"And Your Bird Can Sing": История, Смыслы и Запись Песни The Beatles

1966 Beatles song

Talese quoted a press release for Sinatra's upcoming TV special, which stated it was a show for those who were "tired of kid singers wearing mops of hair thick enough to hide a crate of melons", and he said Sinatra aimed to "communicate his talent to some rock and rollers – in a sense, he was battling The Beatles". Gould adds that while Lennon would have been amused to read about Sinatra having an assistant dedicated to maintaining his 60 "remarkably convincing" hairpieces, Lennon was piqued at the recognition afforded Sinatra, at the Beatles' expense, in the recent 1966 Grammy Awards. Singer Marianne Faithfull said the song was addressed to Mick Jagger and written about her since she was Jagger's girlfriend (or "bird" in English slang) at the time. This interpretation was proposed by journalist Richard Simpson, and others have cited it as an example of the perceived rivalry between the Beatles and Jagger's band, the Rolling Stones. According to Beatles biographer Steve Turner, Faithfull's interpretation is incorrect since she was not in a relationship with Jagger until later in 1966. Some writers have speculated that Lennon's lyrics were directed at Paul McCartney. Under the effects of the drug, McCartney declared that he knew the answer to the questions of existence and told Beatles roadie Mal Evans to write down any statements he made on the subject. McCartney was later dismayed to discover that, rather than the ingenious declarations he recalled, his realisations amounted to the phrase "There are seven levels." Photographer Robert Whitaker based his photo "Birdcage" on the song's lyrics. The cage was among the props assembled by Whitaker for the 25 March 1966 shoot that produced another photo – featuring the Beatles in butchers' coats and covered in dismembered dolls and raw meat – that was selected for the cover of the US LP Yesterday and Today.

"And Your Bird Can Sing" contains an extended harmony lead guitar melody played by Harrison and McCartney. The latter recalled that he and Harrison wrote the part during the recording sessions. McCartney also stated that he helped with the lyrics and attributed the song "80–20" to Lennon. The Beatles first recorded the song on 20 April 1966 at EMI Studios (subsequently Abbey Road Studios) in London. The arrangement was markedly similar to the Byrds' sound; it featured lush vocal harmonies and jangle style guitars, with Harrison playing his Rickenbacker 360/12 electric guitar. The group re recorded the song on 26 April. Whereas the first version was in the key of D major, the remake was played in E major, with the guitarists applying capos to allow for the two semitone adjustment. The band used Take 10 as their basic track before overdubs. The latter included McCartney's bass guitar and Ringo Starr adding cymbal and extra hi hat to augment his drum part. Since the group liked the stuttering bass notes that McCartney had played at the end of take 6, the latter portion was spliced onto the master to close the recording.

"And Your Bird Can Sing" was one of the three songs intended for Revolver that the Beatles reluctantly gave to Capitol Records for inclusion on the North American LP Yesterday and Today. The song was mixed for that purpose on 14 May. It was sequenced as the opening track on side two of the LP, which was released on 20 June in the United States after Capitol had been pressured into withdrawing Whitaker's "butcher sleeve" cover. The song was remixed on 6 June, towards the end of the Revolver sessions. "And Your Bird Can Sing" was sequenced as the second track on side two of the album and issued in the United Kingdom on 5 August. Its omission from the eleven song US Revolver ensured that Lennon was under represented on the LP. Since the three new songs on Yesterday and Today were all his, Capitol's version of Revolver included just two songs for which he was the principal writer. The Beatles did not perform any of the songs from Revolver during their August 1966 US tour. While acknowledging that several of the tracks would have been impossible to reproduce in concert, Unterberger says that guitar based songs such as "And Your Bird Can Sing" would have been easy to arrange for live performance. He views its omission as indicative of the band's mindset that touring had become a futile exercise but rues that they did not seek to regain enthusiasm by playing recent material that would have suited their stage act. Recalling the album's release in his 1977 book The Beatles Forever, Nicholas Schaffner commented that whereas the group's more traditional fans warmed to McCartney's new songs, "Lennon's numbers were a different kettle of fish entirely" due to their oblique lyrics. While he also viewed the music of "And Your Bird Can Sing" as a natural choice for live performance, relative to the more complex recordings on Revolver, he added:
But what was/is one to make of lines like "You say you've seen seven wonders / And your bird is green / But you don't see me ?" Perhaps John was still under the influence of Bob Dylan, who at the time seemed to take pleasure in confounding dissectors of his "message" with cryptic lyrics that made no sense at all.

In 2006, Mojo placed "And Your Bird Can Sing" at number 41 on its list of "The 101 Greatest Beatles Songs". In his commentary on the track, English academic Toby Litt admired its Indian drone quality and the raga influence in the guitar melody. He said that the riff was perhaps "the most baroque that pop music ever came up with", adding: "Slow it down and it could be a Bach chorale." The following year, Q magazine ranked the song at number 6 on its list "The 20 Greatest Guitar Tracks". In October 2008, Guitar World magazine ranked Harrison's playing on the song at number 69 on its list of the "100 Greatest Guitar Solos". In his 50th anniversary review for Revolver, Steve Marinucci of Billboard described "And Your Bird Can Sing" as "an incredibly ambitious song, highlighted by a superb guitar solo by George Harrison". Thomas Ward of AllMusic describes the song as one of the finest on Revolver. He writes that although Lennon was indifferent to the song and the lyrics were "probably nonsense", it's "wildly entertaining" and complements the vocal performances. Ward further praises Harrison's guitar playing, the "lovely" melody and the "unorthodox, yet ingenious bridge". Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone writes that despite Lennon's dislike of it, "And Your Bird Can Sing" is "one of his best songs ever", describing it as "scathing yet also empathetic and friendly".

"And Your Bird Can Sing" was used as the theme song for the Beatles' cartoon series during its third season. It was one of the 45 playable tracks included in the 2009 release of the music video game The Beatles: Rock Band. In addition to the song's lyric being among the most widely and diversely interpreted in the Beatles' discography, the Anthology 2 recording is one of the band's most celebrated outtakes. American guitarist Joe Walsh sought to master the solo on "And Your Bird Can Sing", believing that Harrison had played it in a single take. Walsh, who married the sister of Starr's second wife, Barbara Bach, said he only discovered that it consisted of two parts when discussing with Starr how he had spent years labouring over the solo. Walsh concluded, "I think I’m the only guy who can play it – including George." "And Your Bird Can Sing" was included on the Beatles' 2012 iTunes Store compilation Tomorrow Never Knows, which the band's website described as a collection of "the Beatles' most influential rock songs". In his commentary for Mojo, Litt identified the track as "the birth of all powerpop, from Big Star through Cheap Trick to Fountains of Wayne" and the inspiration for other artists that "use jangle to attack". Jim Reid of the Jesus and Mary Chain contributed a recording of the song to Revolver Reloaded, The magazine's editors commented that Reid's version suggests that Phil Spector would have been an ideal choice to produce "arguably the finest UK band of the '80s". Among the other artists who have covered "And Your Bird Can Sing" are the Flamin' Groovies, the Charles River Valley Boys, Spanky and Our Gang, the Jam, Guadalcanal Diary, Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs, Les Fradkin, R. Stevie Moore and I Fight Dragons.