Mrs H and I have both been finding ourselves singing Paul McCartney's Martha My Dear from the White Album for many days now after listening to side 2 for the first time in a while. This was prompted by Paul McCartney releasing a photo for Love Your Pet Day (apparently it's a thing in the US) showing him and his wife Nancy with their dog Rose. The dog had hitherto avoided publicity. It reminded several news sources of the story of McCartney and his old English sheepdog, Martha, which I hadn't realised was the inspiration for the lyric on Martha My Dear.
I should have twigged that a dog had something to do with it as one of my two most indispensible books, Ian McDonald's Revolution In The Head* calls the lyric "confused" saying "it's author's old English sheepdog somehow gets muddled up in a recent love affair". At the time the song was said by some to be an indirect love message to Jane Asher, who had recently broken off their engagement. The Beatles frequently changed names and threw in other obfuscations, Lennon in particular taking amusement from attempts to decipher their songs. And on the White Album there are such examples: the lyric "Sexy Sadie, what have you done, you've made a fool of everyone" was written as "Maharishi... etc"
And the lyric was never convincing as a love song. Although he sings "Take a good look around you...you're bound to see, that you and me were meant for each other, silly girl" other sections like "Hold your head up, you silly girl, look what you've done" sound more dog-ish and "Hold your hand out, you silly girl, see what you've done" is exactly like Mrs H talks to pets, always referring to front paws as "hands" and rear paws as "feet". She likes the song much more since I told her the story.
Over the post-Beatles years lots of snippets have come out from McCartney in interviews, as it did with Lennon before he ran into Mark Chapman. McCartney co-operated with Barry Miles on an official biography, Many Years From Now for which there were many interviews over a 5 year period before the book was published in 1997. In it Macca said:
"When I taught myself piano I liked to see how far I could go, and this started life almost as a piece you’d learn as a piano lesson. It’s quite hard for me to play, it’s a two-handed thing, like a little set piece. In fact I remember one or two people being surprised that I’d played it because it’s slightly above my level of competence really, but I wrote it as that, something a bit more complex for me to play. Then while I was blocking out words – you just mouth out sounds and some things come – I found the words ‘Martha my dear’.… Martha was a dear pet of mine....It’s a communication of some sort of affection but in a slightly abstract way – ‘You silly girl, look what you’ve done,’ all that sort of stuff. These songs grow. Whereas it would appear to anybody else to be a song to a girl called Martha, it’s actually a dog, and our relationship was platonic, believe me."
Indeed the piano parts McCartney wrote were sufficiently testing that he was advised to let George Martin play it, but he persisted. But when McDonald says "Scintillatingly gifted as this song is, it's also virtually devoid of meaning" the second part of that at least isn't entirely right. One can easily imagine Macca telling Martha she was his "inspiration" and also, when off on his travels "Remember me, Martha my love, don't forget me, Martha my dear".
I also find it interesting that this song was constructed in much the same way as Yesterday with no concept for the lyric before the music was well advanced.
Here is Martha with her "dad", back in the day:
(The feelnumb web link below has the story together with several more photos).
The White Album would come top in very few lists of the best Beatles albums by critics or fans. Personally I would always say Abbey Road. But the White Album is the one I have probably listened to most over the years and is certainly the one I return to most frequently in recent decades. I don't listen to it all the way through, of course - the double album has a few low spots, notably Lennon's lengthy avant garde Revolution 9. Other descriptors are available for this track. As that's buried away on side 4 I rarely got this far when listening to the album from the start day after day at lunchtime in the sixth form (I usually got part way through side 3). But I'm very fond of most of the rest and the first three sides remain very listenable for me.
Side 2, which we listened to recently, starts with Martha, which I'd always considered an OK track but actually it's a great little song. As are Macca's Blackbird (which none of us realised at the time was an opaque reference to civil rights) and the superb I Will, which is so gentle McCartney uses a sung bass line to go with his acoustic guitar; even an acoustic bass wasn't soft enough. And the side flows beautifully, starting when the descending sequence of notes at the end of Martha are mirrored by the ascending sequence at the start of the next track, I'm So Tired, a Lennon track that was one of his personal favourites from his own songs and which has it's own interesting, very Lennonesque lyric:
Although I'm so tired / I'll have another cigarette / And curse Sir Walter Raleigh / He was such a stupid get
Indeed the whole album is, according to McDonald, a "masterpiece of programming", and "a tribute to the sequencing skills of Lennon, McCartney and Martin" who worked out the running order in "a continuous 24 hour effort". And while the individual tracks don't reach the heights of some other albums, there are many I listen to in preference to those rated best by the critics. I listened to Lennon's I Am The Walrus so many times in the 60s I don't really feel the need to any more, whereas Yer Blues still hits a spot for me. And for me Harrison's While My Guitar Gently Weeps is one of his best tracks, though McDonald finds it "pedantically contrived" with "tiresome, browbeating self importance" and a "plodding sequence" and "dull grandiosity" predictive of the stadium music of the 70s and 80s. I just like it, especially Clapton's guitar parts.
I can think of several other artists where the album I listen to most is not the critics classic choice. Give 'Em Enough Rope or London Calling rather than the first Clash album, for example. And Stadium Arcadium rather than Blood Sugar Sex Magik for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I guess it's partly that they are all easier listening. But they all flow well and feature some great tracks. And they showcase some superb guitar playing, especially Stadium Arcadium. Which reminds me, I need to pick up my encomia on the best guitarists I've seen.....
* Revolution In The Head, Ian McDonald, Fourth Estate 1994. Very readable and a great reference book, the meat of which goes through every Beatles song in the order they were recorded. My other most indispensible book, Roy Harper's curated book of all his song lyrics Passions of Great Fortune, has many superb photos and lots of additional material about the songs. I'd have to be tortured to make me choose one or the other. They both get referred to many times a year.
http://www.feelnumb.com/2010/01/10/the-story-about-paul-mccartneys-dog-martha/ published in 2010 has the story as told by Macca to Barry Miles and with super photos of the Fab 4 with Martha and another dog (probably Ringo's), Martha at the location for the Strawberry Fields Forever video and Macca with Martha and a smaller dog. Martha had several puppies one of which is pictured in 1993 with Macca on the Abbey Road pedestrian crossing for the cover of his "Paul is Live" album.
Yes of course the title of this post is taken from McCartney Silly Love Songs
No comments:
Post a Comment