#2. "Here Comes the Sun" (The Beatles)

Have you ever had a song literally stop you in your tracks?  Where you're in the middle of something, and suddenly you hear a piece of music that commands your attention so completely you have to stop whatever you're doing and just listen?
I've had it happen three times in my life.  Once was in early 1982 when I was 4 years old.  
I remember it had been a cold, exceptionally damp winter, and it had overstayed its welcome by creeping into what should have been spring.  As much as I enjoyed snow, hot chocolate, and the smell of woodsmoke, I'd had it with frozen gloom.  The weather had been making every adult I'd encountered cranky, and it also had been keeping me from finishing an outdoors project that I'd started earlier in the fall, which made me cranky.  (A relative of ours in Western NC had a small creek running through her property, and I got it in my head that we should have a creek at our house, too.  So, I borrowed a little pickaxe from my dad's tool shed, and I started digging my own "creek" in our backyard: a 6-inch wide, 4-foot long mini-trench that I just assumed would fill with running water after a good rain.  It didn't quite work out like that.  And when my dad kind of stumbled upon it—or into it—while mowing the grass later that spring, he logically assumed some animal had destroyed a patch of his yard, and he filled it back in.)
Anyway, I remember getting up this one morning, and it was like someone had flipped a switch: it had been cold and disgusting the day before, but suddenly it was warm and sunny.  The South is notoriously fickle when it comes to March-April weather; however, this felt like spring had officially sprung.
My mom sensed it, too.  She opened every window in the house, turned on the radio, and started her spring cleaning routine while I finished watching my daily episode of Sesame Street over a bowl of Cheerios.  
Normally, I would have been glued to the set, watching Big Bird trying to convince the grown-ups that his pal Mr. Snuffleupagus wasn't imaginary.  But then I heard a song with this beautiful plucked guitar line coming from the radio, and I immediately turned off the T.V. so I could listen.  The DJ (the late Russ Cassell on WFBC-FM out of Greenville, SC) made a brief announcement about a listener requesting "the perfect spring song," and then came the refrain: Here comes the sun / Doo-doo-doo-doo / Here comes the sun / I say, it's alright... 
I sat in front of our stereo, transfixed as the verses unfolded.  Every time I thought the song had gotten as good as it could get, some new layer of vocals or strings would drop in, and it would get even better.  But nothing prepared me for the descending bridge section (Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...) with its syncopated handclaps and Moog synth buzzing away.  I think my jaw literally dropped.  It somehow was gorgeous, cheerful, and rocking, all at the same time.  I'd never heard anything like it.
I didn't budge until the very end.  After the very last droplets of guitar had faded, I ran into the kitchen where my mom was mopping the floor and started trying to describe it to her.  I sang a few bars of what I could remember, when she put down the mop and went right to her record collection.  
"Is this it?" she asked, dropping the needle on the B-side of Abbey Road (1969).
And there it was again, pouring out of the speakers in glorious, static-less stereo.
She gave me a kiss on my noggin.  "You have good taste in music, kiddo," she told me.
Years later, reading about what had inspired George Harrison to write "Here Comes the Sun," I discovered that his muse had been a spring day after a long period of dreariness, not unlike how I'd first experienced the song.
Apparently, winter in England had been particularly long in 1969.  Furthermore, Harrison and his bandmates had been mired in endless meetings with accountants regarding The Beatles' cash-bleeding venture, Apple Corps Ltd.  In short, Harrison was burnt out.  
So in the middle of the tedium, along came a pleasant spring day, and Harrison decided to blow off his business meetings and hang out at his pal Eric Clapton's house instead.  
As he stated in his autobiography I, Me, Mine (1980), "The relief of not having to go and see all those dopey accountants was wonderful, and I walked around the garden with one of Eric's acoustic guitars and wrote 'Here Comes The Sun'."

"Come Together" (The Beatles)

I wasn't always in love with "Come Together."  I hated it as a child, actually.  

More than anything, John Lennon's eerie, whispered Shoot me's followed by those echoey handclaps scared the hell out of me when I was little.  But there also were his lyrics: not one word seemed to be in its proper place.  It was as if he'd taken the language that my little kid brain was still trying to learn and chopped it up before also turning it inside out.  It bothered me profusely.

That's why for years when my mother would play Abbey Road (1969), I'd often ask her to start the album with George Harrison's "Something" instead of the Lennon-penned opener.

But then I hit puberty.  Half the time, my thoughts and feelings didn't make much sense, and even when they did, I wasn't all that interested in articulating them.  Suddenly, Lennon's bizarre, purposely inscrutable lyrics and twisted blues resonated with me, and all of my hormone-fueled moodiness and awkwardness—especially when it came to communication—had a theme song.

Today, I simply appreciate the song as an example of Lennon's genius and humor.  I mean, who the hell else could have gotten away with a line like Got to be good lookin', 'cause he's so hard to see?

I also feel this song is a perfect example of how this band was more than the sum of its parts.  Would the track be half as memorable without Paul McCartney's slinky bass?  Would it be half as sexy without Harrison's understated, upper-octave lead guitar?  Would it groove half as hard without Ringo Starr's thumping tom-toms and hi-hat work?

The obvious answer is "no" on all counts.

That's also the reason why no cover version of this song will ever come close to matching the rawness and animal magnetism of the original.

"You Never Give Me Your Money" (The Beatles)

When it comes to The Beatles and songwriting, I've always been more of a John Lennon fan.  But it was never really a conscious "Lennon vs. Paul McCartney vs. George Harrison" kind of thing.  I just always liked the quirkier, snarkier, R&B-tinged numbers on my mom's Beatles records, and 90% of those songs just happened to be written primarily by Lennon.
McCartney's "You Never Give Me Your Money" from Abbey Road (1969) is one of a few exceptions, though.
If you're familiar with the album, you know the track is the starting point for the lengthy 8-song medley that comprises most of the album's second side.  But it's more than just a transition piece or bookend for the medley; it's a smart, funky mini-suite featuring one of McCartney's best-ever hooks that concisely summarizes the history of the Beatles up to that point.
Despite public perception that The Beatles were wealthy beyond belief, they actually were bleeding cash following the death of their original manager, Brian Epstein, in 1967.  So they brought on a new financial manager, Allen Klein—a hard-nosed American businessman who also managed The Rolling Stones in the 60s (and screwed Mick & Keef out of the rights to their back catalog).  McCartney wasn't a fan of Klein from the start and felt that his tactics were a little too smoke and mirrors.  
In short, the song opens with McCartney expressing his frustration with Klein always presenting them with vague financial statements on paper instead of actually showing them where the money was.  Hence the line: You never give me your money / You only give me your funny paper.
From there, he reminisces about "the good ol' days" when they were just getting started—no money, no obligations, and no managers, and then shuttles back to the present through a dizzying series of key changes, essentially thanking his new wife Linda for extricating him from the hell of business meetings and whisking him away to the countryside (Step on the gas and wipe that tear away).
Apart from it being a strong track lyrically, the song is one of the tightest final performances of the entire band together.  McCartney treats us to some damn fine boogie-woogie piano and his baritone "Elvis voice," à la "Lady Madonna," not to mention his inimitable melodic/rhythmic bass playing (especially on the 1-2-3-4-5-6-7 / All good children go to heaven coda).  But then there's also Lennon's raunchy distorted guitar, Harrison's bell-like guitar (fed through a rotating Leslie speaker), and Ringo Starr's simple but effective drumming, which punches and punctuates at all the right times.
Most bands don't sound this good when they're at the peak of their powers, much less when they're imploding.

"Strawberry Fields Forever" (The Beatles)

So much has been written about "Strawberry Fields Forever" already, so I'll keep the history portion brief.
In 1966, The Beatles had tired of touring.  The crazed fans, various death threats, and breakneck schedule had taken their toll, and the band was on the verge of breakup.  So they officially retired from the road and turned their focus exclusively to making records.
The studio follow up to their mid-1966 album Revolver originally was planned as a concept album: a collection of original songs about childhood memories of growing up in Liverpool.  As we all know, the band famously took the album concept in a different direction, pretending to be an Edwardian-era marching band in day-glo uniforms, playing a concert for a crowd of onlookers.  Nevertheless, two songs were recorded for the nostalgia project before it was abandoned: Paul McCartney's "Penny Lane" and John Lennon's "Strawberry Fields Forever," both released as a double A-side single in February 1967.
Strawberry Field (minus the "s") was the name of a Salvation Army home for children, located a short walk from Lennon's childhood home.  He and his boyhood friends would often play in Strawberry Field's garden, despite his aunt's stern orders not to trespass on the property.  (My guess is that's exactly why they played there and why it held such fond memories for him.)
I first heard "Strawberry Fields Forever" on the car radio on the way home from my elementary school's annual Halloween Carnival, which was sort of a throwback to rural harvest festivals, complete with bobbing for apples, cakewalks, and the like.  The ghosts-n'-goblins feel of the evening kind of fit with the psychedelic vibe of the song's eerie Mellotron flutes, strange backwards percussion, and heavily compressed strings.  So for many years, the song just evoked fond memories of being 6 years old and playing carnival games in a homemade lion costume.
But when I bought Magical Mystery Tour on CD as a teenager and listened to it while driving to/from school, "Strawberry Fields Forever" resonated with me for a different reason.  Lennon's poetic, stream-of-consciousness lyrics painted the picture of a bittersweet childhood: the innocence and escape of Strawberry Field pitted against feelings of being a misunderstood oddball.
I'd also felt like the odd man out growing up.  I was an only child, and there were no kids my age in my neighborhood to play with, so I learned early on to keep myself occupied—drawing, building Lego cities, going on fantasy time travel adventures on my bike, or pretending to be a rock star and putting on concerts for my stuffed animals and action figures.  I also spent a lot of time around the adult members of my family.  Consequently, my interests and topics of conversation tended to be a little more World News Tonight than Fraggle Rock.  So I often felt like I was speaking a different language from some kids at school, never really connecting with them on an intellectual level.  That's why Lennon's whole lyrical motif of knowing you have a passionate, singular point of view but having difficulty expressing it to others really struck me.  
I came to embrace the song's refrain Strawberry Fields, forever as a kind of rallying cry for individuality—a declaration that, just because you're misunderstood by some doesn't mean you should change how you look at the world.

"Revolution" (The Beatles)

Frankly, it's a pain in the ass to write about The Beatles.  Everything they ever performed, wrote, said, wore, etc. has been scrutinized and analyzed to the point of oblivion.
And it's infinitely frustrating to scan the Web and find the same, rehashed information (or misinformation), over and over.  So I'll keep my rehashing brief.
It's 1968.  John Lennon is feeling pressure from various factions to support their radical agendas, including anarchy and overthrow.  Also, the Vietnam War is escalating, and Lennon wants to publicly address the topic—something the band's former manager, the late Brian Epstein, had prevented him and the others from doing.
So Lennon writes "Revolution," which is distinctly anti-revolutionary.  His message to the world: we all want change, but violence is not the answer.
The band records a semi-acoustic, bluesy version in May/June of 1968, which comes to be known as "Revolution 1."  Paul McCartney and George Harrison feel it's "too slow" to be released as a single.  So they head back into the studio in July to create a blistering version with Nicky Hopkins on electric piano, which ultimately is released as the B-side to McCartney's "Hey Jude."
So, there it is.
I hate to admit I first heard "Revolution" on a 1987 Nike commercial.  (Yes, that one, which resulted in the surviving Beatles suing the shoe company, its ad agency, and EMI/Capitol Records.)  And I can't believe I'm going to say this, but I think Yoko Ono was right—the commercial had the effect of introducing Lennon's song to a new generation.  Personally, I couldn't have cared less about the commercial or what it was selling; I just liked the song.
Although, I was sporting a pair of Nikes by Christmas that year.  Hmm...
Anyway, between Ringo Starr's compressed drums and Lennon/Harrison's overdriven guitars (fed directly into the mixing console to get that raunchy, fuzzed-out sound), I'd venture that no other song about pacifism has rocked quite as hard, before or since.

"Taxman" (The Beatles)

Although "Taxman" from Revolver (1966) wasn't George Harrison's first foray into writing songs, I think it is the song where he started to step out of Lennon and McCartney's shadow.  There's a real sense of confidence and bile in it: Harrison was pissed off about being in an income bracket in the UK where the majority of his earnings were going straight to taxes, and he let fly with this terse, scorching editorial.
You can't completely count out the other Beatles' contributions, though—particularly McCartney.  Macca does double duty on the track, cranking out the hellacious, Stax-indebted bassline (the man sounds like he has four calloused thumbs on the section from 0:55 to 1:06), as well as the raunchy, Eastern-tinged lead guitar solos at 1:12 and 2:25.
For me, it's the best Beatles album opener, next to "Come Together."

"She Said, She Said" (The Beatles)

Apart from being one of Ringo Starr's best performances on tape (his drum fills here are a thing of wonder), "She Said, She Said" is one of John Lennon's best compositions on the album Revolver (1966).
The Beatles were staying at a rented house in Beverly Hills during a break from touring in mid-1965, when Roger McGuinn and David Crosby of The Byrds dropped by with LSD, ready to party.  Everyone (with the exception of Paul McCartney) got their dosage and started tripping.  However, George Harrison began to panic, telling the others that he felt like he was dying.  Actor Peter Fonda, who also happened to be in attendance, tried to console Harrison by assuring him that he wasn't dying, repeatedly telling him, "You're not dying; I know what it's like to be dead," while simultaneously showing The Beatle a bullet wound from childhood, the result of a gun accident that had almost killed him.  
Whatever Fonda's intentions, the discussion of death and bullet wounds freaked Harrison out that much more.  Lennon, ever the big brother to Harrison, berated Fonda for talking about death, chiding him with, "You're making me feel like I've never been born!"
As McGuinn later recounted to Rolling Stone, "We were all on acid, and John couldn't take it.  John said, 'Get this guy out of here!'  It was morbid and bizarre."
To stick it to Fonda, Lennon wrote a song that he initially called "He Said, He Said," about the incident in LA, incorporating Fonda's words (I know what it's like to be dead) as well as his own retort (You're making me feel like I've never been born) into the song's lyrics.  Ultimately, Lennon decided that "he said" didn't sound quite right, so he changed it to "She Said, She Said."
It's a favorite of mine because it sounds deceptively simple: a straight-ahead rocker with a bit of West Coast influence.  But there are subtle things in Lennon's composition that are pure genius—like switching from 4/4 to 3/4 and back again on the bridges, utilizing the shifting time signature as a way to indicate dialogue between two people who aren't really syncing up intellectually.  Same thing with Lennon's chiming rhythm guitar against Harrison's almost brass-like lead.
It also has a pure, mid-60s guitar sound and a simple but effective bassline, which is played by Harrison, not McCartney.  (Like the party that inspired the song, McCartney sat this one out.)

 

"Hey Bulldog" (The Beatles)

"It's a good-sounding record that means nothing."
This is how John Lennon described his song "Hey Bulldog" in a 1980 interview with journalist David Sheff.
The song began as a rough sketch called "You Can Talk to Me."  Lennon hadn't planned on doing much with the tune, until the band was set to shoot a promotional video in the recording studio for Paul McCartney's new single, "Lady Madonna."  Rather than miming to the "Lady Madonna" track, McCartney convinced his bandmates that they should work on a new song and have the videographers film that instead.  So the boys worked on "You Can Talk to Me" while the cameras ran.
When McCartney spontaneously started barking after the last verse, Lennon ad-libbed, changing the next line of the song from Hey bullfrog! to Hey bulldog!, which became the new title of the song.
The song never was released as a single, not even as a B-side.  Ultimately, it wound up as a track on the Yellow Submarine soundtrack album (1969) but was cut from the movie to help reduce the film's running time.
For as much of a throwaway as Lennon considered the song, it is a perfect example of late-period Beatles: there are still tinges of psychedelia leftover from the Summer of Love (mainly in the abstract lyrical approach), but the music is straight-ahead rock with a bass- and drum-heavy R&B feel.  The opening riff, played on piano and guitar by Lennon and George Harrison, respectively, is like a close cousin to Barrett Strong's 1959 hit, "Money (That's What I Want)," with a little bit of James Bond swagger thrown in.  Ringo Starr also does a solid job as always, never getting too showy or adding needless fills; it's just steady groove from moment one.
And then there's McCartney's bass.  
It is one of the best basslines ever recorded.  The supple tone, the syncopation, the inventiveness of the little octave jumps, runs, and slides.  It's funky, melodic, rocking, confident.  It also perfectly fits the buoyant mood of the song and elevates it to another level without showboating.
Most artists only dream of having "throwaway" material as great as this.

"Tomorrow Never Knows" (The Beatles)

I remember watching the Beatles Anthology on TV back in 1995 and hanging on every word that George Martin and the surviving Beatles said regarding the creation of "Tomorrow Never Knows" from the 1966 album Revolver.  
(Of any song from the psychedelic era, it really holds up to repeated plays, even now.  I'll even go so far as to say that its innovative use of loops and rhythm were a direct precursor to hip-hop and trip-hop.)
According to George Harrison in the interview, John Lennon had read a copy of Dr. Timothy Leary's book The Psychedelic Experience, which is basically a how-to guide for tripping, based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead.  Apparently the notions of "turning off one's mind and floating downstream" came from the book and made their way into Lennon's lyrics.  
Lennon also envisioned the music having a transcendental vibe, with the entire song remaining on a single chord, much like an Indian raga, and his voice being treated in such a way to make it seem as if he were singing from a mountaintop.
On each take of the song, the boys lock in on a C chord.  Likewise, Lennon's vocals are sent swirling through a Leslie speaker to give them that far off effect.
But everything else about Take 1 and the final take that appears on Revolver are vastly different.  The original take is like a funeral dirge with this murky, underwater feel and Ringo Starr drumming in this march pattern, not the hypnotic groove everyone is familiar with.
As for the ambient noises on the final track, Paul McCartney explained that these were tape loops that he'd chopped up/spliced at home and brought to the studio in a plastic bag.  (For instance, the famous "seagull loop" heard on the song is actually a recording of McCartney laughing, sped up.)  Being that these were actual loops of recorded tape, they had to be spooled onto machines throughout the studio for playback, with people holding pencils, jars, their fingers, etc. in place so that the loops would spool properly and play at the desired speed.  Then the loops were fed into the mixing board, and everything was mixed live--meaning each sound on the final recording is the result of The Beatles pushing the faders spontaneously.
As a music geek, it just gives me chills thinking about the unbridled sense of creativity and collaboration in the studio that gave rise to this track.  

"Caroline, No" (The Beach Boys) & "A Day in the Life" (The Beatles)

So it's common knowledge that The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and--to a somewhat lesser extent--Revolver were influenced by The Beach Boys' album Pet Sounds, which itself was influenced by The Beatles' Rubber Soul.  
The Beach Boys' resident genius and primary songwriter Brian Wilson had been impressed by the cohesive nature of 1965's Rubber Soul, considering that most pop albums of the day were typically a loose collection of singles and "filler," slapped together by record company execs without any real regard to continuity.  (Although, it could be argued that the American version of Rubber Soul still bore the heavy-handed imprint of Capitol execs, who replaced 4 songs from the official British release with selections from the Help! soundtrack to cash in on the growing popularity of folk-rock in the States...)  
In any case, Wilson sensed that Rubber Soul had exploded the boundaries of what rock and pop music could be: The Beatles had written every song themselves, played every note themselves, and had expanded the sonic palette of pop music, throwing in everything from sitars to Baroque piano.  It triggered such a reaction in Wilson that he immediately set out to create "the greatest rock album ever made."  Thus commenced the great creative rivalry between The Beach Boys and The Beatles from 1965-7, each trying to best the other on the charts while also racing to the top of a creative Everest.  
Paul McCartney and John Lennon heard Pet Sounds for the first time at a party in London in 1966, where The Beach Boys' Bruce Johnston (who took over Brian Wilson's vocal and bass-playing duties on the road when Wilson stopped touring in 1965) played the album for them in its entirety.  Twice.  The album instantly inspired McCartney to create "Here, There, and Everywhere," a track found on Revolver that pays tribute to Wilson's compositional style and The Beach Boys' close vocal harmonies. 
Fast on the heels of Revolver's release, The Beach Boys' single "Good Vibrations" hit the airwaves in October 1966, followed in February 1967 by The Beatles' single "Strawberry Fields Forever."  Although Wilson's mental state was already fragile--largely the result of record company pressures, creative disagreements within the band, increasing drug use, and his own perfectionism/self-doubt, "Strawberry Fields Forever" might have been final coffin nail.   
In Director David Leaf's 2004 documentary Beautiful Dreamer, Wilson's friend Michael Vosse recounts riding in Wilson's car in early 1967 and hearing "Strawberry Fields Forever" on the radio for the first time.  The song so affected Wilson that he pulled the car to the side of the road and rather cryptically said, "They did it all already.  They did what I wanted to do with SMiLE."
Ultimately, SMiLE was shelved until 2004, and The Beach Boys/Beatles rivalry came to a close with the final, thundering piano chord at the end of "A Day in the Life."

So, with that, I present "A Day in the Life" and "Caroline, No" for your consideration.
There are a few small similarities between the two songs.  In addition to being the final track on each of their respective albums, both feature observational lyrics about relatable aspects of life: Lennon/McCartney wryly recounting headlines from the newspaper, which range from shocking to the mundane; Wilson/Asher exploring the topic of running into an old flame after many years, only to find that she has lost her spark and innocence.  Then there are the sound effects that close each track: snippets of random Beatle chatter, chopped and spliced into a mishmash of noise, running ad infinitum in the runout groove; Wilson's dogs, Banana and Louie, barking at the sound of a passing train.
In other aspects, the songs are vast worlds apart.  "A Day in the Life" is epic, dramatic, and orgasmic.  Its gradual sonic swell and Lennon's cheeky sex/drugs double-entendre, expressing his desire to "turn on" anyone within earshot before the whole affair erupts in a cacophony of horns and strings, is the aural equivalent of stoned coitus in the middle of Piccadilly Circus at rush hour.
"Caroline, No," on the other hand, is a guy sitting in his dusty attic, leafing through an old yearbook with a dim flashlight that's about to run out of battery power.  In the way "A Day in the Life" beckons the world to tune in and turn on, "Caroline, No" quietly asks the world to go away.  It's an intimate lament for fleeting beauty.
In many ways, I think these 2 songs underpin the psyche of the late 1960s: a simultaneous desire to shed the old while also pining for innocence and simplicity of bygone days.  (From a musical standpoint, it's that bi-directional pull that eventually spawned the heavy/light dichotomy that is heard on The Beatles' "white album" and that characterized the entire aesthete of bands like Led Zeppelin at the turn of the decade.)