Michael Lewis - 100 Best Beatles Songs: A Passionate Fans Guide

The 100 Best Beatles Songs
A Passionate Fans Guide

Stephen J. Spignesi and Michael Lewis

Stephen J. Spignesi and Michael Lewis

Copyright 2004 by Stephen J. Spignesi and Michael Lewis

Photos on pp. i, ii, iii, courtesy of Herb Schmitz/Corbis. All other photos courtesy of the authors.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher.

eISBN: 978-1-60376-265-6

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Spignesi, Stephen J.
Here, there, and everywhere : the 100 best Beatles songs/
Stephen J. Spignesi and Michael Lewis.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN: 978-1-57912-842-5
1. Beatles. 2. Rock musicHistory and criticism. I. Lewis,
Michael (Michael D.), 1962- II. Title.

ML421.B4S662 2004
782.421660922dc22

2004002394

Book design: Scot Covey

Manufactured in the United States of America

Published by
Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, Inc.
151 West 19th Street
New York, New York 10011

Distributed by
Workman Publishing Company
225 Varick Street
New York, NY 10014

g f e d c b a

To the memories of John and George

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary. Whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Isaac Newton

For those who are awake the cosmos is one.

Heraclitus

STEPHEN J. SPIGNESI

To the memories of my mother Catherine and grandmother Sophie

When I find myself in times of trouble, mother Catherine comes to me

MICHAEL LEWIS

Introduction:
One, two, three FOUR! Dear Sir or Madam, Wont You Read Our Book?

Guitar groups are on their way out, Mr. Epstein.

Dick Rowe Decca Records

Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane are what I always imagined when I made a vow with John Lennon to make Liverpool famous, to promote our own experiences and environment.

Bill Harry

The importance of the Beatles cannot be overstated.

Paul Evans
The Rolling Stone Album Guide

Ask a Beatles fan which of the Beatles 206 songs are his or her favorites and the answer will probably be, All of them!

Here, There and Everywhere: The 100 Best Beatles Songs is, admittedly, an unusual addition to the library of books about the Beatles, but it is a book that we passionately believe in, and one that we greatly enjoyed writing. Yes, fellow Beatlefans, with boldness and unabashed love for the Fabs, we rank the 100 best Beatles songs. But what is best anyway, right? The American Heritage Dictionary defines best as surpassing all others in excellence, achievement, or quality; most excellent, and we kept those standards in mind as we were selecting, evaluating, and ranking the songs.

That question begs another question, however: What is excellence in art, perhaps the most subjective of all human endeavors? Have you ever seen a painting that consisted of nothing but a yellow canvas, but which art critics described as brilliant? Have you ever heard a popular song that you thought was trite, boring, repetitive, and unoriginal, yet it was Number One on the charts and selling by the boatload? Have you ever sat through a movie that was so slow, so depressing, and so mind-numbing that you trudged from the theater seriously thinking about what color stationery you should use for your suicide notewhile the rave reviews for the flick echoed through your addled brain?

Art is subjective on two levels: excellence and popularity. Great art is not always the most popular art. And the most popular art is not always the artists finest work.

This brings us to a discussion of the criteria we used for ranking the 100 best Beatles songs, and the process of culling down to 100 the 206 Beatles songs on our master list.

If a song was written by a Beatle and it appeared on a Beatles record, it became part of the master list. We did not include covers, since, even at their best (Twist and Shout, Please Mr. Postman, Money, etc.), these tracks were the Beatles rocking out with somebody elses song.) Also, there are a couple of songs on the Master List that are better known as solo Beatles songs, specifically Pauls Junk and Georges All Things Must Pass. Yes, they first appeared in final form on Paul and George solo album, but since they were written when the Beatles were together, and since they were originally considered for inclusion on a Beatles album, and since they did, ultimately, appear on a Beatles album (Anthology), we went ahead and included them on the list. (Neither made the top 100 here, though. However, they do make the top 100 in another book wed like to write, John, Paul, George & Ringo: The 100 Best Beatles Solo Songs.)

To start with, each of us reviewed the master list of 206 and picked the ones we felt definitely deserved inclusion in the top 100. We each came up with close to 150 songs. Next, we created a list of the songs common to both our lists. This totaled around 125 songs. Then we started cutting. We each cut separately and then compared our lists. Eventually, we had a master list of what we both agreed were the 100 best songs.

Our first pass at a Number One included Strawberry Fields Forever, A Day In The Life, Let It Be, Hey Jude, Yesterday, and All You Need Is Love. We both quickly agreed that it should be either Strawberry Fields Forever or A Day In The Life, and we ultimately decided on A Day In The Life, with Strawberry Fields taking the Number Two spot. A Day In The Life, the definitive Lennon/McCartney collaboration, emerged as the obvious choice. We then worked on the remainder of the top 10, which was actually pretty easy since we had already selected several of the Beatles all-time best songs.

The remaining 90 songs were much more difficult to rank. (Were still arguing about Martha My Dear being, at once, both too high and too low!) The first thing we did was come up with a recipe of the elements that made up a Beatles recording. This resulted in four artistic criteria:

1. Songwriting: The further away the song moved from rocks classic (and, truth be told, by now, cliched) three-chord progression (I-IV-V), the higher this rating.