Song of the Week: Yellow Submarine

When I was four years old, "Yellow Submarine" was my favorite Beatles song. While George Harrison was always my favorite Beatle, I did think that Ringo had the coolest name. For a short-time, I insisted people call me "Ringo-John." (Later, I insisted they call me "Jason," after the boy upon whom I had a crush. Yes, I was a five year old girl who wanted to be a boy, and I had a crush on a boy. What of it?) As I grew, my love of the Beatles remained ever true, but interest in "Yellow Submarine" gave way to "Day in the Life," "Taxman," and the medley on Side B of "Abbey Road," back when musical recordings had Side B's.

Lucia is almost five, Ringo is her favorite Beatle (she's partial to drummers, and likes to talk about Daron Henry from Recess Monkey), and "Yellow Submarine" is her favorite Beatles song. She asked me to play it for her birthday party in two weeks. My first thought was, "No, no, no." Then I looked at the chords and said, "Yes, yes, yes." Just look at them. The chords of each line in the verses are all the same. The chords in the chorus alternate between G and D. This is a good song to play! Compare it to George Harrison's While My Guitar Gently Weeps. That F sharp minor, C sharp minor and B minor would have me weeping.

Juggling to the Beatles

Click here for the juggling video

Performer Chris Bliss juggles to the Beatles' "Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End" off of Abbey Road. Thanks to Rob Hampton, my guitar teacher, for the link.


Playmobil Beatles photo by Svencentral

"Where'd you get that cold, cold heart?"

Seattle schools closed last Tuesday and Wednesday because of the icy conditions after the snowfall, and I spent both days inside the house with Lucia. I had a lot of time to practice the guitar while Lucia played highlights from the “Nutcracker” non-stop. At some point without my noticing the exact transition, my fingers finally stopped hurting when I practiced guitar. For a good while, I’ve had proper fingertip callouses that provide extra padding when I accidentally jab myself with sewing needles. Still, the pain was ever-present until this week. Cheers to snow-days.

Here’s what I’ve been working on:

1) On the second side of the “White Album” by the Beatles, right after the ending of “Helter Skelter” when John Lennon yells, “I’ve got blisters on my fingers!” the song “Long, Long, Long” by George Harrison slinks quietly into my speakers. If I want to hear the nuances of the song, I have to turn up the volume on my music player, and remember to turn it down again quickly before “Revolution 1” starts. I’ve simplified and tweaked the chords I found online: A, G, E minor, and D. (Do I really need to struggle with the F sharp minor chord? No, I do not.)

2) Another “White Album” song, “I Will,” written by Paul McCartney, follows “Why Don’t We Do it in the Road?” (which John Lennon sarcastically claimed was McCartney’s best song ever). “I Will” is one of my favorite acoustic Beatles songs, and I often sing it to Lucia as a lullaby. My personal interpretation of the song is that of a person who’s looked forward to her future baby for a good part of his or her life.

3) I didn’t really believe that a lot of rock and roll only needed three chords until I started tentatively plucking out some of the songs. “When it Comes to You” by Dire Straits only needs a G, a C and a D minor chord at the minimum.* “When it Comes to You” is a good “You’ve done me wrong too many times and there’s nothing else we can do to salvage this relationship, so just let it go already” song. If strumming sad songs puts me in a good mood, “When it Comes to You” makes me jubilant.**

*I throw in a G7 chord too, but that’s extra. If you think of the chords as colors, then the number after the chord indicates a slightly different shade of that color. For example, “G” would be your basic orange in a simple seven color drawing of a rainbow, but “G7” would be that stunning hue of red-orange that you find in roses or sunsets.
**My guitar teacher says my chords are all wrong. Crivens! I'd argue, but I'm the one paying him to turn me into a folk-rock rhythm guitar hero.

Beatle George

There were always Beatles records in my house, as both my mother and Aunt Brigit were big Beatles fans. However, I didn’t get the Beatles “bug” until the summer after my freshman year of college, when I was 19. That fall, I proceeded to drive my roommate crazy with non-stop Beatles music, and she returned the favor with non-stop country-western music. Ultimately, I learned to like some country-western music purely for self-preservation purposes, but that’s another story.

George Harrison was my favorite Beatle. I’d like to say he was my favorite because he was the lead-guitarist, or because he was the “quietest,” but really, it was the eyebrows. (For the record, Bede has eyebrows similar to George Harrison’s.) To celebrate my fandom, I made a little “Beatle George” dolly. A friend of mine remarked dryly that he thought Beatle George looked more like an Amishman than a member of the Fab Four, but I was undeterred, and went on to make a quirky Ringo dolly for a friend of mine.

Beatle George showed up in the box of stuff my mom sent me a month ago as part of her efforts to clean out her house of sacred objects.* When Lucia saw Beatle George, she grabbed him and wouldn’t let go. She cried when I borrowed the dolly long enough to take a photo. "Now, there’s a fan," I said.

Three weeks later, I found Beatle George under Lucia's bed.


*This is a household term which refers to the proliferation of meaningful material possessions that we don't want to store anymore but can't throw away, and find it hard to give them to the thrift stores, so we try to fob them off on our friends as "sacred objects."