Reimagining the Classics: Part 2
by David Barker
This time, all selections use Beethoven’s music, some more closely than others.
Because (1969)
Let’s start with a fairly tenuous and possibly apocryphal connection.
During the leadup to The Beatles recording Abbey Road, the story is that John Lennon heard Yoko Ono playing the opening to the “Moonlight” Sonata and asked her to play the chords in reverse. He has been quoted as saying that this inspired him to write Because. Why is there some doubt about it? Certainly, the opening to the song bears some musical resemblance to the Beethoven, but in the normal direction, not reversed. The Beatles already had history with claims about hidden messages when their music was played backwards, specifically referencing the rumour that Paul McCartney had died in a car accident in 1966. Given John Lennon’s relationship with the media, it wouldn’t be a total surprise if he was playing a joke on those willing to take everything he said at face value.
Because is one of the lesser-known songs on the Abbey Road album, dwarfed by the huge popularity of Come Together, Something and Here Comes The Sun. It is one of the few Beatles songs to employ a Moog synthesiser, and the opening section, which has the most obvious connection to Beethoven employs an electric harpsichord, played by producer George Martin.
Now many of you will have Abbey Road in your record collection, but to save you the trouble of tracking it down, there is an audio-only clip on YouTube supplied by Universal.
Beep Beep Beep (2008)
Let’s stay with the “Moonlight” Sonata, and a song that does not hide its connection, but trumpets it (metaphorically – no trumpets are actually involved).
Beethoven’s Wig is the performing name for American singer Richard Perlmutter. He has recorded five albums of vocal music, which put his words to famous classical works, particularly (and unsurprisingly) Beethoven’s. While much of his music is primarily aimed at children (all five albums have been nominated for Grammys in the category of Best Musical Album for Children), and some fall into the category of parody, Beep Beep Beep has a more general appeal.
Now I suspect few of you reading this will know the piece, so I will quote the opening lines, and let you sing them to yourself to the start of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata:
One night while driving my car in the moonlight
I got to a corner and stopped at a red light
But then something happened I had not foreseen
I waited but that light just wouldn’t turn green
The lady behind me she honked at me (Beep beep beep)
Just a short toot I let it be (Beep beep beep)
But I wondered when (Beep) she honked once again (Beep)
What’s her problem then (Beep beep beep) …
Or if you’d prefer to let Perlmutter sing them for you, there is a beautiful animated version of the song on YouTube. It is gently whimsical, and pays due respect to Beethoven’s haunting melody.
This Night (1983)
Billy Joel grew up surrounded by music, particularly classical. His parents were passionate music lovers, who met at a Gilbert & Sullivan performance, and his father was a classically-trained pianist. Of the composers he heard, it was Beethoven whose music made the greatest impact.
It is, therefore, not surprising that Joel would pay homage to Beethoven in one of his songs, This Night. It is from an album that itself is a homage: An Innocent Man from 1983 looked back to the do-wop era. It was his second-most successful album (behind The Stranger). Joel has expressed surprise at how successful the album was, given the retro nature of the songs. Seven songs (of the ten on the album) were released as singles, with three reaching top 10 on the main Billboard chart. Of these, Tell Her About It was a No. 1 and Uptown Girl No. 3. The latter was No. 1 in the United Kingdom (his only chart-topper in the UK), Australia and New Zealand. History suggests Uptown Girl has proven the better; on Spotify, it has over one billion (a thousand million) plays, twenty times more than Tell Her About It.
This Night was the sixth single released, but only in the UK (where it reached No. 78) and Japan (88). In the US, it was the B-side for Leave A Tender Moment Alone. Joel doesn’t hide his usage of the melody from the Adagio cantabile from the “Pathetique” Sonata; the songwriting credits are shown on the album as “B. Joel and L. v. Beethoven”. Joel has said that the song is about the brief relationship he had with Australian supermodel Elle MacPherson. It is only the chorus which uses the Beethoven theme, and is a more subtle and musically more satisfying use of its classical material than many others in this series.
This YouTube link comes from Billy Joel’s own YT channel, so I think we can safely say it is shared with approval. The chorus first appears around 0:57.
Midnight Blue (1982)
To my surprise, Billy Joel wasn’t the first to use that famous theme from the “Pathetique” Sonata. The year before, British classically-trained mezzo Louise Tucker was persuaded to lend her voice to the song Midnight Blue by record producers Charlie Skarbek and Tim Smit, which uses the Beethoven melody throughout its synthesiser-dominated four minutes. She recorded two albums with the writers, but none of the singles, including this one, made much of an impact on the charts.
There is a live version from a concert in The Netherlands on YouTube, which I will share with you (the studio version is on YT as well but I’m less sure about it; there is Spotify as well of course). The song begins with Skarbek singing, and in the live version, it is very clear why he is described as a record producer, not a singer!
A Song of Joy (1969)
This song, sung by Spanish singer and actor Miguel Ríos, uses the choral section of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, arranged by Argentinian composer Waldo de los Rios with both Spanish and English versions of the lyrics (which are original to the song, rather than simply translations of Schiller’s text). De los Rios takes few liberties with Beethoven’s scoring, the addition of acoustic guitar and drums being the most obvious differences. The rhythms are subtly changed (simplified) to make it more pop music-friendly.
Not surprisingly, it was originally released in Spanish (Himno de la alegría), with the English version following a year later. The latter was a worldwide hit, reaching Number 1 in Australia, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, and the Easy Listening chart in the United States (it hit Number 14 on the main US chart).
Here is the YouTube link, provided by Warner Music Spain.
A Fifth of Beethoven (1976)
1976 was bang in the middle of the disco craze, and this re-imagining of the themes from the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony fitted right in. It was created by Walter Murphy, for whom it was a breakthrough in the music industry. Beethoven’s themes are all clearly recognisable, but cleverly incorporated into the disco rhythms. For those of you who don’t recognise the song, it probably sounds like a ghastly piece of appropriation, and it is very definitely of its time. Murphy did express the hope that “kids today … that maybe if they’ve heard this much of his symphony, they’ll go out and buy the original”.
Murphy made several other classical-disco mergers, but none as successful as this first one (I will return to them in a later article). After the disco era faded away, he began a successful and continuing career writing for film and TV.
A Fifth of Beethoven reached Number 1 on the main US chart, but only Number 10 on the US Disco singles chart, which seems rather odd. The year after its release, it was included on the soundtrack for Saturday Night Fever. Given that the soundtrack for the movie is the tenth highest selling album of all time, I hope Murphy and his label received a licence fee that was based on sales, and not a fixed amount.
On YouTube, there is a video of Murphy and his band performing the song live on the long-running music show The Midnight Special, and I think it is interesting to see how the sounds are created.
