‘Yer Blues’: The Beatles epic that foreshadowed punk
There are too many genres to list that The Beatles didn’t have some hand in creating. Their entire career was based on trying anything they could, and looking back on what they left for everyone to feast on, everything from pop-rock to art-rock to prog-rock to heavy metal can be traced back to something they helped pioneer. And listening to ‘Yer Blues’, it’s easy to add punk to the list of genres that they helped shatter the mould for.
Granted, punk never seemed to evolve over time. The genre’s entire genesis came from people like Sex Pistols and The Clash having a visceral reaction to hearing every single prog rock band carry on for 20 minutes at a time, so having something that hit the audience like a slap in the face was needed half the time.
Although the Fab Four were in no real danger or had any anger directed at any particular band, they could easily hammer things out on each other when making The White Album. They still had mutual respect as songwriters, but considering how different some of the tunes were, it’s safe to say that Paul McCartney wasn’t in the same frame of mind making ‘Blackbird’ as John Lennon was when making ‘Revolution 9.’
While there are moments of delicate beauty across the album, the start of side three is by far the noisiest 20 minutes of music in the band’s discography. Outside of bringing things to a close on ‘Long Long Long,’ this second disc kicks off with ‘Birthday’ and never lets up for a second, with Lennon’s ‘Yer Blues’ coming right afterwards and paving the way for McCartney’s ‘Helter Skelter.’
But ‘Yer Blues’ is a bit of an odd duck in their discography. There had been ramshackle rock and roll bands before in the garage rock circuit, and yet none of them have sounded more raucous than Lennon channelling his inner Sleepy John Estes when singing about feeling suicidal and crying out for help from his other half. And since the whole song was cut in a small room with the band crammed into it, you can hear the music practically dripping off the walls as they play.
Even though The Stooges and The Velvet Underground would eventually take proto-punk in a much different direction, the genre’s ethos is already accounted for here. Lennon’s lyrics about feeling desensitised and wanting to die could have easily come from the darker side of punk’s first regime, and the immediacy of hearing them perform in a room has the same frantic energy that would end up on most indie punk releases that were soon to follow.
Judging by where he went later, Lennon could be considered a punk forefather for what came on Plastic Ono Band. The entire album was a reflection of his pain, and ‘Well Well Well’ may as well have been grunge before the genre existed. It wasn’t an accident that his first gig with his imaginary band was tearing through a performance of ‘Yer Blues’ alongside rock and roll favourites like ‘Blue Suede Shoes’.
Whereas most people have rose-coloured glasses on when talking about The Beatles’ perfect melodies, this was proof that they could rock out with the best of them. They had come a long way from their early years, but if you put this same band back in Hamburg, Germany, in the 1960s, they could have easily outdone any punk band that came on the scene circa 1977.
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