Personnel:
Cliff Wilson: Acoustic Bass, Piano, Kombucha Bottle, Cabasa, Kazoo, Vocals, etc.
Hannah Wilson Rebrovick: Ukulele, Kazoo, Vocals
Joe Rebrovick: Kazoo, Vocals (solo, first verse)
Brad Wilson, Vocals (solo, second verse)
Maeli Goren, Vocals
Louise Wilson, Vocals
Why this song is on the album:
All together now! We sang this at a family jam session over the holidays in 2018, and it was a ton (tonne?) of fun. That formed the basis for this all-acoustic version.
This song about life’s generational cycles — falling in love, getting married, having kids — could hardly be more appropriate for a family album, right?
Performance notes:
I love the combination of the acoustic bass and the ukulele as the main accompaniment. The kazoos and silly hand percussion, prominently including a spoon on a kombucha bottle, are part of the living-room vibe we were going for.
And don’t the young men sound great on their vocal solos?
How it’s different from the Beatles’ version:
The instrumental changes are mentioned above. We also moved some of the vocal harmonies into an earlier verse so we could add even more vocal harmonies to the later verse. Those doo-wop vocals in the third verse are not completely original; I heard something like them in a cover version I stumbled across, which in turn referenced an obscure Beatles recording that I have not been able to locate.
Fun(?) fact:
The recording sessions for the White Album were unhappy times for the Beatles, and the lads were frequently at each other’s throats. Lennon loathed this particular McCartney song, which they worked on fruitlessly for weeks. Finally Lennon came into the studio, stoned out of his mind, and went to the piano and played it in a bouncier style, saying, “And this is how your fucking song should go!” He was right.
CCW