The Beatles musical humour | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

Plenty has been said about the Beatles humour offstage. But we should also examine how they expressed it musically, and it is important for the influences upon them. The obvious influence is George Martin and his association with the Goons collectively and individually. But they were also influenced by past humour in songs and parodies too. One of their big motivations was to have fun as well as be a big famous rock band. Almost determined, they were! I have to define parody in several ways, as the Beatles used parody according to several definitions: one, the Gilbert and Sullivan way of taking a style and using it to humorous effect in another context. Two, covering a song by parodying a general musical style and mashing that up (we call this “style parody” rather than a direct one). Three, taking a style and exaggerating it, sometimes for comic effect, sometimes to direct attention, either in an original song or a cover. If you’ve listened to Weird Al Yankovic, a couple of those definitions will make sense to you. Most parody is a change of context, or as an inspiration to something original. It’s how we make most art, how we learn to make it, and why the greed of copyright controllers shrinks our culture because of the fear of litigation. The third definition is what I would call the final stage of parody where it becomes almost indistinguishable from originality other than being something you can recognise.

Let’s get the Goons out of the way first, because other threads have mentioned this. The generation growing up in 1950’s Britain knew the Goons, they were the biggest thing on radio. Their verbal, verging on intellectual, and anti-authority style of humour was yet clownish and zany, full of impressions and characters and a lot of breaking the 4th wall too. It left a mark on everyone it seems. So that explains a lot of the Christmas records, for instance. When it came to making music, though, the jokes are rarer, but there are a few cheeky nods peeking through. It’s the sense of mischief that led to the “tit-tit-tit” chorus in Girl, the sly backup jokes in Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da , the side comments that to me make an inseparable part of the album Let It Be . They loved the Goon songs too, and that’s also fairly obvious from the Christmas records more than anything else. Another thing to finish with those records, the eagerness to send up their big songs is evident from the start, as well as new songs for the fun of it.

Much of the Beatles “breaking the 4th wall” is on the side, not drawn attention to, to see if people picked up on it. You could also place the beginning of Taxman in that category. Another favourite example is their increasing habit of leaving guide vocals in (John being the main culprit here), effectively part of the performance. You might not immediately see that as humour, but that’s the point, that’s them making a joke of the “perfection” of recording. I have been a fan of those web sites that collect the weird bits of Beatles recordings and once you realise that they loved the accidental or “random” and used it with tongue firmly in cheek, it takes on a whole new meaning. I’m not saying everything was intentional, far from it. But if they saw it, they often kept it just for the sake of the joke, even if it was only between them.

Another Martin-Goon association that is more directly about musical parody is something I didn’t realise til recently. Martin worked with The Temperance Seven on some of their best work, their biggest album in 1961 with the No #1 hit “You’re Driving Me Crazy”. But he’d also worked with them years earlier and one song in particular is very interesting, its Peter Sellars singing in a Goonish voice that old classic Ukulele Lady with none other than the Temperance Seven as backup. Now listen to Honey Pie , the influence is undeniable. But also you have to throw in The Charleston and a few other bits but it’s an expert parody from Paul based on those elements.

The Beatles have been accused of being master parodists above all else by some people. When you listen to You Know My Name (Look Up The Number) there are a number of elements you can recognise from their past musical history over and above the obvious Goon song elements. People were very impressed by their covers in the early days, some accusing them of killing the RnB movement in America by being so popular that their peers also covered a lot of RnB and was preferred to the originals. The line between cover and parody can get pretty thin. I think Besame Mucho pretty much crosses that line according to definitions 2 and 3 from above. I couldn’t imagine performing that song with a straight face, it must have taken practice to get over the giggles with that one. Devil In Her Heart is another one, it’s something to do with serious lyrics over that beat, which is no walkover to do either. And what do we think of the whoos in Twist And Shout and Money? A deliberate context-switch that still makes me uncomfortable. So there’s a fair bit of definition two in the early Beatles period with touches of three.

I would say that as they began to dispense with the covers, the parodies increased. Partly to get songs out quick and to have fun with it. I suspect John in particular of parodying the early Beatles style itself just to do a song or two. He was very dismissive of songs on the 2nd to 4th albums (UK) as basically throw-offs or parodies. Of course as the Beatles went from “a” style to “any” style, this became a way of life and impossible to mimic. You might have thought they were impossible to parody but Neil Innes and Todd Rundgren (not to mention XTC) would disagree rather happily. In fact it was their parodies that led me to examine the Beatles own work more closely. The Beatles often style parodied their contemporaries (famously the Byrds), but also a range of musical tropes from classical to contemporary, Sgt Peppers and the White Album are full of these. Paul and John got into the habit of writing “character” songs where the music was an accompaniment to the central characters story, a setting ripe for parodying C&W, blues, RnB, rocknroll, you name it. Much of the enjoyment is in recognising where those styles come from as well as the lyrics. Thus Rocky Raccoon or The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill or Piggies for instance, but also Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite !, Within You, Without You (of course its serious, but it’s still a parody, wait why are they laughing at the end?), Magical Mystery Tour etc.

But parody isn’t the only form of musical humour, just one of the more recognisable ones. Musical jokes are often of the purely aural kind. The Frere Jacques refrain in Paperback Writer , believe it or not is also a classical music joke back to Mahler’s 1st Symphony where he makes it part of a funeral march! Yellow Submarine and Octopus’s Garden has the funny underwater noises and voices. Blue Jay Way matches its lyrics with such magnificent dreariness typical of George’s humour, and Only A Northern Song is full of silly noise jokes, and I think that’s another less noticeable Goon influence there. You could probably excuse What’s The New Mary Jane on the same grounds but I still find it mostly unlistenable 😀 A musical style can be inherently funny (see also Yankovich polkas and G&S), which is perhaps why the pompous nature of baroque music works for Piggies . We have to credit George Martin for much of this, he was a wizard at weaving musical jokes into Beatles songs. His idea to quote musical phrases into All You Need Is Love , for instance (with Paul helping out on the She Loves You joke), and of course the superb backing to Honey Pie which turns a jumped-up ukulele tin pan alley song into a big band piece. Or the melodramatic middle eight to When I’m Sixty-Four ending with the dotty turn-around. Think also of the backing to Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, it has a few guffaws in the trumpets and an actual laugh track from Beyond The Fringe live shows. Once you start seeing the music this way, you may find it difficult to stop! 😀 Good Morning Good Morning mimics TV adverts, clomps along in a start-stop way like your day with jokey guitar solos blaring trumpets and ends in an animal race. And it doesn’t matter who sang the Ahhs in ADITL, its the backup Ahhs that are funny, ok 😀 And the alarm clock and the panting after a bus. All the more impressive that they use such humour to contrast against the very serious things they are saying in those songs, and it’s typical that the Beatles often chose to “take the edge off” that way.

Another way is the musical joke of anti-climax. You can probably think of half a dozen instances of this in Beatles music, from the serendipitous Her Majesty to more subtle forms like the Sgt Pepper run-out groove or the drum coda to Long Long Long, the fade-in and fade-out of the end of Happiness Is A Warm Gun or Ringo’s finger blistered Helter Skelter – more funny noises there too. The White Album is a lot funnier viewed this way, its chock-full of jokes (something has to explain Wild Honey Pie , right). The very sequencing of Goodnight suggests such an anti-climax.

So to conclude this brief overview, there’s a lot to Beatles musical humour. It’s odd when you focus on an aspect of their work, and see how much there is, there’s a lot I haven’t mentioned or even gone into so add anything I’ve missed!