"She's Not There" b/w "World of Glass"

According to Russo's Collector's Guide, fifty years ago to-day (10 January 1969), Neil MacArthur's "She's Not There" b/w "World of Glass" (Deram DM 225) was released in the UK.

In the US and Canada, it was released on 20 January (Deram 45-7524).

In Italy, the A-side was replaced with the Italian version ("Ma non è giusto"), and the single was released on 24 January (Deram DM 230).

"Ma non è giusto"

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I sort of forgot about this (I've been busy lately), but a couple weeks ago (3 July), I searched for "Ma non è giusto," and I found this site, which has the Italian lyrics.  Apparently, an Italian group called the Kings did an Italian version of "She's Not There" long before the Neil MacArthur version.

I don't know when I'll get around to it, but I fully intend to translate this into English, just to see how different it is from the original Zombies lyrics.

"Ma non è giusto"

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Yester-day I listened to the Into the Afterlife album.  I found a couple parts that sounded easy, and I'm going to try to figure them out, but no promises on those.  What I really want to write about is "Ma non è giusto," the Italian version of "She's Not There."

I've been learning Italian for two years, and I've practiced it everyday since March.  While I'm far from fluent, I'm getting pretty good, so I could pick out some more words in the lyrics.  The first line starts with "È così triste" ("It's so sad"), which certainly sounds like a Zombies song.  I also heard "Tu sei che" ("You know that"), "ma più di te" ("but more than you"), and - I think - "ci incontriamo" ("we meet").  It's an excruciatingly slow process, but I am transcribing and (sort of) translating it.  Like I mentioned one other time, the Italian lyrics seem to depart from Argent's original lyrics.

After I listened to the album and was thinking about these Italian lyrics, I realized that the Zombies are half of the reason I started learning Italian in the first place.  Chris White wrote "Brief Candles" loosely based on Aldous Huxley's book of short stories of the same title.  About five years ago, I got a copy of Brief Candles, and when I was re-reading it two years ago, I felt kind of stupid because I couldn't understand the Italian phrases in "The Rest Cure," one of the stories.  (At the same time, I was also reading Dante's Divine Comedy, and - even though this was an English translation - there were still some Italian phrases, with which I had the same problem.)  So I started learning Italian on Duolingo.  It seems to be going pretty well.

Into the Afterlife

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I listened to Into the Afterlife to-day and noticed some things:

"She's Not There" - Neil MacArthur

For the first two sections, there's an acoustic guitar panned right and an electric guitar panned left.  But after the string glissando and tremolo, (at about 2:12) they've flipped channels.  The acoustic is now panned left, and the electric is panned right.  I've had this album for something like seven years and only just now noticed that.

"Twelve Twenty Nine" - Neil MacArthur

I'd a bit unsure of the "I died" (although I suppose it's an appropriate phrase for a former Zombie), but I think the first two lines of the second verse are:

I died as I kissed the last tear I kissed from her face
And through the blur of my own I hurried away from that place

That "face"/"place" rhyme is also present in the Zombies' "Remember You":

I remember your face
When I think of this place

There's something like five years between the two songs, and it's almost certainly a coincidence, but I still thought it interesting.  For the record, "Remember You" is a Chris White song, and "Twelve Twenty Nine" was written by Peter Lee Stirling and Chris Sedgewick according to the Into the Afterlife liner notes.

"I Could Spend the Day" - Rod Argent/Chris White

I'm pretty sure I've noticed this before, but I don't think I've written about it.  The "fall" in "Words you want to hear / Would fall" has a melisma with the later syllables at lower pitches than the earlier ones so that the word itself sounds like it's falling.

"Ma non è giusto" - Neil MacArthur

I'd either started or completed transcriptions of all of the Into the Afterlife songs with the exception of this one, an Italian version of Neil MacArthur's "She's Not There."  I figured I'd finally give it a go, since I've been learning Italian since last summer.  I didn't get very far, but one of the phrases I was able to pick out is "Io vedo lei" ("I see her").  That's not in Argent's original lyrics, so I'm wondering what else I'll find if I get better at my Italian.