Beatles thought dream 012809

Your mother should know I’m so tired when I get home.
Yesterday, she came in through the bathroom window.

“Do you want to know a secret,” she said.
She said, “Baby, it’s you. I need you.”

“Wait, slow down, Michelle. You like me too much.”

Tell me why I saw her standing there, Julia.

She came in through the bathroom window the night before.

“Good day sunshine,” she said.
She said, “I want to tell you it’s only love.
I want to tell you I feel fine.”

“I’m so tired, Michelle. Good night.”

“Ask me why I need you, honey pie.”

No reply.

“Because I’m down,” she said.
She said, “Because in my life I’m a loser.”

I’ve got a feeling she’s leaving home. Something.

“I want to hold your hand, little child.
Hold me tight. I need you. I want you.”

She’s so heavy. Help, Julia.

“Oh! darling, please please me,” she said.
She said, “There’s a place . . . here,
there and everywhere. A taste of honey.”

“You can’t do that, Michelle, what you’re doing.”

“Bad boy. Why don’t we do it in the road?
Every little thing.
Every little thing,” she said.
She said the word “chains.”

“Get back, Michelle. Don’t bother me.”

She’s a woman, I should’ve known better.

“Honey, don’t. Don’t let me down.
All my loving. I need you.”

“Goodnight, Michelle.”

“I’ll be back. I will.”

“You won’t see me, Michelle.”

“I’ll get you,” she said.
She said, “It won’t be long.
I’ll get you. I will. Any time at all.
Run for your life, honey pie.”

It’s all too much, Julia.

“Happiness is a warm gun,” she said.
She said, “Happiness is a warm gun.
All I’ve got to do . . .

P.S. I love you.”

Let it be the end, Julia.
Let it be the end.

Beatlemania: The Most Underrated Beatles Songs

Another pointless listing exercise that I seem to enjoy far more than I should. This one has the added element of being particularly silly and impossible to determine. Not that I was daunted by that.

Nor, evidently, are many other people, as a quick Google search revealed countless web pages devoted to the same quest. I am not alone in my freakdom. After my own list, I include some other results. (Mine, naturally, being far more authoritative.)

Ah, well, it's a fun excuse to talk about good songs.

"Underrated" is always in the eye of the beholder. You can't really prove it; you just know it when you see it. Basically, something you love doesn't seem to be valued as highly by other (less knowledgeable) people. I decided not to include any of the Beatles big hits. That part was easy. But I also wanted to exclude songs that were/are played on the radio a lot, or have always been fan favorites, or that have been written about extensively. That wasn't so easy.

My first choice for the most underrated Beatles song was "Tomorrow Never Knows." It's one of my favorite songs by the Fab Four, and it was enormously important, not just in their own body of work but in the history of 20th century popular music. Many non-Beatles fans may not even know it. But it's been written about at length. George Martin, in his book With a Little Help from My Friends: The Making of Sgt. Pepper, has to include a whole section on the song, even though it was on Revolver, because it marked the beginning of the Beatles serious experimentation in the studio. There is no Pepper without "Tomorrow Never Knows." So, sadly, I didn't include it on the list.

I offer ten songs, in the order they came to me. You can hear them by clicking on the title, which will direct you to a YouTube video. (Several of the videos have additional information about the songs available under the "more" link on the right.) After the first ten are others I considered. I'm sure I've missed some good ones. If I did the list again tomorrow, the first six would probably remain the same, but the others could easily change.

And, of course, I'd love to hear what others think. (Unless you're going to mention "Yesterday." Then I will have to ask you to step outside.)

Rain (B-side single "Paperback Writer") - I'm partial to a certain strain of psychedelic Beatles. Not the flowery songs, but those with an edge and a deeper groove. It's an artistic trajectory that begins, I would argue, with "Norwegian Wood" and ends with "The Inner Light," and is made up almost entirely of work by John and George. "Rain" is one of those Beatles songs that seems to capture the essence of what the group was trying to do at a certain period of time. It's the perfection of a sound that hovers about all of their 1966 output but comes to full fruition on this track.

Recorded during the April 1966 sessions for Revolver, the song's strange atmosphere resulted in part from the group's new-found love of toying with technology. It marks the first time they used backwards guitar, an accidental discovery. As John recalled later, "I got home from the studio stoned out of mind on marijuana, and as I usually do, I listened to what I'd recorded that day. Somehow I got [the tape] on backwards and I sat there, transfixed, with the earphones on, with a big hash joint. I ran in the next day and said, 'I know what to do with it, I know . . . Listen to this! . . . That was a gift from God - of Jah, actually, the god of marijuana. Jah gave me that one. The first backwards guitar on any record."

In addition to the backwards guitar and John's backwards vocals in the last verse, the band also tinkered in the studio by playing the rhythm track incredibly fast and then slowing it down on tape, giving the song much of its dreamy quality.

Beyond the technological innovations, however, the band simply produced some excellent music on this one. Ian MacDonald, in his book Revolution in the Head, says, "[i]nstrumentally, the twin focuses of 'Rain' are Starr's superb soloistic drumming (which he reckons to be his best recorded performance), and McCartney's high-register bass-line, sometimes so inventive that it threatens to overwhelm the track." The song is also helped greatly by John's vocal, which MacDonald highlights for its "acerbic quality. There is nothing innocent here, the observing eye is critical, and the song's chanting phrases verge on a sneer ('Can you hear me.')"

What gets lost forty years later when discussing the Beatles psychedelic era, is that most people think colorful Sgt. Pepper costumes and "All You Need Is Love." But the best Beatles songs of that era - the John and George work I mentioned earlier - have a darker hue, a questioning and often cynical edge. "Rain" is one of the best examples. Unfortunately, by making it the B-side of "Paperback Writer," the song never really received the attention it deserved.

I'm Only Sleeping (Revolver) - Another excellent, dreamy John song from the Revolver sessions. More backwards guitar. A fragment of an early take that appeared on Anthology 2 features vibraphone, which adds to the dreamy quality. For some reason, I always imagine this song as the birth of Yo La Tengo.

Hey Bulldog (Yellow Submarine) - The Summer of Love turned into the Winter of Discontent. The Christmas 1967 broadcast of Magical Mystery Tour on BBC was a critical and popular disaster. Brian Epstein's death seemed to have left his four charges in an emotional and creative lurch. They hadn't been in the studio as a group for several months. Their psychedelic period was crashing to an end and the last tragic epoch of over-exercised egos and crumbling relationships was about to begin. In between the two eras came a strange little session over the course of a week in early February, 1968, just days before they embarked on their ill-fated group pilgrimage to India. They had no overarching project to work on yet, but they needed a single, so they knocked out Paul's "Lady Madonna" and an early version of John's "Across the Universe." The two argued over which should be the A-side, but John's offering wasn't really in great shape, so the nod went to Paul's song.

In the meantime, the band worked on another half-formed John tune first called "Hey Bullfrog." It was somewhat of a nonsense piece, knocked out in a single day (fast work for them at that point), and eventually relegated to the dust-bin of the Yellow Submarine soundtrack. But propelled by a driving James Bond-like theme pounded out on piano by John and Paul's groovy bass-work, the song has more energy than many of their better-known tunes, and it remains fresh after 40 years. Part of the excitement comes from John's snarling vocals. He seems to have woken up from his by-then perpetual LSD reverie and decided to become a more physical rock and roll singer again. Maybe because the band wasn't trying to be great on this song, they were able to deliver a simple yet powerful reminder of just how great they could be. One of their best pure rock and roll cuts.

The Inner Light (B-side single "Lady Madonna") - For twenty years, this was probably the most obscure song in the Beatles catalogue. Available only as a b-side to "Lady Madonna," and then on an expensive (for me at least) ten-LP Beatles collector's set, I didn't hear "The Inner Light" until it was finally released on CD (Past Masters Volume Two) in 1988. Recorded during the same February 1968 session that produced "Hey Bulldog," it would be George Harrison's last and, perhaps, most successful experiment with Indian music.

During the creative lull after Brian Epstein's death in August 1967, George had been invited to Bombay to do a soundtrack of Indian-influenced music for a film called Wonderwall. While there, he also recorded some basic tracks with some of the best musicians in India. To one of these songs, he added transcribed text from the Tao Te Ching by Lao tzu, and thus was born "The Inner Light." Mark Lewisohn notes that Harrison had to be coaxed to sing the song, however. "Strangely, for so beautiful a song, George seemed reluctant to record his vocal, according to tape operator Jerry Boys. 'George had this big thing about not wanting to sing it because he didn't feel confident that he could do the song justice. I remember Paul saying, 'You must have a go, don't worry about it, it's good.'" MacDonald, generally dismissive of Harrison's work, calls it "spirited and charming - one of its author's most attractive pieces."

I don't know why the song fell into obscurity for as long as it did, but I do know that some of its lines often pop into my head, especially the affecting way George sings, "The further one travels, the less one knows."

It's All Too Much (Yellow Submarine) - Another George song unfairly dismissed over the years. This psychedelic epic was recorded a few days before the release of Sgt. Pepper and used for the Yellow Submarine project. To me, the song strikes an excellent balance between the mystery of spiritual unity - evoked by guitar feedback, church organs, droning rhythm and chanting - and the resulting joy that can almost be unbearable. In an ecstatic state, the mind, heart and spirit can definitely feel overwhelmed, and suddenly being connected to THE ALL literally becomes "All Too Much." But Harrison uses his sense of humor to keep the song balanced between powerful mystical experience and our quotidian concerns. "Sail me on a silver sun, where I know that I'm free. Show me that I'm everywhere and get me home for tea." The line is reminiscent of another 20th century British mystic disguised as a popular artist, T.S. Eliot, who writes in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" that there is time for "a hundred visions and revisions before the taking of a toast and tea."

Harrison also does a deft job of connecting spiritual experience to physical love. On one level, "It's All Too Much" is simply another Beatles love song. George opens this six and a half-minute mystical journey in the earthly realm, staring into his lover's eyes: "When I look into your eyes, your love is there for me. And the more I go inside, the more there is to see." Immediately, though, this love from his partner becomes something greater than themselves. "It's all too much for me to take, the love that's shining all around you." What's in her eyes is also that which surrounds them. At the end of the song, after several verses of ecstatic experience, George returns to the physical realm and his beloved: "With your long blond hair and your eyes of blue, You are too much." She, the lover, has now become an earthly embodiment of Love and The All, which has been so mind-blowing. The two shall become One.

There is an earlier and even longer version (8:35) of the song, with additional lyrics, available on some bootlegs. Harrison basically cut out one of the middle verses.

Flying/Blue Jay Way (Magical Mystery Tour) - This is really two distinct songs that follow one another on Side One of the original album. They create such a single mood, however, that I always think of them as being one piece. "Flying," originally known as "Aerial Tour Instrumental," was written specifically as incidental music for the Magical Mystery Tour film and is one of the very rare Beatles instrumentals. In its early incarnations, it stretched to nine minutes long and included at different times an experimental jazz saxophone at the end, and in a bootleg version I have, a Cowboy TV Theme thing. Luckily, both were eventually dropped. What remains is, in my eyes, a tremendous kind of psychedelic groove, and a pathway I really wish the Beatles would've pursued more in their work. Something was happening here that never really shows up anywhere else. Maybe in "I Want You (She's So Heavy)," on Abbey Road. But even that was different.

"Blue Jay Way" continues the mood and deepens it. Some people are lost in a fog. The narrator, George, is simply hanging out waiting for them. How existential and/or spiritual. Nothingness. That's what these two songs conjure up. A beautiful and womb-like nothingness.

There's also a sly, wonderful George poke at the authorities he was always suspicious of. "Ask the policemen on the street; there are so many there to meet." And later, as he repeats the line, "Please don't be long," it suddenly transforms into "Don't belong." Dark fluid psychedelic groove. I want more!

Two of Us (Let It Be) - We forget sometimes that in addition to being one of the great composing partnerships in 20th century music, John and Paul were also best buds going back a long way. One of those rare super-intense friendships. And it fell apart quickly like a passionate romance. "Two of Us," one of their last songs together, is a sad and poignant piece that they somehow manage to pull off emotionally, though they were hardly talking to each other at that point. It's like a married couple singing a lovely, painful duo about their own divorce.

Baby It's You / Twist and Shout (Please Please Me) - John Lennon was a great rock and roll singer, perhaps never more so than in the group's early days. He had an unaffected and energetic, almost wild voice. Over the years, I think drugs and an increasing seriousness (ego) caused him to lose some of the vitality of the first recordings. Listening to the Please Please Me album is to be reminded of his great singing. Nowhere is that more evident than on "Twist and Shout," and though I wouldn't call that exactly underrated, I think it's worth mentioning. It was the final song recorded at the end of a long arduous day on February 11, 1963. Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn, in The Beatles Recording Sessions: The Official Abbey Road Studio Session Notes, 1962-1970, calls it "arguably the most stunning rock and roll vocal performance of all time; two-and-a-half minutes of Lennon shredding his vocal chords to bits." He describes the scene well:

"The group was not exactly at the peak of physical condition before the day even started, having worked up and down the country through one of the coldest British winters on record. John Lennon had a particularly heavy cold. . . .It was now something like 10:00 pm and the studios were due to close down for the evening. But there was one more song to be recorded. . . . Someone suggested they do 'Twist & Shout,' the old Isley Brothers number, with John taking the lead vocal. But by this time all their throats were tired and sore -- it was 12 hours since we had started working. John's, in particular, was almost completely gone. . . . John sucked a couple more Zubes ["throat sweets"], had a bit of gargle with milk and away we went."

MacDonald says that at 10:30, with Lennon "stripped to the waist and the others 'hyping' themselves by treating the control-room staff as their audience, they went for it. The eruptive performance that ensued stunned the listening technicians."

If "Twist and Shout" doesn't count as "underrated," one can hear Lennon's great singing on other tunes from that session. "Baby, It's You," a Shirelles song, was the track the group recorded just before "Twist and Shout." Lennon's voice is obviously already raw, but while the tune may be kitschy in parts, you can still hear why he was such a great singer. "Anna" is another good example from that session.

I'll Be Back (A Hard Day's Night) - John considered this one of his own personal favorites, and it's easy to see why. MacDonald calls it "a melancholy essay in major/minor uncertainty mirrored in the emotional instability of its lyric. The most unorthodox thing Lennon had yet written."

The Night Before (Help!) - One of my favorite Paul songs. For some reason, it never gets talked about much, but I think it's a great example of Beatles "pop" at its best.

Others I considered, in no real order:

Julia (The Beatles) - One of John Lennon's most personal and beautiful songs. Mother-Sister as muse. Perfect yin-yang balance to his great song "Mother" from Plastic Ono Band.
Love You To (Revolver) - Harrison's first full attempt at mixing Indian music with rock and roll. Cool, cynical lyrics give it an edge.
Oh! Darling (Abbey Road) - My vote for Paul's finest vocal effort as a Beatle. At least as a rock and roll singer.
Yes It Is (B-side single "Ticket To Ride") - MacDonald calls this Lennon's "most yearningly romantic song . . . positively 19th century in its haunted feverishness, its Poe-like invocation of the colour scarlet, and its hint that the lost lover of the lyric is dead." Yeah, whatever. It is one of John's most romantic songs.
You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away (Help!) - Lennon in full Dylan mode. Not sure this can really be considered underrated. It gets a fair amount of attention.
I Want You (She’s So Heavy) (Abbey Road) - One of the heaviest Beatles' jams tacked onto John's minimalist lyrics.
This Boy (B-side single “I Want To Hold Your Hand”) - Lennon starting to stretch out as a songwriter. A lovely little ballad.
I Need You (Help!) - More neglected Harrison. A meditative, almost melancholy love song with great atmosphere. Though George was the youngest in the group, this tune seems to have more genuine emotional authority than what John and Paul were doing at that point. George seemed born with an older man's questioning nature.
You Won’t See Me (Rubber Soul) - One of my favorite Paul "pure pop" songs. Sounds very "sixties" now, but it's still catchy.
I Want To Tell You (Revolver) - Revolver may have been George's best album as a songwriter (Taxman, Love You To, and this one), and this was only his third best cut on it. His lazy, cynical vocals and the kind of off-kilter, brooding quality of the song give Revolver some of its essential weight. Provides a needed counterbalance to the dramatic brightness of many of Paul's efforts on the album.
Cry Baby Cry (The Beatles) - MacDonald's take: "[A] haunting and haunted creation. . . . Of all The Beatles, Lennon had the most direct access to childhood, and this song, with its deceptive sunshine and mysterious laughter behind half-opened doors, is one of the most evocative products of that creative channel." Lennon called it "a piece of rubbish." I go with MacDonald on this one.
I’ll Follow the Sun (Beatles for Sale) - Paul's musing folk ditty, actually written in Hamburg in 1960.
I’m Happy Just to Dance With You (A Hard Day's Night) - Another one of those songs that seems to capture what the Beatles were all about at a certain point in their trajectory. George singing a tune John wrote for him.
No Reply (Beatles for Sale) - A pivot point between early and mid Beatles. Their first attempt at an operatic feel.

I found a Beatles web site where over 50 people listed their FIVE choices for most underrated songs. I tallied up the scores and here are the Top 20, along with the number of votes:

1. Rain (B-side single “Paperback Writer”) - 12
2. You Wont See Me (Rubber Soul) - 11
3. Hey Bulldog (Yellow Submarine) - 10
4. I'm Only Sleeping (Revolver) - 8
5. I've Got A Feeling (Let It Be) - 7
6. Dig A Pony (Let It Be) - 6
7. And Your Bird Can Sing (Revolver) - 5
7. The Night Before (Help!)- 5
7. Piggies (The Beatles) - 5
7. Savoy Truffle (The Beatles) - 5

11. Baby You're a Rich Man (Magical Mystery Tour) - 4
11. I Want You (She's So Heavy) (Abbey Road)- 4
11. I've Just Seen a Face! (Help!) - 4
14. I Me Mine (Let It Be) - 3
14. I'm Looking Through You (Rubber Soul) - 3
14. Long, Long, Long (The Beatles) - 3
14. Revolution 9 (The Beatles) - 3
14. She's Leaving Home (Sgt. Pepper) - 3
14. This Boy (B-side single “I Want To Hold Your Hand”) - 3
14. Two of Us (Let It Be) - 3
14. Yer Blues (The Beatles) - 3

Gimme Some Truth

A request from John Schertzer that I'm more than happy to oblige.

One of my favorite John Lennon songs, with George Harrison on lead guitar.

Has anything changed much since 1972? Tricky Dick was Richard Nixon, now it's Dick Cheney. The uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocritics and the neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed politicians remain the same.

All I know is that Lennon's anger and yearning for truth in the midst of an absurd and corrupt environment resonates just as much now as it did 36 years ago.



I'm sick and tired of hearing things
From uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocritics
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth

I've had enough of reading things
By neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed politicians
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth

No short-haired, yellow-bellied, son of tricky dicky
Is gonna mother hubbard soft soap me
With just a pocketful of hope
Money for dope
Money for rope

No short-haired, yellow-bellied, son of tricky dicky
Is gonna mother hubbard soft soap me
With just a pocketful of soap
Money for dope
Money for rope

I'm sick to death of seeing things
From tight-lipped, condescending, mamas little chauvinists
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth now

I've had enough of watching scenes
With schizophrenic, ego-centric, paranoiac, prima-donnas
All I want is the truth now
Just gimme some truth

No short-haired, yellow-bellied, son of tricky dicky
Is gonna mother hubbard soft soap me
With just a pocketful of soap
Its money for dope
Money for rope

Ah, I'm sick to death of hearing things
From uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocrites
All I want is the truth now
Just gimme some truth now

I've had enough of reading things
By neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed politicians
All I want is the truth now
Just gimme some truth now
All I want is the truth now
Just gimme some truth now
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth

Giving Peace A Chance?

American Peace Sign

The Global Peace Index has released its 2008 Rankings, and the United States did not do well, coming in 97th place out of 140 countries.

If you go to the rankings and click on each individual country, you can see how it fares in the 59 measures used to determine the index. The U.S., for example, does well in "Political Stability," but terribly in "Number of jailed population per 100,000 people."

From The Guardian:

"The world appears to be a marginally more peaceful place this year," said Steve Killelea, the Australian technology entrepreneur and founder of the Global Peace Index. "This is encouraging, but it takes small steps by individual countries for the world to make greater strides on the road to peace."

The index, which was launched under the auspices of the global thinktank the Institute for Economics and Peace is endorsed by the Nobel laureates Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Professor Joseph Stiglitz and Professor Muhammad Yunus. It also enjoys the support of business leaders such as Sir Richard Branson and Sir Mark Moody Stuart.

His Holliness the Dalai Lama is another supporter. You can see the full list of Global Peace Index endorsers here.

Here are the Top Ten most peaceful countries in the world:

1. Iceland
2. Denmark
3. Norway
4. New Zealand
5. Japan
6. Ireland
7. Portgual
8. Finland
9. Luxembourg
10. Austria

Spain came in 30th. France 34th. The U.K. 49th. Canada 11th.

And the five least peaceful countries:

136. Israel
137. Afghanistan
138. Sudan
139. Somalia
140. Iraq

I guess the U.S. has helped Iraq achieve one clear distinction in the world.

And here's John Lennon, with Eric Clapton on guitar, doing a ragged live version of "Give Peace a Chance" from Live Peace in Toronto 1969.

The Beatles: I Am the Walrus

Just in one of those moods . . . . goo, goo ga-joob.

A clip of the song as performed in the 1967 film, Magical Mystery Tour.



You know, I've never actually seen Magical Mystery Tour. Originally broadcast on BBC1 on Boxing Day, 1967, the film was considered an unqualified disaster when it came out. And, from watching this clip, I think I can see why.

At least the song was weird enough to keep the visuals interesting. (I'm not sure what animal George Harrison is supposed to be in some of those sequences, but I find him terrifying.)

The song itself, however, has always been one of my favorite Beatles' tunes, even as a kid. Which probably explains why my mind's not quite right.

It was also one of John Lennon's own favorites. From The Beatles Anthology:

"I Am the Walrus" is also one of my favourite tracks - because I did it, of course, but also because it's one of those that has enough little bitties going to keep you interested even a hundred years later.

It's from "The Walrus and the Carpenter"; Alice in Wonderland. To me, it was a beautiful poem. It never dawned on me that Lewis Carroll was commenting on the capitalist system. I never went into that bit about what he really meant, like people are doing with the Beatles' work. Later, I went back and looked at it and realized that the Walrus was the bad guy in the story, and the Carpenter was the good guy. I thought, "Oh, shit, I picked the wrong guy." But that wouldn't have been the same, would it? "I am the carpenter..."

That's what happens, I guess, when you're taking LSD on a constant basis, as Lennon was at the time.

John goes on to talk about Bob Dylan's influence on the song:

In those days, I was writing obscurely, a la Dylan, never saying what you mean but giving the impression of something, where more or less can be read into it. It's a good game. I thought, "They get away with this artsy-fartsy crap." There has been more said about Dylan's wonderful lyrics than was ever in the lyrics at all. Mine, too. But it was intellectuals who read all this into Dylan or The Beatles. Dylan got away with murder. I thought, "I can write this crap, too."

I don't know, do people really over-analyze Dylan and The Beatles?

(Cough.)

From Wikipedia's entry on "I Am the Walrus":

The song also contains the unusual exclamation goo goo g'joob. Various unsatisfactory hypotheses exist regarding the origin and meaning of these syllables. One popular, yet impossible, claim is that the phrase was derived from the very similar "koo koo ka choo" in Paul Simon's song Mrs. Robinson, written in 1967. However, the film The Graduate, where "Mrs. Robinson" debuted, was not released until December 1967, a month after the release of "I Am the Walrus", and The Graduate Original Soundtrack (which contained only fragments of the final version of "Mrs. Robinson") was not released until January 1968.

Perhaps due to the close chronological timing of the release of the two songs, the "Walrus" chorus is often misquoted as "Mrs. Robinson"'s "koo koo ka choo", although the lyrics to "Walrus" were published as part of the Magical Mystery Tour EP packaging, so there is no debate to the actual lyric.

It has also been noted that James Joyce's Finnegans Wake contains the words googoo goosth at the top of page *557, where it appears:

...like milk-juggles as if it was the wrake of the hapspurus or old Kong Gander O'Toole of the Mountains or his googoo goosth she seein, sliving off over the sawdust lobby out of the backroom, wan ter, that was everywans in turruns, in his honeymoon trim, holding up his fingerhals...

It is not clear that Joyce is the source, or what it would mean if he were, but it has been a hypothesis put forward by fans of both artists alike.

Well, long live the absurdity and meaninglessness of "I Am the Walrus" anyway!

Across the Universe

NASA will send the Beatles song “Across the Universe” across the universe on Monday, the agency said. At precisely 7 p.m., E.S.T. the song will be beamed by the agency’s Deep Space Network of antennas at the North Star, Polaris, which is 431 light years away.

The transmission is to mark the 40th anniversary of the recording of the song, as well as the 50th anniversary of both NASA and its first satellite, Explorer I, and the 45th anniversary of the Deep Space Network, which carries out communications between NASA and its far-flung fleet of spacecraft.

In a message to the space agency, Paul McCartney, one of the two remaining Beatles, said, “Send my love to the aliens. All the best, Paul.”

From: "Across the Universe, Literally." Dennis Overbye. New York Times. February 1, 2008.

The song will travel across the universe at a speed of 186,000 miles per second.

NASA goes on to say:

Feb. 4 has been declared "Across The Universe Day" by Beatles fans to commemorate the anniversaries. As part of the celebration, the public around the world has been invited to participate in the event by simultaneously playing the song at the same time it is transmitted by NASA.

That's great. But which version are we supposed to play?!

Of all the Beatles' songs' "Across the Universe" has the most convoluted recording history, resulting in several different versions.

The "40th anniversary of the recording of the song" refers to the original recording session on February 4, 1968. But that mono version (at 3:37) was never released as far as I know.

Later that year, George Martin mixed it to stereo, sped up the track, and added 20 seconds of bird-sound effects to the start and finish of the song, which clocked in at 3:49. That version was finally released in December 1969 on a charity album for the World Wildlife Fund called No One's Gonna Change Our World, and it later appeared on the Beatles compilation Past Masters, Volume Two.

There's also:
3) The slowed-down (3:47) Phil Spector version, with orchestra and choir, for the Let It Be album released in 1970
4) A Glyn Johns acoustic production at the correct speed for the earlier version of Let It Be that was eventually scrapped - that version's never been officially released
5) A February 4, 1968 alternative take with sitar and tanpura that eventually appeared on Anthology II
6) A full group recording, with John and Paul doing harmonies, that was recorded in 1969 during the filming of the Get Back/Let It Be and can be found on various bootlegs
7) A re-mix of the February 4, 1968 master that was stripped of much of its instrumentation and added to the Let It Be, Naked CD that Paul brought out in 2003

So which of these recordings are they beaming into space?! Discriminating Beatles fans want to know!

Or at least obsessed, anal retentive Beatles sessionologists want to know.

I'm sure someone will straighten this out for us soon. I'll get the news to you as soon as I possibly can.

UPDATE: You thought I was kidding about finding out, but I emailed Martin Lewis, organizer of the event, and he very graciously (and quickly) responded.

There is actually a vote being taken on which version to use. The choices are between the four officially released versions (read about them above):

1. The World Wildlife Fund version.
2. The "Let It Be" version.
3. The "Anthology 2" version.
4. The "Let It Be ... Naked" version.

You can vote HERE. The exclusive announcement of which version will be used will be made tonight (Sunday) by 11 p.m. Pacific time at the Abbeyrd Beatles Blog.

UPDATE II: The World Wildlife Fund version, available on Past Masters, Volume Two, was chosen as the one to beam into space. It has been confirmed that this is the version NASA is using.

NASA TV will televise the launch of "Across The Universe" into deep space LIVE from Mission Control at the JPL Laboratories in Pasadena, California. You can watch on NASA's cable channel, if it's available in your area, or on their web site.

There's also an official Across the Universe Day web site.

Also from NASA press release:

It is not the first time Beatles music has been used by NASA; in November 2005, McCartney performed the song "Good Day Sunshine" during a concert that was transmitted to the International Space Station. "Here Comes the Sun," "Ticket to Ride" and "A Hard Day's Night" are among other Beatles' songs that have been played to wake astronaut crews in orbit.

Many of the senior NASA scientists and engineers involved in the effort are among the group's biggest fans.

"I've been a Beatles fan for 45 years – as long as the Deep Space Network has been around," said Dr. Barry Geldzahler, the network's program executive at NASA Headquarters, Washington. "What a joy, especially considering that 'Across the Universe' is my personal favorite Beatles song."

If you need inspiration to participate tomorrow, here's the Spector version from Let It Be, along with some cool footage from outer space and of Motherhship Earth.

10 Influential Albums, Part I

From time to time, I'll realize how much a certain album has influenced me for one reason or another. Maybe it was the album that got me into jazz, or made me realize something about myself, or served as a soundtrack at a turning point in my life. I decided to put them all down on paper and see if I could figure out which were the most important. Some choices were easy. Others quite difficult.

In the end, I came up with ten, which I'm going to present in chronological order of when they came into my life, along with a brief description of why they were important.

I've decided to divide my list into two parts, else I may never get anything posted. We're moving over the next couple of weeks, have the first event in our new poetry series at a local public library next Friday, and summer sessions are in full swing at the university, among other things.

Some of these albums are well known, and I'm sure they've been important to many other people. Other choices are a little more obscure. These are not necessarily my favorite albums, though some of them would be on that list as well, but all of them played a role in my musical or personal development.

One thing I realized in doing this list was how grateful I am to friends I've had who turned me on to some wonderful music in my life. Also, a nod to Steve Caratzas, who did a list of Top Ten Life-Changing Albums on his blog. His list is infinitely more interesting than mine, too.

I'd be curious to know what albums have been important to the rest of you, so consider this a meme, and you've all been tagged. (Or not.) You don't have to do 10 albums, but maybe 5?

So, drum roll, please . . .

1. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band: The Beatles – I can't say for sure if this was the first album I ever owned (it might have been Help!), but it plays that role. In the early 1970s, my mother started going to weekly gatherings at the house of a cool Catholic priest named Fr. Dick Berg. The house had wooden floors, was mildly hippie-ish in decor (it was Austin in the early 70s), and we took communion while sitting on a rug. I have many warm memories of those evenings. Fr. Berg had been at St. Edwards University but wound up taking a position at the University of Portland, where he eventually became Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and is still connected to the university to this day. When he moved away, he gave me some of his Beatles albums, including Sgt. Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour. For a kid who loved the Beatles, this was heaven.

It's probably impossible to explain to people who grew up later what it was like to be a kid in the late 1960s and early 70s, listening to the Beatles. As La Reina said the other day, the Beatles were more than music, they were like the air of our childhood. They surrounded us. The day I got my first paycheck, at 15, I went to the record store and bought every Beatles album I didn't own. That's how important they were to me. When I was in my 20s, post-punk and increasingly cynical, I thought I had moved beyond the Beatles and didn't listen to them for a long time. Then, around my mid 30s, I gave them a whirl again, and it all came back. And having listened to a lot of other music in the meantime, I came to appreciate them even more. It's amazing to me that these four lads from Liverpool who shot to fame as teenagers in something of a Boy Band could wind up turning their fans on to the likes of "Tomorrrow Never Knows," "Love You To," and "It's All Too Much."

Of all the different Beatles albums, Sgt. Pepper was probably the most influential on me as a kid because it was so grand, multi-layered and exotic. Presented almost like a play, the opening "welcome to the show" appealed to me, because I felt like I was entering into some kind of wonderful carnival. The musical range of the album made each song seem like a different booth in this strange and marvellous show. "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" was magical and dream-like, and my love of the song now seems like a harbinger of a later interest in surrealism. "Within You, Without You" seemed totally out of this world. The lush, mysterious, and expansive atmosphere of George singing over Indian sitars was something extraordinary for a 10-year old boy in Austin, Texas. The world seemed like such a rich and fascinating place. The herd of animals rushing from one speaker across to the other at the end of "Good Morning, Good Morning" simply delighted me. What is this wondrous zoo?!

Listening to the Beatles isn't like listening to another group for me. It's part great music, part nostalgia/memory and part yearning for something we've lost as a people. Cynics make fun of "All You Need Is Love" and the hippy-dippy Sixties. But today, listening to their music, especially some of John and George's spiritually searching songs, I realize how lucky I was to grow up with the Beatles as my "air."

2. Dark Side of the Moon: Pink Floyd – I may have been intrigued by the Indian strains of "Within You, Without You," but musically my childhood was incredibly normal. My mom had some Neil Diamond records (it was the 1970s and she was single and in her 30s),some Dave Brubeck and Elvis, but there wasn't a lot of music in the house. Besides the Beatles, I owned a few 45s of the big hits (Barry Manilow's "Mandy"!), listened to Top 40 radio, and had a couple of albums by the Bee Gees (Saturday Night Fever!) Then, one day, when I was about 13, my friend David Esensee brought over this album and said, “You’ve got to listen to this.”

My life has never been the same.

If Sgt. Pepper felt mysterious at times, Dark Side of the Moon totally blew my pubescent mind. I just didn't know music could be like that. It seemed to tap into a different part of my brain. The moody bass lines and atmospheric synthesisers created a musical world that seemed related to the Beatles, but utterly different. It seemed heavier, darker, and edging deeper into a zone of which I was just becoming aware.

Listening to the album for the first time was a major turning point. After that, I ditched the Top 40 singles, started listening to the rock and roll radio station, and began to explore music and the world at large a little more. Suddenly, I was buying albums by the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, The Doors, The Who and other bands I had missed as a child. Oh dear. Adolescence was calling. And I was ready to rock and roll.

3. Never Mind the Bollock’s, Here’s the Sex Pistols: The Sex Pistols – It was 1979, and I was a junior in high school. Since the 4th grade, I had had two of the best friends in the world. We really were The Three Musketeers. But around 10th grade, we each started moving in different directions. We were still really close, but definitely changing.

A new sound had hit Austin, and I loved it. My two best friends did not. They made fun of my B-52s album. They hated that "punk" group, the Police. They hated that geek Elvis Costello. I was feeling torn up. One day, at Inner Sanctum, the great punk record store in Austin at that time, I picked up the Sex Pistols album. I had heard a lot about them by then, knew they had played a confrontational and disastrous show at a country & western club just a few miles south in San Antonio. Knew they had gotten in trouble for their song "God Save the Queen." They marked a dividing line at the time. It didn't matter that they could barely play their instruments - this was it. I could play it safe and stick to Boston and Styx. I could pretend I was cool and get the Cars. Or I could jump full-force into the hurricane. I was 16 years old. I wanted something more. So I bought the album.

The raw energy was electric. The snide singing and outright anger of Johnny Rotten touched something in this increasingly rebellious teenager. The music was fast and furious and wanted to knock against the walls of the world.

To this day, I can remember my friend Steve thumbing through my records, trying to find something to put on. I was in another room, listening to him mumble as he went through the collection. "The Doors? No. Led Zeppelin? No. The Beatles? Nah." Suddenly, silence. Then, shouting across the house: "What in the hell is this?" He had found the Sex Pistols.

I liked other groups much more than the Pistols, especially the Clash and Joy Division. But buying Never Mind the Bollocks, even knowing it would cause division with my longtime chums, definitely marked some kind of passage into a new and different "self." Before that, I had been afraid of what other people thought about me, especially my closest friends. No longer. The Three Musketeers would remains friends through high school, but we hung out less and less. Now, I was headed off by myself into an unknown direction.

4. Stardust: Willie Nelson – Ironically, at the same time I was desperately trying to establish my own identity and listening to the Sex Pistols, I also bought this album. I can actually remember thrashing around my room one night to the Pistols and, after exhausting myself, putting on Stardust as I went to bed. Who knew at the time that this too was my identity. I denied it for a while, because at age 17, good punks weren't supposed to be listening to old fart's music like Willie Nelson.

But I loved the tunes. And, in the end, Stardust had much more of an impact on me musically, because it was through this album that I learned about people such as George Gershwin, Hoagy Carmichael, Irving Berlin and Duke Ellington. I began to look these people up. Who were they? What was their music like? Later, as I started listening to jazz, I came across their names more and more. And these tunes would show up on a Billie Holiday record or a Louis Armstrong record. It was like someone saying, "Welcome, Come On In to Jazz."

Willie Nelson had spent all of the 1960 as a country & western songwriter (Patsy Cline's "Crazy," for example). In the early-mid 1970s, he did a few country albums of his own, none of which were particularly popular. Then he came up with the idea for a country & western concept album called Red Headed Stranger, and one of the singles, "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain, " became a big hit. So what does a country singer do then? Well, an unsual one from Austin gets Booker T. Jones to produce an album of old standards by Gershwin and Hoagy and Berlin. It's Willie's same ol' country band, but now everything has changed. The selection of material was excellent, especially Hoagy Carmichael's two songs, because much of his jazz always did have a rural, country feel to it. And Willie tapped into some of those older, deeper music connections, like Jimmie Rodgers, the Father of Country Music, cutting records with a young Louis Armstrong. Ray Charles, also, would've been an influence, crossing over between jazz and country and the blues. And Texas itself has a rich jazz history (though no one talks about it much), along with folk, country and the blues. In many ways Stardust goes back to that time when folks would sit out on the porch on a warm summer evening and someone would get their guitar and start picking at a few favorite tunes. That's the atmosphere Willie created on this album.

Booker T.'s production still sounds great today - roomy, lush and atmospheric. Willie's acoustic guitar takes on a haunting, nostalgic quality that captures Gershwin beautiful and aching "Someone to Watch Over Me." Mickey Raphael's wailing harmonica moves out of the honky tonk and becomes a mournful songbird on a summer evening. And, perhaps I'm biased because I heard Willie sing these songs first, but I think he does an amazing job with them vocally. He did some other albums of standards, but this one is far and above the best. It's even ranked 257 on Unnamed Corporate Music Magazine's Top 500 of All-Time, not bad for a country singer doing old jazz standards at the height of the Rock and Roll Era. The album remains one of my all-time favorites, and I highly recommend it.

5. Blood on the Tracks: Bob Dylan – In high school, I had gotten into a lot of 60s and 70s music, but I never liked Bob Dylan. That voice! Who could stand it? But my first year in college, a new friend and fellow poet loaned me this album and said I should really listen to the words.

At the time, I was living in north Austin, and the railroad ran close to the house. Sometimes the trains would stop, and as I drove by, I'd notice that some of the box car doors were open. "How easy it would be," I thought, "to just hop in one of those box cars and go." I had just turned 18 and I was restless. College was okay, but it felt just like high school. I wanted to travel, to journey, to wander.

That's when I started listening to Blood on the Tracks. Even the title was cool, I thought. The opening song, "Tangled Up in Blue," was all about drifting around and experiencing interesting things. And the guy's voice didn't seem that bad now. In fact, I liked it's ragged, earthy quality. He sounded like a dirt road. And the lyrics were phenomenal! How could I have missed all of this?! "Idiot Wind" was like an epic novel. He had some of the Pistols anger, but he seemed really different. He sounded wiser and more experienced.

And there were women involved. Dylan wasn't singing stupid love songs, he was singing about sex and relationships. I was 18 and going through my first love affair. It was terribly dramatic and intense. I wanted to run away with this girl. She was my muse, my lover, my goddess. And Dylan seemed to know all about it. He gave out warnings about how much pain might be involved. Ironically, a few years later, after my love and I had run away, and then broken up, this album really struck a deep chord. My heart and soul tore itself up in agony as Dylan sang, "If You See Her Say Hello," because I had lived the song now.

I started buying up all the Dylan albums I could find. My friend Walter, who had loaned me Blood on the Tracks, and I went through a feverish friendship that first year in college, both of us totally into Dylan. It was one of those rare but special occasions when you can share your musical madeness with someone else. We started a literary magazine together. Went to see foriegn films together. Shared an aprtment. Drove out of town in the middle of the night to go exploring, or to hang out in some truck stop cafe at 4 am. I dropped out of college the next year and worked full-time at a supermarket. Then I left Walter and Austin behind, as my girlfriend and I headed to the mountains of Colorado to chase down our romantic dream. Dylan was the soundtrack to that dramatic time of my life. I couldn't have asked for better.

After all is said and done, Bob Dylan has probably had more influence on me than anyone else artistically, though I don’t listen to him nearly as much anymore. If I was headed to a desert island and could only take one Dylan disc, I would struggle between this album and Blonde on Blonde. Nostalgia would make me choose Blood on the Tracks.

Happy Xmas (War Is Over)

Another sad anniversary yesterday . . . Incredibly, it's been 26 years since John Lennon was shot dead. 26 years.