43. All You Need Is Love (single, 1967)
Beatles version:
Spotify YouTube
From
@OrtonToOlsen: "Love the lyrics and vocals but the ‘bun duh dunna dun’ really detracts from everything else." For once, I agree with him on something (other than cats)! I realize I've gone on and on about John's vocal in a variety of songs, but for some reason this is my favorite vocal from him. It's not flashy or difficult like "Twist & Shout" or some of the others, but the tone in his singing here does it for me. His voice sounds sleepy but sincere, and incredibly fluid and hypnotic; it almost feels like a lullaby to me, and I'm entranced by it. The lyrics are lovely; Ringo summed them up as, "It was for love and bloody peace. It was a fabulous time. I even get excited now when I realize that's what it was for: Peace and love, people putting flowers in guns." [
Requisite photo of dorky t-shirt I own.] What I don't like in the song, and I dislike it enough to take this from a top 20 down to here, is the simplistic chorus and especially the "bun duh dunna dun." It sounds cheesy, circus-y, and brings the song down.
Setting that aside, there's so much else to love, including the impressive production that I'll cover below. With respect to the song itself, I love to try to keep time through the frequent tempo changes and especially love tapping out those alternating 4/4, 3/4 beats in the intro and the verses. There's something about that dropped note that's charming; I'm just glad I wasn't Ringo. I'm also a huge fan of Fifth Beatle George Martin's arrangement on this; starting with
La Marseillaise (French national anthem) to open, through the coda with, among others, snippets of "Greensleeves" and "In the Mood," along with a bit of one of the Brandenburg concertos, the orchestration is outstanding. Speaking of that coda, I love the sonic cornucopiaTM of it.
While I said my write-ups might be truncated for a bit, the background of this song's coming to be is too important and interesting to skip. Might sound quaint now, but the song was written for what was a very big deal at the time: the first live international satellite television broadcast, a BBC show called
Our World. More than 20 countries were scheduled to participate, and the Beatles were selected to represent Great Britain in the "Artistic Excellence" portion of the show, much to their...indifference. Brian Epstein showed up to the studio during one of the Sgt. Pepper's recordings, greatly excited to announce this to the lads, but he was met with yawns. It didn't get better for him, as, when pressed by Epstein to be more enthused, John spoke for the group by telling him, "that's what you get for committing us to doing something without asking us first." It seemed the Beatles saw this as a violation of their desire not to perform live anymore, but John unenthusiastically agreed that he'd write a song for it.
Several weeks later, Paul casually asked John if he'd written anything yet, and realizing that they had only a couple of weeks to prepare, John got down to writing the song. The band recorded some backing tracks, including George on a violin(!), but when it came to the vocal, John boldly declared that he would not lip-sync but instead would do the lead vocal live. Not to be outdone, Paul then stated that he would also play the bass live, and the two of them together talked George into performing a live guitar solo as well. Luckily for Ringo, due to technical issues of microphone seepage from the orchestra that would be playing, the drums would have to be pre-recorded, though a last-minute decision did allow him to do a live version of the snare drum roll at the beginning. Though the backing vocals were also pre-recorded, Paul was given a live mic for the show for the ad libs you hear at the end of the song.
The night of the broadcast arrived, and in addition to the Beatles and their wives and girlfriends, a variety of friends were enlisted to sit on the floor surrounding the band while it performed, including usual suspects Mick Jagger, Eric Clapton, Marianne Faithfull, Keith Moon, Graham Nash, and Keith Richards. John was visibly nervous, perhaps because he couldn't use his lyric sheet as he normally would. The broadcasters had decided to station an additional camera in the control booth, and when the broadcast began about 40 seconds early, they nearly caught George Martin and Geoff Emerick in a Scotch toast; they had to scramble madly to hide the bottle and glasses from the camera. Another mad dash was then made to get the pre-recorded tape spooled back to its correct spot to start the song. But somehow, despite everything that could go wrong with a live broadcast,
everyone pulled it off! As mentioned, John's vocal is astounding, despite the fact he forgot to take his chewing gum out before they started and he did flub a couple of lyrics. The orchestra hit all its marks perfectly. George pulled off the guitar solo he'd been so nervous about, though he did hit an off note or two starting ~1:26. Most amazingly, there were no technical glitches with the music, but the broadcast did lose video for a few seconds.
The song was then rushed into the studio for some overdubbing in order to release the single, but not much had to be done to it. John redid two lines of flubbed vocal, and Ringo replaced the snare roll they'd made a last-minute decision to perform live. A "wobble" was added to the end of George's solo to mask the bad last couple of notes. Most people might not have even realized the single version wasn't precisely the same as the version they'd watched on TV a couple of weeks prior.
(By the way, for some reason I previously had this listed under
Yellow Submarine. While it was used on that as well as
Magical Mystery Tour, based on how I've listed other songs this should probably be under the "Singles, etc." category.)
Mr. krista: "Nice job. All-star cast. I think one needs other things – food, shelter. Love is definitely up there. You need love before you need, say, a Nintendo 64. But there are other things I’d put above love. So I disagree with the lyrical premise."
Suggested covers: Nothing can replace that John vocal for me, but if you're
Elvis Costello, you can surely come close. Surprised to like this one, but I enjoyed their incorporation of other Beatles's motifs:
Echo & the Bunnymen.
Daniel Johnston gets to the heart of the matter.
From the Rocky Raccoon love to Paul as favorite Beatle...wait, what do you mean "of course" he's your 3rd favorite? If that means Ringo is 4th, I strenuously protest.
