206. Dizzy Miss Lizzy
The only thing more inexplicable than the album sequencing is what they did with that guitar riff
If you look at lists of ‘the worst Beatles’ songs, Dizzy Miss Lizzy often makes the cut. And I can’t really argue with that. Obviously, it’s down here toward the bottom on my list as well.
And yet. Isn’t there something amazing about this song? Even if it is rather unpleasant to listen to?
For one thing, John is singing his damn heart out on this one, and Ringo is absolutely killing it on the backbeat. And while I can’t really imagine anyone specifically loving that ubiquitous double-tracked lead guitar riff,1 you have to at least admit that it generates a sort of apocalyptic cacophony which may not be exactly pleasurable but which is certainly intense.
I can’t help but wonder how many of the negative reactions to this song are really just down to the bizarre sequencing choice that placed it as the closing track. Which is to say: immediately after the final notes of Yesterday fade away, that piercing guitar line launches itself directly into your ear canal. It’s almost like they were intentionally trying to ruin our mood.
The thing is: they probably were trying to do that. Or, maybe not trying to ‘ruin’ the mood, but I suspect they really did not want listeners to end the record on such a quiet note. That’s a consistent feature on many of their early records. Please Please Me ends with Twist and Shout. With the Beatles closes with Money. Rubber Soul has Run For Your Life. And even more broadly, they consistently tried to ensure that the opening and closing tracks on each side of each album was a rocker. Most of those sequencing choices on the early albums were actually taken by George Martin, but from what I can tell, the Beatles themselves were involved in the conversation for Help!, specifically insisting that Yesterday wouldn’t be an appropriate album-closer.
It’s a shame, and actually a bit out of character. One of their defining features as a band was their willingness to push boundaries and write their own scripts. And they’d already broken the mold on A Hard Day’s Night, which ends with I’ll Be Back, which isn’t a ballad like Yesterday but is also hardly a barn-burner. But in this case, they seem to have been uncomfortable enough with even releasing Yesterday as a Beatles song, and simply couldn’t countenance the idea of having it close the album.
It’s not a good explanation. But I think it’s probably accurate.
However, I do think there’s a more positive spin, which is also probably accurate. It may not have been a question of fear—that ending with Yesterday would harm their rock and roll cred—and more a desire to take some of the air out of their own seriousness.
Which is actually consistent with a lot of their choices over the years. They brought in an entire orchestra for A Day in the Life, eventually ending on he most portentous piano chord in rock history. And then jammed up the listener with some studio chatter and a dogwhistle in the runout groove. You’ve written Why Don’t We Do It in the Road? Why not follow it with I Will? Got an experimental piece of musique concrète about revolution? Time to close things out with a Ringo lullaby. Write an epic medley to cover the back half of your last album and literally name the last song The End? Better splice 23 seconds of Her Majesty after it.
So yes, all things considered, I’d prefer a version of Help! where they just let Yesterday be the finale.2 And yes, I find the guitar in Dizzy Miss Lizzy actively painful. But still…I kind of love them for being willing to do something so stupid.
It’s also worth noting—similar to Everybody’s Trying to Be My Baby, which I discussed yesterday—the live versions of this song are better than the studio cut. The take from the Hollywood Bowl album, for example, uses that guitar riff far more sparingly, and is much better for that decision.
They did a version at Shea Stadium as well (which actually got more overdubs than the official studio version). And Dizzy Miss Lizzy also has the questionable virtue of being one of the tracks John performed at Live Peace in Toronto 1969, the first live performance by the ‘Plastic Ono Band’ which was really just a hastily-assembled group of folks who were willing to fly to immediately fly with him across the Atlantic for a completely unrehearsed concert.3 Of course, that ragtag group included Eric Clapton, Klaus Voorman, and Alan White. It’s good to be John Lennon.
Presumably, they included Lizzy in their short setlist on the theory that it could be performed with no rehearsals.
The take is pretty shambolic, to be honest, but is still an improvement over the old studio version.
I like Jonathan Gould’s characterization in Can’t Buy Me Love:
Thirty, forty, fifty times he plays it, with the self-absorption of a child perfecting his signature, and each repetition seems to affirm some deeply held belief that these eight notes, in this configuration, represent the only conceivable accompaniment to the song.
Though, notably, Gould does overall seem to quite like the song, concluding:
John’s performance—or, more accurately, his behavior, for he finishes some of the verses by simply throwing back his head and shrieking at the top of his lungs—harkens back to the monumental version of “Twist and Shout” he sang at the end of Please Please Me in 1963. That track had been the Beatles’ first great recording of a non-original song. “Dizzy Miss Lizzy” would be their last.
Jonathan Gould, Can’t Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain, and America, p. 279.
Of course, thanks to living in an era of digital music, it’s trivially easy to get that version of Help! Just unclick the little box next to the song and you can easily skip it. You don’t even have to walk over to the stereo!
On the flight home, John declared that he wanted out of the Beatles—a position that he never retreated from. Which means Lizzy has a minor role to play in the permanent fracture of the Beatles.