1964 The Beatles: I Feel Fine

They say that familiarity breeds contempt and that's true enough, but it's also true that it breeds over familiarity just as well. I've highlighted in previous entries how some of the songs now under consideration are as familiar to me as my own face in the mirror, and as far as that goes 'I Feel Fine' is a case in point - I can't say I've sat down with the purpose of listening to it for many a year, but equally, such is my familiarity with the song I'd have no problems at all in getting up to sing it karaoke without having any of the lyrics in front of me on the prompt screen.

To that end, I could have cheated and written this piece off the top of my head on the basis of memory by 'playing' the song through in my mind. In so doing, I'd have no doubt commented that The Beatles had already refined the verse/middle eight/chorus/verse structure to a fine art on 'A Hard Day's Night' and that 'I Feel Fine' was a spot jump in terms of progress and a step back in terms of excitement. In short, I'd have said it was the sound of a restless band marking time by probing for weaknesses in a wall of tradition they'd soon bulldoze through.

Thankfully, I don't resort to such lazy measures in producing these reviews and I dutifully dug out my copy of 'Ones' to listen to it afresh. And I'm grateful that I did because the process was akin to catching up with an old college friend who'd changed over the intervening years from a fondly remembered pissed up loon to a sharp suited professional with a fifty pounds haircut. In the case of 'I Feel Fine', (over) familiarity with the tune and chorus had reduced it in my memory to a knockabout singalong that had taken the edge off the fine detail The Beatles always excelled in. I'd forgotten the burst of feedback drone that opens the song and I'd forgotten (or perhaps never previously appreciated) the twin Rickenbacker sound that provide the skeleton of the song not with a jangle, but with a precision riff of warmth clipped out by what sounds like a softwood plectrum (Tom Verlaine doubtless paid more attention than me).

And the title too - something almost jokey and throwaway on paper, but when placed in the context of more overblown declarations of lifelong desire emotion from its sixties contemporaries (rather than in the context of a Beatles album, which is where I've always heard it), then it's a beautifully understated précis of an everyman experience of love - planets aren't colliding, stars aren't falling and fires aren't burning out of control; "She's in love with me and I feel fine" and that's all that needs to be said. Because it's enough

The earlier assumptions I made above, however' still stand and I can't let the song get away scot free - 'I Feel Fine' is still more of a step sideways than forwards and the harmonic twang of the vocals do generate a sense of deja vu, but it's a more deserving song than I've always given it credit for. Listening afresh, I'm happy to regard that sideways step as a necessary Knight's move stepping stone before the sudden jump two places forward into the future that was just around the corner.