"This Will Be Our Year"

Yester-day, I heard a sloppy cover of "This Will Be Our Year" where the singer got half of the words wrong, but referencing the correct words led me to a realization.

I noticed that there are slant rhymes in the verses:  "the warmth from the sun" with "the darkness has gone" and "smile for me, little one" with "all your worry days are gone."  In a way, the imperfect nature of these rhymes illustrates the current absence of "the darkness" and "all your worry days."  Even poetically, they're incompatible with the present situation and time.

Odessey and Oracle

Last night, I tried to figure out the piano in the verses of "Brief Candles."  I was unsuccessful at this, but I did end up learning the chords for the chorus.  After playing them over a few times and thinking that they were familiar, I realized that they're very similar to the chords in the verses of "This Will Be Our Year."

The chorus of "Brief Candles" is:

|: A major | A major 7 | D major | F major | E major :|

D major | A major

D major | B major

The verse of "This Will Be Our Year" is:

A major | C# minor | A major 7 | D major

F major | E major | D major | A major

All but a few of the chords in the chorus of "Brief Candles" are held for a full measure, but the chords in the verse of "This Will Be Our Year" are each held for half a measure.

The bass parts for these two sections play a similar descending line.  Simplified, it's something like A (G#) G F# F E D A.  "This Will Be Our Year" has that G# (under C# minor); "Brief Candles" doesn't.  The bass part in "Brief Candles" also goes on a bit longer (under D major and B major).

These two sections are different enough that they're distinct but similar enough to lend some cohesion to the songs on Odessey and Oracle.  It's worth noting that both were written by Chris White.

"This Will Be Our Year"

Recently, I got Live from Studio Two, the live album and DVD of the Zombies' performance at Abbey Road Studios last September.  I haven't watched the DVD yet, but I listened to the CD a few days ago.  It occurred to me that over the years, there's been something of an expansion of the last lines of "This Will Be Our Year" - "And this will be our year / Took a long time to come."  Even on Odessey and Oracle, the tempo there slows a bit, but it's developed over the years as the Zombies play the song live.  On Live at the Bloomsbury Theatre, it's more or less the same as on Odessey and Oracle; the tempo just slows a bit.  I'm pretty sure though that in every other live version I've heard (Odessey and Oracle Revisited, Live at Metropolis Studios, Stage on Sixth performance, KEXP performance, the Daytrotter Session, Summer Stage Concert, Extended Versions, the 2015 performance of Odessey and Oracle on NPR, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction performance), there's a longer break between the two lines and Rod Argent plays a piano phrase there.  Because of this expansion, these live versions actually give a better sense of the duration of that "long time" than the original studio version does.

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While looking up those live versions, I also discovered that the Stage on Sixth performance (15 March 2013) and the KEXP performance (16 March 2013) were on sequential days!

"Butcher's Tale" b/w "This Will Be Our Year"

According to Russo's Collector's Guide, fifty years ago to-day (10 June 1968), the Zombies' "Butcher's Tale" b/w "This Will Be Our Year" (Date 2-1612) was released in the U.S. and Canada.

Odessey and Oracle

According to the Zombie Heaven liner notes, fifty years ago to-day (8 December 1967), the Zombies mixed the stereo versions of "This Will Be Our Year," "Care of Cell 44," and "Brief Candles."

"This Will Be Our Year"

According to the Zombie Heaven liner notes, fifty years ago to-day (15 August 1967), the brass overdub for "This Will Be Our Year" was recorded.

Odessey and Oracle

According to the Zombie Heaven liner notes, fifty years ago to-day (12 June 1967), the Zombies did some work on Odessey and Oracle.  The entry for 12 June reads: "EMI Abbey Road Room 53 recording: 'Friends of Mine', 'A Rose for Emily', 'This Will Be Our Year' (mono mixing)."

It seems that this was the mixing session for the mono versions of these songs; however, "A Rose for Emily" is mentioned again later in the list of production dates.  10 July lists "recording... 'A Rose for Emily' (reduction master)," and an-other mono mixing session with "A Rose for Emily" was on 20 July.

According to the Zombie Heaven liner notes, the cello part "was included in some initial mixes but eventually discarded."  So it seems that this 12 June mixing session was for the version with cello.

"Hung up on a Dream" was the other song recorded at that 10 July session, and because that includes mellotron, I'm assuming that 10 July was also when the mellotron part for "A Rose for Emily" was recorded (which was also later discarded).

"This Will Be Our Year"

According to the liner notes of Zombie Heaven and the 50th anniversary edition of Odessey and Oracle, fifty years ago to-day (2 June 1967) the Zombies recorded "This Will Be Our Year."

"This Will Be Our Year"

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I knew I was going to post the chords for "This Will Be Our Year" to-day, but a couple days ago, I was thinking about the bass part and realized that it's almost entirely quarter notes (there are a couple half notes and a triplet phrase).  So I notated that too, during which I found that I had a couple notes wrong in how I'd been playing it, although still - as always - there's no guarantee that this is correct (but I think it is):

The four in the first measure indicates the four measures of rest during the piano introduction.  I put the guitar chords above the bass part, but here they are typed out too:

|: A major / C# minor / A dominant 7 / D major
F major / E major / D major / A major :|

B major / D minor / A major
B major / D minor / D major / E major

|: A major / C# minor / A dominant 7 / D major
F major / E major / D major / A major :|

~key change~

|: Bb major / D minor / Bb dominant 7 / Eb major
Gb major / F major / Eb major / Bb major :|

C major / Eb minor / Bb major
C major / Eb minor / Eb major / F major

|: Bb major / D minor / Bb dominant 7 / Eb major
Gb major / F major / Eb major / Bb major :|

I should note that I found most of these chords something like seven years ago when I was first learning how to play piano.  I changed some to make them more accurate (what I originally found was rife with 7th chords, and I think there's only one [two, if you count the key change]).

"This Will Be Our Year"

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Last night it struck me that I hadn't tried figuring out the trombone parts in "This Will Be Our Year" for a long time (I think I tried maybe two or three years ago but didn't get anywhere).  I've been practicing trombone everyday for almost two months now, so I've gotten better (although I'm still pretty bad), and I thought I'd give it a go.

This is only the part during the first bridge (although I did play through the first verse with piano and bass), but the longer it goes on, the more unsure I am about it.  I don't know how many trombones are in the original (the 40th anniversary concert would suggest three), but I have four - two for each part.

I find it interesting though that the first part is chromatic (D#, D, C#), and - if I have it correct - it splits into thirds for the quotation in the lyrics, the "'Darling, I love you' / You gave me faith to go on."

According to the Zombie Heaven liner notes, this was arranged by Ken Jones, the Zombies' producer during their Decca days.  I'm wondering how much involvement the Zombies themselves had because that three-note chromatic phrase is typical of their writing.  Did they stick it in themselves, or was that Jones' emulating their style?  Also, since it was arranged by Jones and played by session players, I'm assuming that somewhere there exists the written arrangements, which I would love to see.

"A Change Is Gonna Come"

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I finally got around to looking into something that's been on my list since 15 October!

I don't remember the circumstances, but I got to wondering if "She's Coming Home" is like Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come."  There was an NPR article about it early last year, and one of Cooke's biographers briefly mentions the song's structure:  "Each verse is a different movement: The strings have their movement, the horns have their movement."  The melody of the verses is more-or-less the same, but the arrangement changes.

"She's Coming Home" - while it has a much simpler scope - does a similar thing.  The first verse ("I saw her walking out the other day...") has piano playing the chords and rapid guitar strumming that bridges the chord changes, while the bass and drums anchor everything.  But during the second verse ("Oh, baby, baby, baby, I'll be good to you..."), while the vocal melody is more-or-less the same (I haven't looked into it a great deal, but I think the phrases start on B notes instead of the E notes of the first verse), the arrangement is different.  The piano plays just the bass notes (almost inaudibly; it wasn't until The Decca Stereo Anthology that I even knew the piano was still present); the organ plays the chords; and the guitar switches from the frantic strumming of the first verse to a single strum on the first beat of every bar (although it starts on the fifth measure).  The bass and drums still anchor everything, but as the verse goes on, there's a significant decrescendo in the drums.

Aside from the similarity to the changing arrangement in "A Change Is Gonna Come," the differences in the arrangement reflect the lyrics.  The first verse has a sort of insistence, like the re-awakened feelings of the speaker/singer after he sees a girl he used to love and realizes that he still loves her; the second has an almost tender earnestness as the singer/speaker pleads for the renewal of the relationship.

Like all of these this-song-seems-to-be-inspired-by-this-other-song posts, this is purely conjecture, but there is evidence that the Zombies knew (and still know) "A Change Is Gonna Come."  In the Zombie Heaven liner notes (under "You've Really Got a Hold on Me/Bring It on Home to Me"), Chris White explains that "We also had a go at Sam Cooke's 'A Change Is Gonna Come.'"  And in this interview from a few years ago, Rod Argent says that it's a song he wishes he'd written (in the section starting at about 4:30).

I listened to "A Change Is Gonna Come" and transcribed the lyrics, and I noticed what might be a connection to "This Will Be Our Year," too.  Every verse in "A Change Is Gonna Come" ends with "It's been a long, a long time comin', but I know a change gonna come," and every verse in "This Will Be Our Year" ends with "This will be our year, took a long time to come."  Again, "This Will Be Our Year" doesn't have the social scope of "A Change Is Gonna Come," but it does have that similar structure.

"This Will Be Our Year"

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Back in March, I started re-reading John Eliot Gardiner's Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven.  In Chapter 5 (The Mechanics of Faith), Gardiner mentions the continuo part in the third movement of Christ lag in Todes Banden, BWV 4 (page 134, if you're that interested).  It plays a "two-note interval… with octave displacement."  This sounded like the octave-skipping bass part that Jim Rodford plays in some recent live versions of "This Will Be Our Year" (it's in the version on the Live at Metropolis Studios album, and I think it's in the version on Extended Versions too).

I looked into the continuo part for BWV 4 a few days ago, but - if I'm reading my bass clef correctly (for which there's reason to doubt) - that continuo part descends diatonically.  The bass part for "This Will Be Our Year" is chromatic, so I gave up trying to find a connection between them.

I didn't think anything more of this until yester-day when I was listening to Bach's Orchestral Suite, No. 3, BWV 1068.  I'd thought I'd heard the B-A-C-H motif in the second movement when I listened to it a few days before, so I pulled out the score (which I actually own a physical copy of) and looked at the notation while listening.  I didn't find the B-A-C-H motif (I don't think there's one there), but I did find a similar "two-note interval… with octave displacement," so I got thinking about this again.

I've been thinking about these similarities so much that now I feel like I'm trying to force them together, but they do have some things in common, even if it's just coincidental.  (And Argent's mentioned his love of Bach before, so it's possible that there's something intentional behind this.)  There's that "octave displacement," and while the bass part in "This Will Be Our Year" is chromatic (during the verses at least), there are some semi-tone pairs in Bach's continuo parts:

(notation found here [BWV 4] and here [BWV 1068])

I did the notation for "This Will Be Our Year" myself, so it's quite possible that there are errors.  I included the chords (simplified a bit) just so that it's slightly more clear how the bass part goes with the chords.

[I've been thinking about this for a few days now, and I'm still not sure if it makes much sense, but I'm posting it anyway.]

Odessey and Oracle

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I feel like I've been posting a lot here lately, but I've had lots to say lately.

Yester-day I recorded the guitar parts for my annual Odessey and Oracle, and I discovered something.

I don't know if I've written a post about it specifically, but I think I've mentioned this idea I have about the coherence of the album - that part of it is just because the musicality of the songs is similar.

In any case, I found an-other instance of that.  I'd forgotten the chords for parts of "This Will Be Our Year" (I really need to start writing things down), and it took me awhile before I came up with them again (B, Dm, A).  Once I did, I realized that the same three chords (in a different order - A, B, Dm, A) comprise a section in "Maybe after He's Gone."

I think it's also significant that part of "Brief Candles" has the progression D, A, D, B.  That's D major instead of D minor, but I still think it belongs in the same group.  Besides, the D minor in "This Will Be Our Year" is later raised to a D major.

"I Want Her She Wants Me"

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As I mentioned in the previous post, there are some key changes in the bridge in "I Want Her She Wants Me."  (It flips between G major and Eb major four times.)  After realizing this, I got to thinking about the lyrics during the bridge:

She told me to be careful if I loved her
'Cause she had given her heart once before

I realized that the first of the key changes takes place right before loved.  Along with the rest of the lyrics ("She told me to be careful"), that key change seems to imply that a romantic relationship between these two people won't work out.  It's as if the key change on loved indicates a misstep.

At first, I didn't think anything further about this, aside from that it's pretty cool how Rod Argent did this.  But then I realized that Chris White did the opposite in "This Will Be Our Year."

I mentioned this in a post about half a year ago, but in the bridges of "This Will Be Our Year," there's a minor to major modulation right before "'Darling, I love you.'"  (The whole line is, "And I won't forget the way you said, 'Darling, I love you.'")  With this realization, I thought this was super cool.  One song has a key change that seems to portent ill toward a relationship, and an-other song on the same album has a minor-to-major modulation that suggests the opposite - that the declaration of love is a joyous thing.

And then I thought of something else.  I'll admit that I had to look at the track listing to confirm this, but "I Want Her She Wants Me" and "This Will Be Our Year" are sequential tracks.  Not only is there this playing around with the musical accompaniments to love, but they're on back-to-back songs!

If they planned it that way, it's genius.  Even if they didn't plan it that way, it's amazing.

—

This post is the fifth of five ideas/realizations I had about Odessey and Oracle.

"This Will Be Our Year"

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In December last year, I wrote a short post talking about the bass part for "This Will Be Our Year" (which is a chromatic phrase from A down to E), specifically how in recent live shows, Jim Rodford plays it with an octave between each note.  I'd made the connection between this and some organ part, which - at the time - I couldn't place.

I later found out that the organ piece I had in mind was Robert Schumann's fourth fugue ("Mässig, doch nicht zu langsam") on the theme of B-A-C-H, Op. 60 (found here):

After discovering this, I realized that the connection I was positing wasn't valid because, while Schumann's piece does contain sequential half-steps (like the bass part for "This Will Be Our Year"), they're not separated by octaves.

However, listening to an album of Liszt's organ works to-day, I discovered that he (Liszt) also wrote a fugue on the theme B-A-C-H.  So I looked it up, and those two half-steps in Schumann's fugue are that B-A-C-H theme: B flat, A, C, B natural (presumably it's also in the Liszt fugue, but I didn't look up the notation for that).  According to the Wikipedia article for BACH Motif: "In German musical nomenclature… the note B natural is written as H and the B flat as B, [so] it forms Johann Sebastian Bach's family name.”

So while the specific half-steps in Schumann's fugue weren't adopted into the "This Will Be Our Year" bass part, they are connected to Bach, whom Rod Argent was interested in.  And if Bach's playing around with half-steps was what interested Rod Argent in the same thing, there could still be a connection between the B-A-C-H theme and Rod Argent's bass parts, which often contain two sequential half-steps ("Whenever You're Ready" has A, Ab, G, for instance).  That might not be the case here, as "This Will Be Our Year" is a Chris White song (which I always seem to forget), but this still illustrates a connection between Bach and the Zombies, whether or not his work was a conscious influence.

"This Will Be Our Year"

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For the past few days, I've been working on the part of "This Will Be Our Year" after the key change.  I'm still not very good at it (I make at least one mistake in this, and after the key change it's still pretty choppy), but at least I know the chord shapes now.

There's still a bunch of non-chordal stuff in this that I have yet to work out too.

"This Will Be Our Year"

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I just tried out a thing with the bass part of "This Will Be Our Year" where I jump octaves after every other note.  I'm pretty sure that Jim Rodford plays it this way on the Live at Metropolis Studios album (I'd have to watch the DVD to be absolutely certain), but I think on the original record, it's just a straight descending chromatic phrase.

Still, I quite like the alternating octave version, and - while I'd have to do a bit of looking to find which ones - I think that sort of octave-jumping descending chromatic figure is in some of the organ works I have by Bach and/or Mendelssohn.  (Incidentally, the versions I have were recorded by Peter Hurford, who was the choirmaster at the St Albans Cathedral Choir while Rod Argent was a choirboy there.)

Odessey and Oracle

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I've been focusing on learning songs from Odessey and Oracle lately, so when I listened to it this morning, I was paying more attention than usual.  And I noticed some things.  (It's a bit weird to me that there are still things I'm only just now discovering about it.)

• The piano figure that occurs near the end of "Care of Cell 44" is musically foreshadowed by the a cappella parts earlier in the song.  They're the same notes; it's just that one is multi-tracked voices and the other is on piano.
• The final G in the first bass riff in "I Want Her She Wants Me" is an octave lower than the rest, which is not the way I'd been playing it.
• In "This Will Be Our Year," the chord progression goes from D minor to D major at the same time as the proclamation of love.  "And I won't forget the way you said [minor to major modulation] 'Darling, I love you.'"  It gives it more emphasis.
• I'd been suspicious of this, but I'm now pretty sure that the guitar solo on "Friends of Mine" is double-tracked.  In the stereo version, you can hear how one comes in just a little bit later than the other when it's repeated.
• "A Rose for Emily" and "Butcher's Tale" contain the same three-note phrase:  F E D.  Those sorts of musical phrases appearing in multiple songs may provide the album with some coherence.  (But I don't want to emphasize that too much - I don't know whether Rod Argent and Chris White consciously thought of that, whether it just illustrates musical sensibilities that they liked and unknowingly used frequently, or whether it's just a coincidence that these songs have similar musical features.)  Additionally, "Time of the Season" has a three-note falling phrase, but that's E D C.  And an-other similar feature is a bass part centered around two A's an octave apart, which occurs in "Care of Cell 44" (where they're separated by an E) and "Brief Candles" (where it's just an octave jump).

"This Will Be Our Year"

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On Thursday, I did some more work on trying to figure out the bass part during the key change, and I think I've got it.

"This Will Be Our Year"

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I felt bad that I knew only part of the bass part for "This Will Be Our Year," so I wanted to figure out the rest of it.

I did make some progress, but I'm having trouble figuring out the bass part right at the key change.  After that, it's exactly the same as the first half (except a key higher).  This is just the first half.