The Beatles with one of their idols (and mine), Little Richard.

I am very happy to have reached the letter R because it gives me the opportunity to talk about one of my very favourite Beatles songs, and that is “Rain.”

I love that track. Everything about it is incredible. An extraordinary song, a great arrangement. Amazing bass part. I mean a highly original and specifically McCartney-esque bass part, and, as I’ve mentioned earlier, Ringo’s drum fills are equally astounding, as is the sound of the snare drum itself on this particular track. Whatever formula Ringo, George Martin, and Geoff Emerick concocted for the snare sound is terrific. And Ringo uses the snare and the hi-hat as part of each one of his brilliantly composed fills, which is what makes them so highly original. I think it is some of Ringo’s very finest work.

It might be interesting to explore how something like this usually happens in the studio. The way a snare drum finally sounds is the result of a whole series of decisions. First of all, it depends upon which snare drum is used. There are big ones and small ones, wooden ones and brass ones, and many variations and options. There are different kinds of drum heads which can be used, thick ones and thin ones, real calf ones and synthetic ones. Then the heads can be tuned—turning the various bolts which attach the head to the drum tightens or loosens the skin of the head itself, raising or lowering the frequency of the sound it makes.

The resonance of the drum can also be changed by putting something on the head to dampen the vibrations—a wallet sitting on the head is quite a common trick; and Ringo would sometimes drape a tea towel over the whole head to dull the resonance almost completely. The drum can be played with light sticks or heavy sticks or even brushes. And the engineer has numerous options as to the choice and placement of microphones. Each drum can have its own microphone or sometimes two—one above and one below. The kit as a whole can be miked as well by one mic (mono) or two mics (stereo) above it, known as the overhead mics. When the signal from these microphones reaches the control room, it can be processed in multiple ways, the most common applications being “equalization” (EQ) and “limiting and compression.” These mysterious terms actually refer to very simple ideas. EQ is a fancy and infinitely flexible version of the treble and bass tone controls you find on home equipment—the engineer can make the sound as crispy or as boomy as one could ever want, with every subtle variation in between. Limiters and compressors are devices that (in the simplest terms) automatically turn down the loud bits and turn up the soft bits in order to fit all the parts together properly. In the right hands, the use of these techniques is an important art throughout the process of recording and mixing.

Yet none of these techniques makes as much difference as who is playing the drums in the first place and what the drummer decides to play. When I previously described Ringo’s fills as “composed,” I chose the word carefully. Whether he made some up on the spot or thought them up in advance, there is nothing random about them. The brilliant way he integrated the hi-hat and snare into what would usually just be tom-tom fills was perfect, elegant, and highly original.

As it happens, I had a conversation with Ringo recently on this very subject. I told him that I had been writing admiringly about his drum fills, and he expressed curiosity as to which were my current favourites. When I mentioned “Rain” he told me that it was indeed a special case: he had played differently in a stylistic sense (which drums he used and in what order) on that track than on any other Beatles record before or since. Still very hard for me to choose a favourite—even if “Rain” gets its own category, there are still so many great fills to choose from!

Another interesting thing about “Rain,” as I have mentioned before, is that it was slowed down somewhere in the mixing or mastering process. So, if you try to figure out what key the record is in, it is kind of F-sharpish, but I assume it was recorded in G, or possibly even A, and then slowed down. This would not only change the tempo but also lower the pitch and the actual tone of each instrument. Somehow every move the Beatles and George Martin made in the recording and production of “Rain” and every choice they made as it neared completion was perfect.

“Rain” is a John Lennon track, and it shows how experimental and creative he had become by 1966. Of course, John never forgot his rock and roll roots, which we can hear in an early Beatles cover track in the R category, written by one of their great heroes, Chuck Berry: “Rock and Roll Music.” The band recorded it in one take, with a live vocal by John. And then they overdubbed three pianists all playing the same Steinway piano at the same time.

The pianists were John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Martin. I have no idea who played which particular bits of the piano part. It would be really interesting to hear the piano track soloed and try to figure out who played what because, in levels of piano proficiency, it would be John Lennon at the bottom of the list, Paul McCartney in the middle, and George Martin at the top. The complicated stuff would likely have been played by George Martin, the intermediate stuff by Paul, and the basic stuff by John. However it was, their efforts combined to create an extraordinary piano part and a great track.

Now I’d like to move on to another song that the Beatles also covered, where both the song and the artist use the letter R. The song is “Rip It Up” by Little Richard, which the Beatles sang in their live set, and there are recorded versions of them doing it. But honestly, the original version by Little Richard cannot be beat. He was a brilliant pianist, yet oddly there does not seem to be any piano on his first version. It is a sparse arrangement: beautiful horn parts and a terrific vocal. When you listen to it, check out the scream going into the solo, a scream that certainly influenced Paul McCartney. It is a great song, too.

“Rip It Up” was co-written by someone of whom I am also a huge fan and that is Robert “Bumps” Blackwell. He wrote and produced a lot of Little Richard records. He produced “Tutti Frutti.” He co-wrote “Long Tall Sally” and “Good Golly Miss Molly” and “Ready Teddy” as well as “Rip It Up.” He also produced “You Send Me” for Sam Cooke, one of my very favourite records and an amazing vocal. And then he produced several songs for a Bob Dylan album. Who knew? Sadly, he died too young, in 1985.

Back to the Beatles themselves, and a double R song, which we could not possibly omit: “Rocky Raccoon.” It starts off like a Woody Guthrie talking blues, and it has the clever Gideon’s Bible reference and so on. You still find those in hotel rooms all across America to this day. Someone must still be going around putting them in all those bedside drawers.

As I have said, I am a real sucker for those McCartney tunes that tell a story—they form an interesting literary collection of short stories or one-act plays or something. It is very cool. It would be interesting to make a list at some point (I’m sure someone already has) of all the characters that Paul has invented over the passage of time. I mean the girl whose real name was Magill, who called herself Lil, and she was known as Nancy, or her man Dan, or Rocky Raccoon himself. So many people Paul just conjured up who now have real characters and identity and are virtually part of our lives. Not to mention Vera, Chuck, and Dave. I guess they are all grown up now. Where are they? How did they turn out? I hope everything is okay.

Having visited Paul’s world for a while, let’s go back to John and look at a song that he apparently did not rate highly, “Run for Your Life.” He later expressed considerable dislike for this track, saying it was one of his least favourites. And indeed, he has got in some trouble, retroactively, for the line, “I’d rather see you dead, little girl, / Than to be with another man,” which is not currently considered an acceptable sentiment. And correctly so—though in John’s defence we must point out that he borrowed that particular lyric verbatim from the Elvis Presley recording of “Baby Let’s Play House,” written by Arthur Gunter. And despite John’s disdain, I find much to like about “Run for Your Life.” On top of John’s usual pounding Gibson J-160E acoustic part, I love the two intersecting electric guitar parts—the intro guitar riff, which reoccurs later in the song as well, along with the slide part. Even though both are out of tune by any traditional standards (as are many of the old blues records to which they owe musical allegiance), they combine to create a mood of rocking melancholy which matches the vocal. And I love the chord structure and background vocal arrangement in the chorus—especially in the last three bars. After alternating between a B minor and an E major a couple of times, the song ends with a descending G major, F-sharp major, and B minor with an added high part in the background vocals (Paul, I feel sure) which rings beautifully and is the kind of vocal arrangement no one can create or execute as well as the Beatles did.

The Beatles also explored the letter R in their post-Beatles days. Wings recorded an excellent R song, “Rock Show,” from the Venus and Mars album. It features Denny Laine playing the Moog synthesizer, quite early in the Moog’s life, and playing guitar and sitar as well. We also get to hear Allen Toussaint on the piano. I hope you recognize the name. Allen Toussaint was a brilliant songwriter and producer, a stalwart of the New Orleans music scene, who wrote and produced all those Lee Dorsey songs like “Ride Your Pony,” “Working in the Coal Mine” (“whoops!”), and much else besides. His remarkable body of work is well worth exploring.

George also has some R songs in his catalogue, so allow me to mention a fairly obscure one I like. It is called “Ride Rajbun,” and it is a children’s song, with George singing along with a fully Indian instrumentation. He recorded it for a multi-artist charity album called The Bunbury Tails, which also served as the soundtrack for a British animated television series of the same name. I understand that the Bunburys were a bunny rabbit cricket team. And George got interested in cricket through his friendship with Eric Clapton, who was (and remains) a cricket fan and player, and they played in the grounds of Friar Park, George and Olivia’s extraordinary home.

Musically, there is much about “Ride Rajbun” that is of interest. The sitar introduction was played by the great Ravi Shankar while the rest of the sitar parts were played by his student George Harrison. George visited his friend and mentor at his hotel in London and recorded the introduction there. The other singer on the choruses is Dhani Harrison, George’s immensely talented son.

I confess that I cannot help but wonder whether David English, the creator of The Bunbury Tails, might not be (as I am) a devoted Oscar Wilde fan. The original Bunbury tales are from Wilde’s masterpiece The Importance of Being Earnest. In the play, Bunbury is a fictional friend whose name gave rise to the word bunburying, which is the art of using such an invented friend (in urgent need) as an excuse for not showing up at an event one has committed to attend but wishes to avoid. But I’ve gotten way off subject here. So far as I know, George Harrison’s “Ride Rajbun” and the Bunbury cricket team had nothing to do with Oscar Wilde officially—but the two will always be conjoined in my imagination. Though I rather doubt that Oscar Wilde played cricket!

Staying in somewhat obscure mode, I would like to pull up an R song from Paul McCartney. Paul is a fan of Noël Coward, as am I. Coward, as you may know, was a multifaceted genius, a brilliant English actor, playwright, performer, pianist, and songwriter who was born in 1899 and whose career spanned six decades of the twentieth century. Paul liked his songs very much. A few years back, a tribute album to Coward was produced, and Paul contributed his version of a classic Noël Coward song called “A Room with a View.” Paul was certainly an admirer of Coward’s style. Coward is terribly English and a little bit affected, but I love the way he sings. I recommend him very highly—the more you read about him or listen to or watch or read any of his works, your admiration will grow. Paul clearly shared my views, even if he did not go as far as the silk dressing gown and elegant cigarette holder that defined Coward’s look. I can certainly hear echoes of Coward’s clipped and almost staccato delivery, and his very English restraint and precision, in Paul’s lovely version.

Another cover of an R song that Paul McCartney recorded was with Wings. On this track, Denny Laine sings lead, but you can hear Paul singing some great harmonies. This is a song called “Richard Cory,” written by Paul Simon and originally performed and recorded by Simon & Garfunkel. It was based on a poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson, written in 1897, about a man who had everything—riches and success beyond his dreams—but was nonetheless miserable. The last line of the song, echoing the poem’s last line, is “Richard Cory went home last night and put a bullet through his head.” A sad song but a nice version by Paul McCartney and Wings featuring Denny Laine, with excellent harmonies throughout.

So now let us turn to an R song that Paul McCartney did write himself. He not only wrote it, he co-produced it with Linda, who also sang the background vocals, and he played every instrument: piano, Wurlitzer electric piano, ukulele, drums, and percussion. This is from the Ram album, a record with a pleasingly homemade feel to it, and is one of the best songs on it: “Ram On.” Lyrically and musically simple, but a fine song and a good record.

I mentioned that Ram has a homemade flavour to it, but in fact the album wasn’t really homemade at all, and many of the tracks were not recorded using the “Paul plays everything” method. Many of the excellent tracks on it feature all kinds of fine musicians, including the great guitar team of David Spinozza and Hugh McCracken. Ram was also the first time that Paul worked with Denny Seiwell, an amazing drummer who later joined Wings. Ram was recorded and produced in New York and even included no less than the New York Philharmonic. So not exactly homemade when you get right down to it, but it captures that flavour nonetheless.

Another good track on Ram is a song about an imaginary fantasy drink, “Monkberry Moon Delight.” The song that inspired Paul to write about an imaginary drink was the Leiber & Stoller classic “Love Potion Number 9.” There are accounts of the Beatles performing this song live, early in their career, but I have yet to come across a recorded version. The big hit version of “Love Potion Number 9” was by the Searchers, but it was first recorded by the Clovers, and that version would have been the one that both the Beatles and the Searchers heard. The Clovers also had an alternate version of the song that had an extra verse: “I had so much fun that I’m going back again. I wonder what’ll happen with Love Potion Number 10!” The mind boggles. Ultra-Viagra effect, I suppose.

So now we come to our final R song, which actually consists of three songs with almost identical titles: “Revolution,” “Revolution 1,” and “Revolution 9.” An interesting story about an important piece of music.

A common misconception is that John was more avidly interested in the avant-garde aspects of the arts than Paul was. Of course, I spent much more time in conversation with Paul than I did with John, but Paul certainly shared with my friends and me a very lively interest in contemporary drama, literature, the visual arts, and (of course) music which pushed boundaries and headed into the experimental edges of the culture. So far as music goes, that meant that in addition to our beloved American pop music and R&B, we were listening to Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Stockhausen, Edgar Varèse, John Cage, and others like them. But then John met Yoko, and his own interest in the avant-garde caught up rapidly. And when John recorded his brilliant composition “Revolution,” it was the long version of that recording that ended up being split into “Revolution 1” and “Revolution 9.” “Revolution 1” was John’s version of the song itself—a slow bluesy version with some excellent “shooby-doo-wop” background parts and a great feel—which was John’s suggestion for a Beatles single. And “Revolution 9” was the original continuation of that version which John and Yoko turned into a separate example of experimental music, using musique concrète, various loops, and other elements chosen sometimes at random to create a marvelous sonic landscape that became a unique part of Beatles history. The “number nine” part was derived from an EMI test tape on which a recorded voice declares it to be “EMI Test Series Number Nine.”

Meanwhile, at Paul’s suggestion a more single-oriented version of the song was recorded at a faster tempo and with a more rock and roll feel. This final version (titled, simply, “Revolution”) is notable for the remarkable sounds of the electric guitars—rather than using amplifiers, they fed the guitars directly into the tube preamps in the board (or “direct injection” into the “desk,” the English word for “board”). This is the version that was released as the B-side of “Hey Jude.”

And as for the Revolution itself—as of this writing, we are still waiting for that to happen!