There was a saxophone outro on a song that I can’t remember the name of. I thought it was a Paul Simon song, but I can’t find it. The outro is a fast alto sax riff that finally fades.
How about Ringo’s “I’ve got blisters on my fingers!” at the end of Helter Skelter?
I’ve never seen a live band do a fade-out. Who did you see attempting that?
Doubtfully the same songs you’re thinking:
Supertramp’s Bloody Well Right
Lennon’s Whatever Gets You Through the Night (which the video - and the song itself - always reminded me of an SNL credit intro/outro thingie.
This is also probably not the song you’re thinking of (and if you or anybody else does figure it out, please let us know, because I’ve been racking my brains trying to remember if & when I’ve heard what you describe), but… ABC’s lushly orchestrated “All Of My Heart” ends with about a minute’s worth of outro that fades to a solo saxophone.
Only very amateurish bands of the high school and college bar variety. In my youth in Chicago, I saw a ton of music - from the very very good to the truly awful. From concert halls, to friends’ basements.
And I certainly played in some pretty poor bands, where we had trouble trying to figure out how to end songs. Never attempted a fadeout, tho.
Hey Jude
The “Well, meanwhile, I’m still thinkin’” call out to Chuck Berry at the end of T. Rex’s “Bang a Gong”
Help
Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds
Run For Your Life (yeah, quick - I just like when John goes na-na-na)
Magical Mystery Tour
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Rain
Michelle
Hello Goodbye
USSR’s use of an airplane flying away made for a fine fade out.
Piggies
2HB by Roxy Music.
Made even better by the fact that the last lines are:
Your memory stays
It lingers ever
Fade away never…
j
Lots of Beatles songs mentioned, yet I still haven’t seen the first two I happened to think of:
“Strawberry Fields Forever” (with its spooky “[del]I buried Paul[/del] cranberry sauce”), and
“Cry Baby Cry” (with Paul’s “Can you take me back” song fragment)
An obvious one:
Bowie’s “Space Oddity”; it kinda just drifts off into space.
Darn - I mentioned Help, when I meant to post A Hard Days Night instead.
How about a fade in with the Velvet Underground’s Train Coming Around the Bend? (cleverly evoking a train moseying toward us)
A lot of Supertramp’s songs had great outros.
Starship Trooper - Yes
Desire Lines - Deerhunter
DIIV has a couple great ones, too. I’m a sucker for a long, drawn out outro.
EVERY song should be capable of being sung in front of listeners. Listeners who are actually THERE, and have shown up there, solely for the purpose of listening to that song being sung. As such, EVERY song should have a definitive ending.*
And any song that can be performed in front of listeners can be recorded verbatim in a studio.
So my answer is that I have no favorite song fadeout. Song fadeouts are the Designated Hitters of the recording industry. Please be good enough to spread the word about this fact, as it is my understanding that people are still releasing songs with them, and this must be stopped.
*This is the sole exception I know of. I’d be grateful to learn of any others. TIA.
And one of my favourite Yes passages.
Probably not your style, but definitely a long, drawn-out fade with Cephalic Carnage’s Ontogeny of Behaviour
Steely Dan had two guitar solos that I wish I could have heard to the end. Skunk Baxter on My Old School and Larry Carlton on *Kid Charlemagne. *
Have a Good Time. A thing of beauty.
I listened, I learned, I liked it!
Thank you.