Fretful Friday

Fretful Friday

John and Paul playing their gee-tars.

Fretful Friday

Who can't appreciate a happy blues song? And who can't appreciate John Lennon playing lap steel guitar using a shotgun bullet casing as a bottleneck?

Fretful Friday

The song "This Boy" has been a longtime favorite of mine. Though a lot of critics dismiss it as "early Beatles fluff", I think it was one of the first songs that showed us the magic of what was to come.

Written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney in a hotel room, "This Boy" was the result of their desire to write a close-harmony song. Especially for John, a particular inspiration was the Smokey Robinson and the Miracles song “I’ve Been Good To You,” which has a similar chord pattern, melody and arrangement.

"This Boy" was the first song John and Paul wrote with a three-part harmony.
With John playing his now-iconic Gibson J160E, here they are performing it during their second appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show:

Fretful Friday

"You've Got To Hide Your Love Away is my Dylan period. It's one of those that you sing a bit sadly to yourself, 'Here I stand, head in hand...' I'd started thinking about my own emotions. I don't know when exactly it started, like I'm A Loser or Hide Your Love Away, those kind of things. Instead of projecting myself into a situation, I would try to express what I felt about myself, which I'd done in my books. I think it was Dylan who helped me realise that - not by any discussion or anything, but by hearing his work." ~ John Lennon

When recording the song, John messed up the lyrics, with the line in the first verse meant to be "feeling two foot tall". He sang it "feeling two foot small" by accident, but decided to leave it that way, saying "all the pseuds will love it".

The song was featured in the 1965 movie Help, and shows John playing his 12-string Framus "Hootenanny" guitar.




Recording You've Got to Hide Your Love Away- Anthology version:

Fretful Friday

John with his first guitar in 1957, a Gallotone Champion:




John bought this 3/4-sized guitar for about £10 after seeing an ad for it in a magazine. Knowing his Aunt Mimi (whom he lived with) would disapprove, he had it sent to his mother's house. She played banjo, so she showed John some songs. However, because a banjo has only 5 strings, John would play his guitar in the early days with his 6th string left slack.

This guitar currenly resides at the Boston Museum of Fine Art.

Fretful Friday

John and his Epiphone.. it's a beautiful thing.

In the song The End (from the Abbey Road album) Paul, George and John perform a rotating sequence of three, two-bar guitar solos. The solos begin approximately 14 seconds into this video and end just before the piano comes in. The first two bars are played by Paul, the second two by George, and the third two by John, then the sequence repeats.