Grapthar's Song of the Day: The Beatles - 'Strawberry Fields Forever (Demo Sequence)'

weekly Beatles song, I figured I'd try and make up for it over the next week or so with a couple of deep cuts (lol). The Beatles were formed in 1960 in Liverpool, England, and after some initial shifts in members, the 'fab-four' as they came to be known came together, consisting of Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. The group's early music was very much of the time, made up of teenage/youthful love songs, though they band wrote and performed their own music, which helped them stand apart from a lot of their pop contemporaries. As time rolled on, the members grew, and so did their writing, allowing them to create music and sounds that had never been heard before. Many of their in studio techniques were cutting edge, and became the standard for producers that followed. Though they broke in 1970, existing for a short 10 years, they are rightly credited with taking rock music from the realm of novelty into a true art form, and have remained a constant influence in the decades since.

guitar, performing Strawberry Fields Forever, which originally appeared on the band's 1967 album, Magical Mystery Tour, and is among their greatest songs ever. The album version is much more heavily layered, with the acoustic guitar replaced with the Mellotron (using the original strings setting), which has became an iconic sound, and instantly reminds people of this track. It also has some other sections that are not in this version, and is absolutely worth listening to if you haven't heard it before. The key change between the Verse and the Chorus is AWESOME, and so stark and powerful. However, this version is equally interesting, in that you can see where the track began. The chord progression here moves from a G to a Bmin, to a Dmin (very strange), before moving to the Amin, Gmaj, Fmaj part from the final version. The top of those first three chords provides a descending chromatic line, from G to F# to F, which would later appear in a different in the album version, where they used a major chord, to a maj7, then a dom7. It still contains that same line cliche, but has a very different emotional quality to it.