Little Lamb Dragonfly | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

Another inspired song.  “Pastoral” is a nicely evocative word for it. Not only are the orchestral musicians unknown, but so too their arranger (I doubt Paul was able to arrange those subtle classical touches; did he have GM’s help back then?).

I note that Ultimate Guitar has no entry for it. 

I like to play along with it, but I could never figure out precisely two chords — they only occur in the first slow part (not in the second reiteration at the end).  This other website of chords has these chords, but two chords are clearly wrong.  The Em is correct, and the A7 and D are correct, but that F# and the “A7(13)” are wrong.

F# Em
Sometimes you think that life is hard
A7 A7(13) D
And this is only one of them

Perfect — thank you @Beatlebug !

Yep those are the 2 mystery chords.  Now my LLD experience will be complete! 

The first chord I learned from James Taylor, he uses it a lot, so I call it “the James Taylor chord” and it always means a 7th with the bass being a half step above the tonic note — here, D7/Eb.  The second chord I think should be called “A7aug5” (augmented fifth).

Joe’s description says both Paul and Hugh McCracken played 12-string acoustic guitars. That seems surprising to me. First, I can’t discern two of them. Second, the 12-string already has an adequately full sound so I wonder why one would need to double up (especially if they’re playing the same chords/notes — and like I said, I can’t detect any interplay of two doing different things).  It could be another example of Paul’s penchant for intricate additives and layerings, almost like a song is a complex piece of ornate furniture.  I can imagine him in the studio listening to a take and saying “I want to add a riff or line at this point, let’s record another track and merge it” or whatever — and doing this many times for different instruments.