In my view, “Blackbird,” a Beatles song written by Paul McCartney and released on the Beatles’ “White Album” in November, 1968, is one of his finest works. Here we see him rehearsing it in the the EMI’s Abbey Road Studios on the very day it was recorded: June 11, 1968. (The released version is here.)
A few notes on the song from Wikipedia:
McCartney explained on Chaos and Creation at Abbey Road that the guitar accompaniment for “Blackbird” was inspired by Johann Sebastian Bach’s Bourrée in E minor, a well-known lute piece, often played on the classical guitar. As teenagers, he and George Harrison tried to learn Bourrée as a “show off” piece. The Bourrée is distinguished by melody and bass notes played simultaneously on the upper and lower strings. McCartney said that he adapted a segment of the Bourrée (reharmonised into the original’s relative major key of G) as the opening of “Blackbird”, and carried the musical idea throughout the song. The first three notes of the song, which then transitioned into the opening guitar riff, were inspired from Bach.
The first night his future wife Linda Eastman stayed at his home, McCartney played “Blackbird” for the fans camped outside his house.
. . . Since composing “Blackbird” in 1968, McCartney has given various statements regarding both his inspiration for the song and its meaning. He has said that he was inspired by hearing the call of a blackbird one morning when the Beatles were studying Transcendental Meditation in Rishikesh, India, and also writing it in Scotland as a response to the Little Rock Nine incident and the overall civil rights movement, wanting to write a song dedicated to people who had been affected by discrimination.
You can listen to Bach’s Bourré here, but for the life of me I can’t hear the germ of “Blackbird” in it.
The sound is off at the beginning but starts 16 seconds in. There are a few other breaks in the sound.
It’s clear that the song was tweaked right up to the end, including the tempo, the pause, and the raising of the voice on the word “life” halfway into the song.
The guy speaking to John and Paul is of course George Martin, who contributed so much to the greatness of the group’s songs. Notice that Paul breaks into other songs from time to time, including Helter Skelter and Mother Nature’s Son, both also on the White Album. At about 6:15, Lennon tunes his guitar to McCartney’s, as if wanting to accompany him on Blackbird. But no accompaniment was needed.
Check out Macca’s shoes! The woman sitting in the corner and then next to McCartney is identified by a commenter:
This is McCartney at the apogee of his powers. The song is a work of genius. In all my life I will never figure out where the ability to produce songs like this comes from. All I can guess is that there’s a kind of neuronal wiring in such people that can turn thoughts into wonderful music.
You can watch this video: https://youtu.be/7UWkn55ByGM and see what part of the chord progression Sir Paul adapted from Bouree in E minor. You can hear it in the 4-chord intro to Blackbird, and it is more obvious AFTER seeing the video above.
As both a fan of McC and JSB, I also learned the Bouree in college (in the 70s), I also learned both. Fingers still remember bits of it.
The song is a masterpiece. If I were to draw up a Top Ten list of my favorite McCartney-led Beatles songs, it would be on the list along with “For No One” and “Penny Lane” and… Don’t get me started!
It is a marvel…and I too have been on a For No One kick lately. The other day you mentioned your favorite Paul albums (Ram, Band…, and Chaos…). These are my top three as well, though I’d put Chaos as the best solo album of all The Beatles. I’d also give Tug of War an honorable mention.
“You can listen to Bach’s Bourré here, but for the life of me I can’t hear the germ of ‘Blackbird’ in it.”
But you can certainly hear Jethro Tull.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pqxwXla3-Bw&t=1s&pp=2AEBkAIB
Of course, Ian Anderson and Tull played it pretty straight (with sycopation and variations).
I saw Tull last night and will see them again tonight. They played Bourree last night and probably will tonight. The piece consists of three parts A, B, and C, with repetition: AABCBC. The original Tull version (like in the video) has AA straight, then it is heavily varied for B and C, though the bass (except for the solo) is pretty much the same. For a long time now, live they’ve been playing the whole piece straight, primarily on keyboards and guitar, before launching into the album version.
Why did this piece influence both Ian Anderson and Paul McCartney? Because, like “Smoke on the Water” and “Stairway to Heaven”, it is a piece which essentially every guitarist learns relatively early on, which means that most versions are pretty bad. (The Bach piece is originally for lute, but guitar transcriptions are common; Bach also transcribed many of his own pieces.). Anderson heard someone practicing it over and over and thus had the idea of recording his own cocktail-lounge—jazz version. Paul and George used to play it, but early on sometimes goofed up at the beginning, which led to the opening of “Blackbird”. So “Blackbird” is loosely inspired by the Bach piece, while the Tull version is a jazzed-up cover.
Yes, influences can come from many places; check this one out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cn1sUIs5yeE
Longer version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzJJgSls5-U
Years ago whenever I played ‘Blackbird’ in the house, the cat’s ears and head would perk whenever the bird call comes later in the song like he thought something just flew in.
I guess out of all of the band’s discography, this has to be the most cat friendly song of them.
Thanks for posting this. One of my favorite songs.
I’ve played Blackbird on the guitar for >25 years. It is a great song. I play it nearly every time I pick up a guitar.
My understanding of the parallel with the Bach Bourrée in Em (which I also used to play on the guitar; it’s no longer under my fingers) is the intervals between the bass and melody notes throughout the song, which are 10ths and 11ths intervals. Also, throughout Blackbird (but not the Bourrée), there is an open G drone note played on the G string with the index finger on the up-beats (quarter note timing on the up-beats).
The melody notes and bass notes are “pinched” with the thumb and middle finger (melody all on the B and high e strings) and then the G-drone is picked on the off beats with the index finger.
I too struggle to see the real parallels. I think of it more as “inspired by” rather than directly related to. I’m amazed at how McCartney came up with the syncopated 1/8-note rhythm he uses through much of the song.
The beginning of “Blackbird” (before the voice enters) is parallel 10ths. “Bouree” doesn’t use parallel intervals; the two lines are in contrary motion. So there’s no connection between them (don’t feel bad that you don’t hear it, PCC(E) because it’s not really there) except for (1) whatever McCartney imagined in his head, and thank goodness he did, and (2) the great counterpoint in Blackbird, in the guitar part, starting with “take these broken wings,” which certainly recalls Bach in general but not “Bouree” in particular.
I love seeing creative people at work as in this video, when they are not performing to the camera. I liked the very first version he played better than the others, sometimes less polished is better. It is like a painter who goes around drawing or painting in a sketchpad, as references for some planned and well-polished oil painting. Quite often (especially in botanical art) the field sketches are far more wonderful than the finished work. For example see Margaret Mee’s botanical art.
I love the way Paul keeps anxiously looking back at George Martin for approval as he sings. I’ve never seen this expression in him. He usually exudes self-confidence. It is a testament to the importance of Martin in the Beatles’ music.
Creativity is fascinating. I don’t understand its relationship with determinism.
ISTM that physical determinism is not what creative people are referring to when they say things like “the first bars just came to me” or “that character would never say such a thing” or “the Muse gave it to me”. IMO the conscious I/me is a thin crust on top of a much larger sphere of non-conscious mental activity. Thus many things seem given/forced/determined from the PoV of I/me, who is thoroughly unaware of the processes and choices which constructed them.
This is independent of whether or not those processes and choices were physically determined, random, or supernatural.
Bourée is too fast to hear this if you don’t play guitar or can’t play by ear.
I’ll try a super-simple description using plain text:
First three sounds of each – simultaneous notes – diads – the stacked notes are sounded out simultaneously in order.. the formatting shifted them a bit :
Bourée:
High E-string : E ->F# ->G
Low E-string : G ->F#-> E
Blackbird :
B-string: B ———–>C->D
E-string : G->A-string: A->B
It’s not the exact same thing but it is definitely … hear-able with some practice. The voicings produce similar sounds with such a large interval between the bass and treble notes.
It might be a good beginner project to learn these three opening sounds from each piece on guitar.
If I think of some better way to describe it I’ll try to make an addendum.
Richard, and all the rest of you, I appreciated this so much. Thank you. And I’m sorry you all weren’t in my head when I wrote the book. Best to you all. Tim
“Blackbird” from The White Album
This is a Paul McCartney song – totally. He wrote it, and recorded it solo. Written on his farm in Scotland after the Beatles returned from their residence at the Maharishi’s ashram in India, he first performed it from the window of his home in London to a bunch of admirers who were hanging around in the street outside. And when he did go to the studio with it, Beatles all-purpose friend and roadie Mal Evans had the presence of mind to set up a microphone at McCartney’s feet to capture his foot tapping, the only percussion in this beautiful acoustic piece.
McCartney said that the melody was inspired by Bach’s Bouree in E minor:
Paul wrote this as a tribute to the Black American struggle for equality, and specifically told his biographer, Barry Miles, that the lyrics had a special meaning to him:
I had in mind a black woman, rather than a bird. Those were the days of the civil rights movement, which all of us cared passionately about, so this was really a song from me to a black woman, experiencing these problems in the States: “Let me encourage you to keep trying, to keep your faith, there is hope.” As is often the case with my things, a veiling took place so, rather than say “Black woman living in Little Rock” and be very specific, she became a bird, became symbolic, so you could apply it to your particular problem.
During the “dark black night” of Covid-19 people of color have paid a disproportionate price. The sentiments of this song can be taken to heart by all of us, though, as an entire nation has struggled to surmount the “dark black night” of the pandemic, hoping for our “moment to arise.”
From
When We Find Ourselves in Times of Trouble: The Beatles
(All their songs with encouraging words for challenging times)
By Tim Hatfield [now in paperback at http://www.amazon.com]
You did not read the post about this song, which says many of the things you do here, and gives identical links?