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9.49pm
1 November 2012
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(I wonder if the reason there was no topic on this, but there was about Paul, has something to do with Lennon’s style of music, or people’s perception of it…)
Anyway, to kick this off, I’ll note a very subtle electric bass lick in his lovely song “You Are Here” (from the sorely underrated Mind Games album):
At 01:16-17, and at 01:26-27, just at the end of each sung phrase (e.g., “Love… has opened up… my eyes” / “Love… has blown… right through”), the bass up high hits an interesting interval of two notes, twice — C-F#, C-F# (C down to a F# below it — in the context of D7, which is crucial). One wonders if this was John’s inspired idea, or the bassist’s idea (Gordon Edwards).
Here’s the Tube Chop.
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3.26pm
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14 April 2010
Offline In the song ‘God ‘ where he pauses after the line “I don’t believe in Beatles”.
The first time I heard that, I gasped. It gets me every time.
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6.30pm
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1 May 2011
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That and also the emotion of the last section starting with “the dream is over” and singing “you’ll just have to carry on” – there was no getting back so you’d better get used to it.
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9.32pm
1 November 2012
Offline Yeah Zig and mmm, memorable moments in a song full of them (e.g., the way he attacks the Z in “Zimmerman” seems pointedly… zealous…).
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7.37pm
24 April 2013
Offline There are so many song fragments that grab me, I don’t know where to start…. but I’ll say that your Tube Chop of You Are Here always gets me. Not the bass line, but the melody and John’s singing. Just lovely.
I’ll just mention three Beatle John fragments for now ‘cuz I could go on all day:
- Singing-wise, the entire song Girl is just so beautifully done, but I especially love when John sings “…and she promises the earth to me and I believe her…” The “believe her” part is so sultry – grabs me every time.
- In I Should Have Known Better , it kills me when he sings the second time (at about 2:09 or so), “you’re gonna say you love me too-oo-oo, oh-oh…” Very sexy.
- The entire song of I’ll Be Back … think it’s so overlooked and under-rated. Just a gorgeous song with so many lovely fragments, such as: a) the second “oh-oh-oh” after he sings “but I got a big surprise.” It’s that quintessential Lennon “oh” that many have tried to imitate but no one has been able to do successfully b) “I wanna go” – the way his voice goes up when he sings “go” – a very Lennonesque quirk that’s very endearing. c) I love his strumming in that song – it’s forceful and strong against the vulnerable tone of the lyrics. (He does the same in Things We Said Today , which I think is another overlooked classic.) But there’s a little fragment after “I wanna go” that sounds conciliatory and sweet, in contrast to the rest of the song. That yin/yang aspect of John is what makes a lot of his work so interesting and emotionally resonant.
John’s voice was so amazing. I’m a big Patsy Cline fan too, and the thing that she and John have in common that makes them such great singers is that ability to infuse emotion so effortlessly into their songs. The way both of them bend notes is so smart and adds so much lusciousness to their songs. They don’t have to add flashy flourishes or oversing anything. They take what’s there and they make it their own with an emotional honesty that’s impossible to fake. Just so genuine and original.
8.04pm
1 November 2012
Offline Lennonista, I’ll listen again and more carefully to I’ll Be Back (I’ve probably only heard it once years ago). While on the whole I am more pleased with Paul’s singing, there is at least one thing John had that Paul seems unable to produce: that effortless emotion you mentioned. It’s like an actor who can do the amazing feat of being “real” in his role and you can just feel that he’s bringing his humanity into that fictional character. As I said in another thread here many moons ago, Paul is more like DeNiro — better technique — but John is like Pacino, going higher or deepr to a touch of tragic genius.
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9.45pm
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1 May 2011
Offline Isnt this for John’s solo work as we have one for fragments of Beatles tracks and we don’t need to duplicate thread contents?
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1.43am
24 April 2013
Offline meanmistermustard said
Isnt this for John’s solo work as we have one for fragments of Beatles tracks and we don’t need to duplicate thread contents?
It didn’t say that it was limited to solo work in the OP’s first post, so forgive my transgression, meanmistermustard and Bulldog.
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Bulldog4.19am
1 November 2012
Offline Well, I guess I intended it to be John’s solo work, but I think it’s fair to tease out John (or Paul) from the tight mesh of Beatles. On that note, I listened to “I’ll Be Back ” and it doesn’t grab me especially, but there are nice touches with John’s voice.
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9.46pm
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20 August 2013
Offline We have a thread for Paul’s solo work. I would like to see this thread be dedicated to John’s post-Beatles career.
If we keep Beatles songs mixed in here, someone might say that John sang something that might have been Paul, and we know where that leads 
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11.58pm
11 April 2016
Offline Hey, look, there is one of these for John! 
*chokes on dust*
The final scream on Mother gets me every time. The feeling I get is difficult to explain, it’s kind of like chills, but not exactly. It makes me quite sad, actually.
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12.16am
26 January 2017
Offline The bridge in Beautiful Boy. The mood change in “out on the ocean” is cool, and then “I can hardly wait” comes in and he totally changes it again. Genius songwriting when he refuses to stay in the same place.
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9.07pm
2 September 2016
Offline One of my favorite John moments is on Working Class Hero when he uses one of the best f-words of all time in a song. “Till your so f*****g crazy you can’t follow their rules” is such a powerful line. Also the emphasis he puts on the word “f**k” struck me dumb the first time I heard it, it it really gratifying. Sorry for the language everyone.
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9.21pm
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20 August 2013
Offline Desmond said
One of my favorite John moments is on Working Class Hero when he uses one of the best f-words of all time in a song. “Till your so f*****g crazy you can’t follow their rules” is such a powerful line. Also the emphasis he puts on the word “f**k” struck me dumb the first time I heard it, it it really gratifying. Sorry for the language everyone.
No need to apologize when using the words straight from John’s mind and mouth in a song.
That is a a very powerful, insightful line from Lennon.
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1.20am
26 January 2017
Offline @Desmond said
One of my favorite John moments is on Working Class Hero when he uses one of the best f-words of all time in a song. “Till your so f*****g crazy you can’t follow their rules” is such a powerful line. Also the emphasis he puts on the word “f**k” struck me dumb the first time I heard it, it it really gratifying. Sorry for the language everyone.
Dare I say THE BEST “f**k” of all time?
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5.50am
1 January 2017
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I mentioned in the ‘songs you are just discovering thread’ recently that I discovered John’s solo cover of To Know Her Is To Love Her. The part where he screams “YEEEEAAAAH!!!” always gets me.
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12.55am
15 May 2015
Offline Hold on, let me see what the great “Funny Paper” said so I don’t repeat it…
I’ll be damned, it was nearly 3 years ago, and I was going to post the same thing…!
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7.08pm
14 November 2017
Offline ‘I can hardly wait, to see you come of age,but I guess we’ll both just have to be patient’ from Beautiful Boy. So sad that John never got that chance
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8.29am
17 January 2016
Offline I’ll have to concur with Beautiful Boy.
“Love is the answer and you know that for sure
Love is a flower, you got to let it, you gotta let it grow.”
“I was feeling insecure
You might not love me anymore
I was shivering inside”
“You can go to church and sing a hymn
You can judge me by the color of my skin
You can live a lie until you die
One thing you can’t hide
Is when you’re crippled inside.”
“I don’t believe in Elvis
I don’t believe in Zimmerman
I don’t believe in Beatles
I just believe in me.”
– God
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11.22am
15 May 2015
Offline In “Bring on the Lucie (Freda Peeple)” from his Mind Games album, there are many good moments. I’ll only name two for now:
His initial shot over the bow, delivered with echo effect on his voice, all alone:
“All right boys, this is it: Over the hill!”
— immediately followed by the driving music.
Second, in the middle of his lyrics — all vaguely (albeit powerfully) indicting I guess the “elites” of “the System” aka Big Brother, yadda yadda — he sings:
We understand your paranoia
But we don’t want to play your game
You think you’re cool and know what you are doing
666 is your name…
It’s the way he sings “666” that kills me. I recall many years ago, I was inducting my friend, a devout Greek Orthodox (who also happened to be gay and a quasi- Marxist) into some Lennon music. He was sitting on the floor with headphones on listening carefully to this song. When “666” came on he laughed and repeated it the way Lennon does:
“SSSSIXSSSSSSSIXSSSSSSSSSIX! is your name”
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