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Music 351: The Beatles - The Quarry Men

A Slight Detour (but very useful information): Textbook Listening Guides

As you know, the Listening Guides in the textbook (Everette & Riley, 2019) provide minutes:seconds timestamps to represent where a given section begins in the recording (e.g., 00:19 = 0 minutes and 19 seconds). In the textbook, the text-based listening guides look like this (see the image of a text-based listening guides for Elvis Presley's "Tryin' to Get to You" and for Paul McCartney's "In Spite of All the Danger" on the right side of this page):

This information is very helpful, in that, as you listen to the recording, you can keep an eye on the media player in your browser, so that you can track the location of the playback as the current location (in minutes:seconds) moves from 0:00 (at the beginning of the track) to the end of the track, where the final minutes:seconds timestamp will be equal to the duration of the track (e.g., 3:47, if the recording is 3 minutes and 47 seconds long). When you reach one of the minutes:seconds timestamps mentioned in the textbook Listening Guide, then you know you have arrived at the identified section. For example, when listening to Elvis Presley's "Tryin' to Forget You," when the playback reaches 1:15, you should hear the "Instrumental break" begin, as identified in the textbook Listening Guide above. While that is all good and well in theory, in practice, I have found that students have a very hard time navigating these recordings and understanding what the Listening Guides are intended to communicate. Therefore, for the specific needs of this course (Music 351: The Beatles), I have created interactive Listening Guides throughout this website that will make it much easier for you to follow the musical form represented in each textbook Listening Guide.

To help you in hearing the musical form, I have color-coded the buttons in each Listening Guide to make it easier for you to identify the repeated sections visually. Here are the colors used (note that, unlike the buttons in the actual listening guides, the buttons in the bullet-point list below are not connected to code, so nothing happens when you click them):

• Verse - deep sky blue (#00BFFF) is used to identify Verses
• Chorus (or Refrain) - medium purple (#9370DB) is used to identify Choruses (and Refrains, if they are part of the "macro" form rather than "micro" versions like when the "refrain" is a part of a verse; see my "AABA" instructional video for information about the "micro" and "macro" versions of this form)
• Bridge - sea green (#2E8B57) is used to identify Bridges
• Tattoo - coral (#FF7F50) is used to identify "tattoos" (see Everette & Riley for an explanation)


• - a modified color is used when sections of the music are used differently. For example, if a guitar solo happens over the same music as the verse, I would use this "cornflower blue" color (#6495ED Guitar Solo (over Verse music)) to highlight the button, showing a relationship to the Verse color (which is a lighter blue), but not identical to it. I would do the same if a solo instrumental break, or some other section were done over the music for the Chorus (a modified purple color: "Rebecca purple"; #663399 modified chorus), the Bridge (a teal color: #008080 modified bridge), and sections using a "tatoo" (an "orange red" color: #FF4500 modified tattoo).

Interactive Listening Guides

Throughout this website, you will find Listening Guides like the ones below, which are based on the Listening Guides provided in the required textbook (Everette & Riley, 2019). There are two ways to play back the audio file. First, you can use the media player control bar at the top of the listening guide; it looks like this:

The second method of playback is to click on the labeled "buttons" underneath the media control bar. Each of those buttons causes playback to begin at the location identified by the text on the button.

Below, you will find your first online, interactive Listening Guides ... and these buttons DO work when you click on them (or touch the screen of your mobile device). For these first two listening guides (only), I am providing a screen capture of the textbook Listening Guide to the right of the interactive Listening Guide, so you can see the similarity clearly. As you listen to "Tryin' to Get to You" by Elvis Presley and "In Spite of All the Danger by the Quarry Men (early-day Beatles), pay close attention to the musical organization. Do you see how closely the musical form of "In Spite of All the Danger" by the Quarry Men is based on the form of "Tryin' to Get to You" by Elvis? Pay close attention to the order of the verses (with refrain), bridge, break, etc. Even though the sound of the music is quite different between these two songs, the musical structure ("form") of "In Spite of All the Danger" is clearly modeled on the form of "Tryin' to Get to You."

Becoming the Beatles

A Prehistory

Lennon would periodically display antisocial behavior by mocking those with speech impediments and impaired mobility, flaunting the dark side of his wide-ranging humor at the height of the Beatles' fame, a time when "able-ism" was the accepted norm.

The McCartneys nurtured musical genes

• Paul's grandfather played tuba in a municipal band
• his father, Jim, led a dance-hall ragtime band in the 1920s and created his own tunes on the piano at home

the gramophone: what Brits called the record player, which ...

• played 10-inch vinyl records which played at 78 rotations per minute (rpm)
• also played 7-inch singles at 45 rpm
• "singles" contained one song per side, but only the A-side was marketed as a hit and promoted on the radio
• "extended-play" (EP) 7-inch singles contained two songs per side
• 7-inch pop record singles remained monophonic (same signal in the left and right channels; not stereo), which brought wondrous new effects like separation and depth, requiring dedicated playback equipment
• 12-inch discs (LPs; long-playing albums) played at 33 1/3 rpm, each song typically being two to three minutes in duration
• singles and EPs were also publicly available to from jukeboxes, large coin-fed record players found in bars and soda stands that contained fifty or so discs, any title of which could be chosen by a customer

In the early Beatles era, artists typically released one or two albums and three or four singles per year. The popularity of records was measured by sales and airplay posted in charts of from 30 to 200 recordings, varying by single/album format and by chart publisher, updated weekly in trade magazines such as Billboard in the United States and the New Musical Express in the United Kingdom, among others.

• from early on, the Beatles were determined NOT to end up like Elvis, producing an LP with a couple of hits dominating side 1 and "filler" material to flesh out the remainder
• each Beatle single and album came to market thoughtfully conceived as either a radio song or an album track ... and sometimes both!
• ,as the industry progressed from 7-inch monophonic 45 rpm singles toward 12-inch, stereo LPs, the Beatles' own material advanced this technical progression, making it an aesthetically-driven change;

LPs released in American did not faithfully carry the same songs as the British original releases, which causes some confusion. Finally, with the release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (June 1967), the British and American album track sequences were identical for the remainder of their albums.

skiffle - an amateurish musical style, played on homemade washboards and washtub or tea-chest basses with banjos and acoustic guitars, presenting songs from the rural blues tradition of the 1930s, with lyrics often related to manual labor or railroad adventure (e.g., Lead Belly's "Rock Island Line" or Lonnie Donagan's "Mr. Foggy," both of which are included in the Extra Credit Listening Journal Spotify playlist).

Of course, one band that used the skiffle sound as a launch pad for rock 'n' roll came from the Merseyside (a.k.a. Liverpool) suburbs of Woolton and Allerton: the Quarry Men, led in late 1956 by their founder, John Lennon

The Quarry Men

John Lennon grew up having an "absent" father and his mother, Julia (he composed a beautiful song by that name), was found "unfit" by the Liverpool Community Council, so he was raised by his strict Aunt Mimi and her husband.

• Julia reentered John's life, sharing her rock records and teaching him hot to play some of Elvis' songs on the banjolele and then the cheap Gallatone acoustic guitar she bought for him
• she died young and suddenly, fatally run over by an off-duty policeman right near John's home (July 1958)
  • her death haunted John the rest of his life, figuring in (a) the name of his son, Julian; (b) his contemplative 1968 Beatles song "Julia"; and his solo song "Mother"
• in addition to his developing musical abilities, Lennon displayed talent in the visual arts, drawing scathing cartoons for a notebook he called "The Daily Howl, which later found their way into later Lennon tunes ("Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," "I Am the Walrus," and "Glass Onion")
  • Lennon's "crypto-speak became an important part of Beatles lore 

As Lennon improved on the guitar, he gathered friends into a skiffle group sarcastically named for their Quarry Bank High School: The Quarry Men. Members of this earliest incarnation:

• John Lennon: acoustic guitar and lead vocals
• best friend Pete Shotton: scratched out rhythm on the washboard
• Rod Davis: banjo
• Colin Hanton: small drum set
• Eric Griffiths: second acoustic guitar
• rotating tea-chest bass players, including Len Garry (who also sang vocal harmonies)

The list of personnel represented above provides the six-man version of The Quarry Men that played at a fair at St. Peter's Church (Woolton; July 6, 1956), where they were seen by a young Paul McCartney! They played mostly skiffle hits, but they also included Elvis' "Baby Let's Play House" (an old Sun recording) and the Del-Vikings' "Come Go with Me."

About John & Paul's meeting:

• Paul loved John's style, both his command of the group and the way he made up gibberish when he didn't know the words
• the two had a lot to talk about when the meet after the performance
• Paul played & sang Little Richard's "Long Tall Sally" (he did an impressive Little Richard impression as you can hear on one of the Anthology recordings I have made available to you) and then showed off on the guitar with Eddie Cochran's "Twenty Flight Rock"
  • Paul could mimic Little Richard's amazing falsetto tones in his vocals
    
•  he also retuned John's guitar (!)
• there are several recorded fragments of two songs from the day that John & Paul met ... three fragments of "Putting on the Style" and a half-minute of "Baby Let's Play House"
• once Paul joined The Quarry Men, he & John constituted the front line, with all other members functioning as their backing group
  • unlike most pop acts, it never occurred to them to pick a single "lead" front man; they always traded vocals and frequently sang harmonies and duets 

Paul's mother also died young; her death seems to have cemented something of an emotional detachment from his surroundings, distinctly in contrast to John's more desperate acting out

• Paul found emotional nourishment in the stage lights, donning a persona subject to mass appreciation, somewhat more superficial than Lennon's confessional mode
• comparing their styles:
  • John would bare his soul in self-portraits ("I'm a Loser," "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away," and "Strawberry Fields Forever"
  • Paul would tickle his listeners with music-hall turns such as "When I'm Sixty-Four"
• Paul traded a trumpet his dad had given him for a guitar soon after hearing Elvis Presley and Lonnie Donegan
• Paul started writing his own three-chord songs with "I Lost My Little Girl," a song tied to grief over losing his mother Mary, who he mentions in his later ballad "Let It Be"

As Paul befriended John, he reconsidered the talents of another friend, a better guitarist than either John or himself: George Harrison (also younger than the other two)

• George learned the note-bending lead part for Bill Justis' "Raunchy," a Top 20 instrumental hit in the UK in early 1958, which Paul coaxed him to demonstrate as an audition with John
• the performance impressed Lennon, who made George a member March 1958 ... the front line was now a trio!

The Quarry Men started considering other names for the group: 

• Japage 3 (condenses John, Paul, & George's names, indicating they are the group's key members)
• Silver Beetles (influenced by the name of Buddy Holly's "Crickets")
• they eventually settled on the Beatles, using the misspelling (not like the insect!) that made clear their affiliation with the Liverpool "beat" sound  

On July 12, 1958, the group went into Percy Phillips' rudimentary home recording studio, where they recorded Buddy Holly & the Crickets' #1 hit from the from the previous year ("That'll Be the Day") and one of McCartney's tunes that was inspired by Elvis ("In Spite of All the Danger"). Lennon sang lead on both tunes.

Buddy Holly, like Carl Perkins and Chuck Berry, wrote his own material, which inspired John and Paul, who identified with these figures as writers and began to compose fragmentary songs of their own! In an interview years later, Paul described the song like this: "It's very similar to an Elvis song. It's me doing an Elvis."

Compare Presley's "Tryin' to Get to You" to McCartney's "In Spite of All the Danger"

"Tryin' to Get to You" by Elvis Presley

Notice the shuffle pattern (the beat subdivision is LONG-short, LONG-short rather than dividing the beat into equal halves) in the cymbal during the instrumental break (1:12-1:32; click n the button labeled "Instrumental break"below). Also, notice the strong backbeats on the snare drum, which accent the weak beats (the 2nd and 4th beats in a 4-beat/quadruple meter).

A song form is based on the relationships among related and contrasting phrases, and among related and contrasting sections, which gives musical sound a sense of organization in our minds. Repeating material creates a sense of familiarity; varying material suggests change, progress, or novelty; and contrasting material connotes a change of perspective or contradiction.

Common parts of a popular music song (see Video 1.3 online to get more information about these terms and formal sections of a song; linked from Module 0 of our course Canvas site):

• verses: sections with recurring music but differing sets of lyrics
• a refrain or chorus: a recurring section of music for which the music and lyrics are repeated
• bridges: contrasting material that usually builds to the tense retransitional anticipation of a returning verse

"SRDC" form (see Dr. L's video on "Listening Guides & the SRDC"; also see online Video 2.2 for the textbook, linked from Module 0 of our course Canvas site)

• S: statement
• R: restatement (a repetition of the opening idea with new words and perhaps a slight musical variation)
• D: departure (featuring strongly varied material, sometimes in repeated fragments)
• C: conclusion (the ending, cadential section)

stop-time: when the instruments stop playing temporarily, leaving the singer on their own without instrumental support

melisma: singing many notes on a single syllable rather than one note per syllable

Early Paying Gigs

The Casbah Club (opened in August 1959 in West Derby, an eastern suburb of Liverpool): one of the most important performance venues during the early Beatles years

• the Quarry Men served as the house band for the club's hundreds of teenage members for weekends through October, when a disagreement ended the relationship
• the group enhanced their repertoire by adding more material, performing more than 200 songs made famous by Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Little Ricard, Gene Vincent, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Lonnie Donegan, Larry Williams, Fats Domino, Duane Eddy, the Coasters, Eddie Cochran, the Everly Brothers, and many, many others
  • note that these artists are all American ... Britain came late to the rock 'n' roll party! 
• in your required textbook (Everette & Riley, Appendix 1), you will find a list of the core repertoire that influenced the Beatles in their early years, either as source material for their own performance or songs that had a direct bearing on their own creative compositional efforts
  [full disclosure: I used this list as the basis for the Spotify playlist I created containing recordings for which you can provide journal entries for extra credit!!]
• the band was also influenced by the Shadows' and Buddy Holly's use of the electric guitar, often featuring notes bent by the vibrato (or "whammy") bar
  • by June 1960, John, Paul, and George all three owned electric guitars

At art school, John befriended a promising expressionist painter named Stu Sutcliffe, who worshiped Elvis Presley.

• despite his limited musical skills (one might say "nonexistent"), Stu became one of the Quarry Men
• all he had to do was buy a bass guitar, which he did with the proceeds from the prominent sale of a painting
• Stu never gained competence as a musician, either singing or playing

late March 1960: the group approached its now-familar name

• thinking of the Crickets (Buddy Holly's band) as a pun, Sutcliffe suggested "the Beatals," in reference to "beat" poetry and "beat" music (as electric rock 'n' roll was called in Liverpool) rather than spelling the word like the insect ("Beetles")
• the ultimate spelling came that May when the Silver Beatles were advertised for one appearance
• in June, "Silver" was dropped from the name

May 20-28, 1960: after impressing Larry Parnes, a national impresario, the Beatles had the opportunity to tour small towns in northern Scotland (mostly between Inverness and Aberdeen), where they served as the backing group for Johnny Gentle, who also went by the name Darren Young

• the musical performances were dreadful (Gentle had a weak voice, the musical equipment was inadequate, the pay was lousy, and a car accident knocked the teeth out of their temporary drummer, Tommy Moore!)
• but they played to appreciative crowds and felt like celebrities, signing autographs and using stage names: Paul Ramon, Carl Harrison, & Stu de Stael

May 1960: Rory Storm and the Hurricanes brought rock music to the Cavern Club, an underground venue in the heart of Liverpool (previously, the club had hosted jazz music only)

• Liverpool's best drummer kept the Hurricanes' beat swift and lively ... and went by the name "Ringo Starr" (born "Richard Starkey")
• due to health issues, Ringo spent his youth in and out of hospitals for peritonitis and pneumonia, once for a 10-month period!
  • to keep the hospital patients occupied, nurses passed around percussion instruments
  • in 1954, Richie (not yet "Ringo") discovered he loved the drums as well as the Texas-style blues of Lightnin' Hopkins and yodeling cowboys like Hank Snow and Gene Autry
• while with the Hurricanes, Ringo took the microphone for "Ringo Starr time" once each set, at which point he came out from behind the drums, sometimes donning a guitar, to sing the Hollywood Argyles' "Alley-Oop" or the Shirelle's number "Boys," the latter destined to become his first vocal on a Beatles record

late July 1960: Allan Williams, a city-center club owner who was helping the Beatles, drove them to London to meet Bruno Koschmider, who sought British beat groups to attract audiences to his seedy clubs in the red-light district of Hamburg in West Germany

• Koschmider hired the Beatles to play the Indra Club beginning on August 17, 1960, but they needed a drummer
  • days before they departed, Pete Best (son of Mona Best, owner of the Casbah) took the job
  • Best stayed with the Beatles for two full years
• at the Indra and the Kaiserkeller (another -- better -- club owned by Koschmider) the Beatles logged some 500 hours onstage in Hamburg between August 17 and November 30
• in addition to adding new repertoire to their act, they also tightened the sound of their ensemble and discovered how to "sell" their music using their dynamic personalities (and humor) onstage

Another friend of the Beatles during these early years was Tony Sheridan, a Londoner playing down the street at the Top Ten Club; the Beatles, he became "the Teacher" as he tutored them on guitar, showing them many new techniques

• the band occasionally snuck away to serve as Sheridan's backup band, a violation of their contract for the Kaiserkeller
• when discovered, Koschmider was furious, firing the Beatles and had most of them deported over a minor fire in their living quarters and the fact that George was underage (not yet 18 years old so was violating a minor's curfew)
  • the band trudged back to Liverpool that December ... all except for Stu, who left the group to continue both his painting in Hamburg and his romance with his girlfriend until returning home in late February

Ain't She Sweet

Cry for a Shadow

Returning to Liverpool

• December 27, 1960: the Beatles made a spectacular appearance at the Litherland Town Hall, just north of Liverpool
  • advertised as "direct from Hamburg," they were mistaken for Germans by the unfamiliar crowd
• honed and toughened into a tight, entertaining musical group, they roared forth like nothing their hometown audience had ever heard
• on the basis of this performance, John, Paul, George, Pete, and Chas Newby (filling in on bass) rocketed from anonymity to the top of Liverpool's music scene!

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