I Want You (She’s So Heavy) – Round 1

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REDRUM ROAD – ROUND ONE – SKIP TO A PAGE
COME TOGETHER ⎔ SOMETHING ⎔ MAXWELL’S SILVER HAMMER ⎔ OH! DARLING ⎔ OCTOPUS’S GARDEN ⎔ I WANT YOU ⎔ HERE COMES THE SUN ⎔ BECAUSE ⎔ YOU NEVER GIVE ME YOUR MONEY ⎔ SUN KING ⎔ MEAN MR. MUSTARD ⎔ POLYTHENE PAM ⎔ SHE CAME IN THROUGH THE BATHROOM WINDOW ⎔ GOLDEN SLUMBERS ⎔ CARRY THAT WEIGHT ⎔ THE END

ROUND TWO START ⎔ ROUND THREE START ⎔ SPECIAL: STORY ROOM

This song only has two lyrics “I want you so bad it’s driving me mad” (with slight derivations and segmentations) and “She’s so…heavy!” It plays during the whole drive up, and the entire Abbey Road Tour, as previously discussed. The backward action is Jack chopping his way through Suite 3, Danny’s entire final REDRUM sequence, the scene of Hallorann driving the snowcat through the darkening night with the snowy trees, and half (about exactly) of Jack’s talk with Grady.
This was John’s first and last love song to Yoko to be put out by the Beatles on a major album (as far as I can tell). So you’d probably suspect there’d be more Hallorann (Yoko) in the sequence. But if Redrum Road is intentional, I figure Hallorann’s “breaking up the band” moment is enough to get the point across. (Actually, the Round 3 iteration of this track features much more Hallorann, and the scene of Hallorann in Miami in bed is completely contained by this track)

In the car ride up, Wendy is looking at both Danny and Jack, while Jack stares ahead stormily.
And in mirror world, Jack’s doing the “little pigs, little pigs” bit, which makes him look quite mad.
There’s also a point to be made for the fact that the family discusses cannibalism while backward Jack pretends to be the Big Bad Wolf. Two very different but similarly grotesque ways in which someone can want someone else so bad they’re driven mad about it.

While backward Jack is saying “Come out, come out, wherever you are!” he’s walking by a box of Jumbo Tiddley Winks on the coffee table. The game of Tiddlywinks contains a shot called the John Lennon Memorial Shot, which I can’t find predating Lennon’s murder, but it seems likely by the name that it would’ve come after. That said, the shot might’ve been called the John Lennon Shot before the murder. I can’t find how the name came to be (the original French name meant “Flea Game” and Lennon was in the Beatles? is that the joke?). Anyway, both this instance of Jack passing the game, and the mirrorform instance occur while a Lennon track is playing. Here it’s this, and on the other side, Because has just begun to play.

“She’s so heavy” first time we hear this, mirror Wendy is lifting (heavy?) Danny through the air. The tempo shift after “She’s so” marks mirror Danny hitting the window.

There’s a major tempo/mood shift in the song here that makes this side-scrolling pan feel like something out of Platoon or Apocalypse Now.
Actually, since Ullman correlates to John and Hallorann correlates to Yoko, it’s pretty spectacular (given the Come Out, Come Out findings) that Ullman is here passing the spot where Hallorann gets axed. Another chip in the Overlook wanted Hallorann the Most pile. This might have something to do with why Kubrick had Hallorann die, to jive with who these characters were to each other in Redrum Road.

Jack’s reading a Playgirl while Wendy is carrying Danny past the complete works of Shakespeare. And John wants Yoko so bad.
Another neat connection: the entire time the Playgirl is on screen at this point in this track, at the same point in the next round (2), the nude 237 ghost is on screen.

Here, on the second “She’s so…heavy!” people are lugging heavy things around the Colorado lounge. But in the context that John’s lyric was meant (that Yoko was profound and of superior quality, but daunting and serious), it’s interesting that Danny’s REDRUM overlays with the luggage. Murder’s a heavy thing, you know? (to quote a stoner, alone on a bean bag pillow in the ’70s)
Also, note that Danny writes REDRUM in perfect time with this cross shot, and in time with the “Heavy!”

I just want to note here that there’s a poster behind Danny (which I believe to be the work of Gene Hoffman, an American artist) that bears a perfect colour comparison to the likes of the Snapping Turk from the Yellow Submarine movie. Since we’re about to see the Grady twins (who are kinda blue meanies, aren’t they?), if this connection is intentional, I like the idea of the ghosts having a relationship to the hotel like the Snapping Turk’s belly has to its (human) head. Also, the artist for the Yellow Submarine art was Heinz Edelmann, who, just for the record, happened to do the covers for the German Lord of the Rings collection, which you’ll recall has a link to the Kubrick-Beatles alliance.

Danny sees the twins, who abandon him. Also, when he first sees them, we get that screaming, “Yeeeeeeaaaaahhhhh” which Lennon likened to drowning in Yoko’s love. These girls are first seen in conjunction with the bloodfall, which is itself symbolic of the great floods, but it also causes Danny to pass out, as though he drowned. The poster behind the girls here of (most likely, but not certainly) the Denver flood of 1912, also brings to mind the idea of drowning.

“She’s so…” – This is the song’s final lyric, omitting a final “heavy!” The girls look at each other, turn, and leave, in a moment.

I’m no sound engineer, but I’ve read that Ringo plays a “wind machine” during the final instrumental, and it sounds like it starts right around here, but well within the part of Hallorann driving the snowcat. The sound becomes much more recognizable in a moment, and continues to build to the end of the recording. Was this wind supposed to invoke the feeling of a storm to accompany Lennon’s drowning image?
Also, note the way Hallorann’s headlights are almost always touching, or very near Ullman. During the whole labyrinth walk, Dick’s snowcat seems to be bearing down on the figure of Ullman, just like the Austin Maxi does in the third image below. And notice the way the tree line above Dick’s snowcat, in the second, third and fourth images below, looks like a blue wave pouring down on Ullman (John), then Wendy (Ringo? Why on Ringo? Because of Octopus’s Garden?). Remember that Hallorann is Yoko, so this could be Yoko’s love flood. It’s pouring down first from the sky, and then from the Overlook. Which is where the bloodfall is sloshing around, waiting to be de-elevatored.
When John/Ullman get hit by the Maxi, it’s almost right overtop of Hallorann’s snowcat. Yoko was in the Maxi that John crashed, along with John’s son Julien, and Yoko’s daughter Kyoko (all of whom got stitches for facial lacerations, except Julien). From the hospital, John wrote a postcard to his publicist, Derek Taylor, which he signed “Jack McCripple” and pretended he was being held “prisner”. I just think it’s interesting that John Lennon almost killing most of his immediate family prompted him to take on the alter ego of “Jack” Anything.
And again, Ullman wants Hallorann dead, so invoking the image of John almost getting Yoko killed seems deliberate.

Wendy’s little dance here ends up feeling a bit like commentary on the utterly un-jitterbug-able nature of this song.
On that note, I’ve seen some music types discussing how this track feels like a prelude to the coming waves of heavy metal, and styles of the sort. And how odd it is to hear a sound that could almost play as an honourary intro to Black Sabbath’s Paranoid coming out of the Beatles. Even if just for a moment. But in terms of the mirrorform, Wendy’s little jig is about as jarring set against Jack discussing the terms of her murder with Grady, so it’s not just a cute effect.