General Posts | Every Moment Has A Song

Hear the Isolated Vocal Tracks for The Beatles’ Climactic 16-Minute Medley on Abbey Road

04 Sep 2013 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts Tags: abbey road medley, beatles

(Source: Open Culture)

I have many memories growing up of gingerly placing my father’s Abbey Road LP on the turntable and spending the afternoon lying on the floor and peering at the photos inside the album cover’s gatefold—trying to wrap my head around what kind of hairy geniuses could make music like this. I had no inkling that this was their final recording together, that the band was about to come apart. None of that mattered to me. I didn’t quite grasp how this band evolved from the teen pop sensations in identical suits and haircuts with their legions of flailing schoolgirl fans and goofy comedy troupe banter. This seemed like an entirely different entity—and the particular sublimity of the medley on side 2 had me lifting up the needle and dropping it back at the intro to “You Never Give Me Your Money” over and over.

That medley is such an impressive demonstration of The Beatles’ range of voice and sensibility that it almost functions as a capsule for the sound of their whole later career—all the weird narratives, blues, ballads, and gorgeously lush hymns and lullabies. What remains constant throughout every Beatles’ record—even before George and Ringo’s songwriting contributions—is the vocal and lyrical interplay of Lennon/McCartney, and it’s all on fine display in the medley. George Harrison described side 2 in 1969 as “a big medley of Paul and John’s songs all shoved together.” Lennon gave George and Ringo more credit for the medley in an interview that same year:

We always have tons of bits and pieces lying around. I’ve got stuff I wrote around Pepper, because you lose interest after you’ve had it for years. It was a good way of getting rid of bits of songs. In fact, George and Ringo wrote bits of it… literally in between bits and breaks. Paul would say, ‘We’ve got twelve bars here– fill it in,’ and we’d fill it in on the spot. As far as we’re concerned, this album is more ‘Beatley’ than the double (White) album.

However it all came about, it’s the medley’s strange lyrical twists, mélange of vocal styles, and powerful harmonies that stay with me, and that I find myself singing softly, even after having gone several years without hearing the album in full. Perhaps you do this too. Now we can hear what The Beatles’ themselves sounded like in the studio sans instruments with the isolated vocal tracks for the side 2 medley at the top of the post. Hear the full album version above and see the Medley tracklist below.

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

John Lennon’s Raw, Soul-Baring Vocals From the Beatles’ ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ (1969)

29 Aug 2013 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts Tags: don't let me down, john lennon, rooftop concert, the beatles

(Source: Open Culture)

“When you’re drowning,” John Lennon told Rolling Stone in 1970, “you don’t say, ‘I would be incredibly pleased if someone would have the foresight to notice me drowning and come and help me.’ You just scream.”

“Don’t Let Me Down” is Lennon’s anguished scream to his lover, Yoko Ono. When he and the Beatles recorded the song during the Let It Be sessions in late January of 1969, Lennon asked Ringo Starr to hit the cymbal very hard at the beginning, to “give me the courage to come screaming in.”

The Beatles were in the process of breaking apart when Lennon wrote the song. It was a dark time in my ways, and he was becoming more and more dependent upon Ono for personal and creative support. As Paul McCartney told writer Barry Miles in Many Years From Now:

It was a very tense period: John was with Yoko and had escalated to heroin and all the accompanying paranoias and he was putting himself out on a limb. I think that as much as it excited and amused him, at the same time it secretly terrified him. So ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ was a genuine plea, ‘Don’t let me down, please, whatever you do. I’m out on this limb, I know I’m doing all this stuff, just don’t let me down.’ It was saying to Yoko, ‘I’m really stepping out of line on this one. I’m really letting my vulnerability be seen, so you must not let me down.’ I think it was a genuine cry for help.

You can get a strong sense of Lennon’s anguish and vulnerability when you listen to the isolated vocal track above. And for the full arrangement, including Starr’s cymbal-crash near the beginning and Billy Preston’s brilliant electric piano playing, see below.

Guitarist Brian May Explains the Making of Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’

19 Aug 2013 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts Tags: bohemian rhapsody, queen

(Source: Open Culture)

“Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen is one of the most audacious pop songs ever made. Part ballad, part opera, part heavy metal orgasm, the song has six distinct sections and took over a month to record. At just under six minutes, “Bohemian Rhapsody” was considered too long for pop radio. “The record company, in their infinite ignorance, of course immediately suggested that we cut it down,” said Queen drummer Roger Taylor, who stood by his bandmates and refused to let the song be cut. “It really was hit or miss. It was either going to be massive or it was going to be nothing.”

“Bohemian Rhapsody,” of course, went on to become one of the most popular songs in music history. It spent nine weeks at number one in the UK following its release in the fall of 1975, and went back to number one after the death of singer Freddie Mercury in 1991. In America the song peaked at number nine in 1976 and re-entered the charts in 1992, when it was featured in the movie Wayne’s World. Last year, an ITV poll in Great Britain listed “Bohemian Rhapsody” as “The National’s Favorite Number One” song in 60 years of music.

In this fascinating video, Queen guitarist Brian May goes back to the mixing board to explain the complexity of layers that went into realizing Mercury’s vision for the song. The original 24-track analogue recording system was far too limited, so the band used the ping-pong technique to “bounce” literally hundreds of overdubs into the mix. May explains how the operatic vocal layers were inspired by the “cascading strings” effect made famous by Annunzio Paolo Mantovani, a technique May first tried out in 1974 with the guitar solo on “Killer Queen.”

The video is an excerpt from Inside the Rhapsody, a documentary that was included on the 2002 DVD Queen: Greatest Video Hits 1. For more on the making of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” please see our post, “Listen to Freddie Mercury’s Wonderous Piano and Vocal Tracks for ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ (1975).” And for a reminder of how it all came together, here’s the official video:

Video Tutorial: Donald Fagen Deconstructs Steely Dan Songs

16 Aug 2013 2 Comments

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts Tags: donald fagen, steely dan

One of the creators of some of the most sophisticated rock of the 70’s (or any other decade) discusses Steely Dan songs “Chain Lightning”, “Peg” and “Josie” in this video tutorial.