“Lady Jane” Brian Jones played dulcimer on this one and wrote the harpsichord part for the song, too
IT'S A GAS, GAS, GAS!!
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Name: Keno
E-Mail: keno@fairpoint.net
Subject: Poll Post for the week starting Monday, March 20
Date: Sunday, March 19, 2023
Time: 10:01:20 PM
Remote Address: 216.245.78.27
Message ID: 321419
Parent ID: 0
Thread ID: 321419
Time to get our weekly Poll Post underway for our 2 remaining weekly polls, and as usual we’ll look at the Stones Poll first, where we enter week 1,232 of this poll and week 123 of rating the band’s songs. So here’s this week’s question: Rate the Stones song “Lady Jane”, from zero (lowest) to 10 (highest).
“Lady Jane” Brian Jones played dulcimer on this one and wrote the harpsichord part for the song, too
Nope, this one wasn't a Rock song at all, but fell into the genre of "Baroque Pop", a fusion genre that combines Rock music with particular elements of Classical music which emerged as a new genre in the mid-1960s. While Mick Jagger wrote the lyrics to this song, the music came mainly from Brian Jones, with the guitar part by Keith Richards. Recorded from March 6 to 9, 1966, at RCA Studios in Los Angeles. Its main lead instrument was Brian's Mountain Dulcimer, the first time one was played in a rock song, as Brian was introducing many uncommon instruments to rock and roll music at the time. Brian also came up with the harpsichord part of the song's music, which both he and Jack Nitzsche played in the studio for the number - although only one is heard playing in the song (I believe). The song was released in the UK on April 15, 1966 on UK version of Aftermath and then in the States as the B-side to "Mother's Little Helper" that July. Although a B side, “Lady Jane” still reached number 24 on Billboard's Hot 100 singles chart, anyway.
While historical names from long ago (mainly from the 16th century) come up in the song, with "Lady Jane" being Jane Seymour, who was one of England's King Henry's wives. She was only 16 years old at the time he married her, and was Queen for only a week - before being beheaded. "Lady Anne", who also comes up in the song, was Anne Boleyn, who preceded Jane as queen and who Henry also had beheaded (both in 1536). Then the "Marie" in the song is a reference to Queen Marie Antoinette, the very last queen of France (before the monarchy there was abolished), who in time, also lost her head too (in January of 1793, in Paris), after being convicted of high treason. But not all of the song is about Jane Seymour and company, as "Lady Jane" is actually partly being referred to by Jagger as female genitalia, too. He got this idea to call it this from the 1928 book Lady Chatterley's Lover, which he had read before writing the song’s lyrics.
The video linked to at the voting page at the poll, is from one of the Stones 1960s Ed Sullivan TV show appearances. The Stones were playing live on this night, but what we hear in the video is the studio version of the song playing, while only MJ's vocals were kept live…. The studio lineup for this one was: Mick Jagger – Vocals; Brian Jones – Appalachian Dulcimer (aka Mountain/Lap Dulcimer); Keith Richards – Acoustic Guitar; Bill Wyman – Bass Guitar; Charlie Watts – Xylophone, with Jack Nitzsche on Harpsichord (or Brian Jones, as both were credited in the session logs, but only one harpsichord is heard on the studio cut). To rate this week’s song, just click on the following link: Stones Weekly Poll.
Last week at the Stones Poll, we asked this: Rate the Stones song “The Last Time”, from zero (lowest) to 10 (highest).
“The Last Time”, from one the Stones’ single front covers for the song
So we rated "The Last Time", and with a record voter turnout (for the Stones poll, anyway), the tune scored a 10, with 69.8% of the first-place votes. So just where in the Stones rating standing does this one land? To find out, just click on here: Stones Song Ratings & Standings - List Page 5. For the full, finial results from this poll, just click here: Stones Weekly Poll - week 1,231.
This week at the Beatles Poll (week 621 of voting and week 55 of rating Beatle songs), first, just like what we are voting on over at the Stones poll this week, we will also vote on at the Fab poll. That is, yet another Baroque Pop song for this poll, too. Plus, we'll also do something we haven't done yet at the Fab Poll, that is, for the second week in a row, we'll rate a song that George Harrison wrote! So this week's question asks this: Rate the Beatles song, “Piggies” , from zero (lowest) to 10 (highest)
“Piggies”. No, not these kind of kiddie piggies that go to market, but the nasty privileged adult human kind, the kind that totally suck
You would have thought an anti-establishment song like this one might have been written by John Lennon (the lyrics, anyway, not so much the music, and yes, John did come up with one line in the song, too, the bit about the pigs eating bacon [of all things] while clutching folks and knives) instead of the mild, gentle, and very mellow, George. But like John and some of his close friends in the Stones, George too was being busted by the local cops for having some harmless weed on him, and he had had enough of them raiding his home and his friends’ homes regularly, when he started to rewrite this song that he first started to write 2 years earlier (in 1966), which at first was about greed among rich people, plus commercialism, and yes, establishment figures (but not the police, just politicians). George noted in an interview that his arrows were at first aimed only at the upper class and/or big politicians who “don't care what goes on around” with the plight of the lower class. Yet in 1968 when George returned to this one, he had crooked cops on his mind, too. But of course, George couldn’t say it was about any cops, for reasons that all Beatle fans understood (since the cops would just harass/bust him again, since he wasn't gonna give up smoking mother nature, either). So, when he went back to this song that he had once gave up on writing, cops were now being called "pigs" (at least in the U.S. anyway) by those in the growing anti-establishment, counter culture movement, and yes, they were now connected to the song, too, along with the others.
George Martin was away on vacation when most of this song was being recorded, returning only to be around on the final day it was being recorded. So, he really wasn't the true producer of the song (but he was still credited as being it. Chris Thomas, who played the Harpsichord on the song, was, along with the band, the song's producers).
The song ended up being released in November of '68 on the Beatles White Album, and includes a lot of classical sounds on it including 4 Violins, 2 Violas and 2 Cellos, with its main instrument being that wonderful sounding Harpsichord. The tune's full lineup follows: George Harrison – Lead and Harmony Vocals, Backing Vocals, Acoustic Guitar, Vocalized Grunting; John Lennon – put together the Tape effects (of real pig sounds), Vocalized Grunting, Backing Vocals; Paul McCartney – Bass Guitar, Backing Vocals; Ringo Starr – Tambourine and Bass Drum; with Additional musicians: Chris Thomas – Harpsichord (and again, the song's actual true Producer); Henry Datyner – Violin; Eric Bowie – Violin; Norman Lederman – Violin; Ronald Thomas – Violin; John Underwood – Viola; Keith Cummings – Viola; Eldon Fox – Cello; Reginald Kilby – Cello. George Martin took care of the String's arrangement after he returned to the studio, so yes, he did work on it some.
To rate this song and vote in this week's Beatles poll, just click on this link: Beatles Weekly Poll.
In last week’s Beatle Poll, we asked this: Rate the Beatles song, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” , from zero (lowest) to 10 (highest)
“While My Guitar Gently Weeps” Tribute painting by Robert Lyn Nelson
Last week at the Fab Poll, we rated "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", and you already knew as soon as you saw the question, that it would score a 10 once the poll ended - and it did, with a whopping 94.2% of the vote! But, did this make the Beatles Top 10 in their rating standings? Yes, it did, but just where did it land? To see where (it tied with another great song), just click on here: The Beatles Song Ratings and Standings Page . Or, to take a look at the poll’s full, finial results, just go there: Beatles Poll, week 620.
So that does it for yet another Poll Post. A somewhat snowy past week took place where I live in Colorado.....but it’s March, and that's our snowiest month of the snow season around here, in a season where little snow has fallen. Of course, like everywhere else, by mid-March snow melts real fast once it sticks to the ground, unless it falls at nite, so more than half that fell is all gone already. But we got a lot more coming, as every day and nite this new week, starting Monday nite - it's supposed to snow.... so says the local weatherman anyway, but yeah, that's me, and I'm usually correct on predicting that kind of stuff. But then again, I didn’t forecast the snow that fell this morning (Sunday), either, so what do I know? Besides, I'm sure I'm boring most of you reading this anyway, so I guess it's time to stop writing/typing and sign off and close this week's Poll Post up until next Sunday nite. I hope all of you have a great week ahead.
But wait, I almost forgot!..... for now anyway, I was thinking of listing the links to the now closed Classic Rock Poll archives at the end of each Poll Post. So for that, just go here: Rock Poll's Archive Pages and of course, all of the Rock List Pages lists of all the results from these polls (well, about 98% of them that we voted on), and they will always be online to check out too - all 18 pages of them, starting with the very first Rock List Page 1, here. Plus of course, the Ongoing Rock Polls are also still running and active, so remember, you can vote in those polls once a year. You can find these polls and vote in them at the Poll Menu Page!
Okay, so once again, have a great upcoming week, and cheers, my friends!
Keno
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