is beyond fantastic



p.s. how come the sgt. pepper's album does not have its own thread on rm?

Did Ringo do the drumming on "A Day In The Life"? I'm not doubting it, but there were several songs in the later years where one or more members were not present so other members played multiple instruments. Like "Ballad of John and Yoko" is just John and Paul on all the instruments.

Performance:

* John Lennon: double tracked lead vocals (on all the verses),
acoustic guitar, maracas and piano (final E chord).
* Paul McCartney: piano, lead vocals (on the middle eight), and bass guitar.
* George Harrison: acoustic guitar.
* Ringo Starr: drums, congas and piano (final E chord).
* George Martin: harmonium (final E chord) and producer.
* Mal Evans: alarm clock, counting, piano (final E chord)
* Geoff Emerick: engineering and mixing.
* Orchestrated by George Martin, Paul McCartney and John Lennon.
* Conducted by George Martin and Paul McCartney
* Roger Lord: oboe
* John Marston: harp
* Eric Gruenberg, Granville Jones, Bill Monro, Jurgen Hess,
Hans Geiger, D. Bradley, Lionel Bentley, David McCallum, Donald Weekes, Henry Datyner,
Sidney Sax, Ernest Scott: violin



* John Underwood, Gwynne Edwards, Bernard Davis, John Meek: viola
* Francisco Gabarro, Dennis Vigay, Alan Delziel, Alex Nifosi: cello
* Cyril Mac Arther, Gordon Pearce: double bass
* Basil Tschaikov, Jack Brymer: clarinet
* N. Fawcett, Alfred Waters: bassoon
* Clifford Seville, David Sandeman: flute
* Alvin Civil, Neil Sanders: French horn
* David Mason, Monty Montgomery, Harold Jackson: trumpet
* Raymond Brown, Raymond Premru, T. Moore: trombone
* Michael Barnes: tuba
* Tristan Fry: timpani.

he did play on A Day in the Life. he said that he was very proud of Rain's drum fills as well and that his playing on Abbey Road was positively different than on previous albums because of a different drumkit, with better toms, i think.

this song always get me
just need a couple seconds and im almost crying (always)

exactly. the intro is just intense as fuck even though it's so simple... the guitar strumming, the piano with the accents, and then john's voice... damn.

the part on the anthology dvd's, when george martin is talking about the first version he heard of the song, saying how right then he knew it was something else (or something to that effect), it gave me chills.

The band did the backing track together, almost as an impatient prejaculation because the song was really good but not complete. They knew there was something brilliant there, and they cut that backing track live.

Lennon wrote the song, although both he and others have said that Paul wrote the chorus. There was no bridge when it was cut. So Mal Evans counted out the bridge (getting louder as he counted, if you listen close you can hear him), and in his excitement set off a little toy alarm towards the end of the build. That ringing, as it happened, fit perfectly with the song ("Woke up, got out of bed") and was kept in. Anyway, it couldn't be removed without cutting part of the playing.

The bridge was from a song Paul had written that hadn't been completed. He didn't think it stood on its own, but as a bridge it was great. He also presented the idea, according the Jeff Emerick, of having an orchestra build some sort of chaotic climax. John latched onto it, referring to it as an aural orgasm, and that was that.

Paul wanted his voice to sound muffled in the bridge, like he HAD just gotten out of bed, so it was cut with a low-fi mic and heavily compressed. You can hear the fidelity change on monitors or decent headphones. I mean, you can hear it regardless, but the effect is amplified on flat-response speaker systems. John always wanted a lot of echo to sing to, and there was so much here that he actually sang specifically to it. The result floored everybody. He was obsessed with his dislike of his voice, which also lead to the distorted vocals on later records and the Leslie experiment on the insanely forward-thinking Tomorrow Never Knows.

As for PD's comment, from 68 onwards it was iffy. For the white album it was almost seperate recording sessions. For the Get Back sessions it was everybody together, with Preston, but unhappy. And already, nobody really seemed to be giving their all. Paul had literally led them through Pepper and MMT, had fought a renewed Lennon toe-to-toe in the white album sessions and was burnt out. Harrison was into playing with other acts more than his band. Ringo was in his "I'm fucking famous" stage. Aside from the white album Lennon was mostly checked out, moreso in Abbey Road for sure, but checked out nonetheless. Although the song is really ambiguous, John claimed a few times that the "Sgt Pepper took you by surprise" was, among other lines from How Do You Sleep, directed towards himself. He didn't get it and wasn't into music that was, in his words, "so easy to enjoy."

However, percussion was almost always Ringo or Paul. Paul would take tamb if the song was overly slow, to keep Ringo in time, or on tracks like Ballad of John and Yoko take em altogether, but few other Beatles really took the instrument too seriously. Actually, on Everybody's Got Something to Hide he played the fireman's bell, but it left him aching after so many takes. And it must have hurt his ears...it's such a loud device, they didn't even mic it.

John would play congas or other random rhythm instruments on tracks where he had nothing to play, and it's been said that he liked that because he got tired of playing guitar. His mind wandered too much to play the same thing over and over. Sometimes he would play and not be miked, because his timing wasn't as good as some of the others, but he was always restless.

Bam.

Also, I've never heard any complaints about the rhythm in Beatles recordings from people who were both musicians and had listened carefully to the Beatles recordings. The best drummer I ever played with once declared that you could tell someone who didn't understand the drums because said person would likely declare a love for drummers who were full of lightning fills but full of generic backbeat rhythms, and would mock Ringo and his lack of fills (ignoring his creative approach to finding the Beatles beats).

i'm far from being anywhere close to a professional musician, but i gotta say, from classic bands, ringo is one of the last drummers i truly came to appreciate. for the longest time, i paid practically zero attention to the drums on beatles songs. but that's all changed now. in fact, the most prominent instrument, for me, in beatles music, is the bass. it carries the songs so often, and it's so melodic, it's just fantastic. but ringo's drumming went unappreciated by me for too long.

Drumming as an art is often underrated, and thus drummers are generally valued on their ability to create specific tones...generally whipcrack sharp...verses their ability to escape kick-on-the-one-backbeat-heavy generalities. It's too bad, because the sameness of drumming has been one of popular music's weak points the last 30 years or so.

also, about ringo, i remember him saying in an interview how he doesn't like to play by himself a lot, as opposed to most other drummers, whom i assume practice by themselves a lot. basically, ringo said that he sees no point in playing and practicing by himself. he only likes to play when joined by other musicians. weird huh?

There are so many flashy drummers out there and Ringo's often thought of as a simple weak player by people who worship monsters like Peart and Bruford and all the other prog-rockers. But George Martin once mentioned in an interview that Ringo rarely faltered in studio. I can see a cynic saying "well, its not hard to screw up when you don't do anything," but he complimented the music perfectly. He was a metronome and just what the band needed. And on top of that, a great personality. People might consider him the luckiest drummer alive. He was just a great part of the band. I can't imagine the Beatles music with anything other than his playing.

While I love the Beatles version, have you guys heard the instrumental Jeff Beck version? I think he's the one who did it. Its unreal. I first heard it on the radio the day George passed away and every time I've heard it since, it stops me in my tracks. It makes me sad, but when you strip away the vocals and just hear a guitar playing the melody, you hear nothing but the genius behind Lennon/McCartney.

Absolutely love it.

Bingo.

Ballad... was because John and Paul were the only ones in studio at that time because George and Ringo were off doing their own things. In demos you can hear John calling Paul "Ringo" and Paul calling John "George" because of the parts they played.

"Back in the USSR" was Paul because Ringo quit the Beatles because he got frustrated when Paul wasn't satisfied with his drumming on it. Paul used to drum back before Pete Best and knew what he wanted, so he did it for that song. To get Ringo back, they basically had to suck his cock and send him flowers saying "you're the best rock drummer." I am drawing a blank as to what got him back in the band, but recording "Don't Pass Me By" and putting it on the album was one of his conditions.

Other than that, I don't think anyone else took the drums for recordings besides fucking around in the studio.

the lesson here is that MCP doesn't know anything about the beatles

at all

I like this tune.

as do I, but I know a lot of people who loathe it