"Beechwood Park"

I recently read about "Beechwood Park" in The "Odessey": The Zombies in Words and Images and realized that it's in the same category as the Beatles' "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane" in that it deals with a specific place from the writer's childhood.  In the book, Chris White says, "I had written that song when we were touring in the Philippines," and the Zombie Heaven liner notes explain that the Philippines tour was in March 1967.  "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane" were the Beatles' current release at the time (they were released as a double A-sided single in February 1967), so chronologically, it's possible that they inspired the basic subject matter of "Beechwood Park" (a look back at a childhood location).

Odessey and Oracle

According to the Zombie Heaven liner notes, fifty years ago to-day (27 December 1967), the Zombies mixed the stereo versions of "Time of the Season," "Beechwood Park," "Maybe after He's Gone," and "I Want Her She Wants Me."

The entry for the next day (28 December 1967) is "EMI Abbey Road Room 53 Odessey & Oracle (master)."  I'm not entirely sure what this means, but I'm assuming it has something to do with gathering together all of the mixes.  There's a corresponding entry for 1 January 1968 that reads "EMI Abbey Road Room 53 Odessey & Oracle original master (stereo)," so I'm assuming (again) that this 28 December entry refers only to the mono version of the album.

"Friends of Mine" b/w "Beechwood Park"

According to the Zombie Heaven liner notes and Russo's Collector's Guide, fifty years ago to-day (23 October 1967), the Zombies' "Friends of Mine" b/w "Beechwood Park" (CBS 2690) was released.  It was the first single from the yet-to-be-released Odessey and Oracle.

The Zombie Heaven liner notes actually list two contradicting dates.  23 October is the date given in the discography, but the chronology lists 22 September.  I think part of the confusion here is that these two dates are also when Paul Atkinson was engaged (22 September) and married (23 October) to Molly Molloy.

Odessey and Oracle

According to the liner notes of both Zombie Heaven* and the 50th anniversary edition of Odessey and Oracle, fifty years ago this month (July 1967), the Zombies recorded "Beechwood Park," "Maybe after He's Gone," and "I Want Her She Wants Me."  Because Abbey Road was booked, these sessions were held at Olympic Studios.  According to the liner notes of the 50th anniversary edition of Odessey and Oracle, the sessions' being held at Olympic Studios is the reason precise dates aren't available.

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*In the track-by-track section, the Zombie Heaven liner notes list "July or August" for these three songs, but in the chronology, they're all listed under July.

Live at the Bloomsbury Theatre, London

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As promised, here are a couple more things I noticed from the Live at the Bloomsbury Theatre, London album.

"What Becomes of the Broken Hearted"

The thing I realized about this song is that I sort of forgot about it.  Colin Blunstone recorded this in (I think) the 1980s, but I don't have that recording (an-other reason to get his Collected set), so this song has sort of slipt through the cracks in this project.  I have three live versions though: this one on Live at the Bloomsbury Theatre, London, one on Odessey and Oracle: Revisited, and one on Live at Metropolis Studios.

"Beechwood Park"

Because I know the parts to a lot of Zombies songs, I can mentally compare the live versions with the original arrangements, and one section of this is significantly different.  In the original, the bass part under "And the breeze would touch your hair / Kiss your face, and make you care" is:

But on Live at the Bloomsbury, that bass part is:

The rhythm is standardized in the Live at the Bloomsbury version, but the tonality is a bit more interesting.  In the second measure, the G note is in a lower octave, but its novelty probably comes just from its being different from the album version.  In that last measure though, instead of a G note, there's a D.  In the album version, the bass notes (aside from the second in each pair of quarter notes) are just the root notes of the chords they're beneath (E minor / D major / C major / G major).  In the Live at the Bloomsbury version, those chords stay the same, but because that G changes to a D, there's a slightly different tonality.  It doesn't seem as resolved as the part is in the Odessey and Oracle version, so - to some degree - that note's not being the root makes you pay attention and sustains that attention until "Make you care" is completed with "About your world."  It helps to bridge that line break.

Or maybe I was just really excited that I figured out this different part in my head, and now I'm trying to divine a reason for it.

"She's Not There"

I'd noticed before that Keith Airey plays the riff from the Beatles' "Day Tripper" during his solo, but after listening to it this time, I started wondering about the keys.  "Day Tripper" is in E major, but "She's Not There" is in A minor.  Here, the "Day Tripper" riff is played in A major, which skews the key a bit (I think "She's Not There" has a lot of accidentals anyway), but it is still an exact quote from "Day Tripper," just not the one I'd always thought it was.  "Day Tripper" starts out with that riff in E (which is what I thought Airey was quoting), but later it's raised a fourth, so it's effectively played in A major (although both have accidentals; it's in E major, but the second note in a G natural).  That phrase raised a fourth is what Airey plays too.

"Beechwood Park"

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For the last half a year or something, I've been playing around with a harpsichord arrangement of "Beechwood Park."  There are some trills in the original guitar part that sound vaguely baroque, and the harpsichord was a baroque instrument, so playing the song on one sort of helps to bring out those influences.  Also I just wanted to record this because I was one song away from having recorded 200 this year.

I have a bad habit of unintentionally quickening the pace, and I might have hit a bad note, but there you go.

"Beechwood Park"

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On Thursday, I played through almost all the bass parts on Odessey and Oracle (the bass part in "Brief Candles" is too short, and I don't know the bass part for "Friends of Mine" yet), and I realized that I've been playing part of "Beechwood Park" wrong.  During the "And I can't forget you, won't forget you, won't forget those days" part, there are pairs of bass notes ("notes" as in "pitches") for each chord, but when that part is repeated, there's only a single note (played twice) for the first two chords, and no notes for the last two.

Because I had that wrong, now I'm worried that there are other parts of this that are incorrect.  In listening to the recording, I noticed a higher organ note, so I think it plays a third (B, D#) during the introductory phrase and then that 4th-to-3rd transition (B, E to B, D#) along with the guitar.

I should also note that some of the organ phrases are incomplete.

"Beechwood Park"

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I was thinking about "Beechwood Park" this morning, and I had an idea about the rhyme scheme of a few lines.  Incidentally, I recently re-worked my transcription so that the line breaks are more accurate, so my older posts with quotations aren't right.

Anyway, I was thinking about the lines "And the breeze would touch your hair / Kiss your face and make you care."  The "hair"/"care" rhyme works well in these lines because "the breeze" is the subject and a breeze is moving air (the "hair"/"care" rhyme simplified as "-air").  So there's a hidden sort of wind in the rhyme, and it's also in the actual lyrics.

I'm probably thinking about this too much, but there might be something to it.

"Beechwood Park"

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Last year I started a project in which I read all of my literary anthologies.  I started with The Norton Introduction to Literature, 5th edition (which I'm still reading over a year later).  A few days ago, I read some things about pastoral poems.  After Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love," which the Norton provides as an example of a pastoral poem, it says that the pastoral genre is

a poetic kind that concerns itself with the simple life of country folk and describes that life in stylized, idealized terms.  The people in a pastoral poem are usually (as here) shepherds, although they may be fishermen or other rustics who lead an outdoor life and are involved in tending basic human needs in a simplified society; the world of the poem is one of simplicity, beauty, music, and love.  The world always seems timeless in pastoral; people are eternally young, and the season is always spring, usually May.  Nature seems endlessly green and the future entirely golden.  Difficulty, frustration, disappointment, and obligation do not belong in this world at all; it is blissfully free of problems.

As I read this, I got to thinking about "Beechwood Park."  I'd never thought of it as pastoral before, but I think it does belong in the category even though it doesn't match all of the conventions that the Norton lays out.

I could probably make a case for each of the factors listed above (save for spring, since "Beechwood Park" takes place in summer), but what I think is most interesting about "Beechwood Park" as pastoral poem is the colors.  The Norton says that in pastoral poems, "Nature seems endlessly green and the future entirely golden," and those are the only two colors mentioned in "Beechwood Park."  The first verse starts with "Do you remember summer days just after summer rain / When all the air was damp and warm in the green of country lanes," and the second with "Do you remember golden days and golden summer sun."

In the BBC Mastertapes interview, Rod Argent says something about Odessey and Oracle's being about color:  "A lot of the songs were about color and colors."  They're talking about the mellotron, so it seems like they're talking more about tone color and the particular timbre of the mellotron, but since it's "color and colors," literal color (like the green and gold of "Beechwood Park") might be included in that too.  In any case, "Beechwood Park" uses color in a way that aligns it with the conventions of pastoral poetry, at least as they're outlined by the Norton.

"Beechwood Park"

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I wrote out the guitar parts for "Beechwood Park" to-day, and then I started doing the actual notation of the guitar and bass parts (I wrote out a whole page, which is only about half of the song, but the structure repeats, so it won't be too difficult to finish it).

I noticed this interesting rhythmic part just after "About your world, your summer world..." and again after "All roads in my mind...."  Except for that two-beat rest (during which the G major chord from the previous measure might still be sounding), the guitar plays quarter notes when the bass plays half notes and half notes when the bass plays quarter notes.  So there's this rhythmic alternating, which I hadn't noticed before (even though I often play these two parts together on piano).

"Maybe after He's Gone" and "Beechwood Park"

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A few days ago, I remembered something about "Maybe after He's Gone" and "Beechwood Park" that I'd neglected to write about.

After I figured out the vocal melody in "Maybe after He's Gone," I realized that - combined with the chromatic phrase in the backing vocals - it sort of forms a Bsus4.  The "gone" in the lead vocals is on a B, and the backing vocals go from an E to a Db, so it's like going from Bsus4 to B major, just without the F#.  (Since Blunstone has such a high voice, that B might be above the E and Db, in which case it's just an inversion.)

That same chord change - Bsus4 to B major - is in the guitar part in "Beechwood Park."  It roughly corresponds to the "lanes" in the line "When all the air was damp and warm in the green of country lanes."

It's a pretty minor element to be comparing, but both "Maybe after He's Gone" and "Beechwood Park" are Chris White songs (incidentally to-day's his birthday) and they're sequential songs on the album, so while it might be minor, I don't think it's insignificant.

Odessey and Oracle

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I listened to Odessey and Oracle (with bonus tracks!) to work on transcribing the lyrics (which I think I'm almost finished with), and I noticed a lot of things.  I'm still slightly astounded that I'm only now discovering some things about this album, but at the same time, I hope I continue to do so because it just makes me love it so much more.

In the verses of "Beechwood Park," certain words are repeated within a line, ostensibly to further the images.  There's "Do you remember summer days just after summer rain" and "Do you remember golden days and golden summer sun."

Also in "Beechwood Park," there's assonance (and internal rhyme with "dark" and "park") in the line "And we would count the evening stars as the day grew dark in Beechwood Park."

If you isolate the backing vocals for the verses of "Hung up on a Dream," you can get some (perhaps relevant, perhaps irrelevant) statements:  "Gentle love / turned me on to sounds unheard" and "Sometimes I think I'll never find / Gentle love."

I'm still not sure about the lyrics in "Changes," but what I currently have is:

I knew her when summer was her crown
And autumn sighed how brown her eyes 

I knew her when winter was her cloak
In spring her voice she spoke to me

In checking my transcription, I noticed that the poetic device here isn't line-ending rhyme, but internal rhyme:  "crown" with "brown" and "cloak" with "spoke."  I also noticed that the summer/autumn couplet appears two more times than the winter/spring couplet, which - along with "Do you remember summer days just after summer rain" from "Beechwood Park" - seems to emphasize summer on the album.

"Butcher's Tale" has a very obvious domestic element:

I want to go home
Please let me go home
Go home

I'm sort of embarrassed that I didn't think of that when I initially listed instances of home in the Zombies' songs.

In "Friends of Mine," the line "It feels so good to know two people so in love, so in love" sort of parallels the line "Feels so good you're coming home soon" in "Care of Cell 44."  Both are just a single line (in "Friends of Mine," I think it's technically a pre-chorus, and I believe it constitutes the entire chorus in "Care of Cell 44"), and both mention that it "feels so good."

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I also found some things in the bonus tracks.

The line "Walk in the light of day and talk the night away" from "I'll Call You Mine" is such a perfect line.  There are two instances of internal rhyme ("walk" with "talk" [which, incidentally, is a line-ending rhyme in the bridge of "Care of Cell 44"] and "day" with "away") and a sort of parallelism with the temporal elements ("day" and "night").

From "Imagine the Swan," the line "And it's there in my room to remind me of you" seems to be an-other instance of the Zombies' remembering things in their songs.  It's "remind" instead of "remember," but it's still a similar sentiment.

I also started paying attention to the backing vocals during this section:

For the colors are gone
You've become kind of grey
And you're not like the swan
That I knew yesterday

Now the pictures are wrong
You've become kind of grey
I'll imagine the swan
That you were yesterday

During the first two lines, the backing vocals are descending (the second descent starts at a lower pitch than the first, so it's a continual descent, not just a repetition of the first descent).  During the third line, it's a single note, and during the last line, there are interruptions.  So, taken as a whole, those backing vocals indicate the decay that the lyrics themselves are talking about ("the colors are gone / You've become kind of grey").

The lyrics of "Smokey Day" are still proving to be difficult to decipher, but I did notice an instance of consonance in the line "Smokey day, hey, bring the dust of dusky evening."

And I found instances of crying and dreaming in "She Loves the Way They Love Her," although the crying seems more theatrical than emotional:

Crying, dying, sighing, whining, shining in the microphone
Dreaming dreams of future time when she and me are all alone

It's sort of obvious, but there's assonance in that first line - "crying," "dying," & "sighing" and "whining" & "shining."  That assonance is sort of present in the "time" in the second line too.

"Hung up on a Dream"

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The night after I wrote that post about baroque-influenced trills in "Butcher's Tale" and "Beechwood Park," I realized that I'd totally forgotten about the solo in "Hung up on a Dream," which is also pretty baroque.

There are two parts to the solo: the first is played by both guitar and mellotron and is one phrase that's then repeated an octave lower (I don't think the mellotron drops an octave though); the second section is more contrapuntal between guitar and mellotron.

The phrase in the first section of the solo starts with an extended (but moderately paced) trill between B and C.  In the second section, the guitar phrases start with the same sort of three-note trills that I mentioned earlier: E D E, C B C, C# B C#, F# G F#.

There's an-other extended-but-moderately-paced trill after the solo, during the lines "Until I woke up only finding everything was just a dream" and "That gave me peace and blew my mind / And now I'm hung up on a dream."  That's between B and A with a G thrown in at one point.  The melody of the lyrics follows it there too.

After I realized that I'd neglected that, I remembered that Rod Argent even talks about the baroque influence on "Beechwood Park" and "Hung up on a Dream" (specifically naming Bach) on the BBC Mastertapes program (at about 13:15).

Trills

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On Friday, I got thinking about "Butcher's Tale," specifically the trills between the third and fourth verses (between "And cover up the boy" and "And the flies come down in Gommecourt, Thiepval").  I still don't know the music for the end of the verses that well, but I do know those two trills.  They're C# B C# and A G A.

Sunday night, I realized that there's a trill of sorts in the bass part too.  Most of the bass part is the recurring phrase D F E D.  But when the chords change (at first alternating between D minor and G major but then going up to F major), that descent starts, only to be interrupted.  The bass part then follows the ascending chords, resulting in the trill F E F.  It roughly corresponds to "but the king's shilling" in the lyrics.

One of my musical projects for this year is to listen to one of Bach's orchestral suites everyday, so I've been thinking about them a lot and realized that those same sorts of trills are in the third movement (at the beginning of the second gavotte) of the third suite (in D major, BWV 1068):  D C# D / F# E F# / A G A / D.  (I've been listening to the first suite lately, but I'd looked up the notation for the third last fall because I'd thought those trills contained the B-A-C-H motif.  They obviously don't.)

On Saturday, I listened to Bach's third partita for solo violin, and I found a similar phrase (also in the gavotte), which I wrote about here.  Essentially:

A section of the guitar part in "Beechwood Park" (F# E F#) bears some resemblance too.

I'm highly dubious that the Zombies took those particular trills from Bach's orchestral suite or partita, but it is a specific musical element that shows the baroque influence present on Odessey and Oracle.

Additionally, there's a trill in the introductory organ part for "Hold Your Head Up."  (I think it's between G and F#.)  It's actually easier to hear in live performances, like the one on Live at Metropolis Studios, where you can see it.  Or even the performance that KEXP uploaded.  I think that that trill more closely resembles the actual definition because it lasts for a longer period of time.  The other examples I've given are just three notes.

"Kind of Girl" and "Beechwood Park"

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In thinking about certain musical elements that tie together the songs on Odessey and Oracle, I remembered that "Kind of Girl" from early in the Zombies' career bears some resemblance to "Beechwood Park."  (It's not a unifying musical element specific to Odessey and Oracle, but I think it's interesting nonetheless.)  I discovered this when I learned the chords for "Kind of Girl" in September, but I neglected to mention it then.  In any case, both songs have the same descending chord progression - Em, D, C, G.  "Kind of Girl" includes a B major at the end of the progression too, to complete the phrase.

Those chords aren't unusual at all.  In fact, there's a whole Wikipedia page about these chords and their various permutations.  Incidentally, much of "Time of the Season" uses these same chords (albeit in a different order) in the same key.

But, like a lot of other Zombies songs, there are some weird key changes in "Kind of Girl" and "Beechwood Park," and even those are sort of similar.  Both are mostly in E minor, but "Kind of Girl" veers into Bb during the bridge ("But more of that another day…"), and a section of "Beechwood Park" ("All roads in my mind…") is in Eb.  Bb and Eb are adjacent in the Circle of Fifths.

These same sorts of key changes (that is, changes to keys that are distant by three or four places in the Circle of Fifths) are present in "I Must Move," "I Want Her She Wants Me," and "Care of Cell 44."  I mentioned that here, although I have to correct what I said about "Care of Cell 44" - at the end of every other phrase in the verses, it changes from G major to Bb major, not to Eb major.  I got confused because the two flats in the key of Bb are Bb and Eb.

Like I've mentioned before, I don't know that much about keys and tonality.  Aside from what I learned in a semester of beginner piano four years ago, I'm completely self-taught as far as theory goes.  But I think I have this right.

I knew that Chris White wrote "Beechwood Park," but I couldn't remember who'd written "Kind of Girl."  I was surprised to find that it was Rod Argent.  Their writing is similar at times, but these chord progressions and key changes were so similar that I thought they would be from the same writer.

Argent

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I listened to Argent this morning and worked on transcribing the lyrics.  And I noticed some things.

In "Like Honey," there are some lines about flying:

So rise and learn to fly
Help the lonely hour of the night pass by
So rise and spread your wings
Help the lonely hour of the night begin

And then a few songs later, in "Be Free," there are more lines about flying:

If you're gonna spread your wings
And hear the song that freedom sings
Remember that I told you to be free
If you're gonna sweep the sky
And feel the wind come rushing by
Remember that I told you to be free

Both sets of lyrics are also pretty parallel structurally.

This might even bear some comparison to "Wings against the Sun" from the Zombies' 2004 album As Far as I Can See.  I haven't explored that yet.

On the second side, there's an-other instance of this - where the same theme is present in two songs - although it's not as strong a connection as that between "Like Honey" and "Be Free."  "Stepping Stone" has the line "I would gladly made you happy," and "Bring You Joy," the next song, has:

And I'll make you feel so happy
You could cry
Yes, I'll make you feel so happy
You will die

However, while those lines are sort of similar, the songs have different outlooks.

Additionally, I found some more instances of remembering, which is a major theme in Chris White's and Rod Argent's songs.  "Be Free" has the line "Remember that I told you to be free."  "Schoolgirl" (written by Russ Ballard) starts out with "Remember when you were a schoolgirl."  And "Stepping Stone" starts out with "Remember days when we were close and warm as night turned to dawn" and later has "Remember fresh and sweet the thought of summer ways, loving eyes, lazy day."  Those lines in particular connect "Stepping Stone" to the Zombies' "Beechwood Park," specifically the first two verses:

Do you remember summer days just after summer rain
When all the air was damp and warm in the green of country lanes
And the breeze would touch your hair, kiss your face, and make you care
About your world, your summer world
And we would count the evening stars as the day grew dark in Beechwood Park

Do you remember golden days and golden summer sun
The sound of laughter in our ears and the breeze as we would run
And the breeze would touch your hair, kiss your face, and make you care
About your world, your summer world
And we would count the evening stars as the day grew dark in Beechwood Park

Both refer to summer, warmth, and the day-to-night transition (although "Beechwood Park" is day to night and "Stepping Stone" is night to day).

"Beechwood Park"

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Back in March, I got a tremolo pedal in order to do the guitar part from "Beechwood Park."  Yester-day, I got an adaptor for it, so I don't have to use batteries for it all the time (the batteries don't last very long).

So I finally got around to doing a more complete version of "Beechwood Park."  I don't think I've posted a version since I figured out the little bass part that goes from B down to F# and then up an octave to F#.

There is some noise in this; I think it's just the way I recorded the organ part.  Sometimes it doesn't turn out the cleanest.

"Beechwood Park"

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I learned most of the bass part for "Beechwood Park."  A majority of that "most" wasn't too difficult, since it follows the organ part.

I am missing some parts in a few places, but I figured I would upload what I have so far.

"Beechwood Park"

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Last time I did a version of "Beechwood Park," I thought it sounded weird because "I played a B major on guitar and an E note on the organ, and they don't go to-gether."  (This is why I didn't play those guitar chords when I did a rough version of the whole album in January.)  That specifically was not the problem.  I was right in thinking it's not a B major, but the problem I had in December was that erroneous B major conflicting with a G note, not an E.

In any case, I was playing some Zombies songs last night, and "Beechwood Park" came up on shuffle on my practise playlist, and I just happened to play a G major where I had that trouble spot, and it worked.

And then later I felt really stupid because the chord progression in that section is Em D C G, which is a really simple (perhaps even over-used) chord progression, and had I realized that I already had third fourths of it, maybe it wouldn't have taken so long to get that G major.

Also, I fixed some tempo problems in the "summer world" section.  I had been coming in too early with the partial organ chords.  Still, this particular recording isn't as tight as I'd like it to be.

The little organ parts I added as a rough approximation don't seem to go with the rest of the parts, so I guess that's the next thing to work on with this song.  Although I think the bass part follows the organ part through half of the song, so maybe that would be easier to learn first.

"Beechwood Park"

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I learned a rough version of the organ part from "Beechwood Park."  Very rough, in fact.

I'm not sure whether it's the organ part or the guitar chords, but something's wrong during the "and the breeze would touch your hair / kiss your face and make you care" part.  I played a B major on guitar and an E note on the organ, and they don't go to-gether.