By Jim Hagarty
2016
I am a Beatlemaniac of long standing. Maybe not as crazy into them as some others, but entralled enough to follow something like this.
I just watched them in concert in a YouTube clip singing Baby in Black in 1965.
The thing that made the Beatles great is that they were constantly innovating. And in this song, they did something that no one had done before and few have done since.
Of course, from rock ‘n’ roll’s beginning, harmony was a big thing. Think Everly Brothers and practically every other band. But the harmony was sporadic, used mostly in choruses.
On Baby in Black, Paul McCartney and John Lennon sing every single word of the song in unison but also in harmony. They don’t trade lyrics back and forth and harmonize only in the chorus. They harmonize from start to finish.
This was something they purposely tried, I learned from listening to a radio documentary. I don’t know if they ever did it again on any other song. Not even the Everly Brothers, their heroes, did that.
I find that to be true in almost every field of human endeavour. There are those who are doing it and then those who are courageous enough to do it differently. It is those few who always move the bar up for the rest of us.
They are often called geniuses.
Update: Wouldn’t you know it. Last night I also watched Lennon and McCartney sing I Wanna Hold Your Hand. They sang the whole thing together, in harmony, just as in Baby’s In Black.
