Exactly 3 years ago today I decided I needed to do something to help my family and friends cope with the debilitating stress of the Covid pandemic. So, I turned to my beloved Beatles to provide a daily uplift, a brief vacation from the worry and uncertainty that came with Covid, by sending a song, its back story, and some words of encouragement to persevere. It became a thing – I kept doing it daily for most of the rest of 2020 until I had run through every Beatles song that I could find. Along the way, I also received significant encouragement to transform the daily messages into a book.
When We Find Ourselves in Times of Trouble
The ebook, now available at www.amazon.com, is called When We Find Ourselves in Times of Trouble: The Beatles (All their songs with encouraging words for challenging times). Truth be told, I hope you’ll consider buying it, and encourage friends and loved ones to buy it, too [As George Harrison said about “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” when Lennon and McCartney weren’t paying any attention to it, “I knew the song was pretty good.”]. The book is pretty good, too, but if you would rather patiently wait to hear and read about all the songs, they will appear daily on my Facebook page [https://www.facebook.com/tim.hatfield.3914], starting now. We still need hope and encouragement, right? I think the Beatles can help, and I wish you and yours well.
Love, love, love, Tim Hatfield
“Nowhere Man” from Rubber Soul
Rubber Soul – Nowhere Man
John Lennon wrote this song when he was struggling, as was Paul McCartney, to write new material for the album that eventually became Rubber Soul.
Lennon was working at home in Weybridge, feeling isolated and unproductive. In his biography All We are Saying, David Sheff quoted Lennon’s recollection of that time:
I’d spent five hours that morning trying to write a song that was meaningful and good and I finally gave up and lay down. Then “Nowhere Man” came, words and music, the whole damn thing, as I lay down.
So, at least at that moment, it was Lennon himself who was going nowhere, doing nothing. But something beautiful came of it, indeed. In the studio in October 1965, John, Paul, and George began with the harmonious a cappella introduction, John double-tracked his lead vocal, and the group pestered the recording engineers to make the guitar sound as trebly as they could. Add to that George and John’s tandem guitar solo, followed by the one perfect little note that sounded like a bell, and you have the makings of a beautiful song. It remained in the Beatles’ on-stage repertoire, too, all the way to their last concert performance in San Francisco’s Candlestick Park in late August of 1966.
There must be moments while enduring the uncertainties of the hard times in our lives that we all feel like we, too, have been stopped in our tracks. It’s up to us to persevere, though, until we ourselves or someone else lends us a hand.
When We Find Ourselves in Times of Trouble: The Beatles: All Their Songs with Encouraging Words for Challenging Times
KINDLE (OR DOWNLOAD THE FREE APP TO READ ON YOUR LAPTOP)
This book addresses all the songs of the Beatles, from their earliest demos to Abbey Road, in a conversational, accessible format. Special attention is devoted to the band’s creative process and its influence on and synergistic relationship with the culture at large. The book’s genesis was the author’s hope that a daily Beatles song could provide a brief respite from the significant stress and uncertainty caused by the coronavirus pandemic, and beyond that, from the challenges of any personally difficult time – our times of trouble.
