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Rating: “In the vast body of literature dedicated to the group, there remains a substantial disproportion between hagiography and analysis, and even today, the lyrics, an essential component of their work, are attributed a secondary role.”
Antonio Taormina, one of the leading Italian authorities on the Beatles, begins the introduction to his book this way, an excellent reference work, where the text of every Beatles song is presented in the original English version and translated line by line, preceded by a brief and sometimes very substantial historical-exegetical introduction.
The continuous improvement of the four’s music progressed in parallel with the improvement of their lyrics, although in their case, one cannot speak of poetry set to music as with Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen.
Lennon and McCartney started with lyrics based on adolescent clichés, sometimes original (“This Boy”), but much more often banal (“She Loves You”, “Please, Please Me”), with lyrics cleansed of any sexual innuendo as in Elvis, because in the days of Beatlemania, the Beatles, according to Brian Epstein's orders, had to appeal to both children and parents, and they could not afford to go overboard.
The meeting with Bob Dylan, at the beginning of 1964, was essential for their growth as lyricists, especially for Lennon. When John told Dylan, “I don’t listen to the words of the songs, just the sound in general,” the great minstrel’s response, “Listen to the words, mate,” became almost a commandment for John, who changed his attitude towards songs, turning them into a tool to express his thoughts. In any case, already in 1963, in a couple of pieces, Lennon had already shown some (unconscious) attempts as an author: “There’s a Place” (a little gem of introspective poetry) and “Misery” (with lines tending towards victimization).
After “I’ll Cry Instead” (a great revelation of his fragility), his first real (conscious) attempt to say something occurred on a plane in the summer of '64 when he wrote “I'm a Loser”, a song in which, behind a teenage story, he admitted the insecurity hiding behind the facade.
His self-analysis continued with the confession of his shyness (“You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away”) and the admission of his loss of reference points (“Help!”), and then, a few months later, “Nowhere Man” (a brilliant portrayal of his soul split in two by his guilt). But in “Rubber Soul”, Lennon also demonstrated his talent in the splendid female figure described in “Girl” (a prophecy of Yoko Ono), and in “In My Life” (a “crescendo” celebration of love in all its forms: love for the past, love for friends, love for the loved one, love as everything). McCartney, at the beginning, stood by, not believing that song lyrics were literature. However, the first true Beatles piece with lyrics of poetic depth, after meeting Dylan, was his forgotten gem “Things We Said Today”, in which he very well expressed, in dialogical form, his desire for faithful love.
At the end of 1964, in “I’ll Follow The Sun” (to be honest written when he was still a teenager), Paul left another magnificent line: “Tomorrow may rain, so I’ll follow the sun” – indicating a man leaving a woman of unstable character.
After the excellent “Yesterday” (expression of his desire for real love and not a disposable love (“an easy game to play”)) and the invitation not to give up when everything seems to be going wrong contained in “We Can Work It Out”, McCartney reached full maturity in “Revolver”, despite embarrassing falls (“Good Day Sunshine”) and sugary ones (“Here, There and Everywhere”).
In “Revolver” he left posterity with a musical masterpiece (“Eleanor Rigby”) featuring a truly remarkable text which (in its simplicity) holds its ground to the music that accompanies it. In this piece, he tells the solitude of a priest and an old woman, and the woman’s funeral officiated by the same priest to which no one attended.
But he did not stop there, painting the sad picture of a love ending because of her selfishness (“For No One”), while, on the same record, Lennon left his wise celebration of laziness (“I’m Only Sleeping”) and a piece on the annihilation of the ego (“Tomorrow Never Knows”), helping George in his venomous and ironic attack on the British government that taxed the highest incomes at 95% (“Taxman”).
“Pepper”, although not the greatest musical masterpiece of the Beatles, probably represents the peak of Lennon/McCartney as authors – aided by a collaboration between the two that, unfortunately, would not repeat. Almost every track deserves mention for its lyrics: “Strawberry Fields” (brilliant and mad self-analysis of John’s inner laceration); “Penny Lane” (picture of three childhood images of Paul described in three verses, and then collected together in the fourth verse); “The Fool on the Hill” (speaking of the wise person who is sometimes condemned to be alone); “When I’m 64” (the thought of old age treated by a man speaking to his woman); “Good Morning, Good Morning” (with Lennon describing in the third person, brutally, his lonely, bored and loveless life); “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” (Lennon's take on “Alice in Wonderland”); “Getting Better” and “Fixing a Hole” (with the author “John/Paul” telling his attempts to change life to try to be happy); “She’s Leaving Home” (family drama set to verse); and above all “A Day in the Life” (monumental, absurdly logical and unitary “pastiche”). In “Pepper”, John and Paul began to go over the top, with invitations to drug use, and the use of double meanings (“Fixing a hole” (slang for injecting drugs), “Blew his mind” (get high), ”Take some tea” (slang for smoking a joint)) – although, indeed, John had already used a double entendre the year before in the title “Day Tripper”.
After the release of the 1967 masterpiece, the “creative exegetes” began to emerge, starting to pontificate on the hidden meanings of Beatles lyrics. To mock them, Lennon decided to abandon himself to nonsense (inspired by his idol Lewis Carroll) and did so in one of his greatest achievements: “I’m the Walrus”. The artifice pleased him so much that he wasted other musical jewels this way such as “Cry Baby Cry”, “Happiness is a Warm Gun”, “Dig a Pony”, and “Come Together”.
However, in the “White Album”, he continued to write conventionally, as in “Yer Blues” (chilling confession of the struggle against his demons), “I’m So Tired” (second part of “I’m Only Sleeping”, but much less inspired), “Julia” (poetic and delicate dedication to his mother) and “Revolution” (a nice blow dealt to the Maoists, which had furious reactions from the radical left worldwide, leading John to retract and become a Maoist a few years later). Meanwhile, George Harrison, after showing his intelligence in “Revolver” with “I Want To Tell You” (description of the inability to clearly express in words what is clear in our thoughts), in “Within You, Without You” (contained in “Pepper”), wrote an extraordinary text about people who, setting aside love, conquer the world and lose their souls, facing the truth when it is too late. Juan Muscaro, a Sanskrit professor at Cambridge, was so touched by these verses that he sent George a letter of appreciation, suggesting he set to music some pages of the Tao – which Harrison did in the gem “The Inner Light”, absurdly released as a B-side in 1968, and which would have significantly raised the level of the “White Album”. In the '68 album, Harrison spoke again of cooled love in his musical masterpiece, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, where he launched, in a very cryptic way, a bitter jab at his two friends, John and Paul, who, because of the formation of “Apple Records”, had turned from musicians into businessmen. In “Long, Long, Long”, George even addressed a simple but loving prayer to God.
Instead, the only really important lyrics Paul wrote during the “White” period were “Blackbird” and the moving “Hey Jude”. However, the thought and pain over the possible breakup of the Beatles, with Lennon now drug-dependent and lost behind Yoko Ono, inspired some of his best lyrics ever: “Get Back” (a plea to John to come to his senses and forget about Yoko Ono); “2 of Us” (a mournful act of awareness of the imminent end of the Beatles with a splendid line: “You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead”); “The Long and Winding Road” (expression of resignation for the end of a love, which in hindsight, can be read as the end of the artistic story between himself and John); “Let It Be” (expression of the wisdom of someone who has stopped fighting against destiny and understood that it is better to let things go as they must); and finally “Carry that Weight” (prophetic and bitter foretelling of his future as an ex-Beatle, contained in “Abbey Road”). After a simple yet profound and “nude” declaration of love to Yoko Ono contained in “Don’t Let Me Down” (released only as a single), Lennon, in “Abbey Road”, will leave one of his very best lines, if we wish a summary of “In My Life”: “Love is all, love is you” (contained in “Because”), to which Paul responded in his own way, in “The End”, with the most beautiful and profound line of the Beatles’ discography (a “cosmic” line according to Lennon’s definition): “In the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make”.
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