John – lead
vocals, rhythm guitar
Paul – harmony and backing vocals, lead guitar, bass
George – harmony and backing vocals, lead guitar
Ringo – drums, tambourine
Session musicians – two tenor saxophones, baritone saxophone, two
trombones, French horn
Although the Beatles were not always as inventive in the rhythmic structure of their songs as they were melodically, harmonically and even technically, ‘Good Morning Good Morning’ is metrically by far the most interesting and significant song they had recorded to date. The melody, the accompaniment, the arrangement all show a highly complex sense of rhythm, and yet the effect is so natural, it seems unsurprising and simple. The brilliance and originality of the music and arrangement serve to reinforce the surreal sense of extraordinary pipe-and-slippers mundanity.
John often wrote with the television on quietly in the background, and gave it more or less attention, depending on the flow of ideas for his composition. On this occasion, ideas were obviously flowing less freely, as an advertisement for Kellogg’s Corn Flakes clearly inspired the song – ”Good morning, good morning, the best to you each morning …” The song even begins with a cock crowing – an auditory record of the Kellogg’s logo.
While on the verge of leaving the isolation of his Kenwood home, John takes one last shot at nondescript suburbia. The lyric initially revisits some ‘Nowhere Man’ territory – “Nothing to do … nothing to say but it’s okay”. Most telling are the two couplets contrasting “life” with “wife”, particularly the image of everyone outside, in town, and being full of life; and a population drawing the curtains and settling down in front of the fire to watch Thora Hird in the tepid television sit-com Meet The Wife. Ideas are thrown against one another, as they were with ‘Penny Lane’, to provide a detached, kaleidoscopic vision of what goes on inside the head of the average office worker. It is clear, however, that the thoughts related to what was happening in John’s own head. Resentful of seeing Paul gadding about town, he writes with sarcasm and bitterness, the only respite from the tedium being “watching the skirt” – or infidelity.
‘Good Morning Good Morning’ seems to capture well John’s frustrations and scorn, and so it is surprising that he later considered this “a throwaway, a piece of garbage”. Lyrically, musically and rhythmically it is consistently interesting and challenging.
To understand the interesting rhythms the song generates it is important to bear in mind, as George Martin reminds us, that, as John “never put pen to manuscript, it is anyone’s guess where the bar lines lie”. The first section, for example, has ten beats in it, but whether this is two bars of 5/4 or 3/4, 4/4 then 3/4 is anybody’s guess.
For his part, George Martin conducted a passage of the song on ITV’s South Bank Show as follows –
| No´thing to´ do–´ it’s | up´ to´ you– | –´ ´ I’ve´ got´ | no´thing to´ say– | –´ but it’s´ ok´ay
This 3–2–4–2–4 division could also legitimately split into 5–4–3–3. The brass backing enhances the rhythmic drama. As George Martin again points out, although the sound is natural, it was a highly complex piece for the players to count and to hit the stabs on the beat. In the first ten-beat passage, the accents fall on beats one, two-and-a-half, four and seven. It was also a tall order for Ringo, who of course makes it seem effortless. “Lucky he was so good, really.”
Combine these rhythmic changes with the harmonic switches, and the piece becomes extraordinarily involved. The first measures are simply, but unusually, A–Em–G–A (I–v–bVII–I). However, these changes occur on beats one, four and nine. The switch to D–E (IV–V) on “nothing to do it’s up to you” recalls the introduction and anticipates the rolling middle section, both of which are simply A–D (I–IV) switches on alternate beats. The melody also captures the mood well. The predominance of bVII is paralleled in the use the b7th (G) in the vocal. But when things get a little more positive (“it’s up to you” / “you hope she goes”) G# does put in an appearance, in the E major chord. Finally, as John meets the outside world, “good morning, good morning” is not only in 4/4, but again cycles a straightforward I–IV–I–IV.
Although the rhythmic changes come naturally, the original demo of the song, John singing to pre-recorded clomping on a piano, is much more conventional. The piano backing stomps out four beats in the bar, with the stresses of the vocal providing the only indication of what the song was to become. For example, instead of the wonderfully stressed single cymbal crash after “call his wife in”, there are a laborious seven beats. Between this demo recording in late January and the Beatles’ session on 8 February, John had obviously put a lot of work into making the song flow, particularly for Ringo’s drumming pattern. The single “extra” cymbal beat on alternate lines in the verse gives relief and breathing space to the song, in marked contrast to the hurried hi-hat triplets of the bridge. For the transition back to the verse, the rapid-fire snare almost shouts out “OK, hold it, that’s enough!” At the end of the song, his drumming disintegrates completely, and is lost in the sound of galloping hooves. (The full chaotic version can be heard on Anthology 2.)
‘Good Morning Good Morning’ seems to have been a relatively straightforward track to record. The basic rhythm track was completed on that first day’s recording, and eight days later vocals and bass were overdubbed, the vocal then being treated with ADT. It remained in this almost complete stage for three weeks – this is the version that appears on Anthology 2. But John was not content simply to record a track that bulldozed its way through the conventions of four-in-a-bar pop songs, and had inventive overdubs in mind for the song. On 13 March, he returned to ‘Good Morning Good Morning’ with the recording of a mighty brass overdub, magnificently scored by George Martin.
The extent to which he can transform John’s musings, ideas and wishes into a magically appropriate score – not just competently but with sophistication and perfect judgement – is a measure of the empathy George Martin has with John’s music. The brass orchestration for ‘Good Morning Good Morning’ is a case in point. Members of the Brian Epstein-managed group Sounds Incorporated were recruited for the session. Sounds Incorporated were often used in concert by performers such as Little Richard and Gene Vincent, and the Beatles had met them in Hamburg in 1962. Although highly experienced performers, they must have been tested to the limit by George Martin’s score. He writes in his memoir Summer Of Love, “John’s rhythms, so natural to his ear, were the very devil for the six players to deliver in perfect time. They had to count like mad to know exactly when to do the ‘stabs’. It was very easy for them to miss cues, and very hard indeed for them to hit them as one, bang on.”
George Martin also remembers John being bemused at the different transpositions needed for the tenor and the baritone saxes. Having listened to John playing the parts he wanted on the guitar, George Martin faithfully transcribed them for the brass instruments. When John protested he’d written the wrong notes, George Martin patiently explained that when the tenor sax played a C it sounded as Bb, and when the baritone sax played C it came out as Eb. Therefore the notes as written needed to take account of that. Whereas Paul would have been fascinated to learn of this practical application of musical theory, John was clearly unimpressed. “‘That’s bloody silly, isn’t it?” he said in disgust.’
Having recorded the brass part, John naturally wanted something done with it as it sounded too much like a brass part. They therefore spent some considerable time treating it with effects – flanging, compression, limiting – to give it the exciting electric bite that it has on the finished recording.
But the recording was not quite finished. On 28 March, John re-recorded his lead vocal – again treated with ADT – and he and Paul recorded more backing vocals. Also, Paul reprised his work on ‘Taxman’ by adding the Indian tinged guitar solo to the break before the bridge.
The final touch was the farmyard fade-out. Reprising the Kellogg’s logo, and possibly to draw attention to the fact that the behaviour describes is routine and animalistic, John elected to end the song with a bestial wash of sounds. However, rather than have a random series of animal sounds, he wanted the succession to be such that each animal could devour, or at least frighten, its predecessor. So the EMI sound effects collection yielded a cock crowing, followed by the sound of a cat, then dogs, horses, sheep, lions, and elephants. The original idea for the succession now having become a bit tenuous, there then follows the sound of a hunt and gallop, the lowing of cattle and the cluck of a hen. George Martin has written that, by a stroke of luck, he noticed that the sound of the last animal was similar to the guitar tuning up at the beginning of the next track. “I turned the cluck-cluck of the chicken into the sound of a guitar string coming under tension as it tuned, trying to mimic that twang, as near I could. The chicken became the guitar.” There are clues in the following track that the process may not have been quite so straightforward, but nevertheless, with a slice of the scalpel, he seemingly transforms the hen, mid-cluck, into the guitar of…