Off The Beatle Track

Is Revolver The Beatles’ death album? I count 7 songs on Revolver that mention death–including one that appears to, but probably doesn’t:

1. On* Taxman, George offers “my advice for those who die: declare the pennies on your eyes.”
2. On Paul’s Eleanor Rigby, the title character “died in the church and was buried along with her name.”**
3. On Love You To, George sings, “Love me while you can, before I’m a dead old man.” But is this really about a dead man? More below.
4. On Here, There and Everywhere, Paul sings, “Each one believing that love never dies.” That’s not really about death, but it is a mention.
5. On She Said She Said, John sings about a woman who said, “I know what it’s like to be dead.” That woman, of course, was the actor and director Peter Fonda.***
6. On For No One, Paul observes, confusingly, “When she says her love is dead you think she needs you.” (Um, no, in fact, I wouldn’t think that at all. Quite the opposite, in fact.) An added bonus: an early title of the song was Why Did It Die?
7. On Tomorrow Never Knows, John sings, “It is not dying. It is not dying.” The song also includes the line, “Ignorance and hate may mourn the dead.” Since Tomorrow Never Knows was based on The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on The Tibetan Book of the Dead, it probably “wins” the death contest.

Half of the songs on Revolver mention death. When it was released in 1966, Ringo was 26, John was 25, Paul was 24, and George was 23. The album with the second highest number of references to death or dying was Revolver’s predecessor, Rubber Soul (1965), with four songs: In My Life, Girl, What Goes On, and Run for Your Life.

Love You To

Let’s look at Love You To more closely. Is any song in The Beatles’ catalog more consistently referred to incorrectly? “Love To You” and “Love You Too” are two of the most common misrepresentations.

In my favorite scene in A Hard Day’s Night, George wanders into a marketing or advertising office.**** An ad exec hands George some shirts, which the exec calls “clothes for teenagers.” George says, “I wouldn’t be seen dead in them. They’re dead grotty.” Two uses of “dead” in two sentences! Anyway, the first “dead” clearly means “not alive,” and the second is an intensifier commonly used in Liverpool that means “very” or “extremely.”

Alun Owen, the screenwriter, grew up in Liverpool. “Grotty,” of course, is an abbreviated form of “grotesque” that Owen seems to have invented for the film.

So back to Love To You, er, Love You To. “Dead old man” borders on being paradoxical; one can be either dead or old, but not both simultaneously. “Love me while you can, before I’m a dead old man” could mean that the singer wants the object of his affection to love him either before he’s dead or before he’s too old, but in context I suspect it means something like “Love me now, while I’m young, as opposed to when I’m very old.” George’s line is much more succinct than my attempt at an explanation.

Let me know your thoughts on life, death, and Revolver at beatletrack@gmail.com.

* Would you use “in” or “on” when talking about songs? I tried using each one and decided that “on” sounds better. But I’m not convinced.

** Are Eleanor Rigby and Maxwell’s Silver Hammer the only Beatles’ songs in which characters die? Did only Paul kill his darlings?

*** Would you surprised to learn that Peter Fonda’s middle name was Henry? Or that he died on August 16–2019–the same month and date on which Babe Ruth (1948), Elvis Presley (1977), Aretha Franklin (2018), and Michael Parkinson (2023) died?

**** George has the best lines in the movie, when offering his opinion about Susan, the ad agency’s “resident teenager”: “She’s a drag. A well-known drag. We turn the sound down on her and say rude things.” The way he pronounces “drag” reminds me of how he pronounced “brackets” on the BBC.