116. Yellow Submarine (Revolver, 1966)
Beatles version:
Spotify YouTube
Mr. krista: "Did they have a budget to bring in a marching band? I love this part, too. The bubbles, the guy’s voice, like a vaudevillian or carnival barker type thing. Silly. I ####### LOVE IT. It’s obviously not the best Beatles song or the best song on the record, obviously. But its inclusion is great. It’s a kids’ song. The soundscapes, and what self-important mother####ers would call
musique concrète that people use to evoke mood. They get to experiment with all that, but with this unserious purpose that’s pure joy and fun. They get to create this underwater world that’s sailing to the sun in a submarine or whatever. In the late 90s, etc., all these bands came out with the kind of kitchen sink recordings, I’m thinking specifically of Neutral Milk Hotel, who were more like recording projects rather than bands. Who made basically a bunch of Yellow Submarine songs that were pure nonsense and 1/10 of the fun. They’re considered now like a classic album, but it’s Yellow Submarine, man. It’s Ringo. It’s self-important, joyless, Yellow Submarine. But it’s not fun and you wouldn’t let your children listen to it."
Suggested cover: Making an exception to my "no foreign-language versions" rule for
Maurice Chevalier. I don't know what
They Might Be Giants are doing here, but I often don't, to my delight.
115. Octopus's Garden (Abbey Road, 1969)
Beatles version:
Spotify YouTube
Mr. krista: "It’s really funny, it’s like the second song Ringo ever wrote. It’s a great song; it’s fun; it’s so simple. You hear these psycho-dramas of Paul McCartney, like Eleanor Rigby, etc., and he’s just like 'I want to be in an octopus’s garden.' It’s not as trite as the faux-vaudeville stuff McCartney does."
Suggested covers: I don't know who
Jeffrey Lewis is, but I like his take on it. And of course,
the Muppets, with octopus on bongos.
Two kids' songs sung by Ringo, and though I love them both, I give "Octopus's Garden" the slight nod not because of anything musically, but because if I were going to visit somewhere, I'd like it to be the octopus's garden. In fact, Ringo does a masterful job of making this underwater abode appealing that I'd kind of like to buy a house there. I don't care what anyone says: I love "Octopus's Garden." Love the vocal, with Geoff Emerick "feeding the vocals into a compressor and triggering it from a pulsing tone" that gave the middle an "underwater" sound. Love octopi. Love the visual imagery. Love George's Stratocaster running through the Leslie speaker and his run of notes at the beginning. Love the under-the-sea bubble-blowing doo-***-y quality.
"Octopus's Garden" was written by Ringo during the time during the White Album sessions that he had stormed off and quit the band. He and his family traveled to Sardinia on Peter Sellers's yacht, and while out for the day Ringo was served octopus for the first time (he'd expected fish and chips) and started asking the captain all about octopi and their habits. Per Ringo: "He told me that they hang out in their caves and they go around the seabed finding shiny stones and tin cans and bottles to put in front of their cave like a garden. I thought this was fabulous, because at the time I just wanted to be under the sea, too." Then he got the telegram begging him to come back to the band, but in the meantime you can see in the lyrics he wrote how much he desired to escape the band's tension at the time; for instance, "We would be warm below the storm, in our little hideaway beneath the waves." George assisted quite a lot and was a big fan of this song, imbuing the lyrics with a deeper meaning about consciousness and peacefulness than Ringo probably thought he was writing.
"Yellow Submarine" is just irresistible, with its whooshing of the waves, its cocktail party chatter, John blowing bubbles, Brian Jones clinking glasses, and of course that marching band bit. It was a perfect goofy song to give to always-affable Ringo, and the band seemed to have a great time with it when not under the watchful eyes of George Martin, who was at home sick the day the recording began. One the second night of recording they were joined by Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, Marianne Faithfull, Patti Harrison, and others, who proceeded to form what Emerick called a "whole marijuana-influenced scene...completely zany, straight out of a Marx Brothers movie." The group played any instruments or other sound effects they could find, from bells to whistles to gongs to the aforementioned wine glasses, while John became obsessed with getting the sound of him actually singing underwater. After singing while gurgling didn't work, he lobbied for a tank to be brought in into which he could be submerged. Instead, Emerick convinced him to try singing through a mic that was submerged, and the team dispatched to find first a milk bottle that was filled with water, and then something the mic could be put into to protect during submersion. The roadie Mal Evans eventually came up with it - a condom! John was delighted and remarked that this was brilliant because they wouldn't want the mic to get "in a family way." Unfortunately, the idea didn't work as the sound became too muffled and wasn't usable, but the anecdote shows how much fun this recording was.
Full steam ahead!