Maximum Volume by Kenneth Womack

Author:Kenneth Womack
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Published: 2017-03-18T04:00:00+00:00

12

THE FOUR MOP-TOPS

* * *

WHEN MARTIN AND THE BANDMATES reconvened three days later on the morning of March 1, 1964—the Beatles’ first Sunday session during their nearly twenty-one-month association with Martin—they had no such luck. They were all too aware that they only had seven songs prepared for the soundtrack for their still-untitled feature film, which they were scheduled to begin shooting the very next day. By this point, the film had gone by a variety of potential names, including The Beatles and Beatlemania, although neither seemed to stick as far as Richard Lester and Walter Shenson were concerned. Compiling a forty-minute long-player necessitated some thirteen or fourteen tracks, which meant that George had his work cut out for him in terms of bringing the album to fruition in order to synchronize its release with the feature film, which was now slated for a July premiere. Moreover, he had to complete work on orchestrating the movie’s incidental music for Lester, who was anxious to bring the elements of his eventual film together. Martin and the Beatles, especially Lennon, were great fans of Lester’s work, dating back to The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film, a 1959 short flick starring Parlophone stalwarts Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers. Lester shot the movie over two Sundays on a shoestring budget of seventy pounds, which was worth its weight in gold, as the film was nominated for an Academy Award—and perhaps even better yet, it nabbed the attention of the Beatles, who counted it among their favorites and sought the auteur out after Epstein landed the deal with United Artists. As events would show, the thirty-two-year-old director was highly cognizant of the media attention that his movie was already receiving given the incredible popularity and visibility of his stars, and principal photography would only serve to shine an even brighter light on his work. Besides, the film wasn’t merely the Beatles’ feature debut; it was also Lester’s first foray into long-form cinema.

For Martin and the Beatles, things got started on the morning of March 1 with “I’m Happy Just to Dance with You,” an up-tempo Lennon-McCartney original that neither of the songwriters had any interest in singing. Years later, McCartney would deride it as a “formula” song intentionally written to spotlight Harrison’s vocals in the movie. The band made swift work of “I’m Happy Just to Dance with You,” which they dispatched in four takes. Martin made full use of the studio’s four-track machine, reserving one track for Lennon and Harrison’s rhythm and lead guitars, respectively, and a second for McCartney’s bass and Starr’s drum kit, which left two tracks for Harrison to overdub his vocals, giving his voice a fuller, more powerful texture. Their workmanlike approach to “I’m Happy Just to Dance with You” underscores its place as mere “filler” for the eventual soundtrack album, in contrast with, say, “And I Love Her” or “If I Fell,” which they had slaved over. Having run out of fresh material, Martin and the Beatles turned

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.