"Hung up on a Dream"

A couple weeks ago, I was thinking again about the lines from Shakespeare's The Tempest that are quoted on the back of Odessey and Oracle.  Only a portion is given there, but in full, Caliban says:

Be not afeard.  The isle is full of noises,

Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.

Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments

Will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices

That, if I then had waked after long sleep,

Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,

The clouds methought would open and show riches

Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked

I cried to dream again.  (III.ii.131-139)

When I read these lines again, I realized that many of these sentiments are also expressed in "Hung up on a Dream."

The sounds in both are expansive ("The isle is full of noises" "A sweet vibration seemed to fill the air").  Both narrators experience a dream that directs their attention upward ("then, in dreaming, / The clouds methought would open and show riches" "Until I woke up only finding ev'rything was just a dream... [of men who] showed me strangest, clouded sights above"), and they later desire to experience this dream again ("when I waked / I cried to dream again" "now I'm hung up on a dream").  More generally, both pieces also describe the calming effects of sound ("Sounds and sweet airs that give delight" "sounds unheard... which gently touched my aching mind / And soothed the wanderings of my troubled brain").

In Claes Johansen's Hung up on a Dream (p. 30), Argent explains that Shakespeare's "language spoke to me; it had an indefinable, spiritual quality."  In this instance, it seems to have influenced Argent's own words.

Odessey and Oracle

Although there are still a few bits of it that I'm not sure about, I started notating the bass part for "Hung up on a Dream" last month.  In doing so, I discovered that there are some octave skips near the beginning of the instrumental section (at ~0:48), something like this:

I was thinking about this yester-day and realized that there are some characteristics of these phrases that also appear in the bass part during the choruses of "Brief Candles."  Here are the first four measures (repeated as the next four measures):

(I'm still not certain what key the song is in, but I put the notation in A major.  Also note that it's played an octave higher than notated.)

In both parts, there's a steady five-pitch descent (B A G F# E in "Hung up on a Dream" and A G F# F E in "Brief Candles") occasionally punctuated by a note an octave higher (in roughly the same place in the rhythm), and this sequence is played twice in succession (just four measures in "Hung up on a Dream" but eight in "Brief Candles").

This is yet an-other musical element that lends some cohesion to the Odessey and Oracle songs.

(For what it's worth:  I've previously written about musical similarities between "Brief Candles" and "Care of Cell 44" and between "Brief Candles" and "This Will Be Our Year.")

"Hung up on a Dream"

A few months ago, I was thinking about the shape of the vocal melody in "Hung up on a Dream," specifically for the lines "They spoke with soft, persuading words" and "Which gently touched my aching mind."  Each is sung to a melody something like this:

It's an entirely conjunct phrase, and the small intervals match the "soft" and "gently" in the lyrics.

"Hung up on a Dream"

A couple weeks ago, I realized that the line "I stood astounded staring hard" in "Hung up on a Dream" exhibits consonance.  I thought there was some significance to this, but it took me a while to sort it out.  Because that particular sound doesn't change from word to word, there's almost a sense of the narrator's being frozen in wonder while looking at the "men with flowers resting in their hair."

"Hung up on a Dream"

Last night, I was thinking about "Hung up on a Dream," and I realized that the line "And turned me on to sounds unheard" bears some resemblance to part of John Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn":  "Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard / Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on."  Both comment on "unheard" sounds.

In Claes Johansen's Hung up on a Dream, Argent says that Shakespeare's "language spoke to me; it had an indefinable, spiritual quality."  This line in "Hung up on a Dream" may be an instance of Keats' language eliciting a similar response, or it could just be a coincidence.

"Hung up on a Dream"

This morning I listened to Odessey and Oracle and noticed a small thing in "Hung up on a Dream."  "Crowd" in the line "And from that nameless, changing crowd" is sung with a melisma (A G E, I think).  Since the word isn't sung to a single, constant pitch, there's a musical sense of that "changing."

Odessey and Oracle

According to the Zombie Heaven liner notes, fifty years ago to-day (13 November 1967), the Zombies mixed both the mono and stereo versions of "Changes" (although the 19 December entry also lists a stereo mix of "Changes") and the stereo version of "Hung up on a Dream."

"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.

"Hung up on a Dream"

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A couple days ago, I was thinking about the backing vocals in "Hung up on a Dream," and I realized something about the phrase to which "Gentle love" is sung:

(It's sung in falsetto, so it might have been more accurate to notate it an octave higher, but then there's a mess of ledger lines.)

The first two notes have the same rhythm and pitch as the first two notes of the mellotron part at the beginning of "Changes," which just happens to be the next track on the album (after flipping the vinyl, of course):

Although the songs are in different keys, those phrases' having the same rhythm and tonality is just an-other element (albeit a small one) that gives Odessey and Oracle a kind of cohesion.

"Hung up on a Dream"

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Collection Audit:

This afternoon I listened to the 30th anniversary edition of the Zombies' Odessey and Oracle, and I noticed something about "Hung up on a Dream."  There's an interval of a fourth between "sights" and "above" in the line "And showed me strangest clouded sights above."  "Sights" is sung to an A, and the two syllables of "above" are sung to D notes.  The distance between the pitches of those notes helps to give a sense of the spatial distance mentioned in the lyric.

Odessey and Oracle {Revisited}

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Collection Audit:

Over the last two days, I listened to the two discs of the Zombies' Odessey & Oracle {Revisited}: The 40th Anniversary Concert.  I noticed some things (with melismas, naturally) on two songs on the first disc. 

"Maybe after He's Gone"

The "breathe" in the line "I feel I'll never breathe again" is sung to two syllables instead of just one.  There's a deliberateness in how it's sung, almost as if the speaker/singer wants to draw out the breaths he has now because he feels there will soon be a time he can't breathe at all (the next line is "I feel life's gone from me"). 

"Tell Her No"

The "charms" in the line "And if she tempts you with her charms" has a melisma.  Instead of the one syllable it's spoken with, there are multiple syllables, as if to make the "charms" musically alluring. 

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Both of these features are on the original recordings that the Zombies did in the '60s.  However, on this live album, the melisma'd "breathe" in "Maybe after He's Gone" is more prominent, and the melisma to which the "charms" in "Tell Her No" is sung actually has more notes than the original recording.  (It's G# E F# in the original; G# F# E F# in this live version.)

I found some more things about Zombies songs while doing my Collection Audit project.  I didn'’t feel it important enough to include in that post, but I also noticed some consonance in "“Hung up on a Dream."  "I stood astounded staring hard."

I was (and I guess still am) very excited about that melisma in "Tell Her No" partially because it's an example of how songs can develop through playing them live so often (it's like the guitar part that precedes the second verse of "She's Not There;" it's not in the original, but it's been in every live version for about the last eight years, so it's become a part of the song).  I referenced every live version of "Tell Her No" I have, and the period live recordings (on the fourth disc of Zombie Heaven) have the three-note melisma, but the more recent live versions (on Live at the Bloomsbury Theatre, London; Live at Metropolis Studios; and Extended Versions) all have the four-note melisma.

Odessey and Oracle

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To-day I started in earnest in recording my annual Odessey and Oracle (I have all of the guitar parts and some mellotron parts so far), but - to my own surprise - I got a telephone call that I have a job (after almost two years of looking) and I start to-morrow, so I'm not sure if I'll actually finish this by the 19th.  I really have no idea what to expect from employment (aside from money so I can buy [and learn to play] a flute for that part in "I Know She Will").

Anyway, I discovered a few things just in recording what I have so far:

There's some assonance in "I Want Her, She Wants Me" - "I sleep so easy."  That repeated sound sort of represents the ease of the sleep; it's a mellifluous sound.  Also, what I thought was just a regular E minor chord has some variations; it's more like E minor, E minor 9, E minor with a G on top (which is apparently not called E minor 10), and then back through E minor 9 to a regular E minor.  There's a phrase constructed of the notes E, F#, G in the harpsichord part at the same time.

I thought I knew all of the mellotron parts on the album, but recording them for "Hung up on a Dream" has made me realize that I am missing some there.  I also found some alliteration in "Hung up on a Dream" - "Sometimes I think I'll never find / Such purity and peace of mind again."  It sort of demonstrates the same thing that the lyrics themselves mention - "purity and peace."

Rather than writing notes on my arm so I know when I come in with the mellotron parts for the verses in "Care of Cell 44" (like I did a few years ago), I notated the mellotron part for the verses.  The mellotron part during the bridge should be pretty easy to notate too, so hopefully I can post the notation for the entirety of the mellotron part sometime soon.  I've been trying to think of Zombies songs that have straight-forward guitar chords, and "Care of Cell 44" qualifies for that too, so it'll probably be the first song for which I post more than one notated part.

"Hung up on a Dream"

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When I was recording my 2015 version of Odessey and Oracle (which, by the way, I've switched to doing in April), I found something about "Hung up on a Dream" that I never wrote about.  This is that (very belated) post.

At the end of 2014, I listened to Simon & Garfunkel's Wednesday Morning 3 AM every Wednesday for a month and a half.  So when I was recording my own versions of the tracks from Odessey and Oracle, those songs were still fresh in my mind, and I found some lyrical similarities between "The Sound of Silence" and "Hung up on a Dream."  I think at the time, I noticed only "neon."  There's "With neon darkness shimm'ring through the haze" in "Hung up on a Dream," and in "The Sound of Silence," there's "When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light" and "And the people bowed and prayed / To the neon god they made."

Looking at it now, I found that both also mention crowds.  There's "a crowded street," "a sea of faces," and "that nameless, changing crowd" in "Hung up on a Dream," and "Ten thousand people, maybe more" in "The Sound of Silence."

There are dreams and other mental states in both too.  Obviously, there's "a dream" in the title of "Hung up on a Dream," and there's also "A sweet confusion [that] filled my mind."  "The Sound of Silence" is more enigmatic, but it seems to describe a dream in the last part of the first verse:

Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains, within the sound of silence

The second verse starts with dreams too, but they seem to be different: "In restless dreams I walked alone."

So there are certainly some similarities between the two songs, but I can't point to anything that proves that Argent even knew about Simon & Garfunkel, much less took any inspiration from them.  I think that's part of the reason it's taken me so long to write this.

"Hung up on a Dream"

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Yester-day I got to thinking about the bass part in "Hung up on a Dream."  Since 27 January I've been meaning to get around to saying that it changes keys.  It ascends in either E major or B major*, but it descends in G major.

But what I got thinking about yester-day was the shape of the phrase:

It doesn't work out this way in the notation** because visually G# and G natural are on the same line, but audibly, between the key change and the melody itself, there's a sort of hook.  There's the ascending phrase in either E major or B major, and then the next note (G) is the first in G major and a semi-tone lower than the last in the ascending phrase.  Plus, the rhythm changes, so that G note sticks out rhythmically and tonally.  It sounds angular, almost as if it's a hook on which the titular dream is to be hung.

I'm not sure if any of that's making sense, but if nothing else, I finally got around to mentioning that there's a weird key change in "Hung up on a Dream."

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*There are at least four sharps, but the phrase doesn't go high enough to play an A or A#, so I can't tell if it's E major or B major.

**I just used accidentals instead of putting in key changes because I don't know how to use my software and it's intended for programming MIDI, not for notation.

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."

—

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.

Journey

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Colin Blunstone's Journey was released in the UK to-day in 1974, so I listened to it.  (I've started doing this thing where I listen to the albums on their release dates in order to become more familiar with them.  Otherwise, I don't listen to some that often.)  In listening to it, I found a lot of interesting things.

I talked about some of the structure of "Wonderful" back in November, but I found two more things.  First, the progression between two lines in iterations of the bridge (possibly not really a bridge; I don't know how to classify it).  "I need you more than ever now, my love" becomes "I want you more than ever now, my love."  Interestingly, this same sort of thing is in a line from "Shadow of a Doubt" - "You're the very last thing I want; the first thing that I need."

Second - and not as interesting - there's also alliteration in the line "High in the hall."

There's a slight lyrical resemblance between "Beginning" and "Maybe after He's Gone."  "Beginning" has the line "Oh, self-doubt surrounds you in the night," and "Maybe after He's Gone" has "Night surrounds me."  I'm not sure, but the line "Let us begin by beginning" might also reference the Zombies' album Begin Here.

"Keep the Curtains Closed Today" contains some typical Zombie themes of home and crying.  There are the lines "Could this be just the start of coming home" and "Just wish you well and hope that we don't cry."

"Beware" also mentions typical themes of dreams, memories, and crying (tears):

So hard to be alone with these forgotten dreams
No bitterness could drive away the tears
No other one will take the place you have inside
I know the memories will last a million years

According to Russo's Collector's Guide, "Beware" was written by Argent and White (they also wrote "Wonderful").

I think it's also interesting that both iterations in the chorus of "Beware" have a word that doesn't fit into the rhyme scheme.  The first iteration:

Beware as you wander through the years
Beware that you keep your heart from fears
Take care, my love, to share your love
And though the road's been long
I'll say goodbye, and I was wrong
And I've been lovin' you too long
But now I love you more than ever so beware

And the second iteration:

Beware and I know your heart can sing
Beware for I wish your everything
Take care, my love, to share your love
And though the road's been long
I'll say goodbye, and I was wrong
And I've been lovin' you too long
But now I love you more than ever so beware, my love

In both, "your love" doesn't really fit with the pattern.  There's "years," "fears," the outlier "love," and then "long," "wrong," and "long."  The second iteration keeps the last three but switches the first group to "sing," "everything," and - again - the outlier "love."  It seems like it should be two groups of three and then the final line, but - perhaps significantly - the love doesn't cooperate.

"It's Magical" and "You Who Are Lonely" both contain lines about dreams.  "It's Magical" has "And when I go to sleep / All the dreams of you are mine to keep," but the dream reference in "You Who Are Lonely" is much more interesting.  The complete verse:

And a home without love
Is no home at all
I'm hanging on to a dream
Waiting to fall

There's the bit about home common to Zombies songs, but the line with the dream has "hanging on to," which immediately brought the Zombies' "Hung up on a Dream" to mind.  The last two verses of "Hung up on a Dream" seem to describe what the speaker/singer in "You Who Are Lonely" has lost:

They spoke with soft, persuading words
About a living creed of gentle love
And turned me on to sounds unheard
And showed me strangest, clouded sights above 

Which gentled touched my aching mind
And soothed the wanderings of my troubled brain
Sometimes I think I'll never find
Such purity and peace of mind again

Like the "love" in "Beware," "You Who Are Lonely" seems to have a significant inconsistency in that there's a line missing in the choruses:

You, you who are lonely know
How slowly time can go
When winds of sadness blow 

You, you who are lonely see
To be alone is not to be free
Nobody knows like me
And you who are lonely

There isn't a line to complete the first quatrain, as if to mirror the speaker/singer's lack of companionship.

"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).

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.

Falling Fifth

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[link to original on tumblr]

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I've been thinking about the pieces in the Zombies' repertoire that start with a falling fifth (because I recently learned that "Indication" also starts with a falling fifth).  I wrote a post about this a few months ago, but in it, I sort of imply that "I'll Call You Mine" is a Rod Argent song.  That's not the case; it was written by Chris White.  (Other songs that start with a falling fifth are "She's Not There" and "Hung up on a Dream.")

Still, it illustrates that their writing was pretty similar at times.  (Along with starting pieces with falling fifths, they both also used chromatic bass parts and really interesting relationships between bass parts and chords.)