There’s a cough at the beginning of Black Sabbath’s Sweet Leaf. Oh, wait a minute…
Joe
Joe Satriani’s “Flying In a Blue Dream” starts out with his amp picking up the audio from a TV show (or something). It really fits the mood, so they left it in.
John of the “Mamas and Papas” said in an interview regarding “I Saw Her Again,” he said “I’d like to take credit for it, for we couldn’t have done it that good if we tried.” And it does sound good. Blondie laughing on “The Tide is High” is another example. She rerecorded it correctly where she didn’t slur and laugh on the word “High” but it didn’t sound as good. “These Dreams” by Heart. In an interview, Nancy Heart said she had a bad cold when she cut the version on the albumn. She said they went back and did it later and to her surprise no one liked it as much as her “horse” voice. So they used it.
Remember in the old days on records… I’m dating myself… Songs were recorded reel to reel, it wasn’t as easy to fix mistakes and errors as it is now. Digitally it’s very simple. Of course there are examples where they fixed and edited a lot for example Diana Ross’s “Touch Me In The Morning.” Michael Masser co-writer and producer said Ross was so unhappy with her recording they spliced so many takes, according to Masser “There probably isn’t more than 10 seconds from one take on the finished song.”
I think now the emphasis is on pefection. What to me is really amazing when you look at older artists like Dinah Shore and Jo Stafford, sing live their voices match their recordings and they are good. I rarely hear any current artist or any artist prior to 1970 that sound close to their recorded songs when they sing them live.
Crap. This was the one I came in to post.
“Baker St. Muse take one…” [guitar flub]
“shit, shit, shit… take two…”
Records by The Replacements are filled with flubs, false starts and mistakes…their first record in particular. On I Hate Music, Paul Westerberg cuts off the bass line intro by yelling “No! No!” in a very frustated and condescending manner. The song then starts up again.
There are a couple other instances at the beginning of songs where you can hear the studio tech saying “tape rolling.” On one occasion Westerberg replies “Okaaaayy” very snidely, and then starts into the song. On another occasion, “tape rolling” is met with a “so, what” from Westerberg before the song begins.
Perhaps more famously (to Mats fans anyway), Westerberg messes up the chords to Treatment Bound. He tells the other players to “keep going” through that part. The song concludes with Tommy Stinson asking “what are the chords to that one part?” To which Westerbeg drunkenly (?) replies, “Fucked 'em up”.
I’m sure there are many more that I haven’t mentioned. We could probably have a whole thread about bad takes on Replacements records alone.