The earliest photos of the final Beatle line up (in case anyone on earth has forgotten it’s John, Paul, George and Ringo) show Ringo’s bass drum head sporting an extremely run-of-the-mill Beatle logo. Its obviously hand drawn twirly scrawl plays on the insect quality of the word “Beatle” by having insect antennae adorn the letter B. Embarrassingly unimaginative, utterly predictable. Unimaginative and predictable because this isn’t Joe Doe and the Hot Dogs. This is, after all, THE BEATLES.
Soon thereafter, we see Ringo’s bass drum head with a bold new face. And the overall image of the group, the image that will sweep the entire civilized world off its feet, is suddenly fastened in place. This new THE BEATLES graphic is now one of the earth’s best known logos. Think Coca Cola. Think Exxon. Think Apple.
The new logo had a very formal, establishment look. The lettering could have appeared engraved in stone over the front door of a bank or the entrance of an investment firm. Yet somehow this perfectly fit the image of The Beatles throughout their career, from the astonishing squeaky clean, manicured group that overwhelmed Americain February 1964 to the scruffy, bedraggled and dour foursome that glowered their way through the Let It Be film in 1969. And now, in 2012, this THE BEATLES logo is still as striking and evocative as it was when it debuted in 1963.
So, who is the genius behind this classic image? He’s rich, right? Like the guy who designed the Exxon logo?
The gent in question was Ivor Arbiter, the owner of DrumCity, a drum and music store located on Shaftesbury Ave. inLondon. Having bought a Ludwig drum kit from Drum City, Beatle manager Brian Epstein noticed that the name Ludwig was displayed prominently on the drum head. Brian thought, as the owners of the drum kit, the group’s name, The Beatles should be displayed, perhaps even more prominently. Ivor Arbiter, a good salesman, agreed. He drew a circle representing a drum head, and quickly sketched out “The Beatles” with a tiny “The” above and below it, Beatles with a large B that reached up to the level of “The” and the center letter of the word Beatles dropping below the rest of the word.
A part time sign painter named Eddie Stokes who worked at Drum City during his lunch break took Ivor Arbiter’s sketch and produced it on Ringo Starr’s new drum head. Over the course of The Beatles’ career,DrumCity, and presumably Eddie Stokes, prepared seven different but similar “The Beatles” logos for Ringo. Some were larger, some heavier etc. but the iconic image was set.
Ivor Arbiter for his trouble sold a Ludwig drum set (and probably to be fair, quite a few more) and Eddie Stokes made that extra cash during his lunch break. Neither of them saw an extra penny for the logo they had launched upon the world.
If you haven’t already, purchase Beatles Gear by Andy Babiuk, a source for this blog and one of the best Beatle books ever published.
I recently attended a showing of The Beatles’ first film, A Hard Day’s Night. The audience was cautioned that the opening of the film might be a bit startling.
That “startling” opening was, of course, the flaring crash of sound that opens the title song of the movie and the movie itself.
This chiming clang of music is described as “the most famous chord in all of rock & roll.” But new research indicates, after all, that it’s not.
And why not? Well…because it’s not a chord.
Rock & Roll raconteur Randy Bachman recently spent time in London’s EMI’s Abbey Road Studio Two, where most of The Beatles recordings were made, with Giles Martin. Giles is the son of George Martin, who produced most of the group’s records. Giles is now the defacto custodian of the Beatles’ masters – the tapes and the individual tracks from which the final records were produced. These were the recorded sounds that were mixed and released to a waiting world.
Giles explained what he had apparently gleaned from the master tapes. That the opening “chord” was in fact played by the entire Beatle “front line,” that is, the guitarists, John, Paul and George. It was not a single chord, which explains why for nearly fifty years Beatle musicologists and other musicians have puzzled and argued over it.
Filming of the Beatle movie was well along and as yet untitled when Ringo commented, as a day’s work turned into evening, that it had been “a hard day’s… night.” The line had appeared in John Lennon’s recently published book In His Own Write, but until Ringo muttered the line on the movie set, its appropriateness for the title of the film was overlooked. With a title finally chosen came the need, and quickly, for a made-to-order song. Something the song writing team of Paul McCartney and John Lennon had never done before.
In these heady days, as the bachelor Beatles were enjoying the extravagances of their extraordinary fame, new husband and father John Lennon was slightly more homebound. It is noticeable that the majority of the thirteen tracks on the British version of the Hard Day’s Night album are John “weighted’ compositions. Paul was probably out and about in London while John soldiered on at home.
So John was likely at home on Saturday, April 11, 1964, coming up with a basic outline of a song, written to order, entitled A Hard Day’s Night. Over the course of the next three days, John and Paul polished up and finished off John’s rough draft of the song.
On Wednesday, April 16, at seven o’clock in the evening, after a day spent filming the scene in which the Beatles are chased by London constables up and down a dreary London cul-de-sac, the seemingly tireless Beatles showed up at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios. John and Paul stood with their acoustic guitars and played a basic, barebones song to producer George Martin, sitting between them on a high stool, listening intently.
The usually tight-knit crew, Norman Smith, Geoff Emerick, George Martin, who presided over Beatle recording sessions were joined by an apparently unwelcome but necessary guest. This was amateur musician and professional director of the Beatles’ movie, American Dick Lester. Lester was there to make sure the title song was appropriately “cinematic.” It was probably Dick Lester who was responsible for the most famous “chord” in rock & roll. He wanted the title song to open the movie and he wanted to open the movie with a bang.
John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison stood around their carefully miked amps (two Vox AC-50 and Paul’s AC-100 bass) and experiment with notes and chords looking for what George Martin and Richard Lester wanted – a strident beginning to the song – a strident beginning that would also open the film. George was playing his brand new twelve string 360 Rickenbacker guitar, a gift from the Rickenbacker Company, presented to George in New York in February on the group’s first visit to the U.S. The twelve string had the top two strings simply doubled up, while the lower four strings were matched with higher octave strings. The unique sound of this guitar was the Beatles’ secret weapon, at least until the movie came out. John was playing his Rickenbacker 325, a standard six string electric guitar known as a “short arm” Rickenbacker because the guitar neck was shortened so the frets on the neck were closer together. Paul was holding his light, inexpensive (fifty-two guineas he claimed) Hofner “violin” bass guitar, designed for a left-handed player…a four string guitar, with much heavier strings set in the lowest range of the guitar. The three of them were poised to play the strident opening their record producer and their movie director were looking for.
Ringo, sitting behind a new Ludwig drum kit with a new and slightly altered THE BEATLES logo on his twenty inch bass drum head, provided his steady, percussive backbeat.
The Beatles recorded nine takes of their brand new song. Over the course of three hours John and Paul altered the lyrics slightly, smoothed out and tightened up their delivery, while the Georges, Harrison and Martin, worked out a lead guitar break. At some point in those three hours, they all experimented with and settled on the “cinematic, strident” opening that George Martin and Richard Lester were looking for.
Of the nine takes that evening, take nine is the one you hear in the movie and on the record.
On what might be take number one or two, John Lennon muttered one of his usual goofy, oafish “one, two, three, four” count ins, followed immediately by a dissonant clang of guitars, then silence. John mutters “That’s not the one. I’m still doing This Boy.” John repeats the count in, there’s a stuttered clang and again John stops and mutters “I missed the beat…” A third try, the same joking growl of a count in and the famous, unmistakable Hard Day’s Night guitar opening chimes out in all its glory. They had got it.
What “it” was, according to Giles Martin and passed along by Randy Bachman after studying the source tapes preserved on a computer at Abbey Road Studios, “it” was George on his 12 string playing a modified F chord, with a G note on top, a G on the bottom and a C note next to the G. John playing (eventually) a modified D chord with a suspended fourth with a G note. And Paul plucks his third string, a bass D.
Later on, the song was touched up with John adding an acoustic guitar backing on George’s J-160E Gibson and a bongo track, courtesy of Ringo Starr.
And the world was a better place.
Thanks to Geoff Emerick’s Here, There and Everywhere, Andy Bobiak’s The Beatles Gear, Mark Lewisohn’s, The Beatles Recording Sessions and Randy Bachman’s Vinyl Tap radio program on CBC.
It should be hard to come up with “the one indispensible book” about the Beatles—I have shelves of them—but it’s not. Most of the biographies are valuable. Hunter Davies original authorized biography and the up-dated versions are great (esp. the less sanitized additions to the new editions) and Phillip Norman’s bio Shout, is good. Some of the more scholarly books make annoying little errors (John, not Paul, is the falsetto on From Me to You—how do you listen and not hear that?) and the newer gamey accounts don’t bring anything to the Beatle legend that you actually want to know. Paul could be cheap, George was mean. Say it ain’t so! But they do keep coming up with never-before-seen photos and that’s hard to believe when you have Beatle calendars from about 1927.
The current Beatle guru, Bob Spitz, contributed his list of Paul’s best songs to a Time magazine McCartney special. Spitz says Drive My Car was too raucous to be included on the Rubber Soul album. But wait … isn’t that song the opening track on the Rubber Soul album? And Spitz fails to include one of Paul’s and the Beatle’s absolute masterpieces, both lyrically and musically, the one song that had Paul and John out of their chairs and performing joyously together at the nadir of their careers and affections, Two of Us. And listen to Ringo’s drumming. And George’s muted but growling guitar riffs on that song. And somebody should tell biographers and critics (and Paul himself) that Fool on the Hill is the most treacly, overblown, pompous, boring, squirm-in-your-seat, embarrassing song the Beatles ever recorded (how did acerbic John not stamp that one out?)
But enough. Buy this one book if you don’t own a single Beatles book and buy this one book if you have them all.
Beatles Gear by Andy Babiuk, the revised edition. Here’s the level of scholarship. John’s first Rickenbacker guitar is photographed as it looks today. Also, the 1958 invoice from Rickenbacker to German distributor Framous with John’s future purchase (serial # V81) itemized on the invoice. In addition, a photo of Rickenbacker salesman Jean “Toots” Thielemans at an instrument trade show. “Toots” played a Rickenbacker guitar in an appearance with George Shearing that inspired John to buy a Rickenbacker guitar in the first place. Lined up behind “Toots” at the trade show is the actual guitar John eventually bought.
There are a couple other “must have or at least should have” Beatle books: The Beatles Anthology and Mark Lewisohn’s The Complete Beatles Chronicle but Andy Babiuk’s Beatles Gear is the one literally breathtaking volume.
