With A Little Luck | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

Just going through Joe’s Wings posts giving my thoughts, hope yall don’t mind. This is another favorite of mine from Paul’s catalogue. The synth work is understated but it fits really nice and segues out of the intro in a really psychedelic way. While not traditionally psychedelic in a Syd Barret/White Rabbit kind of way, I find the late 70s glossy disco sound to be pretty trippy in certain contexts, something that the Grateful Dead realized as well and implemented beautifully during their late 70s early 80s hot streak.

While Paul doesn’t go full disco on London Town , the driving beat in four, the sweeping synths and the repetitive background vocals are somewhat reminiscent. Of course Paul can do no wrong vocally. His light sweet tenor turns into a powerful rock performance, masterfully blending the vocal styles that he’s so good at. 

Never been a big fan of this song, but hearing it just weeks ago, I noticed for the first time how (Paul’s bass aside) there are no guitars at all, and the synths supply most of the music, so that’s kinda interesting.

Synthesizers that were polyphonic (ie. able to produce sound from more than one key at a time) had only been available since about 1975, so if Paul had wanted to create this same record just a few years earlier, he’d have had no choice but to overdub all the synthesized chords note-by-note.

Sea Belt said

vonbontee said

  

To me, it’s the only actually inspired song on that whole album.

  

I haven’t heard it in years, and very few times total, but your post has induced me to start streaming it now, thanks  

Good points…it’s like he comes up with a new memorable tune in his head every single week, and only a few of them get worked on enough to become a complete song. 

Another thought I’ve had about “…Luck”: I’d almost guarantee Paul was listening to Stevie Wonder’s “Songs In The Key Of Life” the previous year; it kinda reminds me of the opening track “Love’s In Need Of Love Today” in particular 

The synths on this song are really cool. I read an excerpt of a Shaar Murray review of Band On The Run that said he plays synths

like an instrument, and not like an electric whoopee cushion

Paul uses mono synths to add rich layers of melody, usually pretty simple, often played by Linda. Paul plays the polysynth (not sure which synth hes playing) on this song, and his playing uses the programming to be expressive playing rhythmically and then holding out the stabs on a pad that evolves really nicely. The lead line on the intro is pretty cool as well. 

That solo is definetly a synth, sounds like a moog to me with how fat that envelope attack is. Sounds like there might be mellotron in there as well but the line youre talking about is a mono synth for sure

Yamaha CS80 and the Sequential Prophet V both came out in 77, Oberheim had a polysynth in 75, I think it was just called the Oberheim Polyphonic Synthesizer. 

The pad sound on Shine On You Crazy Diamond was a composite of multiple layers, none of which were from a true polysynth. The Prophet V was the first poly to breakthrough because of its programmable memory. Paul plays it on Wonderful Christmastime . That leads me to believe it might be the prophet on With A Little Luck, although Denny and Linda both played the Yamaha CS80 on stage in the late 70s, and the sound of the pad is more similar to the CS80 than the prophet. Can’t find any hard evidence either way. 

Recently Dave Smith (founder of sequential) and Tom Oberheim teamed up to make the OB6, supposed to be the best of both worlds between the Prophet and Oberheim sound. Really cool to see such pioneers join forces later in life. 

Edit: This post

on a synth forum speculates it couldn’t have been the Prophet in 78 because the prototype was barely finished by that point. 

sir walter raleigh said
Denny and Linda both played the Yamaha CS80 on stage in the late 70s, and the sound of the pad is more similar to the CS80 than the prophet. Can’t find any hard evidence either way. 

Edit: This post

on a synth forum speculates it couldn’t have been the Prophet in 78 because the prototype was barely finished by that point. 

Ok, the folks at the Steve Hoffman forum seem pretty sure it is the Yamaha CS-80, so I’m gonna go with that. That Yamaha model was used pretty extensively by Stevie Wonder throughout “Songs In The Key Of Life” – and I’ve already speculated upthread about Paul drawing inspiration from that album, especially the cushion-y sound of those synth pads.