Although the Rolling Stones' 1963 debut single cover-version is vastly superior to Chuck Berry's original, they spoiled it somewhat by introducing one of the most pointless, unmemorable and earliest truck driver's gear changes of all time, a semi-tone up at 1 minute 6 seconds:
As far as I am aware, that is the first and last gear change that the Rolling Stones ever committed to vinyl*.
* Or 'CD' or 'download' or whatever it's called nowadays.
Saturday, 13 June 2009
Totally pointless gearchange from the dawn of pop music
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13 comments:
Had the first 12 Stones Decca singles once upon a long time ago...
Not sure about all this dawn of pop music stuff.How about the Re-birth of Rock and Roll?
By this time r'n'r had been stopped in its tracks in the USA :
Buddy Holly was dead; Elvis had been ruined by the army; Little Richard had got religion; Jerry Lee Lewis had been hit by an underage wife scandal; the Everly Brothers went into the army; Charlie Gracie (once bigger than Elvis)had fallen out with his record label.Chuck Berry was probably still in gaol for a prostitution offence at the time the Rolling Stones released their version.As with all Stones records
the singing is awful.Jagger does n't have the voice .
It was n't that difficult for English pseudo intellectuals (Jagger was at the LSE) to take a recent Chuck Berry song and have a
hit with it,when all of the competition was out of the way.
DBC, exactly, that's why i said 'dawn of pop music' rather than 'dawn of rock'n'roll' because that was ten years before this record came out.
from memory, the Beatles also committed just the one
I'd be interested, Mark: what do you reckon to the gear-change at the very end of the Carpenters' Goodbye to Love ?
ND, according to this they did five, plus 'Mull of Kintyre' and 'Woman'. So that makes seven.
As to the Carpenters, that one's quite clever, actually.
I must be tone deaf - I can't hear the gear change at all.
that's interesting
the one I had in mind was And I Love Her, which really jars. The others are sufficiently a propos that I confess I'd forgotten them. (I uterly diskard Mull)
glad you like the Carpenters - I think at least 3 of the other 4 Beatles changes fall into the same category
BTW, Mark, many thanks for the link, there's a ton of good stuff through that wormhole
particularly liked the muso's guide
I tried to send you this one the other day and something went wrong. Only at the very last moment does the fiddle player's arm warn you, about 3:20, that Don Henley is going to do something horrible to the song.
The Stones have another song that changes key.
'Can't You Hear Me Knockin'' from Sticky Fingers modulates from G major to G minor.
Subtle...
JH, it's quite subtle - I admit that I can only pin it down if I play along with the chorus and then have to play it a tone higher later on.
CI, that's a classic gearchange, thanks.
SS, that doesn't really count.
If you like really fierce modulation (multiple), try the chorus of Elton John's This Song Has No Title
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