Song of the Month: "If I Fell"

I recently downloaded a playlist on Apple Music that had all the Beatles albums on it. I mean all of them, even the early ones that I never listen to, and that, I suspect, most people don't listen to all that often either. The early LPs were mostly cover songs. The fact is that in those days albums weren't really a thing yet in terms being a unified artistic entity. They were basically collections of songs that provided padding around the 2 or 3 "hits" that were garnering radio play at the time. That's why my own Beatles listening has always focused on the later LPs, which were more artistically ambitious, both in terms of sound and subject matter. I'm talking Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper's, Magical Mystery Tour, The White Album, and Abbey Road. Then I would flesh these out with collections like the Red and Blue double LPs. So, anyway, it was an "ear-opening" experience to listen to the early stuff. Some of it is a little weak, but much of it is very, very good. 

"If I Fell" is from the album that accompanied 1964's A Hard Day's Night, their first film, timed to capitalize on Beatlemania. Just their third album, it's all originals, and because of that, we start to hear the sound of the mature Beatles, and I've now moved this into permanent rotation with the aforementioned titles. The songs are all love songs, since they were still in the mindset of trying, first and foremost, to write popular "pop" songs, which means romantic love has got to be the theme. But there's no shame in that. Ninety five percent of songs in the Great American Songbook are love songs. There's a reason, which is that the romantic relationship will always be the greatest theme, period. My marriage is certainly the most important thing in my life. I mean, if Putin said, I'll leave the Ukraine if you never see your wife again, I'd decline the offer.

So with the early songs we don't get sonic experimentation or cutting edge lyrics. But what we get is the pure sound of the Beatles, which is the key to the whole thing. Many of their songs, both early and late, are exceedingly simple, and can in fact be reproduced by a four piece band. What drives the sound is the joy of the melodies, the destined-by-fate simpatico harmonies of Lennon and McCartney, and ingenious arrangements that do what they need to do to get the song across. But look, it's the sound that thrills. Either you feel it or you don't. I feel it. Maybe it's because I was a kid when I first heard it. Probably. Be that as it may, I'll go ahead and outline some of the elements that make the Lennon-composed "If I Fell" a classic early Beatles song, and my Song of the Month. No, Song of the Year!

So the song starts with an introduction that features simple guitar accompaniment under Lennon's double-tracked voice. This technique, along with the unisons Lennon and McCartney sang is a distinguishing feature of the sound. I'm not musicologist enough to tell you exactly what that opening chord is, but it's an interesting one, minor I think. When the melody comes around the second time it doesn't repeat the initial pattern but instead rises to bring us to the main melody. In fact, it's here, I contend, that we encounter the whole of the Beatles in just a few seconds. Starting at 14 seconds the song begins its rise. And then at 18 seconds, when the solo vocal ends, the harmony vocals enter, with Ringo doing a drum fill beneath them that propels them into the launch of the main melody at 20 seconds, at which point the drums go to just marking rhythm and the harmonies become the whole song. It is like a glorious opening of life. Here comes the sun! To me the sequence from 14 seconds to about 22 seconds captures everything that made the Beatles the sensation they were. My description here is a bit rough, but I think your ears can tell you, yes, this is the Beatles. Actually, let's extend that sequence in terms of capturing the Beatles' essence. At about 25 seconds the harmonies merge ever so briefly into Lennon and McCartney singing "I must be sure" in unison. This movement from harmony to unison is definitely a Beatles signature. From there, the whole song is sung in harmony, again with unisons interspersed. What makes it great is how the two lines never stay in the same relation to one another. The intervals are always shifting, and it makes the performance endlessly interesting. In short, it's not technology that makes the song go. There's no Spectorian "wall of sound." Just a beautiful melody, a dynamic arrangement, and the blending of two of the greatest voices of the century. 

I remember reading an interview with McCartney a couple years ago and he said that the main difference between the Beatles and the Stones was that the Beatles were primarily a vocal band and the Stones a guitar band. Now, the Beatles were instrumental masters and took the lead in turning the recording studio into an intrinsic part of the musical art form, but when I listen to "If I Fell," I think McCartney was right. If they had never done Sgt. Peppers, we would still have those voices casting their spell, a spell that for me has never been broken, all these decades later.