Tune Tag #33 with Faith Current of The Abbey- The Beatles Reimagined: Ramones, Buck Owens, Leonard Cohen, Billy Joel, Beatles, Tremors, Ringo

Tune Tag welcomes assistant, Abbey + Tune Tag newcomer, Faith Current, for her first appearance! We actually boated 'cross the Mersey for this one! No worries--Abbey rowed! "Row oar else," I bellowed!

Hey there, Faith! TAG!

Tune Tag proudly welcomes Faith Current!

Faith Current

is a Beatles writer/scholar, a mythologist, a singer/songwriter, and the daughter of a rock music historian. Her in-progress memoir about her journeys to Liverpool, London, and Hamburg is currently being serialized on her Substack site, The Abbey: The Beatles Reimagined. She’s also at work on an in-depth podcast/book about Lennon & McCartney, which will be released later this year.

Subversive. Thoughtful. A little bit🔥. Subscribe now to get what I’m fairly sure will be a most provocative Lennon/McCartney podcast in your inbox the moment it’s released. Thanks!—Faith

Faith’s Song #1 sent to Brad: The Beatles, “Act Naturally,” 1965

Faith’s rationale: As a Beatles writer/scholar, of course I was going to start with a Fab song. I chose “Act Naturally” because it’s considered a throwaway track and it’s anything but, and this was a chance to adjust that misconception. “Act Naturally” was Buck Owens’ first #1 record and Buck Owens’ sound, in general, sparked two musical revolutions, and led directly to the creation of two new musical genres.

It’s a popular parlor game among country music people (of which I am also one) to speculate on who would qualify as “The Beatles of country music.” The real answer is, of course, no one, because the Beatles are a singular phenomenon, and no one in country music has ever come close to changing the history of the whole of Western culture. But there are a handful of revolutionary figures who radically and forever changed country music, and I’d put Buck Owens at the very top of that list.

Buck Owens’ west coast “Bakersfield Sound” was just hitting the charts in late 1963, paralleling the Beatles’ rise, when “Act Naturally” became Owens’ first of twenty #1 records. If you’re not familiar with the history of country music, it might be hard to hear why Owens’ sound is revolutionary, but it sent a shockwave through the Nashville-based country music establishment that still reverberates to this day (for one thing, Owens’ band used... gasp!... drums... and... another gasp!... electric guitars, both of which were strictly taboo in 1963 Nashville).

“Act Naturally” was one of the earliest iterations of what eventually became modern country/country rock.

The Beatles were Capitol label-mates with Buck Owens, and aware enough of his revolutionary sound that, on their ‘64 visit to the US, they requested his entire catalog to take home to the UK. So it’s not an accident that they chose this song to record as their last-ever officially released cover song (unless you count “Maggie Mae,” which I don’t). You can hear the influence of Owens’ Bakersfield Sound in the production/arrangement of “What Goes On,” “Misery,” and “I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party,” among others — the Fabs are more country than it might seem.

The definitive deep dive of Owens’ influence on music is the two-part Cocaine & Rhinestones series on Buck Owens and the Bakersfield Sound, which I can’t recommend highly enough:

Brad’s response to “Act Naturally”: Of course a country song, it was written by country singer, Johnny Russell, and its first recording was in March 1963, nearly a year before Ringo’s band debuted in America on CBS-TV’s The Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964.

UDiscovermusic.com said it perfectly on February 12, 2024 about Buck Owens’ first recording: “The original of a song that later provided the first exposure to country music for so many people all over the world was recorded on February 12, 1963 [at Capitol Studios].

“The number, about someone with delusions of Hollywood stardom, failed to attract any attention for a good two years. But by 1963, Russell was collaborating with another songwriter called Voni Morrison, who knew and worked with Owens, and she drew ‘Act Naturally’ to the attention of the Bakersfield, California-based performer.”

According to the song’s Wiki page, a song-writing credit was given to Ms. Morrison, with publishing rights transferred to Owens (at some point). Russell died at 61 in 2001. “Owens overcame his early indifference to the song and cut the first recorded version of it, to great effect.

“On June 17, 1965, after the rejection [by the band] of ‘If You’ve Got Trouble,’ recorded in February (according to UDiscovermusic.com), “[The Beatles] and producer George Martin were still looking for a suitable song for a lead vocal on the album by Ringo. The drummer, a country and western fan, suggested ‘Act Naturally,’ and it was recorded in 13 takes, with Paul McCartney on backing vocals and George Harrison on acoustic guitar. When the Help! album came out on August 6, The Beatles’ version of ‘Act Naturally’ started Side B.”

Brad’s Song #1 sent to Faith: Buck Owens and Ringo Starr, “Act Naturally” 1989

Buck'n'Bronco: One of these is not like the others (namely, 'cause it's a white-label Promo)! The vaunted Capitol label across 3 decades, featuring Buck and Ringo, both, on two of the three, and both on one! If a similar artist anomaly (involving 3 singles and the same song) on one label exists, I'm not aware of it! Stunning.