While I started off with a long run of John songs, Paul has made something of a comeback recently, in this alphabetical marathon.
"Mother Nature's Son" is a master class in the employment of the guitar's open D chord, hitting multiple voicings, major, minor, suspended, 7ths aplenty, all in service of the lightness the open D brings, evoking this idillic feeling and setting of which Paul dreamt.
I was at a Beck concert once, him performing alone on a stage, no backing band. Applause having died away from his last number, he was down there in the lull, holding his acoustic guitar, and began absently strumming an open D chord for a short spell, gazing down and away to his right. He suddenly began speaking, how there was something in the D chord so light, free. He almost couldn't... and then he just opened up into the chorus of Tom Petty's "Free Fallin'," another open D chord ode. Just a slow, Beck-ian howl version, echoing richly in St. Paul's storied Fitzgerald Theater. We all had a good laugh. Then we all sang along, freely.
I dearly love the music of this quiet, quiet little Beatles song tucked away on Side 3 of the expansive White Album. I love the music in the melodies, especially in the long finishing lines of the verses, just so alive in every note.
But I almost love the words more. Paul gets no credit for being the Zen Beatle. It's George who spoke outright about meditative calm and spirituality. But it was Paul who specialized in the short, unassuming-but-exquisite poetic line, the focus on image and action rather than intellectual abstraction, the lyrical terseness of Zen expression:
"All day long I'm sitting singing songs for everyone"
"Sit beside a mountain stream, see her waters rise"
"Swaying daisies sing a lazy song beneath the sun"
As a teenager, I was so lucky to work for an outstanding recording studio in my hometown (Makoché), and the owner/engineer was (still is) a great guy who shared my love of the Beatles (he also introduced me to Dylan, the Chess Records legends, not to mention all the wonderful in-house artists). I often spent hours in the back room, just up from the back door to the alley downtown, stamping wording onto cassettes with a crazy old pneumatic press machine. I would listen to all kinds of music on a boombox back there as I worked, and one of my best memories of my boss started with me standing back there, printing, singing along to "Mother Nature's Son." Then David Swenson walked past on his way out, just in time to poke his head in the room and sing with me "Yeah, yeah, yeah." And then he was gone.