The abrupt guiter notes in Radiohead’s [Creep were an attempt to screw up the song because the guitarist didn’t like how tame it sounded.
Oh, ok, a radio edit. That explains why I’ve heard it that way on the radio for years. Kinda makes me irritated that I never noticed it, but I would rewind that tape back to Eruption and You Really Got Me over and over again, and would only listen to the last few seconds of that song.
I’m pretty sure it’s a hyper-correction. On the American recording, “saw” probably sounds like Paul’s “sore,” and so he adds the r to make it rhotic and Murkin. You see that a lot in American eye dialect by, say, Agatha Christie. On a recording it makes even less sense, but to Paul’s credit, it doesn’t sound Liverpuddlin.
It’s not a radio edit. In fact, the mutant version is the same length as the correct one. Someone effed up remixing it for the Best Of CD in 1996.
Yes, that’s the prevailing assumption (see my earlier cites) and exactly what I think it is: Paul trying to sound American and pronouncing an extra “r” where there isn’t one.
Zep’s Black Country Woman and Lennon’s Hide Your Love Away were the two I came in to mention.
However, I’ve always been bugged by one from Queen too, I think it’s on We Will Rock You. It’s the part where Brian May really starts jamming and there’s a note or two that’s just missed / off a bit.
I’ve always assume that “two foot small” in Hide Your Love Away was a Britishism - never bugged me.
As for the Queen/We Will Rock You bit - here is a link to a mobile-YouTube clip of it:
At about 1:35 is when May gets rocking. Is that what you are talking about? I hear you that it could be thought of as sounding a bit mistakey, but it just sounds like he is just rockin’ - hitting a low chord, running his fingers up and down the strings (you hear a bit of the string squeak) and then moving up the neck to play the more melodic lead stuff.
To me, there is a HUGE difference between a mistake left in and good old-fashioned “slop” - just issues on the edges of a person’s playing that isn’t technically perfect and where you can here the person at work. I love the slop I hear in this bit of the song, just like I love the slop in Jimmy Page’s, Jimi Hendrix’ and other folks’ playing.
Why do I think there is a huge difference? Heck, I dunno - maybe a “mistake” is something clearly defined as unintentional but left in; “slop” is when you play it correctly, but you can hear the hamsters at work behind the scenes a bit and choose not to try to clean up the execution…
Kenny Loggins comes in early in I’m Alright on the start of the repeated chorus and steps on the bass vocalist doing the “Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom”. The end result is: <bass> (dip dip dip dip dip dip dip dip) <Kenny> I’m alri- <bass> (Boom, boom, boom, boom) <Kenny> I’m alright
I wasn’t clear about this, my mistake. There’s a version played quite frequently on Pandora that isn’t the original album release. I’ll have to look to see where it comes from next time but it’s much more of a casual take and Lennon actually stops everyone at first, then “One two three one two three…” and begins again. I love the version but it’s a flub at the start.
Yes! Almost, about 1:38? I’ve mentioned it to others and they had no problem either but that’s always bugged me for as long as I’ve heard the song, especially when he did it during the Olympics opening ceremony. It just seems to me that it could sound better but he can’t quite get there, something’s off. I’d call it slop too though, not necessarily a mistake, so maybe we’re close on that. This version you link to though, I’ll be darned if it doesn’t sound better there than anything I’d heard before.
Thanks for the effort to address that. I didn’t get a very good description but hoped someone would know what I was talking about.
Yep - that’s slop/intentional noisiness, not a mistake; May just wants a bit of mayhem on his way up to the melodic lead. And May is a technically excellent player and a precise player in the studio - you couldn’t do all of the layering Queen did without extreme precision. I have always noticed and it has always made me smile as a great example of slop. But I can see where a person might hear it differently.
I haven’t heard the other version of Hide Your Love Away - I will look for it…
Death of Rats - I can see why you would think of Loggins’ start-stop as a mistake; I think they were just selling that last, climactic transition to the chorus coming out of the quieter bridge…
Wow, you are right, same length. A remix sounds like an odd (almost impossible) excuse for a re-edit. I wonder what the real reason that happened was?
Wow. I never knew this. Great story. Thank You!
Didn’t ELO’s cover of Roll Over Beethoven have the lead singer coming in too early with a “roll over …” then stopping, then singing the whole line a bit later at the right place?
Mick Jagger does this in the 1981 live album recording of “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction,” of all things. (Now we’re straying from the OP’s request for “studio album” examples, but we already went there with Stevie Wonder’s “Fingertips, Pt. 2”, and anyway, I think officially-released live albums are fair game, since the artists have a chance to fix mistakes by overdubbing – see, for example, the Stones’ Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out, or the Dead’s Europe '72).
Speaking of songs my grandmother knows the lyrics to, yet the guy who wrote them screwed it up onstage – okay, now we’re beyond live albums, but I have to mention this – Led Zeppelin re-grouped twice in the 1980s for special occasion (at Live Aid, and later at an anniversary celebration for Atlantic Records), and both times Robert Plant messed up the words to “Stairway to Heaven” !!
Ok. So this is one of those 'might have been intentional and weird things that were always intended to be on the album" , but here’s the breakdown.
Band/Album: Interpol - Turn on the Bright Lights (Which was incidentally just rereleased as a remastered double-disc with some good B-sides and demos for its 10th anniversary)
Song:** * Stella Was a Diver and She Was Always Down * **- As titled on the album at any rate Youtube of the album version
Possible flub or intentional deviation: ** The intro in which lead singer Paul Banks does:**
[ol]
[li]Introduces the song as if he was playing it live at a concert. Something that from what I can tell he’s never done on any other song since. [/li][li]Slightly messes up the title “This one’s called Stella was a diver and she’s always down.” Probably an actual error, but obviously a slight one. Combined she and was into she’s.[/li][li] Sounds like he’s talking with a bag of rocks in his mouth. I later read somewhere that he was smoking a cigarette and was basically talking out of the side of mouth as he exhaled. Pretty believable in retrospect, but odd sounding without that knowledge.[/li][/ol]
So Interpol fans (I know you’re out there somewhere), what’s the straight dope? Was this intended to be included from the start or was it just something that sounded cool while in the studio and they decided to leave it in there?
For me, personally, it’s a quirk that defines the song. I can’t imagine hearing the song without the intro by a mumbling Paul Banks and have it be as powerful. Weird, right? I’ve actually avoided listening to live recordings of the song because I don’t wanna lose the mystique of how it sounded on the album.
It sounds like he says “Stellar” despite being American.
I think he was born in England. (Wikipedia: Born in Essex, moved to Michigan when he was 3, moved to Spain later on and then finished his schooling in Mexico). So, there’s all that. He does sing certain songs with noticeable affectations, which may be intentional or not.
The “ping” at the end of the guitar solo in the Beatles’ song “Nowhere Man” is supposed to be there and is a harmonic, and is done by touching a string lightly at certain points with a fret hand finger instead of pushing it onto the fingerboard as usual, while you play the string with a pick or pluck it with your finger. It’s commonly used in guitar playing in all styles of music and Mr. Harrison put it at the end of his solo as a little ending flourish.
The intro to the Reverend Horton Heat’s “Big Little Baby”
And there’s a distinctive “pop” on Nick Lowe/Rockpile’s “Cruel To Be Kind” - at :23 and 1:08
UT~
Already pointed out 6 1/2 months ago: