The Beatles and the Art of the Tambourine - Popular/American ...

102 Steven Hamelman
4. The tambourine’s inherent exoticism blurs ethnic and historical
lines, especially when it collaborates with shakers (maracas).
A good Beatles example is “Wait.”
5. Deployed after the song’s rhythm has been set, the rolled or
shaken tambourine adds a sixteenth-note feel and seems to accelerate
the song without, however, increasing its tempo. Contrapuntal
pulses tug the listener in two directions. Buffalo
Springfield’s “Everybody’s Wrong” (1966) captures the excitement
this technique can generate. Thirty years later, Wilco did
the same on “Monday.” The Beatles’ affection for the tactic is a
highlight of “Mean Mr. Mustard.”
6. Through accents, off-beats, delayed entrance, and cross patterns,
the Beatles used the tambourine to create rhythmic contrasts
that even after forty years continue to disorient the listener
and skew the metronome. Revolver and The Beatles burst
with tracks that illustrate this function. The players inject syncopations
and counter-rhythms that augment the more conspicuous
innovations regaling masterworks such as “Tomorrow Never
Knows” and “Happiness Is a Warm Gun.”
Studies in Popular Culture
The Beatles’ Tambourine Tally
Tambourine next crops up on the second album’s “Don’t Bother Me.”
Two tambourine parts grace A Hard Day’s Night. The five mostly conventional
performances on Beatles for Sale do not prepare fans for the jinglejangle
sound-flood on Help! (6 of 14 tracks), Rubber Soul (9/14), and Revolver
(8/14). Perhaps the baroque production of Sgt. Pepper made the
tambourine seem old-hat to the boys; it appears without much consequence
on just four of this LP’s thirteen cuts. On the American release Magical
Mystery Tour, the group applies it to eight tracks (of eleven). One-third of
the thirty cuts on The Beatles have tambourine, one-half (3/6) of Yellow
Submarine, and one-quarter (4/17) of Abbey Road. Let It Be is jingle-free.
Singles made the wetter and/or sweeter by tambourine are “Day Tripper,”
“We Can Work It Out,” “Paperback Writer,” “Rain” (all from the watershed
years 1965-66), and “Hey Jude.”
Sources for this tally are not consistent. Ian MacDonald, Walter
Everett, and Mark Lewisohn, the three leading close-readers of Beatles