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Favorite Beatle Moments


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I always wondered about that bit. I love all the new stuff I'm learning in this thread. 

 

For a long time I thought it was a flamenco recording (technically it is) pasted into the mix, until I read that it's a flamenco sample on a mellotron. No way John, George or Paul actually played that part.

 

I love that the guitar break in "Tomorrow Never Knows" is the "Taxman" solo played backwards.

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No way John, George or Paul actually played that part.

I'm not a guitar player so can't access the difficulty - but as young lads George and Paul had a party piece playing a Bach classical tune. The interweb tells me that it was 'Bourree'. George might have been able to had he been so inclined?

 

http://willybrauch.de/In_Their_Own_Words/mccartney_on_harrison2011.htm

 

MOJO: George played a classical nylon-string guitar on And I Love Her. I recall George getting into Andrés Segovia for a bit. Does that ring a bell?

 

PAUL: I think 'for a bit' is the operative phase. We fell in love with the guitar and we didn't discriminate. It could be a Spanish guitar, a classical guitar. It could be a Gretsch, a Fender, a Gibson. We kind of loved them all. It was like a dream, it was like walking through Santa's grotto. There was a great sense of wonder for us. I remember so clearly being at Pete Best's mother's club - the Casbah in West Derby in Liverpool - and George came in and he opened up this long, rectangular box. It turned out to be a guitar case. We wouldn't have guessed there was a guitar in there 'cos till then you hadn't seen these long rectangular cases which are now perfectly normal; we'd seen guitar-shaped cases. And he opened up this long box and in there was... I'm not sure if it was a Fender. I think it might have been a look-alike, a cheaper copy. But man, it looked good. It looked so glorious. Moments like that were very special. We were in love with guitar, of any kind.

 

George and I used to do this little thing, which is the J.S. Bach thing. I think it's called Fugue or something. [sings Bach's Bourrée in E-Minor] We didn't know it all but we learned the first little bit. We made the end up. What we liked about it was that it was harder than some of the stuff we were playing, it was part of our development, 'cos it was two lines working against each other. You've got the melody [sings] and then you get a sort of [sings] bass line working against it. I tell audiences now that that was what gave me the start of Blackbird. It's not the same notes but I took the style of there being a bass melody and a treble melody in the same guitar piece and made up the song Blackbird from that. I clearly remember George and I used to sit around doing our own version of this Bach thing. It was like a little party piece: it was a little something to show that we weren't just [adopts pompous voice] one-dimensional. It was a little show-off thing. The point I'm coming back to is that, Yeah, we were aware of classical guitar players. I was a big fan of Julian Bream - who was a British classical guitarist - and I think George was too.

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I love the flamenco guitar sample John plays on the mellotron to open "Bungalow Bill."

 

 

I always wondered about that!  Sounds so much like a guitar.  They were amazing musicians but the speed and chops to pay that so cleanly on the guitar would have been amazing.  I know I have been trying (not that I'm any damn good).  In the Beatles complete tablature book they have it tabbed out for guitar so i always assumed that's what it was.

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I always wondered about that! Sounds so much like a guitar. They were amazing musicians but the speed and chops to pay that so cleanly on the guitar would have been amazing. I know I have been trying (not that I'm any damn good). In the Beatles complete tablature book they have it tabbed out for guitar so i always assumed that's what it was.

I've got a Beatles tab book that also says it's guitar. Way too fast for me.

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I always wondered about that!  Sounds so much like a guitar.  

Well, it IS a guitar - but merely a sample. Mellotrons were the prototype sampler.

 

John wasn't actually playing all those notes on a keyboard, he was merely pressing one key, which triggered the flamenco sample. 

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Well, it IS a guitar - but merely a sample. Mellotrons were the prototype sampler.

 

John wasn't actually playing all those notes on a keyboard, he was merely pressing one key, which triggered the flamenco sample. 

 

Exactly.

 

Another favorite moment -- in "Only a Northern Song," when Paul comes in to harmonize on one note/word, "...or if my hair is BROWN."

 

Paul's bassline in that song is terrific as well.

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Something that always catches my ear is the "flying" on Sgt. Pepper's Reprise during Paul's 1234 intro count. Is that John talking in the backround?

 

Love the trading guitar riffs that close out The End.

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Hmm, thanks for the clarification. I guess I heard it differently starting in 6th grade and went with it. "Flying" seemed like it worked.

 

A fav of mine is John's lyrics on In my Life.

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Ha - I listened to that yesterday and thought of this thread, hoping choo-choo could confirm what Paul is screaming there. 

 

Sounds mostly unintelligible to me. Those in the "Paul is dead" camp think someone is shouting "Paul is dead, he's really dead." If it were Paul shouting it that wouldn't make much sense...unless they're poking fun at the whole "Paul is dead" thing.

 

Another favorite moment from that album are the "ooh-ooh / ooh-ooh" and "deet-deet / deet-deet" backing vocals in "Fixing a Hole," which are omitted in the mono mix. Right after the guitar solo in the middle.

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