The Beatles and Marvin Gaye

A muso-cultural analysis through musical arrangement

Joel Sanchez-Carn

For this task, I have arranged the Beatles’ 1969 Rock single Don’t Let Me Down in a Soul/RnB style
reminiscent of Marvin Gaye’s 1971 Motown single What’s Going On. This arrangement focuses on the
contrast of British Rock idioms with the Soul/R&B practices of America, highlighting the equivalences and
differences between the musical, cultural and political ethos at a similar time, albeit in different geopolitical
and musical climates. Attached is a score of the arrangement, as well as a MIDI rendering. Please note
that some parts of the MIDI rendering are not aurally realised as they would be in live performance due to
the use of shorthand scoring, improvised parts, and comp slashes.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the post-Woodstock USA was rife with political, racial, and international
tension: ‘bloodshed and bombings on campus, the harsh realities beneath the facile hopes for a
“Woodstock nation,” the shabby refuse of counterculture communities, all helped kill the [flower power]
dream’ (Greenfield, 1975). Aptly, this was reflected in the nation’s art at the time: ‘the Soul music of this
era, according to Hip Hop pioneer Chuck D, was “darker,” reflecting national tensions’ (TeachRock, 2015).
From this tension emerged both a single and an album entitled What’s Going On by Motown-signed Soul
artist Marvin Gaye. According to Ritz (1985), Gaye wondered ‘with the world exploding around me, how
am I supposed to keep singing love songs?’ (pg.165). Marvin’s album was - and continues to be -
politically and musically incendiary, and is hailed as one of the foremost hallmarks of protest music: ‘a
masterpiece arising from the golden age of soul music, “What’s Going On” wasn’t just a chart-topper. It
was a reflection, a mirror held up to a society in turmoil’ (Russell, 2023).

The Beatles, though discouraged by manager Brian Epstein (Collins, 2012), were not averse to making
political statements, too, if not simply through sheer popularity: ‘The Beatles brought pop music from the
margins of cultural discourse to its centre. Their critical reception in 1960s and early 1970s Britain
reconfigured debates over the relationship between high and low culture in several crucial respects’,
writes Marcus Collins (2021, pg. 415). Poliitcal tensions in Britain throughout the 1960s, as well as a
quest for enlightenment and unification, informed the Beatles’ music. Songs such as Taxman expressed
an ‘abiding resentment of punitive taxation rates’ (Collins, 2012, pg. 5), and Come Together, All You Need
Is Love, and The End concerned ‘the power of love to create community and to invest existence with
meaning’ (Ibid., pg. 7).

Though The Beatles and Gaye stood at the forefront of music throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s,
both artists stood at markedly different points in their respective careers. The early 1970s saw Marvin
Gaye at a creative high point: ‘in the 1970s, Gaye worked in a far more independent manner, creating
albums that were among Motown’s most successful’ (Flory, 2019, pg. 313). In Soul, Gaye held a similar
status to the Beatles: ‘he’s our John Lennon’, remarked Janet Jackson after Gaye’s passing (Ritz, 1985,
pg. 11).

At this time, The Beatles, commonly cited as ‘the best band in the history of popular music’ (Hecl, 2006,
pg. 13) were in their ‘late’ period of music-making (Martinelli & Bucciarelli, 2023, pg. 5), and by 1970 ‘the
band [were] practically broken already’ (ibid. pg. 8), for which John Lennon’s alliance with Yoko Ono is

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thought to be a major catalyst: ‘there is no doubt that Lennon’s turning point… was the meeting with Yoko
Ono’ (Ibid., pg. 54).

At this stage, The Beatles had already diverged significantly from their ‘straight ahead’ pop origins: ‘by the
time of the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the sound of the Beatles is irreconcilable
with the sound of their first album Please Please Me’ (Blackman, 2020, pg.1). Gaye would soon do the
same with What’s Going On: ‘after a decade of polished pop hits, Gaye, now in his early 30s, revealed
there was a lot on his mind’ (Lordi, 2021). Changes in musical, lyrical, and rhetorical substance resulted in
a changing appearance for both artists. For Gaye, ‘the insurgent subject matter [of What’s Going On] was
accompanied by a change in Gaye’s personal style: he stopped wearing ties and grew a beard’ (Ibid.).
This is reflected on the cover of What’s Going On, in which a bearded Gaye dons a raincoat, suggesting a
‘ruggedness’ heretofore unseen in his public appearance. Likewise, the Beatles’ heterogeneous
appearances in 1969, as seen in their 1970 film Let It Be (in which Don’t Let Me Down is performed)
portended their dissolution: ‘when the Beatles ascended onto the rooftop… their disparate styles and hair
lengths are telling indications of [their forthcoming disbanding]’ (Kapurch, 2020, pg. 257).

Deborah Cartmell (2007) claims that ‘we read adaptations for their generation of a plurality of meanings.
Thus, the intertextuality of the adaptation is our primary concern’ (pg. 28). My arrangement of Don’t Let
Me Down seeks to examine these musical, political and cultural differences between The Beatles and
Gaye through the lens of adaption and recontextualisation, revealing the difference between the musical
ethos of Soul and Rock as wholes.

The most immediately noticeable difference in my arrangement is the transformation of its meter. While
Don’t Let Me Down is mostly cast in a typical 4/4 Rock groove, my arrangement transforms the meter to
6/8, changing the underlying subdivision and reframing the piece in compound time. Although What’s
Going On is not cast in compound time, several notable Soul ‘standards’ - including Al Green’s cover of
How Can You Mend A Broken Heart, and Donny Hathaway’s cover of I Love You More Than You’ll Ever
Know - are in 6/8 compound time. Modern Soul and R&B pieces such as Childish Gambino’s Me And
Your Mama and Frank Ocean’s Pink+White are also in 6/8 time, affirming compound meter as a staple of
the Soul ‘canon’. Interestingly, the Beatles’ single elicits a suggestion of compound meter in the ‘3+3+2’
quaver grouping of its verse sections (0:31 of the Beatles’ single), with snare marking the second group of
three, creating a momentary illusion of compound meter. My transformation of meter may be seen as a
natural development of metric material latent in the Beatles’ piece.

Both Don’t Let Me Down and What’s Going On have been described as ‘love songs’, though their
pragmatic deployment of ‘love’ had vastly different ends. Gaye’s single ‘touched on many issues plaguing
American society in the late 1960s, including the unjust treatment of African Americans, race riots, the
Vietnam War, and poverty’ (Barnhill, 2019, pg.10). In the milieu of The Four Tops vetoing What’s Going
On, lyricist Renaldo Benson recalled: ’my partners told me [What’s Going On] was a protest song. I said
no, man, it’s a love song, about love and understanding. I’m not protesting, I want to know what’s going
on’(Edmonds, 2001). Conversely, Lennon’s aforementioned ongoing relationship with Ono gave way to
the lyrics of Don’t Let Me Down. Paul McCartney (1997), recalls that ‘it was a genuine plea… It was
[Lennon] saying to Yoko, ‘I’m really stepping out of line on this one. I’m really letting my vulnerability be
seen, so you must not let me down.’ (pg. 609). While it is apparent that both lyrics are borne from some
form of desperation, Don’t Let Me Down is relegated to an interpersonal love whereas Gaye’s extends to
the socio-cultural. Schotanus (2020) found that ’nonverbal music conveys both emotional and semantic
meaning… the emotional meaning of the music affects the meaning of the lyrics of a song’ (pg.44). With
this in mind, the reframing of these Lennon/McCartney lyrics in Gaye’s music-world drastically changes
the tone, and produces a new hermeneutic of the original prose. These reframed lyrics may be now read

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in a political milieu, with an inherent sense of love more akin to Benson and Gaye’s ‘protest love’ than
Lennon’s desperate romantic love.

Formally, Don’t Let Me Down uses an ABACABA form - a chorus-verse-chorus form separated by a
bridge - with a Coda attached to its end. On his webpage Formal Structure in Beatles Music, Aaron
Krerowicz (2013) states that ‘the formal design [of the piece] is a palindromic structure with the middle 8
serving as the keystone’. In my arrangement, I sought to keep the middle 8 as the dynamic and
orchestrational apex but augmented the form significantly in other places in keeping with the dynamic
structures of Gaye’s music. In all, the form of my arrangement was as follows:

Intro-Verse-Chorus-Interlude-Solos-Interlude 2-Bridge-Chorus-Verse-Chorus-Coda

This formal elongation of the Beatles’ piece interpolates structures used in the vernacular of Gaye, and of
Soul as a whole, thereby increasing the runtime of the Beatles’ single from three and a half to almost
eight minutes. This protraction aligns with both the Beatles’ and Gaye’s inclinations to explore new sonic
and arrangemental territories in the late 1960s to early 1970s, something neither Don’t Let Me Down nor
the single What’s Going On could achieve due to the restrictive length of the single format both songs
occupied.

Scholar Joel Rudinow states that ‘stylistically, soul music was a merger between gospel music and
secular forms of popular music-blues, rhythm and blues, and rock & roll’ (2010, p.17). As such, my
arrangement has also highlighted the important ecclesiastical constituent of Soul. This informed the
inclusion of an extended solo section in the middle of the arrangement (mm.64-95), as well as improvised
‘comping’ parts, evident throughout. Wyatt Tee Walker (1979) describes Gospel as ‘original musical and
poetic forms [that] lent themselves to Black ‘improvisation’ (pg.19). Whereas the Beatles’ original features
its only solo in the Coda, my arrangement sees this section in the centre of the form, bookended by
relatively composed musical structures, foregrounding the section and affirming the rhetorical importance
of improvisation in Black communities, which scholar Jeff Farley (2010) describes as ‘reflecting black
experiences and history’ (pg. 126).

In his 2005 article The African Matrix in Jazz Harmonic Practices, scholar Gerhard Kubick states that
‘[black] musicians have always converted the tonal-harmonic resources provided by the Western
instruments that they played to suit their own concepts’ (pg. 168). My arrangement utilises more colourful
harmonic language, ‘converting’ the tonal-harmonic resources of The Beatles’ original to suit the
sensibilities of Soul. Whereas The Beatles’ original uses exclusively root position chords (often triads), my
arrangement makes extensive use of extended chords and non-diatonic chords of various ‘colours’ and
functions, often informed directly by Gaye’s harmonic vocabulary. For example, at 1:38 of What’s Going
On, the I-vi progression in E major that constitutes the majority of the first chorus is supplanted by a
dramatic shift to A minor 7 (iv-7 in the previous key of E), intimating either a prolonged bout of modal
mixture from E minor or an abrupt direct modulation up a fourth to A minor. I replicated this formal aspect
of Gaye’s music in the second interlude (m.100-) of my arrangement, moving from a semi-prolonged
vamp on F major 7 to Bb minor 7; the same harmonic movement, but this time in the key of F major.
These harmonic interpolations from Soul exhibit the emotional depth and drama inherent in Gaye’s music,
and evidence the marked difference between the rhythmic, relatively simple harmonies of Rock and their
more nuanced and colourful Soul equivalences.

This arrangement’s transformation of melody also functions as an evocation of Soul idioms. For example,
the arrangement adds a new theme (mm.158-), reminiscent of the melody in the instrumental bridge of
What’s Going On (1:38). Its hallmark feature, a melody beginning on the 9th of a minor chord, is here

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replicated in the horn section. Aretha Franklin, dubbed the ‘Queen of Soul’, is credited with bringing
melisma into the vernacular of Popular music, and cementing it as a staple of the vocal stylings of Soul
(Smithsonian Institution, 2022). Franklin’s influence is here delineated; the bridge of my arrangement
(m.110-) calls for the Lead Vocalist to make use of melismatic runs. The Beatles’ original makes use of
melisma, too (words ‘no’ and ‘past’ at 1:40 of Don’t Let Me Down), albeit less extensively than most Soul
artists. This melodic transformation is a natural evolution of the vocal embellishment in the original
through the lens of Soul.

The Beatles’ original instrumentation (Vocals, 2 Guitars, Bass, Drumset, Keys) has been augmented in
my arrangement through the use of new keyboard instruments, modification of typical Rock roles, and the
inclusion of new instrumental forces. Chief among these alterations is the use of the Hammond B3 Organ
(mm.184-199), which reflects Soul’s inheritance of the musical idioms of Gospel. Carlo de Wijs (2022)
states that ‘early jazz pioneers introduced the instrument to the Black Christian community (most notably
to gospel musicians), giving it an impulse to help develop the sounds of styles such as Rhythm & Blues,
[and] Soul’ (pg.4). Not only does the Hammond B3 represent a muso-cultural touchstone extant in the
lineage and legacy of Soul, it is also iconic of Gospel, which Ultimate Classic Rock writer Nick DeRiso
(2021) believes is inherent in What’s Going On: ‘the album actually has the consistently challenging depth
and heart-opening heft of sacred music’.

The Electric Piano came to occupy a central role in Soul, similarly to the Hammond Organ’s role in
Gospel. Stevie Wonders, Ray Charles and Donny Hathaway made frequent use of the instrument (often a
Fender Rhodes Electric Piano), and Hathaway used the instrument on his popular 1972 Live rendition of
What’s Going On. Billy Preston’s use of Fender Rhodes in The Beatles’ original is greatly expanded on in
my arrangement. Here, the Rhodes sits at the centre of the ensemble (e.g. mm.14-20), providing core
harmonic support as in Hathaway’s cover. In Don’t Let Me Down, Guitars tend to deliver the majority of
the harmonic information of the piece, with Electric Piano interjecting with rhythmic punctuation. Inversely,
Hathaway’s cover sees the instrument occupying a foundational harmonic role, with guitars ‘rhythmicising’
this sonority (0:13). The imitation of Hathaway’s texture highlights the differences in arragemental ethos
between The Beatles’ single and Hathaway’s cover, hence microcosmically examining these differences
between Rock and Soul as a whole.

Similarly, the addition of a 3 piece horn section (Alto & Tenor Saxophone; Trombone) to this arrangement
reflects a crucial difference in instrumentation between Rock and Soul: in the late 1970s, ‘Motown was
developing sophisticated and pop-oriented styles highlighted by… horn… arrangements’ (Stephens,
1984, pg. 30). The inclusion of a horn section lends itself to this sense of ‘sophistication’, from which
various new arrangemental textures emerge that supplement and enrich the arrangement, hence evoking
the sounds of Henry R. Crosby and Paul Riser, session horn players of the revolving door group of staple
Motown session players known as ‘The Funk Brothers’ (Justman, 2002).

The Beatles’ continual recruitment of Billy Preston and various other session musicians in the late stage
of their career (Jackson, 2021) exhibits the group’s continual dynamism and inclination to new sonic
territories. As such, this additional orchestration of Don’t Let Me Down can be seen as a pragmatic
evolution of the original, were it to be later re-arranged or re-recorded (as the Beatles were wont to do).

The adaption of The Beatles’ Don’t Let Me Down in the style of Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On not only
exemplifies the differences and similarities between The Beatles and Gaye, but also the commonalities of
artists seeking peace in a time of turmoil and dissent. Through the interpolation and recontextualisation of
form, harmony, lyrics, melody, and instrumentation, the Beatles’ classic is energised with a new musical,
social, historical, and political perspective that is both instructive and enriching.

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