Hidden messages in The Beatles' songs

 

  Hidden messages in The Beatles' songs

 The Beatles are considered to be the most influencial band of all times. They were integral to the development of 1960s counterculture and popular music's recognition as an art form. The band was created in Liverpool in 1960. The members of the band were John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. Although the Beatles fell apart in 70s their music is still valued and used in series and movies.

  But did you know there are some hidden messages in The Beatles’ songs?

  Rounding off 1969’s Abbey Road is ‘Her Majesty’, a Paul McCartney ditty that appears 14 seconds after ‘The End’, the album’s last listed song. At less than 30 seconds long, there’s not much going on – it’s just Paul, acoustic guitar, a lovely vocal melody, and some amusing lyrics including “Her majesty’s a pretty nice girl / but she doesn’t have a lot to say”. In fact, the Fab Four are often credited with inventing the secret track phenomenon, with the sound collage at the end of Sgt. Pepper’s that loops infinitely on vinyl players.

  ‘Blackbird’ is a beautiful song of multitudes. It might contain touches of Johann Bach’s Bourrée in E minor, but that isn’t the only musical touchstone. While in India with the Maharishi, Paul McCartney was awoken in the dead of night by the melodic sound of a blackbird chirping away. He transposed the sound in song and the beauteous anthem was born. 

   However, he also thought the floating fortitude of such a song was fitting to add fight to a worthy cause. McCartney also says he was trying to offer words to Black women struggling in America, in particular, words which “encourage you to keep trying, to keep your faith, there is hope.”

   Such is the way that we consume news whereby pointless innocuities often sit inches from reverent tragedies, the song mirrors a story reel in an unfurling wayward journey through incidents and sound. Thus, the pothole problem in Lancashire is quickly followed by a man blowing his mind out in a car, which is a reference to a friend of The Beatles and Guinness heir Tara Browne who died in a car accident in 1966. Lennon stated, “I didn’t copy the accident, Tara didn’t blow his mind out, but it was in my mind when I was writing that verse.”

 The Irish socialite was a mainstay amid the hip rock scene of the day before a folly befell him. He pushed the highwire lifestyle to dangerous limits one day and sped through South Kensington in his sports car at speeds reportedly around 100mph. Eventually, he cruised through a red light and collided with a parked lorry and died. His girlfriend, the model Suki Potier, fortunately, survived claiming that Browne swerved the car to absorb the impact of the crash to save her life.

   However, it is a mark of the transcendence of the song and what it says about modern life, that Paul McCartney had different ideas about the verse altogether. “The verse about the politician blowing his mind out in a car we wrote together. It has been attributed to Tara Browne, the Guinness heir, which I don’t believe is the case; certainly as we were writing it, I was not attributing it to Tara in my head,” he once said. It is a mark of how prolific and variegated the band were that the meaning of this lyric has even escaped those who coined it.