The Beatles - Norwegian Wood Question

Yea, that is one of the things I admire on learning about the history of the music. How an attempt to emulate, to make parody or a tribute, leads to a great original piece. The Beatles were very good at that - especially if one considers their lack of formal musical education. It takes some talent and some work.

 

I have to agree with this, and I personally think it was the latter. John's memory was usually good when someone asked him what a song was about. Unfortunately, unlike Paul, John could not go in depth in his interviews like Paul did in Many Years From Now.

 

Great post! By the way, IDK if you heard, but apparently math proved John wrote In My Life all by himself, and there are some hints in the songs structure that it was written by him.

 

The twist ending is the whole point of the song, the punch line. It's ambiguous enough that it can mean what you want it to mean I suppose, but the possibility of malice is the whole joke.

Do you also deny the twist ending to The Kinks' "Lola"?

 

You are still not answering my question. You are still trying to postulate some "position" I take. I am not asking who wrote what. I am looking for an answer to a specific question (stated several times above). You already lost all credibility in my eyes. Please do not contact me anymore in any way.

If there are other people, who would sincerely try to give examples of McCartney surprisingly acknowledging (after Lennon's death) a substantial Lennon's credit in particular cases of songs usually considered being written purely by McCartney, I shall be glad. Please, do not try to make me into some kind of a troll or a hater. If you do not know the answer or if you do not want to give it, please at least do not troll me.

 

I'm not sure how math can prove that with neither of the songwriters being involved. They were constantly writing together in those early years and borrowing from each other later on.

Besides, their find on In My Life was hardly conclusive

• Of all Lennon-McCartney songs, “In My Life” has probably garnered the greatest amount of speculation about its true author. Rolling Stone magazine considered it to be the 23rd greatest song of all time (Rolling Stone, 2011). Our model produces a probability of 18.9% that McCartney wrote the verse, and a 43.5% probability that McCartney wrote the bridge, with a large amount of uncertainty about the latter.

43.5 chance of the Bridge being Paul, 56.5% it being John is not something that is definitive. It actually suggests involvement, which is what their conclusion was but too many articles seemed to have ignored that part of the paper

• Thus, a conclusion by our model is that the verse is consistent with Lennon’s songwriting style, but the bridge less so. The bridge having a probability that McCartney wrote the song closer to 0.5 may be indicative of their collaborative nature, as suggested by Lennon, of this part of the song.

Should also be noted that they found the Lennon song with the most chance of being Paul's was She Said She Said with a 0.836%, while Dr Robert (a song that John in some interviews claim Paul helped) gets a tiny 0.012% of it being Paul's.

 

All I was doing was asking you to clarify what you meant and then I followed up by asking what 'several' songs you were talking about.

I'm sorry you feel that way. Your post was not clear to me, I thought I was answering what you wanted to know. Please don't take this personally.

I've given you some, but you don't seem to have liked those. The truth is there is not going to be many because, as I said to you in one of my first replies, John and Paul's accounts are pretty similar. There is not a lot of room for Paul to surprise because for the 200 plus songs they wrote they are pretty much in agreement.

John and Paul, for the most part, don't really disagree. That is why I asked you for examples and the ones you gave I showed that there is not actually disagreement between the authors.

 

IIRC, the other Beatles song over which there was the most disagreement about authorship is "Eleanor Rigby." But for fear of running afoul of certain posters, I'll leave it to others to fill in the details about that one.

 

Yeah, according to a majority of accounts, (Paul, Pete Shotton) John was dismissive of the song and Paul just went to other people and asked for lyrics which made John jealous and think that anybody could be his collaborator, explaining why he claimed more of the song than he actually wrote.

 

?

 

It does indeed. Davies is with the two of them as they're bouncing around ideas for the song. I think Cynthia is there too. Wish I could have been there.

 

Again, they are at times in agreement, at times not. Paul says the song is 80-20 his.

• "John helped me on a few words but I’d put it down 80-20 to me, something like that.”

John in later interviews describes the song like this

• “’Eleanor Rigby’ was Paul’s baby, and I helped with the education of the child.”

However, in earlier interviews he claimed he wrote a lot more

• “Both of us. I wrote a good lot of the lyrics, about 70 per cent.”

This was from the 1970 Rolling Stone interview after a discussion with Allan Klein

• If Paul was really the main factor in the making of records—I mean, if things were really going to fall apart without him—I needed to know that and be able to deal with it. It turned out, of course, that John had written most of the stuff. He’d forgotten a lot of what he’d contributed and had assumed, say, on ‘Michelle’, that because Paul sang lead, Paul had written it. Well, John wrote the entire middle eight for ‘Michelle’ and 60 or 70 percent of the lyric on ‘Eleanor Rigby’. He just didn’t remember till I sat him down and had him sort through it all.

To me it suggests that Klein may have had John talk up his involvement and John went along with it.

Pete Shotton, John's best friend who was at John's house the time Paul was showing the band what he had so far, has this to say about John's claims

• "Maybe my great suggestion hadn’t been so great after all…Though John was to take credit in one of his last interviews, for most of the lyrics, my own recollection is that ‘Eleanor Rigby’ was one ‘Lennon-McCartney’ classic in which John’s composition was virtually nil.”

And here is George Martin's quotes on the authorship of the song when asked

• “I had assumed that it was all Paul, in fact I do remember, actually at the recording, Paul was missing a few lyrics and wanting them, and going round and asking people, ‘What can we put in here?’ and Neil and Mal and I were coming up with suggestions…pretty petty, really. Everyone contributed things occasionally.”

We also have George claiming he added a lyric to the song in an interview when he was responding to John's anger about Taxman.


My understanding of the song is that Paul had the music, something that all parties (including Donovan who Paul played an early version of the song to) all agree, on and had the basis of the lyrics. However the lyrics were far from finished and at both a party, were everyone was likely stoned, and in the studio he was asking other people what they thought and for them to make suggestions. So he had assistance with the lyrics, but John's claim of 70% seems suspect.

I have been in meetings were multiple people have taken credit for something I have thought of (or I have taken credit for something they have), as in Brainstorming sessions people will often come up with the same idea. Include drugs into the mix and I'm not surprised there are multiple accounts of who wrote what when talking about the song.

In this case in regards to the lyrics I think we can say that both John's claim of 70% of the lyrics and Paul's claim of only being helped on a few words to be wrong.

 

Sorry, more of the song, spelling error

 

The OP asked if the arson interpretation was well known. I said that yes, it was well known. I then included yet another interpretation, something that the OP could either ruminate on or discard.

What is there to get about Lola? That he took home a man who he initially assumed was a woman? That, in the end, he was glad he was man or (alternately) that the cross dresser was glad that the protagonist was a man? It's a beautiful lyric - that doesn't end in violence, rage or disappointment. No malice in Lola. Possible (even probable) malice in Norwegian Wood.

 

I really didnt expect this thread to blow up after months of it being dead. Thanks guys for all your insights!

 

Not saying it's true, but I thought I heard once that Dylan thought Lennon stole the melody/tune from a acetate of dylan song demos going around being offered for recording.

On Blonde on Blonde, he titles it "4th time around", slyly referencing the steal.

 

Was it not some kind of game between them? Like trading messages?

 

...yea...now that you mention it, I believe so.

 

I always thought John wakes up in the morning, she's gone, so he lights a joint. "So I lit a fire, Norwegian wood, isn't it good...". Done it myself a few times...

 

The title "Fourth Time Around" was supposedly Dylan's way of needling Lennon, who he had thought had taken the melody for Norwegian Wood.

 

I thought it was the recycling of the chord progression rather than the melody. Don't quote me on that though

 

Yes, I know at least some of the stories. I find this story of theft perfectly possible. I just did not want to go into speculation, because that is just tat - we do not know. However, as the similarity of both songs is striking and both guys seem to quite, how to put it without hurting sensitive fans (actually I am one of them), so both Lennon and Dylan seem like quite ruthless guys (at least in that time period) who liked to play it rough and like to present themselves like that. So it's not very likely to me that one of them would have given such obvious opporutnity to be seen as some "whining snowflake" (if it was Dylan who is showing his feelings towards the thief). So I rather take it as a game of mutual respect and teasing. I guess they both knew that each of them was not afraid to take something existing and make it his own. I am not sure if I express myself well enough. (And I certainly hope not to inspire another flame. I really like their music.)