"Losing You"

Backdated, archival post

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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."