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(c) Ian Hammond 1999
All rights reserved

An Abbey Road Listening

I offer this for what it's worth: just a record of a Beatles
fan/student having a thinking listening session with a Beatles
album. I've recorded the thoughts that popped into my head during an
Abbey Road listening, without too much editing or faking. I added
the comments in square brackets afterwards. I hope the notes make some
sense...

Come Together
Thinking about the RMB threads with George on rhythm and John on lead.

Maybe they made the wrong decision in 1961/1962?

Something
[I've recently been doing a lot of work on George songs]
George really had this one all planned out. Everything sits.

Maxwell
Oh! Darlin
Octopus's Garden
I find myself skipping all three almost automatically.
How would Old Brown Shoe fit in this area?

I Want You
Lennon's guitar sounds 'scared' during his solo. A little like he does
when he speaks during the Anthology takes of Julia. It helps
explain the tentativeness of the some bits of the solo.

The function of the human voice punctuations as a sizing function
becomes clearer to me. It's an idea that's been hanging around me for
years...

[It would take to long to explain. But, it's like those pictures where
they show you the size of a coin or some other well known object so
that you can get idea of the other thing in the picture. More some
other time.]

Here Comes The Sun
Everything George brought to the Beatles in these sessions was a
potential A-side. 

I am a bit fascinated by his rhythm strumming at the moment. The up
and down strokes seem just right, but a bit counter-intuitive.

Because
I guess this is how we like to think about the Beatles' harmony, but
they rarely got it as perfect as on this track.

Funny, the background riff is not annoying me tonight.

You Never Give Me...
This medley comes first because its the best of the bunch.
The links between the sections here are million miles ahead of those
in Slumbers

Who's playing the guitars? [I aways think that]
Why did they sing the outro section out of tune?
I notice the loops leading into "Sun King" [From a recent reading of
MYFN]

Sun King
[albatross instrumental]
I've never really been aware that we are depicting a hot (as in
parched) lazy day, probably southern Europe.

[held vocal chord]
Who sings the harmony bits -- is it all Lennon in the verse? (I always
ask this).

[verse]
The lazy day explains the lethargy in Lennon's voice...

[outro -- listening to the fake Spanish]
Of course, one of those really dry, wasted afternoons in Spain (which
I guess is like the south of France, 'cos I've never been to Spain). 

[Only 30 years to work out the utterly obvious.]

Mustard
Why did they bother recording this? It really is a bagatelle. They
should have dumped it along with Her Majesty and left it as a great
outtake.

Pam
Harmony is a bit lazy.

Who plays the solo? [I always ask this]

I hear the sizing voices in the back of the solo.

Bathroom Window
Harmony is in tune all of a sudden.

Are these the same guitars as in Pam?
I really like that punctuating rhythm guitar.
Some late Beatles scuffed drums at the end of this track.

Golden Slumbers
This song is a bit over the top. A bit too gorgeous.
The links just don't do it for me. It's all a bit mechanical.

The End
[love you bit]
I'm thinking of the differences to the Anthology version.

The bass is a bit like Satisfaction and really deep.
Hang on, what's happening to the bass? Where'd those eight to the bar
come from?

[rewind to drum solo]
Sounds like two bass parts. Pretty crude transition.

[get The Beatles Complete Scores out]
They note a change in the bass part at this point, but not to eight in
the bar...
But they do have a eight under the last George and John solo bits.

[switch to Anthology version]
Who plays the extra guitar bits over the drum solo?

The final Abbey Road version sounds so much smoother in the guitar
parts. It's in the mixing. 

[Finally at the same point]
[Put on the bass booster]
Yep, there's eight in the bar there somewhere, but I can't hear it
clearly. Time to copy it to the computer and muck around, but I'm not
going to do that now. It's 6:00 in the morning... I've gotta get up
in an hour. There's the garbage collector -- shit, I forgot to put the
bins out.

SUMMARY
I make the following notes in my files:

I Want You -- "scared" solo idea.
Sun King -- hot, parched day idea.
The End -- bass bits in solo area
Sizing voice idea from I Want You

Sun King
[thinking about the parched day idea]
Also explains that long held chord going into the verses that never
sounded quite right to me before. 

Mustard
[thinking about the idea that Mustard was a trifle]
I guess Lennon really did decide to do just four good songs for each
album after the White Album, as he talks about in Fawcett's book.
The idea being that Paul, George and Ringo would provide the rest,
with the gaps being made up by joint compositions, found objects
and, if necessary, these bagatelles.

And that, Danny, is another reason for the drop off in Beatle song
quality after the breakup. They had to provide 10 to 12 songs instead
of four or five. There's still four good songs on almost any Lennon
album. They really didn't help each other much after India. But yes,
that little bit did count, and was missed.

The End

[Thinking about the cruder nature of the solos before mixing]
An excellent example of why the Mixing desk must be thought of as
yet another fifth Beatle. I need more of these examples.

Here Comes The Sun
One thing that makes George's rhythm guitar sound better is the
miking. Either they started putting more work into setting up for his
songs, or he started doing it himself.

This song was recorded nearly thirty years ago, and Harrison knew all
this at the age of 25 or something. Half my age.

Soon we'll be coming up to the fourtieth anniversary of the first
Beatle recordings. If I'm lucky, I'll still be around for the sixtieth
anniversaries... you know, I guess Brahms' things were only about
sixty years old when I was born... It's going to be interesting to see
how the Beatles hold out...

Sun King
[I listen to Sun King again to check the held chord ]
Lennon's intro guitar solo makes more sense. Particularly the
f#-g-g#-E6 bit.

Yes, the held chord going into the verse is hot and weary. And a bit
like the ah ah in Because

Even the bongos make sense in the outro now.