markus heuger's
beabliography

Beabliography

Summary 0333

Heinonen, Yrjö, (1995), "Michelle, ma belle — lauluntekeminen psyykkisten ristiriitojen sovittajana."In": Jaakko Erkkilä and Yrjö Heinonen (eds.), Teoksessa Avaa mielesi musiikille! Kohti tutki muspohjaista musiikkiterapiaa. Jyväskylä: Jyväskylän yliopiston musiikkitieteen lai, 1995; and in: Yrjö Heinonen (1995), Elämyksestä ideaksi — ideasta musiikiksi. Sävellysprosessin yleinen malli ja sen soveltaminen Beatles-yhtyeen laulunteko-ja äänitysprosessiin. Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskykä, 1995 (Jyväskylä Studies in the Arts, 48 — Ph.D. Dissertation). [Abstract and Summary] Translated as: "Michelle Ma Belle — Songwriting as coping with inner conflicts." In: Yrjö Heinonen, Tuomas Eerola, Jouni Koskimäki, Terhi Nurmesjärvi and John Richardson (eds.), Beatlesstudies 1. Songwriting, recording, and style change. Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä (Department of Music, Research Reports 19), 1998, 147-159.

This is study III of Heinonen's thesis. It was shown in study I that in the case of "Michelle" Lennon and McCartney integrated musical material from various sources into a new and quite coherent whole. In study III it was assumed that McCartney (who was the main writer of "Michelle") integrated certain personal experiences into new configurations during the compositional process of "Michelle", as well as during the compositional process of certain other songs, mentioned below. Following Freud (1981) and Solomon (1990), three events (impulses or situations) were distinguished as underlying these experiences: (1) a remote event — the death of McCartney's mother in October 1956; (2) a recent event — the temporary break-up of McCartney and his girlfriend Jane Asher in autumn 1965; and (3) an immediate impulse — the hurry to complete the Rubber Soul album in October 1965 in order to get it to the Christmas markets. The aim of the study was to explore the way in which these biographical facts are connected with each other. The study consists of five partial studies, as follows.

The genesis of Michelle

The first task was to describe the stages of the writing and recording process of "Michelle", which may be summed up as follows: (1) the melody of the A section and the idea for the guitar accompaniment (McCartney, about 1960-62); (2) the lyrics for the A section (McCartney with Ivan Vaughan's wife, October 1965); (3) the writing of the B section and working-out the AABA form (McCartney with a little help from Lennon, October-November 1965); (4) grasping the overall form and arrangement (McCartney with the other members of the Beatles and producer George Martin, October-November 1965); (5) recording (the Beatles and George Martin, who told George Harrison to write a new guitar solo on the basis of a motif provided by Martin himself, November 3rd 1965); (6) mixing (George Martin, November 9th and 16th 1965). It may be concluded that the compositional process of "Michelle" follows quite faithfully the typical process sketched in study II. It is also possible to differentiate an old memory (the "French" song written years before) and a new situation (the hurry to write more songs for Rubber Soul album) in the Freudian (1981) sense. Though it is obvious that the hurry provided the immediate impulse, it seems reasonable to assume that a deeper motive was based on Lennon's and McCartney's awakening desire to write nostalgic songs — especially about their childhood and youth (cf. "In My Life", "Yellow Submarine", "Strawberry Fields Forever", "Penny Lane").

Songwriting as a part of a mourning process

It is common knowledge that McCartney and Asher had recurrent quarrels because Asher wanted to carry on with her career and was not willing to be only a housewife. In 1965 these quarrels led to a temporary break-up and the song "I'm Looking Through You" (Rubber Soul) was written as a reaction to the situation mentioned above. In this study it is assumed that many other songs McCartney wrote in 1965-66 are also autobiographical in this sense. More accurately, it is assumed that the themes of these songs — according to the order in which they were recorded — reflect emotions and reactions typical of the different stages of the mourning process. These stages are (1) shock, (2) longing, (2) aggression, (4) emptiness, (5) coping, and (6) creating something new. The stages follow each other in this order, but they always overlap to some degree. The procedure was as follows. All the lyrics of the McCartney songs recorded by the Beatles during February 1965 to June 1966 were examined. A numerical value (0-6) was given to each song according to the stage of the mourning process its lyrics were assumed to represent. These values were compared with a theoretical (mathematical) model developed by the author, representing the different stages of the mourning process. The model gives an expectation value (ascending steadily from 0 to 6 as a function of time) to each of the songs depending on its writing and recording time. The correlation of the values of the song themes to the expectation values given by the model is 0,88. The correlation is statistically significant at the confidence level 0,1 % (N = 19). It may be concluded that is reasonable to assume that McCartney was dealing with his complex relationship to Asher in many of these songs, and that they are autobiographical in this sense.

McCartney's oedipal songs

It is obvious that in certain songs McCartney was also dealing with his relationship to his mother, who died in 1956. In the literature the following songs are considered as oedipal: "And I Love Her" (1964), "Yesterday" (1964-65), "Lady Madonna" (1967), and "Let It Be" (1968-70). In this study two more songs were added to this set: "Michelle" (1960-62, 1965) and "The Long And Winding Road" (1968-70). In psycho-analytical theory, oedipal dependency means a man's affection for his mother and his fear of losing her. For an adolescent, losing one's mother is one of the most devastating experiences one can imagine. Growing apart from one's mother is always agonizing. However, the mother herself can do much to alleviate the pain. When an adolescent loses his mother there is a double loss, as it were, and the mother can in no way alleviate the pain. The loss of a loved one does not only cause an immediate trauma, but also serious fixations in the later relationships of the loser. However, loss may also motivate a person to make a major achievement, often in some creative form. This is undoubtedly true in the case of McCartney. In this study it was assumed that the death of his mother Mary also caused fixations in McCartney's later relationships — especially with Jane Asher. It was shown that the writing and recording time of all the oedipal songs mentioned above coincide with a crucial event in McCartney's relationship with Asher. Both "And I Love Her" and "Yesterday" were written immediately after McCartney started to stay overnight in Asher's house while in London (this happened in late 1963, and both songs were obviously written in January 1964). "Michelle" is one of the songs examined in the previous study, and thus also associated with the temporary break-up in 1965. "Lady Madonna" was obviously written in January 1968, only a few weeks after McCartney and Asher were engaged to be married (this was on Christmas Day 1967). Finally, both "Let It Be" and "The Long And Winding Road" were written about two months after the final break-up of the couple. Thus, the oedipal dependency seems to go hand in hand with the crucial decisions and crisis' of the most important love affair of the early adulthood of McCartney.

The nostalgic aspects of Michelle

Besides being an oedipal song "Michelle" was also regarded as a link in the chain of nostalgic songs written by Lennon and McCartney. Melodic invention (in general) is assumed to be based on the transformation and recombination of various kinds of fragments stored in long-term memory. In the case of nostalgic music, a certain musical fragment is assumed to come into the composer's mind because the words of that musical phrase express what the composer is thinking or feeling at that moment. On this basis, the latent meaning of a nostalgic composition may be investigated as follows. The researcher has to (1) search out and study the musical models of the song (a method for doing this is described in study I), and (2) compare the lyrics of these models with the lyrics of the nostalgic song in question. If both of the basic assumptions are correct, the lyrics of the models (as a whole) should reflect the emotional state of the nostalgic song at the time of writing it. The writing time or currency of the model song may also function as a key to the nostalgic experience behind the song. The first stage of the study (the search for the musical models) was based on the results of study I. In order to get to the roots of the experiences behind "Michelle", the writing times and currencies of the assumed or known model songs were explored. It was shown that the models were current during four periods: (1) 1935-55 — before the death of Mary McCartney ("Summertime", "All The Things You Are", "Les Feuilles Mortes", which is known in English as "Autumn Leaves"); (2) 1956-58 — in the year of the death of Mary McCartney and immediately after it ("Long Tall Sally", "I Put A Spell On You", "All I Have To Do Is Dream"); (3) 1960-62 — during the Hamburg years and the time of writing of the A section of "Michelle" ("Samba De Uma Nota So", "A Taste Of Honey"), and (4) 1964-65 — immediately before the temporary break-up of McCartney and Asher and at the time when "Michelle" was finished ("Chim Chim Cher-ee"). It is worth mentioning that "Long Tall Sally", "A Taste Of Honey", and "I Put A Spell On You" were also current in 1965 — the year "Michelle" was finished, recorded, and published. Thus, they may all be considered as plausible retrieval cues in the sense defined in the theory of episodic memory. The music and the lyrics of "Michelle" and its assumed/ known model songs were compared in the last partial study.

Michelle as regressive escape from reality

In fact, the last part of study III was a psycho-analytic interpretation of the relationship of Michelle to its assumed or known model songs. The music and the lyrics of Michelle were considered to represent the manifest or conscious level of the singer while the music and the lyrics of the model songs were considered to represent the latent or subconscious level. In certain sections of Michelle the text changes while the music remains the same, and there are also sections without any text at all. Thus ambiguous and contradictory relationships exist between different sections with regard to the text and music. Criteria developed by Gasparov (1982) was used in order to explore these relationships. Moreover, it was assumed — as is commonly done in psycho-analysis — that the intensity of a certain emotion (say, love) is directly proportional to the repression of its opposite emotions.

The overall mood of Michelle is conveyed in the instrumental intro. According to its model songs, it subconsciously represents a complex of contradictory emotions concerning social differences ("Chim Chim Cher-ee"), unfaithfullness ("Long Tall Sally"), and longing — back to the loved one ("Samba De Uma Nota So", "A Taste Of Honey") and to childhood ("Summertime"). In the first A section the singer says that the words 'Michelle, ma belle' go together well — of course meaning that the singer and Michelle are a perfect match. However, the subconscious model songs reveal that the togetherness is based on childhood wishes ("Summertime"), idealization and possessiveness ("All The Things You Are"), and the fear of losing the loved one ("Les Feuilles Mortes"). The second A section repeats the words of the first one but now in French. This seems to emphasize the significance of the French model song ("Les Feuilles Mortes") and thus also the fear of loss. During the opening bars of the first B section, the singer intensively affirms his love — an expression of a similarly intense repression of the opposite emotions. The subconscious model songs reveal that here the repression takes place through regression: by means of magic thinking ("I Put A Spell On You") and escape to dreams ("All I Have To Do Is Dream"). In the closing phrase the singer promises to "say the only words I [he] knows that you [Michelle] understand[s]". This is interpreted as representing an effort to cling to existing togetherness. However, the subconscious model songs are the same as in the intro (naturally enough, because the intro is based on the closing phrase of the B section). Hence, the closing phrase subconsciously represents the same contradictory complex as the intro.

The rest of the song is based on alternation of the B and A sections, respectively. With regard to the B sections, the intensity of the affirmation becomes stronger from section to section as the singer realizes the contradiction between his conscious affirmation and the subconscious emotions representing the opposite. A guitar solo based on the A section shows the togetherness/separateness problem in a distorted or dream-like fashion. Every single A and B section of the song ends with a cadence on V (which means that the home tonic is not reached, thus resulting in an unsatisfactory state). The coda offers a solution by ending on I, but the reprise of the guitar solo with its dreamlike quality speaks clearly for the final victory of regression.

Conclusions

It was shown that the writing and recording process of "Michelle" followed quite faithfully the typical songwriting and recording process of the Beatles described in study II. Furthermore, it was shown that "Michelle" was a link in three chains of McCartney or Lennon-McCartney songs: it was an oedipal song, a nostalgic song, and its writing was a part of the mourning process begun because the temporary break-up of McCartney and Asher and also expressed in several other McCartney songs written in the period 1965-66. If the interpretation given in the last partial study (which, in turn, is based on the previous studies) is valid, "Michelle" is a genuine and touching description of someone becoming aware of, but avoiding, a painful reality — in other words, "Michelle" is about repression. To what degree the counterpart of the singer in reality was McCartney, and to what degree the counterpart of 'Michelle' was really Jane Asher was left open in the study. However, it was concluded that "Michelle" was, in fact, based on personal living-through of emotional experiences similar to those conveyed through its music and lyrics (including the connotations with its model songs).