6.34pm
Reviewers
18 February 2013
ewe2 said
Yes it’s very bright, some nice miking to capture the sound. It’s one of the hallmarks of Emerick’s work on that album. Imagine the same thing with the production values of earlier albums, it would have sounded like he was fighting an Ewok inside a sack.
lillo78 said
this track is awesome. I like the bass here, and doesn’t feel that it’s poor, or anything, just because paul didn’t do it. Paul’s line in “Ticket To Ride ” is quite simple but it works well with the whole thing.It’s difficult indeed to see what else you can do with the bassline that George doesn’t use, without getting riffy and getting in the way of the guitars. He alternates long sustained notes and staccato notes during the verse and does those octave notes at the refrain; he doesn’t simply follow the guitar line in the 3/4 parts, and mixes that up each time; and does those nice 3rds in the tail part and then does a little run down the scale just in the right place where the guitars are sustaining and the vocals repeat. In fact for many years I had no idea Paul wasn’t on the recording, vocally or on bass. I would add, don’t mistake simplicity for not playing for the song, something George does more than once on bass when required.
Much of that is very true. And yet… The bass, and therefore the song, lacks something for me. I felt it before I ever knew McCartney was missing from the track, and have felt it more acutely since. George is completely competent on the instrument – it’s worlds apart from Lennon’s atrocious performance on The Long And Winding Road – but not close either in my opinion to the intuitive musicality of Paul on his specialist instrument.
McCartney was firing on all cylinders in this period, as a songwriter and also as a musician generally. It’s his bass playing and lead guitar riff, frankly, that transforms Taxman from a good song to a great song. Taking nothing away from the excellent rhythm guitar and drumming. Just my own opinion, of course, but a very entrenched one.
7.40pm
8 January 2015
The difference, speaking as a bassplayer myself, is how the available space is used. I can think of heaps of things to do in She Said She Said but they would be wrong because they get in the way. It might be instructive to listen to the mono version compared to the stereo. Stereo versions of Beatle songs can give you a false idea of the song’s space. The space in this song is for the guitars, drums and vocals. It might benefit from McCartney’s feel but I really doubt he would do much very different if playing for the song. Unless the riff is a feature of the song, you stick to the basics. Beatles tracks abound in examples of Macca doing this, and adding an individual touch here and there. I Want To Tell You (a George song!) is one example from the same album, as are Here There And Everywhere (which follows the chord progression even more strictly), and Got To Get You Into My Life .
Taxman isn’t a good comparison: that song doesn’t have a lot of chords, and is far more riff-based than SSSS which is a chord-progression based song. It needs a good bass riff, and it is a distinctive one. The drums and guitars keep out of the way and the space is dominated by the vocals, bass and the guitar solo. Similar songs (also George’s) are Think For Yourself and If I Needed Someone .
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7.58pm
Moderators
15 February 2015
I think the bass on this one is simply fabulous. Excellent Georgerocking. And I thought that even before I was a Harrifan.
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2.49am
15 May 2015
I found a you tube of She Said She Said where the drums were magnified (not totally isolated) and I could hear the bass a little better because the guitars were not so loud. I didn’t hear too much artistry in the bass work, though there were a couple of lines that were fairly nice. One thing I noticed that was unusual were a few times where the bass note is extremely short, almost staccato; something I’ve rarely heard (when it’s not that popping snapping technique pioneered later I believe, by the Sly Stone bassist, Larry Graham).
Another thing that became more apparent was how Ringo was quite liberal with his crash cymbals — that was cool. I wish more drummers would stop being so timid about hitting the crash. It reminds me of the time my Jazz Arranging professor (I didn’t realize how famous he was at the time, Bill Smith, clarinetist) told us that when he looked at the actual musical score to a song arranged by Henry Mancini, he saw that Mancini had hand-written for the drummer at one point the following musical instruction: “Hit everything.”
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4.27am
8 January 2015
I love the liberal crash-use too! One of the nice things about hearing that more isolated track is how well they separated the sound so the crash sustain/release wouldn’t overwhelm the following snare/tom/kick hits.
I think @Von Bontee put it best on the discussion page, it wasn’t a perfect take by George but they’d spent all day on it and it’s good enough.
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10.23am
Reviewers
18 February 2013
ewe2 said
Taxman isn’t a good comparison: that song doesn’t have a lot of chords, and is far more riff-based than SSSS which is a chord-progression based song. It needs a good bass riff, and it is a distinctive one. The drums and guitars keep out of the way and the space is dominated by the vocals, bass and the guitar solo. Similar songs (also George’s) are Think For Yourself and If I Needed Someone .
That’s because it’s clearly not a comparison of a song and its structure and its chords. It’s a comparison of two musicians’ relative merits/chops in bass-playing. “Good enough” is enough for some and not for others regarding the track – that’s each person’s prerogative. The point remains, however, that McCartney is a better bass-player than Harrison. Taking nothing away from George as an outstanding person and lead guitarist, it’s a point that’s so obvious it should hardly need to be made.
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Beatlebug12.40pm
28 March 2014
ewe2 said
The difference, speaking as a bassplayer myself, is how the available space is used. I can think of heaps of things to do in She Said She Said but they would be wrong because they get in the way. It might be instructive to listen to the mono version compared to the stereo.
I think Necko would agree with you…
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12.43pm
Moderators
15 February 2015
Silly Girl said
I think the bass on this one is simply fabulous. Excellent Georgerocking. And I thought that even before I was a Harrifan.
….Back in the prehistoric past when I was a Paulette and I thought Paul played the bass. Okay, so I’m biased and always have been. I’m a BEATLEMANIAC!
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6.34pm
Moderators
15 February 2015
..When you dig up a thread that hasn’t been posted in since last year and the last post was by you.
Anywheys, I found this amazing three-minute titbit of amazingness:
For all the She Said She Said lovers (@Eleanor Macca?) The sound quality is rutabaga, but the content is indescribably fascinating.
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2.05am
11 November 2010
Silly Girl said
Anywheys, I found this amazing three-minute titbit of amazingness:
For all the She Said She Said lovers. The sound quality is rutabaga, but the content is indescribably fascinating.
It’s funny, because Revolver is the album for which the least material is available on bootleg. This set of demos and boring stuff that nobody cares about (like slightly different mixes of the master takes) are pretty much the only Revolver –era recordings available on bootleg.
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2.18am
8 January 2015
What makes that 2nd half of the bootleg interesting to me is how the rhythm evolved; that he was thinking in drone terms but hadn’t quite figured out how to match the B part to that rhythm, no wonder they had to bash it out in a day. Seems like once he’d figured out the B part (for which we have no record), that changed how the A part went. Revolver is frustrating for the lack of this kind of documentation as @Necko says, we all wonder what’s in the vaults.
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12.44pm
26 April 2016
Silly Girl said
..When you dig up a thread that hasn’t been posted in since last year and the last post was by you.Anywheys, I found this amazing three-minute titbit of amazingness:
For all the She Said She Said lovers (@Eleanor Macca Macca?) The sound quality is rutabaga, but the content is indescribably fascinating.
Silly Girl said
..When you dig up a thread that hasn’t been posted in since last year and the last post was by you.Anywheys, I found this amazing three-minute titbit of amazingness:
For all the She Said She Said lovers (@Eleanor Macca Macca?) The sound quality is rutabaga, but the content is indescribably fascinating.
Ohhh, that’s so nice of you @Beatlebug It’s a treasure, no matter sound quality
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10.23am
14 February 2016
Just a heads up to everyone in the ‘beatlesbooks vs. Beatles Bible’ thread, we do actually have a She Said She Said thread.
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11.04am
1 November 2013
So was this the only song that Paul was abstinent from?
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11.10am
Reviewers
17 December 2012
Of course not. Julia was solo John.
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9.58pm
19 October 2016
He was also MIA for Good Night , as was everyone but Ringo.
12.37am
26 January 2017
Within You Without You is George only , and I believe his other Indian pieces are too.
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1.09pm
9 March 2017
12.50pm
Moderators
15 February 2015
I spent some time communing with Revolver throu’ the ‘phones last night, after not really deeply listening to much Beatles lately, and . . . well, I suppose you can imagine how much love I felt but especially for ‘She Said, She Said’, which I ended up having to listen to three times.
I feel like ‘She Said, She Said’ is kind of one of the album’s defining songs (And Your Bird Can Sing would also be a strong contender) — with its acid guitar riffing and hazy, English-sun-drenched vocals chasing each other in circles. I feel like the song is a very accurate musical picture of the lyrical subject matter — the tempo stops and starts and shuffles hesitantly whilst chugging along, and the guitars circle back to the vocal phrases like they’re trying to emphasise a point by restating it, but only confusing the conversation further. All the while the bass is doggedly plugging away and Ringo, my god Ringo, he earned his blisters
… but what I’ve not realised until now, in almost four years of intimate acquaintance with this masterpiece of an album, is that
THAT’S GEORGE SINGING THE SECOND ‘SHE SAID’ PART AT THE END!!!!
I always assumed, since the rest of the song is double-tracked John, that the second ‘She saaaaaid’ (etcetera) was a second John. But last night I actually heard it, and it’s very obviously George (especially on the ‘I know what it’s like to be dead’ — his pronunciation is clearly Harrison). Mind = blown
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4.16pm
Reviewers
14 April 2010
Beatlebug said
sun-drenched
This is in no way meant to diminish your entire post, which was (as usual) heartfelt and joyous. It’s just…when I saw the words sun-drenched, it made me smile. I always felt the entire album sounded so Summer-y.
Summer is by far my favorite season and by now everyone knows how I feel about Revolver .
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