WHAT'S THAT SONG ABOUT PT 2 |
TaxmanBy Matt Broad I found this in The Village Broadsheet, in a section called BEATLES UNDISCOVERED, while posting news updates. I thought it was too good to just get lost beneath each days news updates, so I printed it here to keep for reference. There is a sinister counting, low, guttural, unfeeling, disinterested. It sounds like the devil, maybe. Or perhaps its your mono-toned company president testing a microphone’s volume before launching into a bored account of his fortunes, none of which you’ll see, of course. One two three four one two- A cough, a clearing of the throat. Accidental, perhaps, but no matter what its source it does the job: your attention has been gotten. Then the baseline, thundering, forceful, driven by immediate unstoppable force, momentum. Though powerful, it is distant, somehow hateful. But most of all that guitar- piercing, short notes. Like a machete racing from a spinning disc through a wire right into your ear, stopping just short of drawing blood and slinking around the rhythm sections’ steady pulse, through the snare drum and the insistent cow-bell, like a great anaconda coiling itself from the bottom of a flagpole to the very top, far into the atmosphere. “Let me tell you how it will be!” George, as greed personified, vomits onto the record. There must be a moment in the listeners’ life where he would protest. This sound is too sinister. The words are too finite. It’s clear that we have no other choice. “Taxman” is the first truly great George Harrison contribution to the Beatles already stunning oeuvre, and it is both telling and fortuitous that it opens the great album Revolver. The song is empty of pity, snarling, messianic. And only a song devoid of emotion could possibly set the tone for the emotional roller-coaster that the listener is forced to ride for the ensuing thirteen tracks. “Taxman” cuts to the quick, but also numbs the listener. It is the prick of an anesthetic needle; it stings but leads to a lack of sensation, just what is needed for the groundbreaking collection of songs. The Beatles are far past simple love songs that end happily. This is a world where brassy love songs are devoted to joints and French horns tell of doomed affairs. It is a world of the forgotten rotting in graveyards and the escapists surveying the depths of the ocean for pleasure. A world of young geniuses saddled with boredom manifesting itself as paralysis and readers of the Tibetan Book of the Dead wrestling with the ever present question of mortality. It is a world where the bottom line can be overcome only with a fight, where mind expansion is tantamount and possible only through the fiery pain of self-awareness. And this world doesn’t invite audience participation anymore, because the audience doesn’t know shit. “Let me tell you how it will be!” George snarls as the taxman. He wouldn’t even smirk, because anything resembling a smile would imply satisfaction, and satistfaction? Well, if Mick can’t get no, then the taxman don’t want no. Voracious, unyielding, never content. Anesthetized: numbness personified. By the time of Revolver’s recording, the Beatles were ready to ask some of the harder question. Beaten and battered by two impossibly hard years on the road, they were back in England, swearing off touring and beginning life anew as a studio band. Their time as a touring band saw them swept up in a fury of epic proportions: Beatlemania, an endless array of number one singles and screaming girls, a constant place in the public eye. All of this came to a violent head in March 1966, when John Lennon made the off-handed remark that the band had become “bigger than Jesus.” Amidst the bonfires of Beatle paraphernalia and death threats from churchyard Pharisees in Podunk USA, Lennon was forced into an apology. Of course they didn’t consider themselves on par with Jesus, the great teacher. They were merely entertainers. Here to sing, not to teach. But their next album begins quite messianically, doesn’t it? “Let me tell you how it will be!” George hisses forcefully in this screed against greed, this flight towards what’s right. Though he was the Quiet One, and though Lennon became the true martyr of the group and the generation, George was the first of the Beatles to use his pulpit as songwriter for the ancient art of preaching. On the Rubber Soul album he urged the Beatlemaniacs to “Think For Yourself.” It is the earliest example of a truly political thought in a Beatles song, encapsulating the ethos of the Flower Generation two years before the runaways descended upon Haight Street with flowers, dosed fruit punch, and a ticket out of normality. But “Taxman” is the Beatles’ first great anti-establishment song, of which there would prove to be an almost infinite amount. Leave it to the Quiet One to set the tone for the geniuses he shared a band with. In the phenomenal Magic Circles, Devin McKinney posits that George was always the most truthful Beatle simply because he was unencumbered by the genius that forced McCartney and Lennon to at first bury their thoughts in layers and layers of allegory. Harrison was nothing but up front, always, unyielding in his critiques of social mores and unwilling (or even pathologically unable?) to couch his beliefs in lovely phrases, preferring instead the use of irony and bitter humor. And “Taxman” is the greatest example of this facet of his personality. Just as Lennon was torn between Love and Hate, Harrison rode the line between Acceptance and Disgust, between mantras and screeds. The taxman, no doubt, is deserving of the Quiet One’s disgust. Upon his return to England, Harrison discovered that, due to the bands’ unprecedented success, he had been bumped up a few tax brackets and that the government had helped itself to nearly half of his fortunes. Feeling that he was being punished for absolutely nothing, he was incensed. Thus, he embarked upon a full-fledged attack on the traditional tax system the only way he could: the result was “Taxman”, and with it George took no prisoners, going so far as to name-check Prime Minister Harold Wilson and Leader of the Opposition Edward Heath in the song. What George could never have realized (unless he did realize it?) was that money would become a great theme in much of the latter part of the Beatles’ history. The suite that ends Abbey Road, you’ll remember, includes “You Never Give Me Your Money,” and thanks in large part to the birth and subsequent disaster of Apple Records, the bands’ legacy became embroiled in a financial purgatory that exists to this very day (thank you, Michael Jackson). George, ironically, had secured the rights to his own songs from the beginning. The self-proclaimed (and totally misnamed) “King of Pop” wasn’t able to license the rights of “Taxman” for an H&R Block commercial in order to pay for his numerous court cases. No sir, that girl is mine. And I’m sure George, God bless him, made a pretty penny off of it, thank you very much. It is strange that the most Eastern (read: non-materialistic) of all the Beatles would devote an entire song to the subject of his wallet, but to Harrison, no doubt, it stretched farther than that. The point of the song rests in the taxman’s anesthetized voice. It is a voice that is numbed to all of the problems that Revolver showcases. He is not interested in all of the lonely people. He is loveless enough to not want anyone in his life. There is no need for sunshine and there are no LSD-driven fireside chats about death. The taxman doesn’t know what it’s like to be dead, and he doesn’t care- but if you don’t “declare those pennies on you eyes” he’ll hunt you down in Hades and collect. Perhaps George had so much success as a human being because he was able to lose himself in another’s voice, even a voice as alien as the taxman’s. What’s the old adage? Only by knowing your enemy can you truly beat him. George Harrison died as he lived: free, defiant, and, no thanks to Mr. Heath, financially secure. 
John Lennon's "Because"
“How strange men are,” she said, because she could not think of anything else to say. “They spend their lives fighting against priests and then give prayer books as gifts.” Colonel Aureliano Buendia has just returned from one of his many revolutionary insurgencies, his demeanor changed so drastically that his mother, Ursula, and sister, Amaranta, can barely recognize him. He’s hardened by the sea and the horrible realities of battle. His manner is curt and nostalgia impenetrable; he is no longer the young boy who sat at his father’s side in the workshop, wanting nothing more than to understand the mysteries of science. He’s a man. By the September of 1969, the Beatles had weathered as many battles as Colonel Buendia does in Marguez’s masterful One Hundred Years of Solitude, but with one key difference: by this point, the Fabs weren’t fighting against anyone but themselves. Business meetings with Allen Klein turned nasty, the Get Back sessions were in serious disarray, and Lennon’s burgeoning heroin addiction had even further alienated him from the group of men he loved. The music they produced during this period was hard and cynical. Even McCartney’s moments of blissful pop were suffused with a new-found irony and sadness; “Martha My Dear,” addressed to an unknown girl but named after his dog; “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” a delightful pop vignette in the style of “Penny Lane,” but about serial killing instead of suburban bliss; “Helter Skelter,” four minutes of abuse for both the players and us; “Let It Be,” on surface a hopeful piano tune, but really an elegy for an entire generation. Lennon, of course, veered away from McCartney’s slightly more sophisticated form of musical therapy, opting for drugs, rage, politics, and Yoko. His songs from this period read like a list of apocalyptic indictments: “Don’t Let Me Down,” “Revolution,” “I’ve Got a Feeling,” “Come Together,” “I Want You (She’s So Heavy).” This is not the John Lennon of “In My Life” we’re dealing with -- this is John as Colonel Aureliano Buendia, his body ripped by a ruthless media and the tyranny of his once-innocent fans, his soul lost somewhere between revolution and revulsion. “The way things are goin’ they’re gonna crucify me,” he sang in “The Ballad of John and Yoko.” He was more right than he could’ve ever imagined. All this makes John’s finest moment on the Beatles last official record, Abbey Road, even more confounding. “Because” is the capstone to the first movement of the Beatles’ most ambitious record, a brief reprieve from the schizophrenia of the seven songs preceding it before we launch into the picture-perfect “song cycle.” “Because” is the answer to a question we’re too afraid to answer for ourselves. “Because” is Lennon taking his first of many breaks from the world, his attempt to get a little critical and spiritual distance on the band and generation he’d helped to create. “Because” is one of the finest, most delicate recordings the Beatles ever put to tape, with perfect harmonies and ingenious instrumentation, and it’s almost never mentioned in lists of top Beatles songs. “Because” is everything John Lennon hoped to find personally, and the antithesis of what he came to represent through the media and his fans. Why is “Because” “Because”? Because. We’ve all heard our John Lennon blasphemy stories. There’s the infamous pissing on nun’s heads from their Liverpool days, the equally infamous “Bigger Than Jesus” debacle, the lyrics in “Imagine” that managed to win him a place on the list of songs banned on US radio after September 11. His disdain for organized religion, from ministers (“Imagine”) to the Maharishi (“Sexy Sadie”), is one of the most important biographical aspects of his life. His Nietschean distaste for dry, gray Christianity led him to jibe on the original Let It Be album that the title track bore a not-so-pleasant resemblance to “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.” His refusal of canonical music here, using it as a barb against one of the many masterpieces of his one-time collaborator, is indicative of Lennon’s state of mind during this period in his life. If anyone in the Beatles represented the “new pop classical,” it certainly wasn’t John Lennon -- he had his tender side, yes, but it was tempered (even more than McCartney) with a desire to be the kind of rock and roll devil he’d grown up adoring. How, then, do we explain “Because” -- as staid and mannered a piece of neo-Anglican music as has ever been put on wax? How could Mr. Revolution pen a song that’s the pop equivalent of “Ave Maria”? As the story goes, John was inspired to write “Because” when he heard Yoko play the first movement of Beethoven’s “Piano Sonata No. 14 in C Sharp Minor” (the famous “Moonlight Sonata”) and had the clever idea of reversing the chords and writing his own song over them. According to Steve Turner, author of the definitive A Hard Day’s Write: The Stories Behind Every Beatles Song, Lennon felt a deep connection with Beethoven, considering him a peer in many ways. I’m inclined to agree, but that’s because I’m a philistine. The question isn’t about the similarity of the two pieces, but instead why Lennon found it necessary in the first place. As we said before, the late-60s weren’t a good time for the Beatles. As a matter of fact, they weren’t great for anyone, really. The protest movement turned militant and dark, the grandeur of psychedelia has imploded, and the war in Vietnam raged into even bloodier territory than before. The “peace and love” scene had, with the introduction of cynicism and harder drugs, devolved into a flagrant cult of hypocritical hedonists justifying their desire to get fucked up and fuck with vague political and spiritual ideals that they would (for the most part) gladly toss away when they came into positions of power. Whereas the phoniness of the psychedelic movement had a charm and wonderment about it that made it tolerable despite the incredible bullshit it was based on, the late-60’s hippies were perceived by many as ruthless, idiotic, and out of date. In many ways, the masses were, for once, correct. Remember, Lennon opts out of the revolution on the single version of the song, and back in (/out) in the album version. He’s toying with them, daring them to fly in the face of the man who actualized their latent individuality. They do, so he retreats into a strikingly personal world, offering very few comments beyond the abusive (“I Dig a Pony”) or the beautiful-but-banal (“Across the Universe”). He’s stopped helping us; John’s about himself (later, he’d put it perfectly, whispering “Yoko and me...that’s reality,” on “God”), and could care less whether you live or die or whatever. Except, of course, on “Because.” “Because” is Lennon’s last stab at helping us, his last try to give us something substantial to hold on to. He knew the world was going South, and that it was time to retreat into ourselves and our families. He saw the inevitability of the “Why?” on the lips of the once-relevant protest kids. He probably thought about it a lot -- the 60s are over, we’re going to be relics by 1976. Why did we do any of it? Why did we care, and why did I, John Lennon, sweat blood for a decade? To be reviled by the people I helped and mocked by the squares who’ll never get it anyhow? To be the target of governmental abuse and the justification for horrid crimes against humanity? Why? Instead of answering the question with a sneer and wink, John hunkered down and got spiritual about it. There’s a Job-like resignation in “Because” that is accentuated by its hymnal tone: “Because the world is round, it turns me on/Because the wind is high, it blows my mind.” This is a man ready to not only deal with but genuinely love his new place in the world: I’m here because I’m here, and there’s no reason to ask anything more. The closest we get to a “deep” evaluation in this song is the too-simple “Love is old, love is new/Love is old, love is you” lyric, which comes off as a preachy and clichéd. Really and truly, John couldn’t have said anything more perfect. This is his last weighty composition on a Beatles record -- yeah, “Sun King,” “Mean Mr. Mustand,” and “Polythene Pam” are great, but Side Two is Paul’s baby, his time to shine. He ends his proper career as a Beatle with a whisper, not a bang: “Love is old, love is new”: don’t worry, kids, just because the so-called “Love Movement” is dead doesn’t mean the things you learned are irrelevant. In fact, if you remember only one thing from the last decade, remember this: those ideals you fought for are eternal and beautiful, and cannot be taken away by anyone but yourself. The revolution didn’t fail, per se; we did a lot of great things, we did the best we could and gave many people rights and freedoms they could’ve never conceived of before. But now it’s time to pull in the reins and tend to our own gardens; no one wants to spend their entire lives on the battle field. Yoko and me, that’s reality. It really is funny, isn’t it? Most great men do spend the bulk of their lives fighting priests and end them handing out prayer books. Before I started writing this, I was obsessed with the classical music angle of this particular song. A part of me wanted to go deep into the argument about pop versus classical and throw my dog into the ring. But as I listened to the song more and more, it began to unfold not as a justification of some theoretical argument I don’t even really care about, but instead a statement as true and simple as anything I’ve read, heard, or seen in my life. I never skipped because when listening to Abbey Road, but I had never really listened to it with any significant attention. It is, after all, sandwiched between “Here Comes the Sun” and “You Never Give Me Your Money” -- it’s pretty tough to stand out in company like that. What I came to appreciate about “Because” was just that: John didn’t have to prove he was a genius any more, we all knew it. George was just trying and Paul will have to fight that fight until he dies, but John was content. He presented the world with an elegant, beautiful closing statement, encompassing not only the death of the Beatles but the death of a whole generation, and most importantly a universal truth that is as relevant today as it ever was. I know this is all pretty cliché, talking about the eternal resonance of a piece of music; but sometimes we have to throw pride to the wind and admit that some things are trite because they’re undeniably true. “Because” is one of John Lennon’s top compositions, right up there with “In My Life,” “A Day in the Life,” and “Watching the Wheels” -- its oddly inspiring message will continue to console and consternate as long as people are listening to Beatles records. Why? Well, I’m not gonna say it again, but you know. SEE BEATLES FACT SHEETSetting The Record StraightEverybloody's an expert ain't they? Let's get some facts out there. And remember, what inspires a song doesn't mean that's what the song is about. Dear Prudence was about Prudence, but I doubt Paul had a love affait with his dog Martha. "Across the Universe" ~ The images in this song came to John while he was laying in bed. He couldn't stop thinking about them, so he got out of bed to write them down. John has several times called this song his best work, and said Paul didn't spend as much time on it as it deserved. It absolutely is a beautiful and under rated song, originally recorded for a save the wild life campaighn (with the bird wings). "Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite" ~ Inspired almost word for word by a circus poster that John saw at an antique shop. "Blackbird" ~ While with the Maharishi, Paul was awakened by a blackbird. He wanted to make a song that sounded like the bird's song. Paul, ever the diplomate, also claims the song is for black rights, a hot topic in the 60s. "Blue Jay Way" ~ George was waiting in a house rented on a street called Blue Jay Way in L.A. People were supposed to come to his house, but they apparently got lost. George wrote this while he was waiting for themm to arrive. "Come Together" ~ Timothy Leary was running for a president and asked John to write a campain song for him, with "Come Together" as his slogan. "A Day in the Life" ~ Based on articles in a newspaper. The first verse was about the Guiness heir who was killed in a car crash. The last verse was about the potholes in the roads of Blackburn, Lankashire. "Dear Prudence" ~ While meditating with the Maharishi, Mia Farrow's sister, Prudence, who would not come out of her room. "Good Morning Good Morning" ~ Inspired by a Corn Flakes commercial. "Here Comes the Sun" ~ George wrote this in Eric Clapton's garden in the morning, after much stress filming Let It Be. "Hey Jude" ~ Paul wrote this song for John's son, Julian, during John and Cynthia's divorce. It was initally going to be called "Hey Jules." John, however, thought it was written for him, supporting his relationship with Yoko. "Let It Be" ~ This was based on a dream Paul had, in which his deceased mother Mary told him that everything will be alright. Paul admitted he knew Christians would think of The Mother Mary. "Octopus's Garden" ~ While Ringo vacationing on a boat. The Capt told him about the octopuses who collect beautiful things and put them in gardens. "Piggies" ~ This song was inspired by the money-crazed businessmen at the newly formed Apple company, but became an anthem for anti-establishment. "P.S. I Love You" ~ Paul wrote this for Dot Rohne, his girlfriend at the time. "Two of Us" ~ Some say it is about Paul and Linda. Others think it is about Paul and John. Paul says it's about Linda and that he knew some would think it was about him and John. "While my Guitar Gently Weeps" ~ George opened up a book and saw the phrase "gently." He wrote this song around it. "Wild Honey Pie" ~ Paul started singing "Honey Pie, Honey Pie." Pattie Harrison liked it, so he made it into a song. "Yellow Submarine" ~ As Paul was falling asleep, strange thoughts began popping into his head. He started thinking, "We all live in a yellow submarine..." "Yesterday" ~ Paul woke up with a tune in his head. When no one knew what song it was, he realized he dreamed it up. He added words and it became "Yesterday," after he couldn't make the original lyrics work: 'Scrmabled Eggs.' "You Know My Name (Look up the Number)" ~ Based on the British phone company's slogan. |
