"I saw her at the zoo today, what can I say? She's off the drugs now, said to say 'hey'. And did you still play bass in that Paperback Writer-style? She's looking good, she's got Marianne Faithfull's smile" - so goes Songdog's 'Lazarus In Flames', and I've quoted it because that reference to McCartney's Rickenbacker sound is spot on. It defines the song, it's the first thing you notice as it jabs it's way through 'Paperback Writer' like a middle-weight boxer working the body of a lesser opponent in a flurry of excitement that masks the tartness of the lyrics. Presented as an open letter ("Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book?"), McCartney's lyric takes their previous 'A Hard Day's Night' moan at stardom stance and sharpens the satire razor to compare the feverish demand for their product to the hack work expected of a pulp fiction novelist. Though just who is the intended recipient? The record label? ("If you really like it you can have the rights, it could make a million for you overnight") or is it a sly dig at the fans more interested in quantity than quality? ("It's a thousand pages, give or take a few, I'll be writing more in a week or two.I can make it longer if you like the style, I can change it round and I want to be a paperback writer").
Not that it matters really - it's a clever metaphor made cleverer by it's obtuseness that like as not went straight over the heads of 1966 record buyers. And the genius of the song is that it can be taken equally well on the face value of a writer pummelling away at a typewriter because though there's a tongue in cheek whinge at it's heart, it's not a cheap knock-off designed to mark time. The bass outlined above was a move forward all by itself and there's some fine harmonising on the breakdown's that show the boys had been playing close attention to The Beach Boy's version of 'Sloop John B' released a few weeks previously. It gives 'Paperback Writer' an air of familiar comfortability with a veneer of humour that makes it a delight.
Flip side 'Rain' is probably the most famous least known song in The Beatles whole canon. A world away from the clipped precision of 'Paperback Writer', 'Rain' comes acid drenched (sorry) in enough back masking, psychedelic wooze and references to death to present a far more accurate indicator of where the band were heading on 'Revolver' (there's more than a shade of 'She Said, She Said' and 'Tomorrow Never Knows' on this) than the actual 'taster' single would be.
"If the rain comes they run and hide their heads. They might as well be dead" - Lennon draws his 'them and us' line in the sand with a drawling, baiting ("Can you hear me, can you hear me?") vocal over an aural LSD trip of sound that throbs and shifts like a liquid kaleidoscope, but unlike 'Paperback Writer' it never settles into the familiar sound of the 'old' Beatles. The star is 'Rain' is very much the newly acquired 'fifth' member of the band - the recording studio itself and all the possibilities therein. Things were about to get very interesting.....
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