LP,
I was not implying that the Beatles did not know any theory at all, that they just kind of stumbled into being the greatest contemporary song writers of our time. They grew in their understanding of music in a natural way that many of us did in those days, as we listened to the radio, learned to play guitar and wrote songs. They would pick apart the songs they heard and liked on the radio to figure them out. Their understanding of music grew as they matured. They would learn chords and chord structures and then experiment with them to see where they could go with them. Again, what I admired most about them was their ability to experiment, to improvise, and to try new things. Things like starting a recorded song “I Feel Fine” with the guitar feeding back, which was a first I believe. Actually a mistake, which John loved and made them keep it in the song. They were not confined by theory, but instead, like to push it boundaries.
And actually, to the OP... if you want to learn a lot about contemporay music therory, you could do a lot worse than study the catalogue of these guys.
Here is an excerpt from a McCartney interview in May at the release of the remasterd Ram CD. Remember, Paul is in his late 60’s at this time. He has a life time of learning, but still is very “McCartney-like” in his description of song writing.
From the Ram interview:
Talking about the songs you’ve written. There seems to be two types of songs you were writing at the time around RAM, and that probably went on from the late 60s. To me, having had a go at songwriting in my life, there’s the really organic ones, like, as you say ‘Heart of the Country’, and then you’ve got the ones like ‘Uncle Albert’ with the tempo changes and really structured, and really complex things. Do you think you were influenced by the early prog-rock movement, I guess you wouldn’t say RAM was a prog-rock album? Do you think you were influenced by seeing Pink Floyd at the Roundhouse...
What I take the influence back to was A Teenage Opera. That was a very early record in the late 60s, by Keith West... it was his only, like, big hit. That was episodic, there was a bit and it went 'buh-buh-bum', then it went there, and there, and there [Sir Paul makes some stacking gestures with his hands]. I think that was the first record I heard, and we heard, and we thought ‘that’s interesting’. You can have a song here, then you can cut like a film to another song, and you can even cut the tempo and go slow and so on. That was really the one that was the biggest influence, and then lots of people started doing it. We'd do it a bit, prog-rock did it, Townshend started doing it a bit, The Who opera and all that. I think it was just that one record that made you realize that it didn’t have to be the same tempo or the same key all the way through, you could cut like a film.
Was that two different ways of writing that you were trying to employ? Because ‘Heart of the Country’ seems to me, as you say, to be something that you just sat down and wrote...
Yeah, it’s like a little folk country song.
...whereas with other songs you seem it’s so complicated and intricate that it would have to be mapped out. Even something like where you would change the chord on every two beats in the bar on a track like ‘Lovely Rita’ or something like that, and I think it’s one of the hardest things for a writer to do. So many modern songs just change on the beat, and some of the stuff you were doing was so complex...
Yeah, well, you know, I think the thing is, we started, in early rock ‘n’ roll with three chords. We learned those three chords in a number of keys, A, D, E, was the first. Then E, A, B7, which meant you could be in E and do three chords. C, F, G7, but it was always the three chords but in different keys. Then we started to nick C out of its world, the world of C, and put it into the E world, so instead of just E 'dun-dum-dunna', A 'doo-doo-doo', B 'doo-dunna', E. Then you’d go E to A to C or whatever and you’d just see other chords you could stick in.
So it was a gradual development and you were just learning other chords. Then if there was a song that you wanted to do, that was, really chordy... I was just thinking the other day, I liked the song 'Till There Was You’, I didn’t realise at the time that it was out of a musical called The Music Man, I just heard it as a song and I kinda liked it, so I just learned it. I think have even got the sheet music or something. The chords were quite [shrugs]. This was in F, and you were learning the demented chord or whatever. This was like F demen-ted! And C dee-luded! And E distracted! So there was all these kind of weird little chords that were adding to our armory of where we could go, you know. Like you say, once we got a lot of those then you would even try changing in the middle of a bar and that’s another advance.
Was that a conscious thing that you were doing while you were writing?
Yeah, you would just see where you could go with the thing. We never wanted to do the same thing twice. So, you know, even if Ringo would play the same drum kit and beat, for the second song of the day - because we’d usually end up doing four songs a day, in the early days of The Beatles - and we’d say ‘didn’t you just play that snare drum’ he’d go ‘yeah’ and we’d say ‘can’t you hit on the back of a packing case then’. We just didn’t want the same sound on the next record. Whereas now, you’ll get a guy who’ll use the whole of his kit for the whole album, there’s nothing wrong with that, but we were always just trying to make a different sound and see how far we could push it.
So all of that came into play and on ‘Till There Was You’ there was a guy in Hessy’s, do you remember Hessy’s?
Yeah, I sure do. I could only afford to buy plectrums there when I was a kid...
We were the same.
It’s not there now.