George Har­ri­son, the qui­et Bea­t­le, was the first to break out on his own in 1970 with his glo­ri­ous triple album All Things Must Pass. “Gar­bo talks! — Har­ri­son is free!” wrote Melody Mak­er’s Richard Williams in a review, a ref­er­ence to the reclu­sive silent film star who, like the Bea­t­les’ gui­tarist, kept her mys­tique and star pow­er even after fans first heard her voice. Har­rison’s rev­e­la­tion could­n’t have been as dra­mat­ic as all that.

Sure­ly, no fan of “Tax­man,” “With­in You With­out You,” “Here Comes the Sun,” “Some­thing” — and espe­cial­ly The White Album’s stun­ning “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Sleeps” — doubt­ed that George had it in him all along. But the oth­er Bea­t­les would only humor him dur­ing The White Album ses­sions. That is, until he brought Eric Clap­ton into the stu­dio. “That then made every­one act bet­ter,” Har­ri­son remem­bers in Anthol­o­gy. “Paul got on the piano and played a nice intro and they all took it more seri­ous­ly.”

The ques­tion in the You Can’t Unhear This video above is whether Paul played bass on the final stu­dio record­ing and, if not, who did?  It’s an inte­gral part of the song’s feel — the grit­ty, restrained growl, slow­ly grow­ing in inten­si­ty until it sounds like it might give Har­rison’s gui­tar some­thing else to weep about. The mys­tery of the aggres­sive-yet-mut­ed part “has per­plexed schol­ars and Bea­t­les fans for decades.” If you’ve remained unper­plexed, you might find your­self ques­tion­ing assump­tions about this most beloved of Bea­t­les’ tunes.

Ses­sions for the song began in late July of 1968, then picked up again in August, but Har­ri­son decid­ed to scrap every­thing and start over in Sep­tem­ber once Ringo returned from a “self-imposed exile” in the Mediter­ranean. The band seemed refreshed: “the qual­i­ty of the per­for­mances on the new Sep­tem­ber ver­sion seemed to reflect that renewed spir­it.” Ses­sions for the track wrapped on Sep­tem­ber 24. “For many years it was believed that this was the record­ing ses­sion in which Eric Clap­ton over­dubbed his lead gui­tar solo,” writes the Bea­t­les Bible. Not so — Clap­ton sat in on all of the live takes record­ed with the band. Ah, but who played bass? See the mys­tery take shape above and post your the­o­ries below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bea­t­les’ 8 Pio­neer­ing Inno­va­tions: A Video Essay Explor­ing How the Fab Four Changed Pop Music

Is “Rain” the Per­fect Bea­t­les Song?: A New Video Explores the Rad­i­cal Inno­va­tions of the 1966 B‑Side

Hear the Beau­ti­ful Iso­lat­ed Vocal Har­monies from the Bea­t­les’ “Some­thing”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

The word “sem­i­nal” does a lot of work in expres­sions like “sem­i­nal band/album/track, etc.” Yes, it’s an adjec­tive denot­ing “major­ly influ­en­tial,” even “essen­tial.” It’s also an adjec­tive relat­ing direct­ly to the male repro­duc­tive sys­tem. The con­cep­tu­al use of the term does not nec­es­sar­i­ly exclude women, who can per­fect­ly well be said to “seed” artis­tic move­ments. But it does sug­gest that cre­ativ­i­ty is an inher­ent­ly mas­cu­line act. To take a broad­er view, we could say that art is non-bina­ry; it includes all of the gen­er­a­tive prin­ci­ples involved in the act of cre­ation, includ­ing ges­ta­tion, birthing, and nur­tur­ing new art forms.

In this vein, we might call Ger­man elec­tron­ic pio­neers Kraftwerk a “sem­i­nal matrix” of musi­cal activ­i­ty, an econ­o­my of cre­ative work led by two fathers — Flo­ri­an Schnei­der and Ralf Hüt­ter  — who mid­wived a techno/electro rev­o­lu­tion, and — indi­rect­ly — through ear­ly spin-off projects like NEU!, an exper­i­men­tal post-punk/New Wave rev­o­lu­tion.

The best known of the “Krautrock” bands to emerge in the 1970s, ear­ly ver­sions of Kraftwerk includ­ed in its ranks Ger­man pro­duc­er Con­ny Plank (unof­fi­cial­ly) as well as drum­mer Klaus Dinger, and gui­tarist Michael Rother, both of whom went on to play in the afore­men­tioned NEU! and “sem­i­nal” avant-garde bands like Har­mo­nia and La Düs­sel­dorf.

In its ear­ly, anar­chic phase, “Kraftwerk’s music nei­ther ref­er­enced nor evoked the robot­ic,” writes Simon Reynolds at NPR. “They start­ed, in the final years of the 1960s, as post-psy­che­del­ic pro­gres­sives — long hair and all. (Watch their first record­ed gig in 1970 here.) In 1968, Hüt­ter and Schnei­der met at the Acad­e­my of Arts in Rem­scheid, near Düs­sel­dorf, where they stud­ied piano and flute, respec­tive­ly. Shar­ing an inter­est in impro­vi­sa­tion and avant-garde elec­tron­ics, as well as a fond­ness for The Vel­vet Under­ground, the Doors and the mul­ti­me­dia provo­ca­tions of Fluxus, they joined with three oth­er musi­cians and record­ed the album Tone Float under the name Organ­i­sa­tion.”

This ear­ly avant-garde phase con­tin­ued for a time, but once Dinger and Rother left and were replaced by Wolf­gang Flür and Karl Bar­tos, Kraftwerk began its unlike­ly climb up the charts, and into the hands of remix­ers and DJs every­where, with 1975’s Auto­bahn. “That is the point at which they went from a krautrock curio to a world-his­tor­i­cal force,” Reynolds writes, “when the sin­gle edit of the 24-minute title track became an inter­na­tion­al hit in 1975.” The song retains some instru­men­tal ele­ments from the band’s pre­vi­ous incar­na­tions — “twin­kling gui­tar and waft­ing flute fea­ture along­side synth puls­es and drum machine.”

But the meld­ing of man and machine was well under­way. “Cru­cial­ly, it was music stripped of indi­vid­u­al­ized inflec­tion and per­son­al­i­ty” — not only were Kraftwerk beyond 70s gen­der stereo­types, they were chart­ing the course for the post-human before the term had any cur­ren­cy. “We go beyond the indi­vid­ual feel,” Schnei­der told Sounds mag­a­zine. “We are more like vehi­cles, a part of our men­sch machine, our man-machine. Some­times we play the music, some­times the music plays us, some­times… it plays.” Kraftwerk may have played Ger­man stereo­types for humor in music videos and live per­for­mances, but their detach­ment was no act — their approach from the late 1970’s onward was entire­ly the oppo­site of rock and rol­l’s self (indulgent)-expression.

Why, then, does Kraftwerk belong in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? Just induct­ed this year, their pres­ence is tru­ly indis­putable. It’s not much of an exag­ger­a­tion to say, as the Hall of Fame does, that they “are the foun­da­tion upon which all syn­the­siz­er-based rock and elec­tron­ic dance music is built.… Kraftwerk’s influ­ence can be heard in the work of David Bowie and Bri­an Eno, the synth-pop of Depeche Mode, the elec­tron­ic-rock inte­gra­tion of U2, the ‘robot rock’ of Daft Punk, the pro­duc­tion tech­niques of Kanye West, and in count­less EDM and dub­step artists.”

This is just to name a tiny sam­pling of the musi­cians influ­enced by the per­fec­tion­is­tic Ger­man four­some. The case can and has been made that for the sheer breadth of their influ­ence, Kraftwerk is more impor­tant than even the Bea­t­les to the his­to­ry of pop­u­lar music, for rather than mas­ter­ing and trans­form­ing the music of the 20th cen­tu­ry’s first half, they invent­ed the rock and roll of the future. See many more clas­sic Kraftwerk videos at this YouTube chan­nel.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Psy­che­del­ic Ani­mat­ed Video for Kraftwerk’s “Auto­bahn” from 1979

Kraftwerk’s First Con­cert: The Begin­ning of the End­less­ly Influ­en­tial Band (1970)

The Case for Why Kraftwerk May Be the Most Influ­en­tial Band Since the Bea­t­les

Watch Kraftwerk Per­form a Real-Time Duet with a Ger­man Astro­naut Liv­ing on the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion

Kraftwerk’s “The Robots” Per­formed by Ger­man First Graders in Adorable Card­board Robot Out­fits

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Hav­ing evolved over cen­turies — indeed, mil­len­nia — the for­mal ele­gance and son­ic beau­ty of stringed instru­ments con­tin­ue to inspire their play­ers toward ever-greater heights of vir­tu­os­i­ty. But of course, the attain­ment of vir­tu­os­i­ty itself does­n’t come easy, and what­ev­er alti­tude you reach, you’ll still be dogged by some of the same prob­lems you were as a novice. What vio­lin­ist, for instance, could ever ful­ly put out of their mind the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a string’s break­ing as they play, whether at home or in Carnegie Hall? Not celebri­ty play­er Ray Chen, sure­ly, giv­en that it’s hap­pened to him at least twice in the past five years.

Being a Youtu­ber as well, Chen has turned these onstage mis­for­tunes to his advan­tage. Just last week he put up “Vio­lin­ist string BREAKS dur­ing Tchaikovsky,” a video that cap­tures his lat­est such expe­ri­ence while play­ing with the Seat­tle Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra. Far from grind­ing to a halt, the per­for­mance con­tin­ues with only a minor hitch.

After mak­ing a valiant attempt to sol­dier on short an E string, Chen switch­es to what appears to be the back­up plan. With­out the option of singing the blues while chang­ing the string him­self, as B.B. King did at Farm Aid, he swaps his instru­ment with that of the con­cert­mas­ter, who pass­es it down the line. Unfazed, Chen con­tin­ues play­ing right where he left off.

Chen fol­lowed a sim­i­lar pro­ce­dure after a string break in 2017, while play­ing in Brus­sels with the Tai­wan Phil­har­mon­ic. Then, as now, he uploaded the footage to his Youtube chan­nel, where it has  racked up more than 1.6 mil­lion views. The brief clip also cap­tures his final toss onto the floor of the spare pack of strings he’d had the good sense to place in his pock­et before­hand. The acco­lades post­ed in the com­ments below bring to mind the sto­ry of 19th-cen­tu­ry vio­lin­ist Carl Her­man Unthan. Born with­out arms, Unthan became a vir­tu­oso by play­ing instead with his feet — which he also used to change a string that broke on him in con­cert. This proved aston­ish­ing enough that he’s said lat­er to have delib­er­ate­ly weak­ened strings in order to repeat the spec­ta­cle for oth­er audi­ences. Just imag­ine if he’d had Youtube.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

B.B. King Changes Bro­ken Gui­tar String Mid-Song at Farm Aid, 1985 and Doesn’t Miss a Beat

Why Vio­lins Have F‑Holes: The Sci­ence & His­to­ry of a Remark­able Renais­sance Design

The Art and Sci­ence of Vio­lin Mak­ing

Watch Price­less 17-Cen­tu­ry Stradi­var­ius and Amati Vio­lins Get Tak­en for a Test Dri­ve by Pro­fes­sion­al Vio­lin­ists

A Gigan­tic Vio­lin Floats Down Venice’s Grand Canal with a String Quar­tet on Top

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.