Say The Words

Don't know if I can recommend The Beatles Lyrics by Hunter Davies.  It does have numerous reproductions of their original handwritten drafts--often including lines not used in the finished versions of the songs--and Davies, the group's first major biographer, does include behind-the-scenes stories of how they came up with the words.

But the writing is horrible.  Much of it is simply too idiosyncratic.  I don't expect formal rigor, but what can you do with this from his description of "Drive My Car":

I could remember the words--at least, I thought I did, but on listening again, I realized I'd got the story all wrong.  I'd thought the singer, Paul, was asking a girl to drive his car--a sexual euphemism perhaps.  In fact, it's the girl who's inviting the boy to be her chauffeur, and maybe then she will love him.

Yes, Hunter, that's what the song is about.  We don't care if you didn't remember at first.  Yet he constantly tells us such personal things, though they mean nothing to us.  And even when he attempts to be more straightforward, his analysis is rarely penetrating.  Sometimes it even misses the obvious.

For instance, looking at John's original manuscript for "If I Fell" we get:

He has marked the verses 1 and 2 and has written "Into" at the beginning, suggesting there would be no opening chords, just straight into it.

Perhaps.  Or perhaps, because it's a section at the beginning of the song that will not be repeated, John meant to write "Intro" and left out the "r."

Even worse is his discussion of the tunes.  Davies seems to be musically illiterate.  He'll often claim the singer's going high or low as if it's some sort of choice, not the tune as written. And then you realize when he uses these terms he's not necessarily discussing pitch, but rather whether the voices are thin or resonant. Either way, it leads to stuff like this description of "I'm A Loser":

[John's] singing is a bit strange, deliberately going low on the last word of each chorus, almost out of tune, sounding a bit embarrassed...

The low notes are a memorable part of the song, but this description is just weird.  I don't know if John's singing sounds strange, but describing him as "deliberately" going low makes no sense.  It wasn't a wilful act on his part--he wrote the song, he decided what the notes should be, and now he's singing them.  And calling it almost out of tune?  Either it's out of tune or it's not.  On top of which, he goes low on the last word of each couplet in the verses, not the chorus.

So if you're a Beatles completist, by all means, check it out.  But it's hardly the first book about them or their music you should buy.