If you are going to find and love The Beatles, you will probably do it when you are young. A friend or relative’s music collection might stimulate you first, or you might get a taste via a radio program/podcast. So many roads lead to The Fab Four that the streaming algorithms get you there quickly enough if you start listening to pop music. If you like the tracks all of those sources have more, much more, to help you satisfy your craving. Those who are now disgorged from the cruise ships to the Cavern Club in Liverpool might be older and well upholstered now, but they were probably young when their love formed. The love often stays with people once formed, and people have built careers around growing old with their heroes from fifty-plus years ago.
We must also remember that younger people created this music. Yes, they had a unique musical perspective and unprecedented life experiences, but the band imploded before any of its members reached 30. The ones that got the chance to grow old bring that perspective to their renditions now, but they cannot separate it from the young men they once were.
Lucinda Williams had an opportunity, for reasons wished for and unwished for, to bring a whole new perspective on her music and world, that of someone in late middle age. In 2020 she suffered a stroke, during a worldwide pandemic. She had to relearn how to sing, but never regained her guitar skills, and she got to reappraise the music that she loved and formed her. She released six volumes of Lu’s Jukebox, cover albums of her favorite artists or genres. Once she had recovered enough to tour and perform, she got a more welcome opportunity to rethink her relationship to The Beatles, with an opportunity to record at Abbey Road studios.
The result is Lucinda Williams Sings The Beatles from Abbey Road, forming volume 7 of Lu’s Jukebox, and it is a triumph.
The title relates to the recording studio, not the period of The Beatles’ history, and the music comes from throughout the recorded canon. There are no “deep cuts” in The Beatles catalogue; every B-side and initially unreleased version has an extensive written history and Wikipedia page and thousands of die-hard fans, but the songs Williams has chosen come from some of the best known, and less well known, parts of the archive. Each one has been chosen because of its message, as much as any musical theme, and it is here that the strength of the collection lies.
“While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” a single from the album, is a case in point. Williams was an outstanding guitar player, but that was before 2020. The poignancy of her anthropomorphic guitar shedding tears, no doubt mirrored by the more real tears she will have shed at her personal and musical losses, infuses every note and musical gesture of voice and instrument. You cannot help but be moved.
A strong woman who had to overcome huge personal hardship to make her way in the music industry, on her own terms, may not have felt the need to record “With a Little Help From My Friends” or “Don’t Le Me Down,” but those sentiments are a key part of her new, successful life. You can hear the emotion of the need, and the gratitude where it was necessary. It is not a downbeat album, or mawkish, but you cannot escape the sentiment.
In other places, there is a different tone. Young men, perhaps ones who have worked in brothels, have a perspective on forming meaningful relationships (and enjoying the sex that usually comes with them), and they quite frequently prioritize that over money. Sometimes they lose that focus at other times of life, and mammon is the mistress. When Williams sings “Can’t Buy Me Love,” she is re-emphasizing that there is more to life than money.
Paul McCartney wrote “I’m Looking Through You” to note the change in the nature of his relationship with his lover. No cause is given, but the loss is felt, as well as the effect on both of them. Williams has herself had to reappraise those things that are valuable to her, and they may not have been the same ones as she had before. There are several songs which give you a sense of her stoical approach to her life now, whilst noting the benefits as well as the losses. “Rain” does fall but life goes on, but you might note that sometimes you just have to say, “I’m So Tired.”
“Yer Blues,” written by people who were very familiar with the genre from records they obtained off the Liverpool docks, nevertheless sounds different when someone who has been with the music for 70 years takes her stab.
In addition to the engineering team at Abbey Road, who recorded the music, and a mixing team closer to her Southern Home, Williams has an outstanding band backing her. Someone else has to play her guitars for her, but Doug Pettibone and Mark Ford make the losses more than bearable. Of particular note are the drums of Butch Norton, whose Starkey like mastery of the offbeats and rhythms is superb. Whether his love of Ringo is long-standing or he is channeling him here is not clear, but he does a remarkable job here.
Earlier this year we had much fun selecting our 75 Best Beatles covers, full in the knowledge that we could have chosen a thousand and still found good material, and that new entries would be made all the time. There are a couple here that will make the list the next time we embark on that joyful task.
Lucinda Williams Sings the Beatles from Abbey Road is now on release.
Lucinda Williams Sings The Beatles From Abbey Road Track List
“Don’t Let Me Down”
“I’m Looking Through You”
“Can’t Buy Me Love”
“Rain”
“While My Guitar Gently Weeps”
“Let It Be”
“Yer Blues”
“I’ve Got A Feeling”
“I’m So Tired”
“Something”
“With A Little Help From My Friends”
“The Long And Winding Road”
