Making Your Songs Sound Suite
Background: In my last blog, I talked about medleys–songs that had two distinct parts, both of which were played in their entirety. I distinguished it from a mash up, where parts of songs are interspersed together, but none of the songs get played or sung in their entirety. I further distinguished this from songs that had separate movements–those are suites, and we will be discussing them in this blog. For our purposes, all the suites we will look at will be housed under one title, though if you look at them on Wikipedia, you will see bulleted titles under the suites of many 70s prog rock bands, such as Yes.
“Scenes From An Italian Restaurant” by Billy Joel
Lyrically/Structurally: This song was originally conceived as three separate songs, which were later pieced together as one on his magnum opus, The Stranger. The first part is the piano ballad section, which is split into two verses. The first verse ends with, “We’ll get a table down the street, in our old familiar place, you and I face to face,” while the second verse ends with the iconic, “I’ll meet you anytime you want in our Italian restaurant.” The first part of the song is so memorable, there are multiple restaurants who claim to have uttered the phrase, “A bottle of white, a bottle of red,” to Billy Joel, thus inspiring the first line of the song. No word from the schmuck who offered him rosé. After this part of the song comes the ballad of Brenda (or Brender, to be more exact), and Eddie, who, in the story, were former classmates of the song’s narrator. This part of the song deals with their rise and fall as the “it” couple from high school. The song then ends with one final verse, a reprise of sorts of the beginning of the song: “A bottle of red, a bottle of white, whatever you’re in the mood for tonight. I’ll meet you anytime you want in our Italian restaurant.” Although these songs were originally conceived separately, my analysis is that Brenda is the person he’s having dinner with at the beginning and the end. Since she and Eddie were high school sweethearts, it wouldn’t make sense for Brenda and Billy to have had a falling out so early in life and still hang out in high school, with Billy looking at their relationship fondly. Instead, I believe the first part is actually the end of the song, spread out over a few dates, and the rest of it tells how they got to that spot.
Melodically: “Scenes” begins on piano, with a slow piano ballad, talking about meeting someone at “Our Italian Restaurant.” There are two stanzas at the beginning with this theme at the beginning of the song, and after the second one, there is a saxophone part that accompanies the piano to the same chords of the first part of the song. The piano then speeds up for the second part of the song, and stays that way throughout, until the last part, which is a reprise of the “Italian Restaurant” section. When Billy Joel released An Innocent Man 6 years after The Stranger, he wanted to evoke the kinds of songs he listened to growing up. All of the songs are happy and mostly upbeat (tempo-wise), and the middle sections of “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant” evoke that childhood innocence, talking about the main character’s childhood friends (the leaders of which were Brenda and Eddie). Of course, the upbeat piano matches the lyrics to give us that feeling of nostalgia.
“Scenes From An Italian Restaurant” is embedded below.
2. “You Never Give Me Your Money” by the Beatles
Background: In thinking about this blog, I knew I wanted to include a Beatles suite, but then realized this would be challenging to narrow down, as the entire second side of Abbey Road is basically one long suite. Most people call it a medley, but based on our term definitions, a medley is housed as two or more titles, while a suite is one title, containing insanely good transitions from song to song, in the way that Abbey Road does. Coincidentally, Billy Joel has listed side two of Abbey Road as an inspiration for “Scenes From An Italian Restaurant.”
Lyrically/Structurally: “You Never Give Me Your Money” starts out with a haunting piano part, played to the title lyrics: “You never give me your money, you only give me your funny paper.” Allegedly, the song was about their manager, Allen Klein not handling the group’s money well. After the piano section, it moves to a faster section, talking about being out of college with no money and seeing no future for yourself, especially after getting laid off from job after job. Then it transitions into a little bit of a silver lining type section, saying if you have nowhere to go, it’s a “magic feeling,” as in you can’t lose what you never had. However, the next section, starting with “One sweet dream,” talks about how nice it was once your dream of getting somewhere actually came to fruition. This could have been despite the person who never gave them their money, or because the person finally gave them their money.
Melodically: “You Never Give Me Your Money” is written in C major. The intro (on piano) uses Am7, Dm7, G, and C, then Fmaj7, Dm6, E, and Am. The first part of the piano section uses Am7, Dm7, G, and C, followed by Fmaj7 Dm6 E and Am. The second part of the piano section uses the same chords, but ends with F, G, C, and C7, instead of the last chords for the first time around. Section two, which switches to guitar, (starting with “Out of college, money spent,”) utilizes C, E7, Am, C7, F, G, C, C7, which gets repeated twice. This is followed by Bb F F C, which gets repeated twice. This is followed by an interlude that uses the chords Bb, F, C, Bb, F, C, Bb, and F, followed by C, D7, Eb G7, C A7, Eb C7, F# Eb7, A, F#, G, and G#. The final part (“One sweet dream…”) starts on A, then goes to B7, C, E7, A7, Dm7, G7, Dm7, G7, and A, B7, Cmaj7, G, A, C, G, A. The ending coda, (“1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, all good children go to Heaven,”) uses C, G, and A, which repeats 5 times to fade out the song.) More than the chords themselves, though, is how the chords are played in order to fit the mood of that particular part. The song starts off with a slow piano part, then keeps ramping up as it continues on. Of course, as the lyrics get more chipper, so does the melody and the vocals, culminating in the harmonies of the last part.
“You Never Give Me Your Money” is embedded below.
3. “I’ve Seen All Good People” by Yes
Background: While writing for my last blog about medleys, I came across a live medley by Yes, featuring “Long Distance Runaround” and “The Fish”. However, my dad suggested “Devil with the Blue Dress/Good Golly Miss Molly” as a medley, and when he asked if I thought Steve Howe’s group would be better placed in my suite blog, I immediately said, “Yes!”
Lyrically/Structurally: This suite contains two parts: “All Good People” and “Your Move.” “Your Move” uses chess metaphors to talk about relationships, including the phrases, “Move me onto any black square,” “Make the white queen run so fast,” and “The goal is for us to capture only one.” “All Good People” repeats the phrase, “I’ve seen all good people turn their heads each day so satisfied I’m on my way,” until the song fades out, though it should be noted that the song starts off with the recitation of this phrase.
Melodically: “I’ve Seen All Good People,” as the song starts out, is sung a cappella, while “Your Move” uses variations on the chord progression E, F#m, G#m, F#m, E, F#m, G#m, F#m throughout the song.
“I’ve Seen All Good People” is embedded below.
4. “One of Those Days in England” by Roy Harper
Lyrically: The song starts off with just an acoustic guitar, discussing his time in the unemployment line and how the government must really like him, because they won’t give him any work. However, as he spends his day outside, he sees just how beautiful the country truly is, and how the other half lives. It then goes on to express dismay in his current state of affairs, such as, “Every time I met a prince, a fork came down the road,” and this dismay is further expressed in part six, where he talks about how he and someone else were going to start a revolution to change things, but got caught up “Brooding for better breathing spaces”
Melodically/Structurally: This song is broken down into 9 parts (labeled 2-10), with each part changing slightly, adding or subtracting instruments along the way. The song is written in the key of D major. The song uses acoustic and electric guitar, as well as slide guitar, piano strings, and bass guitar, with the acoustic guitar being the only consistent instrument throughout the whole song.
“One of Those Days in England” is embedded below.
