Songs You May Have Missed #111

29 May 2012 4 Comments

by Ed Cyphers in Songs You May Have Missed Tags: ,

ticket_to_ride

The Beatles: “Yes It Is” (1965)

“Yes It Is” never appeared on a regular Beatles LP. Issued as the B-side of their #1 “Ticket to Ride” single, the song itself peaked at #46. Only when the Past Masters collections gathered stray tracks which never before had appeared on LP in the U.S. did “Yes It Is” make it on to a long player.

It’s just one more Beatles song that would have been a career highlight for many lesser bands, but was destined for relative obscurity due to the remarkable output of the band both in terms of quality and quantity. Considering their A-sides of 1965 alone (“Eight Days a Week”, “Ticket to Ride”, “Help!”, “Yesterday”, and  the double A-sided “We Can Work It Out”/”Day Tripper”) you can’t really make an argument that “Yes It Is” should have supplanted any of them. But it’s a great song nevertheless, featuring wonderful harmonies and one of Lennon’s most plaintive performances in the solo sections.

If you aren’t fifty-something or a Beatles completest, this one may have escaped your attention. But let it serve notice that, Past Masters 1 and 2 included, there really is no such thing as a non-essential Beatles album–with the exception, perhaps, of Yellow Submarine.

Video of the Week: Guitarist Randy Bachman Demystifies the Opening Chord of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’

29 Feb 2012 2 Comments

The following is reprinted from the website Open Culture:

You could call it the magical mystery chord. The opening clang of the Beatles’ 1964 hit, “A Hard Day’s Night,” is one of the most famous and distinctive sounds in rock and roll history, and yet for a long time no one could quite figure out what it was.

In this fascinating clip from the CBC radio show, Randy’s Vinyl Tap, the legendary Guess Who and Bachman-Turner Overdrive guitarist Randy Bachman unravels the mystery. The segment is from a special live performance, “Guitarology 101,” taped in front of an audience at the Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto back in January, 2010. As journalist Matthew McAndrew wrote, “the two-and-a-half hour event was as much an educational experience as it was a rock’n’roll concert.”

One highlight of the show was Bachman’s telling of his visit the previous year with Giles Martin, son of Beatles’ producer George Martin, at Abbey Road Studios. The younger Martin, who is now the official custodian of all the Beatles’ recordings, told Bachman he could listen to anything he wanted from the massive archive–anything at all.

Bachman chose to hear each track from the opening of “A Hard Day’s Night.” As it turns out, the sound is actually a combination of chords played simultaneously by George Harrison and John Lennon, along with a bass note by Paul McCartney. Bachman breaks it all down in an entertaining way in the audio clip above.

Video by Ed Cyphers

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