The Beatles: "Something"

November 15, 1969 (4 weeks)

You Know I Believe — and How!: Rating the Stars of the "Something" Promo

The Beatles gradually began making pop videos as their profile grew and as they began easing up on the live appearances. This way, they could "appear" on Top of the Pops and the Ed Sullivan Show without actually showing up. (Sullivan would often introduce these promos by implying that they had been made specifically for his show which must've lent an air of exclusivity to them) With band unity waning, the vid for "Something" placed the Fab Four away from each other and with the women they were choosing to spend their lives with — along with a very special guest star. Let's look at how each pairing conducts themselves.

1) Martha. She only makes a cameo but Paul's beloved sheepdog (and, needless to say, namesake of "Martha My Dear") is by far the most delightful presence in this clip — and she is clearly the only one who really wants to be there, though I suppose Linda is a close second. With Paul entering a dark period of isolation and some heavy drinking — and, lest we forget, some serious pot smoking — the unconditional love of a dog no doubt helped get through it. That and having a devoted wife and a growing family.

Don't Wanna Leave Her Scale: And how!

2) George and Patti. He wrote the song and it's about her so it makes sense that they would be the humans who make the biggest impression in the "Something" clip. Rob Sheffield describes the pair as "peacocking" around their Kinfaus garden but I get the feeling this was how they were: she had a face for being on camera anyway and he looks like her very serious guru. (Good thing they were just a few months apart in age or this could've come across as a little culty) The ultimate hippie power couple. The very fact that their relationship would begin to come apart in the early seventies doesn't undermine the way they look at each other here.

Don't Wanna Leave Her Scale: I don't need no other lover

3) John and Yoko. Ian MacDonald claimed that the two "brought out the worst in each other" which might explain their decision to sport capes. Jesus, they really deserved each other, didn't they? That said, "Something" is about love and how it can't really ever be rationalized so there you go. Given how dour they typically looked at the time, it's refreshing to see them share a smile. A recently — if temporarily — beardless John even mugs for the camera which is particularly out of place for this period. (He might've pulled one of his old cripple faces had they kept it going any longer) If the public couldn't understand what he saw in her then the very least they could've done was accepted that he nevertheless felt the way he did. Or they could've wondered what the hell she saw in him.

Don't Wanna Leave Her Scale: You know I believe

4) Paul and Linda. There's so much to unpack here. While the solo shot of Mr. Photogenic at his most unsettling is creepy, he looks at ease with his bride by his side while prancing about with the lovable Martha is the most joyous part of the entire video. Still, the McCartneys look out of place. While all four couples had their clips filmed separately, the George, John and Ringo segments all look like they could've been done on the same estate. Meanwhile, Paul's segment was probably filmed up in Scotland which is far less green and far more wind swept then down in the English Home Counties. Still, it feels like the media-savy Paul has his guard down. John and Yoko may have bared all a year earlier but did they ever reveal as much Paul and Linda on their Scots seclusion?

Don't Wanna Leave Her Scale: All I have to do is think of her

5) Ringo and Maureen. They'd been together the longest of the Beatles couples yet Mo was still the youngest of the lot. You'd think the years of experience would've made her more at ease in front of a camera but she looks painfully awkward and he isn't a whole lot better either. Being the Fab who has been the most comfortable with facial hair, it's strange that his neck beard is so bad. Similarly, for a hairdresser, what was she thinking with the peroxide blonde look? Affection between the two? None that I can detect beyond what appears to be the bond of a close friendship.

Don't Wanna Leave Her Scale: I don't know, I don't know

~~~~~

As for the song itself, I don't know what to say. They claim it, along with fellow Abbey Road track "Here Comes the Sun", represents George Harrison's emergence as a songwriter to rival Lennon and McCartney and this is largely true, only I wish The Beatles' final studio album had more of his contributions. I know everyone else loves that medley on side 2 but I could personally do without the bulk of that stuff that precedes the magnificent "Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End" passage. Had "All Things Must Pass" and "Isn't It a Pity" been accepted then Abbey Road would have a far more convincing case for The Beatles' greatest album of all time. (The similarly ignored McCartney track "Come and Get It" should also have been included)

Famously and exaggeratedly described by Frank Sinatra as the "greatest love song of the past fifty years", "Something" is that rarest of Beatle numbers that doesn't quite live up to its hype. It isn't far off, mind you, but it just misses out on the absolute pinnacle tier of Fabs classics. What prevents it from climbing that one elusive step higher may well be the very thing that makes it special. McDonald argues that the song's middle eight expresses "callow sentiments" and the whole thing about this "Something" that Patti and other women possess is awfully vague. He can't quite put into words why it is he feels this way and that's how many of us as people experience love but he's the songwriter so couldn't he have tried a little harder? McCartney's love songs range from trite Hallmark greeting card sentiments all the way to expressing bleak depression while Lennon's never fail to invite the listener into his own tortured mind. Meanwhile Harrison is at a loss — and fair enough. The fact that he can't quite describe his situation is precisely what makes "Something" so good but it is a limitation nonetheless.

Score: 9

The Cuff Links: "Tracy"

November 8, 1969 (1 week)

Gosh, it's as if the bubblegum groups didn't get the memo. Then again, neither did the youngsters who kept buying up all this crap. "Sugar, Sugar" ought to have been bubblegum pop's final bit of glory before it got swept away by late sixties' stadium rock and the singer-songwriter boom but there were still enough teenagers who weren't sufficiently tired of it by this point.

Nevertheless, bubblegum was clearly on the way out. If anything, it's a wonder it lasted as long as it did. Just one lame 1910 Fruitgum Company chart topper ought to have been enough for most people but they somehow managed a trio of RPM number ones. If we go by Wikipedia's claim of the dire "Simon Says" (along with the Ohio Express' "Yummy, Yummy, Yummy") as being the sub-genre's jumping off point, "Tracy" is just the seventh bubblegum single to reach the top of Canada's pop charts, with apparently just one more to go. Actually, I say it was clearly on the way out but was that really the case in the late stages of 1969? All I know is that I have had enough it and I just assume everyone was feeling the same way.

Still, there's reason to be not quite as down on The Cuff Links since "Tracy" isn't quite as grim as many of its contemporaries. It's passable. There's oodles of energy in this single, a quality that fellow bubblegum pop records are surprisingly short on. They have a forced jovial air about them which only makes them even more irritating. On the other hand, The Cuff Links are enjoying themselves even if the lyrics are as banal as ever.

I've now rolled my eyes at the likes of the Fruitgums and Tommy Roe and The Archies but I haven't done so in the direction of The Cuffs. This not a resounding recommendation but I might as well try grading bubblegum on a curve. It's simple but that's not always a bad thing. It's moronic but pure pop is often at its best when brain cells aren't quite firing. It's repetitive but the running time is short so there's little chance of boredom entering the picture. It's a perfectly serviceable pop song in a style that struggled to be mediocre. While all the other bubblegum groups had a taste that wore out awfully fast, The Cuff Links almost make you want to keep on chewing.

~~~~~

Finally, a comment on the title which seems rather out of place for its era. Our family friends the Cunninghams have a daughter called Tracy. There was also a Tracy — possibly with an 'e' since she was from Essex — in my class in Billericay during the year I lived in England. A friend of mine in high school had a girlfriend (and, not long after, wife) called Tracy. I can't think of anyone else I've ever known with that name. Not many though I am aware that it is a fairly common name. (I teach in Korea where English names used to be commonplace but I've never once met a Tracy here either) But were there a lot of Tracies back in the sixties? I could be wrong but it strikes me as the sort of name babyboomers gave to their daughters but weren't bestowed upon many of them. Is this what songwriters Lee Pockriss and Paul Vance as well as singer Ron Dante (who, incidentally, is said to have handled all the layers of vocals here) found intriguing about our Trace? With something of an unusual name, perhaps she stood out as a free spirit befitting the wild child sixties. Even the bubblegum popsters couldn't resist these sorts of chicks and who could blame them?

Score: 6

Elvis Presley: "Suspicious Minds"

October 18, 1969 (3 weeks)

It had been just shy of five years since Elvis Presley last topped the Canadian charts but a great deal had changed during this time. The rush of Beatlemania was still very much a going concern, the United States was still reeling from the assassination of President John F. Kennedy a year earlier and the Americans were still a distant second to the hated Soviets in the space race. By the latter part of 1969, however, the Fab Four were all but done as a recording unit, guns deaths among influential individuals in the States had become an all-too common occurrence and NASA sent Apollo 11 to the Moon. Meanwhile, Elvis Presley went from being famous for being in some mighty stupid movies and a wildly erratic song catalog to someone who had become famous for being famous and who, well, had an even more wildly erratic song catalog.

The narrative that typically surrounds The King's famed 1969 Comeback Special is how tranformative it was for him - although only temporarily, as it would turn out. Elvis lost weight, looked like the sex god he had always meant to be and, crucially, was finally performing some first rate material after years in the creative doldrums. Yet, things aren't nearly as simple as all that. For one thing, RPM Top 10 "U.S. Male" from the early part of '68 suggests that he hadn't completely lost his way (a powerhouse version of Jimmy Reed's "Big Boss Man" dates from the same session which only emphasizes how much he still had it — at least some of the time). On the other hand, the 1969 post-Comeback global smash "In the Ghetto" was then followed by the uninspired "Clean Up Your Own Backyard" from one of those dismal B movies that were supposed to have been wiped clean by his return as a rock 'n' roll rebel. The only thing consistent about Elvis was how damn inconsistent he was.

The good thing about yo-yoing is that there's the opportunity to bounce back and Elvis did so and then some with "Suspicious Minds". Again, it's tempting to put this all down to the Comeback Special as well as the early '69 sessions that resulted in the finest album of his career, the remarkable From Elvis in Memphis. Yet, a renewed Elvis was still going to Elvis about as evidenced on the Back in Memphis half of that autumn's From Memphis to Vegas / From Vegas to Memphis release. A part live, part studio creation, it far more accurately predicts the remaining years of Elvis' life than its far superior predecessor: The King bouncing from his Graceland home to the Las Vegas strip while quality control once again began to unravel. While not a bad work, it pales next to From Elvis in Memphis' sustained coming together of rock, soul, gospel and country.

Mercifully left off either of Elvis' 1969 album releases, "Suspicious Minds" was allowed to take on a life of its own. "In the Ghetto" proved to be a solemn conclusion to From Elvis in Memphis but I've never been convinced by it as a single. No, there was only one song from this key year that needed to come out on its own and it was "Suspicious Minds", arguably the sturdiest 45 of his career. Fans of modern pop who had associated Elvis more with his shitty movies now had a tune of his that they could fully appreciate. With fifties' revivalism gaining steam over the course of the year (John Lennon and a makeshift Plastic Ono Band performed only a month earlier at the Toronto Rock 'n' Roll Revival Festival), it would have been seen as perfectly natural to have him right back with his old backing band and the Jordinaires but there's little of the '56 rebel present. Instead, he's accompanied by Memphis studio aces and is singing like a man in his mid-thirties.

As Tom Breihan astutely observes, Elvis chose not to read paranoia into a song about unfaithful partners. Rather, his celebratory tone suggests that he's been getting up to no good, they're both aware of this and that he's in no position to change his destructive habits. ("He's not caught in a trap at all," Breihan notes — and even if he is, he plainly doesn't give a shit anyway) For someone who never could keep to his marriage vows, this certainly tracks. (When people say they hate Elvis because he didn't write his own songs they seem to be unaware of The King's uncanny ability to take someone else's lyrics and apply them directly to himself, at least when the material he was working with inspired him enough to do so)

Considering his background in fifties' pop brevity, it's unusual to hear an Elvis song that goes on for so damn long. At around the two-and-a-half minute mark it feels like it's going to come to a close but then it keeps building with backing singers and strings filling in the gaps. Another sixty seconds and then it begins to fade only for everything to come roaring back, as if the Memphis producers and engineers had a last second change of heart on when to close out the session. While Brian Wilson may have done fade outs for effect, this sounds like a mistake being righted in real time. A two to three minute "Suspicious Minds" would have been fine but letting it go on allows the listener to luxuriate in Elvis' glory. "We could leave 'em wanting more or, fuck it, how about we just give 'em more?"

No longer serving up pablum to accompany terrible movies, nor particularly interested in market trends, Elvis was at long last able simply to be Elvis. He had excellent songs to choose from and a peerless group of musicians at his beck and call. The Vegas residency had begun but he seemed to take much of what he'd acquired back home in Memphis with him. Yet, the momentum following his Comeback Special was gone and even at his best his output was all over the place. (His version of "Hey Jude" from around this time is appalling) Elvis could rise to incredible heights but the inevitable falls from grace were just as dramatic. And if you thought that nearly five years without a number one hit had been a long time then get ready for a bit of a wait until we encounter him again. If only someone had demanded a little more action from him following his extraordinary Comeback.

Score: 10