Here Today by Paul McCartney | acoustic
An acoustic guitar lesson on how to play "Here Today" by Paul McCartney from the 1982 album, Tug Of War. Paul wrote this less than a year after John Lennon passed away although it wasn't released until 1982. It is of course his tribute to John Lennon.
The recording started in the loft of Paul's house at the time and later on a string quartet arranged by George Martin was overdubbed. There was a lot of thought put into whether or not to use the strings as he didn't want it to be like another "Yesterday" but eventually decided to go ahead with it. Here's a McCartney quote on how the song came about: "I was kind of crying when I wrote it. It's like a dialogue with John. One of my feelings even when he used to lay into me was that he really didn't mean it. I could always see why he was doing it. There was this spectrum of me, which I understand because he had to clear the decks just like I did. In the song, John would hear me saying that and say, 'Oh, piss off! You don't know me at all. We're worlds apart. You used to know me but I've changed.' But I feel that I still knew him. The song is me trying to talk back to him, but realizing the futility of it because he is no longer here, even though that's a fact I can't quite believe, even to this day. The 'I love you' part was hard to say. A part of me said, 'Hold on. Wait a minute. Are you really going to do that?' I finally said, 'Yeah, I've got to. It's true." Now days, when he plays this live, it's quite a bit different than the original recording. In fact, he even changes the second chord of the song from a Cmin6 to a Cmaj7! That's a pretty drastic change!
I think since he plays the song by himself, it's just easier to get to the Cmaj7 than the Cmin6, but to me the change from the opening C#m7b5 to the Cmin6 is a huge part of the mood and structure of the song. The rest he just strums through the chords. In this lesson I'm teaching what he played on the original recording, or as close as I can get to it as I much prefer the more detailed playing. I also threw in a couple of the cello lines in the third section to help it move along. It's the classic thumb and forefinger style that he's used on almost all of his acoustic songs. It's a beautiful piece of music and shows McCartney's talent as a composer. To be able to accurately express something so deep in less than two and a half minutes is pretty amazing and one of the reasons I admire The Beatles songwriting so much. I hope that you get something from the video. Cheers Andy |
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