Shout! by Philip Norman

Author:Philip Norman [Norman, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Music, Memoir
Publisher: Simon and Schuster Audio
Published: 1981-11-01T11:00:00+00:00

FOURTEEN

“THIS IS IT. THIS IS THE LAST ONE EVER”

At the beginning, two boys in travel-creased shirts would stand in front of George Martin, playing the new song they had scribbled in an old school exercise book. Martin even then saw two personalities at war. A song would be John’s aggression held in check by Paul’s decorum; it would be Paul’s occasionally cloying sentiment cut back by John’s unmerciful cynicism. Yet Paul loved all-out rock ’n’ roll, just as John could be capable of brusque tenderness. Examples of total collaboration were rare. More often, one would write half a song and then come to the other for help with the chorus or “middle eight.” The formula was established that whoever had written most of the song took the lead vocal, the other providing harmony. That harmony derived its freshness and energy from the contest being waged within it.

Collaboration was dictated, in any case, by close confinement in tour buses, dressing rooms, and later, aircraft; the pressure of songwriting to order in spaces cleared among newspapers, teacups, and the debris of “the road.” From the early, simple yeah-yeah hits up to the Hard Day’s Night album the songs, whether by John or Paul, are chiefly redolent of a common life on the run. Nor was it still absolutely certain that Lennon-McCartney songs were what the public wanted. Their next, and fourth, album, Beatles for Sale, reverted largely to their old Liverpool and Hamburg stage repertoire: Chuck Berry’s “Rock and Roll Music”; Carl Perkins’s “Honey Don’t”; Little Richard’s “Kansas City”; Buddy Holly’s “Words of Love,” a track on which their fans first discovered their almost uncanny powers of mimicry. By covering the songs of these and many others of their rock and soul idols, and openly acknowledging their creative debt, they had reactivated several careers previously in the doldrums, notably Berry’s and Perkins’s, and Holly’s posthumous one. It was thanks to them also that knowing about pop history for the first time became cool.

The importance of George Martin cannot be overemphasized. First of all, he signed them. Second, he did not cheat them. Third, he did not adulterate them. It would have been easy for him, as all-powerful record producer, to insist that each release should carry a B side composed by himself. Martin happened to be of the rare breed who are content to use their talents in improving other people’s work. To Lennon and McCartney he was the editor that all creative promise strikes if it is lucky. He took the raw songs, he shaped and pruned and polished them and, with scarcely believable altruism, asked nothing for himself but his EMI salary and the satisfaction of seeing the songs come out right. As the songs grew more complex, so did Martin’s unsung, unsinging role.

Paul McCartney was, of the two, the more obviously natural musician. Much came from heredity, and the Jim Mac Jazz Band. He had an instinctive grasp of harmony, a gift of phrasing that raised the bass guitar in his hands to an agile, expressive lead instrument.

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