20. Rain
(B-side, 1966)
Ringo's greatest drumming launches countercultural downpour.
Andy Partridge (XTC): “I could go on ad infinitum about this. To me, Rain represents the glorious exploding death of the old Beatles, the part where they stood at the pinnacle of their own Everest after they’d done all they could with just two guitars, bass and drums. Then they look outwards into the psychedelic sunset to where they’re going next, which is inevitably down.
“I first heard it on the radio in a youth club in Swindon when I was 13, and I was singing along to it before it had even finished. I was very puzzled by the backwards voice. What are they singing ‘Nair’ for? That’s the hair removal cream my mum rubs on her legs.’
“I’m a bit synaesthesic, so every time I hear it I see bronze. The guitars are like two ancient Greek shields flashing and battering into each other, the bass is showing off wonderfully, in fact the only records that had such a good bass sound before this were Tamla records. It’s also their first fuck-around with speed; the drums are bigger and slappier than ever before – have you heard a better snare sound? Lyrically it’s a dislocated, caustic nursery rhyme, a quite innocent us-and-them thing. ‘They’ – the straights - run from the rain and the sun, all the wonderful banality of living, and don’t know they’re alive.
“As a song I think it’s indicative of the state of mind of English people. American psychedelia was nastier, with class-A drugs and too many politics; English psychedelia was gentler and more comical - a picnic by the Thames with a bloody big daffodil and a purple smoke bomb and two girls called Alice and Hermione.
“We played in Liverpool the day Lennon died. Rain is modally similar to [XTC song] Towers Of London, so we played it during the coda; I felt torn apart and had tears rolling down my face. It was the weirdest sensation.”
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