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}} "Ding Dong, Ding Dong" is a song by English musician George Harrison, written as a New Year's Eve singalong and released in December 1974 on his album ''Dark Horse''. It was the album's lead single in Britain and some other European countries, and the second single (after "Dark Horse") in North America. The production incorporates aspects of Phil Spector's classic Wall of Sound Christmas recordings of 1963. In addition, some Harrison biographers view "Ding Dong" as an attempt by him to emulate the success of two glam rock anthems from the 1973–74 holiday season: "Merry Xmas Everybody" by Slade, and Wizzard's "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday". Harrison's song became only a minor hit in Britain and the United States, although it was a top-twenty hit elsewhere in the world. Harrison took the lyrics to "Ding Dong" – most of which were reproduced on the single's picture sleeve – from inscriptions he found at his nineteenth-century home, Friar Park, in Oxfordshire. Some commentators interpret the "''Ring out the old, ring in the new''" refrain as Harrison farewelling his first marriage, to Pattie Boyd, and the song is also viewed as an example of the singer further distancing himself from his past as a member of the Beatles. As on much of the ''Dark Horse'' album, Harrison's vocals on the track were hampered by a worsening throat condition, due partly to his having overextended himself on business projects such as his recently launched record label, Dark Horse Records. Other musicians on the recording include Tom Scott, Ringo Starr, Alvin Lee, Ron Wood and Jim Keltner. On release, the song met with an unfavourable response from many music critics, while other reviewers considered its musical and lyrical simplicity to be a positive factor for a contemporary pop hit. For the first time for one of his singles, Harrison made a promotional video for "Ding Dong", which features scenes of him miming to the song at Friar Park while dressed in a variety of Beatle-themed costumes. The song still receives occasional airplay over the holiday season. The video appears on the DVD in Harrison's eight-disc ''Apple Years 1968–75'' box set, released in September 2014. ==Background and composition== George Harrison purchased the 33-acre〔Huntley, p. 46.〕 estate of Friar Park, in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, in January 1970,〔Clayson, p. 299.〕 and he was soon moved to compose "Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp (Let It Roll)" as a tribute to the property's original owner,〔George Harrison, p. 208.〕 an eccentric Victorian lawyer and horticulturalist named Frank Crisp.〔Boyd, pp. 144, 145.〕〔Olivia Harrison, p. 268.〕 Harrison included the song on his acclaimed 1970 triple album, ''All Things Must Pass'',〔Snow, pp. 24–25.〕 by which time, according to author Joshua Greene, he had begun incorporating into his new compositions some of the homilies and aphorisms Crisp had inscribed around the property, 70 or more years before.〔Greene, pp. 165, 171.〕 A four-line verse beginning "Scan not a friend with a microscopic glass" particularly resonated with Harrison,〔George Harrison, p. 37.〕 but it would not find its way into a song of his until "The Answer's at the End" in 1975.〔Huntley, p. 123.〕 Similarly, it took Harrison years of staring at two inspirational lines of verse in the house's drawing room before he turned them into song lyrics.〔Madinger & Easter, p. 444.〕 The lines provided the only, repeated verse for "Ding Dong, Ding Dong": "''Ring out the old, ring in the new''" – from the carving to the left of the fireplace – and "''Ring out the false, ring in the true''" – from the one to the right.〔 In his 1980 autobiography, ''I, Me, Mine'', Harrison credits English poet Lord Tennyson as the original source for these lines.〔 The words for the song's middle eight – "''Yesterday, today was tomorrow / And tomorrow, today will be yesterday''" – came from another pair of inscriptions from Crisp's time at Friar Park.〔 Harrison found these lines in what he called "the garden building",〔George Harrison, p. 280.〕 carved in stone around two matching windows.〔 The only other lyrics in "Ding Dong" are the song title, repeated four times to serve as its chorus.〔〔George Harrison, p. 279.〕 Sung in imitation of a clock chiming,〔Inglis, p. 46.〕〔Allison, p. 140.〕 these chorus lyrics and those of the verse lend the composition an obvious New Year's theme.〔Spizer, p. 264.〕 Authors Chip Madinger and Mark Easter describe "Ding Dong, Ding Dong" as the "quickest song" that Harrison ever wrote, the previous "record holder" being "My Sweet Lord".〔 Harrison's other singles of the early 1970s – "What Is Life", "Bangla Desh" and "Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)" – were all likewise written very quickly.〔George Harrison, p. 162.〕〔Clayson, pp. 322–23.〕〔Madinger & Easter, p. 434.〕 In the case of "Ding Dong", however, his musical biographer, Simon Leng, recognises this haste as an example of the singer "completely ditch() his meticulous approach" to his own music over the 1973–74 period, while remaining a "painstaking craftsman" on concurrent projects for Ravi Shankar and the vocal duo Splinter.〔Leng, pp. 144–46, 148, 149.〕 Preceding this change in Harrison's working practice, elements of the British media had reacted with ridicule towards his continued association with the Hare Krishna movement,〔Greene, pp. 200–02.〕 and some music critics had similarly objected to the spiritual content of his 1973 album ''Living in the Material World''.〔Inglis, p. 43.〕〔Clayson, pp. 306, 324.〕 With his marriage to Pattie Boyd all but over by the summer of 1973,〔 Harrison now wanted to be "one of the boys, not a spotlight-grabbing philosopher", Leng suggests.〔Leng, p. 150.〕 Harrison described "Ding Dong" as "very optimistic", and suggested: "Instead of getting stuck in a rut, everybody should try ringing out the old and ringing in the new ..."〔 He saw in the 1973–74 New Year with a grand party at Ringo Starr's Tittenhurst Park mansion – an "absolute dud" of a night, though, according to their friend Chris O'Dell, thanks to Harrison having openly declared his love for Starr's wife a few days before.〔O'Dell, p. 266.〕 At the party, Boyd recalls in her 2007 memoir, ''Wonderful Today: The Autobiography'', Harrison made it clear how he wished to ring out the old by telling her: "Let's have a divorce this year."〔Boyd, p. 177.〕〔Pattie Boyd, ("Pattie Boyd: 'My hellish love triangle with George and Eric' – Part Two" ), ''Daily Mail'', 4 August 2007 (retrieved 4 May 2012).〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Ding Dong, Ding Dong」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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