Good Morning/Good Afternoon/Good Evening. Song of the Day. Only a Northern Song is a song written by George Harrison and performed by the Beatles. The song was recorded in 1967 during the sessions for Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band but was omitted from that album. It was first featured in the Beatles 1968 animated movie Yellow Submarine and appeared on its soundtrack album, released early the following year. Only a Northern Song has been described as Harrisons personal denunciation of the Beatles music publishing business. The songs basic track was recorded on 13 February 1967, with overdubs added during the Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band sessions. It was recorded using two 4-track tape machines, allowing seven tracks for the complex arrangement of the song (and one for a pulse to synchronise the two machines), a method not common at the time in recording at Abbey Road. However, problems arose with getting both 4-track machines to begin playback at exactly the same time, causing difficulties mixing in stereo. Therefore only a fake stereo (Duophonic) mix was created from the mono mix to appear on the original stereo release of Yellow Submarine. Because such fake stereo versions are no longer in favour, the song was one of eight mono tracks released in the 2009 remastered Stereo Box Set (the only mono track released on the 2009 release of Yellow Submarine). This complex arrangement involves an unconventional musical form and unusual instrumentation, including distorted trumpet played by Paul McCartney, Harrisons reverbed organ, and a glockenspiel played by John Lennon. Harrison himself described the song as a joke relating to Liverpool, Holy City in the North of England. In addition the song was copyrighted to Northern Songs Ltd. which I didnt own. Northern Songs was a music publishing company formed in 1963 primarily to exploit Lennon–McCartney compositions. The company had subsequently been floated in 1965, but while Lennon and McCartney each owned 15% of the public companys shares, Harrison owned only 0.8%.[8] Harrison was contracted by Northern Songs as a songwriter only, and because Northern Songs retained the copyright of its published songs, this meant Lennon and McCartney, as major shareholders, would earn more from his [Harrisons] songs than him. Hence the songs mild dissonance and nasally sarcastic key-changes have been said to complement the suppressed bitterness of Harrisons lyric, which features such self-referential lines as: It doesnt really matter what chords I play/What words I say or time of day it is/As its only a Northern Song. As well as reflecting Harrisons dissatisfaction with Northern Songs, and its major shareholder Dick James in particular – I was starting to get a bit of an idea that ... youd only written half a song and he [James] would be trying to assign it – the song also suggests that, at this time, Harrison had yet to recover his enthusiasm for being a Beatle,[5] having threatened to leave the group six months earlier, following their final live concert at Candlestick Park. youtube/watch?v=EvxyPQT0lhc
Posted on: Mon, 18 Aug 2014 10:48:25 +0000
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