Paul McCartney’s new two-volume collection of song lyrics. Photo by Gordon Berg.
By Gordon Berg
Okay. I confess. I am a Beatles Nerd. As a kid I had a Beatles wig. I had a six-inch-tall stack of Beatles trading cards. And of course, there was the music.
As an adult, I soak up podcasts about The Beatles like a sponge in an octopus’s garden. I even admit that I’ve looked into getting an online master’s degree in The Beatles Music and Heritage from the University of Liverpool.
Yup. That’s me. Beatles Nerd.
All that said, I was not prepared when Paul McCartney’s new two-volume collection of his lyrics found its way under our Christmas tree last month. A generous gift from my sister-in-law, brother-in-law and their daughter. I guess they know me better than I know myself.
I’ve barely scratched the first couple dozen or so pages, but so far, I am transfixed. You see, what really fascinates me about The Beatles’ songs are their origins. Who or what inspired their creation? What was going on in their lives at the time? What was the songwriting process like? It’s all there in these books.
One such morsel stopped me in my tracks. Recalling the origins of one of the first songs he ever wrote, “All My Loving”, McCartney said:
With songwriting you conceive of it in one genre (because you can’t conceive of things in thousands of genres), and you have one way of hearing it. If you get it right, however, you realize it has a certain elasticity; songs can be flexible. And when other members of The Beatles would get into the studio, often that’s when that elasticity would kick in.
McCartney might present to the other members of The Beatles a song he wrote, hearing it in his head initially as a country song, but then John Lennon may suggest a tweak he hears, and it then becomes a rock song. Elasticity.
Famously, McCartney heard a song in a dream and the only words that fit at first were “scrambled eggs.” Later, he replaced those placeholder words with one word, “Yesterday.” Even reading just that one word, I bet you can hear the song in your head. In that moment, he was being elastic.
In his creative process, he is open to new possibilities, open to others’ ideas, and possesses a willingness to let others influence his work.
Wow. Elasticity. This word hit me like “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”. Maybe it was all the 2021 year-in-review segments on TV. Maybe it was how everything, everything has become so politicized. Maybe it was the behavioral studies that report the PTSD-like impact of Covid on young and old alike.
Elasticity. Maybe we as a nation and as individuals need more elasticity in our lives. Maybe we should be less judgmental and more forgiving of each other. Maybe we can be a little more compassionate. Maybe we can let our egos be a little more vulnerable. None of us are going to break if we do this. We’re elastic. When we stretch, we grow. We get bigger. We become a better version of ourselves. A better song.
Elasticity. We can work it out. Let’s at least try this year.
All my lovin’ to you. Happy 2022.
