Beatles "Cry Baby Cry" white album 1968

Personally I've loved this song since it was released. To this day it is still in my top 3 Lennon/Beatle songs.

Regarding John's take on it, I've always taken his comments of this nature with a grain of salt.

 

Cry Baby Cry is one of my favourites from The White Album, but it's Ringo who drives the song and makes it shine for me. Yet another example of Ringo's worth to the band.

 

Has anyone noticed the resemblance between Cry Baby Cry & Hey Jude? Very similar changes.

 

Clean up time & Cry baby

Nope I hear no resemblance with Hey Jude, I'll check that out though from curiosity.

But on that idea of one idea pollinating multiple songs.

Cry Baby Cry & Clean up Time have some of the exact same lyrics, taken not verbatim, but taken liberally from the same poem, an old ( must be ) public domain work a nursery rhyme called " Sing a song & sixpence" Lennon borrowed liberally from this nursery rhyme for both Cry baby cry & Clean up time.

Which reminds me of the McCartney song Queenie Eye, a slang or street saying of a popular children's game in McCartney's youth. But I digress.

Ron so far as poor Ken Scott, he got bumped back down on Mystery Tour, then bumped up when Emerick quit the White album, then I guess bumped down again for Abbey Road !!! Let it be somehow Glyn Johns got in there !!!

Then Ken did ATMP with Harrison, but with both Spector & Allen Klein involved did he ever get properly taken care of ???

Then he had huge success as a producer doing Bowie at his peak, but in Scott's book, he says most of his pay was never given to him by Bowie.... I hope the man finally got paid right when he had tremendous success as the producer for Supertramp ! On 2 or 3 albums ?

I've always felt Emerick was McCartney's favorite & Ken Scott was Harrison's guy. Sadly Harrison didin't record that often ! I think Mr Scott got called back to Friar Park for the ATMP deluxe box in 2000 didin't he ?

One further comment about Cry Baby Cry.. Glen Christensen called it the Beatles last Pepper or Psychedelic era song. ( Great line) along that train of thought just a few of the White album cuts evoke that 66-67 psychedelic sound, Cry Baby Cry, Piggies, & maybe a couple more but that's it..

So I like Cry Baby Cry as the last Beatles Psychedelic song, written in India in 68 but recorded like Pepper or MMT in 67.

 

The first time I heard the album was at night in the dark. It still creates that mood for me and it's always felt like it was recorded in the dark as well. I dig the spooky vibe.

 

Lennon and Jagger waffle wildly in their opinions of their own works. You will get two diverging opinions in interviews even only a few years apart. Both of them have at one time or another said they hated just about every popular work they had a hand in it seems.

 

I love Cry Baby Cry...everything about it.

As far as the White Album creepy factor, I would agree ( although I thought it was just me). It's more of a combination of creepy and haunting and I get that vibe from Sgt Pepper, MMT, White Album and Abbey Road. The Paul is Dead rumor and clues, Manson association, the chaos of the late 60s and just Beatles studio experimentation with sound and vocals. Adding snippets of BBC broadcasts and non sequitur lyrics in a loop or other odd way adds to it as well.

 

I can't believe you just wrote this. I had the exact same experience! I was terrified to the point of not being able to sleep - like I just watched The Exorcist for the 1st time. That radio show really creeped me out. I think I was in 3rd or 4th grade and I seem to recall it was WNEW as well. Didn't each DJ give his/her presentation and interpretation of the "clues?"

Maybe there was subliminal messages in that radio show

 

I never thought The White Album was creepy, it was a fun hodgepodge of songs (mostly).

 

The "can you take me back" part with "Eleanor Rigby" backing works particularly well on Love (in my opinion)

 

Ha - we need to find a recording of the radio show to find out. I still notice George pointing to "Wednesday morning at 5 o'clock" on the back of Sgt. Pepper, the "ghost" on the back Abbey Road cover, the "I buried Paul" at the end of Strawberry Fields Forever, the supposed "Turn me on dead man" if you listen to Revolution #9 backwards, the walrus photo in MMT, etc. Did any Beatle ever comment during or afterward, other than John saying in Glass Onion that "the walrus was Paul"?

 

It's actually one of my favorite songs from the White Album.

 

Not true at all.

Cry Baby Cry is in Em, Hey Jude is in F major. And even when Cry Baby Cry goes into the chorus modulation, still not the same relative chord progression.

 

I think psychedelia (and psychedelics) has a bright shiny happy side and a dark sinister side and they aren't contradictory--just two sides of the same coin. The White Album just seems to fall into the latter category, but other songs do as well, such as Mr Kite.

 

The feel is perhaps similar, but I don't think the progressions or song structures are.

Jude starts with a verse progression, a second verse, and what is more a bridge than a chorus before going to a third verse, a second bridge and a fourth verse before the coda.

Jude Verse: I, V, IIm7, I, IV, I, V, I.
Bridge: I. IV, IIm, V (Vmaj7, V7) repeated.
Coda: I, flatted VII, IV, I

Cry starts with the chorus by comparison: I, IIm, VI, II7, VIm7, flatted VII, I.
So then the verse follows the chorus, and involves a key change to the VI, in minor, descending through m7, 6th and 7th before hitting V7 and I, repeated.
Then it trades off chorus and verse until it reaches the coda/end, which is just in the VIm.

I think I have it right, apologize if there are any errors. But both song structures and progressions are quite different, imo.

 

Unusual drumming from Ringo....

 

Michael Stanley version:

 

Awesome track. And a real curiosity. Clearly a psychedelic-inspired song, but recorded after the Beatles psychedelic period, so the band records it in a blues-rock style with a haunting coda. The lyrics could have been on MMT or Pepper easily. This is the dark sound of Psychedelia's Hangover.

 

You're welcome. I would recommend the entire Mother Nature's Son album by Ramsey Lewis. It's all White Album songs.

 

I guess the answer's a big no, then.

 

Good song........

 

I agree with everyone here who thinks he didn't remember the title. It is so generic sounding.John probably thought it was an early song he could not recall. If the interviewer had reminded him something about the song I am sure Lennon would have had something more interesting and ,possibly, positive to share about it.

 

This goes in and out of print (it is in print currently), and one of my all time favourite records. Killer stuff. Well worth the current $10- price, especially if you love The White Album.

 

Tangentially related, I had to interview Randy Bachman for a Guess Who reissue that has yet to see the light of day. The first interview, we went through a bunch of songs I needed to cover and his answers were vague and tired. Disappointed, I asked him for a follow up and he (pleasingly) agreed. The second time I brought with me a little Bluetooth speaker and my iPod so we could actually listen to each song. It allowed both of us to pick out parts that hit us, and the process really fired up his memory. Clearly, he hadn't heard some of those songs in over forty years. It was bloody night and day. If only Sheff had actually played Lennon some tracks, pointing out parts, etc. Imagine what the answers might have been?

 

Various Beatles commented at the time and afterward, always denying that Paul was dead. The Anthology book talks about it. I don't know if anyone ever asked them point blank if they had planted "clues," but none of the comments I've seen even begin to suggest a deliberate effort by the band. For me, the key is that, as Derek Taylor put it, "they never stood still." John, in particular, got bored and restless. It goes against everything we know about the group to suppose that they would have cooked up a running gag and stuck with it for years, even in late 1969 when they could barely stand to be in the same room together. And others would have had to be in on it as well, including not only studio personnel, but also the photographers and graphic artists who made the album cover art - none of whom have ever spilled the beans. Plus a lot of the supposed "clues" are fanciful and tendentious, like the word "Walrus" supposedly sounding like the Greek word for "death" (which is actually "thanatos").

Years ago, just to see how easy such a thing would be to fabricate, I came up with an alternative theory - Ringo Starr burned his hands when the control panel in an elevator short-circuited. He survived but could never play again (hence the secret recruitment of Bernard Purdie). I've found lots of "clues" in album covers and lyrics, all adhering to the same rigorous standards of evidence used for the Paul Is Dead conspiracy theory, and I keep finding more. (Free sample: On the covers of Beatles VI and Hey Jude, you can see everyone's hands except for Ringo. And, hey, "I got blisters on my fingers!!!")

Getting back on topic - I first heard the "White Album" while I was in college. There was a sort of creepy vibe to it, especially "Revolution 9." I really like "Cry Baby Cry." One of the things that stands out, for me, is the series of descending piano notes during the later verses, much lower than the piano played elsewhere in the track.