8. For No One (Revolver, 1966)
Beatles version:
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For all my inconsistency, there's one thing I believe I've been consistent on, which is that I much prefer Paul's more personal songs to those about fictitious worlds. It's fitting that the two purely Paul songs in my top 10 (I'll give him 85% of the Abbey Road medley) fit this category, and in fact that are opposite ends of the same spectrum, from first moments of love in "I've Just Seen A Face" to the end of love in this song. When he's not just spitting out perfect pop songs - when he stops being polite and starts getting real (hey, I love terrible reality TV) - he writes lyrics that are as deeply affecting as John's or anyone else's.
While there's much to love about this song, I have to start there, with the lyrics, because those are the main reason this song is propelled into my top 10. I think "You Won't See Me" and "I'm Looking Through You" have some devastating lyrics, but they fall more into bitterness than deep sorrow, and none of them compare to the misery of these:
And yet you don't believe her when she says her love is dead
You think she needs you
Or:
You stay home, she goes out
She says that long ago she knew someone but now he's gone
She doesn't need him
Or, the most devastating part:
And in her eyes you see nothing
No sign of love behind the tears
Cried for no one
To repeat: "
cried for no one." She has erased you completely. I love how Paul wrote this in the second person, to pull us even more strongly into the story and make us relate to what is occurring. It feels as if it's just happened to me. Good god, it practically brings me to tears simply reading the lyrics.
This song is so despondent that it could have slipped into maudlin in the hands of someone not named Paul, John, or George. Paul is clearly too brilliant to let that happen, so instead of cheesing it up with a bunch of orchestration or backing vocals, he kept it very simple with single-tracked vocals with no harmonies, little reverb, subtle hi-hats, and piano and clavichord on the verses, then bringing in light bass and tambourine beginning with the chorus. Neither John nor George played on this song, though John frequently referred to this as one of Paul's best works, "superb" even. Just Paul, Ringo, and Alan Civil, the French horn player.
I adore the piano parts on the choruses, and as a piano player I
always air play them when they come on, which can be a problem since I'm usually driving when I hear this. Love the use of the clavichord, too, and Paul's vocal is gorgeous, with a cold affect that works to cast him as the narrator of someone else's pathos. The change from major to minor keys from the verse to the chorus accentuates the most despairing lyrics, and the transition back into major through the addition measure at the end of the choruses is a lovely, unexpected touch.
What's special about the instrumentation of this song, though, is obviously that French horn. Paul had loved the French horn as a child and wanted to use it here, so George Martin arranged for Alan Civil, formerly of the London Philharmonic and at that time the principal horn player for the BBC Symphony Orchestra, to join the session. When Martin asked Paul what he wanted Civil to play, Paul tried to sketch it out as a vocal. As Martin wrote it out, he came to the end and explained to Paul that the high E was the furthest the French horn could go, not the F that Paul wanted. Paul was not dissuaded: "We came to the session and Alan looked up from his bit of paper: 'Eh, George? I think there's a mistake here – you've got a high F written down. Then George and I said, 'Yeah,' and smiled back at him, and he knew what we were up to and played it. These great players will do it. Even though it's officially off the end of their instrument, they can do it, and they're quite into it occasionally." Geoff Emerick describes Martin as having played a bit of a middleman between the two generations - the "kids" like Paul who didn't understand any limitations, and the more staid generation of Civil and Martin who weren't quite sure how to relate to this new type of musician, but appreciated being included in it.
The solo that Civil laid down was extraordinary, including that high F, somehow expressing a loss even deeper than that suggested by the lyrics. Sometimes music can suggest what mere words are insufficient to express. As much as I love the solo, I'm even more entranced by the way the horn reappears in the last verse, softly repeating a portion of its solo on top of Paul's vocal, as if one last memory of this love affair appears and then fades away. It's magical. I also love the ending of this song...if you hadn't heard it before, you might expect a resolution, an additional note to get you back down into the home key, but instead the last note floats out there and it just...ends. That's it, life sucks, sorry, g'bless.
Mr. krista: "“Was that a real song? I mean, was it when he broke up with Jane Asher or something? It’s really cold, and the ending is cold. What’s the JD Salinger short story? Seymour Glass is the protagonist. It’s a couple at a resort, and then the guy walks off the elevator and kills himself. It seemed like that. Where it only hinted at loneliness and despair, then it makes it explicit. Ended just like that song ended."
Suggested covers: Much like Otis Redding, if there's an
Emmylou Harris cover you can be guaranteed I'm going to post it. Good chance I'll always post a
Diana Krall cover (this one with James Taylor), too.
put into this thread. 
But not with me, for saying it first?
