THE BEATLES
537
on the
Beatles Second Album.
It's all cowboys and Indians by people
who have a lot of other games they want to play and who know
very well where home is and when to go there. Parody and self–
parody is frequent among the other groups in the form of persistent
stylization, but its object is almost always some cliched sentiment or
situation. Parody from the Beatles tends usually, and increasingly, to
be directed toward musical tradition and their own musical efforts.
This is at least one reason why "All You Need Is Love," recorded on
the reverse side of "Baby You're a Rich Man," is one of the most
important they have ever done, an indication, along with the Sgt.
Pepper album, of so sophisticated an awareness of their historical
achievements in music as to make it seem unlikely that they can
continue much longer without still further changes of direction even
more radical than their decision not to perform henceforth for live
audiences. "All You Need Is Love" is decisive evidence that when
the Beatles think about anything they think musically and that musical
thinking dictates their response to other things: to "love," in this
instance, to drugs and social manners in "Baby You're a Rich Man
Now" and throughout the Sgt. Pepper album.
I doubt that any of these subjects would in itself prove a suffi–
cient sustenance for their musical invention until first called forth and
then kindled by some musical idea. At this point in their career it is
impossible, given their and George Martin's musical knowledge and
sophistication, that the title "All You Need Is Love" should mean
what it would mean coming from any other group, namely hippie
or flower love. Expectations of complications are satisfied from the
outset: the repetition, three times and in a languorous tone, of the
phrase "love, love, love" might remind us of the song of the aging
Chaplin in
Limelight,
a song in which he keeps repeating the word
throughout with a pitiable and insistent rapidity. Musical subterfuge
of lyric simplicity occurs again when the title line, "all you need is
love," picks up a musical trailer out of the thirties ballroom. The
historical frequency of the "need" for love is thus proJX>sed by the
mUsic, and it is as
if
this proposition emboldens the lyrics: "Nothing
you
can do that can't
be
done," "nothing you can sing that can't be
sung," "nothing you can know that can't be known," "nothing you
can see that can't be shown-it's "easy" - this is a sample of equally
ambiguous assertions that constitute the verbal substance of the song,
