"She's Not There"

I listened to Begin Here last week and noticed a few small features.

In "She's Not There," the line "Though they all knew" is doubled by the backing vocals, and these extra voices lend a slight sense of the entirety of "all."

"She's Not There"

One of my ill-defined, unofficial musical projects for 2019 is to make some progress sorting through a stack of incomplete pages of notation.  Last night, I notated a few more lines of the bass part in "She's Not There."  I think I started writing it out sometime in the first half of last year, even though I still don't know the whole thing.  I wanted to preserve at least as much as I knew.

In comparing what I had already written and what I remembered to the actual recording, I discovered that I had a few notes wrong.  The most significant of these are probably the first two.  For years, I'd thought that "She's Not There" starts with a falling fifth (E to A) in the bass part.  Last night, I discovered that it's not a fifth; it's an octave (A to A).

There are a handful of other songs that start with falling fifths in the bass register ("You've Really Got a Hold on Me/Bring It on Home to Me," "I Love You," "Indication," "I'll Call You Mine," "Hung up on a Dream," Argent's "Free Fall," Colin Blunstone's "Exclusively for Me"), and I've previously commented that these are "just like 'She's Not There'!"  As it turns out, that's not true (unless I'm also mistaken about those).

I'm a bit disappointed that this feature isn't a musical through-line right from the Zombies' first single, but the focus of this project is figuring out the parts note-for-note (or trying to, anyway), so having an accurate record of the part is the most important thing.  In that respect, I'm glad I discovered my error.

"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).

"She's Not There"

Yester-day, I was playing around with "She's Not There."  I knew that it's in A minor, so from memory I figured out (roughly) the vocal melody, and I noticed something interesting about it.  To-day I referenced the recording, a section of an old Dutch documentary I found on YouTube a few years ago where Rod Argent goes through the song explaining some things, and a book of notation of Zombies songs published by Alfred Music to confirm what I'd figured out and what I discovered.  The vocal melody is entirely in A minor with only one accidental.  In this section:

But it's too late to say you're sorry
How would I know, why should I care
Please don't bother trying to find her
She's not there

the "there" in "She's not there" is sung to a G#.  To some degree, that change in tonality musically represents the absence.

I also noticed that the bass part before second "Well, no one told me about her..." section (at about (0:47) starts with the same five notes as the vocal melody:

In a couple interviews, Rod Argent's said that he often wrote the bass parts for his songs (I think he's even mentioned the bass part of "She's Not There" specifically), and this is a great example of how - because of that - the various parts are closely related.

"She's Not There"

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Yester-day I watched the Zombies' concert at The Water Rats (be aware that there are a lot of quickly flashing lights in the video).  It's a great performance.  Tom Toomey and Steve Rodford both have brief solos in "She's Not There," which is a new feature, and it was good to see Jim Rodford playing his Mustang bass.  The last time I saw it was during the Breathe Out, Breathe In sessions.  And Rod Argent includes a quotation of Bach's Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben, BWV 147 in the solo in "Hold Your Head Up."

Anyway, I was reminded of the guitar riff that's been included in live versions of "She's Not There" since at least 2011.  There were a couple times I'd thought it sounded pretty easy, and I finally figured it out last night.

In my recording, I have just the bass part that links the first chorus and the second verse and that guitar riff.

Here's the tab:

I referenced four different videos of live performances (on KEXP, SummerStage, the first Vintage TV appearance, and this second Vintage TV show at The Water Rats) to be as accurate as possible in that tab.  (There's also the DVD of Live at Metropolis Studios, which I think may be the first appearance of that riff, but I didn't feel like digging it out.)  I figured it out from audio recordings, and I was playing the last note in the third phrase (an A) as an open string, but in each of those videos, Tom Toomey plays it on the fifth fret of the E string.

I hadn't really considered the origin of this phrase before, but after figuring it out, I have a suspicion that Rod Argent's behind it.  He wrote the song, so it makes sense, but there's also one of his trademark three-note chromatic phrases at the end (G G# A).

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.

"She's Not There"

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Yester-day I listened to the I Love You album, and I noticed a couple things.  One of them is about "I Love You," and since it's a musical thing and the anniversary of the recording is in about two weeks (8 July), I'll wait until then for that.

Here's the second thing then; it's about the bass part in "She's Not There."  I still don't know the whole thing, but I know the part during the verses, which is the significant one here.  It's the part during the "Well, let me tell you 'bout the way she looked" sections that I don't know yet.

I'd always thought that the bass part during the electric piano solo was just the same as it is during the verses, but there's a small change in rhythm.  At the beginning of the song, the bass part goes like this:

For the first bar of the electric piano solo, the bass part is the same, but then the first quarter note in each bar (an A note) changes to two eighth notes:

I really need to make a list of the songs that do this, but "She's Not There" is one of the earliest Zombies songs that has this feature: the bass part under the solo could be exactly the same as it is during the verses (the solo is based on the same chords as the verses are), but there's a change that makes it a little more complex.

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.

"She's Not There"

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About a month ago, I had the idea to go through and record the whole catalogue again (or at least what I know of it).  Originally, I'd wanted to write down all of the parts too, but for now I think I'll just refresh what I know and get around to writing them down later.

I figured to-day would be a good day to start going through the catalogue again since the first Zombies songs were recorded on 12 June 1964.  I plan on going roughly chronologically by recording date, so I started with "She's Not There."  I'm going to try to do these daily, but I don't know how much I'll hold to that.

I'm still uncertain of the bass part during the "Well, let me tell you 'bout the way she looked" part, but I think what I have now is better than the last iteration (from August 2013!).  Also, I referenced the book I have by the Alfred company that contains the guitar chords, although I changed a few from what they have.  (I'm not sure the parts they have are entirely accurate.)

I took the version from The Decca Stereo Anthology and split the stereo into two mono tracks in an effort to hear the bass part more clearly.  In the right track, there's a guitar part during the electric piano solo that I'd never really heard before.  I tried approximating it, but if you have the means, you should really hear it for yourself.

"She's Not There" b/w "You Make Me Feel Good"

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Fifty years ago to-day (7 September 1964), the Zombies' debut single ("She's Not There" b/w "You Make Me Feel Good") was released in the U.S. and Canada on Parrot Records (PAR 9695).

"She's Not There" b/w "You Make Me Feel Good"

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Fifty years ago to-day (24 July 1964), the Zombies' debut single "She's Not There" b/w "You Make Me Feel Good" was released.  Decca F.11940, if you really want specifics.

First Session at Decca

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The Zombies favorited and re-tweeted my tweet!

Falling Fifth

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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.)

I Love You

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I realize I haven't been doing very much on this project lately, but by the end of the week, I'll be completely done with university, so I'll have some more time to work on this.  I do have some songs I've been meaning to update ("Is This the Dream," "Remember You," and "Beechwood Park" in particular).

In the meantime, I just wrote a post about the I Love You album as part of my Collection Audit project:

I went a bit out-of-order this morning and listened to the Zombies compilation album I Love You.  The Zombies have been my favorite band for the past five or six years, yet I'm still finding new things about their music (although I don't know whether that means they're a incredibly nuanced band or whether I'm not very good at listening). 

I finally determined that "How We Were Before" features twelve-string guitar.  I'd been suspicious of this (I'd played parts of it on my own twelve-string and thought it sounded pretty good), but now I'm fairly certain of it. 

I discovered that Rod Argent uses organ on "Woman."  This realization came after noticing the really long sustain on the G major chord during the guitar solo.  It just keeps going, which means it has to be organ rather than electric piano. 

For the first time, I noticed the three distinct vocals parts at the end of "Don't Go Away."  Two parts are alternating with "don't go away," but the third is just an "ooh." 

This album includes some stereo mixes of songs (which in some cases are different stereo mixes than those that appear on The Decca Stereo Anthology), so on some songs, things were placed in sonically different places, which made it easier to distinguish some parts.  This is the case on "I Love You," and because of that I heard some interesting rhythmical interplay between the guitar and the bass during the "if I can find / the words in my mind" part. 

Another suspicion that was confirmed is the guitar glissandoes at the beginning of "Remember You."  I'd been suspicious of these since I listened to The Decca Stereo Anthology about a month ago.  The guitar part at the beginning alternates between two D's an octave apart and a D and some-other-note-that-I-still-have-to-determine that then slides up to a D. 

Also, I may have found a reference to "She's Not There" in "She Does Everything for Me."  "She's a girl who makes me feel / That you're not there, you weren't real" recalls the "she's not there" from "She's Not There."  The "she" in "She Does Everything for Me" seems to have replaced the "she" in "She's Not There."  In any case, it's an interesting parallel, as "She's Not There" was the Zombies' first single for Decca, and "She Does Everything for Me" was the B-side of their last single for Decca.  Also, kudos to Rod Argent for getting the relative pronoun correct.

I got that album for my 17th birthday, and now I'm 22, but I'm still finding new things in the Zombies' music.

Also, I just checked my posts for "How We Were Before," and when I did a rough version last September, I actually did use twelve-string.  So apparently I forgot I knew it had twelve-string.

Falling Fifth

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I'm going to start posting some more analytical things here too, besides just my trying to figure out how to play the songs.  Because often in learning how to play the songs, I discover other interesting things about them.

—

A few months ago, I noted that "Hung up on a Dream" and "I'll Call You Mine" both start with a falling fifth (from D to G).

For whatever reason, I was thinking of this last night, and I realized that "She's Not There" also starts with a falling fifth, in the bass part.  Although that's E to A.

The falling fifth was something that Robert Schumann apparently used often and in reference to his wife Clara.  Rod Argent listened (and probably still does listen) to a lot of classical music, but I don't know if Schumann's falling fifths are where he got the idea to start those three songs with falling fifths (or if he listened to Schumann at all).  I'm sort of disposed to think not because they don't function in the same way.  Argent's falling fifths start the pieces with something of a jolt.  But I think the connection is still worth noting.

"She's Not There"

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I think I've learned the bass part for "She's Not There."  I've known most of the verses and the little riff that bridges the first two verses since the end of June, but then I got stuck.

But I was playing through it to-day, and I think I've figured out the part for the "Well, let me tell you 'bout the way she looked" parts.

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)