"A Rose for Emily"

In The "Odessey": The Zombies in Words and Images, I recently read about "A Rose for Emily."  Hugh comments that "Rod was quite right in his arrangement of this very beautiful song."  This made me realize that, instrumentally, "A Rose for Emily" is the sparsest song on Odessey and Oracle (the only instrument on it is piano).  I also realized that, in a way, this relative lack of instrumentation (compared to the rest of the album or even just to the preceding and following songs) matches some of the lyrics, particularly "not a rose for Emily" and "none for you."

"A Rose for Emily"

Partially because I felt I should be doing more on this project and partially because I've been doing these sorts of videos lately, I made a video about the Mellotron flute part in "A Rose for Emily," which actually wasn't used in the final version.

I played the Mellotron part and the piano part on my Nord Electro 5.  For the piano, I used Nord's Steinway sample.  I intentionally mixed the piano part a bit lower than I normally would have so that the Mellotron part is easier to hear.

The Mellotron occurs only in the second and third verses, so that's all I included (also because I don't know the piano part for the entire song).  For the piano part, I referenced a book published by Alfred (The Zombies' Greatest Hits), although I didn't follow exactly what that has.  As always, there's the disclaimer that what I have may be wrong.

Here's the notation:

Second verse:

Third verse:

"A Rose for Emily"

The second thing I noticed when I listened to Odessey and Oracle a couple days ago is the articulation of "ev'rywhere" in the line "There's loving ev'rywhere" in "A Rose for Emily."  The musical phrase it's sung to arpeggiates an inverted D major: F# A D.  It spans an augmented fifth, and this distance provides a musical sense of "ev'rywhere."

Odessey and Oracle

According to the Zombie Heaven liner notes, fifty years ago to-day (29 November 1967), the Zombies mixed the stereo versions of "Butcher's Tale" and "A Rose for Emily."

"Butcher's Tale"

According to the liner notes of both Zombie Heaven and the 50th anniversary edition of Odessey and Oracle, fifty years ago to-day (20 July 1967), the Zombies recorded "Butcher's Tale."

The liner notes in Zombie Heaven provide additional information about some other Odessey and Oracle songs.  In full, the 20 July entry reads: "EMI Abbey Road No 3 recording: 'Butcher's Tale' (master), 'A Rose for Emily', 'Hung up on a Dream', 'Butcher's Tale' (mono mixing)."  If I understand this correctly, along with recording "Butcher's Tale" on 20 July, the Zombies also completed mono mixes of "A Rose for Emily," "Hung up on a Dream," and "Butcher's Tale."

"Hung up on a Dream"

According to the liner notes of both Zombie Heaven and the 50th anniversary edition of Odessey and Oracle, fifty years ago to-day (10 July 1967), the Zombies recorded "Hung up on a Dream."

In full, the Zombie Heaven liner notes entry for 10 July reads: "EMI Abbey Road No 3 recording 'Hung up on a Dream', 'A Rose for Emily' (reduction master)."  The entry for 11 July, the next day, reads: "EMI Abbey Road No 3 recording: 'Hung up on a Dream' (reduction master)."  I'm not certain, but I'm assuming that "reduction master" means they bounced down elements so they would have more tracks available to record more parts.  As I mentioned back in June, I think this 10 July session may have been when the mellotron for "A Rose for Emily" was recorded because "Hung up on a Dream" certainly features that instrument.

Odessey and Oracle

According to the Zombie Heaven liner notes, fifty years ago to-day (12 June 1967), the Zombies did some work on Odessey and Oracle.  The entry for 12 June reads: "EMI Abbey Road Room 53 recording: 'Friends of Mine', 'A Rose for Emily', 'This Will Be Our Year' (mono mixing)."

It seems that this was the mixing session for the mono versions of these songs; however, "A Rose for Emily" is mentioned again later in the list of production dates.  10 July lists "recording... 'A Rose for Emily' (reduction master)," and an-other mono mixing session with "A Rose for Emily" was on 20 July.

According to the Zombie Heaven liner notes, the cello part "was included in some initial mixes but eventually discarded."  So it seems that this 12 June mixing session was for the version with cello.

"Hung up on a Dream" was the other song recorded at that 10 July session, and because that includes mellotron, I'm assuming that 10 July was also when the mellotron part for "A Rose for Emily" was recorded (which was also later discarded).

Recording Session

According to the liner notes of Zombie Heaven and the 50th anniversary edition of Odessey and Oracle, fifty years ago to-day (1 June 1967) the Zombies recorded "Friends of Mine" and "A Rose for Emily."  This was the first recording session for Odessey and Oracle.

"A Rose for Emily"

A couple days ago, I was thinking about the unused mellotron part for "A Rose for Emily" (I figured out half of it last week).  I'm not sure about the part for the third verse yet, but the part during the second verse is only five pitches:

I realized that these are the same five pitches that make up the entirety of the lead vocal melody for the chorus of "Maybe after He's Gone" ("Maybe after he's gone / She'll come back, love me again...")

Were that mellotron part used for the final version of "A Rose for Emily," it would have been yet an-other musical element that ties the songs on Odessey and Oracle together.

"A Rose for Emily"

Yester-day, I learned the unused mellotron part for the second verse of "A Rose for Emily" (it's a bonus track on the 30th anniversary edition of Odessey and Oracle).  I'd read about the song in The "Odessey": The Zombies in Words and Images, which reminded me that at some point I was going to figure out that mellotron part.

Figuring out the mellotron part actually helpt in figuring out the one piano chord I was missing for this section.  For the most part, I learned the piano part from a vocal/guitar/piano book of Zombies songs from the Alfred Publishing Company.  They said it's a Ddim7, but this didn't sound right to me.  I knew the note in the bass register was a D, and this mellotron plays a G# on top of it, so while I'm still dubious about the 7th, I guess it really is a Ddim chord.

The mellotron part for the third verse is a little different, and I don't have that yet.  I think the first half is the same though.

"A Rose for Emily"

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I have more notation this week (albeit late at night because my internet connection's been atrocious)!  For the last week or two, I've been working on the cello part in "A Rose for Emily" (I'm hoping that becoming familiar with the cello part will help in figuring out the mellotron part).  After spending some time trying to figure it out from the version on Zombie Heaven, I realized that by splitting the track, I could hear it better because it was a bit more isolated.  And then I split the track with cello and mellotron from the 30th anniversary edition of Odessey and Oracle, and I found that it's even easier to hear there.  So I think what I have is more accurate than if I'd just listened to the tracks as they are on the CDs.

I'm a bit unsure of the key, but I put it in A major because that's what the song resolves to.  I have a couple piano markings, but they apply only to the notes they're above (C#s).

It wasn't until going over this again before I scanned it that I discovered that there's an-other Argentian three-note chromatic phrase.  At the end of the fifth line into the sixth, there's G# A Bb.  (Although maybe I shouldn't be mixing sharps and flats like that.)

For some reason, as I was going over this, it kept reminding me of "Greensleeves," but - so far, at least - I can't really find any resemblance.

Anyway, notation:

"A Rose for Emily"

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For whatever reason, I got thinking about "A Rose for Emily" this morning, and I realized that there's a descending chromatic phrase in the chords.  However, since the chords are really difficult, I'm not sure of the extent of that phrase.  It's at least four notes: G F# F E.

In any case, there are few interesting things about this:

1.  It's an-other instance of a chromatic phrase in one of Argent's songs.  Usually, they're three-note phrases, but this one is longer.

2.  As a descending chromatic phrase on Odessey and Oracle, there's some connection between this, the backing vocals during the choruses of "Maybe after He's Gone" (chromatic from E to C#), and the bass part during the verses of "This Will Be Our Year" (chromatic from A to E).  Descending chromatic phrases are a feature that's present in multiple songs and give the album a coherence.

3.  It doesn't fulfill the definition of a lament bass (it might be a perfect fourth, but it's certainly not from the tonic to the dominant, and it's not in the bass, rather it's sort of hidden in the chords), but as a descending chromatic line, it fits with that tradition, and so do the lyrics of "A Rose for Emily."

Odessey and Oracle

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I listened to Odessey and Oracle to-day (with bonus tracks), and I discovered a lot of new things!

"Care of Cell 44"

The last three lines of the first verse all start with words that end in "-ing," but their meaning is sort of ambiguous.

Good morning to you I hope you're feeling better, baby
Thinking of me while you are far away
Counting the days until they set you free again
Writing this letter hoping you're OK

The "thinking" seems to go along with the "you're" from the previous line, so: "I hope you're feeling better [and] thinking of me...."  (Although the "thinking of me..." could also be a participial.)  The subject of "counting" could be either the "you" or the singer/speaker.  "I hope you're... counting the days..." or "[I am] counting the days."  (Again, "counting the days..." could be a participial too, modifying either the "you" or the speaker/singer.)  The subject of "writing" is clearly the speaker/singer.  Things could be divided a couple different ways there.

"A Rose for Emily"

There's an extra line in the second and third verses (which I knew), but this time I realized the significance of the music's repetition there.  The chords under the second half of "The roses in her garden fade away" (A and Bm) are also used for the next line: "Not one left for her grave."  Musically, there's a return to "the roses in her garden," as if to check if there's one for her grave.

"Maybe after He's Gone"

There's some parallelism in the lines "I feel I'll never breathe again / I feel life's gone from me."  Particularly because both start with "I feel," "I'll never breathe again" is equated to "life's gone from me."

"Brief Candles"

I got thinking about the "tight" in the first line: "There she sits her hands are held, tight around her glass."  In that rendering, it's an adjective, but it could also be parsed as a flat adverb:  "There she sits her hands are held tight[ly] around her glass."  There's no real difference in the meaning, but grammatically it's different.

I also discovered a consistency in the rhyme scheme.  Each verse has a rhyme scheme of AABB, but the B's carry over: the last two lines of the first verse end with "stay" and "way;" the those in both the second and third verses end with "say" and "way."

I think I noticed this before but forgot to write about it: the vocals are double-tracked during Blunstone's verse (as are the others'), except for the second "say" in "He does not say a single word, no word of love to say."  It draws attention to itself because that second voice is missing, and it musically portrays the lack of a "word of love."

"I Want Her She Wants Me"

The continual repetition of "I want her she wants me" at the end mirrors the cyclical nature of the statement itself.  It just keeps going around.

"Butcher's Tale"

I noticed this earlier, but I've neglected to write about it:  the repetition of the "can't/won't stop shaking" line reflects the inability to cease.

A new thing I noticed though is the rhyme scheme of the first verse, which is different from all the others.  The first verse has ABAB ("trade," "fee," "stayed," "see") where the others are ABCB.  So as the speaker/singer looks back on his past life ("A butcher, yes, that was my trade...") things have a stronger coherence than they do once he goes to war.

"Friends of Mine"

I'd previously noted the parallelism in "That's something to see; that's nothing to hide," but I noticed a new one in the chorus:  "And they've got something it's so hard to find" parallels with "And they've got something you don't often find."  It's not as strictly parallel as some other instances, but it's pretty close.

—Bonus Tracks—
"I'll Call You Mine"

I've been meaning to mention this since 19 April:  although "I'll Call You Mine" is a bonus track, it works really well sequenced after "Time of the Season" (as it is on one of the Odessey and Oracle CD re-issues I have) because they're in relative keys.  "Time of the Season" is in E minor, and "I'll Call You Mine" is (at least mostly) in G major.

I did notice a new thing too.  During this section:

I couldn't chance to break the spell we had
The happy times we had, and yet the times were sad
Just for me, baby, you understood then
I was afraid to try to call you mine

Blunstone is singing the lead vocal, and Argent is doing the harmony vocal.  But Argent's harmony vocal drops out for the third line.  So there's only one voice (Blunstone's) singing "Just for me...."  It emphasizes the exclusivity.

"Don't Cry for Me"

An-other thing I've neglected to write about:  the "down" in the lines "Don't break your heart / Thinking you have let me down" is broken into syllables (a melisma), and the later notes are lower in pitch, so the word itself is going down.

"Smokey Day"

Like the "tight" in "Brief Candles," there are words here that could be either adjectives or flat adverbs:  "Soft, serene, she dances" or "Soft[ly], serene[ly] she dances."

"She Loves the Way They Love Her"

Surely I must have noticed this before, but I don't think I've written about it:  in the first line of the third verse, there's a multitude of internally-rhyming words:  "Crying, dying, sighing, whining, shining in the microphone."

Odessey and Oracle

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While recording my 2015 version of Odessey and Oracle, I kept finding more things to write about, so I just saved them for later.

I'll just go by track order.

I never remember when the mellotron comes in during the verses of "Care of Cell 44," so I wrote down on my arm the words on which it comes in:

It looks kind of funny because arms are not the best surface to write on, and my pen was giving me difficulties.

The last two verses have the same lyrics, but the mellotron comes in on different words the second time.  The first time, it comes in on "again" and "saved;" the second time on "have" and "train."  The whole verse:

It's gonna be good to have you back again with me
Watching the laughter play around your eyes
Come up and fetch you, saved up for the train fare money
Kiss and make up, and it will be so nice

After seeing those four words written out, I realized that they're pairs of imperfect rhymes - "again" & "train" and "saved" & "have."  I'm not sure if this was Rod Argent's intention either in 1) writing those particular pairs of words or 2) having the entrance of the mellotron emphasize them, but as imperfect rhymes they sort of provide the sense that the ideal situation that the speaker/singer is describing isn't going to work out.  This is also seemingly hinted at by the "could" in the line "And it could be so nice," which appears twice in the bridge.

Since 2014's version, I've learned some of the chords for "A Rose for Emily" (mostly from a book I have that has some sheet music for a few of the songs).  Knowing some of the chords has helped in correcting the bass notes I'd had.  And - if I'm right in what I have now - there's a Bachian sort of sequential half step.  C# to D and then G to F#.  I've mentioned multiple times that Rod Argent likes to use sequential half steps, but his are usually linked (the second note in the first pair is the first note in the second pair), but that's not the case here.  It's not strictly Bachian either, because one is a rising half step and the other is a falling half step (in the B-A-C-H motif, they're both falling half steps).  Still, I thought it interesting.

Apparently I've severely neglected "Maybe after He's Gone."  Before this year, I've mentioned it in only two posts.  So it's good that I have six things to say about it:

1. For the first time, I noticed how much of the music is chromatic and diatonic.  Excepting the chorus ("Maybe after he's gone / she'll come back / love me again") the chords are almost entirely diatonic, and there's a chromatic phrase (E to C#) in the backing vocals (it's most prominent at the end, when the instruments fall away).  Similar to Argent's imperfect rhymes and mellotron, I don't know if this is what Chris White had in mind while writing the song, but that predictability and steadiness of the diatonicism and chromaticism give the assurance that the singer/speaker seems to need so desperately.
2. There's an-other instance in "Maybe after He's Gone" of remembering - "I remember joy and pain."  I'm fairly certain that joy is present in some Zombies songs and more particularly in early Argent songs (like "Bring You Joy," obviously), but - again - I need to work on a lyrical concordance to investigate this.
3. "Maybe after He's Gone" also has crying!  The line after "I remember joy and pain" is "Her smile, her tears are part of me."  Later, there's "And all the dreams I'm dreaming now / Hide the tears that I cry."
4. And, of course, dreams: "All the dreams I'm dreaming now."
5. Along with the A, Bm, D chord progression that I mentioned earlier, "Maybe after He's Gone" contains an-other musical element that's present in some of the other Odessey and Oracle songs and that helps to tie the album together.  Specifically, high and insistent A notes.  During the chorus, these A notes are in the piano part (later, they move to B, then D, then back to A, to follow the chords, and then there's a chromatic phrase from B to C# [which is a good example of Rod Argent's type of sequential half step - B to C to C#]).  There are also high A notes in "Changes" (also on piano) and in "Brief Candles" (prominently on guitar, but I think also on mellotron).  The bass parts for "Care of Cell 44" and "Brief Candles" also contain high A notes at times (high for bass, at least).  Incidentally, both sides of the album start on A notes.  That is, both "Care of Cell 44" (the first song on Side One) and "Changes" (the first song on Side Two) start with an A note.
6. In checking the notes for that chromatic phrase, I learned how to play the melody for the lead vocals (just to see how the two parts go together), and I discovered a phrase that's also in the mellotron part in "Hung up on a Dream."  The melody that accompanies the lyrics "she'll come back, love me a[gain]" (just the first syllable of "again") is the phrase G# A B G# A B.  And if I have that section of the mellotron part from "Hung up on a Dream" right, that phrase (even repeated like that) is in the solo (at about 1:04).  Some of the note values differ, but not too greatly.

I have one other thing I noticed about "Hung up on a Dream," but I still have to look into that.

"A Rose for Emily" and "Maybe after He's Gone"

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I'm in the midst of writing up a post about more stuff I noticed while recording my annual version of Odessey and Oracle, and in fact-checking stuff against the recordings, I thought I'd discovered that "Maybe after He's Gone" has the same sort of cadential ending as "A Rose for Emily" (a fourth [A and D] to a major third [A and C#]), but I think it's actually a minor third (B and D) to a major third (A and C#).

Still, two sequential songs end with the same two notes.

Odessey and Oracle

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Recently I was looking through the liner notes of the 30th anniversary edition of Odessey and Oracle - the one that includes the lyrics.  I'd been suspicious of the accuracy of these lyrics, specifically the first line of "A Rose for Emily" and part of "Changes."

These liner notes list the first line of "A Rose for Emily" as "The summer is here at last," but I'd always heard it as "Though summer is here at least."  Additionally, though acknowledges the difference in mood - summer is usually seen as a happy time, but the rest of this song is about a woman who doesn't have any love.  Though seems to signal that contrast.

The liner notes also have part of "Changes" as:

I knew her when summer was her crown
And autumn sad
How brown her eyes

The British accents are a bit difficult for me to decipher here; just by hearing it, I can't tell whether it's "sad" or "sighed."  But based on the other lyrics, I think it's "sighed."  I (mostly) agree with these other lyrics that the liner notes list:

I knew her when winter was her cloak
And spring her voice
She spoke to me

I'd always thought it was "In spring her voice she spoke to me," but that's a minor point.

Still, you have the structural parallelism between "summer was her crown" and "winter was her cloak," so it makes sense to me that that parallelism would also apply to further words and that they would relate to speech and respiration  - "Autumn sighed" and "She spoke to me."

Those were my qualms up to that point.  But just recently, in looking through the lyrics, I found that among the friends listed in "Friends of Mine" are "Jim and Christy."  But the Zombie Heaven liner notes lists them as "Jim and Christine."  The on-screen text on the 40th anniversary concert DVD also has "Christine."

With the cases of "A Rose for Emily" and "Changes," I had only my own dissent, but now I have more viable evidence.  The Christy/Christine thing for me is the final straw that sort of invalidates the lyrics as listed in the 30th anniversary edition liner notes.

—

This post is the first of five ideas/realizations I had about Odessey and Oracle.

Odessey and Oracle

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I've been focusing on learning songs from Odessey and Oracle lately, so when I listened to it this morning, I was paying more attention than usual.  And I noticed some things.  (It's a bit weird to me that there are still things I'm only just now discovering about it.)

• The piano figure that occurs near the end of "Care of Cell 44" is musically foreshadowed by the a cappella parts earlier in the song.  They're the same notes; it's just that one is multi-tracked voices and the other is on piano.
• The final G in the first bass riff in "I Want Her She Wants Me" is an octave lower than the rest, which is not the way I'd been playing it.
• In "This Will Be Our Year," the chord progression goes from D minor to D major at the same time as the proclamation of love.  "And I won't forget the way you said [minor to major modulation] 'Darling, I love you.'"  It gives it more emphasis.
• I'd been suspicious of this, but I'm now pretty sure that the guitar solo on "Friends of Mine" is double-tracked.  In the stereo version, you can hear how one comes in just a little bit later than the other when it's repeated.
• "A Rose for Emily" and "Butcher's Tale" contain the same three-note phrase:  F E D.  Those sorts of musical phrases appearing in multiple songs may provide the album with some coherence.  (But I don't want to emphasize that too much - I don't know whether Rod Argent and Chris White consciously thought of that, whether it just illustrates musical sensibilities that they liked and unknowingly used frequently, or whether it's just a coincidence that these songs have similar musical features.)  Additionally, "Time of the Season" has a three-note falling phrase, but that's E D C.  And an-other similar feature is a bass part centered around two A's an octave apart, which occurs in "Care of Cell 44" (where they're separated by an E) and "Brief Candles" (where it's just an octave jump).

"A Rose for Emily"

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I guess I'm learning piano parts now?

This is just the bass part of the piano (along with the final Asus4 to A major ending) and the 'cello part.  I don't have a 'cello and would have no idea how to even play one, so I used the fake 'cello setting on my keyboard.  I would not be averse to learning the actual instrument though (I'd actually prefer that to using the fake one).

I feel I should also mention that this is one of the songs in the book I have that contains sheet music to some of the Zombies' songs.  They have the chords listed, and three or four years ago, I learned it on guitar, but I'd like to learn it on the appropriate instrument this time.  So I may just use those instead of figuring it out for myself.  I did this much on my own though.

A major

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Also, I'm not sure how accurate this is, but every suspended chord that I've encountered in the Zombies' repertoire so far has been around an A major.

• The end of the solo in "She's Not There" (Asus4 to A major)
• The very end of "A Rose for Emily" (Asus4 to C# - ending on A major's third)
• The guitar part in "Call of the Night" AKA "Girl Help Me" (seemingly constant variation between Asus2 and A major during the verses)
• A very small guitar part in "I Don't Want to Worry" (an Asus2 thrown in between two A majors)