Aberrations/outtakes kept in a song's final mix

Even though a search failed me, it still feels like there’s been a similar thread about this, so please post a link, if so.

When I say aberration - basically anything that you would deem entirely extraneous to the song.

Three that immediately come to mind:

  • the cough in the Velvet Underground’s “Who Loves the Sun”. At 1:05

  • Carl Palmer saying “shit” (among other pre-recording verbalizing) at the beginning of “The Sheriff”. At 14:59

  • Plant’s “below!” (or whatever the hell he’s irrelevantly blurting) in “Rock and Roll”. At 2:40
    There are oodles of “1…2…3…”'s out there so hopefully your offering will have a bit more distinction.:wink:

There’s an error in I Saw Her Again by The Mamas and the Papas. Wikipedia describes it:

It sounds like there were two mistakes; Denny coming in early, and the engineer including Denny’s track too early. It works, though. I wonder if they decided to do it that way in live performances.

Astral Weeks is one of my favorite moody albums… evoking the Irish countryside, and you forget that it was a young Van Morrison sitting in a windowless recording studio.

Until he turns a page of lyrics in the middle of Slim Slo Slider (at the 1:26 mark).

*that’s what it sounds like, but there’s also a “hitting wood” sound…any Audio Sherlocks have an opinion?

On Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” there was a track bleed-through that as a teen in the 70s I thought was some kind of defect in my vinyl. It was indeed a defect, but one they decided to keep.

In the Who’s “Eminence Front” there’s a flub in Pete’s singing of backup to the chorus (he gets out of step with Roger). Not clear why they left it in, but it gets cleaned up on a re-released version.

In the song “Louie, Louie” by the Kingsmen —

Drummer Lynn Easton drops his stick and can be heard yelling “Fuck!”

Singer Jack Ely comes in too early after the guitar break.

In the song “Second Wind” by Billy Joel, Joel flubs one of the lines and laughs. He left it in at the urging of then-wife Christie Brinkley since it illustrated the song’s point that it’s okay to be fallible.

After “Get Back”, there’s John’s dumb “I’d like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves and I hope we’ve passed the audition.” followed by obsequious laughter, and then John’s impersonation of Gracie Fields: “That was ‘Can You Dig It’ by Georgie Wood, and now we’d like to do ‘Hark, the Angels Come’”, which leads into “Let It Be”.

Does Niel Young slightly muff it up, in the title track to After the Gold Rush, when he goes “when the sun burst through the skRy”? At 1:23.

heh or is it “this guy”?

The opening to the Bonzo Dog Band’s “Doctor Jazz” has a bit of talk before things start. Knowing the Bonzos, that could have been deliberate. Their version of the Monster Mash starts out with a drum beat, which stops, then starts again.

I Brook Benton and Diana Washington’s You’ve Got What It Takes, Brook steps all over Diana’s spot at about the two minute mark. They both recover nicely.

This makes me think that there wasn’t much editing or post production mixing back in the '50s and '60s. Or do you think the producers thought it sounded cute?

“Let It Be” has that one piano chord Paul whiffs just after the lead guitar solo.

Just before the “na-na-na” fade in Hey Jude, Paul hits a wrong chord on the piano and says “Fucking hell.”

I’m not sure I buy this one; I always thought he was laughing because he did the stuttering effect, which was presumably on purpose? Do you have a cite where you heard the Christie Brinkley story? Not trying to be “that guy”, just surprised I never heard that before, being a huge Billy Joel fan.

There’s two studio versions of “Under Pressure”, the original version and a remastered one that came out in the 90’s that sounded better but removes Freddie Mercury’s shouting “that’s okay!” at about a minute in, which makes me think that him shouting that wasn’t originally planned to happen.

Original Studio

Remaster

The stereo version of “Please Please Me” has John singing the first line of the second verse while Paul correctly sings the first line of the third verse. John catches himself a couple of words in.

But the all-time leader of extraneous noise from a classic band has to be the Beach Boys.

If you’ll accept Wikipedia,

If not, here’s a link to an AP interview with Joel from 1985, recovered by Google.

https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=YIsvAAAAIBAJ&sjid=pNwFAAAAIBAJ&pg=1560,403216&dq=you-re+only+human+billy-joel&hl=en

The aimless piano and ringing phone at the end of Bowie’s “Life on Mars” really detracts from the tune, AFAIC. Trying to go for the irreverent, artsy thing, especially after such a grand, orchestral conclusion - whatevs; meh.

Otherwise my DB fave. (Heh, well, maybe tied with “Look Back in Anger” and Station to Station title track.)

Just before “Monsters”, David Yow of The Jesus Lizard yells this out. (“dude…ooooo Doug!” “Yeah?”)?

Supposedly the clanging piano chord and laugh at the beginning of Roxanne were originally Sting accidentally sitting on a keyboard and reacting to it.

Another Beatles:

At the end of “A Day in the Life,” they hit the final piano chord and hold it (forever) while you hear someone shushing someone else, chair squeaks and the AC ducts blowing.

No one has mentioned Ronnie Van Zant and ‘Turn it up.’ in Sweet Home Alabama?

Pretty much the entirety of Louie Louie by the Kingsmen. :smiley:

But especially (from Wiki):

ETA: On re-reading the OP, I see he was asking about entirely extraneous elements, not flubs. But since most of the other examples are flubs, here’s another.