"Tell Her No" b/w "Leave Me Be"

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Fifty years ago to-day (28 December 1964), the Zombies' "Tell Her No" b/w "Leave Me Be" was released in the U.S. and Canada (PAR 9723).

Red House

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For Christmas, I got Rod Argent's 1988 album Red House.

There's a hole punch in the liner note booklet, but otherwise it's in really good condition, considering its age.  It's mostly an instrumental album, and it's pretty synth-heavy (not surprising for the '80s, I guess), neither of which I was expecting, so I don't quite know what to think about it yet.

I was kind of surprised to find that I already know three of the songs - "A 4th Gymnopedie," which also appears on Classically Speaking from a decade later, "Helpless," and "Baby Don't You Cry," both of which appear on Rod Argent & Colin Blunstone's Out of the Shadows from 2001 (although on Out of the Shadows, "Baby Don't You Cry" appears as "Baby Don't You Cry No More").

Also, in looking up the release dates, I've discovered that both Red House and Out of the Shadows came out in the U.S. years after they came out in the U.K.  Red House came out in 1988 in the U.K. but in 1991 in the U.S.; and Out of the Shadows came out in 2001 in the U.K. but in 2003 in the U.S.

"Brief Candles"

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Last night, I figured out the mellotron parts for "Brief Candles."  Or at least I think I did.  I think there are mellotron parts throughout the choruses, which I hadn't noticed; I'd thought they were just in the bridge.  I used the fake flute setting on my keyboard, which I think has a bit too much tremolo to sound mellotron-like, but it's the best I could do.  I've been thinking about getting a Nord keyboard so I can use their mellotron samples, but I don't have the money for it yet (and probably won't for a long time).  They also have Hohner Pianet samples, which I could definitely use.  They even list the Zombies under famous uses of the Pianet.

I still don't know very much of the piano part (so a lot of this is empty space), and I still have to record what I know with two tracks because I can't play both parts at once (so they don't match up perfectly).

But because I learned the mellotron part, I think I now know all of the mellotron parts on Odessey and Oracle ("Care of Cell 44," "Brief Candles," "Hung up on a Dream," and "Changes").  What I know for "Hung up on a Dream" might not be too accurate though.  (There's also the un-used mellotron part for "A Rose for Emily," but I haven't gotten around to learning that yet.)

"You Make Me Feel Good"

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This is a thing I've been meaning to write about for at least a few months, if not a year or more.

In figuring out the opening riffs for "Sticks and Stones" and "You Make Me Feel Good," I found a few similarities.  I felt it would be better to write out the notation for them rather than try to describe them verbally.  (Actually, I figured out how to make notation in Cubase, which is infinitely better than my trying to do it manually.  Plus I could check the note values with MIDI.)  I've put different colored boxes around the parts that are similar.

Both songs are (mostly) in E major, but even the accidentals have some similarity.  There are the same two in the opening riffs (D natural and G natural), and both songs include a descending chromatic phrase (G to F# to F to E) at the very end ("Sticks and Stones" has it as major chords and has it at the beginning too - after the riff).

I haven't found anything that confirms that the Zombies performed "Sticks and Stones" early in their career, but since "You Make Me Feel Good" has a riff that's pretty clearly inspired by it and since "You Make Me Feel Good" is one of the first songs they recorded, I'm fairly certain that "Sticks and Stones" was in their repertoire before they were signed to Decca.

Begin Here Session

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Fifty years ago to-day (10 December 1964), the Zombies had an-other session for the Begin Here album.  They recorded "Can't Nobody Love You," "The Way I Feel Inside," "I Got My Mojo Working," "You've Really Got a Hold on Me/Bring It on Home to Me," "I Can't Make up My Mind," and "Work 'n' Play."

They also received an award for "She's Not There" - it had been #1 on Cashbox.  I'm fairly certain that most of the pictures of the Zombies in the Decca studio in West Hampstead were taken on this day, as some sort of publicity event because they received that award.

"I Must Move"

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OK, so commentary on "I Must Move."

Like I mentioned when I first figured out the bass part, it's based on the D F# G A motive that Chris White uses a lot, although here the G and A are inverted, so it's D F# A G.

The chords over the first part of that bass motive are D F#m A (although almost all the chords in the song are broken up into arpeggios), which is sort of the opposite of the opening chords of "Hung up on a Dream" - G Em C.  Each modulation changes only one constituent note from chord to chord.  D major (D, F#, A) to F# minor (F#, A, C#) to A major (A, C#, E) in "I Must Move" goes higher, and G major (G, B, D) to Em (E, G, B) to C major (C, E, G) in "Hung up on a Dream" goes lower.

After that D F#m A G progression, there's a modulation from G major to G minor.  A modulation like that (from the major to the parallel minor) is actually pretty common in Zombies songs.  There's F major to F minor in "Walking in the Sun," G major to G minor in "How We Were Before," E major to E minor in "The Way I Feel Inside," and a whole slew in "A Love That Never Was" (D major to D minor, B major to B minor, and A major to A minor).

What makes that modulation interesting in "I Must Move" is that the humming part (and I think the melody too) arpeggiates those (already arpeggiated) chords.  It seems like I've run across this in some other Zombies songs - where there's an ascending melody in the major followed by a descending in the minor (or vice versa), but the only example I can think of off-hand is "The Way I Feel Inside," during the line "I can tell the way you smile."  However, I'm not sure if that's the same sort of situation.  There's no major-to-minor modulation there (although there is one elsewhere in the song), and those notes might just be accidentals, not in an-other key.  I have a feeling there's something like this in "Butcher’s Tale" (because at various points it contains both A major and A minor), but I'm not certain.

That modulation in "I Must Move" is also significant because of the lyrics that accompany it.  In one verse, that modulation accompanies "good" in the line "But that won't be any good."  In fact, there's a melisma there so that "good" is drawn out to a second syllable for that major-to-minor modulation.  So the minor shift musically portrays how it "won't be any good."  This is the opposite of what White later did in "This Will Be Our Year," where there's a minor-to-major shift to accompany the line "'Darling, I love you.'"

In an-other verse, that major-to-minor modulation accompanies "if" in the line "That I love you, and even if I do."  It sort of emphasizes the conditional clause and seems to portend that "even if" the singer does love the girl, it won't turn out well, which is exactly what the lyrics indicate - "Even if I do / I must move."  Again, this is a precedent for an-other Zombies' song; this time, it's Rod Argent's "I Want Her, She Wants Me."  There, a key change (from G major to Eb major) accompanies the line "She told me to be careful if I loved her."  It doesn't match up exactly with "if" (it hits "loved" instead), but it still draws attention to the conditional clause and the possibly-disastrous results.

"I Must Move" - through that G major to G minor shift - has that same sort of key change (at least, it does if my understanding of music theory is right).  The song is (mostly) in D major, and G minor is the relative minor of Bb major.  So - if I understand this correctly - that shift briefly moves the song's key over four spots to the left in the Circle of Fifths (from D major to G minor/Bb major), which is comparable to the G major-to-Eb major change in "I Want Her, She Wants Me."  Additionally, there's the same G major-to-Eb major change in "Care of Cell 44" at the end of some of the lines ("Hoping you're OK," for instance).  I don't think that really has any other bearing on the lyrics as is the case in "I Must Move" and "I Want Her, She Wants Me," although, as I've pointed out earlier, during the line "Thinking of me while you are far away," that key change does sort of emphasize the distance.

"I Remember When I Loved Her"

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Three days ago, I got a tambourine, so I wanted to do "I Remember When I Loved Her" because the tambourine part seemed pretty easy.  (This was pretty much the first time I'd ever played tambourine.  At least I got to slather on the reverb, which made it sound a bit better.)  And I also tried to figure out the rest of the bass part, but I'm still not that sure about it, especially during the solo.

Also, I'm still not that good at the guitar part.  It's almost entirely barre chords, so it gets tiring, especially if I do more than one take (this was the second).

"I Must Move"

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Yester-day, I had the Zombies section of my music collection on shuffle, and I was playing along to bass parts.  I tried figuring out the humming part of "I Must Move" on piano, and - while I never actually figured out that part - I think I figured out the guitar part.  I'm not so certain about the second-to-last chord though.

Also, I discovered that I had a bass note wrong in the last iteration, so I fixed that.

This should be on acoustic guitar, but I was making so many mistakes on it when I was practicing last night that I just did it with electric.

I have a lot to say about the musical aspects of this because there is so much in it that appears in other Zombie music, but I'm going to wait awhile before posting that because I want to make sure I remember everything I wanted to say about it (plus it'd be too long to post along with this and I have some things I have to verify).

"Brief Candles"

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I think I've figured out the opening piano part for "Brief Candles."  This same phrase repeats in the first part of the verses too (the whole of the first line and most of the second).

As I've mentioned before, I'm not a very good keyboard player, so I had to record this in two parts - the melody and the accompaniment.

Songs from 25 November 1964 Session

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I've been listening to each group of songs on the 50th anniversaries of when they were recorded, and I found some interesting lyrical things about the batch from the 25th.  (Mostly because I was either transcribing the lyrics or checking transcriptions I'd done earlier.)

In "Tell Her No," there's the line "Just remember she said that to me" - an-other instance of remembering in the Zombies' songs.  Although, unlike the others I've found, it's an imperative.

I also noticed the conjunctions in the first verse of "I Remember When I Loved Her":

She seemed so cold to me
And I remember when I loved her
She seemed so cold to me
But I remember when I loved her

The conjunctions make a huge difference here.  The first ("and") indicates simply that the speaker/singer remembers his past love.  The second ("but") seems to suggest that he still harbors some sort of feeling, whether it's remorse or nostalgia.  This could probably be taken in other ways, but that's how I understand it.  At least for now.

I'm not sure if I'd noticed this or not (apparently I haven't written anything about it), but there's also a reference to dreams (an-other common Zombie theme) in "I Remember When I Loved Her":  "My dream of love has gone."

Finally, the phrasing in the second verse of "I Want You Back Again" seems to be a precedent for the phrasing in the third verse of "If It Don't Work Out."  (I should note that I'm talking about the alternate version of "I Want You Back Again," but the single version may very well have the same phrasing.  I haven't compared the two.)  I'd format the verse from "I Want You Back Again" as:

Since you have left me
I'm all alone
I need your help, I
Can't stand on my own

That "I" is tacked on to the end of the third line even though grammatically it goes with the fourth.  The same sort of thing is in the third verse of "If It Don't Work Out":

One day I know we'll find again the love we had and I
Will know and feel the joys and pleasures that I'm dreaming of

Like I said in a previous post about "If It Don't Work Out," it's like the speaker/singer is so concerned and worried (or perhaps, in that particular verse of "If It Don't Work Out," excited) that he stumbles over his words.  Not surprisingly, considering that similarity, both were written by Rod Argent.  Actually, all of the songs I talked about in the post are by Rod Argent.  "He's our A side writer."

"The Way I Feel Inside"

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Over the past week or so I've been intermittently working on writing out the notation for "The Way I Feel Inside."  It's been really interesting notating the vocal part because nearly all of the phrases begin on downbeats.  But I just discovered that I have some of the note values wrong, so everything after those notes is wrong (which is further complicated because I repeated that error when those notes are repeated).

I've been trying to get better at the formal aspects of music, including notation, but I'm still not very good at the rhythms and note values.  It doesn't help that the first part is a cappella and - because of that - sort of rubato.

Begin Here Session

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Fifty years ago to-day (25 November 1964) was the second session for the Zombies' Begin Here album.  For the album, they recorded "I Don't Want to Know," "What More Can I Do," and "I Remember When I Loved Her."  They also recorded "Walking in the Sun," "Tell Her No," "I Want You Back Again" (although not the single version), and the rehearsal version of "The Way I Feel Inside" found on disc 3 of Zombie Heaven.

I think this was also the session when the band received the phone call from Al Gallico that "She's Not There" was a #1 hit.  I've read interviews where they said they got that phone call while recording "Tell Her No," which would make it the 25th, but the Zombie Heaven booklet (where I get most of these dates, cross-referenced with the liner notes of the Decca Stereo Anthology) says that the call was during the session on the 24th.

Begin Here Session

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Fifty years ago to-day (24 November 1964), the Zombies recorded "I'm Going Home," "Road Runner," and "Sticks and Stones" during the first session for the Begin Here album.

"A Love That Never Was"

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When I posted a new version of "A Love That Never Was," I checked the lyrics that I'd transcribed.  I think the only change I had to make was "vague hallucinations."  I'd heard it as "fake hallucinations" when I originally transcribed the lyrics.  I'm actually not really sure which it is, but I'm leaning toward "vague hallucinations" now.  It's not helpful that V & F and G & K sound sort of similar.

In any case, I also found more typical Zombie themes.

Memories: "Memories of a love that never was"

Crying: "No one needs to cry"

Dreams: "Living in a dream"

I haven't really looked into this very much yet, but I think the sun is also pretty prominent in the Zombies' lyrics, and there's a line about it in "A Love That Never Was" - "Weeping from the sun."

I really need to work on a lyrical concordance, and I'm slowly doing that by transcribing the lyrics of a song when I post a new version of it here, but it'll still take awhile.

"A Love That Never Was"

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A few months ago, I figured out that I was playing a wrong note in one of the arpeggios in "A Love That Never Was."  Last night, I was playing around with it, and I think I've corrected it.  I'd been playing it as F#, A, D#, F#, but I think it's actually F#, C, D#, A.  As I'd been playing it wrongly, it was the top part of a B7, but if F#, C, D#, A are the constituent notes of a chord, I do not know what chord it is.

I also played the chromatic phrase that I discovered a few months ago on organ.  It's not actually in the song (although I think part of that phrase is in the backing vocals), but I was curious as to how it sounded.

I used my tremolo pedal for some of the arpeggio parts in this, which I'm not sure is accurate, but I'm pretty sure there is some kind of guitar effect.  I missed a note or two in transitioning between guitar parts, and some others aren't very clear, but this was the third or fourth take, so I just went with it.

Also, I discovered that the drumming pattern is similar to that on "She's Not There."

"If It Don't Work Out"

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I was listening to my recording of just the bass and organ from "If It Don't Work Out," and I kept thinking that it was "I'll Keep Trying" instead.  And then I realized why: both have sort of an alternating rhythm between the bass part and the piano part (although in "If It Don't Work Out," the bass part is also played on piano, at least during some sections).  I think it's something like the bass playing on the beat and the piano playing on the offbeats (electric piano in the case of "I'll Keep Trying").  Both songs are by Rod Argent who seems to use interesting rhythms like that a lot.  They were recorded only two weeks apart, too - "I'll Keep Trying" on 24 June 1965 (incidentally Colin's 20th birthday) and "If It Don't Work Out" on 8 July.

I transcribed the lyrics this morning, and the song has some really interesting line breaks.  At least as far as I've formatted it.  I went more by phrasing than rhyme scheme, which you could make a case for.  In any case there are some interesting phrasings.  Like, "When she loved me nothing in the world could touch her love, and now / The light of love has gone, can I return the joy she's dreaming of?"  The line break there clearly demonstrates that "now" something is different.

I'm not sure, but "the light of love" might be a reference to the Supremes' "When the Lovelight Starts Shining through His Eyes," which the Zombies did on the BBC (as "When the Lovelight Starts Shining through Her Eyes").  However, I've also found that phrase ("love light") in Herman's Hermits' "You Won't Be Leaving" and even "I'll Be Home for Christmas," so I'm hesitant to assert that it's from "When the Lovelight Starts Shining through His Eyes."  It's certainly possible, but it seems to be a more common phrase than I'd thought.  (Interestingly, they did "If It Don't Work Out" and "When the Lovelight Starts Shining through Her Eyes" for the same radio program - Saturday Club, recorded 20 September 1965 and broadcast 2 October.)

The line break in the second verse ("Will she still care for me the way she did before, will / She turn around and tell me she don't love me anymore") seems to have the singer/speaker stumble in his singing.  Like he runs out of breath in the middle of a sentence because of his insistent questioning and worry.

And the chorus has typical Zombie themes of crying and returning home:  "The tears that I cried in vain / Won't bring her home."  Dreaming, an-other common theme in their songs, is mentioned in two of the verses ("can I return the joy she's dreaming of?" and "the joys and pleasures that I'm dreaming of"), but I think they're more aspirational dreams than sleeping dreams.

Finally, if you listen closely to the beginning of the track as it appears on the third disc of Zombie Heaven, you can hear someone say, "Nice and driving, alright?"  I think it's Gus Dudgeon, the engineer, but I'm not certain.

"If It Don't Work Out"

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I might have hit a wrong note in the organ part, but I was having some problems with recording it and didn't want to have to do it again.

Most of the bass part is just D notes, so it's not that interesting just by itself.

Also, an-other new one in the catalogue.

"If It Don't Work Out"

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While listening to Zombie Heaven yester-day, I thought the bass part for "If It Don't Work Out" sounded pretty easy.  I think I just figured it out (the only difficult part is remembering what rhythm corresponds to what section of the song), along with the organ part at the very end of the bridge, which I'm pretty sure is the only organ part in the whole song.

It's sort of late though, and I still have stuff to do to-day, so I'm not going to record a version to-night.  Maybe to-morrow.

"Will You Love Me Tomorrow"

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I just listened to Zombie Heaven Disc 4 and discovered that the solo in "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" is played on both electric piano and electric guitar.  I can play the solo on electric guitar (at least the solo as I played in on electric piano in the version I did about a month ago, which might not be very accurate), but the transitioning back to chords is the difficult thing.

I should also note that I didn't play the guitar chord rhythms right in that version I did last month, but that was intentional.

Zombie Heaven

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I listened to the third disc of Zombie Heaven to-day, and I noticed some more things:

1.  At about 1:38 in the instrumental version of "Nothing's Changed," it sounds like Rod Argent is playing rolled chords simultaneously on electric piano and organ (they're not really chords, but that's the best I can describe it), which - especially to someone like me who isn't very good at keyboards - is nothing short of amazing.  (I've tried it; I can sort of do one, but not both at once.)

Those simultaneously keyboard rolls correspond to the solo in the final version, but they're not in the final version!  I really liked the song even before I noticed those keyboard parts, but they add so much that it's unfathomable that they were taken out, especially because the solo that is there is pretty much just guitar chords.  There's part of a descending C major scale in the organ part, but it wasn't until I split the stereo track from the Decca Stereo Anthology that I even knew it was there.

2.  I'm pretty sure that there's twelve-string guitar even on the demo version of "Don't Go Away."

3.  There are organ parts throughout "One Day I'll Say Goodbye."  I feel pretty dumb I hadn't noticed them before, but I hadn't listened to that song for at least a year, and it's only recently that I've started listening really closely to what instruments are in the songs.

Zombie Heaven

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I just listened to the first disc of Zombie Heaven for my Collection Audit project (which I'm nearly finished with, for this year at least), and I discovered some things:

1.  I'm pretty sure that "Don't Go Away" uses twelve-string guitar.  I'd thought it was just six-string.

2.  Back in May, I said that the guitar phrases at the end of "Indication" alternate between having glissandi and not having glissandi.  Yeah, that's not true.  There's only one glissando (in the second phrase), which is significant as it's the last phrase before the electric piano part comes in.

"I Remember When I Loved Her"

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I figured out a bit of the bass part for "I Remember When I Loved Her" to-day.  The part during the verses is pretty much just the root notes of the chords above, and the first half of the chorus is just arpeggios, but I'm still stuck on the last half of the chorus, the transitions between the verse and chorus, and the part during the solo.  The chords during the solo are the same as those during the verses, but the bass part is different.  There are more notes, and it's more involved.

This same sort of thing happens in "Time of the Season."  While the verses in that don't have any chordal accompaniment, the bass parts during the organ solos are more elaborate versions of those that occur during the verses.  So "Time of the Season" resembles "I Remember When I Loved Her" in that they both have more complex bass parts during the keyboard solos.

"I Can't Make up My Mind"

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I did some clicking around Wikipedia this morning (I think it was something along the lines of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer's Works Live [which I was listening to] to Keith Emerson to Hammond organ to List of Hammond organ players to Rod Argent), and I rediscovered this Rod Argent interview.  I'd been looking for this, specifically for the part where the interviewer mentions the Beatles' having F major and B major in the same song.

Both F major and B major are in "I Can't Make up My Mind."  F major to B major is the transition in the lines "I need you here" and "I want you by my side."  Since I hadn't recorded a version since last October, I thought I would record and post a new one.  I'm not particularly sure of the electric piano part in this, but the chords (which are all I played) are right.

I've broken up the twelve-string chords into arpeggios, which I'm not sure is right, but it's more accurate than just straight chords.  It sounds a bit twangy because I'm still not quite sure how to record it.

My recording cuts off a bit early because I still don't really know the part during the fade-out.

"The Way I Feel Inside"

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I forgot to note that the penultimate chord in "The Way I Feel Inside" is actually an E diminished (E, G, Bb, although it's inverted as Bb, E, G).

So far, this is the only diminished chord I've found in any of the Zombies' songs, although there's always the possibility that I've figured out something wrong and neglected one.

"Walking in the Sun"

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Last night I was practicing "The Way I Feel Inside" again because I don't want to forget it (I'll have to notate it), and since "Walking in the Sun" was right next to it alphabetically, I gave that a try.  And I ended up getting most of it.  The F major to F minor transition was the hardest part.

There might be a more substantial guitar part for this, but I just played individual notes.  (I was going to play it in octaves, which I think would be more accurate, but I have a callous on my finger from practicing it in octaves last night and it hurts too much to play it that way now, so.)

I also figured out some of the parts in the orchestrated version.  I tried playing those on electric piano, but it didn't work really well, so I stuck with chords instead.

Also, an-other new one in the catalogue!

"The Way I Feel Inside"

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Last night, I had some time to waste, so I tried figuring out the organ part in "The Way I Feel Inside," not really expecting to get anywhere.

But in figuring it out, I realized that - duh! - it follows the same chords as the rehearsal version (which I figured out last September).  So figuring it out was actually pretty easy, but I felt really stupid for not having realized earlier that they would use the same chords.

I actually played intervals of thirds (except for the final B major and possibly the last E major to E minor transition [I don't remember]) because full chords sounded too heavy.  There's a falling third in the first section (F# to D#), which then ascends to E (I think), which I'm not sure is very accurate.

The bass was pretty easy to figure out once I had the organ chords.  Except for a few extra notes that I figured out this evening (transitional G#s), it's all in the organ part.  And, typical of Rod Argent's writing, there are two instances of sequential half-steps: B to C to C# and B to A# to A.

"Wonderful"

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When I decided to transcribe the lyrics to some Colin Blunstone songs, I started with "Wonderful" from Journey.  I'd never noticed the intricacy of the rhyme scheme of the first verse:

I can see the bright line
Of the runway light shine
Coming on the night flight
From out the sky

In the first two lines, there are actually two words at the end of each line that rhyme with the next line ("bright" with "light" and "line" with "shine").  And the third line ends with two words ("night flight") that rhyme with the first of the pair from the previous two lines ("bright" and "light").

The other verses don't follow this pattern, but even writing just one verse with this arrangement seems difficult to me, so I think it's understandable that the other verses don't follow it.

"Shadow of a Doubt"

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I think I've been neglecting Colin Blunstone's solo career, so I started transcribing a few of his songs, which somehow led to learning the chords for "Shadow of a Doubt," which I think has become one of my favorites of his (I'd always liked it, but after looking at the lyrics, I like it even more).  It feels like I've been working on this for a few days, but I only transcribed the lyrics yester-day morning.

There's some alliteration in the first line of the third full verse: "The nosy next door neighbours," which I mention first only because I don't have anything to add to it.  There are more interesting things to say.

Like the first half of the second verse:

Company convivial, the drink went to my head
Conversation trivial, don't ask me what I said
Could have been pure coincidence the moisture in your eye

There's alliteration (with some really interesting phrases and internal rhyme), but the really interesting thing is that trivial doesn't fit into that alliteration.  As if the word itself - like its meaning - isn't important enough to merit that same starting letter.

Also the future tense in the bridge (I think it's a bridge):

What's passed is history I'll never wish to read
You're the very last thing I want, the first thing that I need

The singer/speaker is saying that he doesn't want to relive the relationship, but at some future time.  At the present time, he's still interested in thinking about it.

Also "You're the very last thing I want, the first thing that I need" is a solid example of structural parallelism.

—

I'm not sure my voice suits this very much, but it's better than I'd feared.  The chords are sort of all over the place (and - as always - I may have gotten some wrong; I'm not sure there are actually full-blown chords during the bridge either), so I felt having the vocal would help glue it together.  I actually recorded this live (as electric guitar and vocals), but I wasn't paying attention to where the melody was going at one point, so I had to re-do the vocal track (and then I double-tracked it).  There's a bunch of just C and F chords at the beginning and end; they're supposed to have variations, but I know only one so far (the last one before the lyrics start), so those parts aren't that interesting.  Also, the solo is sort of painfully absent.

This is a new song in the catalogue.

"I Do Believe"

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---&---

I figured out the guitar arpeggios that comprise most of "I Do Believe" (although I might have one note wrong in one of them).  Interestingly, they're sort of like the arpeggios in Argent's "Like Honey" in that they're also in A minor and they also contain a descending chromatic phrase (G, F#, F, E).  They're more disjunct though, where those in "Like Honey" are more straightforward.

I also transcribed the lyrics for "I Do Believe" and found some interesting things I hadn't noticed before.  Alliteration in the lines "Hanging hard in the air," "There's a fine mist that's falling," "Late at night shadows falling / Through the shapes of despair." and "As the gold hits the ground."

More interesting is an-other reference to dreams: "From the edge of my dreams," which has a lot of precedent in the classic Zombies songs.  There's also some parallel structure in what I guess is the second half of the second verse (although I suppose it could also be the fourth verse, if the verses go in pairs):

Let it rise in my senses
Let it come to my heart
Let it break its defences
Let it tear them apart

Each pair of lines says pretty much the same thing ("rise in my senses" & "come to my heart" and "break its defences" & "tear them apart") but in different ways.

I also referenced the version on Live at Metropolis Studios, which I think predates the version on Breathe Out, Breathe In (I haven't watched the DVD for awhile, but I think Rod Argent says something about how they're still in the process of recording the album and Jim Rodford calls "I Do Believe" a "brand new Rod Argent song.").  In any case, the line there is "Calling loud and extreme" instead of "Calling sweet and extreme."  I can't be sure about this, but it seems as if they changed that line after the performance on Live at Metropolis Studios.

This is the first song from Breathe Out, Breathe In that I've figured out a part of.

"Care of Cell 44"

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---&---

I recently re-read Claes Johansen's The Zombies: Hung up on a Dream.  I've read it a few times, but not recently, so I was surprised by how much he gets wrong.  I might write more about that later, but for now I want to address his comments on "Care of Cell 44."  He claims that Paul Atkinson isn't present on the recording, which is just wrong.

I examined the versions on the 30th anniversary edition of Odessey and Oracle from Big Beat.  He's clearly present on the vocal-less backing track (more clearly in the right channel), but comparing that with the final version, I've discovered that they're actually two different takes.  The tempi are different, which is the most obvious evidence, but also the piano part during the bridge is slightly different (despite Johansen's claim that it's harpsichord; it's actually tack piano).

But even in the final version, you can make out the slight change in instrumental coloration (again, more clearly in the right channel) when Atkinson comes in, at the same spot as he does in that other backing track - right before the second verse ("Saved you the room you used to stay in every Sunday…").

Johansen sort of makes a big deal of Atkinson's supposed absence on the track:  "We also know from Paul Atkinson that his relationship was going through a particularly difficult patch at the time.  Is that why he isn't present on the recording?  Is this song, in fact, in vague symbolic form about the crisis he was going through?"  Which is just ridiculous because he is present on the recording.

"Sometimes"

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---&---

I think I've figured out the chords for "Sometimes."  Mostly it just alternates between D major and G minor.  Quickly alternates, I might add, and it's not the easiest transition to make.

One section ("Well, I'm so happy / When I'm with you…") is really interesting in that it contains a chromatic phrase.  I'm not exactly sure what key it's in (I'd guess D major, but there are a lot of accidentals), so I'm not sure if this is notated correctly.  (The inversions are how I played it on organ.)

Bb major (F, Bb, D)

G major (G, B, D)

C major (G, C, E)

A major (A, C#, E)

D minor (A, D, F)

I hadn't heard Rod's harmony (which I think is the best part of the song) during those parts (I think they're bridges?) until I got The Decca Stereo Anthology, but now that I know there's also a chromatic phrase during that part, I like it even more.

I think I've figured out a bit of the opening a cappella part too, but I'm not sure enough yet.  (On the third disc of Zombie Heaven, there's some early takes of it, and the piano intermittently plays arpeggios of inverted E minor chords so they can be in tune, which further complicates figuring out what key the whole song is in.)

Also, this is an-other new one in the catalogue.

"Care of Cell 44"

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---&---

I split "Care of Cell 44" into the left and right channels, and the a cappella parts are a bit easier to hear in the right channel when it's isolated, so I'm pretty sure I've figured it out more accurately.

This isn't accurate as far as instrumentation though, obviously.

"Leave Me Be" b/w "Woman"

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---&---

Fifty years ago to-day (16 October 1964), the Zombies' second single was released: "Leave Me Be" b/w "Woman" (Decca F.12004)

"She Does Everything for Me"

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---&---

My novice audio engineering skills make themselves known with this.  I think the audio's peaked except for the introductory electric piano phrase and the very end, but it's still listenable.  (I would try to fix it, but I don't keep the project files for these, so I'd have to re-record the whole thing.)  I always have problems recording the guitar part for this.  I double-tracked it here with two different settings, which might have resulted in some of the audio peaking.

I got a word wrong - "Now I've found a girl that / I love instead" instead of "Now I've found a girl who / I love instead"

I can't do falsetto at all, so I dropped the falsetto backing vocals by at least an octave, probably two.

I don't think I'd ever really noticed that there are hand-claps in this song.  This is only the second time I've tried recording hand-claps.  This turned out better than that other time.

"Will You Love Me Tomorrow"

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---&---

I think this is the first Zombies song that I've done that they didn't record "properly."  They did this live on the BBC.

Last month, I got a CD of the Shirelles greatest hits, and I listened to it for the first time to-day.  Since it includes "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" (they did the original), I tried figuring out the Zombies' version.  I got the chords and at least an approximation of the electric piano solo (although I kept the organ part underneath, unlike the recording).  I'm not sure of the harmonies, so when the backing vocals' lyrics were the same as the lead vocals', I just sang them the same way (so because some parts are essentially quadruple-tracked [double-tracked lead vocals and double-tracked backing vocals] they're louder than I'd like).

I think Colin sings, "When I can feel the magic of your sighs" in the second verse (which I followed), but in the Shirelles' version, it's "Can I believe the magic of your sighs."  He also goes straight to "Will you still love me tomorrow" as the last line of the first verse, but that form doesn't come until the second verse.  The first is "But will you love me tomorrow."  Also, he takes the "and" out of the line "So tell me now, and I won't ask again," which makes him seem more insistent as a singer/speaker than that in the Shirelles' version.

I think there might be some connection between "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" and "She Does Everything for Me."  Both are mostly in A major with the prominent exception of a C# major.  The Zombies recorded "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" for Saturday Club on 20 September 1965 (and it was broadcast on 2 October 1965), and "She Does Everything for Me" was recorded in May 1966, so chronologically it's possible that "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" influenced "She Does Everything for Me."

"She's Coming Home"

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---&---

When I wrote that giant post about the bass lines in "Care of Cell 44" and "She's Coming Home," I went back to the songs to verify some things.  And I noticed that there're a few extra bass notes transitioning from the chorus of "She's Coming Home" into the bridge.  I knew about the transitional notes from the bridge to the second verse, but I'd missed the ones going into the bridge.

Also, I reversed the process I did for figuring out the organ notes - I split the stereo track and put the left channel into mono, and I discovered that there's a piano part during that second verse.  It's just the E notes that are also in the bass part.  There're really slight though, almost as if they were being mixed out (mine are too noticeable here, but I did the best I could).  I think it works better without that piano part, but I'm trying to be accurate with these.

Now I want to go through the whole Decca Stereo Anthology, split all the tracks and listen to the left and right channels individually.

"Work 'n' Play"

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---&---

Yester-day, I played along to the four Zombies songs that use twelve-string guitar, and I learned the ending part of "Work 'n' Play."  It's just arpeggios, so I feel like I should have figured it out earlier.

This recording isn't the best (my piano playing, which I'm not sure is all that accurate, is sloppy [as always], the end gets more and more out-of-sync the longer it goes on because the original fades out so I had problems keeping in time with it, and I accidentally hit the open A string in the guitar part), but the last version of "Work 'n' Play" I did (almost a year ago) wasn't even with the correct instruments, so this is some improvement at least.

"He's a Dynamo"

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---&---

For whatever reason, I got to thinking about Argent's "He's a Dynamo" this morning, and I realized that the melody in the verses is almost entirely one note.  This reminded me of something I read somewhere about how the Beatles tried writing a song like Little Richard's "Long Tall Sally," where the melody was only one note.  I think this resulted in "I'm Down," but I can't find whatever I read again to verify this.

So now I'm wondering whether "He's a Dynamo" was Argent's attempt to write a song like "Long Tall Sally," with a melody of only one note.

"She's Coming Home" and "Care of Cell 44"

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---&---

I was thinking about the thematic similarities between songs again, specifically "She's Coming Home" and "Care of Cell 44."  Both are about a girl's returning home to a guy.  But, musically, the homecoming in "Care of Cell 44" is more exciting than that in "She's Coming Home" because the bass lines during the verses of "Care of Cell 44" are (mostly) diatonic, where the bass part during the verses of "She's Coming Home" just sits on an E note until the second half of the last line.  It's only during the choruses and the bridge that it moves, and even then, it's usually the root of whatever chord is on top of it.  The bass part for "Care of Cell 44" is almost constantly moving and doesn't hold so strictly to the root note of the overlaying chords.

The speaker/singer of "She's Coming Home" seems to be stationary, indicated by the line "She sent word to me" (which, admittedly, is in the chorus, rather than the bass-stationary verses), where the speaker/singer of "Care of Cell 44" is mobile, indicated by the line "Come up and fetch you, saved up for the train fare money."  So he's actively involved in reuniting with his girl, where the speaker/singer of "She's Coming Home" is just sitting there, waiting for his girl to return to him.  Both of these positions seem to be indicated by the fluidity - or lack thereof - of the accompanying bass parts.

The bass part in "Care of Cell 44" does just sit on a G note during the bridge ("We'll walk in a way we used to walk / And it could be so nice…"), but there it sort of mirrors the speaker/singer's wish to revive the frozen past.  He's looking back nostalgically ("in a way we used to walk") and forward hypothetically, hence the future tense ("we'll walk") and the subjunctive case ("it could be so nice").

This nostalgia-accompanied-by-a-static-bass-note sort of appears (figuratively, of course) in the second verse of "She's Coming Home" too (the verse with chordal organ accompaniment).  There's the nostalgia in the line "Our love was such a sweet and gentle thing," which is accompanied by the bass playing only E notes.  Musically, the second verse isn't very different from the first - it has the same chords and bass part; it's just that the chords are played on organ and guitar rather than on piano, as in the first verse - so the nostalgia-accompanied-by-a-static-bass-note works better in "Care of Cell 44," where the static bass part occurs only during the part where the lyrics involve that nostalgia.  That way, it's musically distinct.

After that part in "She's Coming Home," there's the line "I threw our love away without a thought," where the bass plays the recurring descending phrase in the song (E, D#, C#, B), sort of reflecting the throwing away mentioned in the line (it doesn't quite match up to the lyrics).

Most of the bass part in "Care of Cell 44" is also descending, but there are rapid ascending phrases after them (plus the recurring and mostly upward-moving phrase that - on piano - opens the song), almost to reflect the song as a whole: the sadness of the girl's going to prison and being separated from the speaker/singer followed by the joy of the anticipated reunion.

It's probably just that Rod Argent got better writing bass parts between the time of "She's Coming Home" and "Care of Cell 44" (they're two years apart - March 1965 & August 1967), but it has an interesting meaning when looked at without that real-world, behind-the-scenes factor.

Of course, there's also the (very likely) possibility that I'm just looking at this too closely and ascribing too much importance to certain musical elements.

Also, can I just draw attention to the line "Kiss and make up, and it will be so nice" in "Care of Cell 44"?  I didn't pay much attention to it the first few hundred times I listened to the song (I usually pay attention to the music, not the lyrics), but it seems that the speaker/singer is in some way responsible for the girl's imprisonment.

"Care of Cell 44"

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---&---

Yester-day I realized a possible influence on "Care of Cell 44."  In the song, there's the line "writing this letter, hoping you're OK," which reminded me of a post I recently wrote about this same sort of epistolary writing in the Beatles' "P.S. I Love You" and "When I'm Sixty-Four."  I'm not sure if "When I'm Sixty-Four" had been released by the time "Care of Cell 44" was written (although it had certainly been released by the time "Care of Cell 44" was recorded; it was released on 1 June '67 on Sgt. Pepper, and "Care of Cell 44" was recorded on 16 & 17 August '67), but by 1967 "P.S. I Love You" had been out for five years (it was the B-side to the Beatles' first single), and it starts off with the line "as I write this letter."

Epistolary writing certainly wasn't a new concept (at least not as a literary concept; I'm not sure of the extent of its history as far as its lyrical application), but considering how often Rod Argent has mentioned the Beatles' influence, there might be some connection between "P.S. I Love You" and "Care of Cell 44."

I haven't read it for awhile, but I'm pretty sure that Claes Johansen mentions something akin to this in his book The Zombies: Hung up on a Dream.  His point is that both bands have songs that are conversations between two people and that concern a third party ("Tell Her No" and "She Loves You," for examples), which illustrates an-other similar outlook on communication.  It occurs to me that "Friends of Mine" fits into that paradigm too:

When we're all in a crowd and you catch her eye
And then you both smile, I feel so good inside
And when I'm with her, she talks about you
The things that you say, the things that you do

In some ways, "Tell Her No" and "Friends of Mine" are two sides of the same coin.

"Like Honey" and "Lula Lula"

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---&---

Way back in May 2012, I noted the similarities between the opening guitar figures for the Zombies' "Lula Lula" (on the New World album) and Argent's "Like Honey" (the first track on Argent).  (I'm actually sort of embarrassed about how insistent I was.  And I think I was wrong; everything I've found credits "Like Honey" to Argent and White.)  After learning both of them (both of the guitar parts at least), I discovered that they both start with an arpeggiated A minor.  Recently, I realized that both also contain chromatic phrases within the arpeggios.

In "Like Honey," the chromatic phrase is in that opening arpeggiated part.  While the higher notes mostly stay around A minor, the bottom note of the arpeggios goes from A to G to F# to F to E (incidentally, this phrase - A G F# F E - is also part of the bass line in the Zombies' "Indication").

"Lula Lula" is the opposite.  In the part after the opening, the bottom note goes up - from E to F to F# to G.

So, along with the same opening arpeggiated A minor, both songs have a chromatic figure from G to E.  One going up and one going down.

Remembering

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Two nights ago, I was thinking about Odessey and Oracle (which is apparently a thing I do with some regularity), specifically how "Beechwood Park" begins with "Do you remember summer days just after summer rain?," and "Brief Candles" has the line "Brief candles in his mind, bright and tiny gems of memory."  So, memory or remembering are in two sequential songs on the album.

But then I got thinking about memory/remembering in other songs.  It also starts "Hung up on a Dream" (so, three sequential songs) - "Well, I remember yesterday."  And it's in "This Will Be Our" year, albeit in an opposite sort of way - "And I won't forget."

And, of course, back in the Decca days, there's "I Remember When I Loved Her" and "Remember You."

I've been working on transcribing the lyrics, but I haven't been putting too much effort into it (I've been working on other stuff, and even when I do work on transcription, I physically write it out, so I don't get much more than a line or two at a time).  Finding this makes me wonder whether there are other prominent themes.  There are at least two songs each for home/domesticity, dreams, and crying.  And, obviously, love is a pretty obvious theme, but looking for love songs isn't something I find particularly interesting.

At some point, I'd like to make a concordance of the lyrics (which would certainly help in finding these themes), but it seems like a pretty formidable task, and I'm not exactly sure how I would do it.

"She's Coming Home"

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---&---

It turns out I grossly neglected the organ parts in "She's Coming Home."  I thought only the middle part had organ, which is hilariously wrong now that I know otherwise.  I think in some of the beginning parts, it's the same as the backing vocals, but I'd have to listen to both again to compare it.

This isn't the best recording, performance-wise.  My piano playing is mediocre (as always), my organ playing actually has too much legato in some parts, and some of the E major chords on guitar during the middle part are a bit twangy because I accidentally ran my finger into the high E string.  (I improved the accuracy of that part too.  I'd thought those guitar chords were present during the whole middle part, but they're not.)  Also, I think I missed a bass note near the end.

I find it a bit odd that the organ part doesn't copy the whole E D E G A B A# A phrase.  It cuts off after the B.  I'm not sure if that phrase is repeated on organ at the very end either, but I included it anyway.

I took the stereo version of "She's Coming Home" from The Decca Stereo Anthology, split the two channels, and put the right channel in mono in order to hear the organ parts better.  It's still hard to make out some things, but I feel a bit better having corrected my oversight to some degree.

Paul Atkinson

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---&---

[source]

I'm sure these have been posted before, but I just rediscovered them.

In looking through them, I noticed that Paul Atkinson took off his scarf (seen in the first picture) and hung it on the mic stand for his amp (second picture), which I find inexplicably funny.

"I Know She Will"

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---&---

I finally got around to combining the guitar part and the bass part for "I Know She Will."  The bass part changes during the solo, but I'm not sure if what I have here is right.

This is based off the version on Zombie Heaven.  The demo that's a bonus track on one release of Begin Here has a different bass part (more notes during the guitar phrases and B notes in some places where this has E notes), and - while I haven't listened to it extensively - the version on Into the Afterlife might differ a bit too.

"Leave Me Be"

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Yester-day I figured out the bass part and some of the organ part for "Leave Me Be."  I just played chords for the organ part because I don't have all of it figured out yet.

I went back and listened to the demo version to see if it would help in figuring out anything, and I realized that the demo version has electric piano where the final version has organ.  It's the same with "Woman" and "Kind of Girl," which were demoed at the same time as the "Leave Me Be" demo and recorded at the same time as the final version of "Leave Me Be."  So apparently, it was between 13 and 31 August 1964 (between recording those demos and recording the final backing tracks) that Rod Argent got his Vox Continental organ.

I might have a bit of the guitar solo wrong too, but I've been playing it that way for at least a year.

"She Loves the Way They Love Her"

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I just figured out most of the chords for "She Loves the Way They Love Her."  And I'm sort of suspicious that some the parts I don't know don't really have chords.

And I wrote them down!  Because I'm prone to forgetting this sort of thing.

"Care of Cell 44"

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I thought I had the vocal arrangements for the a cappella part of "Care of Cell 44" figured out, but re-listening to it, I think I forgot a note.  Still, this is pretty close.

"I Could Spend the Day"

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---&---

A lot of things in this aren't accurate (the bass part in the middle, my lack of vocal ornamentation, chords where they're only implied not actually played), but I tried to do as complete a version as I could.

I still don't know the whole bass part, but I know four more notes than I did last time.

PledgeMusic Campaign

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I pre-ordered the signed vinyl of the new Zombies album through the PledgeMusic campaign, and I got this in the mail to-day.

When I first looked, they'd sold out of the signed copies, but about a week ago, they added 100 more (each) of the signed CDs and signed vinyls.  I got the first of the added 100 vinyls.

I'm not sure if it's intentional or not, but the end of Rod's name looks a bit like a Z, for Zombies.

"She's Not There" b/w "You Make Me Feel Good"

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Fifty years ago to-day (7 September 1964), the Zombies' debut single ("She's Not There" b/w "You Make Me Feel Good") was released in the U.S. and Canada on Parrot Records (PAR 9695).

Recording Session

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Fifty years ago to-day (5 September 1964), the Zombies recorded the vocal tracks to "Leave Me Be," "Kind of Girl," "Sometimes," and "Woman."

"Kind of Girl"

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I finally figured out that part of "Kind of Girl" that I was stuck on.  And it wins the award for weirdest key changes.  Most of the song is in E minor, but the "but more of that another day" part first goes to G major (the relative major) and then - I think - Bb major.  And, like, I don't know all that much about key changes and tonality and such, but it strikes me as a really weird key change.

Also, in thinking about the song, I realized that I'd discovered only part of the interesting thing about the implied E D C B diatonic phrase.  In the introductory part, it's the root of each of the chords, and at the end, it's the root for the first three and then the fifth of the last one.  But during the verses, the chords are Em D C G B.  So that B note is also present as the major third in G major (G, B, D).  As you progress through the song, the B note in the E D C B phrase goes from root (B, D#, F#) to major third (G, B, D) to fifth (E, G, B).  It would be interesting if the bass part includes that diatonic phrase, but I haven't even started trying to learn it yet.  (I'm not sure how well I explained that….)

Since the key changes are so weird, I felt I should do the vocals for this, just to tie it together a bit more.  My voice isn't particularly suited for it though.

"Kind of Girl"

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Because "Kind of Girl" and "Sometimes" were recorded fifty years ago this week (the backing tracks on 31 August and the vocal tracks on 5 September) but I don't know any parts of either, I've felt bad and have recently been trying to learn the chords for "Kind of Girl."  I have only one part left before I know at least a rough version of the whole song, but I noticed something interesting about it.

As far as I've figured out, it starts with a descending progression - Em D C B.  And a similar sort of progression is at the very end - Em D C Em (with the second E minor lower than the first).  What's interesting is that these two chord progressions both contain the same descending diatonic phrase (E D C B).  In the opening progression, that phrase is the root of each of the chords.  In the progression at the end, that descending phrase is still present, but the B note is present as the fifth in E minor (E, G, B) instead of the root in B major (B, D#, F#).

It's an interesting way to retain that phrase yet still return to the tonic in order to signal the end of the song.

"A Love That Never Was"

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I've been sort of obsessed with chromatic phrases sneaked into songs lately, and I discovered an-other one last night.  Provided I have the chords correct, there's a chromatic phrase from F# to B in the chords in "A Love That Never Was" - during the "and there is nothing there / no one needs to cry" part.

D major (D, F#, A)

D minor (D, F, A)

A major (A, C#, E)

B major (B, D#, F#)

B minor (B, D, F#)

A major (A, C#, E)

A minor (A, C, E)

E major (E, G#, B)

I'd noticed before that it was a weird chord progression, what with sequential changes from a major to a minor with the same root, but until last night, I'd never noticed that chromatic phrase hidden within the chords.

Recording Session

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Fifty years ago to-day (31 August 1964), the Zombies recorded the backing tracks to "Leave Me Be," "Kind of Girl," "Sometimes," and "Woman."

"I Know She Will"

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I think I've figured out the guitar part for "I Know She Will."  I'm a bit suspicious about the part during "no matter where you go / no matter what you do…" though.  And I might have the solo an octave too low.

Funny story about this:  I figured out most of this yester-day, and I recorded it to-night.  After doing about five takes (it's simple but difficult to play well), I exported it and figured that I would have to start a new folder for the song.  But I found that I already had one, and in it there's a .wav file titled "2013.06.10 - I Know She Will."

I figured out the bass part for this over a year ago and completely forgot about it!  That June 2013 recording is based on the demo version though (it's a bonus track on a CD re-release of Begin Here), and this one is based on the Decca Stereo Anthology version.  There's enough in common between the two to boost my confidence on what I have here, but they're too different in tempo to be able to put together coherently in one audio file.

So now I'll have to re-learn that bass part and put together a more complete version.

Argent Album Release Dates

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I was searching on the internet for the release dates of the Argent albums, and I could find only the years.  But then I looked in Greg Russo's Time of the Season: Collector's Guide, which lists (I think) every release by the Zombies, Argent, and Colin Blunstone.

So, the UK release dates of the Argent LPs:

• Argent - 16 January 1970
• Ring of Hands - 5 February 1971
• All Together Now - 21 April 1972
• In Deep - 23 March 1973
• Nexus - 22 February 1974
• Encore - 22 November 1974
• Circus - 4 April 1975
• Counterpoints - 31 October 1975

"She Does Everything for Me"

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I think I learned the bass part for "She Does Everything for Me."  It's actually pretty easy, provided I learned it correctly.

The guitar tone on this might have too much treble, but I did about five takes with different settings.  This was close enough.

"Losing You"

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A few days ago, I was thinking about "Losing You" from the New World album.  So far I've figured out only the guitar chords (and since I didn't write them down, I've forgotten some parts).  But the first few chords (unaccompanied by anything save some percussion) are Dsus4, D major, Gsus4, G major.  In thinking about the song, I realized that those four chords contain two sequential half-steps.  G to F# in Dsus4 (D, G, A) to D major (D, F#, A), and C to B in Gsus4 (G, C, D) to G major (G, B, D).

This is more like the Bb, A, C, B of the B-A-C-H motif than Rod Argent's half-steps, which are sequential in a linear way in addition to a chronological/musical way (by which I mean that his sequential half-steps usually overlap so that the last note in the first pair is the first note in the second pair, as in A, G#, G in "Whenever You're Ready").

So "Losing You" is interesting in that it's a Colin Blunstone song that demonstrates a Bach influence (even if it's conjectured).  It makes me wonder how much of a precedent there is for this Bach influence in Blunstone's earlier writing.

I'd noticed before that the first few notes of the solo in "How We Were Before" (D, A, B, A, F#) are the same (even in the note values) as those in the introduction of the Byrds' version of Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man," which, apparently, McGuinn took from Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring."  (Interestingly, both parts are played on twelve-string guitars too.)  So I'd always thought that Argent had a hand in that part of "How We Were Before" - because of that Bach connection.  But with this similarity to Bach on a Blunstone song on an album that Argent had almost no involvement with (he played keyboards on only one track), I'm not sure what to think about that part in "How We Were Before."

"How We Were Before"

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Two days ago, I was playing around with some guitar chords, and I realized that "How We Were Before" includes a chromatic phrase… sort of.

I'm not sure that the chords are played as straight chords; I think they're broken into arpeggios or something.  Still, there's a chromatic phrase within the chord progression.

D major (D, F#, A)

D major 7th (D, F#, A, C#)

D major dominant 7th (D, F#, A, C)

G major (G, B, D)

G minor (G, Bb, D)

D major (D, F#, A)

Although, since it's in D major, it might technically be A# instead of Bb.  So the chromatic phrase is D, C#, C, B, A#, A.

Excepting the numerous instances three-note chromatic phrases, I think this is the third chromatic phrase I've found now.  (The other two are in the bass parts of "Indication" and "This Will Be Our Year.")

"Woman"

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I listened to the Beatles' Please Please Me this morning, and I noticed that "Ask Me Why" has some lyrics in common with "Woman."  "Ask Me Why" has:

I can't believe
It's happened to me
I can't conceive
Of any more misery

And "Woman" has:

I can't conceive, no
I can't believe you love me too

"Woman" uses believe and conceive more as an internal rhyme where "Ask Me Why" uses them for a line-ending rhyme.

"Ask Me Why" was released as the b-side to the "Please Please Me" single on 11 January 1963, and "Woman" was released as the b-side of the "Leave Me Be" single on 16 October 1964.  (Coincidentally, both songs were the b-side of each band's second single.)  So, between the chronology and the Beatles' influence on Rod Argent (which he's mentioned multiple times), there might be a connection between these two songs.  On the other hand, rhyming believe and conceive isn't too unusual, so it might just be a coincidence that both songs use them.  At best, it's just a conjectured influence.

"She Does Everything for Me"

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I transcribed the lyrics to "She Does Everything for Me" because - while I haven't really learned any more of it - I've been kind of obsessed with it lately.  And I found something interesting.

There are falsetto parts during the second half of each of the verses (or whatever they're called; I'm bad at song terminology; they might technically be pre-choruses), and in both cases, those falsetto parts are reductions of the lyrics in the verse proper.

[Disclaimer that my transcribed lyrics are as I hear them and quite possibly might be wrong.]

So, in the second half of the first verse, the lead vocals are:

She won't lead me up with air
And tell me that she doesn't care
About the way I feel
'Cause I'm a fool

[Side note to point out the interesting line-ending words here (feel and fool), which differ only in the vowels.]

And the falsetto part is:

She won't lead me
Up with air and
Tell me I'm
A fool

So, all of the lyrics in the falsetto part are contained within the lead vocals:

She won't lead me up with air
And tell me that she doesn't care
About the way I feel
'Cause I'm a fool

And in the second half of the second verse the lead vocals are:

She's a girl who makes me feel
That you're not there, you weren't real
I feel so good that
I don't care at all

And the falsetto part is:

She's a girl who
Makes me feel that
I don't care
At all

So, likewise:

She's a girl who makes me feel
That you're not there, you weren't real
I feel so good that
I don't care at all

I'm pretty sure that some of these features in the main vocals/backing vocals relationship (with special regard to lyrics) are also present in some Argent songs.  Maybe not where the lyrics in the backing vocals are reductions of the lyrics in the main vocals, but at least where the backing vocals are delivered with either longer notes or melismas so that they sort of match up to the main vocal's longer lyrics.  (Looking quickly, the only one I can find that does this is "Sleep Won't Help Me" from Ring of Hands.  During the choruses, the backing vocals deliver the same lyrics as the lead vocals but with different note values corresponding to particular syllables.)

Anyway, I think this is a really cool feature.  It's almost like counterpoint, but lyrically instead of musically.

Recording Session

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Fifty years ago to-day (13 August 1964), the Zombies recorded demos of "Sometimes," "Woman," "Kind of Girl," and "Leave Me Be" at Ryemuse Studios.

Three of these can be heard on the third disc of Zombie Heaven.

"I'm Going Home"

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I've been learning the bass part to "I'm Going Home."  It changes about halfway through, and so far, I know only the first minute.

I wrote out most of the notation for what I know, and I think the first introductory part is in a different time signature than the rest of the song.  It seems like it's in 3/4 and the rest is 4/4.

I'm still not very good at that aspect of music though, so I could be wrong about it.