Not a Second Time

"Not a Second Time" is today's song. It's the sixth song on the B-side of the album and it was recorded in 9 takes on September 11th, 1963. John, who wrote the lyrics, said that he was "trying to write a Smokey Robinson or something at the time." I'm not sure if he succeeded or not, since I've heard very little of Smokey Robinson's music, but I kind of liked this song. I didn't love it, but I enjoyed the harmonies and the Aeolian cadences we learned about from "It Won't Be Long".

As it turns out, those harmonies and Aeolian cadences are actually a pretty big deal. I checked out what history BeatlesEBooks.com had to offer on "Not a Second Time", and I found this great quote from music critic William Mann (then writing for London newspaper The Times):

Harmonic interest is typical of their quicker songs, and one gets the impression that they think simultaneously of harmony and melody, so firmly are the major tonic sevenths and ninths built into their tunes, and the flat submediant key switches, so natural is the Aeolian cadence at the end of 'Not A Second Time' (the chord progression which ends Mahler's Song of the Earth).

The guys had little or no experience with the highly technical musical terms for the phenomena they were so casually creating; John himself claimed he had no idea what Aeolian cadences were (saying, as we remember, that they sounded like "exotic birds"). According to Dave Rybaczewski (author of BeatlesEBooks), Mann's critical analysis lent a certain credibility to The Beatles' reputation (rescuing them from the doom of "Bieber Fever" as we call it today), but the boys themselves thought little of Mann's opinion. (I'll copy and paste a good chunk of Rybaczewski's words here because they contain such fabulous quotes.)

John Lennon referred to this article [Mann's review] in interviews many times over the years, emphasizing that this review was responsible for “starting the whole intellectual bit about the Beatles.”

The term “Aeolian cadence” became an often mentioned term in the tabloid press at the time, which sounded very impressive with respect to the Beatles’ music, but was viewed as humorous by the band.  “I can’t help having a quiet giggle when straight-faced critics start feeding all sorts of hidden meanings into the stuff we write,” Lennon remarked in 1965.  “William Mann wrote the intellectual article about The Beatles.  He used a whole lot of musical terminology and he’s a twit.”

In the 1970’s, John seemed to change his attitude about this review.  “I still don’t know what it means at the end, but he made us acceptable to the intellectuals.  It worked and we were flattered.  I wrote ‘Not A Second Time’ and, really, it was just chords like any other chords.”  McCartney agreed, saying “we hadn’t been conscious of any of that.  We just did our songs in hotel rooms, whenever we had a spare moment, John and I, sitting on twin beds with guitars.”

I love it. First they're snickering about the review, thinking it's a pretty clever joke, then later they realize, Hey, maybe we are doing something intellectual, even if we didn't mean to. :P I just think that's so incredible--it really shows that the guys were true artists. They didn't have to think about all that technical musical jargon. They just had to "feel" the music, and there it was. No studying, no research, nothing but what came out of their hearts and their minds. Pretty cool. :)

Well, that's it for today... See you guys tomorrow. :)

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Heard It Tally: 1

Songs Completed: 27