In my effort to eviscerate the lyrics of Bob Dylan, I perused all the lyrics of the first 12 albums or so. I came out thinking that no one in their right mind could judge that Dylan's lyrics were worthwhile in any dimension, and affirming that the critical reception of Dylan is the most irrational piece of stank ever disseminated.
I also strongly dislike the lyrics of the Beatles, and as with Dylan, I've done so since about 1971, shortly after they'd broken up and I'd come to an age where I started making aesthetic judgments for myself. I spent a lot of time in the 1970s ridiculing the Beatles as childish and meaningless betrayers of rock music, really pissing some people off. And as part of my continuing program for affected rock twats, I just read all the Beatles' lyrics too.
But I came out less hostile than I went in. Dylan’s consistently and gratuitously pretentious, as well as consistently and gratuitously garbled. The Beatles are rarely garbled, and even their pretentious moments are offset to some extent by their penchant for simplicity, and are also partly the fault of their unfortunate association with Dylan. There isn’t much there in the later Beatles' lyrics, but even though they suck, it's kind of a sweet sucking. It doesn't make me angry, just kind of disappointed.
It's not true that all you need is love. But I don't want that sentiment or that sentence or that song to make me snarl and scowl, because then I’d be snarling and scowling at love! It would be wrong to thrash them the way I thrashed Dylan; they're too naive and innocent to deserve it. The Beatles are too cute to hate properly.
Furthermore, I love their early albums, right up to the point in 1964 where they met Bob Dylan and shit started heading Elsewhere. Help! is a great rock album: unpretentious, with great melodies and momentum. "You're Going to Lose That Girl" and "Ticket to Ride," among others, are irresistible. But then they ran into Dylan and started doing drugs. They started getting melancholy about woman problems instead of joyously dating. Also, they’d absorbed the whole world's stunned admiration for a couple of years by '65. Perhaps they stopped worrying about being better than the Dave Clark 5 or Gerry and the Pacemakers and started worrying, as Dylan evidently did, about whether they were better than William Blake or Pablo Picasso. Or maybe in their case, and even more problematically, they worried about being better than the Buddha or Zoroaster.
John Lennon famously said in 1966 that the Beatles were "bigger than Jesus" and later added, "The way things are going, they're gonna crucify me." The Jesus comparison was an accurate assessment of their unbelievable and bizarrely excessive reception as the essence of a world-transforming generation. But it also affected how they thought about themselves. In many cases, underneath the childish nursery-rhyme singsong which they favored, there are spiritual messages of astounding generality and banality, a sort of greeting-card religiosity in which our boys, after discovering girls and drugs, share with us their discovery of druggie nirvana. Suddenly or even instantly, they appeared not as cute little mop-toppers but as holy men from the Indian sub-continent to whom shaving was prohibited and who spent all day sitting on a mountain top uttering mystic truths.
Being worshiped was bad for the Beatles, personally and artistically. It starts going south on Rubber Soul, which begins supplementing delightful love songs with melancholic hyper-generalized and abstract ruminations about next to nothing. It gets worse and worse from there.
The pretentiousness and affectation that so thoroughly vitiates the output of Dylan isn’t that evident in the Beatles' lyrics. It’s evident instead in the instrumentation, arrangements, and recording techniques, which went amazingly fast from fun propulsive R&B and soul on guitars and drums to gratuitous noise effects and imitations of the avant-garde conceptual music of people like John Cage.
The Wikipedia article on the album Revolver (also '66) describes the recording process for "Tomorrow Never Knows" with such observations as these: "The recording includes reverse guitar, processed vocals, and looped tape effects. Lennon adapted the lyrics from Timothy Leary's book The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on The Tibetan Book of the Dead, which equates the realizations brought about through LSD with the spiritually enlightened state achieved through meditation... Lennon intended the track as an evocation of a Tibetan Buddhist ceremony. The song's harmonic structure is derived from Indian music and is based on a high-volume C drone played by Harrison on a tambura. Over the foundation of tambura, bass and drums, the five tape loops comprise various manipulated sounds: two separate sitar passages, played backwards and sped up; an orchestra sounding a B♭ chord; McCartney's laughter, sped up to resemble a seagull's cry; and a Mellotron played on either its flute, string or brass setting. The Leslie speaker treatment applied to Lennon's vocal originated from his request that Martin make him sound like he was the Dalai Lama singing from the top of a high mountain."
That’s an idiotic betrayal of rock music in every respect, from people who once expressed in delightful, recorded form their reverence for Little Richard and Chuck Berry, people who once seemed to like and even to understand Motown and Memphis soul. Now they wanted to enlighten the world, but maybe a "speaker treatment" applied to your voice doesn't make you into the Dalai Lama after all. It definitely doesn't make you Otis Redding, one of a 1000 artists of the period who are better than the later Beatles in every respect.
Here’s a collection of later Beatles lyrics (from Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Magical Mystery Tour, The White Album, Yellow Submarine, Abbey Road, and Let it Be) designed to show two things: pseudo-spiritual teachings from these crypto-gurus and innocent yet meaningless children's songs. Those two things in juxtaposition have a certain wacky charm, but ultimately undermine one another as well as rock music as a whole, which has never really recovered.
Nowhere Man [not to be confused with the fool on the hill]
He's a real nowhere man
Sitting in his nowhere land
Making all his nowhere plans for nobody
Doesn't have a point of view
Knows not where he's going to
Isn't he a bit like you and me?
Nowhere man, please listen (Ahh, la, la, la)
You don't know what you're missing (Ahh, la, la, la)
Nowhere man, the world (Ahh, la, la, la)
Is at your command (Ahh, la-la-la-la)
He's as blind as he can be
Just sees what he wants to see
Nowhere man, can you see me at all?
Nowhere man, don't worry (Ahh, la, la, la)
Take your time, don't hurry (Ahh, la, la, la)
Leave it all till somebody else (Ahh, la, la, la)
Lends you a hand (Ahh, la-la-la-la)
Doesn't have a point of view
Knows not where he's going to
Isn't he a bit like you and me?
Nowhere man, please listen (Ahh, la, la, la)
You don't know what you're missing (Ahh, la, la, la)
Nowhere man, the world (Ahh, la, la, la)
Is at your command (Ahh, la-la-la-la)
[Fans of "A Hard Day's Night" must’ve been stunned by this development. But what's it all about? Maybe some sort of aspiration to read Camus? He's as blind as he can be, and the world is at his command. I find this puzzling.]
The Word
Say the word and you'll be free
Say the word and be like me
Say the word I'm thinking of
Have you heard the word is love?
It's so fine, it's sunshine
It's the word, love
In the beginning I misunderstood
But now I've got it, the word is good
Spread the word and you'll be free
Spread the word and be like me
Spread the word I'm thinking of
Have you heard the word is love?
It's so fine, it's sunshine
It's the word 'love'
Everywhere I go I hear it said
In the good and bad books that I have read
Say the word and you'll be free
Say the word and be like me
Say the word I'm thinking of
Have you heard the word is love?
It's so fine, it's sunshine
It's the word 'love'
Now that I know what I feel must be right
I'm here to show everybody the light
Give the word a chance to say
That the word is just the way
It's the word I'm thinking of
And the only word is love
It's so fine, it's sunshine
It's the word, love
[The scripture of the Beatles' Christian/Hindu new religion. It's so fine it's sunshine! That summarizes a lot of their thinking. "I'm here to show everyone the light." Maybe make some good popular music instead.]
Tomorrow Never Knows
Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream
It is not dying
It is not dying
Lay down all thoughts, surrender to the void
It is shining
It is shining
That you may see the meaning of within
It is being
It is being
That love is all and love is everyone
It is knowing
It is knowing
That ignorance and hate may mourn the dead
It is believing
It is believing
But listen to the color of your dreams
It is not living
It is not living
Or play the game existence to the end
Of the beginning
[This is some kind of meditation guide composed by people who picked the practice up last week. Maybe this was their first attempt to replace the Dalai Lama. You could’ve been listening to Shirley Caesar or the Staple Singers if you were spiritually lost. But then maybe you wouldn't quite see "the meaning of within."]
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
Picture yourself in a boat on a river
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies
Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly
A girl with kaleidoscope eyes
Cellophane flowers of yellow and green
Towering over your head
Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes
And she's gone
Lucy in the sky with diamonds
Follow her down to a bridge by a fountain
Where rocking horse people eat marshmallow pies
Everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers
That grow so incredibly high
Newspaper taxis appear on the shore
Waiting to take you away
Climb in the back with your head in the clouds
And you're gone
Lucy in the sky with diamonds
Picture yourself on a train in a station
With plasticine porters with looking glass ties
Suddenly someone is there at the turnstile
The girl with kaleidoscope eyes
Lucy in the sky with diamonds
["Rocking horse people eat marshmallow pies" is pure psychedelic Beatles, strongly informed by Salvador Dali, or something along those lines. It's typical Beatles also in that it's kind of sweet, cute and empty, even if it's trying to be art. It's about a girl, and acid. But it keeps saying things like "plasticine porters."]
Within You Without You
We were talking about the space between us all
And the people who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion
Never glimpse the truth
Then it's far too late
When they pass away
We were talking about the love we all could share
When we find it, to try our best to hold it there with our love
With our love, we could save the world, if they only knew
Try to realise it's all within yourself
No one else can make you change
And to see you're really only very small
And life flows on within you and without you
We were talking about the love that's gone so cold
And the people who gain the world and lose their soul
They don't know
They can't see
Are you one of them?
When you've seen beyond yourself then you may find
Peace of mind is waiting there
And the time will come when you see we're all one
And life flows on within you and without you
[Once the Beatles achieved enlightenment, which had nothing to do with heroin or cash (not at all), they offered to share it with all of us. But first they had to berate us for being people who hide ourselves behind a wall of illusion. Okay yes! I’ve hidden myself behind a wall of illusion. But not behind a wall of reversed sitar samples. It makes one sad to realize that these are the same happy chappies who did "Baby You Can Drive My Car." They really aren't happy anymore, and I blame... Timothy Leary, Bob Dylan, and the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The time will come when I see that we're all one. Or will it?]
I Am the Walrus
One, two, three
I am he as you are he, as you are me and we are all together
See how they run like pigs from a gun, see how they fly
I'm crying
Sitting on a cornflake, waiting for the van to come
Corporation tee-shirt, stupid bloody Tuesday
Man, you been a naughty boy, you let your face grow long
I am the eggman, they are the eggmen
I am the walrus, goo-goo g'joob
Yellow matter custard, dripping from a dead dog's eye
Crabalocker fishwife, pornographic priestess
Boy, you been a naughty girl you let your knickers down
I am the eggman, they are the eggmen
I am the walrus, goo-goo g'joob
Expert textpert choking smokers
Don't you think the joker laughs at you?
See how they smile like pigs in a stye, see how they slide
I'm crying
Semolina Pilchard, climbing up the Eiffel Tower
Elementary penguin singing Hare Krishna
Man, you should have seen them kicking Edgar Allan Poe
I am the eggman, they are the eggmen
I am the walrus, goo-goo g'joob, g'goo goo g'joob
Here they are
The Beatles!
[It soon turned out that the Walrus was Paul. Are you guys absolutely sure that the Walrus wasn't Ed Sullivan? I'm going with "goo goo kachoo!", which is a little better than what Google does here. I perceive the influence of Dylan in these wasted words, but it's not as bad because it’s not as idiotically self-serious.]
Hello, Goodbye
You say, "Yes", I say, "No"
You say, "Stop" and I say, "Go, go, go"
Oh no
You say, "Goodbye" and I say, "Hello, hello, hello"
I don't know why you say, "Goodbye", I say, "Hello, hello, hello"
I don't know why you say, "Goodbye", I say, "Hello"
I say, "High", you say, "Low"
You say, "Why?" And I say, "I don't know"
Oh no
You say, "Goodbye" and I say, "Hello, hello, hello"
You say, "Stop", I say, "Go, go, go" (I can stay still it's time to go)
Oh, oh no
You say, "Goodbye" and I say, "Hello, hello, hello"
[This is concentrated essence of the Beatles, who aspire as they go along to be Mother Goose, and would do well to approach the level of Dr. Seuss. It's like they know that 20 years later they'll be covered by Raffi and are writing more for him and his audience than for themselves and theirs.]
Glass Onion
I told you about strawberry fields
You know the place where nothing is real
Well, here's another place you can go
Where everything flows
Looking through the bent-backed tulips
To see how the other half lives
Looking through a glass onion
I told you about the walrus and me, man
You know that we're as close as can be, man
Well, here's another clue for you all
The walrus was Paul
Standing on the cast iron shore, yeah
Lady Madonna trying to make ends meet, yeah
Looking through a glass onion
Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah (yeah, yeah)
Looking through a glass onion
I told you about the fool on the hill
I tell you man, he's living there still
Well here's another place you can be
Listen to me
Fixing a hole in the ocean
Trying to make a dovetail joint, yeah
Looking through a glass onion
[Seems like a lazy re-write of nonsense. But maybe it's a self-parody, which would be appropriate. It does poke gentle fun at people—call them “Charles Manson”—who interpret Beatles songs too hard or hear the voice of God or Satan coming through the infantile diction and vocal effects. But the whole planet interpreted them as prophets, though it’s difficult to imagine how. If they were aware that this was (a) absurd, and (b) a big problem, that would speak well for them. But it doesn't redeem this non-lyric.]
Piggies
Have you seen the little piggies
Crawling in the dirt?
And for all the little piggies
Life is getting worse,
Always having dirt to play around in
Have you seen the bigger piggies
In their starched white shirts?
You will find the bigger piggies
Stirring up the dirt,
Always have clean shirts to play around in
In their styes with all their backing
They don't care what goes on around
In their eyes there's something lacking
What they need's a damn good whacking
Everywhere there's lots of piggies
Living piggy lives
You can see them out for dinner
With their piggy wives
Clutching forks and knives to eat the bacon
[I think this is some kind of protest or anti-capitalist song, and refers to Orwell's Animal Farm, maybe? But it's primitive.]
Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey
Come on, come on, come on, come on
Come on, it's such a joy
Come on, it's such a joy
Come on, let's take it easy
Come on, let's take it easy
Take it easy, take it easy
Everybody's got something to hide except for me and my monkey
The deeper you go, the higher you fly
The higher you fly, the deeper you go
Everybody's got something to hide except for me and my monkey
Your inside is out when your outside is in
Your outside is in when your inside is out
So come on, come on
Make it easy, make it easy
Everybody's got something to hide except for me and my monkey
[This apparently was based on a saying of the Maharishi, who believed that people have something to hide. Adding the monkey wasn't the worst idea; maybe they're ridiculing their own enlightener. Hard to tell.]
Revolution 1
You say you want a Revolution
Well, you know
We all wanna change the world
You tell me that it's evolution
Well, you know
We all wanna change the world
But when you talk about destruction
Don't you know that you can count me out (in)
Don't you know it's gonna be alright
Alright
Alright
You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We'd all love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
Well, you know
We are doing what we can
But if you want money for people with minds that hate
All I can tell you is brother you have to wait
Don't you know it's gonna be alright
You say you'll change the constitution
Well, you know
We all want to change your head
You tell me it's the institution
Well, you know
You'd better free your mind instead
But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao
You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow
Don't you know it's gonna be alright
[Is it going to be alright? Dunno. Also, coming out of this song, I don't know which side the Beatles were on for the whole 1960s. Maybe this is an anti-peace-movement, anti-hippie screed? Or maybe it's the opposite. I guess I think they could have said something and that they failed to. Count me out and in, or whatever.]
Revolution 9
I'm just going to skip the vast nonsensical lyric.
[I appreciate that the song refers to American football, of which Lennon was a fan. Block that kick! Also it could amount to an attack on the pseudo-surrealist claptrap of Bob Dylan. Also it might be a piece of conceptual art by Yoko Ono (though if so, it's not one of her better efforts).]
Yellow Submarine
In the town where I was born
Lived a man who sailed to sea
And he told us of his life
In the land of submarines
So, we sailed on to the sun
'Til we found a sea of green
And we lived beneath the waves
In our yellow submarine
We all live in a yellow submarine
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine
We all live in a yellow submarine
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine
And our friends are all aboard
Many more of them live next door
And the band begins to play
We all live in a yellow submarine
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine
As we live a life of ease (a life of ease)
Every one of us (every one of us)
Has all we need (has all we need)
Sky of blue (sky of blue)
And sea of green (sea of green)
In our yellow (in our yellow)
Submarine" (submarine, aha)
We all live in a yellow submarine
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine
[Very paradigm later Beatles: it's a children's story or a childish narrative that takes on something of the tone of Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Miss Tiggy-Winkle. But its aesthetic is derived from Andre Breton's "Surrealist Manifesto" with its advocacy of "pure psychic automatism." No one, even Beatrix and Breton, will ever know why or even how this could be. The cartoon helps.]
All Together Now
One, two, three, four
Can I have a little more?
Five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten
I love you
A B C D
Can I bring my friend to tea?
E F G H I J
I love you
Bom bom bom bompa bom
Sail the ship, bompa bom
Chop the tree, bompa bom
Skip the rope, bompa bom
Look at me
All together now, etc.
Black, white, green, red
Can I take my friend to bed?
Pink, brown, yellow, orange, and blue
I love you
All together now, etc.
Bom bom bom bompa bom
Sail the ship, bompa bom
Chop the tree, bompa bom
Skip the rope, bompa bom
Look at me
All together now, etc.
[You were aware that I wasn't kidding about the nursery rhymes? This one doesn't quite make it to the Mother Goose level, however.]
All You Need is Love
Love, love, love
Love, love, love
Love, love, love
There's nothing you can do that can't be done
Nothing you can sing that can't be sung
Nothing you can say, but you can learn
How to play the game
It's easy
Nothing you can make that can't be made
No one you can save that can't be saved
Nothing you can do, but you can learn
How to be you in time
It's easy
All you need is love
All you need is love
All you need is love, love
Love is all you need
Love, love, love
Love, love, love
Love, love, love
All you need is love
All you need is love
All you need is love, love
Love is all you need
Nothing you can know that isn't known
Nothing you can see that isn't shown
There's nowhere you can be that isn't where
You're meant to be
It's easy
All you need is love
All you need is love
All you need is love, love
Love is all you need
All you need is love (all together now!)
All you need is love (everybody!)
All you need is love, love
Love is all you need
Love is all you need (love is all you need)
[I won't count how many times this song uses the word “love,” because that would be churlish. And yet there are other words in our language. The basic lyric thrust is that if x is actual then x is possible and also that if x isn’t possible then x isn’t actual. These are important axioms of modal logic. And yet you may be unsurprised to learn that you can't do things that can't be done, as important as that realization is for each of us.]
Octopus's Garden
I'd like to be
Under the sea
In an octopus's garden
In the shade
He'd let us in
Knows where we've been
In his octopus's garden
In the shade
I'd ask my friends to come and see
An octopus's garden with me
We would be warm below the storm
In our little hideaway beneath the waves
Resting our head on the seabed
In an octopus's garden near a cave
We would sing and dance around
Because we know, we can't be found
Great
Great
Great
Beautiful
Sensational
Fab
Isn't that great?
We would shout and swim about
The coral that lies beneath the waves (lies beneath the ocean waves)
Oh, what joy for every girl and boy
Knowing they're happy, and they're safe (happy, and they're safe)
We would be so happy, you and me
No one there to tell us what to do
I'd like to be under the sea
In an octopus's garden with you
[This is closely based on the classic song "Teddy Bear's Picnic," I believe, an important influence on the Beatles. But no thanks, in this case. I'm concerned that I'd drown. But oh what joy for every girl and boy!]
[This one is good, as are "Come Together" and "I Will" ("the things you do endear you to me") for example:]
I've Got a Feeling
Everybody had a hard year
Everybody had a good time
Everybody had a wet dream
Everybody saw the sun shine
Oh yeah (oh yeah)
Oh yeah, oh yeah (yeah)
Everybody had a good year
Everybody let their hair down
Everybody pulled their socks up (yeah)
Everybody put their foot down
Oh yeah
[I left on a positive note, for I’m such a positive person!]
Mathematical Proof that the Stones are Better than the Beatles
—Follow Crispin Sartwell on X: @CrispinSartwell