"I Want You Back Again" b/w "I Remember When I Loved Her"

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According to Russo's Collector's Guide, fifty years ago to-day (31 May 1965), the Zombies' "I Want You Back Again" b/w "I Remember When I Loved Her" (PAR 9769) was released in the U.S. and Canada.

"Like Honey"

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When I listened to Argent a few days ago, I noticed that the word-less vocal part (which I'm pretty sure is Rod Argent) during the introduction to "Like Honey" is doubled by organ.  And then while verifying that to-day, I realized that the bass part of the guitar arpeggiation is doubled on organ too.

The organ part in my example is considerably louder so that it's easier to hear that part.  Also, I might have articulated that descending bass part wrong.  I just went from note to note, but I think there might be a sort of skipping.  So, instead of going straight from A to G, it’s A, *rest,* A, G.

"It's Only Money, Pt. 1"

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I wasn't going to do a version of "It's Only Money, Pt. 1" because the guitar parts I know are pretty boring just by themselves, but I think I figured out the organ chords beneath them, which makes it slightly more interesting.

I'm not sure about the voicings I have here.  Some of the chords in Argent's version include some higher notes.

"It's Only Money, Pt. 2"

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I was bored last night, so I decided to figure out a part and I got the introductory guitar part for "It's Only Money, Pt. 2."  Later, I got a few phrases from "It's Only Money, Pt. 1" too (but since most of that is just a two-note phrase that's repeated throughout the verses, I don't think it'd make that interesting of an audio example).

As usual, my guitar tone leaves something to be desired, but I'm pretty sure I have the notes right (although I think I flubbed one in the third phrase).  I was surprised by how chromatic some of these phrases are.

There's an organ part underneath this, and I know it starts with an E and ends with a B, but I'm still not certain if it's D# and C# or D and C or some other combination of notes between that E and B.  I tried both when I recorded this, but neither sounded right, so I just left it off.

"Lonely Hard Road"

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I listened to Argent again this morning, and I noticed these piano chords at the end of "Lonely Hard Road."  There're some fairly interesting dynamics involved.  It just goes between C minor and F major, but the C minor is forte where the F major is piano.  Since it's only two chords, I didn't feel that it was worth it to record an example.

"Celebration"

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I listened to Argent's Ring of Hands this morning just for the sake of it, and then I decided to figure out the one guitar part in "Celebration."  I got the chords and the solo too, so I think I know all of the guitar parts now.  The first minute and a half or so is just the chords though, so it's not that interesting.

Part of the chord progression of this is the same as that of "She's Coming Home."  Specifically, the part that Rod Argent took from Herbert Howells:  E major, E major 7th, C# minor, B major.  In "She's Coming Home," that's all part of the verse, but in "Celebration," the E major, E major 7th, C# minor part serves as a transition to a different section that starts with B major.  (For the guitar part in "She's Coming Home," it's easier to play a G# minor, which is pretty close to an inverted E major 7th, but here I did play an E major 7th because a G# minor sounded weird.)  Aside from that part, the chords are really easy and relatively few.  Most of the song is just five chords.

I moved my recording set-up, and I'm still trying to get things working again, so this might sound a bit rougher than normal.

This is a new one in the catalogue too.  I haven't even written about "Celebration" before, which I'm kind of surprised about.

"Play It for Real" and "Show Me the Way"

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I have a list of about twelve things I have to look into and possibly write about.  Two days ago, I checked one of them and confirmed that there's a chromatic bass part in "Play It for Real."  In the second half of the choruses, during "When you feel how you feel / There's no deal to reveal," the bass goes chromatically from F to D.

But then I checked my list, and I'd actually written down "Show Me the Way."  So I checked that, and it too has a chromatic bass line.  During the "If I bleed..." parts, there's an initial G before a chromatic descent from F to C.  It goes up again (from that C to D to G) before repeating that chromatic phrase.

Update

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I got thinking about "Kind of Girl" for whatever reason, and I couldn't remember a section of the chords.  I'd thought I'd written it down, but apparently not, so I had to dredge it out of my memory/relearn it (and I did write it down).

I'm sure that there are other songs that I've forgotten parts of and that I haven't written down, so now I sort of want to go through and record the whole catalogue again (at least what parts I know) while writing them down (whether it's notation, tabs, or just the chords).

Most of what I've been posting lately has been text, so going through and recording everything again might be more interesting anyway.

"I Want Her She Wants Me"

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I've been really into Elvis' "Don't Be Cruel" lately, and I just realized that there's a similarity between it and "I Want Her She Wants Me."  Except for the first one, after each "Don't be cruel to whose heart is true," the bass descends diatonically from D to G (and, since it's in D major, it's D C# B A G).  I haven't learned the whole bass part (I know just the chords and the guitar part at the beginning), but in that section, they're playing the root note of the chords above them.  So that D C# B A G phrase is between a D major and a G major.

"I Want Her She Wants Me" is in G major, but it does the same thing.  After "'Cause she had given her heart once before" in the bridges, the bass descends diatonically (D C B A G) while the chords above go from D major to G major.  It differs slightly from "Don't Be Cruel" in that the G at the end of the phrase is above the D.

That phrase links the bridges to the verses in "I Want Her She Wants Me," and while I don't think the phrase in "Don't Be Cruel" really links any two sections, they are similar in that the vocals resume as soon as the bass hits the G.

"Stepping Stone"

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When I listened to Argent last week, I noticed this guitar part in "Stepping Stone."  It reminded me of two things: a theme in Sibelius' Symphony No. 5 in E flat major, Op. 82 and a section of the Easybeats' "You Me, We Love."  I'd noticed the connection between that Sibelius symphony and the Easybeats before (I listened to Sibelius pieces on twenty-two of the twenty-eight days of February this year), so I decided to look into them all.

First, I learned the guitar part from "Stepping Stone."  My guitar tone doesn't really match, but I always have problems with that.  I might have some of the glissandi out of place, but I'm pretty sure on the notes themselves.

Then, I looked up that part of the Sibelius symphony (this morning, I started going through what Sibelius symphonies I have, and, fortunately, I guessed the one that the phrase is in).  It's in the first movement of Symphony No. 5.  I found it most clearly in the violins just after section J begins, but I think it's in one of the brass instruments a bit earlier (and I think that phrase is foreshadowed in the flutes and clarinets at the beginning of the B section earlier in the movement too).

(notation found here)

Then I knew that there wasn't a real similarity because that phrase in the Sibelius symphony is chromatic.  In the first and second measure there, it's Bb, A, Ab, G (and then it goes back up into the third measure - Ab, A, Bb).  The guitar phrase in "Stepping Stone" is very conjunct (the biggest leap is a third - from B to D), but it's not chromatic.

But I went on and looked at the phrase in the Easybeats' "You Me, We Love" anyway.  The guitar doubles the vocals during what I think is a bridge ("But if he knew / Of the life I go through...").  Like the guitar phrase in "Stepping Stone," it's very conjunct, but it's in a different key (although I'm not sure which key either is in).  That phrase in "You Me, We Love" also has a lot of accidentals.  It switches between A & A# and D & D# in spots.

So what I was hearing in these pieces was the conjunction (diatonic in "Stepping Stone" and "You Me, We Love" but chromatic in Sibelius' Symphony No. 5).  There really isn't anything specific that connects them.

Rain Imagery

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I was still thinking about the rain images in Zombies songs, and - in a supreme coincidence - I was playing "Maybe after He's Gone" on electric piano while it was raining outside, which reminded me of "She told me she loved me / With words as soft as morning rain."

I sort of remembered a rain image in Argent's "Pleasure," but I had to look that up to confirm it ("My love is full of pleasure / Falling rain to cool my aching face").  Since I've been transcribing the lyrics, I can just do a search for "rain."  There are some more references on the later albums (like Out of the Shadows and As Far as I Can See), but the only other one I'll mention is from "Keep on Rollin'" - "Move just like a river / Fall like the morning rain."  Like "Maybe after He's Gone," that's even morning rain, specifically.

New World

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I listened to New World to-day because it was released to-day in 1991, according to Russo's Collector's Guide.  And - as usual - I noticed things:

There's a line in "New World (My America)" that I'm fairly certain is a reference to The Tempest - "All of my life begins within this brave new land."  "Brave new world" is a phrase in The Tempest, and "brave new land" is similar enough that I don't think it's just a coincidence.  Plus, there's the quotation from The Tempest in the original Odessey and Oracle liner notes.

"When Love Breaks Down" wasn't written by any of the Zombies, but it occurred to me while listening to it that a lot of the later material uses rain as an image.  I just recently discovered the connection between "Beechwood Park" and "Let It Go" from Breathe Out, Breathe In ("after summer rain").  "When Loves Breaks Down" mentions "The sweet September rain," and rain is prominent in "Only the Rain" from Argent and Blunstone's Out of the Shadows.  There are probably other songs that rain is mentioned in, but I've been holding back on writing stuff like that (incidentally, a lot of the songs on New World mention dreams, memory, and home - things that I've traced throughout the catalogue).

"I Can't Be Wrong" contains a reference to "Time of the Season" that I'd never noticed.  The first line is "For me, time is only seasons."  "I Can't Be Wrong" was written by Sebastian Santa Maria who appears on the album almost as a replacement for Rod Argent.  I found the reference interesting.  It's akin to the "In you I've found my odyssey and oracle" in "In My Mind a Miracle" in that it's a reference but it's not blatant.

There's also an interesting bit of wordplay in Santa Maria's "Moonday Morning Dance."  The first lines are (I think) "Don't 'xpect any movement out my eyes / Not even a wink, not even one side."  With expect abbreviated as such, it sounds the same as spect, so there's the connection between eyes and words like spectacle and spectacular that ultimately come from the Latin verb spectare (to look at).

"Liar"

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While listening to Argent a few days ago, I paid particular attention to the electric piano part in "Liar."  I figured out most of it, so I tried recording a version, but it wasn't turning out right.  I think there's some alternating beats between the bass part and the other parts (like the other parts are on the beat, but the bass is off-beat), but when I tried recording it - even though I separated those parts into different tracks because I didn't (and don't) have enough faith in my keyboard skills to be able to play that - I couldn't get that alternating to work out.

Something to work on, I guess.

Updates

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I spent some time yester-day re-organizing the catalogue page.  I'd neglected to put the song titles in quotation marks when I originally created it, so I fixed that.  I also created divisions so that the songs are separated by album (save for the Decca-era Zombies tracks and the post-Zombies/pre-Argent period), and I added songs to the listing that I haven't figured out how to play yet but that I've written about.  Originally, my goal with this project was just to learn all of the parts, but over the past couple months, I've actually been writing more commentary, which might be more interesting.

Additionally, I discovered by happenstance to-day that Argent's Circus is being released on CD on 26 May.  I was bemoaning the lack of a release of Counterpoints, so I went looking for Argent things on Amazon and found this listing.  It's $24, which is pretty expensive, but I'm still excited about a new Argent release (even if it is a re-release and even though I bought Circus as a digital download about two years ago).  I'm still waiting (probably in vain) for an Argent box set like Zombie Heaven.

"Like Honey"

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I've been having problems uploading audio, so I hope this works.

While listening to Argent yester-day, I realized that the opening guitar figure of "Like Honey" is double-tracked in some places.  The left track plays the whole arpeggiated part and then the final A minor chord, but the right track breaks off at the end of the first phrase and plays an Esus4 and E major before repeating the phrase exactly the same as the left track (ending with the A minor).  I'd missed the Esus4 completely and thought the E major was overdubbed just by itself.

Argent/Breathe Out, Breathe In

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This morning, I listened to Argent and Breathe Out, Breathe In just for the sake of it.  I didn't even work on lyric transcriptions.  But I still noticed interesting stuff.  There are a lot of things I still have to look into, but here are things I'm sure about:

Argent
Some of the guitar part at the beginning of "Like Honey" is double-tracked.  I plan on recording an example of this, and when I post that, I'll explain more fully.

At about 1:16 in "The Feeling's Inside," there are guitar harmonics.

"Free Fall" starts with a falling fifth, beginning the song with a musical portrayal of what the lyrics relate.  When I confirmed this, I was surprised to find that it starts with the same falling fifth that "She's Not There" features - E to A.

There's some connection between "Stepping Stone" and "Brief Candles" in that the very end has a piano part (accompanied by bass in "Brief Candles") panned to one side ("Stepping Stone" is panned right; "Brief Candles" left).  That part is still audible on the other side, but it seems more distant, so between the two channels, you get the impression of space.  I'm not sure that's the best explanation though.

Breathe Out, Breathe In
For the first time, I noticed Rod Argent's falsetto part during the second halves of the choruses in "Play It for Real."  While Colin sings, "When you feel how you feel / There's no deal to reveal," Rod sings "Feel," spreading it out to four syllables.

There are a lot of elements that evoke the feeling of Odessey and Oracle too:

I'd noticed the music that's the mellotron plays in "Shine on Sunshine," but I don't think I'd really realized that it's a mellotron.

"A Moment in Time" also has mellotron, which I hadn't noticed at all.  The lines "Life is a stage where / We all just act a part" come from Shakespeare's As You Like It.  I'm not sure if I'd really recognized their origin before, but listening to it this time, I realized that it goes well with the quotation from The Tempest in the Odessey and Oracle liner notes and Macbeth's "brief candle" in "Brief Candles."

Finally, I noticed the lyrics in one of the verses of "Let It Go":

I long to see you
Back again
In sunshine after
Summer rain
That washed away
The hurt and pain
So we would never know

It re-uses a phrase from the first line of "Beechwood Park" - "Do you remember summer days just after summer rain."  Not realizing this until just now made me feel pretty dumb.  It was literally a head-smack moment.

"Butcher's Tale"

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A little over a week ago (23 April), I was playing "Butcher's Tale," and I realized (again) that there are Picardy thirds at the end of each section.  The song starts in D minor (with some accidentals), but half-way through, it moves to D major.  Then it restarts in D minor again before finally ending with D major.  The transition from D minor to D major (an F note to an F#) occurs during the last "home" in the "I want to go home / Please let me go home / Go home" part.  The vocals end on that F# note, emphasizing that F-to-F# change.

I got to thinking about this, especially because the lyric accompanying that Picardy third contains "home" and I've written about the lyrical/musical connections with "home" before (with "She's Coming Home" and "Care of Cell 44").

The Picardy third and "home" together are particularly significant here, considering the subject matter in the song.  The period following World War I (or even during it) was filled with disillusionment, and the ending of "Butcher's Tale" demonstrates that really well.  The vocals don't go to the root note (D) almost as if they can't go home again after having witnessed the horrors of war ("a friend of mine / Hang[ing] on the wire like some rag toy").  And they don't go to the minor third (F) almost as if they don't want to emphasize the sadness that minor chords seem to signify.  Instead, they go to the major third (F#).  They seem to yearn for something higher - both literally (F# is higher than D) and figuratively (as if the "home" mentioned in the lyrics is a spiritual home above the old Earthly home [id est: Heaven]).

Stakes and Chips

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I recently got the Roulettes' one and only album Stakes and Chips.  The Roulettes is one of the bands that Russ Ballard and Bob Henrit were in before Argent.

I've listened to it only twice so far, but I really like it.  While listening to it this morning, I realized how weirdly coincidental it is that one of the bonus tracks is their cover of Smokey Robinson & the Miracles' "The Tracks of My Tears."  Mishearing "if you look closer, it's easy to trace" is how Rod Argent came up with the phrase "time of the season" (if I recall correctly, he misheard it as "at the close of the season").

"I Must Move"

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I just listened to the songs from the Zombies' radio appearance that was broadcast fifty years ago to-day, and I confirmed my suspicion from last time I listened to them:  the live version of "I Must Move" has a different bass part from the studio version.  I haven't even tried figuring it out yet, but I thought I'd at least mention it.

Saturday Club

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Verulam Cover Project:

According to the Zombie Heaven liner notes, fifty years ago to-day (20 April 1965) the Zombies recorded an appearance on the Saturday Club radio show performing "You Must Believe Me," "She's Coming Home," "I Must Move," and "Just out of Reach" (tracks 13-16 on the fourth disc of Zombie Heaven).  The show was broadcast on 1 May 1965.