The “True Love Ways” guitar, given to me by the Buddy Holly Educational Foundation.

We have arrived at the letter Q.

I am sure some of you may have been wondering, What is Peter going to do when he gets to some of the difficult letters? Well, the answer is that I did have to think a bit harder. There is only one Beatles-related song that begins with Q, and I shall get to it shortly. But Q does open up a whole other range of possibilities. So, do not worry; there is plenty of interesting Q-inspired stuff to come.

I am going to start by talking about a very early recording of the Beatles when they were not even the Beatles. They were a skiffle group called the Quarrymen, a fine name, beginning of course with the letter Q. And, better than that, they were playing a song by one of my very favourite singers and songwriters, the great Buddy Holly. The amateur recording, which was made on one microphone in 1958, was of Buddy Holly’s “That’ll Be the Day.” John was the first nascent Beatle to be a member of the Quarrymen, then Paul joined in October 1957 and George in early 1958. The skiffle craze was at its peak at the time; in his excellent book on the subject, Billy Bragg estimates that there may have been as many as fifty thousand active skiffle groups in Britain in the ’50s. The Quarrymen were obviously sliding from skiffle into rock and roll already (in terms of both instrumentation and arrangement) when they made the recording of “That’ll Be the Day”—John throws in a couple of great Buddy “hiccups” and George’s solo is very close to the original one Buddy played, while still following the skiffle tradition of keeping the arrangement very simple. In fact, they made “That’ll Be the Day” into a genuine three-chord song (in A major) by leaving out the B7 chord which would have preceded the E7 on “that’s some day when I’ll be through”—and they also omitted the heavy triplet accents on the last “you make me cry.” And yet one can still hear hints in John’s excellent vocal, in the harmonies and in the solo, of rock and roll greatness to come.

Buddy Holly was, of course, a huge influence on the band, in so many ways. As you probably know, one of the reasons they considered “Beatles” as a name in the first place was that they were inspired to do so by the Crickets, Buddy Holly’s band. This allowed them to consider the entomological world as a possible source for cool name options. An irony is that they also thought the Crickets was an extra cool name because it comprised a pun by referring to both the insects and the game. They found out later that the Crickets themselves had no knowledge whatsoever of the game of cricket, so the pun factor was invisible to them and played no role in their choice of name. But that didn’t stop the Beatles from incorporating a pun on “beat” into their own name.

The Beatles were great fans of all the brilliant songs Buddy Holly wrote—as I am myself to this day. Gordon and I had a big hit with our duet version of “True Love Ways,” and I produced a couple of Buddy Holly songs with Linda Ronstadt (“That’ll Be the Day” and “It’s So Easy”) and one with James Taylor as well (“Everyday”).

I mentioned that there is only one actual Q song that I could find in the catalogue of the Beatles, the Quarrymen, John, Paul, George, Ringo, or any of their projects. So, I am going to talk about it right away. It is almost like throwing away your high cards in a game of high-stakes poker. But what the hell, perhaps it will compel us to get more adventurous as we delve deeper into the Q’s.

The only Q song I could find is called “Queenie Eye,” and it comes off Paul McCartney’s excellent 2013 album New. Apparently, queenie eye is a street game popular in Liverpool. It never reached London, I guess, because I never played it or heard of it, but maybe my friends and I weren’t on the street and the future Beatles were. Who knows?

The name Queenie brings something else to mind, too, which is that Queenie was the name of Brian Epstein’s mother. He spoke of her often with great affection. I never met her, but I know she was incredibly important in Brian’s life and probably the only person in the world whom Brian loved more than he loved the Beatles.

So now that we’ve exhausted the Quarrymen, “Queenie Eye,” and Queenie Epstein, let’s really explore the letter Q. It is the beginning letter of quite a large number of musical terms, the most important of which, for our purposes, is quartet.

Now what that word probably brings to mind is the idea of a string quartet, and the Beatles did indeed love and use string quartets. One might well imagine, if one had to guess, that a string quartet would consist of a violin, viola, cello, and bass, just as a vocal quartet would consist of soprano, alto, tenor, and bass. But a string quartet does not work that way. A traditional string quartet is first violin, second violin (playing a part a little bit lower), viola, and cello. And that lineup, the traditional and perfect classical lineup, is what one hears when one listens to Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons or any of the other great string quartets that have been written, some of my favourites being Bartók’s, which are a bit less obviously melodic and more intense, even punkish in their attitude. But I digress. The string quartet the Beatles used most famously appeared on the song “Yesterday.” That has become the exemplar of how to marry a pop song and a string quartet.

No one did it better before, and I do not think anyone has done it better since. It is a masterpiece of a record and a great string arrangement by George Martin, who was essentially following direction from Paul McCartney and then applying his own genius and skill for orchestration. Once Paul figured out what a string quartet could do, he was clear about which lines and melodies and countermelodies and chords he thought would work with his song, and he was right.

I am sure you all know the story of the song, but if not, it is well worth repeating. Paul woke up with the melody in his head fully formed but without any lyrics. First, he thought it must be something he was remembering and asked everybody what tune it was. And when I say everybody, I include my mother, who was one of the first people he saw that day since he was living in our house. I was not there, but my mother (a musician herself, of course) told Paul that she did not recognize the tune and had never heard it before. After many other people said the same thing, Paul finally realized that he had written it magically in his head. Initially, he titled it “Scrambled Eggs” because he just wanted a temporary phrase that would fit that da-da-da scansion scheme, and eventually he came up with the brilliant lyrics about yesterday.

A string quartet has a beautiful, subtle, and emotional sound. But for “Eleanor Rigby,” also to be arranged by George Martin, Paul wanted a more intense sound. As I have mentioned earlier, they accomplished this by close-miking a double string quartet. This is why the song sounds a lot less smooth than “Yesterday” and more crunchy and in your face. A brilliant arrangement. “Eleanor Rigby” combines a touching story, a great vocal, and above all eight extraordinarily good string players playing so beautifully and attacking each quarter note—or each crotchet, as we used to call them back in England—with a brio and precision that gives the song such extraordinary presence.

Speaking of quartets, there is, of course, a quartet sitting right in front of us. As plain as the nose on our face, as it were, and that quartet is the Beatles themselves. Now, of course in the records they made, the Beatles frequently overdubbed instruments, doubled their vocals, and did extra work, which could be seen as taking them above and beyond the quartet concept. But the essence of a rock and roll band is often a quartet. And in this case, it is two guitars, bass, and drums and a couple of singers. So here, I thought I’d track down a great pure quartet version of a Beatles song, and I chose the BBC recording of “Ticket to Ride” because it is just the four of them playing the song once—no overdubs, no studio adjustments or tricks, nothing beyond the four instruments and the live vocals. It is the Beatles at their “quartet-est” for the letter Q.

As we can hear on “Ticket to Ride,” the Beatles sang very strongly. I imagine that this was something they picked up in Hamburg, where the clubs were undoubtedly noisy every night, and sound systems were not very good. Hearing them live in a regular unamplified environment was certainly very impressive. I distinctly remember sitting with John and Paul when they were learning something on the guitar or at the piano in our house, and their vocals were spectacular. Not just loud but intense, heartfelt, and accurate.

At the opposite end of the scale, it did occur to me to wonder, since we are dealing with the letter Q, what one might consider the quietest Beatles song. I suppose “Julia” would be a contender. It is hard to choose, but in the end, I would go with a different track from the White Album. So, becoming extremely quiet with the letter Q, my choice is “Blackbird.” Paul’s gently tapping feet, an almost classically restrained finger-picked guitar part, and a contemplative vocal—and an exceptional song, of course.

It has also occurred to me that the letter Q stands for the word question. And so I started to wonder how many Beatles songs pose a question. And the answer is that quite a few do so. The list makes for an interesting selection from all the different eras of their career. I’ll start with an early one, and a very obvious question, posed this time by George Harrison as he asks, “Do You Want to Know a Secret.” John Lennon (the primary composer) did not specifically create it with George in mind, but once the song emerged, John thought it would be a good one for him. John has gone on record with his view that at that time George was not an experienced singer, having concentrated on his guitar playing, and had only a limited range—which would make this song an ideal choice. I have always wondered myself about one of the catchiest bits of the song, the descending chords in the very first bar (after the word “Listen”), curious as to whether John was inspired by hearing that very same sequence (in a key a half step lower) in a song they covered, “Till There Was You” (under the words “heard them at all”)—it works brilliantly in both instances.

Turning to the years immediately after the breakup, I shall give John a turn at posing a question. And he asks this one, “How Do You Sleep?”—a question directed to Paul McCartney in a very public way. By this time, the friendship and incredibly fruitful partnership between these two extraordinary musicians had decayed utterly, and their only communications were via lawyers, occasionally in the press—and in song. John was convinced that Paul had sent him multiple “coded” (and insulting) messages in his 1971 Ram album, and so he felt entitled to respond vigorously.

I remember not long before that, when there were still in-person meetings at the Apple offices, there were a couple of occasions when the Beatles would have extremely heated discussions among themselves (we could hear shouting through the door), but at least they were communicating. I suppose resorting to the music press and song lyrics was even worse.

Now, of course, to be fair to Paul, I must give him a turn. And the song I would choose is “What You’re Doing.” I know that if you listen to the beginning of the song, you might not think the song poses a question; he’s just saying, “Look what you’re doing.” But he then goes on to ask, “Would it be so much to ask of you / What you’re doing to me?” Suddenly, an important question.

Ringo gets in on the question game with “What Goes On.” This song actually dates back to the Quarrymen era; John had written most of the song back then, and it was resurrected (changing perhaps from a folky skiffle track to more of a country song in the process) with help from Paul and even from Ringo. In fact, this song is the only one ever credited to Lennon, McCartney, and Starr.

Paul McCartney asked a very significant question in another song, to which the honest answer is probably, “Because we’d be arrested!” The question is, of course, “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?” Very much a Paul effort—John’s feelings were hurt that Paul recorded it alone with Ringo and did not involve John at all. Paul has said that it just happened that way circumstantially and was not a deliberate slight, and, of course, John did a similar thing with “The Ballad of John and Yoko,” which excluded Ringo as Paul played drums. I have no idea how George felt about either of these songs. “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?” is a brilliantly fierce bluesy vocal from Paul, recorded during the final sessions for the White Album. The track features Paul’s extraordinarily intense and passionate singing, with a remarkable octave jump into falsetto and back; Ringo’s brilliantly minimalist drum part that fits perfectly around the handclaps and percussion; and Paul’s turn at some Elmore James–style slide guitar work. Apparently, the question came to him while in Rishikesh, when he saw a monkey couple doing it in the road without any qualms about the public nature of their location. I suppose only an evolutionary biologist could really answer the question as to why we don’t (usually!) do the same thing. In the meantime I shall settle for a quote from the turn of the last century from the legendary actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell, who asked, “Does it really matter what these affectionate people do—as long as they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses?” And modern motorists might be equally distracted—so perhaps that answers Paul’s question for now.

Not all the Beatles’ questions were plaintive. Their questions came in all varieties. Sometimes they do not even ask a question as such but rather instruct someone else to do so, as they do on “Ask Me Why,” a track recorded in 1962 but with a sound more reminiscent of the ’50s. It features a quintessentially American and doo-wop-flavoured vocal from John with harmonies from Paul and George which owe much more to the wonderful harmony arrangements of Smokey Robinson and the Miracles than to any early British rock and roll or skiffle.

Before I close out this querulous part of the chapter, I’d like to pose two questions that the Beatles picked up from others. The first is a very straightforward question to which the answer is usually yes. That is the early Beatles song “Ain’t She Sweet.” I describe it as a Beatles song, but it actually derives from an even earlier era. “Ain’t She Sweet” was written in 1927 by Milton Ager and Jack Yellen in honour of Ager’s daughter and was a giant hit back in the Roaring Twenties. It is a cool song and an interesting choice by the early Beatles.

Sticking with the “ain’t” theme, Fats Domino wrote a song probably twenty-five years or so after that, which was a favourite of all of ours, including the Beatles. John Lennon recorded it on his Rock ’n’ Roll album, and that song was “Ain’t That a Shame.” I confess that if I had to choose one version for the proverbial desert island, I would choose the original Fats version, but I do admire the almost experimental bravery of John’s effort. The Lennon version changes the groove completely, removing the triplet feel of Fats’s piano part and replacing it with a more “straight” piano part—still a New Orleans kind of thing but without the swing. And I am such a fan of John’s singing that the compulsion to load his vocal down with effects (as is the case here) is one I question.

That brings us to the end of my list of question songs. Hope that was not too annoying in that I gave you lots of questions and very few answers, but that’s what Q will do.

The letter Q also leads us to a term in classical music, one that is quite rare. It is a Latin term, quodlibet. And what it means is “as you please.” It is the name for the use of little musical quotations from other composers in one’s work. Such use is quite common in classical music and also in rock and roll and jazz. Johann Sebastian Bach was very fond of quodlibet, and a family game in the Bach household is reputed to have been a game of quodlibet in which Bach would play the organ and interpolate into his piece sixteen or so little quotations from other composers. It was up to his children and the rest of the family to guess and identify those composers and the piece of music from which the quotation came. Probably not terribly easy, but I don’t imagine being the children of a genius like Bach was particularly easy anyway. Evidently, when he wasn’t in his study writing another hit, or when he wasn’t on the road doing a gig or something, that’s how he would unwind when he was home with his family. When I say “gig,” of course, you probably know that Bach was a highly skilled organist as well as a brilliant composer, and he would play gigs, mostly in churches. So (to make a silly modern comparison) I guess he was not only the Lennon & McCartney of his day but the Billy Preston of his day as well.

In the Beatles catalogue I can think of one prominent use of quodlibet. But maybe somebody else will think of another one. The Beatles song which I know contains quotations from other works is “All You Need Is Love,” in which there are quotations from “La Marseillaise” and “She Loves You,” to name but two—one right at the beginning and one at the end. It is interesting to note that the two quotes are probably equally familiar to a general audience. I think it could certainly be suggested that you know you have made it as a songwriter when you write a song which is as famous, as distinctive, and as instantly recognizable as one of the major national anthems of Western civilization! Each can be named by most listeners in only a few notes. Their use in the global live broadcast of “All You Need Is Love” in June 1967 increased the universality and significance of the event and even added a certain Charles Ives–like sense of everything happening at the same time musically as the song heads towards its dramatic end.