Can't Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain, and America by Gould Jonathan

Author:Gould, Jonathan [Gould, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography
ISBN: 9780307353382
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 7014809
Publisher: Crown Archetype
Published: 2007-10-02T00:00:00+00:00

THE FIRST SIGN of the metamorphosis that was under way in the Beatles’ music came on the group’s first single of 1966, “Paperback Writer” b/w “Rain,” a record that recalled “Can’t Buy Me Love” b/w “You Can’t Do That” in its pairing of songs that matched sharp distinctions of style with close similarities of form. Paul McCartney’s “Paperback Writer” was a satire of pop ambition in the style of “Drive My Car,” set like its predecessor in a musical context of relentless simplicity. Instead of a melody that clamors on one note, the song has a harmony that clamors on one chord, confining itself to long stretches on the tonic relieved by brief forays to the subdominant. This going-nowhere chord progression suggests a harmonic metaphor for unfulfillment that jibes with the lyrics of the song.

Like its budding author-narrator, “Paperback Writer” tries to make the most of its meager resources by heaping an elaborate arrangement on its simple harmonic frame. In the introduction, the song title is triplicated in an a cappella chorale that has Paul, John, and George staggering their entrances like children singing rounds. Their voices invert in a cascade of “writer, writer, writer” as the singers complete their lines, whereupon Ringo comes bolting out of the gate with a beat of almost comic intensity behind a driving, harshly distorted figure on guitar. “Son of Day Tripper” was how Lennon described the song, but the lyric is much wittier than that of the earlier single. There’s a wealth of satiric nuance in the formality of the author’s query on behalf of his “dirty story” with its thinly fictionalized plot and its obsessive dimensions (“a thousand pages give or take a few”). The mangled reference to “a novel by a man named Lear” sounds like a dig at Lennon, whose own paperback writings had drawn comparisons with Edward Lear. But the butt of the joke rests firmly with McCartney himself. He, after all, was the one who wrote the query letters back in the days of the Quarry Men and the Silver Beatles, soliciting work for the band in his most affected grammar-school prose. And the tight fit between the singer and his character helps to drain the condescension from the song. When Paul exclaims the words “Paperback Writer” at the end of every verse, he brings a starry-eyed reverence to this dubious occupational title that almost stands up to the punning counterpoint of “Pay-per-back-er” (sung to the tune of “Frère Jacques”) that John and George provide.

If the words and music of “Paperback Writer” could be said to capture some of the spirit of London in 1966, enlivened by people from all stations of society on the move and on the make, then John Lennon’s “Rain” on the flip side of the single captured the dreamy private languor that formed the flip side of the city’s “swinging” scene. The two tracks are similar in the simplicity of their chord progressions and the fullness of their sound, but the rhythm of

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