Late Beatles Blues

Trying to 'Get Back' to writing about music

The whole internet is swollen with Beatles takes at the moment. Everyone is watching ‘Get Back,’ Peter Jackson’s three part, nine hour cinema verite chronicle of the Let It Be sessions. It takes only a slight push to get me listening to the Beatles. The docuseries is a full blown shove. The hours of mundanity (passive-aggressive banter, tea and toast) feel as deliciously voyeuristic as when the camera captures a creative breakthrough — like Paul McCartney willing the melody of “Get Back” from his Hofner violin bass. I like the joyous covers that pop up throughout, from Dylan songs to countless early rock and roll numbers that I have to imagine date back to their Hamburg days. At any moment, the Beatles seem poised to break into a 12-bar blues, and every time they do, the band is all smiles. With this in mind, a brief dive into three late-career blues from none other than the Fab Four.

“For You Blue”

A George Harrison number. Maybe he was inspired by his days hanging with Bob Dylan and the Band in Woodstock. Maybe his pal Eric Clapton had him feeling blue. One thing is clear watching “Get Back”: George Harrison, the ‘spiritual one’, at this moment lacked ego to the point of depression. He suggests his bandmates replace him with Clapton, which they quickly scoff at. Later, he suggests Dylan join the group. George was taking little joy from the band at this point — and no wonder, Paul and John repeatedly rejected his songs, the ones that would come to make up All Things Must Pass.

So rather than a more spiritual number, “For You Blue” winds up on Let It Be. It’s a fun one, George singing with sensual softness, John accenting everything with a wobbly lap steel. “Elmore James has nothing on this baby,” Harrison ad-libs over John’s solo. It’s not so serious, the camp of the twangy lap steel, the basic blues lyrics about hyperbolic love. But it’s tight, and it’s the Beatles. It rips.

“Yer Blues”

For “Yer Blues,” John brings his witty cynicism to the blues. It’s lousy with blues tropes: suicidal ideation, unrequited love. But Lennon pushes them to the absurd, leading with his death wish and describing his dismemberment at the hands of nature. He’s tongue-in-cheek in his melodrama, apparently mocking Eric Clapton and British blues fetishization more broadly. As Lennon sings, “Feel so suicidal, even hate my rock and roll,” the rhythm section breaks into an OG ‘50s Rock & Roll boogie. It’s silly. Like his “Glass Onion” reference to “Strawberry Fields,” John goes intertextual on “Yer Blues,” referencing “Dylan’s Mr. Jones,” a nod to the protagonist of “Ballad of a Thin Man.”

What’s funny though is that while teasing Clapton, Lennon crafts a better blues song than any in Creem’s discography. The Beatles don’t rely on tone, not virtuosity. One guitar sounds like a dying whine while the other spasms with a final burst of life. Paul lays down an ominous and consistent bass part that lays the rhythmic foundation for the guitar experiments. Whereas most bands of the era go for a guitar hero version of the blues, the Beatles layer, opting for tightness, not flair.

Here, Lennon playing as The Dirty Mac.

“One After 909”

A very early (1957? 1960?) Lennon-McCartney number revamped for their late period. A 1963 studio take appears on Anthology 1, but it’s tame compared to the Let It Be version. It sounds like a vestige of the skiffle years. At that point, the band known as the Beatles was still imitating. They didn’t yet know how to play the song like the Beatles would play it.

Lyrically, the song has the nursery rhyme boringness of early rock and roll. “Move over once, move over twice / c’mon baby, don’t be cold as ice.” I find it a pleasant respite from all the acid-drenched Hare Krishna of Lennon and Harrison (I’m partial to McCartney’s ‘little ditties.’) While not exactly in the folk idiom, it’s a 17-year-old John’s riff on all those Lead Belly train songs the Weaver’s popularized. And whatever its shortcomings, I’ve spent much of the last week saying to myself over and over “travelin’ on the one after nine-oh.”

Musically, though, “One After 909” is raucous. It reminds me a little of Skull and Roses-era Dead, “Bertha” or “Big Railroad Blues.” McCartney’s harmony, always tight, adds a certain gruffness. His bass starts simple and plain, but as the band takes off, so does he, somehow never sacrificing his steadiness. Billy Preston’s electric piano gives the song a lift, and by the halfway point, guitar riffs spring from the gaps in the chorus. The Beatles are back to square one, even as entropy is tearing the group apart. In their final moments, recording in the same room for the first time in years, they returned to their original influences. The Beatles aren’t a blues band, but they have me fooled.