All You Need Is Love

After a bit of a hiatus, I’m back!  The hiatus was not without good reason, though.  First, I’ve still been working hard at learning new Beatles songs, so I actually have a few in the pipeline – I just have to write the blog entries.  Second, I’ve embarked on two new musical undertakings that will make this blog a bit more interesting: I’ve started playing the bass guitar, and I’ve started learning how to do some very basic recordings of my playing.

The bass is proving particularly fruitful because Paul’s playing was so important to the sound of the band.  By learning his parts, I feel like I’m getting more insight into how these songs work.  I’d like to say that I plan to learn all of the bass parts to every song, but it turns out that that Paul guy was a pretty good bassist – some of his stuff is just beyond what I’m capable of.  But we’ll see.

The recording is something I’m just doing for practice.  I’ll record the different parts and then I can turn one of them off and practice that part while the others are playing.  It’s really good practice for playing in time.  It’s also good for this project because I can play the different parts together.

Both of these new pursuits were particularly useful on the next song in my queue: All You Need Is Love.

Before a recent commercial forever ruined this song for me, it was actually a pretty beautiful and interesting entry in the Beatles canon.  It originally appeared on the soundtrack to Yellow Submarine, but became popular enough that the band (or the studios) wanted to include it on one of the proper Beatles albums, so it also ended up on The Magical Mystery Tour.

The lyrics seem rather simple, but there’s actually a few different ways to read them (which is, I think, the point).  On the one hand, lines like “There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done” and “No one you can save that can’t be saved,” seem to suggest that nothing we do is important; that it’s impossible to stand out and be truly original since “There’s nothing you can know that isn’t known” and “Nothing you can see that isn’t shown.”

If that’s the case, then, we have to”learn how to play the game” and realize that even as our various goals and pursuits can’t really set us apart, what makes it all worth while is love.

This, then, leads to the other, more hopeful, way of interpreting the lyrics; an interpretation that appears most clearly in the line “Nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be.”  This line suggests that as long as we stay committed to love, every action that we take has value, regardless of its originality or importance.  A line like “There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done” now comes to mean that by doing something we prove it’s possibility and that that, in and of itself, makes it worth while.

The question that remains is what does the song mean by the word “love”?  It’s fairly vague on this point, which I think is, again, the point.  The context of the lyrics suggest that romantic love isn’t really what the song is about.  Instead, the love seems to be both a love of the self and a general love of others.  That’s still pretty general, but, as my interpretation of the verses suggests, the openness of the meaning is key to what makes the song’s lyrics work.

What makes the music work is a really great interplay of a lot of different instruments.  In addition to the usual Beatles line-up there’s also a harpsichord, some brass, and possibly some other instruments lurking in the background somewhere.  In fact, the guitars don’t even start playing until the musical introduction is over and the lyrics begin – about 25 seconds into the song.  And throughout, it is the interplay of the instruments more than any single instrument that carries the song along.

This makes the guitar part pretty simple once I got used to a few unusual chords.  During the verses there’s a D/F# that’s certainly not standard fare.  Then in the chorus there’s a Em7/D and C major 7 played as an open chord, both of which I hadn’t encountered before.  None of these chords is hard to play (none of them are barre chords), but I still had to take a bit of time to commit them to muscle memory.

Once I did, though, playing the rhythm guitar on this song is really pretty easy.  The beat is pretty steady, consisting of only quarter notes with the occasional eighth note for good measure.  There are a few brief changes in time signature, although unlike “Across the Universe” these changes involved dropping a few beats rather than adding them.  Otherwise, this was a pretty easy song to play.

There is a very brief guitar solo following the first chorus, but this, too wasn’t terribly difficult.  It basically just adds a bit of ornamentation to the melody of the vocal line in the verse.  After a few minutes of practice I had it down pretty well.

Just playing the guitar parts, though, felt pretty unsatisfying.  As I’ve already said, it is the interplay of the instruments that makes this song go.  So, I decided to put my rudimentary bass skills and my even more rudimentary recording skills to work.

I ended up recording four parts for the song.  First, I played the bass track.  Then, I added the acoustic guitar, followed by the brief solo.  Then, it occurred to me that I’m probably better on the piano than any of my other instruments, so, while a piano doesn’t sound exactly like a harpsichord, it’s close enough for my purposes (especially when all of the sound is going through a set of microphones from Rock Band).  So I ended by adding a piano part, which really helped to flesh things out.

The bass line immediately adds to the song.  During the brief musical interlude that connects the verses to the chorus, the guitar just chugs away on a D chord.  It’s the bass that actually contributes the melody that builds to the chorus, so adding that part made the whole thing seem a lot more complete.  The harpsichord doubles this melody line, so the piano helped round things out a bit as well.

The resulting recording wasn’t anything anyone would ever want to listen to, but it did demonstrate how important each instrument was to the overall effect of the song.  It makes sense that a song about love would involve this kind of interplay, and learning how to produce that interplay, even on a very minor scale (I of course, didn’t even attempt to produce the brass section), was a rewarding experience.

The next, hopefully rewarding, experience is “And I Love Her.”

Lyrics – “All You Need Is Love”

Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love.
There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done.
Nothing you can sing that can’t be sung.
Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game
It’s easy.
There’s nothing you can make that can’t be made.
No one you can save that can’t be saved.
Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you
in time – It’s easy.

All you need is love, all you need is love,
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.
Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love.
All you need is love, all you need is love,
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.
There’s nothing you can know that isn’t known.
Nothing you can see that isn’t shown.
Nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be.
It’s easy.
All you need is love, all you need is love,
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.
All you need is love (all together now)
All you need is love (everybody)
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.

Advertisement