Tom Hanks picks his favourite Beatles song
For years, Tom Hanks has radiated happiness every time he comes onscreen. Although he has taken on his fair share of villainous roles throughout his acting tenure, Hanks has an inherent way of getting moviegoers to see him in his element through sheer charm, quickly becoming one of the most prominent father figures of Hollywood. While Hanks has loved bringing people together through his films, he has been an avid fan of music ever since he was a child.
Then again, there wasn’t much separating Hanks’ approach to film from how music fans reacted to their favourite artists. As much as fans like to turn their brain off now and again when watching a movie, the more experienced viewers want to see Hanks’s take on a character rather than just hearing him perform everything correctly.
Years before Hanks had even decided to start acting, though, The Beatles were already making waves as one of the greatest bands in the world. Arriving like a bolt of lightning in America on The Ed Sullivan Show, Hanks was enthralled with The Beatles from an early age, loving everything he could get his hands on.
When talking about his all-time favourite Beatles song, though, Hanks had a soft spot for the song ‘There’s A Place’ off their debut album Please Please Me. Discussing the power of the group’s music, Hanks thought that The Beatles were one of the first musical forces he could identify with, recalling, “This is one of those time and place moments. When you get to a certain age you are searching for that music that is going to be yours and yours alone. This is not one of their big hits, but to me, this was the birth of The Beatles”.
While The Beatles had a long way to go before becoming the cultural phenomenon they would become on their debut, ‘There’s A Place’ is one of the first steps into clever wordplay that the music world had seen. Despite not getting into the psychedelic movement for a few more years, John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s message of withdrawing into one’s mind when they feel depressed is a precursor to the mind games they would discuss later in albums like Sgt Pepper.
Beyond the lyrical depth of the song, Lennon and McCartney had already started working outside the conventional structures of harmony as well. Even though the verses of the song are played straight for the most part, a few melodic surprises are awaiting in the bridge of the song, where the duo throw in different chords that don’t fit into the original key of E. By borrowing chords from parallel keys, the group created different modal forms of writing without really trying.
Even as his favourite band, Hanks thought The Beatles greatly impacted his outlook on cinema, recalling that one of the most joyful movie experiences he has ever had was watching A Hard Day’s Night. Hanks might be a child of the silver screen, but his determination to bring happiness into people’s lives through cinema is informed by how the Fab Four enriched the lives of their fans.
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