Beathoven

Studying the Beatles

Because

Songs

Home

Mail


(c) Ian Hammond 1999
All rights reserved

Without going into a detailed analysis here are some brief notes:

• Sevenths form the apex of each arpeggio
• The 2- on d75-2- is a fingering mistake
• The phrase seems to start on d75-
• The bass line is c-d-eb-d-c
• The opening diminished chord is not on the flat supertonic
• The repeated C minor sounds like it wants to go major

Lennon plays the progression in C minor. The sequence is summarized below: The chord enclosed in brackets is sometimes omitted. The inner bass plays the same role as the inner bass of Because.

The prominent G7-Ab progression is reminiscent of the A7-G#7 change in I'm So Tired and A7-Ab7-G7-F#7 progression in Sexy Sadie. All the major chords have sevenths, which reminds me again of Sexy Sadie.

Backwards Chord Progression
Commentators are skeptical about Lennon's backwards Moonlight origins or leave the issue open:

• Mellers believes that the progression is the "right way around"
• O'Grady agrees with Mellers
• MacDonald ordains that Lennon's backwards claim is erroneous (and
  points us to O'Grady for the reasons)
• Riley believes Lennon's story "may make good copy…"
• Kozinn and Coleman believe the pattern was subsequently altered
• Pollack is skeptical that a believable line can be drawn, however notes that most chords in Because are present in the Moonlight.
• Everett points to the general similarities, calling it a recomposition of Beethoven's piece saying perhaps it borrowed a backward chord structure.

We must first ask a simple question: What are we looking for?

Those who expect to go to the score of the Moonlight and find the full, unaltered Because progression in reverse will be disappointed. Lennon does not say that he copied and retained a chord sequence verbatim. He wrote the chords around the backward progression.  Ono states clearly that the derivation is "not exact".

Most Lennon quotes and Ono's quote above indicate that the song was only partly based on a backward Moonlight progression. When Lennon based other songs on adaptations he took only a brief phrase (e.g. Run For Your Life, Come Together, Grow Old With Me) to act as a seed. 

So, let us assume that we are looking for a partial sequence, which may have been altered and extended.

Below is one possible evolution of the chord progression with some evidence for each step of the transformation. I do not maintain that the steps I show are those Lennon took, only that this is a possible set of steps.

To make the comparison more readable, chords in this section have been transposed a semitone down, to c minor, and I have reduced chords to simpler forms (thus the second chord, d75-, is written as f6).

We can summarize Lennon's progression as:

Examining the Moonlight backwards, we start the end. The first half dozen chords are repetitions of the final G-c close and are not interesting (except for the diminished chord buried in the G79-):

The next passage of chords is more interesting. Ignoring the details of inversions we have:

If we delete the chords which are repeated within the sequence, we arrive at something close to the start of Lennon's sequence:

Now, compare these with Stay In Bed and Because:

There is a core identity for those first five chords from the Moonlight. These five chords could give Lennon most of his verse, more than enough to define the mood of the song. Apart from some shading only the link (Db db-) need be added.

Supporting evidence that the Ab7/Ab6/Db/db- section was added later comes from Stay In Bed fragment which also lacks this component:

While not conclusive, the fragment demonstrates that the earlier form was close to the derivation made from the backwards analysis. By the way, I did this backwards analysis before I had access to the Stay In Bed fragment.

Additionally, the fragment shows some extensions in an early form:

• Lennon sometimes moves from Ab7 to G7 and sometimes from Ab7 to c minor. In the final version he adapts the Ab7-G7 to Ab7-A6 and retains the Ab-c progression.
• The opening f diminished chord is retained in the link section.

Incidentally, the phrasing of Stay In Bed seems to position the f6 chord as the first chord of the sequence!

A counter argument is fairly simple, and would run something like this:

"Look, a c|f6|G7 sequence in a C minor piece is to be expected. All you have of any significance is the G7|Ab7+ sequence and that's not much". 

Basically, I agree (with my own counter argument). As stated above, this sequence is a possibility only.


A Different Evolution
While the Backwards Analysis presented above is quite logical there is conflicting evidence that I present here in terms of an alternative evolution.

The pattern Lennon plays on the guitar sounds much more like a Bach pattern than a Beethoven pattern. There is a well guitar prelude based on a Bach piece with a similar figure. That piece was written in C minor, the key we hear Lennon using in Stay In Bed. 

Lennon says that he wrote Because immediately after hearing Ono play the Beethoven piece. However, the date of that report seems to post-date Stay In Bed.

Thus, let's speculate:

1. Lennon initially wrote the pattern for Stay In Bed on guitar. It may have been based on a Bach piece.

2. Later, he used the basic pattern to record Stay In Bed with Ono.

3. Later, he heard Ono play the Beethoven piece and asked her to play some of the chords. He then noticed the similarity between the Beethoven chords and the Stay In Bed progression.

4. He took the Stay In Bed progression and reworked it for Because.



The Flat Supertonic
Lennon's D major chord corresponds closely to Beethoven's favorite Neapolitan flat supertonic. What's more, Lennon even plays it in the idiom's preferred first inversion.

How Lennon arrived at the chord is immaterial. His decision to retain may have been strengthened by Beethoven's introduction to the Moonlight (the D/f# is the flat supertonic):

Beyond that we would need to make assumptions that could not be sustained about Lennon's general knowledge of Beethoven.


The Inversions
Lennon, like many good composers, knew how to erase. Many of the demo's for the White Album reveal wonderful little details, particularly in the intro/coda area, which Lennon simply dropped for the final version. 

Stay In Bed used a number of chord inversions. Lennon may have associated these with the Moonlight (the backwards section he worked on has a number of second inversions). However, most were dropped in the final. The bootleg demo for Love reveals even more inversions, all of which were erased (along with a Bb chord opening the bridge).


The Melody
Does Lennon's opening melody remind you of anything: it's composed of the three tones G#, C# and E. He begins by accentuating the G#-E sixth, an interval that figures prominently in the piece.

How does Beethoven's piece begin? With the three notes G#, C#, E that more or less define the distinctive texture of the entire piece.


Beathoven?
The Yoko Ono quotation that opened this article concludes as follows:

In fact, the Chord Progression as such does not have the prominence in classical music that it has in Rock. Few Beethoven chord patterns are as memorable or as well formed as Because. The sequence of chords opening the second movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony or the last movement of Brahms' fourth symphony are exceptions that prove the rule.

This is not to say that chords and chord sequences are not important in classical music. Rather, it's to say that they live in the background rather than in the forefront of that music. On the other hand, for many Rock songs the chord sequence is the primary building block. Most Beatle songs are recognizable simply as chord patterns. 

Just as the initials L.S.D. in the title of Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds diverts us from the obvious fact that the song, with or without title, is soaked in L.S.D., so the reverse-chord issue diverts us from the obvious in Because: the clear part writing, the arpeggios, the flat supertonic, that enharmonic change, the unsyncopated melody, the chromatic movement etc: all these details shout classical, not just blindly imitated, but rather abstracted into Lennon's pop-rock style. 

We see possible references to Bach (the arpeggios), the music of the romantics (the bridge), Richard Strauss (the 2001 chords), in fact a whole potpourri of classical sources.

Because is Lennon's homage to Beethoven/Classics in the same way Come Together is a nod to Chuck Berry, or Yer Blues is to Elvis/Blues. A very clean job which I hope would have pleased Ludwig.


References
The Beatles' recordings are found on Abbey Road and Anthology 3. The Hal Leonard 1993 The Beatles: Abbey Road, the Wise Publications' Complete Beatles Scores provide the most accurate transcriptions of Because. Most of the scores of Because are surprisingly good. 

Stay In Bed: on Lennon/Ono's Wedding Album, track 2 at 22.10.00. The transcription is mine.

The Bach prelude and the Moonlight Sonata are both available in midi format at http://www.prs.net/beethovn.html 

Because by Guy d'Hardelot is probably still available in sheet music form (I found it among a whole stack of old music I had).

Alan Pollack (http://rmb.simplenet.com) and Walt Everett (The Beatles As Musicians and Concert Music, Rock And Jazz Since 1945) have both published analyses. Everett's contribution to Concert Music... includes a full transcription of the song. Both recognize the extended structure of coda (Walt uses the term hypermeasures for my term overlays). 

Acknowledgements
My thanks to Alan Pollack for sending me the O'Grady quotes and asking the initial question about the origin of Because that prompted this series, many moons ago.