Hold Me Tight

With The Beatles, 1963

When we were young teens, twelve to fourteen or so, we thought it was funny to stand in the corner facing the wall with your hands wrapped around yourself as if they were someone else's hands, as if you were in the corner hugging someone. It must have been something we'd seen on television or in a movie, and in retrospect the really funny part is that none of us had ever held anyone tight like that. Alas, we were boys and we had to pretend, I suppose.

The song that most triggered this kind of behavior was The Beatles's Hold Me Tight, track two on side two of their second album, With The Beatles.

With The Beatles was the group's second studio album,  released on 22 November 1963… the same day of Kennedy was assassinated. In England the album had pre-sold a half million copies and by 1965 sold another half million so that it was the second album up to that point in history to make the million mark. (The soundtrack for the film South Pacific was first, if you want to bone up on your trivia.)

The Beatles fame came about in part due to the stellar songwriting of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, but that was a subsequent chapter in their story. Initially, I'm sure it was the pretty boy look, the solid rock 'n roll sound they produced, the primo harmonies and tight pants. This second album, With The Beatles, was actually comprised of no less than seven songs by other writers including Meredith Wilson, Chuck Berry, Smoky Robinson and others. No song here is explicitly a Lennon/McCartney collaboration.

Hold Me Tight was, however, an original tune, penned by a teen-aged Paul McCartney in 1961. (Sir Paul turned 70 last month.)

The song is classic early Beatles, in the same vein as She Loves You, yeah yeah yeah. Here is the first verse. 

It feels so right now, hold me tight,
Tell me I'm the only one,
And then I might,
Never be the lonely one.
So hold me tight, to-night, to-night,
It's you, you you you, oh, oh, oh, oh.

Now contrast that with the lyrics from one of Dylan's 1963 albums, also his second album, released in May of that year..

Young Bob

How many roads must a man walk down before they call him a man?
How many seas must a white dove sail before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, and how many times must the cannonballs fly before they are forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

This is not to say The Beatles weren't doing something significant. They were an emerging force by virtue of the fact that they had learned how to connect with an audience. They had spit and polish now and were ready to sweep into American hearts in that famous wave called the British Invasion.

Phil Spector liked the song enough to produce a version of it with The Treasures, draped in his famous wall of sound style. But despite my appreciation for his production form, The Beatles have the superior version here, infusing the song with youth, energy, electricity and passion. What more should an audience expect beyond that?

Interestingly enough, Dylan made an impact on the content of Lennon and McCartney's music. After six straight albums of  love songs they began to explore the various themes that were emerging in the Sixties youth culture, from alienation to the generation gap. But the influence went both ways. Dylan, the folk singer, was soon to go electric, and with the new sound he'd found he electrified a generation.

With The Beatles was one of my first albums, and Hold Me Tight an early favorite. If you haven't heard it in a while, you can listen here on YouTube. Get up and dance!

Telling Stories: Phil Spector's Agony & Ecstasy

Yesterday I finished the audio book Changing My Mind, a wonderfully rich collection of essays by Zadie Smith. What impressed me was the honesty of her perceptions. When reviewing movies she doesn't go with the crowd, she goes with the way she sees it. And her breadth of experience gives a good vantage point for these perceptions. Even stronger are her insights on the various books and writers she assesses. Being a novelist herself, she shares not only what is happening on the page, but shines a light into the corners of what she suspects was happening in the minds and souls of those who were doing the writing.

Though her essays on Liberia, Katharine Hepburn or going to the Oscars make for great (by which I mean insightful, thought-provoking) reading, Smith's at her best when dissecting the problems of storytelling.

Storytelling takes on such a variety of forms. This week's Sound Unseen/Duluth International Film Festival is full of stories. Thursday night we were introduced to Harry Belafonte's story in the documentary film Sing Your Song, which could just as easily been sub-titled, "Don't Give Up the Fight." Last night, we saw a portrait of Phil Spector titled The Agony & Ecstasy of Phil Spector. It's a remarkable accomplishment by director Vikram Jayanti because the camera never blinks.

Songwriter and record producer Phil Spector has been a major influence in modern music in part because he was striving for something more than just the next hit record. His concept of the "wall of sound" is now almost cliche, but was revolutionary in the Sixties. Hits like The Ronettes "Be My Baby" struck a nerve with audiences across the airwaves. Songs like "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling" by The Righteous Brothers and "Da Doo Ron Ron" established his cred as someone who knew how to reach a mass market. When two years of recording songs for the Beatles' last album failed to produce a product, Spector was called in as Mr. Fix-It and in four months Let It Be was released. And no matter how much Sir Paul disliked the outcome, I for one consider it a favorite, recalling the very moment I heard it for the first time. After the break-up of the Beatles, Spector produced music for both Lennon and George Harrison.

But this is only backdrop for the documentary which used Spector's murder trial as a thread to weave all the pieces of his life story into a whole. Or was it the other way around? Maybe the trial is the backdrop and the real story is the man himself, in his own words, for that is what we get here... Spector spending a day in his home explaining the meaning of his life, Spector sitting on his couch talking, the camera rolling. In the background is the white piano he bought for his friend John Lennon with which the song "Imagine" was recorded.

There is no effort to conceal the size of his ego. At various points he compares himself to Galileo, DaVinci, Bach and Michaelangelo. And he is clearly bitter that someone like Tony Bennett, who was a coke head in the sixties, can get his past absolved, but Spector is treated like a leper. Or that Buddy Holly, who performed for only three years would be a legend and get his own postage stamp.

About the trial. Spector had been accused of having murdered B-movie actress Lana Clarkson in his home with a handgun. The defense points out that the angle at which the bullet entered was the angle a self-inflicted shot would be fired. They also showed that if Spector had fired while standing next to her with the gun in her mouth, the manner in which she was killed, it would have splattered blood and debris on his clothing, hands, face and hair... which did not occur.

Some of the reviews of this film describe Spector as creepy. His pasty skin and not so pretty sagging flesh repeatedly fill the screen. His flambouyant hair and attire give him an almost comical aspect at times. But I can't help feel pity for the man. As Jimi Hendrix once sang, "Loneliness is just a drag." In fact, early in the film Spector himself is asked why he lives alone in such a large castle. He said it's better than a single room with a toilet. Was he referring here to the jail cell he would eventually be occupying?

The first trial ended in a hung jury. The day-long interview with Spector takes place two weeks before the verdict. We follow much of the courtroom drama which is interspersed with Spector's candid rambling. We see palsied hands quivering through much of the film. And at one point John Lennon's poignant "Crippled Inside" becomes the soundtrack, another Spector-produced song. Spector knew the meaning of crippled because his father blew his own brains out with a gun.

To some extent we're all crippled inside and in this respect Phil Spector's story -- bizarre as it seems -- is our own story. To cite Goethe, our hearts are capable of all things from megalomania to murder. Whether Spector is innocent or guilty on the murder charge, to some extent one can only say, "There but for the grace of God go I."