George at Friar Park.

Together we have been exploring the Beatles alphabetically, and it is with some trepidation that I have brought you to the letter X. I confess that I have been wondering in advance what on earth I was going to do when I got to X because there unequivocally are no Beatles songs that begin with that letter at all. Some of you must have thought, Well, he’s going to be stuck now! What’s he going to do? But I have come up with a few dodges and cheats and shortcuts which I hope I may get away with. So here we go.

Did you know (I did not) that on December 13, 2009, on the final night of the television program X Factor UK, there was a surprise guest appearance by our very own Paul McCartney? And that guest appearance on the (perfectly named) X Factor qualifies instantly for this chapter, of course. Paul sang two songs live: “Drive My Car” and “Live and Let Die.” These are songs he often performs—and very well, too. You can find excellent live versions of these songs on his album Good Evening New York City, which was recorded over the three nights of the inaugural concerts at New York’s Citi Field on July 17, 18, and 21, 2009. A huge gig, but it instantly sold out, and by all accounts it was a great performance. Several friends of mine were there and raved about the music, the energy, and the sheer excitement of the show. It is perhaps worth reflecting on Paul’s boundless enthusiasm for performing which does not appear to have diminished at all over the decades. When Peter & Gordon had the privilege of opening for the Beatles more than fifty years ago, I remember watching Paul bound onto the stage as if there were nowhere else in the world he would rather be—and watching him much more recently it is clear that the sentiment has not changed. He plays for far longer now (often three hours straight) than he ever did in the old days and with even greater and more readily apparent joy. He’s obviously no longer doing it to make a living or to become a star but solely out of love for music and performing. With all the old problems of sound and staging having found modern technological solutions, with the various issues so clearly outlined in the documentary Eight Days a Week happily resolved, Paul can relax and enjoy not only the miraculous body of work upon which he can call but also the musicianship, vocal resilience, audience appeal, and stagecraft which have always impressed us so much.

At the end of his performance on X Factor, Paul asked, “Did we pass the audition?” And to everyone’s relief, Simon Cowell said, “Yes, you made it through to the next round!” And I am looking forward very much to Paul’s “next round” myself, whatever it may bring.

So X Factor got me started on the letter X, but it is hardly enough for a whole chapter. I found myself wandering around the house mumbling, “X … X…” to myself, wondering what on earth to do, and it occurred to me that one X topic we do have is “Ex-Beatles.” And the most famous ex-Beatle by miles is Pete Best. He has not had an easy career, but he is in person a charming man. I have run into him at some Beatles-related events, and he is totally cool.

After he left the Beatles in 1962, Pete went on to have his own group, the Pete Best Band. One of their tracks is a nostalgic song about Liverpool, in the same vein as Paul’s “Penny Lane” and Ringo’s “Liverpool 8.” Pete wrote and recorded “Haymans Green,” about an area in which no doubt the Beatles played gigs back in the day in Liverpool.

Pete Best, of course, is not the only ex-Beatle. If you think about it, Paul and John and Ringo and George themselves became ex-Beatles after 1970 and proceeded to make some terrific records in that capacity. So I would suggest that we choose and explore one significant or interesting song that each recorded as an ex-Beatle. For Paul, many people consider his first extraordinary and creative song as an ex-Beatle to be “Maybe I’m Amazed,” a track from the album McCartney, his first release after the breakup. The music world did not know what to expect from this record and probably was amazed (and impressed) when Paul’s first solo album turned out to be so terrifically good and to contain such an exceptionally powerful song. Written by Paul and dedicated to his wife, Linda, it was recorded in EMI’s Studio Two, with Paul playing every instrument. “Maybe I’m Amazed” was never released as an actual single, but it received a great deal of airplay worldwide nonetheless. Much later, a live version of the song was recorded by Wings as part of the album Wings over America, and that one was released as a single and became a top ten hit in the U.S. So the power of “Maybe I’m Amazed” was proved beyond any question, and the song can be seen in retrospect as a clear harbinger of the extraordinary solo career Paul enjoys to this day.

Moving on to our second ex-Beatle, John Lennon, who is so profoundly missed. He was an extraordinary man, an intimidating and even mordant intellect, and a brilliant musician. He recorded so many good tracks it is hard to choose just one. In this instance I have chosen a song which shows John in a gentle mood, which was not always the case with him. That song is “Love Is Real”—or so I always call it, though the official name of the song is just “Love.” This song was included on John’s 1970 album John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. Though never released as a single, it rapidly found a following and received substantial airplay as well. With disarmingly plain but profoundly effective lyrics, with some simple but unexpected chord changes and a beautiful vocal (double tracked, as John so often did), the record has a contemplative elegance to it that I find very affecting.

Then there is Ringo—a brilliant and astonishingly creative drummer, an amazing musician, a charming man, and a valued friend. I picked an odd one here. Not one of Ringo’s classics, but a track which I find highly entertaining. The song is called “Wine, Women and Loud Happy Songs.” Well, since that time, Ringo no longer drinks the wine, and he found himself one incredibly wonderful and beautiful woman in Barbara, of whom I am a great admirer—but he is still really good at singing loud happy songs, like this one.

Our last ex-Beatle, George Harrison, is also so seriously missed, of course. An extraordinary composer, a wildly skilled and inventive guitarist, and a brilliant and remarkable man. He combined some of the traditional virtues of an English country gentleman (civility, good humour, and a certain traditionalism) with a profound fascination with other cultures, their music, their skills, and their philosophical knowledge. He also felt a deep connection to his own extraordinary and beloved home in the British countryside, Friar Park, so miraculously loved and maintained to this day by the amazing Olivia—just as she maintains every aspect of George’s legacy with unbounded love and a precise attention to detail. I do not think there can be a better song to represent George’s ex-Beatles years than “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth),” one of George’s biggest hits and a significant change of style from its predecessor, “My Sweet Lord,” though both share a spiritual theme. Switching from the pomp and size of a Phil Spector production to a clarity and intimacy more reminiscent of what George Martin might have done, it allows individual instrumentalists to shine rather than building a wall of sound: Nicky Hopkins’s irresistibly catchy repetitive piano lick and the perfectly light, almost jazzy, syncopation shared by Klaus Voormann on bass and Jim Keltner on drums. And above it all the sincerity of George’s vocal and (my favourite element) the ineffable sweetness of his elegantly written and beautifully played twin slide guitar lines in the introduction and the solo.

At this point, in contemplating the letter X, I decided to take advantage of outside help. On my radio program, I regularly give out my email address (it is peterasher@siriusxm.com, if you’re curious), and I do read and answer every email I get. In the course of this correspondence, some listeners graciously send suggestions or requests for particular songs. In relation to the “A to Zed” project, I received a suggestion from two listeners named Mike and Jennifer Brunsberg, who said, “When you get to X, you’re probably going to be completely stuck! But here’s an idea.”

And the idea was one that was silly enough that it appealed to my jejune English sense of humour, and I am going to include it. What Mike and Jennifer pointed out was that John and Paul had actually written a song that was clearly, specifically, and definitively composed from the point of view of an X-ray technician, and thus perfect for addressing the letter X.

“What song could that be?” I hear you ask. “What song could possibly be said to be written from a radiological standpoint?”

Well, the answer, of course, is “I’m Looking Through You.” An excellent early Beatles track from Rubber Soul, written in Paul’s bedroom next to mine. It was the only time I witnessed some actual live writing, because I distinctly remember Paul sitting with his guitar in my bedroom for some reason—trying to finish the bridge and suddenly coming up with the line “Love has a nasty habit of disappearing overnight,” which fits so perfectly. And he was done!

Now, to return to an actual musical discussion that fits our topic, there is one famous musical instrument that begins with the letter X, and that is the xylophone. The xylophone is a family of instruments: the name refers to any instrument made out of bits of wood that you hit with mallets. The name comes from the Greek for “wood,” which is xylo (ξύλο) or xylon, and phone (also a Greek word, φωνή), which means “sound.” So it is literally wood-sound. You hit bits of wood, they make a sound, and you are playing a xylophone! And one prominent member of the xylophone family is the marimba, which the Beatles used quite a lot in the studio. George Martin used multiple marimbas and other xylophones to great effect on his soundtrack for Yellow Submarine, most noticeably on “March of the Meanies.” If you listen attentively, you will hear many mallets hitting a lot of wood!

I happened to learn classical Greek at school. Perhaps part of the tradition of an old-school English education is that you learn stuff you hardly ever need, but finally, it has come in handy. Who knew that my classical education would prove invaluable when I was searching for Beatles songs related to the letter X?

Let us also consider what other instruments are mostly made out of wood. Rather obviously all the woodwind instruments, of course (the oboes and clarinets and bassoons) along with the strings (violin, viola, cello, and bass). But in the world of rock and roll, we would have to go with the guitar—and the acoustic guitar, in which instance the wood from which it is made is a very important factor in creating its particular tone. The Beatles played acoustic guitars a lot and made them sound really good—and they knew that the sound of each acoustic guitar was affected directly by the kind of wood out of which it was made. When musicians talk about their guitars, they talk about whether the top is made of spruce or the sides are made out of koa or whatever, and they discuss all these different kinds of fancy woods, each of which creates a different resonance and thus a different tone. The Beatles made extensive use of these differences. They used the Gibson J-160E, with a laminated Sitka spruce top (essentially fancy plywood), for all their rhythm parts, as in “I Should Have Known Better” and “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away.” But they also used different guitars for other songs, for a more varied and effective sound. On “Yesterday,” Paul played an Epiphone Texan with a solid Sitka spruce top, a mahogany back and sides, and a mahogany neck—and it sounds great.

Paul also had a 1967 Martin D-28, made of different kinds of wood entirely. The D-28s of that year were constructed of Brazilian rosewood for the back and sides, solid Sitka spruce on top, and a mahogany neck. The supply of Brazilian rosewood soon ran low, and Martin changed to East Indian rosewood in 1969, but the Beatles (John had one, too) beat this downgrade by a couple of years. Brazilian rosewood is crazy expensive now. One can often identify Brazilian rosewood by the circular knot patterns in the wood instead of the straighter-line look of East Indian rosewood.

As you can see, one can get seriously nerdy about wood when in a conversation about acoustic guitars, but these woods do make a difference. Compare the sound of the Martin D-28 that Paul plays on “Blackbird” with the Epiphone Texan on “Yesterday,” and you will hear what I mean.

I have made it almost to the end of what began as our X chapter and has become kind of our wood chapter. And what better way to end a wood chapter than with a giant fire, the bit of arson that concludes the only song specifically written about wood in the entire Beatles catalogue: “Norwegian Wood.”

So as the fire crackles away merrily in the background, I say thank you very much. We made it through the letter X. It is no more. It is an ex-letter.