“Bohemian Rhapsody” has so many disparate parts that I can’t say that any portion of it is either “characteristic” or “uncharacteristic”.
The Byrds’ gorgeous, ethereal version of Gerry Goffin and Carole King’s “Wasn’t Born to Follow”, from The Notorious Byrd Brothers, has a jarring, distorted instrumental interlude in the middle (around 0:57). Actually, several other songs from that LP do something similar.
From here:
I always thought that the acoustic guitar break in A Space Oddity was a little out of place.
“American Girl” by Tom Petty suffers by what I call the disco solo that got stuck into the middle of it.
I know it was all cool to do that sort of thing back in 1967, but I sure wish Buffalo Springfield had left those goofy instrumental interludes out of “Broken Arrow”… they’re pure novelty and really deflate the power of an otherwise incredible song.
I’ll add the Moody Blues’ concept album Days of Future Passed. In the middle of all that poetic language*, they insert the phrase “senior citizens”. Couldn’t they have said “old people”, or “our grandparents”, or something other than that clinical, tax-return-worthy euphemism?
(*Okay, now that I’m grown up, I see it’s bad poetry, but still.)
Another Queen song, Seven Seas of Rhye, ending with “Oh I do like to be beside the seaside”
Shakespear’s sister’s ‘Stay’ was a mournful love song interrupted by a sudden evil witch growling that she was going to kill you, then going back to the love song.
It’s in the Clapton version too, and yeah, it is a bit displaced and really long. I guess those were the days of prog rock and vinyl singles that really gave you your money’s worth.
Clapton seems to have copied most of the song from that Derek guy…
Graeme Edge is responsible for several such unintentionally hilarious moments of horrendous versification on Moody Blues albums, that being perhaps the worst.
Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd’s “See Emily Play” is punctuated with sped-up piano bits just after the choruses, that come from nowhere and derail the rhythm. Picking out anomalous parts in Syd Barrett songs is futile though. “Jugband Blues” is a series of anomalous parts one after the other.
Not really songs, per se, but Mike Oldfield had an odd habit of putting novelty tunes at the end of his album-long mid-70s compositions. The second side of Tubular Bells ends with a rollicking version of the Sailor’s Hornpipe, and Ommadawn - the hardcore pre-mental breakdown fan favourite - ends with a curious folksy tune called “On Horseback”.
E.g. after thirty minutes of atmospheric, chin-stroking instrumental Celtic folk-rock fusion the audience gets:
“Hey and away we go
Through the grass, across the snow
Big brown beastie, big brown face
I’d rather be with you than flying through space!”
Along similar lines, The Orb’s UF Orb is a masterpiece of early-90s ambient techno that ends with a minute-long track called “Sticky End”, that sounds like what can only be described as farting noises. British people, eh?
I’m not sure what you mean.
This was one of the biggest reasons why I bought a high-end tape deck back in the day; so I could edit out the damn poetry.
That’s the only version I’ve ever heard. Are you talking about the long, endless boring section after the the good rockin’ part? The part used in Goodfellas when we find the toupe salesman and his wife dead in their car?
Or is there an even longer version?
Clapton was in Derek and the Dominos. There is no Derek.
Twas a joke. Eric Clapton was Derek & The Dominos (along with Jim Gordon, Bobby Whitlock & Carl Radle with Duane Allman sitting in sometimes).
Harry Chapin gave fantastic concerts. In person, the interlude was incredibly moving, but yes, it was a little jarring on the album.
The penultimate stanza in “Tangled up in Blues” by Dylan has always thrown me.
“I lived with them on Montague Street
In a basement down the stairs
There was music in the cafes at night
And revolution in the air
Then he started into dealing with slaves
And something inside of him died
She had to sell everything she owned
And froze up inside
And when finally the bottom fell out
I became withdrawn”
Them? Who’s “them”? Up til that point in the song, it’s been a pretty straight-forward narrative. But now it’s almost as if Dylan has slipped into the third person for one stanza.
I admit that by Dylan’s standards, it’s not particularly opaque and you can at least come up with some plausible interpretations about who “them” is. But every time I listen to the song, I get to this stanza and go “What just happened?”