The Beatles: Got To Get You Into My Life
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Earth Wind & Fire: Got To Get You Into My Life
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Bloggers don't usually bother prattling on about The Beatles; there seems to be an unspoken assumption in modern culture that the larger-than-life phenomenon of the Beatles as icons somehow contains their history, making any discourse moot. And it is true, I suppose, that the Beatles' use of horns is so culturally recognizable, it's practically memetic; I'm sure I'm not the only one who grew up believing that the French stole the first few bars of All You Need Is Love for their national anthem.
But before the brassband sound of 1967's Sgt. Pepper and its horn-carrying cover, or the faux-military capriciousness of the psychedelic, love-happy 1969 Yellow Submarine, came the sunshiny britpop of 1966 masterpiece Revolver, and it is here, in the underrated Got To Get You Into My Life, we find Beatles' first use of horns -- in truth, a better harbinger of the anthemic, almost carnivalesque sound of Sgt. Pepper than the animated nonsense of a brightly lit underwater world which would follow, though GTGYIML didn't chart until 1976, a full decade after its original release, when it was re-cast as a single with Helter Skelter on the B-side.
The song takes on a darker foreshadowing, too, revealing the kernels of later, deeper Beatles songs, if you accept the underground explanation, later confirmed in Paul's 1998 bio, that he wrote this one about his desire to smoke marijuana, rather than about, say, a girl.
Meanwhile, where the original song's use of brass provides a blare of orchestral sound right from the starting block, thus framing the Beatles' paean to reefer with a swinging pace, Earth Wind & Fire adopt a totally different approach for their take on the song for 1977 movie Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Here, the electric fuzz of funk takes the intro, while the horn section takes a more Disco-era turn as a form of rhythmic flair more typically found in elevators than anywhere else these days. Take the two versions together, and despite the fact that they ultimately achieved their fame within a year from each other, you've got practically a textbook study in contrast between two musical genres, and their respective use of brass.