Author: Rob Sheffield / Source: Rolling Stone
Aretha Franklin sings in the Atlantic Records studio during ‘The Weight’ recording session on January 9, 1969 in New York City, New York.
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty
Aretha Franklin’s genius took so many forms — as a singer, a songwriter, an album-crafter, a live performer.
But the Queen was also one of history’s most audacious Beatle fans. Nobody ever sang the Beatles like Aretha. Since she was one of the few Sixties musicians as famous and revered as they were, she felt free to take any approach she pleased to a Fabs song — sometimes radically reworking it, as when she sang “Eleanor Rigby” in the first person. When Aretha sang any song, even a Beatle song, she claimed it as her own — and the Beatles knew it. Nothing could make them prouder than getting one of their songs stolen by the Queen. When Paul McCartney wrote “Let It Be,” he sent an acetate demo to Aretha in hopes she’d record it, knowing full well she’d outsing him on it. (Needless to say, she did.)The Beatles’ music was always steeped in American R&B — as kids in Liverpool, they heard a sophistication and urgency in American music that inspired everything they did. From their earliest days, they played songs by Ray Charles, Smokey Robinson, the Shirelles, Little Willie John, the Marvelettes—always aspiring to live up to the spirit-in-the-dark soul of the original. They were already stars when Aretha became an overnight sensation in 1967, with her album I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You). She sang their songs with the irreverent bravado they brought to their American R&B covers—instead of just trying to copy the original, she took it somewhere new.
As Paul McCartney said in his statement on her death, “Let’s all take a moment to give thanks for the beautiful life of Aretha Franklin, the Queen of our souls, who inspired us…
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