Hard Day's Night Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

Greg Burgas, who I’ve only known online for a couple of decades, wrote as as his Question of the Week: What’s your favorite soundtrack?

Then he started coming up with RULES. Old-timey bloggers like Greg (and me, to be sure) always have RULES. His include that he didn’t consider movies where everything is sung. He notes “my absolute favorite soundtrack of all time if I considered this is the score to Jesus Christ Superstar.” My love for Superstar is well-documented, though it goes back to the album prior to the movie.

He also eliminated straight musicals, e.g. The Music Man and The Sound of Music. I like the former but my love of the latter, and also West Side Story, is massive.

Greg continues, “Finally, I narrowed it down to a few. Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? has a killer soundtrack. It’s a bit too close to an actual musical for me, though.” Yes, a tremendous collection, and that would have been my pick but…

He ended up with Singles as his favorite. Since I have never owned it, I can’t consider it.

Moi

I’m going to try on a few choices:

A Hard Day’s Night. The Beatles’ first movie has some great songs, including the title track, created at the last minute.

Easy Rider. If it wasn’t the first movie to take previously recorded songs as the soundtrack, it was very early on. Songs such as Steppenwolf’s Born To Be Wild became strongly affiliated with the film.

Amandla!: A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony is a 2002 documentary film depicting the struggles of black South Africans against the injustices of Apartheid through the use of music. The film takes its name from the Zulu and Xhosa word amandla, which means power. I dare say Greg would bounce it for the singing by the participants, yet note the context. “The freedom songs heard in the film have an important historical context…In South Africa, the songs take on a different meaning, referring to a unique collection of songs tied to the struggle for racial equality during the 20th century. ” There are a lot more songs besides these.

Cold Mountain. I’ve never seen the movie, yet I have the soundtrack. From Wikipedia: Cold Mountain: Music from the Motion Picture shares producer T Bone Burnett with the soundtrack for O Brother, Where Art Thou?, a largely old-time and folk album with limited radio play that still enjoyed commercial success, and garnered a Grammy. As a result, comparisons were drawn between the two albums. Burnett brought in musician and scholar Tim Eriksen to teach the performers Sacred Harp singing, which features prominently in the soundtrack.”

Ultimately, I’m going with the Fab Four. It was the first soundtrack I bought with my own money, though I saw the film Help! begore HDN.

The Beatles, as influential as they were on other musicians, were also influenced by their predecessors and peers. I’m rereading Steve Turner’s “The Beatles: A Hard Day’s Write,” subtitled “the stories behind every song.”

Fairly often, the members of the group are quoted as having been inspired by a piece for their own creations. I thought I’d put some of their songs up against the source material, with links to most.

Actually, the videos I’m having the most difficulty finding recently are those of the Beatles themselves, with several of them banned at least in the United States by some UK entity. The links I’ve used WERE working…

Anytime at All (at 16:52):

[John] later admitted [it] was a rewriting of his earlier song ‘It Won’t Be Long’, using the same chord progression from C to A minor and back, and when it came to recording, employed the same bawling vocal style.

I hear the connection. Yet the latter song is arguably better.

When I Get Home (at 23:39):

Influenced by his love of Motown and American Soul Music. Around the time it was recorded, he was asked what song he wished he had recorded…His first choice would be Marvin Gaye’s ‘Can I Get A Witness‘.

Wouldn’t we all have liked to have written that?

You Can’t Do That (at 26:00): “The musical influence, John later said, was Wilson Pickett…who had only released three singles under his own name, only one of which had been a minor hit.” I listened to some early Pickett – I Found a Love, If You Need Me, It’s Too Late – but I’m not hearing the connection at all.

Beatlesebooks confirms this:

The problem is that Wilson Pickett had not come into his own as of January of 1964 when this song was written. By that time, Wilson had only released four early singles which were 6/8 ballads far unlike anything he’s known for, such as ‘In The Midnight Hour’ and ‘Mustang Sally,’ which were much closer to what Lennon was talking about… John obviously was thinking retrospectively and originally found inspiration elsewhere, such as the R&B classics coming out of Memphis at the time. Confirmation of where the inspiration actually came from may never be known.

Memory is a peculiar thing, I’ve discovered. And John’s recollection of events in the early 1960s was taking place in 1980.

I’ll Be Back (at 28:40):

John found the chords while playing a Del Shannon song. This was probably ‘Runaway‘, which the Beatles had played in their early shows and which also starts with a minor chord and has a descending bass line.

This is so transformative that even though I was well aware of the earlier song, I never made the connection.

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