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Lady Madonna
Composer(s) : Lennon and McCartney
Year : 1968
Chords/Tabs: Lady Madonna
Notes on "Lady Madonna" (LM)
KEY A Major
METER 4/4
FORM Intro -> Verse -> Verse -> Bridge ->
Verse -> Verse (instrumental) -> Bridge -> (instrumental) ->
Verse -> Verse (instrumental) -> Bridge ->
Verse -> Outro (w/complete ending)
GENERAL POINTS OF INTEREST
Style and Form
- As stylistic hybrids go, this is quite a novel blend Paul's recently
much-favored pseudo-verismo slice-of-life portraiture with some of his
always much-favored and much stylized hard-driven semi-blues. When you
stop to think about it, you realize it had been quite a while, at this
point, since any of the Beatles had published a song as out-and-out
*rocking* as this one!
- The fast tempo and the short length of the verse make for a large form
here, in spite of the average song length.
- Also, a relatively large quotient of the track is taken up by
primarily instrumental interludes.
Melody and Harmony
- The tune leans heavily on the two bluesy scale notes of flat 3 (C natural)
and flat 7 (G natural). At the same time, subtle tension is created
by the tune's emphasis on the naturally occuring Major 6 in the verse
(that's F# as it appears, for example on the first syllable of the word
"manage") while the bassline at the end of the same section is allowed
to run roughshod over the flat 6 (F natural). You can hear this more
readily with your ears than I can hope to describe it in mere words.
- The home key of A Major is so heavily inflected by the melodic flat
(or "blue") 3rd that it becomes easy to effect a modulation to C Major
in the bridge by way of the parallel minor key of 'a.'
- A relatively small number of chords are used, with the most novel effect
coming from the end-of-verse cadence in which flat-VI and flat-VII (i.e.
F Major and G Major) are used to establish A Major amidst a host of
cross-relations; recall how A *Major* has a key signature of 3 sharps,
NONE of which appear in the flat-VI and flat-VII chords! By the same
token, the V chord of A Major (E) appears only at the end of each bridge.
Arrangement
- We have an unusual mix of the familiar and the novel here: the
rhythm track of piano, drums, and bass guitar with lead and backing
vocals, and hand claps on the one hand; and the nasal vocalizing into
cupped hands to approximate brass instruments, along with a cameo
appearance of some real saxaphones on the other.
- The bassline here rivals the tune itself for your melodic attention.
It is dominated, more or less throughout, by a saw-tooth ascending shape
that has an uncanny way of grabbing you from down under. Yes, this
upward spike tendency is nicely balanced out by that downward scale
at the start of the bridge, but even that is followed by yet another
persistently ascendent move. Better keep your legs crossed :-)
- The bassline riff of the verse is eventually given the melodic
foreground during the instrumental verse sections when it is doubled
by guitars and saxaphones, but if you look back to the beginning of the
song, you recognize that it's been there almost all along.
- And you want examples here of Beatles typical attention to detail?
- The intro starts off with just piano and drums. Entry of the bass
is held back until the first verse. In spite of whatever other
elements show up in the remainder of the track, the honors of the
brief outro are reserved for this simple trio.
- From the stereo mix, it sounds like two distinct drum tracks
are used: a metronome-like ride beat on the left, and a more
elaborate, nuanced treatment on the right; the latter entering
together with the bass at the end of the intro.
- Syncopated cymbal flashes appear on the third beat of the measure
in all three bridges. The same rhythmic emphasis is provided by
the hand claps in the two instrumental verses.
- All three of the bridges are finished off with a smooth topping
of lush vocal harmony and a momentary silencing of the steady
clock-ticking pulse.
- In the middle pair of verses, the bassline is doubled by guitar
in the sung verse, and saxaphones triple it in the instrumental.
Paul ends his own solo with a nice octave flip upwards.
- The second bridge is entirely instrumental and features a variation
on the sung tune scored for "nose horns," accompanied by a solo
saxaphone obligatto that, listened to in isolation, seems to have
little to do with the backing track in either melodic, harmonic,
or rhythmic terms! This bridge and the final one introduce a
little bit of an eigth-note guitar riff to glue the end of the
section to the verse that follows it.
- The doubling of the bassline and Paul's octave flip are repeated
in the third pair of verses.
- The third 3rd bridge, which is sung, uses the nose horns from the
instrumental bridge as part of the accompaniment.
- The final verse is the only place in the song where the saxaphones
triple the bassline during a section that is sung.
SECTION-BY-SECTION WALKTHROUGH
Intro
- The intro is eight very fast measures long, and covers one complete
instrumental-only exposition of what will be the verse section of the
song. This is fitting in light of the several instrumental patches
that pop up throughout the rest of the track.
|A |D |A |D |
A: I IV I IV
|A |D |F G |A |
I IV flat-VI flat-VII I
- The harmonic rhythmic is steady throughout with a deft touch of
acceleration as the section draws to a close.
Verse
- The verses are doubled up throughout except for the very end. You might
even say they're "tripled up" at the beginning, if you include the intro;
the latter effect bearing an interesting comparison with
"All You Need Is Love."
- The melodic content of the bassline riff merits special attention if
for no other reason than that it provides an object lesson in the
uneccessarily albeit perennially confusing science of musical orthography:
|A A B# C# |D D F# A |
The question you should ask is what the difference consists of,
after all, in whether you spell the third note of this riff as B#
or C natural.
The answer is that your choice of spelling should follow your
melodic "sense" of what's going on, which I'll be the first one
to admit is ambiguous:
- Do you experience that third note as an expressively decorative
appoggiatura that leans against the C# that follows it? (If so,
then B# is the so-called correct answer.)
- Or, perhaps, do you experience the transition of the 3rd to 4th
notes of this riff as a kind of minor/Major last-minute change of
heart? (If so, then C natural is probably a more correct answer.)
IMHO, the best answer is that this riff is inherently ambiguous to
the ear, a kind of musical pun, in which *both* answers would seem
to be equally correct, and at the same time, no less.
This riff, by the way, is hardly unique in the Great Lexicon of
Famous Musical Quotes. Consider the opening of Richard Strauss'
"Also Sprach Zarathustra;" the latter made into a ubiquitous
cultural readymade by its usage in the prologue to the "2001" film.
Bridge
- The bridge is 16 measures long, and is built out of a four phrase
pattern of ABAC:
chords |d | |G | |
bassline D C B A G F E D
C: ii V
|C | |a | |
C B A G A B C E
I vi
|d | |G | |
D C B A G F E D
ii V
|C |B half dim. |E |- |
I
a: III ii V4 ------------>3
- In the first half of this section, the harmony converges steadily
toward C Major, only to turn in toward its relative minor key of a
at the last minute. In the second half, the big finish is on an
E Major chord which is ambiguously the V chord of *either* A Major
or minor, and this nicely sets up the return of the Major home key
in the next verse.
- The harmonic rhythm is twice as slow as it was in the verse, and
we have that dramatic use of a 4->3 suspension over the last chord.
Outro
- The outro is a short and sweet reprise of an idea introduced at the
very end of the final verse.
- Try and sight-sing that chromatic lick in the last two measures, and
savor the way in which the movement of the outer two voices in parallel
tenths makes for such a cool-sounding cross-relation:
C# D Eb D C#
A B C-nat. B A
SOME FINAL THOUGHTS
- The lyrics are conspicuously clever. Friday night's arrival without
a suiticase, for example, is a blend of the abstract and concrete
reminiscent of a certain face kept in a jar by the door. Not to
mention those stockings which, pun-like, run just like a
child who has learned to tie his bootlace; wait a minute -- or
was it, "like pigs from a gun?"
- My favorite consistency-avoiding detail, though, remains the omittance
of Saturday from an otherwise complete listing of the days of the week.
Perhaps, in consequence of her great piety, This Lady rests on the
seventh; day, that is.
Regards,
Alan (awp@world.std.com)
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"... lying on the bed ..." 021797#127
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Copyright (c) 1997 by Alan W. Pollack
All Rights Reserved
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(c) 2024 Serge Girard
(c) Alan Aldrigde, The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics