The Beatles: "Yellow Submarine" - Vinyl Friday #73
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- čas přidán 13. 07. 2024
- In preparation for this week's episode, I did some Reddit-reconnaissance. It appears that every few years, someone on r/beatles asks the question "what is the worst song on Revolver?" (clearly a trick question - all of the songs on Revolver are brilliant and unique, and thus impossible to rank!) To my dismay, today's song is most frequently named as Revolver's worst track*. This is my attempt to give back some of the love it deserves.
In this episode: submersibles, silliness, and a swingin' sixties soirée! Bonus: a cameo from Donovan brings even more yellow to an already amber-hued affair. Also, The Anchor has a cobweb in her hair, which goes unnoticed until hours after the camera has been switched off. It's all Editor Nancy could look at, to be honest.
*In fairness, I was dismayed at every song submitted as Revolver's worst
For those of you with a burning desire to generally support what I do (or to see how badly I can screw up a Yellow Submarine arts and crafts project), I'm here to help you along in that journey: www.buymeacoffee.com/fathommu... (but no pressure, friends☺️)
Happy Friday, folks!
0:00 Hello!
1:13 Baby Fathom
1:32 Origins
4:10 Studio shenanigans
5:45 A far-out sixties shindig
13:30 Successes and accolades
14:19 A perfect children's song
19:37 A music Rorschach test
21:52 Goodbye!
Want to look at pictures of what I'm working on? / fathommusicnz
Interested in purchasing music I've made? fathomnz.bandcamp.com
Fathom albums "The World to Breathe" and "Modern Reflections, Vol. 1" are also available on all streaming platforms. Tweed's album "High Brow Blues" is also ALSO available on all streaming platforms!
Thanks for your sharing your attention with me. :)
#beatles #thebeatles #revolver #vinyl #vinylcommunity #musicreview #yellowsubmarine #musicreaction #musicreactions
In your view, does Revolver even have a "worst" song? If so, which is it?
we're here because we love the album, from the first cough and count to the last of the beginning ( which is the end). though i never skip them i think I'm guilty of tuning out a little when doctor robert and i want to tell you arrive. there is great singing on doctor robert though and i want to tell you has a nice switch into the middle eight. y'know it's the beatles man.
however, it does kind of have implications for the pacing of the album and the OUTRAGEOUS simply OUTRAGEOUS 😮claim that revolver is the best beatles album (and she's always seems so nice).
signed yours truly, outraged of england. possibly in hiding. somewhere where you can't send the cat to hunt me down.
It's Good Day Sunshine
Never! "Least good" maybe but not "worst"; though even least good is subjective. One of my favourites on the album is I Want To Tell You, which most people seem to rate quite low. But I love the driving rhythm and Paul's weird discordant piano part; and also the fact that it inspired the great Neil Innes to become a songwriter.
No worst, or least good, song on the lp, which I think is in contention for best Beatles album...
However, Nancy, I'm surprised that you didn't mention the YellowSub movie, which was also treated as a kids film, and where we teen attendees dressed&acted like children, and "where I'm sure no substances were involved"!
@@fredkrissman6527 Absolutely - I think it's rock solid from start to finish.
I've *always* loved "Yellow Submarine" for its hilarity, silliness, and quirkiness. How can anyone listen to this song without feeling the joy they all experienced in making it? Thank you for the rehabilitation!
I want that lunchbox!
By the by, Yellow Submarine is so very clearly a protest song against the Blue Meanies.
Neil Aspinall (school mate of Paul and George from the Liverpool Institute) was the original Beatles roadie. As their needs grew Mal Evans was recruited as roadie and Neil was "promoted" to handle other slightly more formal tasks as personal assistant.
I do not have much to add beyond that this video brought me 23 minutes and 1 second of pure joy. I love your enthusiasm and insight. It made me appreciate a song I have heard many times before in a new way. I appreciate the work that goes into these.
You know, It has never occurred to me that there were people who didn’t like this song. What else don’t they like? Don’t tell me. Nice video by the way. Keep up the good work.
I love “Yellow Submarine.” It never ceases to make me smile- I love that the space where an instrumental solo would sit is replaced by crazy sound effects and a party. Of course, I was four-years old when it was released, so I was bang-on for the target demographic.
Glorious celebration of an underdog track. I'm a second gen Beatles fan and already knew the song when I was growing up in the '70s. When I finally heard it in context (Revolver wasn't reissued in Australia until 1977) it stuck out awkwardly and made me wonder what the first people to hear the album made of it. But Revolver is still one to put on and leave on, for me, so this one is just part of the flow.
Totally agree. This was the first Beatles song I liked as a little kid, and I still get a kick out of it.
Late to the conversation, but I'll have to say I've always loved this song. Musically there's not much too it, but the performance, lyrics and production are sublime.
I loved "Yellow Submarine" as a 10 year old, when it came out, and I still feel that way.
In my opinion Yellow Submarine is simply about having a good time with your friends, which the backstory to the recording beautifully demonstrates. Ringo's Octopuses Garden is also about that, escaping the troubles of the world and living merrily with your friends, that one being more poignant because of the troubles the band was going through at the time.
I wouldn't say it was a "deeper meaning" necessarily, but I think the concept of the Beatles all living together in a Yellow Submarine does borrow from, and feed into, the fact and the myth of the Beatles as a self-contained band of brothers insulated from our "real world" inside their bubble of fame and magic, the cuddly "four headed monster" that we see in newsreel films, and A Hard Day's Night, and in Magical Mystery Tour where the magicians live in the sky together. It recalls the fact that they thought about buying a Greek island or a group of little islands and all living there together. The world treated the Beatles as public property but at the same time they were apart from us and untouchable, in a place where they preserved an innocence that was a big part of the glamour of the Beatles. Yellow Submarine fits right in.
Love this point - it remind me as well of the scene in Help! where its revealed that they all live together in a giant, open- plan flat. As a kid, I was convinced that this was historically accurate.
Always nice to hear a shout-out to Geoff Emerick! I don't think I'll ever grow out of giggling at the megaphone call-and-response bit....
P.S. I actually stumbled across a pretty good Yellow Submarine knockoff on Spotify recently - Jolly Mary by a band called July.
Another awesome episode. I've learned more details about this track (which I've always loved) than ever before.
Yellow Submarine was banned in Singapore. When I bought my Revolver LP, the censors had deleted Yellow Submarine track
Really? What on Earth for?
@@leerogers9949 I think the censors believed it was drug related. Singapore is weird that way. Lots of others banned too. Lucy in the Sky, Day in the Life, Love is a Warm Gun , Magical Mystery Tour, etc
Not sure if the ban still stands. May have been slackened in the 1990s.
I had a mate, when I was at CalZtts, who built a recording studio in his loft with a periscope in the form of a yellow submarine-
And yes, fathom, “sobriety” may have been involved!
That was big fun ! Well done Fathom.
Being the age of two years old in 1966 I was the perfect demographic for this song. What I think doesn't really get mentioned is that “children's songs” were a very popular genre unto themselves through most of the early 20th century, there was a canon of nursery rhymes with familiar melodies, and at that time in my life such an album was my favourite. What I'm really trying to say is that I mourn the death of children's songs as a genre. I think by the 1980s it was just young kids would get out of their prams and get straight onto Michael Jackson. However I would point to the sterling work of They Might be Giants.
Well I enjoy this song. Always have. Just so much fun! Thanks for including the recent discovery of John's beginning.
It would have been interesting if they had performed “She Said, She Said” live. A truly great but bizarre song. Paul doesn’t play on it, so George is playing bass and guitar. I like when you demonstrate the melodies on piano and guitar. “I’m Only Sleeping” is my favorite on side A, but “She Said” is a close second………another excellent show, thank you!
The brass makes me think of Rainy Day Women #12 & 35
Yet another wkly ex of why we love Nancy/Fathom...
I usta bounce around in the back seat -- no seat belt laws back then -- joining in the lyrics every time YellowSub came on the radio, which was quite often, gleefully making my dad grumpy (?!?) and me mum happy to see&hear her tweener happy.
And, we all DO live in a YellowSub!
Revolver is a masterpiece. While I personally wouldn't say that YS is 'not a favorite' it's certainly ok for others to feel that way. However, to express any disdain or to even give it an eye roll seems pretentious. To be so deaf to the joy you wonderfully describe, or to dismiss it completely loses all the fun; the important fun. It's like a dark movie script needing a moment of comic relief. Those moments help the whole piece profoundly. And I'm not suggesting that Revolver is dark, but it is in many ways their heaviest album thematically speaking. The somber life of Elenore and Father McKenzie. John's need to check out and just sleep. The loss of love that should've lasted years and even the weight of finally having a love so profound that one needs it everywhere, as if life without it isn't one worth living. Some woman (Peter Fonda) knowing what it's like to be dead! Don't get me started on the almost haunting aggressions of Love You To and Tomorrow Never Knows... sounds that were so exotic that there wasn't a pop music fan on the globe that had heard anything like it at the time! Revolver begs for a little levity. It is my belief that the people that think like that need to 'work on THEIR sobriety' from time to time. It also reminds me of the ire some people have towards Sloop John B. being on Pet Sounds. Even Bruce Johnston has bemoaned that he thinks Pet Sounds would've been a flawless record if SJB wasn't included.... WHAT?!! I suppose that's a comment for a different post.
Another video with me smiling all the way through. I didn't know any of that detail about the background sounds. (And I can never watch that clip of Heather (17:38) without laughing along with her). Liverpool Football Club play in all red with white trim and supporters in the Kop stand sing "We All Live in a Red and White Kop" and when Jamie Carragher played for them sang "We All Dream of a Team of Carraghers". Twelve thousand singing along makes it sound wonderful.
I've been in the echo chamber in Studio 2 at Abbey Road - it's still in use as an echo chamber - they said it's practically the only real one left though.
I've always enjoyed this song! So lighthearted & fun! Yellow Submarine, come & take me away! LOL 😆😆😆
I always loved the sound effects and always wondered how they did them, especially the submarine engine sound effects, in particular, the one that goes "wwwwwwwssshhhhhhh........jiiiii-bioink" (LOL) I've always liked that weird "lololololololololololol" laugh which I think is Patti Boyd! Yes, they positively, definitely weren't under the influence of anything like Mary Jane on this track in any way, shape or form whatsoever! 🤣🤣🤣
I know the exact sound effect youre referring to! Unfortunately, I have no idea what makes that specific sound. It remains a mystery.
@@fathommusicnz Nope! It's probably described in some Beatles geek book or video somewhere.
Revolver is my favorite Beatles album. George's I Want To Tell You is my least favorite song.
It's a shame that Paperback Writer and Rain weren't included. I used to put them in between side 1 and 2 on cassette and later on CD.
"Me and My Arrow" by Nillson is a great kids song.
Psychedelic music took different paths in the UK than the US. In the UK there was a lot of looking back to childhood memories and stories. John wrote about Strawberry Fields, he was into Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear's writings and nursery rhymes. He used 'Sing a Song of Sixpence' in 'Cry Baby Cry' and 'Cleanup Time'. Other bands like Pink Floyd and Traffic used childhood images too.
In the US psychedelic music was more improvisational, extended solos and bizarre images.
This is an interesting point, you're absolutely right.
Nice pointing out of the original wife-recording-studio-entering incident!
Also, in the last of the AI images, I spot Liam Gallagher on the right!
Finally, on the strength of this video, I'm bumping my rating of this song from 1/5 to 2/5!
Job done! 🤣
Thank you Nancy for the history lesson! Still it is my least favourite from Revolver.
"You all live in a convict colony..." - The Barmy Army in Australia during the Ashes tours.
I think that later on John was happy to disavow YS for some reason and Paul was only too happy to go along with it and claim it for himself. But there is an interview from 1967, where they do explain how they put the song together from two separate songs.
I Love Ringo!
That was interesting and very funny...thanks
Vinyl Friday and Taskmaster - Thursday (UK time) is the best TV day!
I get the feeling Yellow Submarine wasn't hated at the time; I think it's the snobbish Rolling Stone magazine idea of "legitimate rock" that seemed to seep into popular culture in the late 60s (and only got worse with punk), that you have to hate anything frivolous or silly or meant for younger people (or girls, ew, girls smell) otherwise you weren't "cool". This notion of Yellow Submarine being a "bad" song because it's not All Along the Watchtower or Smoke on the Water... whereas in reality, YS is part of the rich tapestry of popular music and is great because, like you say, it's drawing on George Martin's 1950s career as the foremost comedy record producer.
Also, I've become fascinated in recent years by the low harmony or counter-melody in the chorus. Have you ever noticed that? It sounds like George to me... it's over on the right hand in the remix version.
I can't believe I forgot to mention the countermelody!
I completely agree with your thoughts on the rock community's rampant snobbery - thanks for your contribution to the conversation!
Yes, it's George.
Your copy of Revolver has "stereo" written on the cover, but it's the mono version we can hear. The giveaway is the presence of the opening chord before Ringo sings; that's not on the stereo version.
Perfect, good luck with sub...XXX
Another gem
It's the Ringo-song of this Beatle album.
The kinks or the who wouldn't dare to do this even lennon and Harrison enjoyed making it❤
I disagree - The Kinks and The Who did some very silly songs. Until the failure of Dogs as a single made them go all serious, The Who were pretty much the funniest band out there in terms of musical output.
@@Adam-qi7no yeah ur right happy jack and I'm a boy are pretty funny and the drumming is mad as well👍
Interestingly, Ray Davies called this song "a load of rubbish." 😆
@@fathommusicnz Certainly an interesting appraisal from the man who made Phenomenal Cat only a year or so later.
@@fathommusicnz don't get me wrong I love the kinks waterloo sunset is one of the best songs ever. It's up there with the beatles best love from ireland👍
Enjoyed that. One comment, if i may: when you say "when John sang it in that early demo he sounded a little bit too plaintive" you speak as though John's tape is an early demo of Yellow Submarine, but i think this encourages misunderstandings that are already too rife on the internet. "Turns out John wrote the verses to that song" tends if anything to reinforce them.
Truth is, there's a good reason why John said "Paul's baby, I had a hand in shaping the lyrics, but it was Paul's concept, Paul's title and chorus, so i think of it as a Paul composition". John's "in the town where I was born" fragment was an idea for a completely *different* song that John never wrote. Yellow Submarine did not exist in any form until Paul came up with the concept and brought in the chorus. John said (WTTE) "I've got this bit of tune that might do for the verse", and so they wrote the rest of the lyric *together* using that, following Paul's concept.
This would be merely pedantic, were it not for the fact that the internet is filled with claims that "John's Yellow Submarine demo" proves it was "really John's song" etc etc.
Thanks for your take, I appreciate your contribution to the conversation 😊
I would maintain that even if, thematically, the song wasn't yet "Yellow Submarine" in John's early iteration, the final product might not be all that interesting without that melodic verse. For me, it makes the song.
@@fathommusicnz True, that's possible. Of course, we don't know what other verse tune they might have come up with if John had not had that fragment handy - one we might never hve known existed had it not found a home in Yellow Submarine.
You shouldn't take Emerick's book as fact, unfortunately. The details are mostly made up - Ken Scott had a lot of not very nice things to say about it :/ The "tossed tape bits in the air" might have happened for the mr Kite sessions, but this brass snippet is far too coherent to have been cut up that way. There were brass session musician present on the 1 June 1966 overdub session and it's likely that they actually played on the record. George Martin even said as much (even though his memory wasn't always reliable either): "There was also a brass band. This wasn’t a sound effect on tape, the band was right there in the studio".
Interesting, thanks for sharing. I do try to take his book with a grain of salt - his anti-George bias really gets up my nose sometimes!
I haven't read Geoff's book, so I'd never heard that claim before. As far as I knew, it was just a straight up sample. But you're saying the brass was live according to GM. Curiouser and curiouser.
an achievement, talking about yellow submarine for 23 mins and not forgetting the second. i never doubted you.
in english culture there can be a bit of a crossover between silliness, an address to perhaps a younger audience and an adult audience at one and the same time. the goons, python, lewis carroll. the songs appeal like
a tale begun in other days
when summer suns were
glowing
(through the looking- glass)
liverpool, historically, is a massive seaport and john's dad was, i think a merchant seaman: so an adventure seawards has an autobiographical impetus. the whimsical twist in the track run, startling, but true in it's cultural context.
given that, next up, the riff for she said she said burrows itself into the brain, it's time to borrow a title from a crowded house tune and make the claim that the beatles truly were four seasons in one day.
Bonus points for the NZ music reference, Alan! It is, after all, New Zealand Music Month!
Love the link you're drawing with the Goons, and with Carroll in particular. Well noted.
@@fathommusicnz i'll get ladyhawke into the conversation someday!