N S Ford

Tag: music

  • My favourite albums #4: Depeche Mode – ‘Violator’

    I’m in love with this album. All the elements of it are perfect. The songs were written by Martin Gore, who sings lead on two of them. A lot of the sound was due to Alan Wilder and producer Flood. The attention to detail is incredible. The layers of sound are best appreciated when listening with headphones. Violator was the seventh studio album by Depeche Mode and was released in 1990.

    1. World in My Eyes. ‘Let me take you on a trip / Around the world and back / And you won’t have to move / You just sit still’. A chilled-out, carefree track with an irresistible bassline. Smooth vocals, every sound in its right place, cool as a glass of iced water but also somehow warm at the same time.
    2. Sweetest Perfection. ‘I stop and I stare too much / Afraid that I care too much / And I hardly dare to touch / For fear that the spell may be broken’. A darkly seductive, obsessive and vaguely orchestral song with a fascinating array of sounds.
    3. Personal Jesus. ‘Reach out and touch faith / Your own personal Jesus / Someone to hear your prayers / Someone who cares’. This merger of electronica and rock ‘n’ roll is one of the band’s most successful singles and has an iconic video.
    4. Halo. ‘You wear guilt / Like shackles on your feet / Like a halo in reverse’. This song is about the bittersweet feeling you get when you’re doing something (or someone) you shouldn’t, as the pleasure outweighs the guilt. And the synths are wicked.
    5. Waiting for the Night. ‘I’m waiting for the night to fall / I know that it will save us all / When everything’s dark / Keeps us from the stark reality’. A stunning, atmospheric track, relatively sparse as it lacks drums. Beautiful vocals from Dave and Martin.
    6. Enjoy the Silence. ‘Words like violence / Break the silence / Come crashing in / Into my little world’. Famously this song started out as a sorrowful ballad before Alan and Flood gave it the disco treatment, resulting in a massive hit.
    7. Policy of Truth. ‘It’s just time to pay the price / For not listening to advice / And deciding in your youth / On the policy of truth’. Incisive lyrics, pounding beats and guitar-like screeches give this song a mean edge. The hook is so catchy it’s evil.
    8. Blue Dress. ‘Can you believe / Something so simple / Something so trivial / Makes me a happy man’. This shimmering, pulsating yet tender song is almost a ballad. It’s joyful in tone and has breathy-sounding effects.
    9. Clean. ‘Clean / The cleanest I’ve been / An end to the tears / And the in-between years / And the troubles I’ve seen’. An incredible track with very ‘clean’ sounds, achingly perfect production and excellent vocals from Dave.

    Favourite track? Enjoy the Silence, as the first song which really got me interested in Depeche Mode. I’ve listened to that song hundreds of times and I never get tired of it. My next favourites are World in My Eyes and Clean.

    Catch up with previous posts in my ‘favourite albums’ series: The Beatles – Revolver, Simon and Garfunkel – Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, Kraftwerk – The Man-Machine.

  • Review of ‘Crossroads: In Search of the Moments that Changed Music’ by Mark Radcliffe

    Do you love music trivia? Are you interested in a wide range of genres? Do you have a sense of humour? Then this book by radio presenter and musician Mark Radcliffe is right up your street.

    When Mark found himself at a crossroads in his own life, he started thinking about the crossroads in music too. In a fun and friendly style, this book dips into music history (mostly 20th century) and is also a memoir. You don’t have to be a fan of Mark to enjoy this book. I’d heard of him but couldn’t recall listening to his shows, although I must’ve done, back when I listened to the radio more.

    The ‘crossroads’ in the book are the turning points in the history of popular music. Mark argues for these where there might be doubt, for example who the first punk band was or where rock ‘n’ roll began. He focuses on particular bands and singers, such as Elvis, Woody Guthrie, Nirvana, Sandy Denny, Kraftwerk, Donna Summer, Carole King, Bob Marley, Black Sabbath, Jimi Hendrix and Lonnie Donegan. It’s not a book you would turn to for a comprehensive history of music, as it’s necessarily selective and has a meandering style in and out of the decades, with amusing asides. The developments in music technology are very interesting and Mark describes them in an easy-to-read way.

    Highly recommended if you’re a music nerd who likes to laugh.

    First published by Canongate in 2019.

  • Sheet music review: ‘Radiohead – The Piano Songbook’

    I realise this is a very niche book to review on my blog. How many of my readers play the piano? And how many of these are Radiohead fans? Yet I’m going to review it anyway and if anyone finds it interesting, then that’s a bonus.

    Published in 2010 by Faber Music, this book contains 28 songs for piano, voice and guitar. The emphasis is on piano, with most of the selection being piano/keyboard-based originally. Some of the songs are guitar-based but transcribed for piano. Apparently they’re all ‘band approved’, which makes me feel reassured. I bought the book because I was looking for new pieces to learn and had the thought that although I’ve been a fan of Radiohead for nearly 20 years, I never considered acquiring a songbook before.

    The songs span Radiohead’s career up until the year of publication, with the greatest number of songs being from OK Computer. Some b-sides and a charity single are also included. I find the nicest ones to play are ‘Karma Police’, ‘Street Spirit’, ‘Sail to the Moon’, ‘Lucky’, ‘Exit Music (for a Film)’ and ‘Last Flowers to the Hospital’. The difficulty level I would estimate at Piano Grades 3 to 5, but the pieces can seem more difficult than they really are because there are some crazy time signatures and unusual rhythms. Each piece has guitar chord boxes, some of which are challenging for my beginner’s fingers, but if I wanted to play these songs properly on guitar then I’d get one of the guitar songbooks instead.

    There are only two things wrong with this book. Firstly, like most books of its kind, it’s tightly bound with the music printed close to the margins (not practical). Secondly, the songs are supposed to be in alphabetical order of title but somebody messed up and put ‘No Surprises’ before ‘Motion Picture Soundtrack’ and ‘My Iron Lung’, while ‘Last Flowers to the Hospital’ is after ‘Lucky’.

    Overall this is a good collection of pieces and has helped to keep me occupied during the summer.

  • My favourite albums #3: Kraftwerk – ‘The Man-Machine’

    The German electronic music pioneers Kraftwerk had a robotic / futuristic city concept going on for their seventh album, Die Mensch-Maschine, which was released in 1978. The preciseness of the sounds is one of the reasons I like it. Every sound is considered and in its right place. The science fiction feel is another appealing element. Ralph Hütter was credited with ten different contributions on this album, in addition to jointly composing all the tracks. The other major player was the late Florian Schneider, followed by Karl Bartos and Wolfgang Flür.

    1. The Robots. ‘We’re functioning automatic / And we are dancing mechanic / We are the robots / We are the robots.’ Guaranteed to stay in my head all day, the robots are singing about how they are there to serve us, a tune filled with bleeps and other typically robotic noises. There’s a bit of Russian through a vocoder, which somehow makes it even cooler.
    2. Spacelab. That epic space sound is captured perfectly in this track. There aren’t any lyrics except for ‘space lab’ repeated occasionally. It begins with a kind of launch, getting faster and higher-pitched until the main theme kicks in. Somehow it manages to convey that sense of both awe and loneliness which I associate with outer space.
    3. Metropolis. The synths on this one remind me of old video game soundtracks (although of course it would really be the other way round). This one has a sort of ennui yet busyness which conveys the production-line feel of workers in a city, a nod to the Fritz Lang film Metropolis. The only lyric is the word ‘metropolis’ repeated.
    4. The Model. ‘She’s a model and she’s looking good / I’d like to take her home that’s understood / She plays hard to get, she smiles from time to time / It only takes a camera to change her mind.’ Definitely a pop song, this is one of Kraftwerk’s most famous. I’ve always thought the ‘model’ to refer to a product, like the robots, and not an actual woman.
    5. Neon Lights. ‘Neon lights / Shimmering neon lights / And at the fall of night / This city’s made of lights.’ A little slower-paced, this is a deceptively simple song which suggests how beautiful the urban landscape can be. There are some synth notes which shimmer to match the lyrics. It’s literally the lighter side of living in a metropolis.
    6. The Man-Machine. ‘Man Machine, pseudo human being / Man Machine, super human being.’ In the closing track, we’re with the robots again for a relentless mechanical-sounding tune. Bleeps, whirrings and a walking-pace rhythm suggest an army of robots quietly poised to take over the world. Who is superior – humans, or the super-humans they engineer?

    My favourite is The Robots (check out the amusing, slightly sinister video), followed by Spacelab and Neon Lights.

    Check out the previous posts in this series: The Beatles – Revolver and Simon and Garfunkel – Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme.

  • Review of ‘One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time’ by Craig Brown

    So much has been written about the most popular band in history that any new book about them has to have an original perspective. Craig Brown’s is a kind of time-travel adventure which mixes personal reflection, excerpts from interviews, intriguing ‘what-if’ scenarios, fascinating coincidences, present-tense narration, lists, fabulous photos and more. If you want a straightforward telling of the Beatles story, with descriptions of how every album was made, chart positions, a timeline, etc, then this book isn’t for you.

    I enjoyed reading this book. It was funny and unusual. The ending was particularly striking, going backwards through time from Brian Epstein’s death until the moment he first saw the Beatles. Not everything about the band is included in the book but all of the significant events and divisive characters are there. What’s quite interesting is that Craig Brown examines the other bands and artists of the era too, the ones who got left behind once Beatlemania took off, in addition to those whom the Fab Four partied with.

    There are some flaws in the book. Certain quotes are repeated two or three times and I’m not sure if this was an oversight or intentional. There is a bias towards material on John Lennon, which I suppose is understandable as he’s the most controversial and idolised of the four. I felt that George Harrison had the least coverage, as the childhoods of the other three were written about but his wasn’t (unless I somehow missed it). I thought it was a pity that Linda McCartney was barely mentioned, while Yoko Ono occupied the limelight. Occasionally the author goes off on a tangent, including passages from books which don’t have anything to do with the Beatles but which he felt were apt quotes. The sources section at the end of the book should have been organised into a proper bibliography rather than into paragraphs. Also, if I’d wanted an index, I’d be disappointed.

    In summary, you’ll like this book if you’re a Beatles fan (obviously), you have a sense of humour and you want an unusual read.

    First published in 2020.

     

  • Paperback writers and neverending stories: books in songs!

    Here’s a fun post for you, which I thought of while walking home through heavy rain one afternoon during lockdown. Some songs about books (or which reference them, at least) – here we go…

    ‘Paperback Writer’ – The Beatles (1966). ‘Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book? / It took me years to write, will you take a look?’ There’s a slightly seedy tone to the writer’s plea to be published, which suggests the trashy reputation that cheap paperbacks had. I think there’s a bit of snobbery even now about paperbacks…

    ‘Books and Water’ – Ian Dury and the Blockheads (2002). Books and water / Bricks and mortar / Books and water / You can do what you like on a Saturday night / But you ain’t coming home if you feel alright.’ Ian Dury gets an extra mention here for ‘Profoundly in Love with Pandora,’ the TV theme for The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, based on the book by Sue Townsend.

    ‘Marvin’ – Stephen Moore (1981). ‘I’m so depressed I could expectorate / My moving parts are in a solid state / I want to rust in peace, switch off and lie / In that great junk yard in the sky.’ One of a few novelty songs featuring Marvin the Paranoid Android, one of which, ‘Reasons to be Miserable’, is a parody of Ian Dury’s ‘Reasons to be Cheerful, Part 3’.

    ‘Wuthering Heights’ – Kate Bush (1978). ‘Heathcliff, it’s me, I’m Cathy / I’ve come home, I’m so cold / Let me in through your window.’ A reference to the creepy moment when the ghostly Cathy appears at the window in Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel. Emily and Kate share a birthday – July 30th. An extra mention here for her song ‘The Sensual World’, inspired by James Joyce’s Ulysses.

    ‘Singing in My Sleep’ – Semisonic (1998). ‘I’ve been living in your cassette / It’s the modern equivalent / Singing up to a Capulet / On a balcony in your mind.’ Falling in love while listening to a mix tape made by an admirer. A nice reference to Romeo and Juliet there but without any of the tragedy. I wonder what songs Romeo would have chosen?

    ‘Belle’ – from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, written by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, sung by Paige O’Hara and Richard White (1991). ‘Oh, isn’t this amazing? / It’s my favourite part because you’ll see / Here’s where she meets Prince Charming / But she won’t discover that it’s him ’til chapter three.’ Introducing bibliophile Belle, different to the other townspeople.

    ‘The NeverEnding Story’ – Limahl, composed by Giorgio Moroder (1984). ‘Rhymes that keep their secrets / Will unfold behind the clouds / And there upon a rainbow / Is the answer to a neverending story.’ The title track of the children’s film based on the (much superior) book by Michael Ende and more recently the subject of a comedy moment in the TV show Stranger Things.

    ‘I Am a Rock’ – Simon and Garfunkel (1966). ‘I have my books / And my poetry to protect me / I am shielded in my armour.’ A song about hiding away from the world to avoid being hurt. Paul and Art get another bookish mention here for the song ‘The Dangling Conversation’, which mentions Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost. And of course, one of their albums is entitled Bookends.

    ‘White Rabbit’ – Jefferson Airplane (1967). ‘One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small / And the ones that mother gives you, don’t do anything at all / Go ask Alice, when she’s ten feet tall.’ Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking-Glass (the song references both books) inspired this psychedelic song.

    ‘2 + 2 = 5’ – Radiohead (2003). ‘Are you such a dreamer / To put the world to rights? / I’ll stay home forever / Where two and two always makes a five’. One of many songs out there inspired by George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Radiohead also get another bookish nod for their song ‘Lozenge of Love’ (1994), the title of which is a phrase in a Philip Larkin poem, ‘Sad Steps’.

    ‘The Invisible Man’ – Queen (1989). ‘I’m the invisible man / I’m the invisible man / Incredible how you can / See right through me’. H G Wells’ 1897 novel is about a man (not a nice man at all, it must be said) called Griffin who finds a way to turn himself invisible but the condition is permanent. This song was written by Roger Taylor.

    I’m sure there are a lot more, but these are the ones I can think of. Have you got any favourite bookish songs?

  • My favourite albums #2: Simon and Garfunkel – ‘Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme’

    Until a few years ago, I was only familiar with Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘greatest hits’, but then I acquired a set of their albums and discovered I’d been missing out. Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme (the title referring to a line from the first track) was released in 1966. Most of the songs were written by Paul Simon. I love this album for the smart lyrics, beautiful harmonies, excellent sound quality and variety of moods.

    1. Scarborough Fair / Canticle. ‘Remember me to one who lives there / She once was a true love of mine’. The soft vocals, delicate guitar picking and chimes ensure that this song is magical and haunting.
    2. Patterns. ‘Like the colour of my skin / Or the day that I grow old / My life is made of patterns / That can scarcely be controlled’. A dramatic, dark comparison of human lives to those of rats in mazes and a gloomy acceptance of fate.
    3. Cloudy. ‘My thoughts are scattered and they’re cloudy / They have no borders, no boundaries’. A chilled out tone to this song belies the depression of someone who lacks direction and whose thoughts are like clouds drifting across the sky.
    4. Homeward Bound. ‘Home where my thought’s escaping / Home where my music’s playing / Home where my love lies waiting silently for me’. Yearning vocals and wonderful lyrics take centre stage in this song about a homesick musician.
    5. The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine. ‘Do figures of authority just shoot you down? / Is life within the business world a drag?’ Hippy-ish and witty, this commentary on the advertising industry has some funky organ and a fast pace.
    6. The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy). ‘Hello lamppost, what’cha knowing / I’ve come to watch your flowers growin’. Upbeat and irresistible, this tune is groovy indeed and is named after a bridge over the East River in New York City.
    7. The Dangling Conversation. ‘And we sit and drink our coffee / Couched in our indifference, like shells upon the shore / You can hear the ocean roar’. A failing relationship is explored in this thoughtful, slow paced and slightly intellectual song.
    8. Flowers Never Bend with the Rainfall. ‘Through the corridors of sleep / Past shadows dark and deep / My mind dances and leaps in confusion’. A very short beautifully sung commentary on pushing the thoughts of mortality aside.
    9. A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert McNamara’d Into Submission). ‘I been Mick Jaggered, silver daggered / Andy Warhol, won’t you please come home?’ An amusing parody of Bob Dylan, somewhat of an oddity.
    10. For Emily, Wherever I May Find Her. ‘And when you ran to me / Your cheeks flushed with the night / We walked on frosted fields / Of juniper and lamplight / I held your hand’. A stunningly beautiful, very short song with a powerful crescendo.
    11. A Poem on the Underground Wall. ‘And the train is gone suddenly / On wheels clicking silently / Like a gently tapping litany / And he holds his crayon rosary / Tighter in his hand’. A perfectly-worded micro-story of graffiti on a subway wall.
    12. 7 O’Clock News / Silent Night. ‘Demonstrators were forcibly evicted from the hearings when they began chanting anti-war slogans’. Contemporary news bulletins of August 3rd 1966 clash with a sweet rendition of the Christmas carol.

    Scarborough Fair has been a long-standing favourite since I was very young. Every track on this album has its merits but my next favourites would have to be Homeward Bound and Patterns.

  • 10 things I’ve learned about guitars

    My first guitar was an empty tissue box with elastic bands over it, a long time ago. I’ve recently acquired a proper one, a second-hand acoustic. Here are some things I’ve learned about these wonderful and versatile instruments:

    1. Learning to play the guitar is a lot harder than it looks. Folk singers and rock stars seem to play it effortlessly, their fingers flying over the strings. Meanwhile, us beginners get frustrated that it will take a long time to get even half as proficient.
    2. Already knowing some music theory and/or playing another instrument comes in handy, as there are some elements which cross over. As a piano player with some theory, I found that this was a little shortcut. If you have ‘piano player hands’ you’ll also be used to stretching to span those octaves, which again is useful for the guitar, where some of the chords are tricky.
    3. There is a handy, cheap accessory called a capo, which is like a tight clamp you can attach to the neck of the guitar. It changes the notes, raising the pitch. I bought one so I could learn to play ‘Wonderwall’ by Oasis.
    4. Tuning a guitar for the first time seems like a scary prospect but actually it’s easy. You can buy a little electronic gadget called a Snark, which clips on to the guitar headstock and measures the vibrations. It tells you what note you’re playing and how flat or sharp it is. All you have to do is turn the tuning pegs to adjust the notes.
    5. Changing the strings is a scarier prospect and I confess that mine look a bit amateur. On the recommendation of the music shop man, I got ‘easy’ strings which have a tiny plastic ball at the end, meaning no knots have to be tied at the bridge. However, the high ‘E’ broke and I replaced it with a traditional string instead. Tying the knot was fiddly but it hasn’t snapped.
    6. There are thousands of YouTube tutorials on playing the guitar, many of which take you through how to play specific songs. It’s a case of finding a tutor that you like and who explains things at the right pace for you. My preference is Justin Guitar. I feel grateful for all these free resources, although undoubtedly they’re no substitute for actual one-to-one lessons.
    7. Picks (also known as plectrums) come in different materials and thicknesses. Strumming while holding one is trickier than you might think, as it can slip around when gripped between your finger and thumb.
    8. Guitars attract dust (or at least, mine does). I gave mine a clean when I’d taken the strings off but it was soon looking dusty again. I keep it in a case to protect it from insects / small children / leaks etc.
    9. As if coordinating your chord-playing hand with your strumming hand isn’t difficult enough, singing at the same time while keeping the tune and rhythm is really hard. You’d have to be well-rehearsed at the guitar piece before trying to sing over it.
    10. Playing the guitar toughens up your fingertips. This doesn’t sound particularly desirable (and it can hurt a little until your tender fingers are accustomed to pressing down the strings) but it goes with the territory.

  • Frustrated ants, flies on the windscreen and hungry caterpillars: insects in books, films and music

    Despite the grimness of the global pandemic, Spring is in the air, bringing flowers, sunshine and, of course, insects. Here are some examples of bugs in literature, films and popular music. If you’re wondering about the lack of spiders, it’s because they’re not really insects…

    Books:

    • James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl follows a little boy and his insect friends as they have adventures while escaping James’ bug-hating aunts.
    • Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka is a short story about a man who wakes up to find he has turned into a giant insect. I always thought it was specifically a cockroach but this seems open to interpretation, and possibly it doesn’t matter anyway.
    • The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle is self-explanatory. If you haven’t read this picture book, I won’t spoil the ending for you.
    • Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll famously includes a rude caterpillar who smokes a hookah while sitting on a mushroom.
    • The Lord of the Flies by William Golding, unsurprisingly enough, has flies in it.
    • The Bees by Laline Paull is a bit like The Handmaid’s Tale, but with bees. It’s weird and slightly gross.
    • The Railhead trilogy by Philip Reeve includes a species called Hive Monks composed of bugs. Individually the bugs are not intelligent, but together they’re strong. Hive Monks cover themselves up with robes and masks so as not to freak people out too much.

    Films:

    • Antz follows the journey of a frustrated worker ant called Z as he falls in love, goes to war and finds his place in the colony. For a children’s film it’s unusually violent and shows the aftermath of a battle with the termites.
    • A Bug’s Life was released the same year as the above (1998) but is more conventionally child-friendly. The protagonist is a clumsy but good-hearted ant called Flik. The villains are the grasshoppers.
    • Bee Movie is another CGI children’s film. It has the bees suing the human race for stealing their honey. It shows the effects of what happens when bees stop working.
    • The Fly is a horror film in which teleportation goes wrong, turning a scientist gradually into a terrible fly-creature.
    • Pinocchio is the classic Disney film with the character Jiminy Cricket having an important role as Pinocchio’s ‘conscience’. I never really recognised Jiminy as a cricket, partly because I’d never seen a cricket and partly because he doesn’t much look like one.
    • Men In Black features a giant alien bug who crashed to Earth in a flying saucer. He looks like a cockroach and wears the skin of a farmer as a disguise. He gets especially angry when someone kills an insect.

    Music:

    • ‘Ugly Bug Ball’ is a song from Disney’s 1963 film Summer Magic (no, I haven’t seen it either, but it’s on a compilation album I have). A lonely caterpillar is persuaded by his insect friends to attend a dance and they all have a wonderful time.
    • ‘Antmusic’ by Adam and the Ants is a 1980 song which implores us to turn away from the usual jukebox fare and try ‘antmusic’, i.e. the music of Adam and the Ants. We are also advised not to tread on ants.
    • ‘Buggin’ Me’ by True Steppers ft. Dane Bowers was popular when it was released in 2000. It’s not about insects as such, but the word ‘buggin’ is used to describe someone who is pestering, like a bug that keeps flying around your face. Like this song, actually.
    • ‘Fireflies’ by Owl City is a hit from 2009, with lyrics that make little sense, about ‘ten million fireflies’ which ‘fill the open air’ and ‘leave teardrops everywhere’. Catchy song, though.
    • ‘Fly on the Windscreen’ by Depeche Mode is an atmospheric 1985 song which has the message that death is all around us, so we might as well have sex because we too could meet our end at any time, like flies on a windscreen.
    • And here are a few bug-tastic music videos: ‘Breathe’ by The Prodigy, ‘Life’s What You Make It’ by Talk Talk, ‘One Caress’ by Depeche Mode, ‘Digging in the Dirt’ by Peter Gabriel, ‘Between Angels and Insects’ by Papa Roach.

    Image: from one of Edward Lear’s limericks.

  • My favourite albums #1: The Beatles – ‘Revolver’

    Music! It’s just as important to me as books are. Don’t make me choose between them.

    Welcome to the first of another series. I’ll be talking briefly about my favourite albums and thus exposing my taste in music to the world (or the tiny fraction of the world who might chance upon these blog posts). I’ll be referring to the UK CD version, so the tracklistings may differ slightly from other formats and regions. I know CDs aren’t cool any more, but for various reasons I’m not going to replace my collection with vinyl.

    Revolver was released in 1966 and unusually for any album, even a Beatles one, I really like every track on it. I wouldn’t skip any of them. This album shows their emerging experimental style but is still accessible and full of great melodies.

    1. Taxman. ‘If you drive a car, I’ll tax the street / If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat / If you get too cold, I’ll tax the heat / If you take a walk, I’ll tax your feet’. A caustic, rocky opening track from George Harrison targeted at the British Labour government.
    2. Eleanor Rigby. ‘All the lonely people / Where do they all come from?’ The sadness of this song is due to the string arrangements as much as the lyrics. It’s a perfect song, with much credit to Paul McCartney, and I never tire of hearing it.
    3. I’m Only Sleeping. ‘Please, don’t wake me, no, don’t shake me / Leave me where I am, I’m only sleeping’. This dreamy song has a leisurely pace and some backwards guitar. I find John Lennon’s lyrics very relateable.
    4. Love You To. ‘Make love all day long / Make love singing songs’. The classical Indian style of this song is exciting and intoxicating. George is basically telling us to seize the moment, because life is short.
    5. Here, There and Everywhere. ‘To lead a better life / I need my love to be here / Here, making each day of the year’. One of Paul’s, this is a hopeful ballad with some lovely harmonies.
    6. Yellow Submarine. ‘In the town where I was born / Lived a man who sailed to sea / And he told us of his life / In the land of submarines’. The simple tune, sung by Ringo, may be repetitive but it’s irresistible. Interesting sound effects, too.
    7. She Said She Said. ‘She said / I know what it’s like to be dead / I know what it is to be sad / And she’s making me feel like I’ve never been born’. This trippy mid-tempo guitar song is bittersweet and melodramatic.
    8. Good Day Sunshine. ‘I need to laugh, and when the sun is out / I’ve got something I can laugh about / I feel good, in a special way / I’m in love and it’s a sunny day’. A happy, summery McCartney song with romping piano and music-hall feel.
    9. And Your Bird Can Sing. ‘Tell me that you’ve got everything you want / And your bird can sing / But you don’t get me / You don’t get me’. Under two minutes, this song is short and sweet. I think it has the style of the Beatles’ early albums.
    10. For No One. ‘And in her eyes you see nothing / No sign of love behind the tears / Cried for no one / A love that should have lasted years!’ This melancholy ballad is another of Paul’s. It has a nice French horn solo.
    11. Doctor Robert. ‘If you’re down, he’ll pick you up / Doctor Robert / Take a drink from his special cup / Doctor Robert’. I always wondered who Doctor Robert was, and what exactly was in his special cup. Something illegal, I suspect.
    12. I Want to Tell You. ‘My head is filled with things to say / When you’re here / All those words they seem to slip away’. George’s final song on the album has nicely balanced piano and guitar. The vocals are a bit muffled, as if sung in the shower.
    13. Got to Get You Into My Life. ‘Ooh, then I suddenly see you / Ooh, did I tell you I need you / Every single day of my life’. Oddly I always thought this was a cover version, but it’s the original. Brassy, funky, quintessentially 1960s.
    14. Tomorrow Never Knows. ‘Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream / It is not dying, it is not dying’. The most experimental on the album, also known by me as ‘the seagull song’ due to a particular sound effect. An amazing track.

    Favourite track? It has to be Eleanor Rigby. Closely followed by Tomorrow Never Knows.