Discussion: The Beatles "Old Brown Shoe" - Paul or Ringo on drums?

Maybe I've missed something else he's written, but in his last post he says it's his opinion that Lewisohn is wrong, and characterizes the theory as "unlikely" to the point of being ridiculous. But he also says it's "not impossible."

Absent evidence, the greater likelihood is that his theory is wrong. It would be an unlikely coincidence that they'd add three new songs in the middle of the run and that a tape recorder would just happen to be running on the night they did it.

 

Howlett does not say that his conclusion is based on anything he's heard on the tapes though. He says that Ringo was away filming. That's all he says on the subject.
Regarding that people sometimes can't tell their voices appart...
Howlett himself confused George's and Paul's voice at the end of the Revolution 1 outtake., "it is that" bit.
He also failed to recognise from the studio chatter (and Baby I Don't Care jam) that it's actually Paul on bass and John on guitar on the outtake for the released version of Helter Skelter. He even claims the basic track is TWO guitars, where in fact it's just one.
He repeats the same mistake that the bang bang shoot shoot vocal on Happiness Is A Warm Gun were done by Paul and George. But John DOES sing the bit too (it's a three part harmony and John sings the lowest part).
He couldn't tell from the tapes that it's impossible for Paul being able to play the piano and organ at the same time on While My Guitar Gently Weeps.
He's far from being 100% reliable to decipher what's on the tapes, imo.

 

Don't think it's John on the Helter Skelter / Baby I Don't Care guitar!
Yes I'm almost sure Paul plays the bass, I even started a thread about it, but that Scotty Moore guitar lick on Baby I Don't Care screams George to me!

 

Yes I edited my post to say it was an opinion. You read the post just before I edited it.

 

Sure, it still can be Lennon playing the rhythm guitar.
There are early outtakes available from the first day of recording (Take 3 and 4) when the rhythm was played on acoustic and even though it's a low quality it sounds very much like J-160e which would point to John. Still it doesn't prove with certainty who is on the finished recording. Paul might have handle the rhythm guitar next day.
But, yeah, it can be Lennon, that lack of bass on the basic track does not rule him out.

 

But doesn't Paul discuss the guitar chord progression with John on the outtake? I don't remember...
But whatever, it's clearly Paul on bass. And kudos to you, you were the first one to point out long before the White Album SDE was even released! I was disappointed when the official book failed to spot this.

 

I only remember Paul's voice, but I might be wrong.
Unfortunately I think Howlett relied on Mal's info from the Monthly's book.
Same with the organ/piano on WMGGW, he went with the info on Lewison's book.
I blame Lewison's book for many bad info we took as fact all these years, and they're so ingrained on people's heads, that even if we have a video of The Beatles playing a certain song, some would still be spreading wrong info through the internet and in books.
Howlett, has access to the tapes and new studio documentation, and overall IMHO he's doing a good job, but then makes amateur mistakes and omissions...! It should be a perfect job, not good.

 

George was apparently busy setting ashtray on fire and running around with it over his head, according to Ringo

In the Helter Skelter Take 17 or Rock Band studio chat for that song there's what I hear as a John's voice that says "...jump off the A" or something like that, it's very distant and requires some isolation processing in Audacity to hear better. In this particular case, Take 17 and Rock Band segments are very similar and have the same bits, but one has less than the other (I think Rock Band one is longer) but also if I'm not mistaken there are 'exclusive' bits to each of them as well, or a different order. Oh yes, the Rock Band one has a short bit of Paul saying "hold it fellas" in Elvis' voice, which clearly comes from You're So Square outtake. Which means that either one of these (or both) studio talking and noodling audio portions were edited, but to which extent? Though I don't think they'd go as far as lifting John saying "that's goooood enough" that is barely audible from somewhere else and splice it at the end of Old Brown Shoe outtake. At the end of Take 17 when Paul says "keep that one, mark it fab" there's also a suspicious ambiance/noise change...

I think many still do, was Mal maybe describing the slow 'rehearsal' version of Helter Skelter, where John indeed played bass?
And it's stuck ever since, repeated thousands of times, and it's still "John played amazing punk style dirty bass on Helter Skelter using Fender VI" everywhere.

Not to mention Lewisohn's book stating Clapton solo was recorded as an overdub. At least 50 years later with the outtake we have confirmation he played live together with them for 20-something takes. At least we get these new bits of info, I guess

 

Just a problematic for me is the fact that Lewisohn, in this case, cites no evidence whatsoever to back up his claim. As I mentioned before, not a single set list from the November/December Hamburg runs has surfaced (which might help to bolster his argument).

Which is what you just said, LOL. In his defense, Lewisohn talks at the outset of the podcast about how he's not a musician, not a musicologist, etc. and so had been hesitant to be a guest on a show where the focus would be the music itself. So there is that disclaimer at least, although I was disappointed the host didn't press him on it just a little bit.

 

Yes, presenters are often too in awe of Lewisohn. They rarely question anything he says.

 

Great point.

 

Yes it should be perfect.

And if it isn't perfect, then it's Howlett's fault alone.

For OBS why didn't he say "Ringo may not have been on this track because he was filming, but it certainly sounds like him. Nothing on the session tape indicates if he was definitely there or not"?

OR he could have said "Ringo doesn't drum on this track. Studio notes indicate his absence and we can hear Paul on the drum mike".

Of course to do either you have to have a certain amount of humility, which is something these guys occasionally lack.

 

Well, I don't know if paperwork exists or if it was from listening to the session, but it is not mentioned only on the Old Brown Shoe entry:

Something entry: "The next session for Something at Abbey Road took place during the evening of 16 April, following na afternoon spent recording Old Brown Shoe. Two days previously, Ringo had been unavailable to play on The Ballad Of John and Yoko due to his acting commitments for The Magic Christian. As Ringo was also away filmimg on this day, Paul again played drums for Something (…) Over two weeks passed before work resumed on the song. With Ringo now present on 2 May (…)".

Oh Darling entry: "The Beatles returned to Abbey Road Studios with Chris Thomas producing the session on 20 April. On the original eight-track tape, the line up consists of (…) drums by Ringo, who had recently returned from filmimg".

They sure insist on this subject in the book, so I guess they had access to something we don't know. Pity Howlett doesn't mention what it was! If it's really a mistake, it's a big one indeed, and they should fix that!

 

Incidentally, for all you Lewisohn-watchers, in the recent eggpodcast about the Star Club album concerning Falling In Love Again Lewisohn says McCartney wrote and sang his own English lyrics to the song because it was a German song.

He then says, "There may have been, I suspect there must have been, some English adaptation."

Darn right there were English lyrics. Marlene Dietrich sings them in the film from 1930 for goodness' sake. McCartney's problem is that he didn't know them and he kind of goobledgygooks his way through the song. I doubt very much he wrote his 'lyrics' down.

Here's Marlene with the original English lyrics on her recording from 1939. They are in fact rather good. (Men cluster to me like moths around a flame. And if their wings burn, I know I'm not to blame).

 

After listening to the podcast, I read what Lewisohn says in Tune In. He says there that a lot of the songs played in Hamburg in December were songs that had been dropped from their regular setlists (hence they were 'new' to Ringo). How he knows that certain songs had been dropped from the regular setlists, I don't know. But he must feel quite sure if he's repeating the claim.

 

By the way, apart from the drum part controversy on Old Brown Shoe, I was looking at the tape box today and:



First, Lewison is wrong when he says that the basic track takes were two guitars, drums and piano, as we can hear on take 2 there's only one guitar, piano and drums.
If you check all the other songs from Abbey Road, they used the first tracks for the instruments and vocals, when they recorded the basic track takes.
In this case track one (Drums), track two (Guide Vocal), track three (Guitar) and track four (Jangle Piano). It makes no sense, as Mark implied, that John's guitar would be recorded on track eight, and then erased two days later for the organ overdub. If he played live, his guitar would be on track five or by a stretch on track six.
My guess is that track eight entry on the box, means that George or John on the 18th of April, overdubbed a guitar that was not used in favour of the organ, or simply a mistake by the engineer when writing on the box. That guitar def was not recorded on the basic track takes, on 16 April 1969. By the way, the guitar on track seven, recorded on 18 April 1969, is George's guitar solo.

Second, the guitar we hear on take 2, sounds like the guitar we hear on the released take, which is on track three of the tape box.
Now, on track six we have the bass / guitar overdub combo. My question is, what guitar do we hear on the released version? The one on track three, recorded during the basic track takes; the one recorded with the bass on track six; or both?

 

I would take Seiwell on the McCartney album ANY DAY. That dude is a great drummer with a great feel. Wings lost something special when he left.

And that's not to take away from the homespun charm that is McCartney, an album I love as-is.

 

Would Apple actually risk offending Ringo and getting it wrong by listing Paul as the drummer on OBS if they were at all unsure? Why take that risk? What's to be gained by guessing and getting it wrong? Surely the default if its ever unclear is to list Ringo on drums or percussion for a Beatles session. It's almost more believable that they would make note in the liners about being unsure if it was Paul or Ringo, rather than just switching the credits.

That leads me to think there is some incontrovertible evidence on the session tapes that it is Paul playing drums. Either that, or J, P, G drafted an unnamed session player in, but didn't want to credit them originally in deference to Ringo, and don't want to credit them now for the same reason. In this scenario, it makes more sense to credit Paul with the drumming rather than Ringo, because being a real drummer and protective of his style and sound, Ringo really wouldn't want that, whereas crediting Paul and copy/pasting the "Ballad" story of Ringo being unavailable is a more perfect coverup.

 

I understand that - it's just that there's absolutely nothing to support his claim that the tapes document the "first takes" of those songs (with Ringo). Again, I have loads of respect for Lewisohn and just about everything he's done, but I see no reason to think that he's correct here.

 

The perfect answer.

Bernard Purdie on drums!

 

On the early take the drums are sloppy, no groove at all.

I say it's Paul.

 

So now Paul plays drums on Something, too, or am I misinterpreting that?

What's next, the drum track on Octopus's Garden? Why not every track?

It's funny how this thread drifted toward Good Day Sunshine, where Ringo(I hope) opens the song with the exact same fill that appears several times in Old Brown Shoe.
But maybe that's Paul, too.

This thread is nothing if not interesting.


Dan

 

Paul played drums on the first, still unreleased, versions of Something. The released version is a remake, with drums (as far as we know) by Ringo.

 

Ok, that was my first impression. Thanks for the clarification.


Dan