Lambley - And the Band Begins to Play. Part 2

AND THE BANDBEGINS TO PLAY
Part Two The Definitive Guide to the Beatles WITH THEBEATLES

by

SteveLambley

Published bySLIDE Books

Version 2.0

Steve Lambley2014

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She Loves You

John leadvocals, rhythm guitar
Paul lead/harmony vocals, bass
George harmony vocals, lead guitar
Ringo drums

Its hard tothink of the Beatles contriving a more exhilarating opening to asong. The power, energy and excitement crammed into those openingfew seconds hit like a thunderbolt in the summer of 1963. Even theastonishing I Saw Her Standing There couldnt have prepared therecord buying public for the joyous tumble of Ringos low tom-tomand the ebullience of the two voices singing as one. With hindsightwe can put this song in the context of I Want To Hold Your Handand Cant Buy Me Love, but remember that those who had not seenthe group live would have been unprepared for this level of energy.Certainly not from Love Me Do, nor from Please Please Me oreven From Me To You. Those opening ten seconds grabbed you by thecollar and threw you into the middle of next week.

Yeah, yeah,yeah, indeed.

And the icingon the cake was that added sixth on the final yeah. This touch,suggested by George, was one thing that was there from thebeginning George Martin remembers being intrigued by this oddsort of major sixth when they first ran through it on theiracoustic guitars. They were saying Its a great chord! Nobodysever heard it before!

And yet to alarge extent, She Loves You is a spectacular triumph of styleover content. It is undeniably breathtaking a thrilling,rapturous experience that bestrides the world of popular music likea Colossus. And yet sober analysis reveals that in many ways thesong is not as audacious as it may seem. Most strikingly, itconsists solely of four four-bar verses and two four-bar choruses a highly formal structure with no bridge, no middle eight. Theresult is that we are relentlessly bombarded by the vocal energy ofthe song. Any occasional bar lacking vocals is given a guitar fill.Musically and lyrically it defines and reiterates many Beatlehallmarks vocal lines starting in unison and ending in harmony, acall-and-response hook, those notorious melismas with alteredvowel sounds (yesterday-ee-ay), a driving rhythm section withRingo giving it his all on the cymbals, a falsetto ooh, and theyeah, yeah, yeah hook that would come to define a generation.

Which is notto say, of course, that there is little of interest. Within thestrictures of the four-square construction, there are powerfulrhythmic statements. She says she loves you is preceded andsucceeded by heart-stopping moments exactly mirroring the emotionof the lyric, and the chorus neatly switches the emphasis to thethird beat of the bar YEAH, yeah, yeah.

In fact, everyborrowed technique is enhanced with a pure Beatle touch. One of themost arresting comes at the climax of the introduction thatfabulous free sixth note that George throws in, just for the hellof it.

By no meansoriginal, of course whereas the group thought theyd hit uponsomething totally new, their producer knew theyd reinvented thewheel, hitting upon a clich favoured by everyone from Glenn Millerto the Andrews Sisters. But by God, it worked.

But also thestandard doo-wop IviIVV sequence (as in Please Mr Postman) isadjusted to Ivi7iiiV7 (GEm7BmD7) for that extra subtlespoonful of depth. More astonishing is the variation on Yes, sheloves you and that wonderful Cm in the IviivV7 (GEm7CmD7)switch, also contrasting with the C major in the intro. Anomination from at least one critic for the Greatest Beatle ChordChange.

But all thisanalysis is eclipsed by the energy of the piece and the brillianceof that thrice-stated idiomatic affirmative. This inspired hookthat came to epitomise Beatlemania was, as John readilyacknowledged, nothing new. He would later cite Lonnie Donegan andElviss All Shook Up as influences but what was new here wasthat yeah yeah yeah wasnt just introduced as a sound or afiller, but as a sentiment, an integral part of the lyric.

Paul happilypoints out that She Loves You marks a watershed inLennon-McCartney songwriting (apart from the historic switch incredit from McCartney-Lennon) in that for the first time it tookthe point of view of a third person. Still a love song of course it is surprising to discover that of the 21 original compositionsrecorded by the Beatles up to the end of 1963, all deal witha romantic relationship between a boy and a girl, from the boyspoint of view. In fact, only four I Saw Her Standing There,Misery, Please Please Me and She Loves You do not addressthe girl directly. So She Loves You marks a shift in perspective,a comment on a relationship that doesnt involve the singer. WhilePaul is reluctant to take all the credit for this, John rememberedthat it was Pauls idea. Bobby Rydells final hit, Forget Him(Forget him if he doesnt love you / forget him if he doesntcare) had entered the top 20 two weeks before he and John sat downto write, and that gave Paul the germ of an idea. And not only didit offer a new perspective, it also offered a vaguely philosophicalsentiment. Nothing compared to the groups later pronouncements ofcourse, but the lines pride can hurt you too / apologise to herwere not standard fare for a 1963 chart-topper.

Paul initiallyhad thoughts about an arrangement: Id planned an answering songwhere a couple of us would sing She loves you and the other oneanswers, Yeah, yeah. We decided that that was a crummy idea as itwas, but at least we then had the idea for a song. He and Johnwrote the song that day, 26 June, in their shared hotel room inNewcastle-upon-Tyne, and finished it off the next day back atPauls house in Forthlin Road. Four days later they went into thestudio to record the song, together with its B-side.

Back atForthlin Road, Pauls father was in the next room watching TV. Wewent into the living room Dad, listen to this. What do youthink? So we played it to my dad and he said, Thats very nice,son, but theres enough of these Americanisms around. Couldnt yousing, She loves you. Yes! Yes! Yes! At which point we collapsedin a heap and said, No, Dad, you dont quite get it!

The hook notonly entered the publics consciousness, but would make anoccasional appearance in the groups output over the years tackedonto the end of All You Need Is Love, for instance, or used tofill out Polythene Pam.

The releasedrecording of She Loves You comprises a number of the takes editedtogether. There are no details of precisely where the edits are,but some are clearly audible, most notably the drop-in of Pridecan hurt you too apologise to her / Because she loves you in thethird verse. The edits are disguised somewhat as many mixes havevarying degrees of echo (the 1992 mix by Peter Mew for the CDs of