Paul McCartney’s “Black­bird” com­petes with Lennon’s “Julia” as the most ten­der song on the Bea­t­les’ White Album and maybe in the band’s entire cat­a­logue. Inspired by a Bach piece that McCart­ney and George Har­ri­son learned to play when they were young, its fin­ger-picked acoustic gui­tar has the sound of a folk lul­la­by. But the song’s shift­ing time sig­na­tures and del­i­cate melody make it some­thing of a tricky one: record­ing ses­sions at Abbey Road involved a series of 32 takes, most of them false starts and only 11 com­plete. The ver­sion we hear on the album is the final take, fin­ished while Lennon worked on “Rev­o­lu­tion 9” in the stu­dio next door.

You can see 1:33 of that ses­sion in the footage above, cap­tured on 16mm by a film crew from Apple Records direct­ed by Tony Bramwell, part of a 10-minute pro­mo that also includ­ed footage of McCart­ney record­ing “Hel­ter Skel­ter” and “var­i­ous oth­er scenes from inside the stu­dio, in the Apple Bou­tique, Apple Tai­lor­ing, McCartney’s gar­den and oth­er loca­tions,” the Bea­t­les Bible notes. It’s an ephemer­al doc­u­ment of time pass­ing peace­ably dur­ing the gru­el­ing 5‑month White Album ses­sions, which for all their leg­endary ten­sion and ran­cor, includ­ed many moments like these.

The three-day ordeal that was the record­ing of “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” (after which engi­neer Geoff Emer­ick quit) pro­vides stark con­trast, and maybe con­fir­ma­tion that the Bea­t­les were at their best when they worked sep­a­rate­ly in 1968. The brief film above also con­firms a more tech­ni­cal record­ing con­cern: the tick­ing we hear in the stu­dio track is not a metronome, but Paul’s feet alter­nate­ly tap­ping on the wood stu­dio floor to mea­sure out the bars of the com­plex song, which shifts between 3/4, 4/4, and 2/4 time. “Part of its struc­ture is a par­tic­u­lar har­mon­ic thing between the melody and the bass line which intrigued me,” he remem­bered, and we see him striv­ing to get it right.

After the Bea­t­les, McCart­ney made “Black­bird” a reg­u­lar part of his set, play­ing it at near­ly every con­cert from 1975 on. It wasn’t only the beau­ty of the song that has moved him all these years, but its inspi­ra­tion, the Civ­il Rights move­ment, which “all of us cared pas­sion­ate­ly about,” he said. “Black­bird” is “sym­bol­ic, so you could apply it to your par­tic­u­lar prob­lem,” but the song’s intend­ed mes­sage, he said, was “from me to a black woman, expe­ri­enc­ing these prob­lems in the States: ‘Let me encour­age you to keep try­ing, to keep your faith, there is hope.’”

Below you can watch McCart­ney talk about the sto­ry behind “Black­bird” in a 2005 pro­duc­tion called Chaos & Cre­ation at Abbey Road.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

When the Bea­t­les Refused to Play Before Seg­re­gat­ed Audi­ences on Their First U.S. Tour (1964)

How “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er” Con­tains “the Cra­zi­est Edit” in Bea­t­les His­to­ry

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

Dave Grohl, like many rock musi­cians, does not come from a clas­si­cal­ly trained back­ground. Instead he has an abil­i­ty to write accord­ing to what sounds good, and where noodling around in the stu­dio can bring great rewards. That’s where The Foo Fight­ers’ best song “Ever­long” orig­i­nates.

In this 2020 clip from Oates Song Fest, Grohl tells the sto­ry of “Ever­long,” and how it came to him in the stu­dio one day in between work­ing on the band’s sec­ond album. It start­ed with a chord.

“I’m not a trained musi­cian, so I don’t know what that chord is,” he says. (The Inter­tubes seem to agree it’s a Dmaj7). At first he thought it was a chord from Son­ic Youth (“Schiz­o­phre­nia,” in fact), one of his favorite bands of all time. So that was a good start. One chord led to anoth­er and soon he had a sketch of a song.

At the time, Grohl was essen­tial­ly home­less after a divorce from his wife, pho­tog­ra­ph­er Jen­nifer Young­blood. And the band were at a low ebb as well, not hap­py that their debut album hadn’t tak­en off like they want­ed. But Grohl then fell in love again, this time with Louise Post of the band Veru­ca Salt. Over Christ­mas 1996, he wrote the lyrics. He would tell Ker­rang mag­a­zine in 2006: “That song’s about a girl that I’d fall­en in love with and it was basi­cal­ly about being con­nect­ed to some­one so much, that not only do you love them phys­i­cal­ly and spir­i­tu­al­ly, but when you sing along with them you har­mo­nize per­fect­ly.”

He record­ed a demo of the song, play­ing all the instru­ments (he might not be a *trained* musi­cian, but he is a well round­ed one), and the fin­ished stu­dio ver­sion real­ly didn’t stray too far from the orig­i­nal. Post pro­vid­ed har­monies record­ed down a tele­phone, as she was in Chica­go at the time. (You can hear them iso­lat­ed, along with a lot more gear­head chat on this Pro­duce Like a Pro episode): “I nev­er con­sid­ered doing this acousti­cal­ly, I thought it was a rock song,” Grohl adds. That was until he did the Howard Stern show, ear­ly in the morn­ing at 6 a.m., and per­formed it with just solo gui­tar. “It gave the song a new life,” he said. “It makes the song feel the way I always wish it would.”

The song cat­a­pult­ed the band to the top of the charts, and is con­sid­ered one of the great rock songs of the 1990s. David Let­ter­man con­sid­ers it his favorite song, and asked the band to play it at the close of his final show in 2015. For a very spe­cif­ic lyric writ­ten about a very spe­cif­ic woman, with chords dis­cov­ered while just goof­ing about, it has a uni­ver­sal qual­i­ty.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Paul Simon Tells the Sto­ry of How He Wrote “Bridge Over Trou­bled Water” (1970)

Dave Grohl & Greg Kurstin Cov­er 8 Songs by Famous Jew­ish Artists for Hanukkah: Bob Dylan, Beast­ie Boys, Vel­vet Under­ground & More

AI Soft­ware Cre­ates “New” Nir­vana, Jimi Hen­drix, Doors & Amy Wine­house Songs: Hear Tracks from the “Lost Tapes of the 27 Club”

Nir­vana Refus­es to Fake It on Top of the Pops, Gives a Big “Mid­dle Fin­ger” to the Tra­di­tion of Bands Mim­ing on TV (1991)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

The top flight crew of L.A. stu­dio musi­cians known as The Wreck­ing Crew acquired their name, leg­end has it, because they “were wreck­ing the busi­ness for every­one else,” writes Janet Maslin at The New York Times­, mean­ing old­er ses­sion play­ers who couldn’t keep up. Drum­mers like Hal Blaine (“who jus­ti­fi­ably calls him­self ’10 of Your Favorite Drum­mers’ on his Web site”) and gui­tarists like Tom­my Tedesco and Car­ol Kaye could play any­thing put in front of them per­fect­ly, in one take, with the style and per­fect tim­ing that char­ac­ter­ize the absolute best rock, folk, pop, and soul of the 1960s.

With some excep­tions, this group kept a low pro­file and have only become known in sub­se­quent ret­ro­spec­tives that reveal just how much they con­tributed to the music of the era. The answer is: more than any­one sure­ly sus­pect­ed at the time. But “the Wreck­ing Crew was not sup­posed to attract atten­tion. Groups like the Beach Boys, the Byrds, the Mon­kees and many oth­ers didn’t care to point out why they sound­ed so much bet­ter on records than on the road.”

Not only did mem­bers of the Crew “work mir­a­cles,” play­ing a “first-take, no-glitch ver­sion of ‘The Lit­tle Old Lady From Pasade­na,’” for exam­ple, but in many cas­es, they com­posed icon­ic parts with­out which songs like “The Beat Goes On” or “These Boots Were Made For Walk­ing” would prob­a­bly not have become hits.

“Nine times out of ten the pro­duc­er or arranger would tell us to use the charts as a guide, that’s all,” Blaine remem­bered. “We were encour­aged to go for it, to go beyond what had been writ­ten. We had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate, to be a team of arrangers.”

Though most­ly unknown to lis­ten­ers, the cou­ple dozen or so musi­cians in this group of excep­tion­al per­form­ers did pro­duce two major stars, Leon Rus­sell and Glen Camp­bell, who toured with the Beach Boys in the mid-60s until he became a major super­star with the Jim­my Webb-penned songs “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” and “Wichi­ta Line­man,” both record­ed, of course, with mem­bers of the Crew. They played on jazz records and record­ed icon­ic TV theme songs like The Twi­light Zone, Green Acres, Bonan­za, M*A*S*H*, Bat­man, Mis­sion: Impos­si­ble, and Hawaii Five‑O.

The only female mem­ber of the Crew, Car­ol Kaye, was described as “the great­est bass play­er I’ve ever met,” by no less than Bri­an Wil­son. Report­ed to have played on some­thing like 10,000 ses­sions, she wrote basslines for songs from “Cal­i­for­nia Girls” to the “Theme from Shaft.”

You can learn much more about the once-hid­den work of some of the best stu­dio musi­cians in the coun­try, rivals of the best play­ers in Motown, Mem­phis, and Mus­cle Shoals, in the doc­u­men­tary above direct­ed by Dan­ny Tedesco, son of Wreck­ing Crew gui­tarist Tony Tedesco. Or Kent Hart­man’s book, The Wreck­ing Crew: The Inside Sto­ry of Rock and Rol­l’s Best-Kept Secret.

Lis­ten to a YouTube playlist of clas­sic Wreck­ing Crew tracks here. And see why when you thought you were lis­ten­ing to The Byrds, Beach Boys, Mamas and Papas, Mon­kees and even Simon & Gar­funkel, you were real­ly often lis­ten­ing to the Wreck­ing Crew.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Car­ol Kaye Became the Most Pro­lif­ic Ses­sion Musi­cian in His­to­ry

Meet Car­ol Kaye, the Unsung Bassist Behind Your Favorite 60s Hits

Visu­al­iz­ing the Bass Play­ing Style of Motown’s Icon­ic Bassist James Jamer­son: “Ain’t No Moun­tain High Enough,” “For Once in My Life” & More

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

John Foger­ty once said that he con­ceived the open­ing bars of “Proud Mary” in imi­ta­tion of Beethoven’s Fifth sym­pho­ny. It’s an unusu­al asso­ci­a­tion for a song about a steam­boat, but it works as a clas­sic blues rock hook. Most peo­ple would say, how­ev­er, that the song didn’t tru­ly come into its own until Tina Turn­er began cov­er­ing it in 1969.

“Proud Mary” helped Turn­er come back after a sui­cide attempt the pre­vi­ous year. Her ver­sion, released as a sin­gle in Jan­u­ary 1971, “plant­ed the seeds of her lib­er­a­tion as both an artist and a woman,” Jason Heller writes at The Atlantic, bring­ing Ike and Tina major crossover suc­cess. Their ver­sion of the CCR song “rose to No.4 on Bill­board’s pop chart, sold more than 1 mil­lion copies, and earned Turn­er the first of her 12 Gram­my Awards.” See her, Ike, and the Ikettes per­form it live on Ital­ian TV, above.

It’s a sad­ly iron­ic part of her sto­ry that the suc­cess of “Proud Mary” also helped keep Turn­er in an abu­sive rela­tion­ship with her musi­cal part­ner and hus­band Ike for anoth­er five years until she final­ly left him in 1976. She spent the next sev­er­al decades telling her sto­ry as she rose to inter­na­tion­al fame as a solo artist, in mem­oirs, inter­views, and in the biopic What’s Love Got to Do With It.

The new HBO doc­u­men­tary, Tina, tells the sto­ry again but also includes Turner’s weary response to it. Asked in 1993 why she did not go see What’s Love Got to Do With It, Turn­er replied, “the sto­ry was actu­al­ly writ­ten so that I would no longer have to dis­cuss the issue. I don’t love that it’s always talked about… this con­stant reminder, it’s not so good. I’m not so hap­py about it.”

Like all musi­cians, Turn­er liked to talk about the music. “Proud Mary,” the sec­ond sin­gle from Ike and Tina’s Workin’ Togeth­er, came about when they heard an audi­tion tape of the song, which they’d been cov­er­ing on stage. “Ike said, ‘You know, I for­got all about that tune.’ And I said let’s do it, but let’s change it. So in the car Ike plays the gui­tar, we just sort of jam. And we just sort of broke into the black ver­sion of it.”

She may have giv­en Ike cred­it for the idea, but the exe­cu­tion was all Tina (and the extra­or­di­nary Ikettes), and the song became a sta­ple of her solo act for decades. Now, with Tina, it seems she may be leav­ing pub­lic life for good. “When do you stop being proud? How do you bow out slow­ly — just go away?” she says.

It’s a ques­tion she’s been ask­ing with “Proud Mary” for half a cen­tu­ry — onstage work­ing day and night — a song, she said last year, that could be summed up in a sin­gle word, “Free­dom.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How Aretha Franklin Turned Otis Redding’s “Respect” Into a Civ­il Rights and Fem­i­nist Anthem

Watch the Ear­li­est Known Footage of the Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence (Feb­ru­ary, 1967)

How Gior­gio Moroder & Don­na Summer’s “I Feel Love” Cre­at­ed the “Blue­print for All Elec­tron­ic Dance Music Today” (1977)

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