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Reviewed by Ian MacDonald, in Revolution in the Head: This fascinating Lennon song, probably written during his holiday in May, occupied the evening session of 1st June. A personal favourite of his, it was based on the descending chords of Del Shannon's 1961 No. 1 'Runaway', though loosely enough to be unnoticeable except to other guitarists. Starting, as it ends, with an irresolute swing from A major to A minor (a triplet plus a dislocating push which recurs in both the bridge and the middle section), I'LL BE BACK, is a melancholy essay in major/minor uncertainty mirrored in the emotional instability of its lyric. The most unorthodox thing Lennon had yet written, it has no real chorus, being constructed as a twelve-bar verse in two equal sections (shortened to six bars in its final reprise), a six-and-a-half bar bridge, and a nine-and-a-half bar middle featuring a characteristic chromatic descent [1]. Despite all this, and as so often with Lennon's more bewildering constructions, the whole rings totally true, being his deepest emotional expression to date. |
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With its warmly resonant acoustic backing track, I'LL BE BACK is driven by a swinging beat loosened by a cross-rhythm of flamenco-style half-time triplets [2]. Lennon is harmonised by McCartney in shifting major and minor thirds, resolving on a Picardy third at the end of the first and second verses. (Someone - McCartney or Harrison - holds the upper E of the harmony throughout.) The singing could have been subtler and the harmony is at points sufficiently recondite that McCartney's pitching wobbles, but as a whole this is one of the most concise and integrated songs The Beatles had so far created. Fading away in tonal ambiguity at the end of A Hard Day's Night, it was a surprisingly downbeat farewell and a token of coming maturity. |
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Posted: 27 mrt 2011