If it’s a matter of simply saying playing the correct notes and chords, I agree…not much to it. And in fact, that can apply to most Beatle songs. Duplicating the actual feel of the original recording (any recording, by anyone) can be an entirely different matter. Perhaps this is what @Robber Soul’s friend was more so referring to when he refused to play the song.
Here's my band doing it. For me, the tricky part was playing the straight beat and adding the overdubs(which has to be done on a fair few Fabs songs). Dan
In case nobody has said it yet, for all their compositional quirks (especially John’s), technical complexity is very much beside the point of the Fabs’ music.
Nice job. One reason it is rarely done by 4 piece tribute bands is it has 3 guitar parts as well as a bass part - but you pull it off nicely without the rhythm guitar.
Was that a one-off? I never knew the Dead did that. Is there a version with better sound quality anywhere?
They did "It's All Too Much" a few times in 1995, Vince Welnick on vocals. There are probably some good board tapes.
It's only three parts, overdubbed two additional times. It's a great George Martin arrangement, but consider something like Good Vibrations or California Girls...total next level stuff. Dan
Yes only three parts...but the harmonic weaving of those three parts, and chord structure beneath (C#m D#m7b5 G#7/D# A C#m A7 A13 D Ddim7... etc) is not exactly kid stuff.
Are you talking about intervals? I have no idea. But I've performed all four of those songs, and Cali Girls was, by far, the hardest to pull off. I'm usually playing catch-up with the real "singers" in the band. And the only time I did Because live was as part of Side 2 of Abbey Road, which was like running a marathon. Ha. Dan
I know enough about music to be awestruck by “California Girls” when a friend helped me figure out how to play it. Same deal with “I’ll Be Back.” I know enough about music to sort of get what John is doing with “is it A major?/is it A minor?” games of that song, but I never could have written it myself. Maybe he couldn’t have explained what he was doing or how he did it, but it’s a really, really clever, and, more importantly, pleasing to the ear, series of rather odd chord changes, at least by the standards of 99% of rock bands. The descending chromatic bit in the second “bridge” is a quintessentially “Lennon” device.
It's been overwhelmingly Lennon songs mentioned on here, and yet he is usually cited as being far less complex musically than Paul. Or is that not the case and I'm just confusing complex playing structures with Paul's gift for melody? Another question, with all of these songs that are difficult to duplicate, why are The Beatles so often said not to have been very good musicians?
You misunderstand me, I meant that the choices undermine the notion that Lennon was a lazy songwriter who was prone to horizontal melodies etc. I suppose I got this idea comes from Revolution In The Head, the book about their studio recordings by Ian MacDonald, which is really good by the way. You hear it from Lewishon occasionally too.
