it is probably like complaining that picasso should have jumped straight into pure abstraction. it would have been impossible to make the philosophical jump straight across in either case. in spite of all the talk of 'originality' and 'genius', i'm sorry, but art never works that way. it can only ever evolve.
the great thing is, though, what happens later on when the artists begin thinking about those leftover bits from previous eras, and start moving them into line as well. for picasso, you end up with things like 'guernica', where subject matter and technique are seamlessly intertwined, just about to the point of perfection, in the service of the artwork. i'd say something like 'strawberry fields forever' is analogous to that - lyrics and sound intertwined so closely as to make a perfect representation of the ideas being presented.
