Notes on “Lady Madonna” (the Beatles)

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 the flat third (C-natural) and flat seventh (G-natural). At the same time, subtle tension is created by the tune’s emphasis on the naturally occurring Major sixth 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 sixth (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”) third 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 three 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 saxophones 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 ascendant 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 saxophones, 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 saxophones 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 saxophone obbligato 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 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 saxophones 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

# Lady Madonna, intro: eight fast bars, an instrumental run-through of the verse (figure 127.1).
key A

system
chords   | A{I} | D{IV} | A{I} | D{IV} |

system
chords   | A{I} | D{IV} | F{flat-VI} G{flat-VII} | A{I} |

Figure 127.1

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 unnecessarily albeit perennially confusing science of musical orthography:

|A     A     B#    C#    |D     D     F#    A     |

# Lady Madonna, verse: the bassline riff (figure 127.2). Pollack spells the third note B# (an
# appoggiatura to the C#) and discusses whether it is really C-natural (a blue note); kept as B#.
key A

system
bass "Bassline"   | A2 A2 B#2 C#3 | D3 D3 F#3 A3 |

Figure 127.2

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 third to fourth 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.)

In my humble opinion, 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 ready-made by its usage in the prologue to the “2001” film.

Bridge

The bridge is sixteen 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           |-           |
       C:  I
       a:  III          ii           V4 --------> 3

# Lady Madonna, bridge (figure 127.3)
# Sixteen bars, two to a chord, with the bassline Pollack types underneath walking in half notes:
# two bass notes to each bar (D C | B A over d, G F | E D over G, and so on).
# Bass octaves follow the stepwise descent (D3 down to D2); in the a-minor bars it turns and climbs
# A B C E. Pollack types no bass for the last phrase, so that system has the chords only.
# He puts the V of the third phrase under the F; it belongs to the G chord, as in the first phrase.
# Last phrase carries two keys of analysis (C: I; a: III ii V), and the "4 --> 3" is the
# suspension over the E chord, resolving at the start of its second bar.
#? Bass octaves: E2-D3 range chosen per the guidelines; on the record the line may sit an octave apart in places (e.g. the climb A B C E).
key C

system
chords "Chords"     | d{ii} | - | G{V} | - |
bass "Bassline"     | D3 C3 | B2 A2 | G2 F2 | E2 D2 |

system
chords "Chords"     | C{I} | - | a{vi} | - |
bass "Bassline"     | C3 B2 | A2 G2 | A2 B2 | C3 E3 |

system
chords "Chords"     | d{ii} | - | G{V} | - |
bass "Bassline"     | D3 C3 | B2 A2 | G2 F2 | E2 D2 |

system
chords "Chords"     | C{C: I / a: III} | b-half-dim{ii} | E{V4} | -{3} |

Figure 127.3

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 a 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

# Lady Madonna, outro: the chromatic lick of the last two bars, outer voices in parallel tenths
# (figure 127.4). Pollack types the two lines with no bar lines or rhythm.
#? The bar line (four notes, then the final C#/A in bar 2) and the equal note lengths are my placement; Pollack gives no rhythm.
#? Octaves (lower line A3, upper C#5, a tenth apart) are chosen for range; check against the record.
key A

system
voice "Upper voice"   | C#5 D5 Eb5 D5 | C#5 |
voice "Lower voice"   | A3 B3 Cn4 B3 | A3 |

Figure 127.4

Some Final Thoughts

The lyrics are conspicuously clever. Friday night’s arrival without a suitcase, 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 boot lace; 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 (021797#127)