"I Want You Back Again"

Recently, I noticed a couple small features in "I Want You Back Again," both in the lines "Since you have left me / I'm all alone."  "Alone" is sung with a melisma (it's Eb F C in the single version; I think it's also Eb F C in the alternate take; and it's F G F D in the version on Still Got That Hunger), giving a sense of degree (for "all").  The words in the phrase "all alone" start with the same initial sound, and this gives a sense of that singularity.

"I Want You Back Again"

The next song in my series of posts on Still Got That Hunger is "I Want You Back Again," but since this is a new recording of an original Zombie song, I've actually written about it before and don't have much to add.

On the record sleeve, one section of the lyrics is rendered as:

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

Like I pointed out in November 2014, that the "I" jumps the line break here indicates the speaker/singer's worry or desperation.  It's certainly intentional, but it gives the impression that he's stumbling over his words because of his emotional state.

More recently, I discovered that the word "feet" in the lines "Somebody help me / Stand on my feet" is sung to the tonic note, so there's a musical foundation along with the metaphorical one.  I also discovered that while the original two versions (the alternate version recorded in 1964 and the single version recorded in 1965) are both in C minor, the version on Still Got That Hunger is in D minor.

Mixing the real-world history of the song (its being recorded three times) and the story in the song itself gives further emphasis to the "again" in "I want you back again."  It's as if a situation that happened twice before is occurring yet again.

"I Want You Back Again"

A couple days ago, I was playing the chords of "I Want You Back Again" with some approximation of the vocal melody on top of them.  In doing so, I discovered something interesting about the first verse, which I then referenced the recordings to verify.  The "feet" in the line "To stand on my feet" is sung to a C note.  The song is in C minor, so this is the tonic note, the pitch that the key is based on.  In the same way, the "feet" in the lyric symbolize the foundation, as it were, that the singer/speaker wishes to regain.

I knew off-hand that the Decca recordings (the single version and the alternate take* included on both The Decca Stereo Anthology and Zombie Heaven) are in C minor, but in referencing the version on Still Got That Hunger, I discovered that the Zombies actually raised the key to D minor there.  The lyric is ever-so-slightly different ("Somebody help me / Stand on my feet" instead of "Somebody help me / To stand on my feet"), but the "feet" there are also sung to the tonic note.

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*Oddly enough, what's termed the "alternate" take on The Decca Stereo Anthology and Zombie Heaven was actually recorded before the single version.  The alternate version was recorded on 25 November 1964 as part of the sessions for the Zombies' first album, and the single version was recorded on 2 March 1965.

"I Want You Back Again" [single version]

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This is the last of the historical anniversary recordings for now.  Last night I refreshed the guitar part and discovered two things.  First, in the single version, it ends on an Eb where the alternate version ends on a C (if I remember correctly).  To some degree, that helps to emphasize the sadness of the tonic C minor chord.  Second (and more interesting), the guitar part for the entirety of "I Want You Back Again" contains all the same notes (no more and no less) as the guitar solo in the Beatles' "Can't Buy Me Love," which I learned earlier this year.  There are only nine notes in both:

The Zombies have often cited the Beatles as an influence, so I think this is a bit more than a coincidence, but I don't think that Argent set out to write a song with a guitar part that contains only the notes in the "Can't Buy Me Love" solo.  That seems too much like writing in the vein of what's popular, which - as he's mentioned multiple times - he doesn't do.  Still, I thought this immensely interesting.

The guitar part during the (still missing) electric piano solo isn't strictly accurate.  I mostly just stayed on the C note, but it's more complex than that.  There's a C, Bb, G figure and something else I couldn't figure out (although I think it's some form of a C minor chord), so I just kept it simple.  I think it's more like the alternate version of "I Want You Back Again" (which, to be honest, I think I like better than the single version).

"I Want You Back Again" [alternate version]

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I had to re-learn virtually all of this, but it came back pretty easily.  I think I need to start making a distinction between this alternate version of "I Want You Back Again" and the single version.  I haven't really compared the two, but that's something I should get around to doing.

While listening back to my own recording, I noticed the rhythm during the electric piano solo (which is missing in my version because I don't know it yet).  It's the same sort of thing that the Zombies did with "Just a Little Bit" on their radio performance, which I wrote about earlier this month.  There are progressively shorter note values.  At first, I thought, "Oh, so they're doing the same thing they did earlier on the radio," but then I realized I had the chronology backwards:  this version of "I Want You Back Again" was recorded in November 1964, and that radio performance was in November 1965.  As far as the record shows (no pun intended), that rhythmic feature was in "I Want You Back Again" first.

I tried notating it the same way I did the bass part in "Just a Little Bit," but in doing so, I discovered that "I Want You Back Again" is in 3/4 (which I hadn't realized) and - apparently - the notation system I have doesn't understand 3/4.  I tried putting in whole notes, but instead of counting for three beats (like they should in 3/4), they counted as four beats.  So I had to do the notation by hand:

My bass clefs look weird; I'm still not good at spacing my bar lines well; and I might have written the half rest on the wrong line, but there you go.

I checked the single version of "I Want You Back Again," and - while it does a similar thing during the solo - it's not the same as what this alternate version does.  The single version does have progressively shorter notes, but they don't divide as uniformly as they do in this alternate version.

"I Want You Back Again" b/w "I Remember When I Loved Her"

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According to Russo's Collector's Guide, fifty years ago to-day (31 May 1965), the Zombies' "I Want You Back Again" b/w "I Remember When I Loved Her" (PAR 9769) was released in the U.S. and Canada.

Recording Session

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According to the liner notes from both Zombie Heaven and The Decca Stereo Anthology, fifty years ago to-day (2 March 1965), the Zombies recorded "I Want You Back Again" (the single version with the working title "Somebody Help Me"), "I Must Move" (with the working title "I Believe in You"), "She's Coming Home" (with the working title "I Cry No More"), and "Just out of Reach."

"I Want You Back Again"

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This is sort of embarrassing, but I kind of forgot about "I Want You Back Again."  There are a few songs that I know I haven't done much work on, but I'd forgotten that "I Want You Back Again" was one of them.  The one and only version I did of "I Want You Back Again" was in April 2013.

I should note that - except for the chords - I've pretty much forgotten the electric piano part.

In any case, two days ago, I learned the bass part.  There are some slight differences between the single version and the album version, but - except for the part during the electric piano solo - I used the single version (in the single version, the bass alternates between C and G during the solo, but I haven't quite figured out how to play that part yet [I think it's just a matter of memorization, but I haven't the time for it now], so I used the alternate version - which I think is just Cs - for that part).

It's mostly just C notes with variations in rhythm.  I might have the rhythms wrong at the beginning, in which case I've just standardized them.

There's at least one instance of two sequential half-steps (F to F# to G), and I included a second one (Eb to E to F).  Eb-to-E-to-F sounds a bit weird by itself, but it sounds OK with the electric piano part, so I'm not sure if I have that right or not.

I can't tell if it's in the original or not, but I added a bit after the choruses where the bass goes from G to C back to G.  It might just be a G in the Zombies' original; I'd have to listen more closely.  But I figured it was past time to update it.

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."

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.

"I Want You Back Again"

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KEXP uploaded videos from the Zombies' set at SXSW.  I'm not sure whether it was just because I hadn't listened to "I Want You Back Again" for a long time or because I could watch Rod Argent, but it became obvious to me that the chord progression was based on fifths.  So I figured it out.  It's mostly just C minor and F major.

I think that makes "I Want You Back Again" one of the few songs where I learned the piano part before anything else.  This is a bit rough, and I play the wrong notes in a few spots, but I just learned it to-day.  The blank part is where the solo should be.