10:61 Revolution (pt.1) Did George Play Bass on Revolution 1?

Received wisdom

Lewisohn says the bass was overdubbed the day after the basic track with two Lennon vocals and the BVs but the 50th ann version of Take 18 doesn't have these BVs – just the bass. But it does have some embryonic samples/farting around from the Lennons which were supposed to be recorded later, with (or after) the drum overdub which is also missing. So something's confused.

Why I think Harrison did it

Paul played piano live (with John on acoustic and Ringo drums) and the bass 'seems' to be cut live at the same time. It's hard to believe they would have a full on extended jam with no bass. Take 18 (on the the 50th ann) has a bass line for it's entirety. It's unlikely anyone would think it worth while to continue playing for the whole extended freakout unless they were there at the time (and not overdubbing).

The bass is very unlike Paul - jamming or overdubbing. Compare how 'Pianist Paul' gets loose and wild, whereas 'Bassist Paul' seems to be happy with hanging on the root notes but overly enamoured with doing crazy slides. I can't believe Paul, given all the aimless filler in the last half of the track, wouldn't try to put in a lot more clever stuff - certainly a lot cleverer that a bunch of quick slides. The only McCartney-esque flourish is the descending line in the pre-chorus. However it does sounds a little 'indian' which points to …

George Harrison did play bass on some tracks like Maxwell's Silver Hammer, Honey Pie and She Said She Said.

Therefore I suspect George in Studio Three with the Fender VI.

But on the other hand

Paul did overdubbed bass on Revolution the single at a later date so it's possible he did the same thing here. Though on the other other hand (third hand?) this may be the source of the confusion about the album version.

What would decide it

Is there bass on earlier takes (1-17) of Revolution 1? Then it's definitely Harrison. Paul couldn't play piano and bass at the same time and they would have never overdubbed bass on discarded rehearsal takes. If there isn't it probably is an overdub by Paul.

Is there bass spill on the stems of Lennon's acoustic guitar, Paul's piano or Ringo's initial drums part? Then it's definitely Harrison. Later overdubs would not leak onto earlier tracks.

Is George's voice audible as studio chatter on the original takes. Then it's probably Harrison on bass. He wasn't involved otherwise.

Why it matters

If George played the bass - the lead guitarist laid down a uninspired bass take during an extended jam session that somehow morphed into a album track. So what!

But if Paul played the bass – arguably Paul's unimaginative bass playing 'ruined' Revolution 1 just like John's error-strewn take 'ruined' The Long And Winding Road. Listen to verses 2 and 3 (1:21) – the bass inexplicably abandons the walking line of the first verse, ignores the chord changes and hangs on the root note, which in turned forced George Martin into arguably his most uninspired horn arrangement.

After two less than stellar versions – Lennon could have taken another crack but he lacked Paul's stamina. So where Paul would power through a Maxwell or an Ob-La-Di, Lennon gave up on tunes like Across The Universe.


Footnotes


Lewisohn says Mark Lewisohn: The Beatles Recording Sessions (p.137)

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Guest Mini Book Review: While My Guitar Gently Weeps

Here's a guest review by BSA forum member Andy Getch. Enjoy.

While My Guitar Gently Weeps - The Music of George Harrison by Simon Leng (first published in the UK in 2003), review based on the Hal Leonard U.S. edition 2006.

Written after George's passing, this book chronologically follows George's musical story, but this is NOT a biography. I recommend it for a musician/fan of George Harrison, interested in his role in The Beatles and the evolution of his solo career.

The Good

There is something here about nearly (do I dare say every?) recorded published track here, even obscure B-sides and side projects. Musicians and instruments are listed for each song and summarized with a fair bit of information, with comments on the story, arrangements, etc. typically included. This is a musician's book about a musician. It generally keeps that focus, providing quotes from other musicians and detail in musical terms.

The Not So Good

The "unappreciated Beatle" refrain gets old after awhile. Only the first 40 or so pages of the 330 pages in the book are devoted specifically to George in the Beatles years. The same amount of ink is devoted to the late 60's solo project Wonderwall Music and All Things Must Pass. References and comparisons to Beatle days are sprinkled through the rest of the book. There is a fair bit of ink devoted to George's spiritual journey and how it influenced his music. That may put some people off.

Andy Getch is 6th year hobbyist guitarist songwriter and lifelong Beatles fan.

More Book Reviews here

 

Hurry Up George

One really got the impression that George was being given a certain amount of time to do his tracks whereas the others could spend as long as they wanted. One felt under more pressure when doing one of George’s songs.

Geoff Emerick in Mark Lewisohn: The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions

We tried to record [While My Guitar Gently Weeps], but John and Paul were so used to just cranking out their tunes that it was very difficult at times to get serious and record one of mine. It wasn’t happening. They weren’t taking it seriously and I don’t think they were even all playing on it ... [getting Eric Clapton into the studio] made everyone act better. Paul got on the piano and played a nice intro and they all took it more seriously.

George Harrison in Anthology

Almost every Beatles song has a 'story' – the 'story' of While My Guitar Gently Weeps is that Harrison asked Clapton to play on the track to make the rest of the Beatles 'behave' and take the song seriously. The bigger 'narrative' is that Harrissongs were second class citizens at Abbey Road and didn't have the same care lavished on them as Lennon & McCartney tunes.

But is that really true?

The band tracked the song on the 5th Sept 1968. Clapton recorded his part on the 6th. The only contributions on that day, other than George himself, were Paul's vocal harmonies and bass, and Ringo's tambourine and castanets overdubs. It's hard to believe that Eric's presence had any real effect on the band's behaviour at that late stage. UPDATE 50th Anniversary Edition reveals Clapton tracked his part live with the band on the 5th.

What about other tracks?

Here's a list of all George's Beatles tracks* with the number of takes spent on the rhythm track. I've used this as a rule of thumb because that's the only time the whole band would need to be involved. Overdubs might not require any other member.

One Take

Think for Yourself
If I Needed Someone
Blue Jay Way
Savoy Truffle

10 Takes Or Less

All Things Must Pass – 2
Love You To - 3
It's All Too Much - 4
Old Brown Shoe - 4
I Need You - 5
I Want to Tell You - 5
For You Blue – 6
You Like Me Too Much - 8
Only a Northern Song - 9

20 Takes Or Less

Don't Bother Me - 11
Piggies - 11
Here Comes the Sun - 13
Taxman - 15
I Me Mine - 16

40 Takes Or More

While My Guitar Gently Weeps - 43
Something - 49
Long, Long, Long - 67
Not Guilty** – 101

Abbey Road Scrapyard

Four of these tracks were not only laboured over, but recorded, then scrapped, and rerecorded.

Don't Bother Me - 7 takes, then scrapped. Version 2 - 4 more takes.
Taxman - 4 takes, then scrapped. Version 2 - 11 more takes.
While My Guitar Gently Weeps – demoed at Abbey Road 2 takes. Full band version 1 - 14 takes, then scrapped. Version 2 - 28 more takes.
Something -13 takes, then scrapped. Version 2 - 36 more takes.

In the case of While My Guitar Gently Weeps it wasn't merely the backing tracks that were scrapped. After tracking 'version 1' Harrison spent an entire eight-hour session trying to record a backwards guitar solo. The following day he recorded two lead vocal parts, alongside maracas, drums and lead guitar. Then he binned the whole thing, enlisted Eric Clapton and started all over again.

What to make of all this?

The proportion of 1st takes to 101 takes, and of scrapping recordings and starting again, looks broadly same as Lennon & McCartney's work on their own songs. Michelle was recorded (and mixed) in a single day. Happiness Is A Warm Gun took forever. Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da and Strawberry Fields Forever were scrapped and rerecorded, as were One After 909 and Hold Me Tight.

As I've written before it's one thing taking up your bandmate's time with something either world class (Strawberry Fields) or very complex (Warm Gun). But imprisoning them in the studio so you can flog a dead horse (Maxwell, Ob-La-Di, Not Guilty) is just going to make everyone crazy.

Looking at the figures it's hard to believe George got a raw deal when he'd made John 'world's shortest attention sp...oh look something shiny' Lennon sit at the Electric Harpsichord for 101 takes***.

George seems to have been indecisive or ill-prepared**** when working on his own songs and, perhaps understandably, lacking in confidence. Compared to the uber-confident, omnicompetent McCartney (who demoed a 'full band' version of Come And Get It on his own, in one hour!) and the laid back Lennon (who often got bored of his own songs before anyone else could) he was perhaps the least fun Beatles to 'work for'.

*I've not included The Inner Light and Within You Without You as no other Beatle was involved with the basic track.

**Not Guilty was not included on The White Album and remained unreleased until Anthology 3.

***Perhaps that explains why Lennon often excused himself when George was recording one of his songs. Of the 22 released, Lennon plays no part in 6, and contributes only backing vocals to 4 others.

****For example each 'version' of While My Guitar has different (or extra) lyrics.

Under The Influence: George Thorogood

[I'm Down] absolutely terrifies me. It's as good as anything Little Richard ever did. This is what they probably sounded like in Hamburg before they got into writing their own material. It's almost as if they were saying, “See, we're the greatest rock and roll band as performers too, not just the greatest songwriters”

Guitar World July 1997

Funnily enough, I got into [Elmore James] because of The Beatles. Remember that moment in the song For You Blue where George Harrison goes, 'Elmore James got nothin' on this baby!'? That made me say, 'Wow, so there's somebody The Beatles think is as heavy as The Beatles, huh? OK, I'll check him out.'

Music Radar

The Beatles represented freedom to me, they had all the freedom in the world...they were young, they were good-looking, they were talented, they were rich, they were famous...they had it all.

Blues About

The Worst Of George Harrison

 

Hi there folks, the good news is that I have started work on the next post, but sadly it's not finished yet. So here's a video I put together a while back but buried in the post as I was convinced EMI would yank it off the net as soon as I put it up. But it's still there. So just in case you missed it, here's a genuine remix of All You Need Is Love. The stems (which I think were created for the rock band game) are doing the rounds online and there in all it's grisly glory is George's violin track. Enjoy. If you can.

10 Preconceptions About The Beatles (pt 2)

In my last post I listed a few preconceptions I had when I started this blog two years ago. Let's see if I was right...

1) The Arctic Monkeys are better songwriters than the Beatles

WRONG – Arctic Monkeys were another young British band with regional accents and cheeky sense of humour whose sudden rise to fame looked like something akin to Beatlemania. The big difference was that, in Alex Turner, they had a lyricist with the wit and sharp eye of a young Dylan and they burst onto the scene with a fully realised sound/style. When they survived the hypestorm almost completely unscathed and delivered an assured and mature second album without pausing for breath (along with another albums worth of quality B sides and EPs) it looked like they were unstoppable.

But 2009 changed all that. Album number 3 was largely dour, turgid and overly influenced by producer Josh Homme and I had started listening to the Beatles. Arctic Monkeys are a great band, far better lyrically than The Beatles and quicker to mature in the studio, but they need to turn in another 8 or 9 incredible albums that continue to develop and stretch to claim the crown, and sadly that doesn't seem likely to happen.

2) Judging the Beatles for trite lyrics is merely a result of unfairly comparing song lyrics to printed poetry

WRONG - Compare any song lyrics to poetry by putting them side by side on a page or even read them aloud and the lyrics are guaranteed to come of worse. BUT. Many of the Beatles lyrics are undoubtedly poor, even when compared to other pop song lyrics. The truly awful outnumber the excellent, and the average and mediocre outnumber both. There's hundreds of better lyricists out there - Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Nik Kershaw, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen – the list goes on and on and on...

3) George Harrison could have been as good a songwriter as Lennon and McCartney (and was later) but wasn't given a fair chance

WRONG - This assumption came from two things, Harrison knocking the ball out of the park on Abbey Road with Here Comes The Sun and Something and the fact that his first post Beatles album was a critically acclaimed TRIPLE album! While Harrison compared his time in the Beatles to a 7 year bout of constipation (which I guess would make All Things Must Pass a giant diarrhoeic bowel movement) the general perception is that ATMP was a mix of classics and filler (think Use Your Illusion). I don't have an opinion as the album is still on my 'to do' list, but even if it was a 24 carat disc, the next album of originals didn't arrive till 3 years later and Harrison only managed 7 more solo albums in the next 27 years.

We could indulge in 'What If' scenarios (that's what comments sections are made for!),

Lennon/McCartney/Harrison? – too many chiefs in the kitchen
Lennon/Harrison? – too similar, an overdose of dark cynicism that would make Roger Waters sound like The Wiggles
McCartney/Harrison? – might have worked. But would we have lost out on Lennon/McCartney songs? And surely Paul would have driven George crazy? (see Let It Be for further details)

but whatever may have been, George was never in John and Paul's league. Harrison's songwriting career didn't start till Dec 63 with Don't Bother Me and then nothing happened for another 18 months. Lennon and McCartney just had too big a head start. I think it's comparable to Dylan, Springsteen and Bon Jovi. Each are good writers in their own right and genre, but if Bon Jovi had been in Springsteen's band or Springsteen in Dylan's they would never have been able to compete and would never have developed. (OK, maybe that's a poor example!)

4) John Lennon gave up songwriting to be a house husband and was just coming into his prime when he was killed

WRONG - I'm not even going to get into the whole 'was Lennon really baking bread and reading bedtime stories or just having a Brian Wilson-style drug-fuelled hibernation?' debate. It's sufficient to say Lennon's solo career was hampered by the same laziness and apathy that plagued his work with the Beatles and his resurgence, while very welcome, produced yet another mix of promising songs and Yoko's experimental crap swimming in bland, middle of the road production. The posthumous leftovers Milk And Honey only promised more of the same.

What do you think? Am I right now?
I'll look at the remaining 6 assumptions next time.

The Many Guitar Solos Of Let It Be

Still confused about the four different guitar solos in Let It Be? So was I. So in the name of musical science I edited them all together. Then I thought I'd do a little video and share it with you. But hurry. I'm sure people who have no respect for fair use in musical education will want to spoil the party.. Which solo is YOUR favourite...

 

Film Review: Living In The Material World

Still A Dark Horse

A documentary on a music celebrity can be measured by content and insight - what footage did they access and who was willing to contribute and what new light did it shed on the subject? On the first point Martin Scorsese knocks the ball out of the park. Though I didn't feel I knew George any better than before by the end, I was treated to nearly four hours of dazzling and emotionally moving entertainment.

I watched both parts of the film at UK preview and at no point did my attention or enthusiasm flag. In fact I would have happily sat through any outtakes! This beautifully crafted film is packed with concert footage, home movies, press conferences, interviews, photos and documents that I've never seen before, even though I've been researching the Beatles quite heavily for several years here at Beatles Songwriting Academy. There are interviews with (or at least footage of) everyone you would hope to see. Beatles, wives, brothers, son, Pythons and peers. Everyone from Eric Clapton to Eric Idle.

The documentary is constructed entirely from interviews and clips without explanation or analysis. The closest we get to a voiceover is Dhani Harrison reading excerpts from his father's diary and letters to his mum. Though the film is visually stunning it's strange watching the practically square picture forced upon us by the source material. Equally quirky is the sound editing. Scorsese doesn't know the meaning of 'fade'. All the music cuts brutally, sometimes after a few seconds. Sometimes this is cool. Mostly it's odd. The film is largely chronological and there are some great juxtapositions of sound and visuals like All Things Must Pass accompanies footage of the WW2 bombers that plagued Liverpool during Harrison's birth. The first part covers George's life up to the White Album.

It's hard to pick out favourite parts. But Harrison's obvious delight watching archive footage of the Beatles miming This Boy, laughing and singing along, is one. The Beatles performing If I Needed Someone, Harrison playing What Is Love? with Billy Preston, and seeing the Travelling Wilburys in the studio would be others.

There are moments of laugh out loud humour, especially TV footage of crusty professors discuss the significance of Pop music while Beatles and Mick Jagger seeth like captive wild animal in the background and Tom Petty recounting Harrison arriving at his house with a trunk full of ukeleles. But Harrison's story of how Lennon and McCartney inspired him to start composing is the best -

"If John and Paul can write [songs] everybody must be able to".

The Maharishi (a spiritual Joe Pasquale) and Phil Spector (a croaking, unblinking vision of craziness with a permanently twitching thumb) also provide some unintentional humour.

Scorsese deserves praise for not going down the revisionist myth making route trodden by the Anthology series, especially as Olivia Harrison was one of his producers. Olivia is honest, though vague, about George's infidelity as Klaus Voorman is about his drug problems. But the lack of a narrator almost makes George a mirror in which we see his world. We know he was loved, deeply, by friends - racing drivers, comedians and film makers, musicians, but we don't whether he was truly loveable. Terry Gilliam describes George as a mix of "grace, humour and a weird kind of angry bitterness" but what made him that way? Did he ever find a release from that bitterness? Was he a good father? Nearing death Harrison asked Olivia if he had been a good husband. She never tells us what her answer was."What's the secret of a long marriage?" She asks herself. "Don't get divorced".

It may sound strange but the highest point for me was simply hearing the music. Listening to Here Comes The Sun and While My Guitar Gently Weeps I was almost moved to tears at the transcendent beauty of those recordings.

Perhaps the fact that the film cause me to fall in love with the music all over again is it's greatest recommendation.

Book Review: Wonderful Today - Pattie Boyd

Hope you all enjoy my latest video review. There'll be more about Something on Thurs (hopefully).

Check out the Beatles Complete Chord Songbook video review

More book reviews
Recommended resourses

George, George & Michelle

Which George wrote the solo for Michelle?
Here's a couple of clips for you.

Have a great weekend.