This weekend I’m highlighting one of the best one-two punches in music history, a pair of songs released on a “double-A-sided” single that are among the best The Beatles ever recorded.
Today’s track comes courtesy of Paul McCartney. ‘Penny Lane’ is his remembrance of a street in Liverpool, where he and John grew up. I don’t know if the fireman, banker, barber and nurse were actual people Paul encountered as a lad or inventions for this song, but he certainly paints a lovely picture.
Apart from the title song, the most celebrated tune on Let it Be is John’s masterful ‘Across the Universe.’ This is one of those quintessential Beatles tunes that really gets to the heart of what made them special… the combination of simple melody, inspired production and enlightened lyrics.
It’s ironic that John repeats the phrase “nothing’s gonna change my world” when this song is a perfect example of how he and The Beatles changed everybody else’s world through their music.
Let it Be is one of my least favorite Beatles albums (all things being relative, of course… it’s better than just about everything but other Beatles records). Some of the songs are just ok and the great songs have been over-produced by Phil Spector.
I’m curious about the Let it Be… Naked release of a few years ago, which presented the album without Spector’s embellishments, although I’ve heard that one is a bit disappointing too.
So far I’ve written exclusively about songs that appear on The Beatles’ albums, and lord knows there are enough of those to keep these Beatles Weekends going for months. But I’m turning my attention today to one of the band’s non-album singles.
Back in the day, artists would release songs between albums, probably to keep themselves on the audience’s radar. Somewhere along the line that practice fell by the wayside and singles were treated as previews of upcoming albums. Some artists still keep up the practice — Belle and Sebastian released all of their singles with non-album cuts for years — and in the Internet age, more and more artists have taken to releasing one-off tracks on their Web sites.
It occurred to me the other day that when Let it Be, The Beatles’ last official release, came out, John Lennon was 30 years old and Paul McCartney was 28. They had changed the face of music, written and recorded some of the highest-selling and most ground-breaking albums in history, sparked a cultural phenomenon that spanned continents… all in their 20s. Amazing.
The next thought I had is that it must be weird to live out the next two thirds of your life knowing you’ve basically already peaked. (Of course, sadly, John didn’t get that chance.) I mean, Paul knows that he can have Wings and a series of well-received solo albums and all that, but nothing he ever does in his life will approach what he did in his 20s.
Meet Me In Montauk 