Paul McCartney’s “Black­bird” com­petes with Lennon’s “Julia” as the most ten­der song on the Bea­t­les’ White Album and maybe in the band’s entire cat­a­logue. Inspired by a Bach piece that McCart­ney and George Har­ri­son learned to play when they were young, its fin­ger-picked acoustic gui­tar has the sound of a folk lul­la­by. But the song’s shift­ing time sig­na­tures and del­i­cate melody make it some­thing of a tricky one: record­ing ses­sions at Abbey Road involved a series of 32 takes, most of them false starts and only 11 com­plete. The ver­sion we hear on the album is the final take, fin­ished while Lennon worked on “Rev­o­lu­tion 9” in the stu­dio next door.

You can see 1:33 of that ses­sion in the footage above, cap­tured on 16mm by a film crew from Apple Records direct­ed by Tony Bramwell, part of a 10-minute pro­mo that also includ­ed footage of McCart­ney record­ing “Hel­ter Skel­ter” and “var­i­ous oth­er scenes from inside the stu­dio, in the Apple Bou­tique, Apple Tai­lor­ing, McCartney’s gar­den and oth­er loca­tions,” the Bea­t­les Bible notes. It’s an ephemer­al doc­u­ment of time pass­ing peace­ably dur­ing the gru­el­ing 5‑month White Album ses­sions, which for all their leg­endary ten­sion and ran­cor, includ­ed many moments like these.

The three-day ordeal that was the record­ing of “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” (after which engi­neer Geoff Emer­ick quit) pro­vides stark con­trast, and maybe con­fir­ma­tion that the Bea­t­les were at their best when they worked sep­a­rate­ly in 1968. The brief film above also con­firms a more tech­ni­cal record­ing con­cern: the tick­ing we hear in the stu­dio track is not a metronome, but Paul’s feet alter­nate­ly tap­ping on the wood stu­dio floor to mea­sure out the bars of the com­plex song, which shifts between 3/4, 4/4, and 2/4 time. “Part of its struc­ture is a par­tic­u­lar har­mon­ic thing between the melody and the bass line which intrigued me,” he remem­bered, and we see him striv­ing to get it right.

After the Bea­t­les, McCart­ney made “Black­bird” a reg­u­lar part of his set, play­ing it at near­ly every con­cert from 1975 on. It wasn’t only the beau­ty of the song that has moved him all these years, but its inspi­ra­tion, the Civ­il Rights move­ment, which “all of us cared pas­sion­ate­ly about,” he said. “Black­bird” is “sym­bol­ic, so you could apply it to your par­tic­u­lar prob­lem,” but the song’s intend­ed mes­sage, he said, was “from me to a black woman, expe­ri­enc­ing these prob­lems in the States: ‘Let me encour­age you to keep try­ing, to keep your faith, there is hope.’”

Below you can watch McCart­ney talk about the sto­ry behind “Black­bird” in a 2005 pro­duc­tion called Chaos & Cre­ation at Abbey Road.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

When the Bea­t­les Refused to Play Before Seg­re­gat­ed Audi­ences on Their First U.S. Tour (1964)

How “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er” Con­tains “the Cra­zi­est Edit” in Bea­t­les His­to­ry

Hear the Beau­ti­ful Iso­lat­ed Vocal Har­monies from the Bea­t­les’ “Some­thing”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Dave Grohl, like many rock musi­cians, does not come from a clas­si­cal­ly trained back­ground. Instead he has an abil­i­ty to write accord­ing to what sounds good, and where noodling around in the stu­dio can bring great rewards. That’s where The Foo Fight­ers’ best song “Ever­long” orig­i­nates.

In this 2020 clip from Oates Song Fest, Grohl tells the sto­ry of “Ever­long,” and how it came to him in the stu­dio one day in between work­ing on the band’s sec­ond album. It start­ed with a chord.

“I’m not a trained musi­cian, so I don’t know what that chord is,” he says. (The Inter­tubes seem to agree it’s a Dmaj7). At first he thought it was a chord from Son­ic Youth (“Schiz­o­phre­nia,” in fact), one of his favorite bands of all time. So that was a good start. One chord led to anoth­er and soon he had a sketch of a song.

At the time, Grohl was essen­tial­ly home­less after a divorce from his wife, pho­tog­ra­ph­er Jen­nifer Young­blood. And the band were at a low ebb as well, not hap­py that their debut album hadn’t tak­en off like they want­ed. But Grohl then fell in love again, this time with Louise Post of the band Veru­ca Salt. Over Christ­mas 1996, he wrote the lyrics. He would tell Ker­rang mag­a­zine in 2006: “That song’s about a girl that I’d fall­en in love with and it was basi­cal­ly about being con­nect­ed to some­one so much, that not only do you love them phys­i­cal­ly and spir­i­tu­al­ly, but when you sing along with them you har­mo­nize per­fect­ly.”

He record­ed a demo of the song, play­ing all the instru­ments (he might not be a *trained* musi­cian, but he is a well round­ed one), and the fin­ished stu­dio ver­sion real­ly didn’t stray too far from the orig­i­nal. Post pro­vid­ed har­monies record­ed down a tele­phone, as she was in Chica­go at the time. (You can hear them iso­lat­ed, along with a lot more gear­head chat on this Pro­duce Like a Pro episode): “I nev­er con­sid­ered doing this acousti­cal­ly, I thought it was a rock song,” Grohl adds. That was until he did the Howard Stern show, ear­ly in the morn­ing at 6 a.m., and per­formed it with just solo gui­tar. “It gave the song a new life,” he said. “It makes the song feel the way I always wish it would.”

The song cat­a­pult­ed the band to the top of the charts, and is con­sid­ered one of the great rock songs of the 1990s. David Let­ter­man con­sid­ers it his favorite song, and asked the band to play it at the close of his final show in 2015. For a very spe­cif­ic lyric writ­ten about a very spe­cif­ic woman, with chords dis­cov­ered while just goof­ing about, it has a uni­ver­sal qual­i­ty.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Paul Simon Tells the Sto­ry of How He Wrote “Bridge Over Trou­bled Water” (1970)

Dave Grohl & Greg Kurstin Cov­er 8 Songs by Famous Jew­ish Artists for Hanukkah: Bob Dylan, Beast­ie Boys, Vel­vet Under­ground & More

AI Soft­ware Cre­ates “New” Nir­vana, Jimi Hen­drix, Doors & Amy Wine­house Songs: Hear Tracks from the “Lost Tapes of the 27 Club”

Nir­vana Refus­es to Fake It on Top of the Pops, Gives a Big “Mid­dle Fin­ger” to the Tra­di­tion of Bands Mim­ing on TV (1991)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.