Penny Lane Is In My Ears And In My Heart
A personal journey through one of the greatest songs in the history of the universe
I once had a girlfriend who was related in some way to Englebert Humperdinck. She was never clear about it but I think she was a niece through marriage. Or something.
I never wanted to meet him which surprised her as I am a music fanatic. The thing is, I’m still annoyed that Englebert’s Please Release Me beat Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields Forever to the UK №1 spot back in 1967. I realise that’s the fault of the UK record-buying public and their appalling taste in music but, nonetheless, Englebert bears some of my ongoing ire.
I’d have been unable to stop myself from asking him, “Englebert, how the hell did your rubbish record beat one of the greatest singles in music history?”
I’m sure I wouldn’t have been the first to ask him that question. Or the last.
Penny Lane
Penny Lane was composed by McCartney at his London home close to Abbey Road studios. Lennon helped with the lyrics a little later and I’m guessing the finger pie reference was his.
The locations mentioned in the song are all real places around the bus terminal in Penny Lane except for the fire station which is half a mile away.
Despite the poppy catchy melody, McCartney used various clever and complex musical structures and chords to give the song its happy and nostalgic feel. It has a complexity more associated with classical music that had never been heard before in popular music, especially not in Englebert’s Please Release Me and, sadly, not in today’s charts either.
Macca used no less than seven modulation (key) changes to match the mood changes of the song and to the lyrics. Although largely written in a ‘happy’ major key (B), he switches at the end of the verses to a parallel minor key (B minor) to bring wistfulness as well as using ‘borrowed’ chords from other keys and complex chords for other mood changes.
This was no ordinary song. Like Please Release Me.
Is there a G sharp minor 7th with a flattened 5th chord in your song, Englebert? No. How about you Taylor? Oh right, you don’t understand the question. Ed? No. Anyone? I thought not. Penny Lane? Oh yes. And much more.
The verse-chorus modulation goes downwards from B to A with the vocal rising. This is also highly unusual and, combined with the busy rhythm of the verse and the leisurely rhythm of the chorus, is a deliberate method for contrasting the celebratory storyline mood of Macca’s youth in the verses to the nostalgic and whistful mood of living away from his old home in the chorus.
This is a song written by a master songwriter at the top of his game.
My journey through the Penny Lane music video
The Beatles never claimed to have invented promotional music videos but they took them to an art form never seen before. This was probably born out of necessity since The Beatles had stopped appearing live in 1966 but needed to promote their music.
Their first truly promotional video was probably the Paperback Writer and Rain films shot at Chiswick House in West London.
The Penny Lane (and Strawberry Fields Forever) promotional music videos that followed this were directed by Peter Goldmann, a Swedish television director and produced by Tony Bramwell for Brian Epstein’s company Subafilms.
The Beatles scenes in the Penny Lane video weren’t filmed in Penny Lane but in London and Sevenoaks in Kent. By 1967, The Beatles were living in and around London.
And since Penny Lane (with Strawberry Fields) is one of the greatest singles in history, I visited all the sites in the promotional video; as you do when you’re a Beatles fanatic and a music nerd.
Here’s the Penny Lane promotional video that I’ll refer to in the rest of the article.
Penny Lane Liverpool
Although the Beatles didn’t film in Liverpool, contemporary shots of Penny Lane were spliced in between the Beatles scenes including the fireman riding a horse.
Here are a couple more shots from my visit to Penny Lane in Liverpool in addition to the main article photo above.
The shelter in the middle of the roundabout is now a Beatles-themed bistro. We see the original shelter in 1967 at the 58-second mark on the video and an aerial view at 1.48.
And here’s the bank on the corner where McCartney’s imaginary banker with a motor car worked. It’s on the other side of the street to the bus shelter and the barber’s. The bank can be seen in the aerial view on the right at the video’s 1.48 mark.
In Macca’s childhood and when the Penny Lane video was made, the barber shop featured in the verses was called Bioletti’s Barber Shop.
These days it’s known as Tony Slavin’s Hair Salon. I was on a coach that couldn’t stop due to road works and parking restrictions on the day I visited hence the photo through the coach window. Otherwise, I’d have gone in for a haircut despite not needing one.
Angel Lane Stratford, East London
The Beatles filmed the street scenes for the Penny Lane video in Stratford, East London. It’s five tube stops from my London home and is also the home of my team, West Ham United who play at the former London Olympic Stadium in Stratford.
It’s a tenuous connection to The Beatles but I’ll take whatever I can claim.
At the 15-second video mark, we see John Lennon approach the other three in front of a black-painted building. The building is easy to identify since at the 25-second mark, we see a sign behind Lennon and McCartney saying, Theatre Royal.
In 1967, the Theatre Royal was in Angel Lane which has largely gone. The theatre is still painted black today, albeit much tidier. Here I am in front of the theatre with the approximate Beatles location from the film pasted in on the right-hand corner.
Unfortunately, much of Angel Lane was redeveloped in the seventies. The locations where the Beatles walked and rode horses in the alley and in Angel Lane are now beneath an ugly indoor shopping centre.
Kings Road Chelsea, West London
The video shows John Lennon purportedly walking down Penny Lane. He continues to walk at various points in the video, including the opening scene. He was actually filmed walking down the Kings Road in Chelsea, West London.
At the 1.17 mark in the video, a red London bus passes him.
The area behind the metal fence and hedge is Markham Square and the street Lennon and I are walking away from along the Kings Road is Markham Street. The hedges and plants along King Road and Markham Square have grown in the intervening 57 years but, remarkably, the same buildings are still there.
The name of the square is another extremely tenuous connection to the Beatles but I’ll take this one too.
Sevenoaks
Two days after filming at Angel Lane, the boys went to Sevenoaks, around 20 miles south-east of London. They filmed the rest of the Penny Lane film and also the entire Strawberry Fields Forever video here.
The Beatles used Bligh’s Hotel at 135 High Street as a base. It’s now called the Oak Tavern. We didn’t stop there although the IPA was tempting. We had a long walk ahead of us and besides, I was far too impatient after 57 years of waiting to see where the film was made and the Beatles once stood.
Sevenoaks is a wealthy town in the county of Kent; classic Stockbroker Belt. Knole Park is a 20-minute walk west along the High Street from the Oak Tavern. But before we get to the park, we pass another iconic location in Beatles history.
44a High Street is a former antique shop where John Lennon found a circus poster titled, For The Benefit of Mr Kite. This occurred during the filming of Strawberry Fields Forever and will be covered in a future article.
Knole Park, Sevenoaks
Knole Park has an enormous 600-year-old historic building managed by The National Trust UK. The locations where the Beatles filmed were around the rear of this house although only a ruined arch and wall are ever seen.
The 1000-acre park surrounding the house is a privately owned deer park and golf course.
At the 1-minute mark in the Penny Lane video, we see the boys riding horses through an old arch behind the house and it’s our first sight of Knole Park in the video.
The boys ride through the arch and turn to their right along a ruined wall at the 1.30 mark to reach a ruined tower.
Behind my right elbow in the photo is a golf teeing-off point and the fairway runs down and past a pond to the golfing green. I didn’t notice the golf stuff, of course, my eyes and brain were fixed only on another Beatles location.
From the ruined tower, I had spotted the pond from the video and in my over-excitement, I ran down the incline (that happened to be a golf fairway) and heard a shout, “Fore.” Or maybe it was, “Four.” Who knows? Not me.
I tend to ignore numbers other than 64, 909 or the number of holes in Blackburn Lancashire (4,000). Another more urgent shout went up. “Golf course, get out of the way.”
I looked behind me. Two golfers were about to tee off. I got out of the way rather than having a golf ball lodged in the back of my head. As they passed they laughed and chatted to me.
They knew all about the significance of the pond in the Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever videos and were used to Beatles nerds like me getting in their way. They thought it funny anyone could get excited by a pond.
The golfers then volunteered the directions to get to the dead tree that featured in the Strawberry Fields Forever film but that was possibly to get me out of the way and off the golf course.
Another tick on The Beatles’ Bucket List
Only the Paperback Writer/Rain, A Hard Day’s Night film, Strawberry Fields Forever and Help film locations to go for the long-suffering Mrs M. Or so she thinks.
I haven’t yet got around to mentioning Magical Mystery Tour. I’ll need to break that one to her gently.
SOURCES:
https://beatlesinkent.wordpress.com/sevenoaks-walking-guide/, https://www.beatlesbible.com/songs/penny-lane/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Lane https://www.the-paulmccartney-project.com/song/penny-lane/