One song from the Liverpudlian group The Beatles was “pointing the direction of where music has to go” according to Bob Dylan.
The legendary songwriter and The Beatles would have the occasional run-in, though the writing process overseen by Paul McCartney and John Lennon impressed Dylan. He would go on to call one of the Fab Four’s songs his favourite, and credited it with changing the direction popular music was headed. I Want to Hold Your Hand, which was released on November 29, 1963, sold over one million copies in the UK and was the first of their songs to be made using four-track recording equipment. Dylan spoke highly of the song, and called it an “outrageous” achievement.
He said: “They were doing things nobody was doing. Their chords were outrageous, just outrageous, and their harmonies made it all valid… I knew they were pointing the direction of where music had to go.” Dylan’s comment on I Want to Hold Your Hand has since made its way to the r/Beatles subreddit, where fans asked what he meant by his summary of The Beatles’ chart-topping classic.
One user wrote: “What does Bob Dylan mean in this quote about the chords in I Want to Hold Your Hand?” Other fans of the song have suggested it is the “unconventional” chord structure which gives it a sound unlike anything being made at the time.
One user wrote: “The chord choices and progressions were unconventional, and completely unlike what any other pop or rock artist had done at that point. Which is true, he was right. Although songs like From Me To You made it even more obvious. The Beatles’ songwriting was completely unlike what any of their peers were doing.”
Another added: “I looked up an arrangement – it implies key of G major but finishes the first line with a B7 chord (e.g. ‘… I think you’ll understand’ B7 over ‘stand’). Normally you’d play Bmin rather than B7 in G major and finishing the line on the third step of the scale is pretty unusual itself.
“The ‘normal’ music theory idea is to resolve at the end of a melodic section by returning to the tonic or at least dominant/sub dominant – this is the opposite of that idea. It reminds me of Who Loves the Sun by Velvet Underground, where the first chord change is the wrong-sounding A to G# that still sounds right within the song.”
A third user suggested that, irrespecitve of chord structure or “unconventional” tones, it was the influence of popular music at the time which made The Beatles push that little bit further with their works.
One user wrote: “Listen to an American pop song six months before I Want to Hold Your Hand was released. The difference in the two styles is stark. It was nothing Americans had heard before. The reach of music in 1963/64 was pretty shallow. For Americans to hear The Beatles in the beginning, someone had to bring a record over from the UK.
“Ed Sullivan was the first time a lot of people even ever heard them. Their style utilizing skiffle influences was akin to Elvis using African American influences. Music was not wide reaching even popular music until this time.”
