In the last verse of “Brown-Eyed Handsome Man” Chuck Berry sings “2-3 the count, with nobody on, he hit a high fly into the stands”. 2-3? Two balls and three strikes?
The weird ending of “Ezy Rider” by Jimi Hendrix is due to Hendrix and Eddie Kramer leaning too far back in their chairs while manually fading the song out and falling on the floor, then grasping at the controls.
Another mixing mistake, but I can’t imagine how this happened. There was an odd “mutant” version of “Runnin’ With The Devil” on early pressings of Best of Van Halen vol. 1 (it also ended up on the Detroit Rock City movie soundtrack). Verses, choruses and guitar solos are all in the wrong order, nearly twenty years after the original recording.
In Metallica’s Master Of Puppets at the end of the Guitar Solo Kirk Hammett was trying to bend the string but ended up pull the string right off the neck of the guitar which ended up creating a high note that worked. That version is on the record.
I think someone posted before that at the beginning of The Police’s Roxanne you can hear an out of place set of piano notes and Sting laughing and it’s because during the recording he or someone bumped into (sat on?) the piano and they left it in. You can hear it hereat 0:04-0:07
I’m pretty sure that was intentional. A lot of that song is making fun of Dylan.
Besides the obvious reference of the guy thinking when you mention Dylan it was Dylan Thomas, we have “That’s all right Ma, everyone must get stoned.” And I’ve always figured Albert was Albert Grossman, Dylan’s manager.
There are tons of mistakes in Dylan tracks, since Dylan is not exactly a perfectionist. In “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” he starts “Oh what did you meet” and then corrects it to “And who did you meet” in the second. There is a mistake in “Like a Rolling Stone” also. And there are sometimes so many versions of the lyrics of some songs that it is hard to tell if the released version is a mistake or a revision. The bootleg and released versions of “Subterranean Homesick Blues” have lots of examples of this. Is “six time users” right or a mistake. It’s a great line in any case.
At 2:23, they start the song up again, much to the dismay of the piano player who is completely lost. He is fishing for the correct note, then yells out “What key? What key?”
By George, I think you’re right. I’ve never paid any attention to Dylan, and still know next to nothing about his recordings. So while it’s obvious (even to me) that Simon was poking fun at Dylan, I never realized the harmonica drop was an intentional gag. Makes me like it even more. Ignorance Fought.
This is one that has always bugged me. In Bon Jovi’s Livin’ On A Prayer, after the guitar solo the lyrics go “…hold on, ready or not, you live for the fight when that’s all that you’ve got”, and then there is a key change and he comes in with “whoa, we’re half way there…”- the vocals and music come in just a split second early, as if they cut in an overdub early in post production. And then it does it again at the next “whoa…”. If you’re keeping time, you can tell that at those two points it just sounds off. It’s not a full beat early, which could be intentional, but it sounds as if it happened during the edit.
The Beatles’ “I Wanna Hold Your Hand”: one of them says the word “something” about two thirds into the song, at a pause between sung lyrics. I heard this song a million times, and never noticed it – and now that I’m aware of it, when I hear the song it’s so obvious!
Another Beatles one isn’t a flub: just for fun, the backing vocals (John and George) for a verse of “Paperback Writer” are “Frere Jacques”.
(And the OP was surely referring to the beep at the exact halfway mark of “Tomorrow Never Knows”).
I agree with you about the late switch, but are you sure about that “wrong extra note”? It gives such a nice punch – it’s the root note of the V7 chord under the last “and I try”. Maybe it was a mistake, but they realized it sounded great, and kept it in.
I’d say I’m “pretty sure” but not positive. I agree that it gives “a nice punch” (perfect choice of words), sounds great, and was left in for that reason. However, I’ve read that Keith had initially imagined that riff being played by horns, recorded it on fuzzed guitar as a guide part to be overdubbed by horns, and was surprised when the unfinished recording (in his view) was released without the overdubs. This might explain why he was a little fast and loose with the part, to our good fortune.
By the way, (NITPICK) the chord underlying the last “and I try” isn’t the V7, it’s the subdominant A to the tonic E. (Please correct me if this is yet another of my senior brain farts.)
Frank Sinatra, “Luck Be a Lady.”
He sounds like he changes his mind about what word to sing in the middle of the sentence (from girl to dame).
At 3:37 on my mp3:
“Luck, let a gentleman see
Just how nice a g… a dame you can be.”
Robert Plant, “Your Ma Said You Cried in Your Sleep Last Night”
There are some noticeable vinyl hissy, scratchy noises at the beginning. Enough for them to say something about it being unavoidable on the album notes.
I read a long time ago that on the Beatles’ “Day in the Life” Ringo was on the can when they started recording and that is why the drums start so late. However a cursory internet search has turned up nothing and almost certainly what I thought was a brilliant piece of serendipity was likely planned the whole time.
Not so much a flub, but definitely a case of not bothering (or unable to afford) going back to record something as intended is A Quick One by The Who. Near the end they sang the intended cello parts (“Cello, cello, cello…”). Kit Lambert was too cheap to hire a cellist for what was essentially the first rock opera. In the end it was a fortuitous decision since it allowed the Who to perform the song live without any extra musicians.
Yes, but I consider that as part of the common at the time fad of leaving in studio discussions to make the track more real.
An interesting mistake is that the chord at the beginning of Her Majesty at the end of Abbey Road does not belong there, but belongs at the end of another song. When they cut the tape to make the tracks, they cut in the wrong place.
I think you may have thrown us off by saying the honk is at the end of the riff. I don’t hear one at the end of the riff, but I do hear one at the end of each line of the verse. It’s Toni hitting a quick power chord at the end of each one.
Wait, how’s that a mutant version? It sounds exactly like the one I grew up with.
